Soldiers Live

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.

“Rajadharma is everywhere. Anyone who can write seems to put that one up. Then there’s ‘Madhuprlya ’ which means ‘A Friend of the Wine’ and is a popular nickname for Ghopal Singh. Seems the lord of the Greys has a taste for the grape. The one I don’t get, and which seems to trouble the Greys more than ‘Madhupriya,’ is, ‘Thi Kim is coming.’ It doesn’t make sense. Everybody assumes Nyueng Bao are involved because Thi Kim is translatable only from Nyueng Bao. As ‘death walk.’ Except that here it’s written as a proper name.”

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 listened closely enough. I had listened and understood that One-Eye’s wondrous spear would have to be employed in ways that the little wizard had defined well back into his healthier days. But that hat had been such a commonplace, and so foul, that it had not clung to its place in my mind.

“It may be in my junk wagon,” Tobo told me. “If it’s not there it’ll be with mom’s stuff.” He winced. Sahra remained missing. “We took everything of his and Nana Gota’s when we left Hsien.”

“I need to find it. Fairly soon.”

Tobo wondered why but did not ask. What a good boy. He did say, “If I was you I’d think about getting my stuff together, ready to move.” For this Annalist all the junk and paper and pens and ink and notes and whatnot can build into piles that threaten to swamp. “Sleepy would rather stay here and spend some treasure refitting and recruiting and training and getting stronger but I convinced her that won’t work. Things aren’t going to slow down anywhere else. Right now we have more sorcery available than ever before in the Company’s history.”

“I’ve said so myself.” More than once, in jeremiads about counting too much on powers and skills not part of the traditional Company arsenal.

“Yes, you did. But you didn’t say anything about it fading away.”

“Sure I did.”

“You want it to go away. And it will. Because these aren’t the kind of people who’re likely to be content to do what we’ve got them doing. So we ought to use them up while we can.”

“Meaning?”

“We need to go after Taglios while we have the power to hit it hard.”

Was he starting to sound just the slightest bit bigheaded? Like he might know better than the Captain what we ought to do? Was it going to be squabble on with Sleepy now that his mother was no longer around?

Might better keep an eye on our baby boy. He was overdue to outgrow all that.

I said, “You could be right.”