I made a noise like a dog strangling and jumped to my feet. Not again! I was over those falls into the past... wasn't I?
One-Eye clambered down from the wagon. "All done, Kid. You can have him if you need him but you really ought to give it a break. Ain't nothing going to happen for a while, anyway."
"What're we burning in these fires? I'm having visions or something here."
One-Eye sucked in a couple gallons of air, held his breath a while, then blew it out, shook his head, disappointed. "You're imagining things."
"I never did."
I never did. That was worth thinking about. I glanced around to see who was listening. Mother Gota was at the family cookfire but her Forsberger was not good enough to give her a clue.
She had appointed herself full-time family cook. Which meant that, even with the demands made by my travels with Smoke, I was in no danger of getting fat. She still lugged her personal arsenal. She acted like she knew how to use it those rare times she troubled to practice with Thai Dei and Uncle Doj. She did not talk to me much anymore. I was not the reason she was here. I was an inconvenience and an embarrassment.
She knew none of this would have happened if love and Hong Tray had not gotten in the way of common sense and ancient custom.
I was just as happy she stayed out of my way. I had my own feelings to tame. Among them was the conviction that life might have been much better for me had Sarie's mother never come to stay with us. Sahra might even be alive still. Though there was no way I could work that out so that it fit any logic.
Much as Smoke called I decided to endure the pain. I had to get used to it sometime. So why not try walking around the camp again? I could stay away from the worst smoke.
Thai Dei materialized almost as soon as I started moving. "Your sling and splints are gone," I said. "Are you back on the job?" He nodded.
"Sure it isn't a little soon for that? You could break that arm again if you don't give it time enough to heal."
Thai Dei shrugged. He was tired of being a cripple. That was that. Tough as he was, he was probably right.
"What happened to Uncle Doj?" I had not seen the old boy for a while. If Thai Dei was back Doj might give in to an impulse to go after revenge on his own. His Path of the Sword thinking would find that perfectly reasonable. Thai Dei shrugged.
He was lucky he did not have to talk for a living. There would be even less of him than there is now.
"Help me out here, brother. I'm going to get real upset if that old man gets himself killed." Uncle Doj was not ancient. He had maybe ten years on the Old Man and was more spry than Croaker.
"He would not do that."
"Glad to hear it. Trouble is, anybody can. While we're at it, remind him to try not being so weird in front of people who don't know us. The Captain didn't survive Dejagore with us."
Thai Dei was positively loquacious all of a sudden. "He lived his own hell." Which was true but not a point I would expect Nyueng Bao to note.
"He sure did. And it twisted him. Same as Dejagore twisted us. He doesn't trust anybody anymore. That's a lonely way to be but he just can't help it. And he especially don't trust people whose beliefs and business and motives are completely opaque to him."
"Uncle?"
"You have to admit that Uncle Doj is odd even by Nyueng Bao standards."
Thai Dei grunted, conceding the point privately.
"He makes the Captain very nervous." And the Captain was a very powerful man.
"I understand."
"I hope so." Ordinarily even Doj has to pry words out of Thai Dei so I felt rewarded. He remained talkative. I learned a good deal about his childhood with Sahra, which was pretty unremarkable. He believed there was a curse on their family. His father had died when he and Sahra were children. His wife My had drowned when their son To Tan was only a few months old, early in the pilgrimage that had brought the Nyueng Bao into Dejagore just in time for the siege. Sahra had married Sam Danh Qu, who had put her through several years of hell before he died of that fever in the early days of the siege. Then the children had all died, Sahra's under the swords of Mogaba's men in Dejagore, To Tan during the Strangler raid that had ended with my wife dead and Thai Dei's arm broken.
Evidently nobody in this family ever died of old age. This dying family. Mother Gota would bear no more children. Thai Dei had the capacity to become a father again but I did not expect that to happen. I expected Thai Dei to get killed avenging his sister and son.
Thai Dei stopped being communicative when To Tan's name came up.
The army lined up so: Lady's division to the left, the Prince's in the center, the Captain's two to the right, stacked one behind the other. All our cavalry assembled in the gap between the front and trailing divisions.
Why? The reserve division belongs behind the center. That has been customary since the dawn of time.
And why did Croaker station all his specially trained units behind or beyond Lady's division?
Either the Old Man thought he could dive Mogaba berserk trying to winkle out the answers or he was letting his hatred for Blade and his paranoia define his tactics.
And why were the camp followers, voluntarily or otherwise, being gathered together right on the front line? Croaker hated camp followers. That he had not run them off weeks ago was a wonder to all who knew him.
I could not find Uncle Doj. Still.
23
I felt it begin before any growl of drum or snarl of trumpet. I ran for the wagon, leaping rocks and fires in the mist.
I had Smoke take me up where Mogaba watched from his high tower, sensed uncertainty immediately. He knew Croaker. He knew that half what the Old Man did would be done to mess with his mind. But which half?
The knowing itself would cause a hesitation at every point of decision.
I loathed Mogaba the traitor but admired Mogaba the man. He was tall, handsome, intelligent. Just like me. But he was the perfect warrior, too.
He had no company but couriers and the two big wazoos. And they were doing a great imitation of two guys sleeping. Their strategy was to wait for Lady to make a move so one could grab her while the other one blindsided her.
Mogaba's platform provided a less than perfect view though probably the best attainable. A portion of his left flank was masked by a jumble of boulders while to his right a steep knee of stone concealed his flank there along with a portion of the Taglian left wing.
I took Smoke up amongst the crows for a vulture's eye view. The smoke was thinning out. People were stumbling uphill, unable to make an orderly advance over the rocky ground.
Now I understood why the troops had been issued calthrops.
Calthrops are like large kids' jacks, only the tips are sharp and sometimes poisoned. The calthrop is a handy tool if you have to run for it, particularly if the guys after you are going to be on horseback. You scatter calthrops where horses have to follow narrow paths and you have yourself a guaranteed head start or even grounds for a nasty ambush.
Aha! I spied the missing complimentary in-law.
Uncle Doj was dressed up in his best outfit, his holy fencing duds, like he maybe did not want us going to a whole lot of trouble when we laid him out. Hell. I would have to check with Thai Dei on Nyueng Bao funeral customs. A lot of Nyueng Bao had died around me but I never took part in what went on later.
I still resented being left out when they took care of To Tan and Sahra without me.
Uncle Doj strutted uphill till he was just fifty feet from the first line of Shadowlanders. He stopped and bellowed a challenge to Narayan Singh.