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Back Bleak Seasons Save as PDF
Chapters (102)
  1. Title page
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The smell of smoke wakened me. I sat up. Sindhu rose at almost the same instant. I found a crow studying me from so close I had to cross my eyes to focus on him. The Taglian who was supposed to be keeping watch was sleeping. So much for well-rested. I said nothing. Neither did Sindhu.

In moments my fears were confirmed. A southern voice called out. Another answered. Crows laughed. Sindhu whispered, They know we are here? It sounded like he had trouble believing that.

I lifted a finger, requesting silence. I listened, picked out a few words. They know somebody is here. They dont know who. Theyre unhappy because they cant just kill us. The Shadowmaster wants prisoners.

They arent trying to lure us out?

They dont know any of us can understand some of their dialect. The albino crow in front of me cawed and flapped its way up out of the brush. About twenty others joined it.

If we cannot evade them we must surrender. We must not fight. Sindhu was an unhappy young man.

I agreed. I was an unhappy young man myself. The Taglian soldiers were two more unhappy young men.

We evaded nothing and no one. The crows found our efforts amusing.

59

59

Time had no meaning. The Shadowmasters camp lay somewhere north of Dejagore. We four were among the earliest prisoners taken but more soon joined us in our pen. Lots of Mogabas guys wanted to leave town.

He would have less trouble feeding the ones who stayed behind.

One-Eye and Goblin seemed to hold our part of town together. Nobody I knew became a prisoner.

I did not send any more moths so they knew I had found trouble instead of Lady.

Even our guards had no notion how Spinner meant to use us. We were happier not knowing, probably.

I spent uncounted days in total misery. Piglets in a feed lot live better than we did. More and more prisoners arrived. The food was inadequate. After a few meals everybody got the runs. There were no sewage provisions, not even a simple slit trench. They would not let us dig our own. Maybe they did not want us getting too comfortable.

In fact our life was not much worse than that of the Shadowlander private soldiers. They had nothing anymore and could expect only nothing. They indulged in a ferocious desertion rate despite the Shadowmasters reputation. They hated Shadowspinner for putting them into such an awful state. They took their anger out on us.

I do not know how long we were there. I lost track. I was busy trying to die from dysentery. I noticed only that there was a sudden absence of crows one day. I was so used to having crows around that anymore I noticed them only when they were not there.