Just as I realized that night's siege was ending a final small volley of fireballs erupted near the Shadowgate. Then the world went still. And for a few minutes nobody and nothing was killing anybody or anything anywhere within sight.
I looked south and reflected that there was no Smoke to keep me from going over there and taking a peek. And shadows did not bother me in this state. And if they did try, why, they behaved like rodents. No matter how big and ferocious, they stayed close to the surface. They wanted to be able to get into hiding quickly. And I could fly.
I started southward. I really did. But something happened.
The earth shook again.
Lightning struck Overlook only a dozen feet away.
Thai Dei woke me up.
The effect was, I headed south but something grabbed me by the scruff of the neck and I spun northward like a leaf snatched up by a dust devil.
"I don't want to get up," I told the hand abusing my repose. "I'm tired. I worked all night." I was tired. I had worked all night. Hard. I did want to roll over and snooze for another eight hours.
Thai Dei poked me again. And then there was the other problem. Maybe a bigger problem.
My feet were wet.
I pushed myself up onto one elbow as Thai Dei told me, "You must get up!"
"I hate to admit it. You're right. I gotta get up." I had to get up because rainwater was running in in a stream, turning the floor to mud.
I banged my head against a log. "What the hell?" The overhead had fallen halfway in. The far wall had collapsed. The only reason I could see anything was that Thai Dei had brought a candle, the shadow repeller, when he came to visit. "What happened?"
"Earthquake."
Oh. Yeah. It had not occurred to me that I could become a disaster victim, too.
By the time I got my knees under me I saw that Thai Dei must have done a lot of work just to get to me. I was in a pocket. Most of our dugout must have fallen in. "Mother Gota?" I asked. I had shifted to Nyueng Bao without thinking.
"I don't know." He responded in the same language. "She never came home." His voice had an uncharacteristic edge. The strain was getting to him. Every few years he cracked and stopped being the ice man for minutes at a time.
"How'd you get in?"
"Where the roof fell in."
I had to duckwalk to look at the hole. Yeah. I could see where he had squeezed his way in. There was some ugly grey sky out there. It was drizzling still. Thai Dei was about half my size, though. "I'm going to have to stay down here for a couple months before I can get through that. I shouldn't have put on all that weight after we got out of Dejagore." We had looked bad back then. Like walking skeletons, most of us.
I wondered if that had anything to do with my dreams. "Take the candle. I'll go up and make the hole bigger." My bodyguard. This was about the first time he ever had a real chance to save my ass and it was from being smothered by a vicious sod roof.
He pushed himself up into the opening. He wiggled. He squirmed. He dropped back down. "You need to push me."
"Too many snacks while we were sitting around here bullshitting. Go." I set the candle aside very carefully. It had become very important to me. I did not want to be down there in that tight, cold, wet place without a light.
I grabbed his legs and pushed. There must have been enough water in the hole to lubricate it. He popped through. I chuckled at a mental image of the earth giving birth to that ugly little man, like some clay devil in the Gunni myths.
I heard voices. Something blocked the dirty light. Croaker called, "Hey, deadbeat, you still breathing down there?"
"I'm fine. I was thinking about taking a nap."
"You might as well. We're going to be a while getting you out."
"All right. I'll be fine." As long as the candle lasted.
I looked at it. It had a lot of life left. Those things were designed to last.
I began to think about what Thai Dei had had to do to come down into a place where shadows might be hiding just to see how I was doing. And that made me wonder that much more about the landscape of his interior world. Maybe I was a sloppy thinker. Or maybe just not yet experienced enough at being Nyueng Bao. I could not even work out how to treat Thai Dei like he was several different, distinct characters.
He and the Nyueng Bao believed he owed me a debt so great he had devoted his life to protecting me. He would lay that, and maybe even his soul, down for me. But at the same time he would willingly lie to and deceive the foreigner who was a cause for shame on his family. And, certainly, he would tell a Soldier of Darkness nothing that might cast any light upon Nyueng Bao attitudes toward the Black Company.
Come to think of it, not even my darling, beloved Sarie had gone that far. She could always change the subject without appearing to have done so.
I said something into the hole but nobody answered. Well, screw them. I was tired.
I sat down in the deepening mud and did go back to sleep. I did not go anywhere. I did not do anything but sleep.
72
I was a terrible mess when prisoners from the Prince's division hauled me out of the ground. Otto and Hagop, who belonged with the Old Division and whom I had not seen since Charandaprash, came to stare down at me. "Looks like one a them mole-rat things they got down here," Otto said.
"Only filthier. It wasn't raining, Ott, I'd say get a bucket a water and throw it on him."
"Comics," I muttered. "You just gave away why you signed on. Your only way to get out of town ahead of an audience turned ugly."
"His disposition's improved since the last time we saw him," Hagop observed. "He don't let these little setbacks bother him anymore."
"How you guys been keeping? We don't get a lot of personal news over here."
Hagop frowned. Otto said, "A nick here, a ding there. Nothing serious." Practically ever since I met them one or both had been recovering from some kind of wound. It was what they were known for. They were icons, practically. Otto and Hagop could not be killed, only injured, and as long as they stayed alive the Black Company would survive.
Hagop said, "We was sent over with a bunch of stuff for the Old Man and some stuff for you to put in the Annals. Names."
"Oh." Croaker and I always tried to record the names of our fallen brethren the best we could. A lot of guys counted on it. Once they were gone it would be the only evidence that they had ever lived. It was immortality of a sort.
"Lot a names," Hagop persisted. "Hundreds. Last night was not a good night for the Old Division."
"You going to be able?" Otto asked. "Is everything buried down there in the mud?"
"It is. But I was more careful with the Annals and that stuff than I was with me. I kept them in a room with logs for the walls and floor and ceiling, with drainage and everything. Just in case. I figured the Shadowmaster would be the problem, though. Hundreds of names? Really? Any I know?"
"They're just all on a list."
"I'll have to add them on at the back of the volume I'm doing now." If there were hundreds they would be recent enlistees, their names likely unknown to me. They would be recorded on a payroll somewhere but that had nothing to do with me.
Thai Dei materialized. I had not noted his absence till he did. He said, "My mother was all right." He did not sound real sure about that, though.
"Uhm?"
"They found her in the wizard's hole when they dug him out. Which was why they were so long getting to you. Your Captain knew you were all right. He did not know if the wizard was dead or alive."
He meant One-Eye, I realized. Well, of course, if the quake had been bad enough to overcome the fine craftsmanship Thai Dei and I put into our place, then One-Eye's place could not be anything but a rainwater pool by now.