Soldiers Live Read Free

Hsien
     has now resembles nothing so much as lightly organized anarchy. But not a one is
     willing to yield a minimum of power to another authority, either.
    One-Eye grinned, revealing dark gums. “Not going to. Trick me. Captain.”
    “I’m not the Captain anymore. I’m retired. I’m just an old man who pushes paper
     as an excuse to keep hanging around with the living. Sleepy is the boss.”
    “Still. Management.”
    “I’m about to manage your scruffy old ass . . . ” I trailed off. His eye had
     closed. He made a statement by beginning to snore.
    Another hoot and holler arose outside, some close by, more far away toward the
     shadowgate. The snail shells creaked and rustled and, though I never saw a one
     touched by anything, rocked and spun around. Then I heard the distant bray of a
     horn.
    I rose and retreated, not turning my back. One-Eye’s lone remaining
     pleasure—other than staying drunk—was tripping the unwary with his cane.
    Tobo reappeared. He looked ghastly. “Captain . . . Croaker. Sir. I misunderstood
     what he tried to tell me.”
    “What?”
    “It wasn’t him. It was Nana Gota.”

Black Company GS 9 - Soldiers Live
    3
    An Abode of Ravens:
    A Labor of Love
     Tobo’s grandmother, Ky Gota, had died happy. As happy as the Troll could die,
    which was drunker than three owls drowned in a wine cask. She had enjoyed a vast
     quantity of extremely high-potency product before she went. I told the boy, “If
     it’s any consolation she probably didn’t know a thing.” Although the evidence
     suggested she knew exactly what was happening.
    I did not fool him. “She knew it was coming. The Greylings were here.” Something
     behind the still chittered softly in reponse to the sound of his voice. Like the
     baobhas, the greylings are a harbinger of death. One of a great many in Hsien.
    Some of the things that had been howling in the wilderness earlier would have
     been, too.
    I said the things you say to the young. “It was probably a blessing. She was in
     constant pain and there was nothing I could do for her anymore.” The old woman’s
     body had been a torment to her for as long as I had known her. Her last few
     years had been hell.
    For a moment Tobo looked like a sad little boy who wanted to bury his face in
     his mother’s skirt and shed some tears. Then he was a young man whose control
     was complete again. “She did live a long life and a fulfilled one, no matter how
     much she complained. The family owes One-Eye for that.”
    Complain she had, often and loudly, to everyone about everything and everyone
     else. I had been fortunate enough to miss much of the Gota era by having gotten
     myself buried alive for a decade and a half. Such a clever man am I. “Speaking
     of family, you’ll have to find Doj. And you’d better send word to your mother.
    And as soon as you can you’ll need to let us know about funeral arrangements.”
    Nyueng Bao funerary customs seem almost whimsical. Sometimes they bury their
     dead, sometimes they burn them, sometimes they wrap them and hang them in trees.
    The rules are unclear.
    “Doj will make the arrangements. I’m sure the Community will demand something
     traditional. In which case my place is somewhere out of the way.”
    The Community consists of those Nyueng Bao associated with the Black Company who
     have not enlisted formally and who have not yet disappeared into the mysterious
     reaches of the Land of Unknown Shadows.
    “No doubt.” The Community are proud of Tobo but custom demands that they look
     down on him for his mixed blood and lack of respect for tradition. “Others will
     need to know, too. This’ll be a time of great ceremony. Your grandmother is the
     first female from our world to pass away over here. Unless you count the white
     crow.” Old Gota seemed much less formidable in death.
    Tobo’s thoughts were moving obliquely to mine. “There’ll be another crow,
    Captain. There’ll always be another crow. They feel at