Book 1 - Bleak Seasons Read Free Page A

stomped on
Dejagore like jumping on an anthill before looking for a real
challenge. But here lightweights Goblin and One-Eye can slide
around quickly and treacherously enough to parry Spinner’s
every feeble thrust.
    His weakness is a mystery.
    Makes you nervous when an enemy doesn’t do everything you
think he can. And a Shadowspinner doesn’t become a top badass
being gentle. One-Eye sees everything in its wickedest light. He
says Spinner is slacking because Longshadow has a hold on him and
is weakening him deliberately. Your basic old time power politics
with the Company in the middle. Before we came along the
Shadowmasters did find their biggest challenges in fighting one
another.
    On principle Goblin seldom agrees with One-Eye about anything.
He claims Shadowspinner is lulling us while he recovers from wounds
that were more serious than we suspected.
    My guess is, six of one, half a dozen of the other.
    Crows circle the Shadowlander camp. Always they circle. Some
come, some go, but a baker’s dozen minimum are there all the
time. Others haunt us day and night. Wherever I go, whenever, a
crow is nearby. Except inside. They don’t get inside. We
don’t let them inside. Those that try end up in
somebody’s pot.
    Croaker had a thing about crows. I think I understand it now.
But the bats bother me more.
    We don’t see the bats as often. The crows get most of
them. (These crows are not ashamed to come out at night.) And those
that the crows don’t get we do, most of the time. Inevitably,
though, a few get away. And that isn’t good.
    They spy for the Shadowmasters. They are the far-ranging eyes of
wickedness out here where our enemies cannot always manipulate the
living darkness.
    Only two Shadowmasters remain. Spinner has problems. They do not
have the reach or control they showed back when they could and did
run the shadows into the very heart of the Taglian Territories.
    They are fading from the stage.
    One dreams.
    Dreams too easily become nightmares.
     
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6
    When you look down from the citadel you have to wonder how the
Jaicuri manage, all jammed inside Dejagore’s walls. Truth is,
they don’t and never did.
    At one time the hills surrounding the plain were covered with
farms and orchards and vineyards. After the shadow came enterprises
gradually disappeared as the peasant families abandoned the land.
And then the antishadow, the Black Company, came, ever so hungry
after the long sprint south from the victory at Ghoja Ford. And
then came the Shadowlander armies which battered us.
    Now the hills bear little but memories of what once was.
Vultures never picked bones much cleaner than those hills have been
gleaned.
    The wisest peasants were those who fled early. Their children
will repopulate the land.
    Later the stupid ones ran here, inside the false safety of
Dejagore’s walls. When Mogaba is particularly cranky he
drives a few hundred out the gate. They are just mouths crying to
be filled. Food must be husbanded for those willing to die
defending the walls.
    Locals who fail to contribute, or who demonstrate a weakness for
getting sick or seriously injured, go out the gate right behind the
peasants.
    Shadowspinner won’t take any in but those willing to help
raise his earthworks and dig his burial trenches. The former means
laboring under falls of missiles directed by old friends inside,
while the latter means making the bed where you will lie as soon as
you are useful no longer.
    Hard choices.
    Mogaba cannot fathom why his military genius isn’t
universally hailed.
    He doesn’t mess with the Nyueng Bao. Not yet. They
haven’t contributed much to Dejagore’s defense but they
don’t sap resources, either. Their babies are getting fat
while the rest of us tighten our belts.
    You don’t see many dogs or cats now. Horses manage only
because they are militarily protected, and then only a handful of
them. We’re going to eat hearty when the last fodder is
gone.
    Small game like rats and pigeons are