Thai Dei gestured.

“Right,” I said. “Just what I was thinking myself.”

One-Eye looked puzzled. Goblin grumbled, “What?” My wizards. Right on top of everything.

“Sometimes I wonder if you guys could find your dicks without a map. The shelter, old-timers. The shelter. Don’t it seem like that’s an awful lot of shack for one runt killer and a kid barely tall enough to bite you on the kneecap? A bit big even for a living saint and the daughter of a goddess?”

One-Eye developed a nasty grin. “Nobody else came out, did they? Yeah. You want I should start a fire?”

Before I could answer him Goblin squealed. I whirled. A shapeless darkness, visible only because of the bonfire, reared out of the shelter entrance then I slammed into the ground, felled by Thai Dei. Fire blasted over my head. Lights crackled. Balls of flame darted in from all around.

The killing darkness took on a moth-eaten look. Then it came apart.

That darkness was why so many of us had been shivering before the attack. But we won this round.

I sat up, crooked a finger. “Let’s see what we’ve caught. It ought to be interesting.” My guys knocked the shelter apart. Sure enough, they turned up a half dozen wrinkled little old men, brown as chestnuts. “Shadowweavers. Running with the Stranglers. Now isn’t that interesting?”

The geezers gobbled their willingness to surrender.

We had run into their kind before. They never were big on personal heroics.

A soldier called Wishbone said, “These Shadowlanders are getting good at this ‘I surrender’ stuff.” He sneered. “Everybody down there must be practicing their handy Taglian phrases.”

“Except Longshadow,” I reminded. I told Thai Dei, “Thanks.”

He shrugged, a gesture foreign to the Nyueng Bao. The world did touch him occasionally. “Sahra would expect it.”

And that was very Nyueng Bao. He would blame his actions on his sister’s expectations rather than on any notion of duty or obligation or even friendship.

“What are we supposed to do with these guys?” Wishbone asked. “We got any use for them?”

“Save a couple. The oldest and one other. Goblin. You never said how many got away.”

“Three. That counts Singh but not the kid. But we’re going to get one of them three back on account of he’s hiding in the bushes right over there.”

“Collect him. I’ll give him to the Old Man.”

Sarky One-Eye cracked, “Give them a little authority, they turn into field marshals. I remember this kid when he was so green he still had sheep shit between his toes. He didn’t know what shoes were for.” But the humor wasn’t in his eye. Every move I made he watched like a hawk. Like a crow, in fact, although we had no crows hanging around tonight. Whatever experiment Goblin and One-Eye had going in that area was a complete success during this outing.

Goblin suggested, “Ease up, Murgen. We’ll get the job done. How about some of you lazy asses toss a couple logs on the fire?” He began to circle the hidden Deceiver in the direction opposite that taken by One-Eye.