He and the Nyueng Bao believed he owed me a debt so great he had devoted his life to protecting me. He would lay that, and maybe even his soul, down for me. But at the same time he would willingly lie to and deceive the foreigner who was a cause for shame on his family. And, certainly, he would tell a Soldier of Darkness nothing that might cast any light upon Nyueng Bao attitudes toward the Black Company.

Come to think of it, not even my darling, beloved Sarie had gone that far. She could always change the subject without appearing to have done so.

I said something into the hole but nobody answered. Well, screw them. I was tired.

I sat down in the deepening mud and did go back to sleep. I did not go anywhere. I did not do anything but sleep.

I was a terrible mess when prisoners from the Prince’s division hauled me out of the ground. Otto and Hagop, who belonged with the Old Division and whom I had not seen since Charandaprash, came to stare down at me. “Looks like one a them mole-rat things they got down here,” Otto said.

“Only filthier. It wasn’t raining, Ott, I’d say get a bucket a water and throw it on him.”

“Comics,” I muttered. “You just gave away why you signed on. Your only way to get out of town ahead of an audience turned ugly.”

“His disposition’s improved since the last time we saw him,” Hagop observed. “He don’t let these little setbacks bother him anymore.”

“How you guys been keeping? We don’t get a lot of personal news over here.”

Hagop frowned. Otto said, “A nick here, a ding there. Nothing serious.” Practically ever since I met them one or both had been recovering from some kind of wound. It was what they were known for. They were icons, practically. Otto and Hagop could not be killed, only injured, and as long as they stayed alive the Black Company would survive.

Hagop said, “We was sent over with a bunch of stuff for the Old Man and some stuff for you to put in the Annals. Names.”

“Oh.” Croaker and I always tried to record the names of our fallen brethren the best we could. A lot of guys counted on it. Once they were gone it would be the only evidence that they had ever lived. It was immortality of a sort.

“Lot a names,” Hagop persisted. “Hundreds. Last night was not a good night for the Old Division.”

“You going to be able?” Otto asked. “Is everything buried down there in the mud?”

“It is. But I was more careful with the Annals and that stuff than I was with me. I kept them in a room with logs for the walls and floor and ceiling, with drainage and everything. Just in case. I figured the Shadowmaster would be the problem, though. Hundreds of names? Really? Any I know?”

“They’re just all on a list.”

“I’ll have to add them on at the back of the volume I’m doing now.” If there were hundreds they would be recent enlistees, their names likely unknown to me. They would be recorded on a payroll somewhere but that had nothing to do with me.

Thai Dei materialized. I had not noted his absence till he did. He said, “My mother was all right.” He did not sound real sure about that, though.

“Uhm?”

“They found her in the wizard’s hole when they dug him out. Which was why they were so long getting to you. Your Captain knew you were all right. He did not know if the wizard was dead or alive.”

He meant One-Eye, I realized. Well, of course, if the quake had been bad enough to overcome the fine craftsmanship Thai Dei and I put into our place, then One-Eye’s place could not be anything but a rainwater pool by now.

“She was in One-Eye’s dugout?”

Embarrassed, whispering because there were other Nyueng Bao around, Thai Dei admitted, “They were both dead drunk. Passed out in their own vomit. Didn’t even know the roof had fallen in till the rescuers pulled them out.”

“I’m sorry,” I told him. “But I’m just going to have to laugh.” It came on me hard. It was more than just picturing those two getting plotzed together. It was the release of all the stress from last night.

Otto and Hagop stared at the slopes to the south, restraining their own amusement.

I suffered another laugh seizure. I realized that, before lunch, word would be all over what was left of the army. Undoubtedly it would suffer severe exaggaration and would evolve into some prurient epic before it reached our most remote outpost.

The slope that had been the home of the headquarters group had turned into thirty acres of pockmarks. Hardly a dugout had survived. Prisoners were digging in a dozen different places.

I spotted one familiar face, then another, directing rescue teams. “So. She didn’t stay mad at them.”

“What?” Thai Dei asked.

“Nothing. Just thinking out loud.” Speak of the devil. There she came out of the Old Man’s bunker. Which had survived unscathed. Croaker was right behind her. Neither looked rested.

But they sure looked pleased with themselves.

I grumbled inarticulately, deep in my throat. My wife was half a world away.

Croaker ambled over. “Time for your annual bath, Murgen.”

“If I just stand here in the rain long enough...”

Lady stared a hole through me. She wanted to interrogate me. But not now, not here, not in front of so many people who did not need to hear my answers because half of them did not themselves know where their loyalties lay.

I asked, “How bad did we get hurt last night?”

Croaker shuddered. Maybe some cold rainwater got inside his collar. “I don’t know yet. Lady has almost two thousand people she still can’t account for.”

“They keep turning up, though,” she said, joining us. “I imagine we’ll find most of them eventually.” Probably dead.

I said, “Otto and Hagop say we lost a big chunk of the Old Division.”

Croaker nodded. “They brought a list. It’s way longer than I hoped. We still don’t have anything useful from the other divisions. The New Division is still disorganized and the Prince’s fell apart completely. Did you have something you wanted to say in private? You have that look.”

“Yes.” Smoke rose from the crude chimney of Croaker’s shelter. Warm sounded good. I would make up something to tell him if I had to.

I joined him in the warmth with no remorse and little sympathy for the guys I had left out in the rain.

Lady followed us inside. She wore a smug but hungry look.

Lady had one of Croaker’s rough maps spread before the fire.

“Can you pinpoint where he went down?” She meant the Howler. “Maybe we can still catch him if he was hurt bad.”

“What’s that?” the Old Man asked when I mumbled.

“Uh... I said, you never stop tempting trouble, do you?” Lady did not turn me into a toad. Nor even one of Otto’s ugly little mole-rats. She was in a good mood this morning, as opposed to last night.

Smoke groaned. He startled me, though it was his second groan since I had come into Croaker’s shelter. I glanced that way. The curtain was open. Longshadow and Narayan Singh had been stacked in the alcove with the stricken wizard. I could not imagine Lady and the Old Man fooling around with that crew piled up only a few feet away, but it was obvious that they had taken complete advantage of their opportunity.

I was mildly surprised Lady would turn her prisoners over even to her old man. Longshadow represented a great opportunity to gain power. And Singh... Lady owed Singh a lot. But so did the Captain.

Maybe they would make a family project out of Narayan.

She asked fewer questions than I expected, mainly about Smoke’s limitations. I did not mention that I was developing an ability to travel without the comatose wizard. She did not ask. Croaker, though, noted that I knew about Howler even though I had been in my own bunker during the Taken’s run of bad luck.

“I’ll send Blade,” she decided. “He’s levelheaded. He can get a job done without getting himself or Howler killed.”