The turnip is unknown here but I have seen vast tracts of land perfect for cultivating turnips, parsnips and sugar beets. And Otto and Hagop are not far away so seed should be available soon. Maybe they will even bring some potatoes. Maybe they will even bring some potatoes.
Croaker grinned, told One-Eye, “This weasel isn’t going to tell us anything we can use.”
“You know what it is, Chief? I’ll bet you. He’s stalling. He’s got something he’s trying to hold onto just a little while longer. That’s what goes through his head every time I hurt him. He thinks he will endure it just one more time. And then just one more time.”
“Let him get thirsty for a while.” Croaker shoved the Deceiver’s chair over against a wall, tossed a piece of ragged linen over him as though he was discarded furniture. “Murgen, listen up. Time is getting tight. Things are going to start happening. I need you in the first rank, healed or not.”
“I don’t like the sound of that.”
He didn’t feel like joking. “We’ve discovered some interesting things about Smoke.” Suddenly he was speaking the Jewel Cities dialect, unknown outside the Company here, unless Mogaba was lurking around. “We stalled because of your lapses and what they might signify, but we have to move on. It’s time to take chances. There are some new tricks you need to learn, old dog.”
“You trying to scare me?”
“No. This is important. Pay attention. I don’t have time to work Smoke anymore. Neither does One-Eye. The arsenal is eating up all his time. And I don’t trust anybody else but you to help with this.”
“Huh? You’re going too fast for me.”
“Pay attention. And by that I mean keep your ears and eyes open and your mouth shut. We may not get much time. The Radisha could decide to come back and torment the Deceiver again. She likes that sort of thing.” He told One-Eye, “Remind me to see if we can’t get Cordy Mather assigned here permanently. She doesn’t get underfoot when he’s around.”
“He’s supposed to be back in town soon. If he’s not here already.”
“That there is my intelligence chief,” Croaker told me, pointing at One-Eye and shaking his head. “Blind in one eye and can’t see out the other.”
I glanced at the cloth-covered villain. He had begun snoring. A good soldier seizing his rest when it was available.
34
Hours passed. Croaker left, then returned. Now he slapped me on the back. “See how easy it is, Murgen? Ever seen such a big trick that was this simple?”
“Nothing to it,” I agreed. “Like falling off a log.” Or like falling into a bottomless pit, maybe, which I have had enough involuntary practice doing.
Nothing is ever as simple as somebody tells you it is going to be. I knew this would be no exception when I tried it myself, amazing as it was. “At least now I understand how you got so damned spooky, knowing things you shouldn’t.”
Croaker laughed. “Go ahead.” Showing off his astonishing discovery had put him into a grand mood. “Try it.”
I gave him a look he chose to interpret as my not really understanding what he meant. Nothing to it. Like falling off a log. Maybe. Only One-Eye is not a very good teacher.
“Do what One-Eye showed you. Decide what you want to see. Tell Smoke. But be damned careful how you do that. You have to be precise. Precision is everything. Ambiguity is deadly.”
“That’s the way the magic goes in every story I ever heard, Captain. The ambiguities screw you every time.”
“You think so? You might be right.” I must have touched a nerve. He became thoughtful suddenly. “Go ahead.”
I was reluctant. “This whole thing is too much like what keeps happening to me when I fall down the rabbit hole to Dejagore. Could Smoke be doing that to me somehow?”
Croaker shook his head. “No way. It’s not the same. Go ahead. I insist. You’re wasting time. Go look at something you always wanted to know about for the Annals. We’ll be right here to cover you.”
“How about I go look for Otto and Hagop ?” “I know where they are. They just passed the First Cataract. They’ll be here in a few days. Try something else.” Hagop and Otto had spent the last three years travelling back north with a Taglian delegation and letters from Lady to those she had left behind. Their mission was to learn anything possibly known there about the Shadowmaster, Longshadow. One of the dead Shadowmasters, Stormshadow, had turned out to be a refugee from Lady’s old empire, Stormbringer, previously thought dead. And two other big and nasty sorcerers long believed perished also have turned up and remain burrs under our saddles, the Howler and Lady’s mad sister, Soulcatcher. And there was Shapeshifter, too, but we took care of him.
That Otto and Hagop managed to survive so incredible a journey was, to me, a major miracle. But Otto and Hagop are blessed.
“I expect they’ll have whole new collections of scars to talk about.”
Croaker nodded. He seemed a little grim now. I little anxious. Time to get on with my training.
An unexplained tragedy of the past caught my imagination. There had been some grotesque, horrible, senseless killings in a village called Bond that never got connected with anyone or anything, to my recollection. I was sure they had to be important somehow and was baffled that, even today, the slaughter remained unsolved and unresolved.
I gripped Smoke’s hand, blanked my mind, spoke careful instructions in a whisper. And away I went, out of my body, so suddenly I almost panicked. For a moment I thought I recalled doing all this before. But I could not remember what was going to happen.
The Old Man was right. This was not the same as my unwanted plunges into my own past. In this nightmare I was aware and in control. I was a disembodied vision racing toward Bond but my mission remained clear in my mind. That was a big distinction. When I floated over Dejagore I lacked identity and control till I merged with my self of the past. Then I forgot the future.
Bond is a hamlet on the south bank of the River Main, facing the Vehdna-Bota ford. For centuries the Main has been the traditional boundary of the Taglian heartland. The peoples who live below the river share the languages and religions of Taglios but are considered only tributary cousins by the Taglians themselves.
The nonagrarian part of Bond’s economy revolved around a small remount station for the military courier post. A minimal garrison of Shadar cavalrymen managed the station and kept watch on ford traffic. Bond was the kind of duty soldiers dream about. There were no officers and very little work. The river was low enough to ford only about three months a year. But the garrison got paid all year round.
Smoke’s soul slipped back to that long ago disaster. I stayed with him, carrying a load of fear despite all of Croaker’s reassurances.
It was very dark that night in that Bond gone by. Horror stalked out of the night and those nightmares where men are more often prey than predator. A monster padded through the hamlet, headed toward the army stable. I watched from a place where I could offer no warning.
One solitary soldier had the watch. He was nodding. Neither he nor the horses sensed their danger, The latch rose inside the stable door. No animal mind knew enough to pull a string. The soldier started awake just in time to see a dark shape with scarlet eyes hurtling toward him.
The monster fed, then padded into the night. It killed again. Screams wakened the garrison. The soldiers seized their arms. The monster, like an oversize black panther, loped to the river, swam to the northern shore.
I knew something now. The killer was a shapeshifter, the acolyte of the sorcerer Shapeshifter, whom we had destroyed the night we captured Dejagore. She got away, trapped in the animal shape.