Uncle Doj walked beside me. He carried a lance as well as Ash Wand, his holy sword. He had assumed the job of bodyguard while Thai Dei was elsewhere with his mother. We two encountered all the corpses first. "There's another one that looks like a Deceiver," I said, indicating a badly hacked body wearing nothing but a ragged loincloth, despite the weather.
"It is good," Uncle Doj told me. He rolled the corpse over. The man had been run down by someone with an especial dislike for his cult. He had been mutilated badly, mostly while he was still alive.
I did not feel a shred of pity. Men just like him murdered my Sarie.
We encountered nothing but signs of outstanding success. But those did not inspire my confidence in the future.
Roads converged. Forces massed up even more. Every hour we drew nearer Charandaprash, Mogaba and his four badass divisions of well-trained and motivated veterans. Getting closer to soldiers who had been getting ready for us for years. Getting closer to soldiers who were not the clumsy, indifferent militias that had made up most of our opposition so far. The Old Man talked confidently in front of the Taglians, who did not know any better, but I knew he had his doubts.
We would have a numbers advantage but our men had not been drilled until they were automatons. Our men did not fear their officers more than they feared death itself. Our men did not know the price you paid if you stirred the anger of a Shadowmaster. Not in the intimate way the defenders of Charandaprash knew.
Our men had not rehearsed again and again, learning every boulder on the ground where they would be expected to fight.
13
A breeze whipped smoke and the stench of death into my face. A soldier shouted. I glanced back. The Captain, wearing the hideous black Widowmaker armor Lady had created for him, was coming up. Ravens surrounded him. For the thousandth time I wondered about his connection with Soulcatcher.
"You sent for me?"
"There's something you ought to see, I think." I had not seen it myself yet, but did know what to expect.
He gestured. "Let's go."
We rode up a small rise. We stopped to look at the bodies of six small brown men far too old to have been soldiers. They lay inside a bowl that had been hollowed out of the hard ground, around a fire that still yielded a puny thread of smoke.
"Where are the men who killed them?"
"They didn't hang around. You don't take chances with these people."
Croaker grunted, not pleased but understanding the thinking of the ordinary soldier. He removed his ugly winged helmet. Crows took the opportunity to perch on his shoulders. He seemed not to notice. "I'd say we've gotten somebody's attention."
I had run into little brown men like these before, years ago when first we had come into the south and more recently in the Deceivers' holy Grove of Doom, where I had ambushed many of their top people. A group of these skrinsa shadowweavers had had the misfortune to be there on behalf of the Shadowmaster.
These men would have been doing the same as those others, using a gaggle of little shadows to spy and run messages. Croaker pointed. Several of the old men had had chunks ripped right out of them. He observed, "Lady did say you shouldn't get in the way of her bamboo toys."
We had overtaken Lady, more or less. She was following a line of advance several miles to our left. If Croaker and she had stolen a kiss they had managed it by magic. Croaker was in too big a hurry to assume complete control of his assembling center corps of two divisions.
He carried a bamboo pole slung across his back. So did I. And so did every other man in the main force, now. Some carried a bundle. "Oh?"
"She'll pitch a fit if this gets to be a habit." Croaker was amused.
"She never was a ground-pounder."
Your average infantryman does not give a rat's ass about the design function of a weapon. He is concerned about staying alive and about getting his job done with the least risk taken. The bamboo doohickeys were meant for combating killer shadows? So fucking what? If using them made taking out nasty little wizards easier, guess what was going to happen?
Pop!
14
We sighted Lake Tanji an hour before night fell. The sudden view was so stunning I stopped dead in my tracks. The lake was miles across and cold grey. It dwindled away to my right, the direction our road ran. To our left the land was very rugged. Arms of increasingly substantial hills ran down to the water. The Dandha Presh itself seemed to rise directly from the far shore, all greys in the evening light, dark down low and lighter at the peaks, where snowfields sparkled. A playful god had scrawled a thin cloudline across the panorama, halfway up the mountains, so that the peaks rode a magic carpet.
Grey, grey, grey. Right then the whole world seemed grey.
"Impressive," the Captain said.
"Not at all like seeing it through Smoke's eyes."
He frowned at me even though not even a crow was near enough to hear. "Look there."
A village burned along the shore several miles ahead. A ball of blue light streaked out of the conflagration, over the water, narrowly missed a small boat. The men aboard the boat tried to row harder but began to catch crabs and get in one another's way. A swarm of points of light darted at them, not only blue but green, yellow, pink and a stunning shade of violet. A man jumped up and flailed around after a ball hit him in the throat. He fell overboard. His antics rocked the boat dangerously. It shipped water, raised its stern into the air momentarily.
A ball of light zipped through its bottom, leaving a shimmering hole.
Most of the balls missed. Those continued across the lake, slowing gradually. Eventually they just drifted on the breeze and faded away.
The excitement brought a flock of crows fast. They circled overhead. Two big ones dropped onto Croaker's shoulders. The others scattered in pairs. The boat sank.
It had been bound for an island that was little more than a rock outcrop boasting a dozen scraggly pine trees and some halfhearted brush. A crow that got close suddenly folded up and went ballistic, hit the water and floated without twitching.
Croaker glared. "Murgen. Move down the foreslope, out of the wind. Find a place to dig in for the night. Line troops only on this side of the ridge. I want a double watch kept. I want two battery wagons up, trained on that island."
His shoulder ornaments were agitated now. I did not mention them. He was starting to go spooky and he did not answer questions anyway.
One of the ravens squawked. Croaker grunted back. He dismounted, grabbed an extra bamboo pole from a nearby soldier, headed downhill. His mount followed the trail he broke.
The soldiers who had begun to gather followed Croaker's example. They formed a skirmish line as they advanced. I could not unsling my own bamboo pole because I was mounted and burdened with the standard. I followed the men on foot. Uncle Doj formed a one-man rearguard.
Two Shadowlander militiamen broke cover suddenly. They stumbled toward the water's edge. Arrows swarmed.
Standing orders were to take no prisoners. The Shadowlanders had been warned. They had been given four years' grace. They had made their choices.
Afterward the soldiers began to settle in groups, finding what shelter they could, starting their cooking fires. More and more came up to the line. Our staff group gathered in the lee of a shattered boulder, everybody grumbling and shivering. Pessimists started talking about the chances of snow.