Nyueng Bao were almost always a part of my life then. A scant three weeks following Croaker's showdown with Mogaba, and Mogaba's consequent flight, while us survivors were still creeping north toward Taglios, pretending to be triumphant heroes who had liberated a friendly city and rid the world of a bunch of villains, I awakened one morning to find myself under the dubious and permanent protection of Thai Dei. He was no more talkative than ever but in a few words he insisted that he owed me big and he was going to stick to me forever. I thought that was just hyperbole.
Boy, was I thrilled. I was not in a mood to cut his throat so I let him hang on. And he did have a sister I wanted to see a lot more than I wanted to see him, though I never found the nerve to tell him that. Even so...
Back in the city, established in the Palace, in my tiny room with my papers and books and Thai Dei sleeping on a reed mat outside my door, him insisting that To Tan was in good hands with his grandmother, I lived a life of confusion, trying to figure out what had happened to us all and to make sense of Lady's writings. I was not thinking with absolute clarity when I received a gentleman name of Bahn Do Trang, who was a relative of one of the pilgrims of Dejagore. He had a message for me. It was so cryptic it could have qualified as one of the great goof-ball sybilline pronouncements of all time.
"Eleven hills, over the edge, he kissed her," brother Bahn told me, all splashed up with a huge and un-Nyueng Bao grin. "But the others were not for hire."
To which I offered this countersign, "Six blue birds in a peppermint tree, warbling limericks of apathy."
Death of the grin. "What?"
"That's my line, Pop. You told the guys downstairs you had a critical message for me. Against my better judgment I let you come up here and right away you start spouting nonsense. Tamal!" I yelled at the orderly who assisted me and several others who worked out of rooms nearby. "Show this clown the way to the street."
Do Trang wanted to argue, looked at my sidekick, thought better of making a fuss. Thai Dei watched the old boy closely but did not look like he wanted the honor of flinging him out on his enigmatic ass personally.
Poor Bahn. It must have been important to him. He seemed stricken.
Tamal was a huge Shadar man-bear, all hair and growl and bad breath. He would have liked nothing better than to pummel a Nyueng Bao all the way to the street and thence to the edge of the city. Bahn went without protest.
Less than a week later I received the identical message as a handwritten note that looked like it had been inscribed by a six-year-old. One of Cordy Mather's Guards brought it up. I read it, told him, "Give the old fool a beating and tell him not to bother me again."
The Guard gave me a funny look. He glanced at Thai Dei, then whispered, "Ain't old, ain't a him, but probably is a fool, Standardbearer. Was I you I'd take the time."
I got it. At last. "I'll just box his ears myself, then. Thai Dei, try to keep the bad guys out. I'll be back in a few minutes."
He did not listen, of course, because he could not bodyguard me from a distance, but I did confuse him long enough to get a headstart. I got down there and got my hands on Sahra before he caught up or got ahead of me. After that he had little say. And my clever lady had brought To Tan to distract him.
Thai Dei did not talk much but that did not make him stupid. He knew he could not win with the cards he held right now. "Clever," I told Sahra. "I thought I'd never see you again. Hi, kiddo," I said to To Tan, who did not remember me. "Sahra, honey, you gotta promise me. No more of that cryptic stuff like Grandpa Dam. I'm just a simpleminded soldier."
I led Sahra inside and up to my little hole in the wall. For the next three years I marvelled every morning when I wakened to find her beside me and almost every time I saw her during the day. She became the center of my life, my anchor, my rock, my goddess, and every damned one of my brothers envied me almost to the borders of hatred though Sahra converted them all into devoted friends. She could give Lady lessons on softening the hearts of hard men.
Not till Uncle Doj and Mother Gota came to visit did I find out that Sahra had done more than just defy the customs of the Nyueng Bao. She had ignored the express orders of her tribal elders to come make herself the wife of a Soldier of Darkness. Confident little witch.
Those toothless old men put no value on the wishes of the "witch" Ky Hong Tray.
I think I have a realistic picture of who and what I am so I am amazed that Sahra ever thought as much of me as I thought of her.
98
I sipped water, ate, and reflected that this was one time when I had no trouble leaving Smoke's world. There was no attenuation of the pain if I went out there to see Sarie. What was I doing here?
There was one mystery yet to be illuminated before I allowed Croaker to drag me off into the next fun phase of our great adventure. I wanted to know what had happened between him and Blade.
Smoke and I zigzagged back and forth through time, quartering the temporal reaches, tacking into the winds of time, following a search pattern, looking for anomalies in the relationship between Blade and my boss. I knew about when the blowup happened so, instead, for the time being, I sought contributory evidence.
You can cover a lot of time fast riding Smoke. It did not take long to establish, beyond a doubt, that Blade's relationship with Lady was never anything but proper, however charged with wishful thinking on his end. Lady never acknowledged Blade's mooneyes nor those of anyone else. She seemed too accustomed to them to pay them any mind.
So what did happen?
I worried it like a wild dog trying to dig a rodent out of its hole. Smoke was no help at all. There were places, times, angles that he just refused to go see. I tried tricking him several ways, just to find out why he could not or would not go where I wanted him to go. None of that did any good.
Maybe I was baying down the wrong trail.
The actual headbutting had been less than wildly explosive and made only marginal sense when viewed from another point in time. All I could find out that made sense was that Blade and Croaker were sipping some potent home brew before they started getting crazy.
Verbal sniping turned into angry implications which became threats on the Old Man's part. And the beer continued to flow.
I have to say that Croaker was definitely the bad guy. Or fool. He kept on and on while Blade did his best not to let himself be baited.
That only infuriated Croaker. He spouted threats that left Blade no choice but to run.
I backed away, embarrassed for my Captain. I had not thought that he could be such a complete asshole. I did not understand why he was so insecure about Lady. I felt for Blade, deeply, and had to think less of one of my heroes.
Now that I reflected on it, I recalled occasional bestowals of unpleasantries upon Willow Swan that had not gotten out of hand. And Croaker had even exchanged cross words with the Prahbrindrah Drah once.
I sensed a pattern. It was not one I wanted to see. But it was obvious if you looked for it.
Croaker was obsessed with his woman. He would alienate anyone who offered her too much attention, however costly that might be.
Shit. Why? She was not Sarie.
We had lost Blade already. I do not have a lot of use for Willow Swan, who is much too pretty and too blond, but I would really hate to have the Company on the wrong side of the Prince just because one man could not be sure of his woman.
More scales fell from my eyes, leaving disappointment behind.
I needed to take this up with the brain trust, the oldest of the old, One-Eye, Otto and Hagop. Goblin was too far away and Lady both too far and disqualified by being too intimately involved. A Captain who thought with his balls instead of his brains could get a lot of people killed.