Tobo waited for me to finish translating. I asked an extra time to make sure the kids really grasped the gravity of the situation. Youngsters have a hard time getting it when the cruel and deadly applies to them personally. They also tend to agree to almost anything just to stop hearing about it.
Tobo had me tell them, "The rest of today and tonight you can rest. Tomorrow you'll begin an intensive education in Taglian. While we're hurrying to catch up with the rest of our army. I'll travel with you and will help you as much as I can."
The leader boy wanted to argue again. He had not listened closely enough to what he was translating. Riverwalker knocked him down again. Tobo told me, "That one's going to be trouble."
"There's a good chance they all will be. They couldn't get along at home." They had to be misfits. Shifting languages, I told the kids, "If you make yourselves more trouble than you're worth these people will kill you. Come on. I think I see some chow waiting to make our acquaintance."
One of the girls said something in her own language. The captive, not the one who had come along with the boys.
I responded to the whine. "Tell her she can't go home. It's too late for that."
Meantime, Tobo remarked, "But everybody here is running away from something."
"Some," I stipulated. "How soon do you think we'll get a chance to sit down somewhere? I've got a lot of writing to catch up on."
Tobo laughed. "You'd better stage a coup, you want a chance to sit down. Sleepy won't take time off until the corpses are piled high enough to make fences."
The Voroshk seemed to enjoy their evening meal. They were hungry enough to appreciate anything. We started teaching them Taglian nouns. Tobo studied both them and the wonders they had brought with them. He seemed less impressed by their flying posts than he was by the clothing they were no longer permitted to wear.
He told me, "Those posts look like a variation on the same sorcery Howler uses to operate his flying carpets. I should be able to work it out eventually. If I can get around some spells that're meant to make the posts destroy themselves if they fall into the wrong hands."
I told him about the two I had seen explode.
"Pretty potent self-destruct, then. I'll be careful."
"Be careful of those girls, too. I think the little one's already staked you out."
Come morning the leader kid could not be wakened. He was alive, all right, but no one could rouse him. "What did you do?" I asked Tobo, whispering, having leapt to a conclusion involving Tobo wanting the potential troublemaker out of the way without us losing access to his post and clothing.
"I had nothing to do with it."
Lady examined the boy after I did. She said, "This looks a lot like the coma Smoke went into for so long."
I agreed. But Soulcatcher had been responsible for that, we believed. And there was no way this could be her doing. The Unknown Shadows knew every move she made. And would turn aside any monsters she sent against us. I wondered aloud, "Were any of your invisible friends around here last night? Maybe they saw something."
"I'll check."
By dint of ferocity I got the unconscious kid's brother to admit that he could communicate. I made him understand that they needed to bind his brother onto one of their posts. Otherwise he would get left behind when we moved out.
The kids were terrified.
"Handy disaster," Lady remarked.
"Yeah. But for whom?"
35
Taglios: The Message
Mogaba swore softly but virulenty, foully and steadily. Crows had been arriving for over an hour, each bird carrying a fragment of a long message from the Protector. Being birdbrained, no one crow could carry much of the whole. And because they were vulnerable to a thousand misfortunes, every fragment had to be sent again and again.
The Great General hated putting these puzzles together and this one was the worst ever, by an order of magnitude. There should not be this many crows in the whole world.
He had twenty scribes working on the message already.
Some points became clear quickly.
He sent for Aridatha Singh and Ghopal Singh. This message would affect all of them.
By the time the others arrived, enough of the puzzle had come clear for Mogaba to reveal what, for him, was the most critical detail. "They're back."
Aridatha jumped, startled by Mogaba's intensity. "Back? Who's back?"
"The Black Company. The Protector destroyed them. Right? Root and branch. Right? But now she says they're back. They're patching her message together in the next room right now."
Ghopal asked, "What are you talking about?"
"There's a huge message coming in from our employer. She's given up her quest. She's on the run, headed home. The Black Company is pouring through the shadowgate. Thousands strong. Well-armed, well-clad, well-trained. With the Radisha Drah and Prahbrindrah Drah in their train and blessing them. And we have nothing much in their way for hundreds of miles. She's headed back here. She expects to lose her ability to watch them shortly. They have some unfamiliar kind of supernatural help coming off the plain with them. Evidently something like the shadows but more dangerous because they're smarter."
Aridatha observed, "Sounds like pretty good intelligence gathering for somebody who's on the run from an enemy who knows her capabilities." Singh's handsome face had lost some of its color. His voice had gone husky.
"A thought which did not escape me. She is Soulcatcher, after all. On the other hand, though, she can't learn anything when there isn't anything to see."
Aridatha and Ghopal nodded. In all ways, except in their hearts, they remained dedicated servants of the Protector.
Mogaba said, "The enemy being familiar with the Protector's capabilities means they'll try to take them away from her. We don't know who's in charge but doctrine is doctrine. They'll try to blind her first, then they'll try to take away her capacity to communicate. They couldn't have come at a better time for them. She's a hundred miles from nowhere. She can't spread the word much faster than rumors will spread. And you know the news that the Radisha and her brother are coming back will spread like the plague."
Ghopal said, "I'll seal this part of the Palace off, then. We don't want those people in there running to their temples or whatever and telling too much of the truth to someone who'd use it as a tool against us."
"Do that." That would look good to the Protector's invisible spies. But, on the other hand it might be very useful to have some of the news get out. Taglios might fall into a state of chaos. A state in which there would be opportunities. Chaos could be very useful. Chaos could make wonderful camouflage.
Perhaps when the Protector was nearer Taglios.
Right now it was necessary to prepare for the advent of the Company. That would be expected from all quarters.
Where did they find so many men? Or shadows of their own? What other surprise cards did they have in their hand?
Some, surely. That was their nature.
Mogaba said, "We've got to leak some of the news. Like it or not. We have to get ready for war. We're headed for a fight. Unless we give up without a struggle. I don't plan to do that myself. I couldn't live with the consequences."
The Singhs exchanged glances. The Great General showing a sense of humor? Remarkable.
Ghopal said, "People are afraid of the Black Company."
"Of course they are. But when was the last time they won? We beat them over and over during the Kiaulune wars." Mogaba was proud of his work back then. His thinking and planning had contributed to every Taglian triumph.
"But we didn't wipe them all the way out. The trouble with the Black Company is that if you leave even one of them alive, before long they're coming right back at you again."