Thai Dei and Sahra were very late children. I pray my wife will not come to resemble her mother later, in character or physically. Like her grandmother would be fine, though.
Cold in here.
“Why so hard you push my Sahra’s man, ho, Mr. So High and Mighty Liberator?” She hawked and spat to one side, the meaning of that no different to Nyueng Bao than anyone else. She rattled faster and faster. The faster she yakked the faster she waddled. “You think maybe he slave be? Warrior not? No time for grandmother to make of me, him always away to do for you?” She hawked and blank spat again.
She was a grandmother all right. But none were mine and none were alive anymore. I didn’t remind her. No need attracting her attention.
An hour earlier she had climbed all over me because I was a no good bonehead lackwit layabout who wasted all his time reading and writing. Hardly the sort of thing a grown man does with his time.
Nothing ever satisfies Mother Gota. Croaker says that is because she hurts all the time. He pretended he could not fathom her broken Taglian. “Yes, it really is lovely weather. For this time of year. The agricultural specialists tell me we will make two crops this year. Do you think you’ll be able to double harvest your rice?”
I Hawk and spit, then a lapse into ferocious Nyueng Bao liberally spiced with imaginative epithets, not all of them native to her birth tongue. Mother Gota hates being humored or ignored more than she hates everything else.
Somebody pounded on my door. Sarie was busy doing something somewhere that kept her from being close enough to her mother to become embarrassed. I went. I found One-Eye stinking up the hallway. The little wizard asked, “How you doing, Kid? Here.” He shoved a smelly, ragged, grubby bundle of papers into my hands. “The Old Man here ?”
“What kind of sorcerer are you if you don’t know the answer to that?”
“A lazy sorcerer.”
I stepped aside. “What’s this mess?” I lifted the bundle.
“Them papers you been after me about. My notes and Annals.” He ambled over to the Captain.
I stared down at the mess in my hands. Some of the papers were moldy. Some were waterstained. That was One-Eye. Four years late. I hoped the little rat did not hang around. He would shed lice and fleas. He takes a bath only if he gets drunk and falls in a canal. And that damned hat... I am going to burn it someday.
One-Eye whispered to the Captain. The Captain whispered back. Mother Gota tried to eavesdrop. They changed to a language she did not know. She sucked in a bushel of air and went to work.
One-Eye stopped talking and stared at her. This was their first encounter, close up and personal.
He grinned.
She did not faze him. He was two hundred years old. He had had obnoxious down to a fine art generations before Mother Gota was born. He gave her a thumbs up, sidled over to me grinning like a kid who had stubbed his toe on the pot at the end of the rainbow. In Taglian he asked, “Want to make a formal introduction here, Kid? I love her! She’s great! Everything I’ve ever heard. She’s perfect. Give us a kiss here, lover.”
Maybe it was because Mother Gota was the only woman in Taglios shorter than him.
That was the only time I ever saw my mother-in-law at a loss for words.
Thai Dei and Uncle Doj seemed taken aback, too. One-Eye stalked Mother Gota around the room. Finally, she fled.
“Perfect!” One-Eye crowed. “She’s absolutely perfect! The woman of my dreams. Are you ready, Captain?”
Was he high on something?
“Yeah.” Croaker separated himself from his barely tasted tea. “Murgen, I want you to come with us. It’s time to teach you some new tricks.”
I started to shake my head. I don’t know why, Sarie slipped her arm around me. She was back now, avoiding her mother by being where I was. She felt my reluctance, squeezed my arm. She looked up at me with those gorgeous almond eyes, asking why I was troubled.
“I don’t know.” I figured we were going to interrogate the red-hand Deceiver. That was not work I would enjoy.
Uncle Doj astonished me by asking, “May I accompany you, husband of my niece?”
“Why?” I blurted.
“I wish to inform my curiosity about what it is you people do.” He spoke to me slowly, as though to an idiot. I do suffer from a severe birth defect, by his thinking. I was not born
Nyueng Bao.
At least he does not call me Bone Warrior and Stone Soldier anymore.
I never did figure that out.
I translated for the Old Man. He didn’t bat an eye. “Sure, Morgen. Why not? But let’s get going before we all die of old age.”
What the hell? This was the guy who was sure the Nyueng Bao were up to no good.
I looked at the mass of paper One-Eye passed off on me. It smelled of mildew. I would try to make something of it later. If anything could be made of it. Knowing One-Eye it could well be written in a language he no longer remembered.
32
One-Eye’s Annals were as terrible as I expected. And then some. Water, mold, vermin and criminal neglect had left most of his recollections irretrievable. One recent memoir, though, did survive except for a page in the middle which was just plain missing. It will serve to illustrate what One-Eye considers to be an adequate chronicle.
He made up the spellings of most of the place names. I corrected to standard where I could, from the maps, figure out where he had been.
In the fall of our third year in Taglios the Captain decided to send the Khusavir Regiment to Prehbehlbed, where the Prahbrindrah Drah was campaigning against a bevy of minor Shadowlander princes. Me and several Company comrades were told to go along to give the new regiment backbone. The traitor Blade was in the region.
The regiment proceeded through Ranji and Ghoja, Jaicur and Cantile, then Bhakur, Danjil and other recently captured towns until, after two months, we overtook the Prince at Prai-phurbed. There half the regiment split off to escort prisoners of war and booty back to the north. The rest of us went west to Asharan, where Blade caught us by surprise and we had to barricade the gates and throw a lot of the natives off the wall because they might be spies. With my talent we were able to hold out even though the green troops were terrified.
In Asharan we found a large store of wine and whiled away the hours of the siege.
After a few weeks Blade’s men began to desert because of the cold and hunger and he decided to go away.
It was a very cold winter. We suffered a great deal and often had to threaten the natives to get enough food and firewood. The Prince kept us moving, mostly far from the heavy fighting, because the regiment was not experienced. In Meldermhai three men and I got drunk and missed marching when the regiment moved out. We had to travel almost a hundred miles counting only upon ourselves in order to catch up. Once we took four horses from a local lord after we stayed over the night in his manor. We took his brandy, too. The noble complained to the Prince and we had to give the horses back.
We spent a week at Forngaw, then the Prince ordered us south to High Nangel, where we were supposed to join the Fourth Horse in trying to drive Blade’s bandits into the Ruderal canyon, but when we got there we found only one old woman in the whole territory and nothing to eat but rotting cabbages, most of which the peasants had buried in the earth before they fled.
Then we went up to Silure by way of Balichore and in the forest there we found a tavern almost like those in the north. While we were drunk an enemy witch sent an attack of poisonous toads against us.