Dreams of Steel Read online

  The stench of a thousand cruel gut wounds filled the air like the stink of the largest, rawest sewer in the world. It was the smell of battlefields. How many times had I smelled it? A thousand. And still I wasn’t used to it.

  I gagged. Nothing came up. I had emptied my stomach into my helmet while I was under the pile. I had a vague recollection of being terrified that I would drown in my own vomit.

  I started shaking. Tears rolled, stinging, hot tears of relief. I had survived! I had lived ages beyond the measure of most mortals but I had lost none of my desire for life.

  As I caught my breath I tried to put together where I was, what I was doing there. Besides surviving.

  My last clear memories weren’t pleasant. I remembered knowing that I was about to die.

  I couldn’t see much in the dark but I didn’t need to see to know we had lost. Had the Company turned the tide Croaker would have found me long ago.

  Why hadn’t the victors?

  There were men moving on the battlefield. I heard low voices arguing. Moving my way slowly. I had to get out of there.

  I got up, managed to stumble four steps before I fell on my face, too weak to move another inch. Thirst was a demon devouring me from the inside out. My throat was so dry I couldn’t whine.

  I’d made noise. The looters were quiet now.

  They were sneaking toward me, after one more victim. Where was my sword?

  I was going to die now. No weapon and no strength to use one if I found one before they found me.

  I could see them now, three men backlighted by a faint glow from Dejagore. Small men, like most of the Shadowmasters’ soldiers. Neither strong nor particularly skilled, but in my case they needed neither strength nor skill.

  Could I play dead? No. They wouldn’t be deceived. Corpses would be cool now.

  Damn them!

  Before they killed me they would do more than just rob me.

  They wouldn’t kill me. They would recognize the armor. The Shadowmasters weren’t fools. They knew who I’d been. They knew what I carried inside my head, treasures they dreamed about getting out. There would be rewards for my capture.

  Maybe there are gods. A racket broke out behind the looters. Sounded like a sally from Dejagore, some kind of spoiling raid. Mogaba wasn’t sitting on his hands waiting for the Shadowmasters to come to him.

  One of the looters said something in a normal voice. Someone told him to shut up. The third man entered his opinion. An argument ensued. The first man didn’t want to investigate the uproar. He’d had enough fighting.

  The others overruled him.

  The fates were kind. Two responsible soldiers handed me a life.

  I lay where I’d fallen, resting for several minutes before I got onto hands and knees and crawled back to the mound of bodies. I found my sword, an ancient and consecrated blade created by Carqui in the younger days of the Domination. A storied blade, but no one, not even Croaker, had heard its tale.

  I crawled toward the hummock where, when I’d seen him last, my love had been making his final stand, just him and Murgen and the Company standard, trying to stem the rout. It seemed an all night trek. I found a dead soldier with water in his canteen. I drained it and went on. My strength grew as I crept. By the time I reached the hummock I could totter along upright.

  I found nothing there. Just dead men. Croaker was not among them. The Company standard was gone. I felt hollow. Had the Shadowmasters taken him?

  They would want him badly for crushing their army at Ghoja, for taking Dejagore, for killing Stormshadow.

  I could not believe they had him. It had taken me too long to. find him. No god, no fate, could be so cruel.

  I cried.

  The night grew quiet. The sortie had withdrawn. The looters would return now.

  I started moving, stumbled into a dead elephant and almost shrieked, thinking I had walked right into a monster.

  The elephants had carried all kinds of clutter. Some might be useful. I scrounged a few pounds of dried food, a skin of water, a small jar of poison for arrowheads, a few coins, whatever caught my fancy. Then I walked northward, determined to reach the hills before sunrise. I discarded half my plunder before I got there.

  I hurried. Enemy patrols would be out looking for important bodies come first light.

  What could I do now, besides survive? I was the last of the Black Company. There was nothing left.... Something came into me like a lost memory resurfacing. I could turn back time. I could become what I had been.

  Trying not to think did not help. I remembered. And the more I remembered the more angry I became. Anger shaped me till all my thoughts were of revenge.

  As I started into the hills I surrendered. Those monsters who had raped my dreams had written their own decrees of doom. I would do whatever it took to requite them.

  Chapter Six

  Longshadow paced a room ablaze with light so brilliant he seemed a dark spirit trapped in the mouth of the sun. He clung to that one crystal walled, mirrored chamber where no shadow ever formed unless called forth by dire exigency. His fear of shadows was pathological.

  The chamber was the highest in the tallest tower of the fortress Overlook, south of Shadowcatch, a city on the southern edge of the world. South of Overlook lay a plateau of glittering stone where isolated pillars stood like forgotten supports for the sky. Though construction had been underway for seventeen years, Overlook was incomplete. If Longshadow did finish it, no force material or supernatural would be able to penetrate it.

  Strange, deadly, terrifying things hungered for him, lusted for freedom from the plain of glittering stone. They were shadow things that could catch up with a man as suddenly as death if he didn’t cling to the light.

  Longshadow’s sorcery had shown him the battle at Stormgard, four hundred miles north of Shadowcatch. He was pleased. His rivals Moonshadow and Stormshadow had perished. Shadowspinner had been injured. A touch here, a touch there, subtly, would keep Shadowspinner weak.

  But he couldn’t be killed. Oh, no. Not yet. Dangerous forces were at work. Shadowspinner would have to be the breakwater against which the storm spent its energies.

  Those mercenaries in Stormgard should be given every chance to sap Spinner’s troop strength. He was far too strong now that he had possession of all three northern Shadow armies.

  Subtlety. Subtlety. Each move had to be made with care. Spinner wasn’t stupid. He knew who his most dangerous enemy was. If he rid himself of the Taglians and their Free Company leaders he’d turn on Overlook immediately.

  And she was out there somewhere, shuffling counters in her own game, not in the ripeness of her power but deadly as a krite even so. And there was the woman whose knowledge could be invaluable, alone, a treasure to be harvested by any adventurer.

  He needed a catspaw. He couldn’t leave Overlook. The shadows were out there waiting, infinitely patient.

  He caught a flicker of darkness from the corner of his eye. He squealed and flung himself away.

  It was a crow, just a damned curious crow fluttering around outside.

  A catspaw. There was a power in the swamps north of that miserable Taglios. It festered with grievances real and imagined. It could be seduced.

  It was time he lured that power into the game.

  But how, without leaving Overlook?

  Something stirred on the plain of glittering stone.

  The shadows were watching, waiting. They sensed the rising intensity of the game.

  Chapter Seven

  I slept in a tangle of brush in a hollow. I’d fled through olive groves and precariously perched hillside paddies, running out of hope, till I’d stumbled onto that pocket wilderness in a ravine. I was so far gone I’d just crawled in, hoping fate would be kind.

  A crow’s call wakened me from another terrible dream. I opened my eyes. The sun reached in through the brush. It dappled me with spots of light. I’d hoped nobody could see me in there but that proved a false hope.

  Someone was
moving around the edge of the bushes. I glimpsed one, then another. Damn! The Shadowmasters’ men. They moved back a little and whispered.

  I saw them for just a moment but they seemed troubled, less like hunters than the hunted. Curious.

  They’d spotted me, I knew. Otherwise they wouldn’t be back there behind me, murmuring too low for me to catch what they said.

  I couldn’t turn toward them without showing them I knew they were there. I didn’t want to startle them. They might do something I’d regret. The crow called again. I started turning my head slowly.

  I froze.

  There was another player here, a dirty little brown man in a filthy loincloth and tattered turban. He squatted behind the brush. He looked like one of the slaves Croaker had freed after our victory at Ghoja. Did the soldiers know he was there?

  Did it matter? He wasn’t likely to be any help.

  I was lying on my right side, on my arm. My fingers tingled. My arm was asleep but the sensation reminded me that my talent had shown signs of freshening since we’d come down past the waist of the world. I hadn’t had a chance to test it for weeks.

  I had to do something. Or they would. My sword lay inches from my hand....

  Golden Hammer.

  It was a child’s spell, an exercise, not a weapon at all, just as a butcher knife isn’t. Once it would have been no more work than dropping a rock. Now it was as hard as plain speech for a stroke victim. I tried shaping the spell in my mind. The frustration! The screaming frustration of knowing what to do and being unable to do it.

  But it clicked. Almost the way it had back when. Amazed, pleased, I whispered the words of power, moved my fingers. The muscles remembered!

  The Golden Hammer formed in my left hand.

  I jumped up, flipped it, raised my sword. The glowing hammer flew true. The soldier made a stabbed-pig sound and tried to fend it off. It branded its shape on his chest.

  It was an ecstatic moment. Success with that silly child’s spell was a major triumph over my handicap.

  My body wouldn’t respond to my will. Too stiff, too battered and bruised for flight, I tried to charge the second soldier. Mostly I stumbled toward him. He gaped, then he ran. I was astonished.

  I heard a sound like the cough of a tiger behind me.

  A man came out of nowhere down the ravine. He threw something. The fleeing soldier pitched onto his face and didn’t move.

  I got out of the brush and placed myself so I could watch the killer and the dirty slave who had made the tiger cough. The killer was a huge man. He wore tatters of Taglian legionnaire’s garb.

  The little man came around the brush slowly, considered my victim. He was impressed. He said something apologetic in Taglian, then something excited, rapidly in dialect I found unfamiliar, to the big man, who had begun searching his victim. I caught a phrase here and there, all with a cultish sound but uncertain in this context. I couldn’t tell if he was talking about me or praising one of his gods. I heard “the Foretold” and “Daughter of Night” and “the Bride” and “Year of the Skulls.” I’d heard a “Daughter of Shadow” and a “Year of the Skulls” before somewhere, in the religious chatter of god-ridden Taglians, but I didn’t know their significance.

  The big man grunted. He wasn’t impressed. He just cursed the dead soldier, kicked him. “Nothing.”

  The little man fawned. “Your pardon, Lady. We’ve been killing these dogs all morning, trying to raise a stake. But they’re poorer than I was as a slave.”

  “You know me?”

  “Oh, yes, Mistress. The Captain’s Lady.” He emphasized those last two words, separately and heavily. He bowed three times. Each time his right thumb and forefinger brushed a triangle of black cloth that peeped over the top of his loincloth. “We stood guard while you slept. We should have realized you would need no protection. Forgive us our presumption.”

  Gods, did he smell. “Have you seen anyone else?”

  “Yes, Mistress. A few, from afar. Running, most of them.”

  “And the Shadowmasters’ soldiers?”

  “They search, but with no enthusiasm. Their masters didn’t send many. A thousand like these pigs.” He indicated the man I had dropped. His partner was searching the body. “And a few hundred horsemen. They must be busy with the city.”

  “Mogaba will give them hell if he can, buying time for others to get clear.”

  The big man said, “Nothing on this toad either, jamadar.”

  The little man grunted.

  Jamadar? It’s the Taglian word for captain. The little man had used it earlier, with a different intonation, when he’d called me the Captain’s Lady.

  I asked, “Have you seen the Captain?”

  The pair exchanged looks. The little man stared at the ground. “The Captain is dead, Mistress. He died trying to rally the men to the standard. Ram saw it. An arrow through the heart.”

  I sat down on the ground. There was nothing to say. I’d known it. I’d seen it happen, too. But I hadn’t wanted to believe it. Till that instant, I realized, I’d been carrying some small hope that I’d been wrong.

  Impossible that I could feel such loss and pain. Damn him, Croaker was just a man! How did I get so involved? I never meant it to get complicated.

  This wasn’t accomplishing anything. I got up. “We lost a battle but the war goes on. The Shadowmasters will rue the day they decided to bully Taglios. What are your names?”

  The little man said, “I’m Narayan, Lady.” He grinned. I’d get thoroughly sick of that grin. “A joke on me. It’s a Shadar name.” He was Gunni, obviously. “Do I look it?” He jerked his head at the other man, who was Shadar. Shadar men tend to be tall and massive and hairy. This one had a head like a ball of kinky wire with eyes peering out. “I was a vegetable peddler till the Shadowmasters came to Gondowar and enslaved everyone who survived the fight for the town.”

  That would have been before we’d come to Taglios, last year, when Swan and Mather had been doing their inept best to stem the first invasion.

  “My friend is Ram. Ram was a carter in Taglios before he joined the legions.”

  “Why did he call you jamadar?”

  Narayan glanced at Ram, flashed a grin filled with bad teeth, leaned close to me, whispered, “Ram isn’t very bright. Strong as an ox he is, and tireless, but slow.”

  I nodded but wasn’t satisfied. They were two odd birds. Shadar and Gunni didn’t run together. Shadar consider themselves superior to everyone. Hanging around with a Gunni would constitute a defilement of spirit. And Narayan was low-caste Gunni. Yet Ram showed him deference.

  Neither harbored any obviously wicked designs toward me. At the moment any companion was an improvement on travelling alone. I told them, “We ought to get moving. More of them could show up.... What is he doing?”

  Ram had a ten-pound rock. He was smashing the leg bones of the man he’d killed. Narayan said, “Ram. That’s enough. We’re leaving.”

  Ram looked puzzled. He thought. Then he shrugged and discarded the rock. Narayan didn’t explain his actions. He told me, “We saw one fair-sized group this morning, maybe twenty men. Maybe we can catch up.”

  “That would be a start.” I realized I was starving. I hadn’t eaten since before the battle. I shared out what I’d taken off the dead elephant. It didn’t help much. Ram went at it like it was a feast, now completely indifferent to the dead.

  Narayan grinned. “You see? An ox. Come. Ram, carry her armor.”

  Two hours later we found twenty-three fugitives on a hilltop. They were beaten men, apathetic, so down they didn’t care if they got away. Few still had their weapons. I didn’t recognize any of them. Not surprising. We’d gone into battle with forty thousand.

  They knew me. Their manners and attitude improved instantly. It pleased me to see hope blossom among them. They rose and lowered their heads respectfully.

  I could see the city and plain from that hilltop. The Shadowmasters’ troops were leaving the hills, evidently recalled. G
ood. We’d have a little time before they picked it up again.

  I looked at the men more closely.

  They had accepted me already. Good again.

  Narayan had begun speaking to them individually. Some seemed frightened of him. Why? What was it? Something was odd about that little man.

  “Ram, build us a fire. I want a lot of smoke.”

  He grunted, drafted four men, headed downhill to collect firewood.

  Narayan trotted over, grinning that grin, followed by a man of amazing width. Most Taglians are lean to the point of emaciation. This one had no fat on him. He was built like a bear. “This is Sindhu, Mistress, that I know by reputation.” Sindhu bowed slightly. He looked a humorless sort. Narayan added, “He’ll be a good man to help out.”

  I noted a red cloth triangle at Sindhu’s waist. He was Gunni. “Your help will be appreciated, Sindhu. You two get this bunch sorted out. See what resources we have.”

  Narayan grinned, made a small bow, hustled off with his new friend.

  I settled crosslegged, separate from the rest, faced the city, closed out the world. The Golden Hammer had come easily. I’d try again.

  I opened to what little talent I retained. A peppercorn of fire formed in the bowl of my hands. It was coming back.

  There is no way to express my pleasure.

  I concentrated on horses.

  Half an hour later a giant black stallion appeared, trotted straight to me. The men were impressed.

  I was impressed. I hadn’t expected success. And that beast was only the first of four to respond. By the time the fourth arrived so had another hundred men. The hilltop was crowded.

  I assembled them. “We’ve lost a battle, men. Some of you have lost heart, too. That’s understandable. You weren’t raised in a warrior tradition. But this war hasn’t been lost. And it won’t end while one Shadowmaster lives. If you don’t have the stomach to stick it out, stay away from me. You’d better go now. I won’t let you go later.”