I made a calming gesture. "Easy. Yes. Where they're getting through."
"Everywhere between those two yellow splashes." The little Shadar scowled at Bucket. "The red area is what must have been the actual original gateway."
"Thank you. I'll try not to trouble you much more."
The Shadar muttered, "Will miracles never cease?" as I went to walk over the ground. Bucket thought about adjusting the man's attitude, decided it was not worth the trouble. Not now. But there would be later, when I was not around.
A few rods below the Shadowgate there were torch racks and the remains of bonfires that had been used to produce light the night before. There were crude bunkers where soldiers had lain waiting for the shadows, protected only by repellent candles and their luck with the bamboo poles. There were two rickety ten-foot towers somebody had thrown up to provide plunging fire.
I pushed forward into the buzz until I no longer felt comfortable, which was right at the edge of the red chalk dust. From there I could make out the remains of the fallen gate. It must have been truly substantial in its time. It looked like it had been wide enough to permit passage of four men marching abreast. There was no sign that there had ever been a moat or a ditch or anything such, though. And a ditch is the oldest form of defense work there is. It persists today below every wall that is not some engineering monstrosity like the ramparts surrounding Overlook and Dejagore.
The implication was that the forgotten builders had not been concerned about threats from downhill.
There were still some strong spells on the Shadowgate. You could feel them growl if you pushed against them hard enough.
I did not press my luck.
I mused, "Why is the road in halfway decent shape when everything else here is almost completely gone?" The farther uphill you looked the better preserved the old road was.
Nobody offered an opinion. Chances were nobody gave a rat's ass. It was bad enough they just had to be there.
I strolled back down to the standard. Somehow, vaguely, it seemed to have come alive. I felt a vibration from it, too. That seemed to center on the head of the lance. Which would fit with Croaker's theories about the Lance of Passion.
Thai Dei, Bucket and Isi felt what I felt but did not know what it was. I told Thai Dei, "I want to move the standard up where it'll be the first thing a shadow runs into when it comes through the gate. Let them know the boys are back." I told Isi, "Tonight shouldn't be as rough. Lady thinks she's got Longshadow under control. She might even get the Shadowgate shut down completely before dark." Which I doubted because that was not very far off anymore.
The relief on Isi's face was almost comical.
A couple of soldiers caught part of what I said and scattered to start rumors that, no doubt, would grow fat in the retelling. Bucket grumbled, "I can't wait to see the twist that gets put on that by the time it comes back around."
Hum! We did not want any Taglians still loyal to the Prahbrindrah Drah to become too confident of their safety. "That's only might," I said. "And even if she shuts it down tighter than a virgin's twat there's still a shitload of shadows that got out of there last night and are still hiding under rocks and stuff waiting for sunset." Darkness always comes. "We're not out of the woods yet. Not by a long way."
I made sure I was overheard saying that, too.
I will teach you to fear the darkness. Who said that? Lady's first husband, maybe, back before my time. Certainly somebody who learned a lesson of his own way back in one of the old Annals.
I added, "We're going to face it every night for a long time to come."
"We're really going up there?" Bucket asked, pointing, when nobody but Thai Dei could hear him. He did not consider the question a major secret, though, or he would have asked in a language unfamiliar to Thai Dei.
"Maybe. I don't know how soon, though. The Old Man keeps talking about getting crops in so we don't need to kill ourselves foraging." While I talked I tried to figure how big a circle of influence the standard would cast. With Thai Dei's help I replanted it an estimated half radius from the Shadowgate, mid-line on the old road. Then I went back down and talked a couple of Vehdna into letting us take over their frontline bunker. Funny. They hardly argued about it.
Lady's horse had followed me around the whole while, staying out of the way but missing nothing. I told him, "Thanks a bunch. You can go back to your boss now." I always talk to mine as an equal. You treat the critters right, they'll do any damned thing. Even run somebody all the way to Taglios. Or back.
The horse argued less than the Vehdna soldiers did. Off he trotted.
I wondered how Sleepy was doing.
He could not have run far yet. It had not been that long since everything turned to shit.
78
Chalk dust bands defined fields of fire for the soldiers, so they could pick off shadows more efficiently. But, though they glowed, the dusts did not betray the shadows perfectly.
Lady had given me some tools and instructions on how to use them. I was supposed to resist any temptation to take shortcuts.
A lot of soldiers came to watch. The Taglians were awed because a man who was neither priest nor sorcerer could read. They made me feel like a freak.
Essentially, Lady's directions had me lay down strips of leather rope in semicircles around the most dangerous passthrough, which was where the original gate had stood. More ropes went down as spokes.
Everything had to be done just so. None of which took into account the presence of the standard. If Lady understood that the standard was special she never made much of it.
I scuttled around inside the bunker we had appropriated. It was barely three feet from floor to ceiling. There was room for four men and a pile of bamboo. The place stank. No one had gone out after dark, no matter how pressing the need. As a shelter it was a feeble improvement over sitting out in the rain.
I told everyone watching, "When a shadow crosses one of the leather ropes it'll make a spark so we'll not only know that one is there, we can follow its movements. As long as we stay calm we can pick them off without wasting any fireballs."
The situation there was grim. A repeat of last night meant not many guys would see another sunrise.
"Not much of a mattress," I told Thai Dei, patting the ground. "Why don't you get some rest?" Whatever happened, I had to sleep later so I could prowl. If that worked for me again.
I crawled outside, settled on a comfortable block from the old wall. I studied the roof of my new home. It had been fashioned from a tent taken from the Shadowlanders. Everywhere around me I saw a wealth of plunder taken from our enemies. So much that in another month we would be as gaunt and disease-ridden as we were when we broke the siege of Dejagore.
The big edge we held over our enemies now was that we were still around. We could pretend to be an army still. Mogaba's band was the best they had left.
What would Mogaba do when he heard about Longshadow's disaster?
"Speaking of disasters." Real bad news was headed my way.
At the bottom of the slope, where the road southward gave up its final pretense and became an eroded dirt track, Uncle Doj stood staring up at the Shadowgate. If he had come any later it would have been too dark to pick him out. Mother Gota was fifty yards behind him, still moving, bitching so loudly that I caught snatches from where I sat. Both carried packs, which suggested that they planned to move in with me again. They had become professional squatters.
I flipped a stone at a crow. It was not a serious effort and the crow showed slight enthusiasm about getting out of the way. He just leaned. There were not a lot of the birds around now that dusk was thickening, though at their most numerous they had remained uncommon all day. Curious. I had seen nothing to explain the absence of the usual flocks. Nobody had started roasting them.