Mogaba spent a moment considering what options he might have. It took only a minute to conclude that withdrawal toward Taglios was the best course.
Oh, but he hated that. No matter the true facts, rumor would call it a defeat and a retreat. That would cost.
The Great General considered his aide. He did not know the man well enough to be aware of his family status. “Ton-jon, is it?”
“Than Jahn, sir. A remote male ancestor is reputed to have been Nyueng Bao. My family is Vehdna.”
“Excellent. Perhaps you can share religious anecdotes with the enemy Captain.”
“Sir?” Sounding both baffled and irked.
“I’m sending you south under a flag of truce. To arrange for an armistice. So we can collect our dead.” If anything the Great General ever did won him favor with the Taglian people, it was his effort to bring back the fallen sons so their families could honor them with all the appropriate last rites.
This time would be a bitch. There was no way he was going to recover all the Taglian dead. “Find me some priests. Every kind we have.” He needed advice about what to do with so many bodies, this close to home.
The Company, Mogaba was sure, would just fling their share of Taglian corpses into one big ugly hole, cover them over and forget about them.
99
By the Military Cemetery:
Missing Persons
Tobo was distraught. Murgen was distracted. He walked around bumping into things, trapped inside his own interior world. I had not seen him so lost since his Annalist days.
No trace of Sahra had surfaced, even with the Unknown Shadows hunting. So far Tobo had determined only that she had not fallen into enemy hands. The Taglians were not looking. They were unaware, even, that they ought to bear the woman a grudge.
Sahra always had had a knack for going unnoticed.
“She’s dead,” Lady told me. “She was hurt, she crawled in somewhere to hide, and she died there.” Which was plausible enough. Several bodies had been discovered in circumstances that fit the scenario. And Sahra was not alone in being missing. Every company in the force was unable to account for someone. Most, probably, had run away or were prisoners of war. But the hidden folk kept finding others dead in places where no one had yet thought to look.
I hoped Lady’s simple explanation was the correct one. I dreaded the chance that Sahra had been captured by somebody who would use her to manipulate Tobo.
The up side was that there was a paucity of villains who might be interested. Mogaba was exonerated. Soulcatcher was buried. Booboo and the Khadidas were entombed in the big fortress guarding the southern approaches to Taglios, behind a door that could not be opened by any key still within the stronghold. Others who might have tried something sly—say the Howler or the Voroshk—had perfect alibis.
So it came down to Sahra being dead and lost or lost and wandering around in a shock so profound that she could not recall who she was or where she belonged.
Sleepy posted a huge reward for “the capture of an older Nyueng Bao woman wanted for questioning in regard to espionage against agents of the Prahbrindrah Drah.” Murgen provided a description that included the shapes and locations of moles and a birthmark unfamiliar to anyone else.
“It doesn’t make much sense, does it?” my darling whispered to me. “People go at the oddest times and from the oddest causes.”
“Soldiers live,” I murmured.
“You’re turning that into a mantra.”
“You feel guilty. You wonder why him and not me, then you’re glad it was him and not you, then you feel guilty. Soldiers live. And wonder why.”
“One soldier lives because the gods know that I still haven’t gotten my fair share of loving. Put that pen away and come on over here.”
“You’ve sure turned into a pushy broad in your old age.”
“Yeah? You should’ve seen me four hundred years ago.”
Tobo announced, “Mogaba’s had the Khadidas and the Daughter of Night moved to the palace. In a remarkable coincidence the Protector was seen publicly for the first time in months only a few hours later. She was extremely angry with the Taglians and brought one of her punishments down on their heads.” He grinned. “Most likely that had something to do with all the graffiti that’s begun appearing. All the good old stuff. ‘Water sleeps.’ ‘My brother unforgiven.’ And even some that aren’t my doing. ‘You shall lie in the ashes ten thousand years, eating only wind.’ I love that one.”
That one caught my attention. I had heard it before, somewhere. But I had heard them all before.
“
I said, “If it’s used as a name or title it would more properly come through as ‘Deathwalker’ or ‘Death Walking.’ Not so? In olden times a Deathwalker was a suspected plague carrier.”
“Goblin,” Lady said. “It’s Deceivers announcing the coming of the Khadidas. A dead man still walking around. By the grace or curse of Kina. And a plague carrier, too, if you count the religious side.”
“Maybe.” Tobo did not seem convinced. I did not blame him. I had a feeling it was something more sinister myself. Based on nothing whatsoever, because Lady’s suggestion ought to be true.
I nodded in the general direction of where Sleepy should be. “She said anything about what she’s planning?”
“Not unless you count her complaining about the headbutting she’s been doing with our friends from the Land of Unknown Shadows. Every brigade commander is whining about needing replacements. But none of them want local recruits—because of the language problem more than because of their lack of equipment and training—but none of them wants to see their own brigade disbanded so its soldiers can fill open slots elsewhere.”
But there was no choice and everyone recognized that fact. The best answer was simple enough. And Sleepy found it without consulting me.
Instead of disbanding the hardest hit units she took the one least distressed and distributed its people amongst the others, keeping whole groups together. Being with people you know and trust is critical to a soldier. She made sure the officers got better jobs whenever possible. The displaced brigade commander became her chief of staff, with the assurance that he would be given command of all the native troops we raised, however numerous they might become.
Maximum result with least distress to oversized egos. Only a few men ended up completely disappointed.
Life has turned into a preoccupation with administrative detail.
Is that what happens when you get old? You worry more about people and their interaction than you do about drama and the violence and the wicked deeds those people do?
That is us. The Black Company. Wicked deeds done dirt cheap. But by damn! You had better pony up when payment is due. Otherwise, if we must, we will come back from the grave itself to make sure our accounts are properly balanced.
I said some of that aloud one afternoon. Tobo told me, “You’re mad, old man.”
“As a hatter.” A reflection. “Speaking of which. You know whatever happened to One-Eye’s old hat?” I was going to need that disgusting flea farm one day soon. Desperately. One-Eye had told me I would but I had not
