Bleak Seasons

60

They pulled it off, Lady and her damnfool gang. Audacity pays. They slipped into the camp, murdered Shadowspinner, and when they got caught they convinced the southerners that it was all fated and they should not go doing anything because of that. I could not be much of a witness to their mass conversion. My bowels overruled my desire to observe. I spent most of my time making a worse mess of myself.

At some point our former guards decided to bring us to Lady's attention in an effort to curry favor.

Blade recognized us as they brought us out of the pen.

Blade looks like he might have been born Nar. Like them he is tall, black and muscular, without an ounce of fat on him. He says little but has a strong presence. His background is shadowy. He ran with Willow Swan and Cordy Mather, who saved him from crocodiles several thousand miles north of Taglios. What everyone knew for sure, what Blade made no effort to hide, was that he hated priests, singly, collectively, and without any prejudice whatsoever where belief system was concerned. Once I thought he was an atheist who hated the whole idea of gods and religion, but after further exposure I decided it was only the retailers of religion he detested. That suggested sharp incidents in his past.

No matter now. Blade took Sindhu and I away from our guards. "Standardbearer, you stink."

"Call out the ladies in waiting. Let them give me a bath." I could not remember my last bath. In Dejagore we did not waste water on trivialities.

Of course, now we could bathe all we wanted although the water would be unclean.

Blade obtained fresh clothing by the expedient of robbing some southern officers, had us clean up and visit the inadequate field physicians Croaker had tried to train for the Taglian forces.

They knew less about stopping the drizzling shits than I did.

It was daylight when Lady saw me. She already knew the prisoners were deserters from the city. She was blunt. "Why did you run out, Murgen?"

"I didn't. We decided somebody had to come find you. I lost the election... Uh." She was in a bleak mood, apparently pretty sick herself. Never mind the humor, Murgen. "One-Eye and Goblin figured I was the only trustworthy guy who had any chance of getting through. They couldn't leave. I didn't make it, though."

"Why did you feel the need to send someone?"

"Mogaba elected himself god. With the water around us, keeping the southerners back, he doesn't need to get along with anybody who doesn't agree."

Sindhu said, "The black men believe they serve the goddess, mistress. But their heresies are grotesque. They have become worse than unbelievers."

I pricked up my ears. Maybe I would learn something about Sindhu's bunch. I had bones to pick with them. I had not yet found any evidence to suggest that it was not them who kidnapped me and took a crack at murdering Mogaba.

Still, I could not imagine why they would bother.

Sindhu and Lady talked. Her questions sounded vaguely doctrinal. Sindhu's replies made no sense.

Once Lady interrupted the interview to be sick. A skinny little gink named Narayan, who kept hanging around, seemed inordinately pleased. I noted that Sindhu showed him considerable deference.

I was not happy. The little I knew of their cult assured me that I did not want them influencing my captains.

The interview ended. Blade's cronies took me away. I got to hang out with Swan and Mather, meaning I had somebody to speak a reasonable language with for a while, but soon I felt like a forgotten man.

"What are we doing?" I asked Swan.

"I don't know. Cordy and I just tag along behind Her Lordship pretending not to be watching her for the Prabrindrah Drah and Radisha."

"Pretending?"

"Ain't much good being a spy if everybody knows it, is there? Anyway, Cordy gets to do all the worrying. He's the one playing pattycake with the Woman."

"You mean that ain't just a vicious rumor? He's really plooking the Radisha?"

"Hard to believe, ain't it? She's got a face like... Hey! Cordy! Where's them cards? We got us a pigeon here thinks he can play tonk."

"Thinks? Swan, you're gonna think I invented the game if you get into it with me."

Mather was a nondescript character of average height with ginger hair who stood out only because he was white in a land where nobody but harem girls, kept out of the sun from birth, had fair skin. He asked, "Willow's mouth running away with him again?"

"Maybe. I've made a career of playing tonk. Hell, they boot you out of the Black Company if you don't make journeyman player."

Mather shrugged. "Then you'll twist Willow's head back around straight for him. Here. Deal. I'll see if the mighty general Blade wants to sit in."

Swan grumbled, "That would take him out of sight of Lady." Sounded like some sour grapes there. Mather showed him a smirk that confirmed my guess.

"What is it about her?" I asked. "Every damned guy that walks on his hind legs gets near her for five minutes, he starts floating around with his tongue hanging down, banging into things. But I've been around her for years. I can see she's got the right stuff in the right places put together about as good as you could want but I don't think I could get excited even if she didn't used to be the Lady and she wasn't married to the Old Man." Not that that was literally true. They had not even bothered to jump over a sword.

Swan shuffled. "Cut?"

I cut. I always cut. One-Eye taught me that.

Swan asked, "You really don't feel it? Man, she comes around me and my brain goes south. And she's a widow now so... "

"I don't think so."

"What?"

"She ain't no widow. Croaker is still alive."

"Shit. That'd be my luck, too. You want to stack Cordy a hand, make him think he's got a winner, then skunk him?" As soon as I shook my head he wanted to know how come I thought Croaker was alive. I evaded a definitive answer for the few moments it took Mather to return.

"Blade's too busy looking for an angle to use while he's close to the magic. You load me up again, Willow?No? Bullshit. Let's just pick them up and deal them over."

"Ain't this the story of my life?" I grumbled. "Look here." I had two aces, a pair of deuces and a trey. An automatic winner, damned near couldn't be beat. "And that's a true natural, no help."

Swan snickered. "Don't matter. You don't got anything to do anyway."

"You got a point. Why don't you guys come over to Dejagore? I'll buy you a mug of One-Eye's home brew."

"Ha! Competition, huh?" Swan and Mather had gone into the brewing business back when they first came to Taglios. They were out of the racket now, among their reasons the fact that the priests of all the native religions condemned the use of alcohol.

"I doubt it. The only thing good about their brew is it gets you skunked."

"That was the only good thing about the rat piss we made," Mather said. "My dear old daddy the brewmaster rolled over every time we tapped another keg."

"We never laid any beer up," Swan countered. "Soon as it was ripe we skimmed the scum off and poured it down Taglian throats. And don't buy that shit about his daddy, neither. Old Man Mather was a tax assessor who was so dumb he didn't take bribes."

"Shut up and deal." Mather snatched up his cards. "He did brew his own beer. And Swan's old man was a hod carrier."

"But a handsome one, Cordy. And a lover. I inherited his good looks."

"You take after your mother. And if you don't do something about that hair pretty soon you're going to wind up in somebody's harem."

This was a side of these guys I had not seen before. But I had not spent much time loafing with them. They were not Company. I kept my mouth shut and concentrated on my cards and let them tell me about who they used to be before the wander-dust settled on their shoes and set them roving against all odds. "What about you, Murgen?" Swan asked after he noticed that I was winning more than my share of hands. "Where did you come from?"

I told them about growing up on a farm. There wasn't anything exciting about my life until I decided that farming wasn't what I wanted to do. I joined one of Lady's armies, found out I didn't like the way things were done there, deserted and joined up with the Black Company, which was the only place I could hide with the provost after me.

Mather asked, "You ever regret leaving home?"

"Every goddamned day, Mather. Every goddamned day. It was boring raising potatoes but not one time did I ever did have a spud try to stick a knife in me. I was hardly ever hungry and almost never cold and the landlord was all right. He made sure his tenants had enough before he took his share. He didn't live much better than we did. Oh, and the only magic we ever saw was the kind your wandering conjurers perform at town fairs."

"So why not go home?"

"Can't."

"If you're careful and don't look prosperous and don't go around pissing people off you can travel almost anywhere safely. We did."

"I can't go home because home ain't there no more. A Rebel army came through a couple years after I left." The Company passed through later still, marching from somewhere unpleasant to somewhere where we would be unhappy. The whole country had been turned desert in the name of freedom from the tyranny of the Lady's empire.