Book 4 - Soldiers Live by Glen Cook

using those and bits of flesh torn off by the Black Hounds
while it was fleeing toward the shadowgate.”
    “But it did have what it takes to get back to
Khatovar.”
    “It did.”
    “Then it’s going to be as hard to kill as the Limper
was.”
    “Not anymore. Not with what Tobo has.”
    “He had your help?”
    “I’m ancient in the ways of wickedness. Am I not?
Didn’t you write something like that a time or
two?”
    “Especially after I got to know
you . . . Ouch!
Well . . . as long as you’re a bad girl
like you’re being a bad girl right
now . . . ” I do not recall if I did
write the exact words she claimed but I know I recorded those
approximate sentiments many years ago. Without exaggerating.
“I’m going to go after it.”
    “I know.” She did not argue. They were humoring me.
They wanted to keep me quiet. Sleepy was involved in touchy
negotiations with the File of Nine. The Court of All Seasons and
the monks of Khang Phi were behind us already. The warlords of the
File remain unconvinced that it would be wise to give us what we
want even though the Company has grown to the point where it has
become a serious burden on Hsien’s economy. And poses a
threat, if the notion of conquest happens to take root. I, myself,
do not see one warlord, or even a cabal of warlords, out there, who
would stand much more chance than smoke in a high wind if the
notion did take us. Most of the warlords are clear on that,
too.
    They still want Maricha Manthara Dhumraksha—our Shadowmaster
Longshadow—desperately. Their hunger for revenge borders on racial
obsession. They are not forthcoming about the evils Longshadow
visited upon their forbears but we have our sources inside Khang
Phi. Longshadow’s cruelties had been as capricious as any
wickedness of Soulcatcher’s but far more terrible for their
victims. The need to haul the Shadowmaster up before a tribunal
colored every consideration of the warlords, the legal and noble
courts, even the several spiritual traditions of Hsien. Maricha
Manthara Dhumraksha was the one thing they all agreed upon. Nor did
I ever sense a hint of a chance some rogue would try to acquire
control of Longshadow in an effort to amplify his own power.
    Sleepy did not want a short-tempered, foulmouthed but still
influential former Captain stumbling around being sarcastic and
opinionated while she was trying to wring the one last concession
she wanted out of the File of Nine. She was confident that our
years of good behavior would tilt the scale. And if it did not,
well, she was the kind of planner who always had a secondary scheme
in motion. In fact, she was that wonderful kind of villain for whom
the public and obvious scheme might well be only a tertiary effort
meant primarily as a smoke screen. Our Sleepy was one wicked little
girl.
    There are no great sorcerers in the Land of Unknown Shadows.
“All Evil Dies There an Endless Death” means that they
have persecuted the talented since the flight of the
Shadowmasters. But Hsien does not lack or disdain knowledge. There
are several huge monasteries—of which Khang Phi is the
greatest—dedicated to the preservation of knowledge. The monks do
not sort it into good and evil knowledge, nor do they make moral
judgments. They take the position that no knowledge is evil until
someone chooses to do evil with it.
    Even though it has been engineered to wreak havoc upon the human
body, a sword is strictly inert metal until someone chooses to pick
it up and strike. Or chooses not to do so.
    There are, of course, a thousand sophistries spewed by those who
wish to deny individuals the opportunity to choose. Which is an
arrogant presumption of a divine scale.
    This is what happens when you get old. You start thinking.
Worse, you start telling everybody what you think.
    Sleepy was nervous lest I express an unfortunate opinion to one
of the Nine, whereupon, in high dudgeon, the offended party would
abandon all sensibility and self-interest and