Glen Cook

The fourth and final omnibus of novels from Cook's Black Company series, this collection includes "Water Sleeps" and "Soldiers Live."

For four thousand years, the Guardships have ruled Canon Space—immortal ships with an immortal crew, dealing swiftly and harshly with any mercantile houses or alien races that threaten the status quo.
But now the House Tregesser has an edge: a force from outside Canon Space offers them the resources to throw off Guardship rule. This precipitates an avalanche of unexpected outcomes, including the emergence of Kez Maefele, one of the few...

"Let me tell you who I am, on the chance that these scribblings do survive. . .
"I am Murgen, Standardbearer of the Black Company, though I bear the shame of having lost that standard in battle. I am keeping these Annals because Croaker is dead, One-Eye won't, and hardly anyone else can read or write. I will be your guide for however long it takes the Shadowlanders to force our present predicament to its inevitable end. . ."
The Return

...

The ongoing war between Humanity and the Ulat is a battle of attrition that humanity is unfortunately losing. However, humans have the advantage of trans-hyperdrive technology, which allows their climber fleet, under very narrow and strenuous conditions, to pass through space almost undetectable. Passage at Arms tells the intimate, detailed and harrowing story of a climber crew and its captain during a critical juncture of the war. Cook combines speculative...

King Bragi Ragnorson decides to join Chatelain Mist's coup against the Dread Empire. Varhlokkur — the King's wizard — tries to dissuade Ragnorson from this chosen path, but only the drum-beat of war is heard. The King's Spymaster Michael Trebilcock joins with the wizard to stave off The Ill Fate Marshaling, to no effect.
Many of the characters from past volumes take center stage, and the climatic events of this book shake the world...

The Fortress on the edge of the galaxy was called Stars' End, a planet build for death, but by whom? It lay on the outermost arm of the Milky Way, silent, cloaked in mystery, self-contained and controlled, tantalizingly close to the harvesting Starfishers. If they could gain control of that arsenal, the Starfishers need never fear the Confederation's navy nor the forces of the human-like Sangaree. But intelligent life everywhere now needs the might...

Darkness wars with darkness as the hard-bitten men of the Black Company take their pay and do what they must. They bury their doubts with their dead. Then comes the prophecy: The White Rose has been reborn, somewhere, to embody good once more.... --From publisher description.

The old evils, the Instrumentalities from the Time Before Time, have begun to ooze back into the world and Piper Hecht's sister Heris and his living ancestor Cloven Februaren, the Ninth Unknown, have made Piper part of their fight against the return of the dark god Kharoulke the Windwalker.