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Four years passed and no one died. Not of violence or hazard of the calling,
anyway. Otto and Hagop did pass on within days of each other, of natural causes
associated with aging, last year. A few weeks ago one Tam Duc, recruit in
training, perished of the overconfident exuberance of youth. He fell into a
crevasse while he and his lance brothers were riding their blankets down the
long slick slope of the Tien Myuen glacier. There were a few others. But not a
one by an unfriendly hand.
Four years has to be a record, though not the sort often recalled in these
That much peace is impossible to believe.
Peace that prolonged becomes increasingly seductive.
Many of us are old and tired and retain no youthful fire in the belly. But us
old farts are not in charge anymore. And though we were prepared to forget
horror, horror was not as accomodating toward us.
In those days the Company was in service to its own name. We recognized no
master. We counted the warlords of Hsien as our allies. They feared us. We were
supernatural, many recalled from the dead, the ultimate Stone Soldiers. They
dreaded the chance that we might take sides in their squabbles over the bones of
Hsien, that once-mighty empire the Nyueng Bao recall as the Land of Unknown
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