Book 1 - Bleak Seasons Read Free

chaos.
    It is always a holy day for somebody.
     
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5
    From the citadel tower it is obvious that Dejagore is a complete
contrivance. Of course, most walled cities are shaped by the
probability that, part of the time, neighboring states will be
managed by thugs. Your own city’s masters will never be worse
than benevolent despots, of course, and their worst ambition will
be to heighten the hometown’s glory.
    Until the appearance of the Shadowmasters one short generation
ago war was an alien concept throughout this part of the world. It
had seen neither armies nor soldiers in all the centuries since the
Black Company’s departure.
    Into this improbable paradise came the Shadowmasters, lords of
darkness from the far reaches of the earth who brought with them
all the wolves of the old nightmare. Soon inept armies were about.
They stalked unprepared kingdoms like great cruel behemoths even
the gods could not stay. The dark tide spread. Cities crumbled. A
lucky few the Shadowmasters chose to rebuild. The peoples of the
newly-founded Shadowlands were given their options: obedience or
death.
    Jaicur was reborn as Stormgard, seat of the Shadowmaster
Stormshadow, she who could bring the winds and thunder howling and
bellowing in the darkness. She who had borne the name Stormbringer
in another age and place.
    First Stormshadow raised a mound forty feet high on top of the
ruins of captured Jaicur, at the heart of a plain she had flattened
absolutely by slaves and prisoners of war. Earth for the mound came
from the ring of hills completely surrounding the plain. With the
mound complete and faced on its outer sides with several layers of
imported stone, Stormshadow built her new city up top. And that she
surrounded with walls another forty feet high. She did not overlook
the latest theories about towers for enfilading fire and barbicans
to protect her elevated gates.
    All the Shadowmasters seemed driven by a paranoid need to make
themselves safe in their home places.
    Never once in her planning, though, did she take into account
the possibility that she might have to resist the onslaught of the
Black Company.
    I wish we were half as wicked as I talk.
    Dejagore has four gates. Each stands at one point of the compass
rose. Each is at the end of a paved highway running straight in
from the hills. Only the road from the south carries any traffic
these days.
    Mogaba has sealed three gates, leaving only sally ports which
are guarded by his Nar at all times. Mogaba is determined to fight.
He is just as determined that not one of our raggedy-ass Taglian
legionnaires will run off and not go down with him.
    None of us, be we Black Company Old Crew, Nar, Jaicuri, Taglian,
Nyueng Bao, or someone else who had the bad luck to get caught
here, is going to get out alive. Not unless Shadowspinner and his
gang get so bored they go looking for someone else to bully. Right.
You’ve got the eight and ten of swords and to go down
you’re going to bet your ass on pulling the nine.
    Your chances of pulling that nine are better than ours of
getting out of here.
    The fortified encampment of the Shadowlanders stands south of
the city. It is so close we can reach it with our heavy artillery.
You can see charred timbers where we tried to burn them out the day
of the big battle. We have raided them a few times since then, too,
but no longer have the strength to risk.
    We can’t seem to discourage Shadowspinner, though.
    Like most warlords he doesn’t let reality get in the way
of his doing whatever he wants to do.
    The artillery gives them a wake-up five nights out of five, pick
a random time. That keeps them cranky and tired and a lot less
effective whenever they attack. Trouble is, so much effort keeps us
tired and cranky, too. And we have other projects going as
well.
    Shadowspinner is a puzzle. He is not the first of his kind in
Company experience. The heavyweight killers in our past, though,
when faced with a situation like this, would have