Book 4 - Soldiers Live Read Online Free PDF Page B

kill
you.
     
----

----

6

An Abode of Ravens:
Suvrin’s News
    S uvrin did not
arrive until after midnight. By then even our dullards understood
that there was significance to the agitation of the hidden folk and
the crows whose presence gave our settlement its local name. Arms
had been issued. Men with fireball poles now perched on every
rooftop. Tobo had warned his supernatural friends to stay out of
town lest taut human nerves snap and cause them harm.
    Everyone of stature available gathered to await Suvrin’s
report. A couple of subalterns took turns running up to the
headquarters’ roof to check the progress of the torches
descending the long scarp from the shadowgate. Local boys, they
seemed to feel that their great adventure had begun at last.
    They were fools.
    An adventure is somebody else slogging through the mud and snow
while suffering from trench foot, ringworm, dysentery and
starvation, being chased by people with their hearts set on murder
or more. I have been there. I have done that, playing both parts. I
do not recommend it. Be content with a nice farm or shop. Make lots
of babies and bring them up to be good people.
    If the new blood remain blind to reality after we move out I
guarantee that their naivete will not long survive their first
encounter with my sister-in-law, Soulcatcher.
    Suvrin finally arrived, accompanied by the runner Sleepy had
sent to meet him. He seemed surprised by the size of the assembly
awaiting him.
    “Get up front and talk,” Sleepy told him. Always
direct and to the point, my successor.
    Silence fell. Suvrin looked around nervously. He was short,
dark, slightly pudgy. His family had been minor nobility. Sleepy
had taken him prisoner of war four years ago, just before the
Company climbed onto the glittering plain, headed this way. Now he
commanded an infantry battalion and seemed destined for bigger
things because the Company was growing. He told us,
“Something came through the shadowgate.”
    Jabber jabber, question question.
    “I don’t know what. One of my men came to tell me he
thought he’d seen something sneaking around in the rocks on
the other side of the gate. I went to look. After four years of
nothing happening I assumed it would be just a shadow or one of the
Nef. The dreamwalkers visit us all the time. I was wrong. I never
got a good look at the thing but it seemed to be a large animal,
black and extremely fast. Not as big as Big Ears or Cat Sith but
definitely faster. It was able to pass through the shadowgate
without help.”
    I felt a chill. I tried to reject my immediate suspicion. It was
not possible. Nevertheless, I said, “Forvalaka.”
    “Tobo, where are you?” Sleepy demanded.
    “Here.” He sat with several Children of the Dead,
officers in training.
    “Find this thing. Catch it. If it’s what Croaker
said, I want you to kill it.”
    “That’ll be easier said than done. It’s
already squabbled with the Black Hounds. They backed off.
They’re just trying to keep track of it now.”
    “Then kill it, Tobo.” There was no “try
to” or “do whatever you can” with this
Captain.
    I told him, “Ask Lady to help you. She knows those things.
But before anybody does anything, we need to set up some kind of
protection for One-Eye.” If it was a shape-shifting,
man-eating werepanther from our homeworld, it could be only one
monster. And that creature hated One-Eye with the deepest and most
abiding passion imaginable because One-Eye had slain the only
wizard capable of helping it regain its human form.
    “You think it really is Lisa Bowalk?” Sleepy
asked.
    “I get that feeling. But you told me it escaped from the
plain through the Khatovar gate. And it couldn’t get
back.”
    Sleepy shrugged. “That’s what Shivetya showed me.
It’s possible that I just assumed it couldn’t get back
onto the plain.”
    “Or maybe it made new friends out there.”
    The little woman spun, barked, “Suvrin?”
    Suvrin understood. “I left them on