Book 1 - Bleak Seasons by Glen Cook Read Free Book Online Page A

We’ll want somebody to tell us bedtime stories.
One-Eye. How the hell did Singh all of a sudden know we were
here?”
    The runt shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe his goddess
goosed him and told him to haul ass.”
    “Give me a break. Kina didn’t have anything to do
with it.” But I wasn’t that sure. Sometimes it is hard
to disbelieve.
    Thai Dei gestured.
    “Right,” I said. “Just what I was thinking
myself.”
    One-Eye looked puzzled. Goblin grumbled, “What?” My
wizards. Right on top of everything.
    “Sometimes I wonder if you guys could find your dicks
without a map. The shelter, old-timers. The shelter. Don’t it
seem like that’s an awful lot of shack for one runt killer
and a kid barely tall enough to bite you on the kneecap? A bit big
even for a living saint and the daughter of a goddess?”
    One-Eye developed a nasty grin. “Nobody else came out, did
they? Yeah. You want I should start a fire?”
    Before I could answer him Goblin squealed. I whirled. A
shapeless darkness, visible only because of the bonfire, reared out
of the shelter entrance then I slammed into the ground, felled by
Thai Dei. Fire blasted over my head. Lights crackled. Balls of
flame darted in from all around.
    The killing darkness took on a moth-eaten look. Then it came
apart.
    That darkness was why so many of us had been shivering before
the attack. But we won this round.
    I sat up, crooked a finger. “Let’s see what
we’ve caught. It ought to be interesting.” My guys
knocked the shelter apart. Sure enough, they turned up a half dozen
wrinkled little old men, brown as chestnuts. “Shadowweavers.
Running with the Stranglers. Now isn’t that
interesting?”
    The geezers gobbled their willingness to surrender.
    We had run into their kind before. They never were big on
personal heroics.
    A soldier called Wishbone said, “These Shadowlanders are
getting good at this ‘I surrender’ stuff.” He
sneered. “Everybody down there must be practicing their handy
Taglian phrases.”
    “Except Longshadow,” I reminded. I told Thai Dei,
“Thanks.”
    He shrugged, a gesture foreign to the Nyueng Bao. The world did
touch him occasionally. “Sahra would expect it.”
    And that was very Nyueng Bao. He would blame his actions on his
sister’s expectations rather than on any notion of duty or
obligation or even friendship.
    “What are we supposed to do with these guys?”
Wishbone asked. “We got any use for them?”
    “Save a couple. The oldest and one other. Goblin. You
never said how many got away.”
    “Three. That counts Singh but not the kid. But we’re
going to get one of them three back on account of he’s hiding
in the bushes right over there.”
    “Collect him. I’ll give him to the Old
Man.”
    Sarky One-Eye cracked, “Give them a little authority, they
turn into field marshals. I remember this kid when he was so green
he still had sheep shit between his toes. He didn’t know what
shoes were for.” But the humor wasn’t in his eye. Every
move I made he watched like a hawk. Like a crow, in fact, although
we had no crows hanging around tonight. Whatever experiment Goblin
and One-Eye had going in that area was a complete success during
this outing.
    Goblin suggested, “Ease up, Murgen. We’ll get the
job done. How about some of you lazy asses toss a couple logs on
the fire?” He began to circle the hidden Deceiver in the
direction opposite that taken by One-Eye.
    They were right. I get too serious under stress. I was a
thousand years old already. Surviving Dejagore had not been easy.
But all the rest of these guys had come through that, too. They had
seen Mogaba’s slaughters of innocents. They had suffered the
pestilences and plagues. They had seen the cannibalism and human
sacrifices, the treacheries and betrayals and all the rest. And
they had come away without letting the nightmares rule them.
    I have to get a handle on it. I have to get some emotional
distance and perspective. But there is something going