76
Horses were in short supply. Most that had not gotten eaten had been killed by shadows the previous night. And were getting eaten now. I ended up borrowing Lady’s mount. Croaker never said a word. He did not have to. Down the road somewhere I was going to pay.
Thai Dei got up behind me. Lady’s stallion, which was used to lugging only her hundred and a few pounds, plus armor occasionally, glared over his shoulder. I told the beast, “It’s only for a little ways. I promise.”
The Old Division and some of Lady’s troops had moved into camp below the Shadowgate. Tensions were obvious as we rode in. A lot of faces were less than friendly. These were men who had stayed with the Company mainly because their chances of survival were better with us than away from us. Twilight was not far off, though, so no one was inclined to belligerence.
I decided not to tell anybody why I had brought the standard.
Word spread fast. Company brothers came out to see if there was anything special in the wind. I ran into people I had not seen for months. Some, even, whom I had not seen since we had left Taglios.
Sindawe and Isi appeared. They thought something big had to be up since I had come out of my hole. I could see how they might have gotten that odd notion. My job had kept me close to Smoke for a long time.
Ochiba materialized. He and the other two Nar were the senior officers outside the Shadowgate. All the most senior Taglians had deserted. They had respected their obligations to their prince.
I suspected they would regret choosing to maintain their honor. If they had not done so already, last night.
Sindawe caught the stallion’s reins. Thai Dei and I dismounted. Everybody waited for me to say something. I just shrugged. I pulled my pants away from my burning thigh. Riding had been no improvement. Just as I had predicted. “Don’t ask me why I’m here. The Old Man said to come. So I came. What he’s up to is his secret.”
“So what else is new?” Big Bucket asked. “He ever does say what’s what, nobody will believe him.”
I glanced around. The ground there was harder than it was back across the way. It was also dryer. Most of the shelters, therefore, were aboveground. The camp gave poverty and squalor a bad name. I saw the ensigns and pennons of battalions that had, a year ago, been renowned for their spit and polish. I asked, “Is morale really this bad?”
“It is over here.”
“From what I hear the New Division suffered fewer casualties than anybody last night.”
Sindawe observed, “You’ve been in this business most of your life, Standardbearer. You know morale can have little to do with the facts of a situation. Perceptions are more critical.”
Absolutely. People want to believe what they want to believe, good, bad, or indifferent, and do not confuse them with facts.
I said, “We maybe shouldn’t mention it to these guys but I think he expects to head on up there soon.”
Bucket glared up the unwelcoming slope. “You’re shitting me.”
“You didn’t believe him when he said that’s where we’re going? He’s never made a secret of the fact that we’re headed for Khatovar. It’s what we’ve been doing since we left the Barrowland.” Half a lifetime ago, it seemed. Before he ever joined up.
Grimly, Isi observed, “I don’t think you’ll find anyone here who actually believed we’d get this far.” And he had not been with the Company as long as Bucket had.
Isi was not exaggerating. I do not think anyone but the Old Man ever really believed in Khatovar. The rest of us went along because we had nowhere else to go and nothing else to do but follow the standard. Every day was a gift, of sorts, and it did not much matter where the long night caught up. I said, “The last human obstacle went down last night. Lady has Longshadow wrapped up like a birthday present.”
I glanced around again. Everywhere I looked men were hard at work. It was not something special suddenly put on for me but I did garner plenty of resentful stares just for being a guy from headquarters. Me turning up could only mean more demands, more work, more hardship.
The light was getting strange. There was not a lot of daylight left. “What are they doing over there?” I asked, indicating a work gang apparently digging a defensive trench. Against shadows that would be as useful as teats on a bull.
“Burying last night’s dead,” Bucket told me.
“Oh. Look. You stick with me. Unless you’ve got something critical going. The rest of you go ahead with whatever you were doing.”
Sindawe told me, “Isi or I would be better guides, Standardbearer. We’re in charge so we don’t do much.” He said that with such a straight face I almost thought he meant it.
I walked over to the mass grave.
They were digging a trench because that was the most efficient way to get bodies under the hard ground. I knelt, ran my fingers through what they had broken loose. Despite the rain earlier the hardpan was dry just inches beneath the surface. “It didn’t rain much over here?” I asked.
“Mostly it just gets cold,” Isi said.
I stared up the slope, past the Shadowgate. The ground grew more barren by the yard. There was some plant life up there but it was stunted, desertlike growth.
The corpses the soldiers were planting bore the stamp of shadow death, they were all shriveled up, with skin darkened several shades. Each dead man’s mouth was open in a screaming rictus. The bodies were curled. They could not be straightened.
Crows circled but the soldiers kept them back.
I felt the hard soil again, eyed the slope. The rock itself looked like hardened mud, lying in hundreds of thin layers being gnawed away slowly by time. “I guess it wouldn’t rain a lot up there, either, then. Or there would be more gullies and obvious washes.” I wondered if erosion would create ways for shadows to escape from beyond the Shadowgate. Evidently not. Otherwise the world would have been overrun a long time ago.
I had never found any record of a time when the Shadowgate had not been there. It was ancient beyond reckoning but even so had not found its way into native religion in any form I recognized. Except, possibly, in the infrequently used idiom common to many southern languages, “Glittering stone,” which seemed to mean an inexplicable possession of dark madness, a sort of demonically savage insanity complicated by congenital stupidity. One of those things Taglians will not discuss with outsiders, however pressed.
Until the rise of the Shadowmasters there had been very little historical mention of the land beyond Kiaulune, except that it tied in somehow with the rise of the Free Companies of Khatovar over four hundred years ago.
Though not religious myself I bowed and offered a short Gunni prayer for the dead before I ventured uphill for a closer look at the source of our trouble. Thai Dei beamed at me. I must have done right.