Soldiers Live

53

The Taglian Territories: A Haunted Wood

Soulcatcher glanced back before entering the wood. "So where are they all?" And in a firm male voice she demanded, "What happened to all the suck-ups?"

Another voice, "Somebody should've wanted to kiss up."

A puzzled voice asked, "They always do, don't they?"

"Are we losing it here?"

"I don't like it."

"This isn't fun anymore." Petulant, spoiled child voice.

"Most of the time we're just going through the motions. There aren't any challenges here."

"Even when there are it's almost impossible to get impassioned enough to care."

Most of those voices were businesslike but jaded.

"It's hard to keep going on fuel like hunger for revenge alone."

"It's hard to be alone, period."

That remark brought on an extended silence. Soulcatcher did not have a voice for expressing the emotional costs of being who she was. Not out loud. Ferocious mad-killer sorcerers do not whine because nobody likes them.

The growth along the creek had a sharp boundary. In another time the land must have been groomed by human occupation. Soulcatcher listened. The wood, which was a little more than a mile wide, seemed remarkably silent. There should have been a racket from work parties harvesting firewood and timber for use around the camp. But there was nothing. And she did not recall authorizing a holiday. Something had frightened the soldiers away.

Yet she sensed no danger.

After a moment, though, she did detect a supernatural presence.

She glanced upward. Those vultures continued to circle. They were lower now. They seemed to be wheeling above the presence she sensed.

Warily, she probed farther and deeper. She had remarkably well-honed senses when she cared to concentrate.

This presence was like nothing in her experience. Something like a powerful shadow, yet with a strong implication of working intelligence. Not a demon or some such otherworldly entity, though. Something that felt like it was a part of nature but still having about it a hint of not belonging to this world. But how? Not of this world but not otherworldly?... Something very powerful but not driven by malice. At the moment. Something timeless, accustomed to patience, mildly impatient right now, again a smart-shadow thing like those stalkers down south had been.

Soulcatcher extended her senses to their maximum. This thing was waiting for her. For her alone. It had repulsed everything but those vultures. She had to be careful. Despite her ennui she did not want to trigger a fatal ambush.

There was nothing.

She stepped forward.

She did so while assembling a quiver of sudden and deadly spells. She squinted behind her mask, looking for this thing that wanted to see her.

It grew stronger but less focused as she moved toward it. For a moment it seemed that it was all around her—even while being in one place somewhere ahead of her. When she did arrive where her senses told her it ought to be, she saw nothing.

That place was a small clearing just off the Rock Road, across the shallow stream. She saw several Vehdna grave markers and a few Gunni memorial posts with time-gnawed prayer wheels on top. This must be where her sister fought the Shadowlander cavalry during her flight from Dejagore. In a time so long ago that she still had believed Narayan Singh to be her friend and champion.

Sunlight tumbled through the leaves overhead. It dappled the clearing. Soulcatcher settled on a rotten log that protruded from what might once must have been an earthwork. "I'm here. I'm waiting."

Something large moved at the edge of her vision. She got the impression of a black feline. But when she turned she saw nothing.

"So that's the way it's going to be, eh?"

"Thus it must be. Ever." The response seemed to come from nowhere in particular and it was not clear whether she heard it with her ears or inside her head.

"What do you want from me?" Soulcatcher used a deep masculine voice heavy with menace.

The presence was amused, not intimidated. "I bring a message from your old friend Croaker."

Croaker was no friend. In fact, she was distinctly piqued with that man. He had not been entirely cooperative when she had tried to seduce him and now he had refused to stay buried after she had tried to kill him. Still, he was the reason she had a head on her shoulders these days. And that tiny edge would be why this communication was arriving in his name.

"Go ahead."

The whatever-it-was did as she bid. As she listened she poked around in an effort to fathom its true nature. While searching for some handle she could grasp to make it over into an agent of her own.

It sensed what she was doing. It was amused. Not troubled. Not frightened. Not inclined to react. Just amused.

Soulcatcher reviewed the story carefully once the spook had finished relating it. It sounded plausible. If incomplete. But why expect those people to be entirely forthcoming in such a situation?

Try as she might she could discover no obvious trap. They sounded worried down there. This news could explain their sudden shift of strategy.

Goblin possessed by Kina. Narayan Singh dead. The Daughter of Night running loose... Not running loose at all! In the hands of her troops, on the Rock Road somewhere south of Dejagore, very probably looking for an opportunity to get loose.

Goblin might arrange that.

She bounced up off the rotten log, ennui gone. "Tell Croaker he can consider communications opened. I'll take steps to deal with the situation. Go! Go!"

A flicker. Like a shadow passing through and deserting at the same time. It left a deeply felt chill and one more uncertain glimpse of an impossibly large, catlike form moving away at an impossible pace.

From the nearby Rock Road came the rattle and clop of a large party headed south. Camels seemed to be involved. That meant civilians. There were no camels in her armies. She hated camels. They were filthy animals with nasty tempers even on their best days.

She leapt across the creek and hurried to the edge of the woods, emerging not a hundred feet from where a caravan was doing the same. Civilian it was, but most of the wagons and camels and mules would discharge their cargo in her camp.

The caravaners spied her. They were startled. And frightened.

Her blood was moving again. She always enjoyed the impact she made when she appeared unexpectedly.

As she turned and raised her gaze to the circling vultures she thought she glimpsed a familiar face among the merchants and teamsters. Aridatha Singh? Here? How? Why? But when she looked more closely she saw no Aridatha. Maybe it was just someone who looked like Singh. Maybe it was her reawakened zest reminding her that it had been a long time since she had enjoyed a man. Aridatha Singh had a definite masculine allure. Few women failed to notice that, though he seemed entirely unaware of the effect he had.

Time enough to think about that after she alerted Dejagore and got troops of cavalry out to round up her niece, that willful, difficult child.

There must be some way to gain control of her and add her talents to the arsenal of the Protectorate. Possibly she might even take Goblin—despite the fact of his possession.

Goblin never had been much of a wizard.

How sweet revenge was when it arrived after a long delay.

Then let that bitch Ardath and all her dogs come on! A lot of ancient debts would get paid off.

As she approached the encampment ditch she glanced back to consider the vultures again.

The carrion birds had broken their circle. Only a few remained in sight, cruising the sky in search of something rank and tasty again.

Soulcatcher found a voice she had not used since she was young. With it she began to sing a song of springtime and young love, in a language recalled from the springtime of life, when love still lived in the world.

The sentries were extremely frightened.