Kiaulune, here labeled as "Shadowcatch", and surrounding lands
The Kiaulune wars were a series of conflicts which took place during the first 5 years of the 15-year gap between She Is the Darkness and Water Sleeps. They are only mentioned in retrospect in the Annals of the final two Books of Glittering Stone.
On one side was the Black Company, led by its Annalist, Sleepy and a key ally, Ky Sahra, along with their allied forces of Shadowlanders. They were desperately outclassed in terms of sorcery and resources. They fought against the armies of the Taglian Protectorate, commanded by the Great General Mogaba, who ostensibly served the Radisha Drah but was truly answerable to the unrivaled sorceress Soulcatcher. The result was the decisive defeat of the Company. For the rest of his life, Mogaba "was proud of his work back then. His thinking and planning had contributed to every Taglian triumph."[1]
The Protectorate war, which began about 14 years later, was a renewal of hostilities between the Protectorate and the reconstituted Black Company.
Before Water Sleeps[]
Prelude[]
Immediately before the Kiaulune wars (that is, the closing events of She Is the Darkness), Soulcatcher trapped the Black Company's leadership (the "Captured") in the Cave of the Ancients beneath Shivetya's fortress at the center of the glittering plain. She eventually seized de facto control of Taglios and declared herself its Protector.
List of battle sites[]
Events of the wars[]
When the remainder of the Black Company and their new Shadowlander allies resisted the Radisha and Soulcatcher, Mogaba was ordered to destroy them. Willow Swan played some role on the Taglian side as well.
The resulting wars took place near the fortress Overlook, in and around the city of Kiaulune, and in the wider Shadowlands south of the Dandha Presh in general. The Company remained safe in Overlook for the 5 years the wars lasted, as the structure had been hardened against sorcery by Longshadow. From there, the Company and their Shadowlander allies mounted ambushes on Mogaba's Taglian forces. Though they never struck a victory against Mogaba directly, they were never fully wiped out.
A comment by Sleepy suggests that the Company used guerrilla tactics and avoided pitched battles to prevent their total destruction:
| “ | [Mogaba] believed real men got in close, where they could get splattered with each other’s blood when they fought. It was a blind spot we had exploited more than once during the Kiaulune wars and would exploit again until he figured it out.[2] | ” |
In one skirmish near the Daka Woods, a Taglian soldier by the name of Dorabee Dey Banerjae who was still loyal to the Company was killed in action beside Sleepy.[3] She would use Dorabee's name for a stretch of seven years afterward for one of her alter egos while in hiding in Taglios, working at the Taglian Royal Library for Surendranath Santaraksita.
In another incident, the Company lost Croaker's Widowmaker costume armor to the enemy.[4]
The locations Khadighat, Bhoroda, and Nalanda were also sites of battles during the Kiaulune wars. Willow Swan would later mention that he thought One-Eye was killed during one of those battles.[5] It was later learned that the elderly Company wizard wizards One-Eye and Goblin convincingly faked their own deaths. Their enemy Mogaba was a personal witness. Mogaba, deceived, would swear to Soulcatcher that both men were dead.
A man named Lal Mindrat, who was not a member of the Black Company, betrayed some of the Company's allies during the Kiaulune wars. No further details are supplied in the Annals about this betrayal, except that Soulcatcher evidently rewarded Lal Mindrat by making him the commander of a fort just south of Taglios. He was still in command of this fort many years later, by the time of the Protectorate war. Croaker ascertained that Lal Mindrat must have been a "minor traitor" since Sleepy never mentioned his name until they encountered him in the Protectorate war.[6]
The Kiaulune wars, like the Shadowmaster wars which preceded them, made it impossible for the Nyueng Bao De Duang to conduct their traditional pilgrimage from the Nyueng Bao delta to the Shadowgate south of Kiaulune.[7]
Khusavir Pete betrays the Bahrata Battalion[]
The final crushing blow came to the Company when the Bahrata Battalion was betrayed by the Company defector Khusavir Pete and was wiped out by Protectorate forces at Kushkhoshi. During this bloodbath, more than 500 people (containing many Company brothers but mostly consisting of the Company's "largest surviving force of allies") were lost. This marked the defeat of the Company and the end of the Kiaulune wars.[8] Soulcatcher emerged from the war as the undisputed ruler of both Taglios and the former Shadowlands, collectively the Protectorate.
Aftermath[]
After the Kiaulune wars ended, the Company survivors remained holed up "for years" in Overlook. Their presence was not a secret. Soulcatcher eventually devoted her entire attention to obliterating Overlook itself with a specially crafted sorcery, a task which took full 2 years. She genuinely believed that the Company and their surviving allies were wiped out inside the destroyed structure. But her enemies secretly moved north and dispersed into the urban sprawl of Taglios. The Company became an underground movement, headquartered in a warehouse on the banks of the great river owned by their elderly Nyueng Bao sympathizer Banh Do Trang. The subsequent events are detailed in Water Sleeps.
Black Company veterans[]
When the Black Company transformed into an underground urban guerrilla movement in Taglios, its backbone was comprised of veterans of the Kiaulune wars. Prominent such veterans were:
- Sleepy (the Annalist and ranking officer)
- the elderly wizards One-Eye and Goblin
- both Singh brothers: Runmust and Iqbal
- Riverwalker
- Spiff
Although not explicitly mentioned as such, these other Company men were almost certainly veterans of the wars as well:
The following close-knit Nyueng Bao allies were also veterans:
References[]
- ↑ Soldiers Live, ch. 35
- ↑ Water Sleeps, ch. 63
- ↑ Water Sleeps, ch. 13
- ↑ Soldiers Live, ch. 19
- ↑ Water Sleeps, ch. 10
- ↑ Soldiers Live, ch. 108
- ↑ Water Sleeps, ch. 16
- ↑ Water Sleeps, ch. 65