Now, at last, Cook brings the "Glittering Stone" cycle within the Black Company series to an end. . .but an end with many other tales yet to tell. As Soldiers Live opens, Croaker is military dictator of all the Taglias, and no Black Company member has died in battle for four years. Croaker figures it can't last. He's right.

For, of course many of the Company's old adversaries are still around. Narayan Singh and his adopted daughter -- actually the offspring of Croaker and the Lady -- hope to bring about the apocalyptic Year of the Skulls. A report soon arrives that an evil spirit, a forvalaka, has taken over an old enemy, setting off a chain of events that bring the Company to the edge of the apocalypse.