Doomstalker

Chapter Fourteen

I

Jiana! You have brought this upon Akard and the Reugge.

Marika started out of her resting trance, shaken by the touch. What? ...

Someone scratched at her cell door. She sat up. "Enter."

Barlog came in. She carried a tray laden with hot, high-energy food. "You'd better eat, Marika. I hear the silth need much energy to work their witchery."

The smell of food made Marika realize how hungry she was, how depleted her energies were. "Yes. You are wise, Barlog. I had not thought of it."

"What is the trouble, pup? You seem distracted."

She was. It was that touch. She took the tray without answering, dug in. Barlog stationed herself beside the door, beaming approval like a fussy old male.

Another scratch. Barlog met Marika's eye. Marika nodded. Barlog opened the door.

Grauel stepped inside, apparently relieved to see Barlog there. She carried a whole arsenal of weapons: shield, sword, knives, heavy spear, javelins, even a bow and arrows, which would be useless inside the fortress's tight corridors. Amused, Marika asked, "What are you supposed to be?"

"Your guardian."

"Yes?"

Grauel understood. "The old one. Gorry. She is saying wicked things about you."

"Such as?"

"She is walking the walls calling you doomstalker. She is telling everyone that the nomads have come down upon Akard because of you. She is telling everyone that you are accursed. She is saying that to end the threat the packfast must rid itself of the Jiana."

"Indeed?" That was a change from moments ago. "I thought that the senior had designated me Akard's great hope."

"There is that school of thought, too. Among the younger silth and huntresses. Especially those who have shared the hunt with you. Arhdwehr follows her around, giving the lie to all she says. But there are those among the oldest silth who live in myth and mystery and hear only the magic in Gorry's claims. One savage packstead pup is a cheap price to pay for salvation."

"It is sad," Marika said. "We have ten thousand enemies howling outside the walls, so we divide against ourselves."

Grauel said, "I know huntresses who have served the Reugge elsewhere. They say it is ever thus among silth. Always at one another's throats-from safely behind the back. This time could be dangerous. There is much anxiety and much fear and a great desire for a cheap, magical solution. I will stand guard."

"I, too," Barlog said.

"As you will. Though I think you two would be of more value upon the wall."

Neither huntress said a word. Each had a stubborn look that said no command would return them to the wall while they fancied Marika threatened. Barlog took weapons from Grauel. After a last look at their charge, the two stepped outside.

Marika wondered if a bomb would blast them away from her door.

She did feel more secure, knowing they were there.

She ate, and returned to her resting trance.

Jiana. Your time is coming,

Angrily, Marika flung back, Someone's time is near. The grauken is about to snap at someone's tail. She felt Gorry reel under the impact of the unexpected response. She felt Gorry's terror.

She was pleased.

Yes. Someone's time was near, be it hers or that of the mad old instructress.

For a time Marika had difficulty resting. Memories of kagbeasts and other surprise horrors kept creeping into her mind.

IIShe felt the bombs falling in the far distance, sending muted vibrations running through Akard's roots. The nomads were back. Their silth had recovered control of the ghost realm. She ignored the sounds, remained calm, waited till she had regained her full strength. Then she probed out through the cold stone, searching for a suitable ghost.

The hunt took much longer this time. In time she captured a weaker one and rode it farther afield in her search. And it was while she hunted that she witnessed the disaster on the Husgen.

The third dam, the far dam, up the Husgen several miles, erupted suddenly. A wild volcano of ice and snow went charging down the river, driven by the reservoir water. So mighty was its charge that it smashed through the ice upon the middle lake, poured over the face of the middle dam, gnawed at its foundations where it abutted the canyon walls, and broke it, too. The combined volume of two lakes rushed toward the final dam.

The disaster seemed to occur in slowed motion because of its scale. Marika had ample time to grow angry.

Her anger, perhaps, allowed her to scale another barrier, as she had done during the attack upon the Degnan packstead. She found she was able to detect the presence of a far, strong ghost. She called it to her, mounted it, took it under control as the fury in the canyon reached the third dam, broke it, swamped the powerhouse, and bit deep into the face of the bluff on which Akard stood, so that great pillars of stone collapsed into the flood, taking a section of fortress wall with them. Several score huntresses, silth, and dependents tumbled down with the wall.

Whipped by rage, Marika drove her ghost steed out to the gathering of nomad silth. She hit them the way a kagbeast hit a herd of banger, slaughtering everything in reach. There would be time to savor and linger over the kill later.

Once again the nomad silth lost their concentration. And once again Marika's strength expired and she had to race back to her self, past the second rout of the besiegers, who were scourged much more terribly this time.

This time, as she parted from the wild silth gathering, Marika did sense the presence of a central control, a trained silth. But this control was stationed far from the main gathering, directing them from both safety and anonymity in the eyes of the sisters of Akard.

A trained silth, yes, certainly. And a powerful one. Perhaps the Serke guiding influence the senior suspected, and. so wanted to capture.

Perhaps she was the key, Marika thought.

Marika slipped into her own flesh and lay there gasping.

"Are you ill, pup?"

Grauel was bending over her, face taut with concern.

"No. It is hard work, making the silth magic. Bring me some sweetened tea. A lot of sweetened tea." Her head was pounding. "Make it one cup of goyin to begin." She tried to sit up. Grauel had to help her. "I stopped them, Grauel. For a while. But they destroyed the dams."

She wondered what Braydic was doing now she could get no more power from the powerhouse. What would they be thinking down in Maksche? Would loss of contact force them to move finally? When it was too late?

Grauel went for the teas while Barlog stood in the doorway, heavy spear in one paw, sword in the other. When Marika gave her a querying look, she said only, "Gorry has found a new slander to spread. She is accusing you of murdering Khles Gibany, and of trafficking with males."

An accusation that would be hard to deny, Marika realized. Anyone who had been trying to help Gibany weather the agony of burning would have realized a tradermale projectile had ended her trial.

Senior Koenic came down soon after Grauel returned with the teas. It seemed an age since she had come back to flesh, but it could not have been more than fifteen minutes. "You did very well this time, pup." There was a light in the senior's eyes that baffled Marika. Mixed fear and respect, she supposed.

"Senior ... Senior, I think I touched a true silth that time. She was beyond the nomads, hiding, but I am sure she was fully trained and exceptionally strong. And there was an alien flavor about her."

"Ah! Good news and dark. We may not die in vain. I must relay this to Maksche immediately, before Braydic's reserve power fails. It is not proof, but it is one more hint that the Serke are moving against us." She vanished in a swish of dark clothing.

Marika allowed the goyin free run and lay back to sleep. Many hours passed while her body recovered from the drain she had placed upon it. When she finally awakened, she was instantly aware that there was fighting inside the packfast proper. Panicky, she dove through her loophole and explored.

Nomad huntresses had gotten inside, coming around the end of the wall where it had collapsed. More were coming all the time, despite the arrows of Akard's huntresses and the rifles of the tradermales. Two thousand nomads lay dead upon the snowfields, but still they came, and still they died. They were a force as unstoppable as winter itself.

It was insanity. It was nothing any meth of the upper Ponath could have imagined in her worst nightmare. It was blood-soaked reality.

Most of the day had passed. It was late. If she could turn the attack once more, Akard would have the night to recuperate, to counterattack, to something. Night was the world of the silth ...

Grauel and Barlog heard her stirring. They looked in. "Finally coming around?" Barlog asked.

"Yes. You look awful. You need some rest."

"No. We have to guard this door." And there was that in Barlog's stance which said that the guardianship had been tested, though the huntress appeared unwilling to say how.

Grauel said, "There are those now willing to appease the All with the sacrifice of a doomstalker."

"Oh."

Just the slightest hint of fear edged Barlog's voice as she asked, "Is there anything you can do to stop the nomads, Marika? They are inside the packfast now."

"I was about to do what I can. Try to have me some tea and food here when I come back."

"It will be here," Grauel promised.

Marika slipped through her loophole. Desperately, she hunted for an appropriate ghost. And the thing she finally found was a monster, discovered hovering high above the packfast. It never had occurred to her to seek upward before. A set of mind she realized was shared by all the silth she knew. All were surface oriented.

Once she bestrode the monster, she immediately became aware of others, higher still, even more monstrous, but the sensing of them was dim, and they were too strong to control. She stayed with the ghost she had, and rushed it toward the nomad silth.

This time she sensed the control of the silth clearly as she approached. Marika was stronger than she had ever been. She located the strange sister and stole toward her, and took her entirely by surprise.

She pounced. There was an instant of startled "Who are you?" before she ripped the female's flesh, scattering her heart and blood across an acre of snow.

Marika was appalled. The silth had, almost literally, exploded.

It was a strong ghost.

She savaged the nomad silth as well, slaying several score before she became so body-loose she had to withdraw. She fled to Akard, where her sisters were again slaughtering nomads by the hundreds.

But there were hundreds inside the fortress, unable to flee, and they continued fighting, as cornered huntresses would.

Too many silth sisters had been slain during the attack. Those who survived were hard pressed, even with their powers restored. And, one by one, they were succumbing to exhaustion.

Marika grabbed her flesh before she lost her grip entirely.

Grauel recognized her arrival in flesh, had her sitting up with a cup of sweet tea to her muzzle almost before she recognized her surroundings. "Drink. Did you do well? Is there hope?"

Marika drank. Almost immediately she felt the sugar spreading through her body, giving her a near high. "I did very well. But maybe not enough. Maybe too late. More of that. And chaphe. I will have to go back right away. The others haven't the strength to hold."

"Marika ... "

"You want a hope? The only hope I saw was for me to strike again. Soon. Closer to the fortress. The way it stands now, silth or no silth, we are destroyed."

Grauel nodded reluctantly.

"What of Gorry?"

"As vicious as ever. But lately she has been too busy to stir trouble. I think most of those who supported her have been killed in the fighting. So she may be no problem after all."

Marika downed another long draft. Her limbs were trembling. She knew risking the ghost realm in her state was not wise. But it was necessary. It seemed to be the choice between grave risk and certain death. Also, there was something she had to do ...

"Stay with me this time, Grauel. I don't know you could, but if something seems bad wrong, try to bring me back."

"All right."

Marika lay back and closed her eyes. She slipped through her loophole. A glance upward showed her the giant ghost she had used before still hovering over the packfast. She snatched at it, seized it, brought it down amid the ruins of the broken wall.

She spied Gorry almost immediately, surrounded by scores of nomad bodies, exulting in her killing. Gorry, whom she hated above all else in her world. Gorry, who was totally engrossed in her work. Gorry, who was wounded and likely to be struck down by some nomad missile at any moment.

That could not be. No nomad would steal the pleasure of that death.

It was time.

Marika reached, found the point at the base of Gorry's brain, struck quickly but lightly, paralyzing not only the old silth's body but her talent. She held Gorry there for a long moment, letting the terror build.

It is time, Gorry. And, Good-bye, Gorry.

She left the paralyzed silth for the nomads. Their imaginations were far more gruesome than hers. She hoped Gorry suffered a long wait in impotent terror.

She hacked, slashed, battered, left a hundred nomads twisted and torn. Then she could stay out no longer. Blackness hovered at the edges of her perception. If she did not get out of the ghost realm soon, she never would.

She slipped into her own present and fell into a sleep of total exhaustion. Her final thought was that she needed food if she were to recover. She had pressed too hard, taken herself too far.

Self-mockery echoed through her fading consciousness. This was the last sleep from which she would never return.

She tried to beg the All to spare her awhile longer. She had one mission yet to perform before she departed the world. The Degnan dead remained unMourned.

III

To Marika's amazement, she wakened. The hammer of tradermale weapons wakened her. She opened her eyes. She was lying on a pallet in Braydic's comm room. Grauel sat beside her, a bowl of soup in her paw. Relief flooded her features.

Marika turned her head slowly. It ached terribly. She needed more goyin tea. She saw Bagnel and one of his comrades firing through narrow windows. Huntresses with bows waited behind them, occasionally stepped forward to loose an arrow while the males reloaded. Bombs were falling outside. They did little damage. Occasionally a metal pellet whined through one of the windows. Most of Braydic's beautiful equipment had been wrecked. All of it was dead. Marika could not feel a spectre of the electromagnetic fog.

Barlog knelt beside Grauel. "Are you all right, Marika?"

"My head aches. I need a double draft of goyin tea." She then realized it was daylight out. She had slept a long time. "How bad is it? How did I get here?"

"It is very bad, pup." She presented the tea, which had been prepared. "We are the last." She gestured. The two tradermales. A dozen huntresses, counting herself and Grauel. Braydic. A dozen worker pups cowering in the nether reaches of the room. "We carried you up when it became clear the nomads would take the underparts of the packstead. Take as little of that tea as you can. You have been drinking too much."

"The sisters. Where are the sisters?"

"All fallen. All but you. A valiant struggle, I am sure. One the savages will recall for a thousand generations. We will be sung into their legends."

Grauel exchanged glances with Barlog. "Are you too weak, Marika? You are the last silth. And we need to hold them off awhile longer. Just awhile."

"Why? What is the point? Akard is fallen."

Braydic replied, "Because help is coming, pup. From the Maksche cloister. Because of what you discovered about the Serke sister. They want to see the body for themselves. You see? Never abandon hope. You may then be too late to profit from what the All has in store."

"I killed her," Marika said. "Gruesomely. They will not find enough left of her to identify."

"They did not need to know that down there," Braydic countered. "Shall we turn them away?"

A burst of explosions sounded outside. Marika turned to Grauel and Barlog. "Help is too late once again, eh?"

Barlog looked at her oddly, with a hint of awe. "Perhaps. And perhaps the All is moving through the world."

Puzzled, Marika glanced at Grauel and surprised the same look there. What were they thinking?

She said, "More food. I am starving. Famished." When no one moved, she pouted. "Find me something to eat. I can do nothing till I have eaten." Her body did feel as though she had fasted for days. "Those pups are beginning to look tasty."

They brought her food. It was dried trail rations of the sort prepared for the summer nomad hunts. Tough as hide. And right then very tasty.

Outside, the racket of the siege continued to rise. Bagnel and his comrade looked ready to collapse. But those two were, for the moment, the only line of defense.

Marika went among the ghosts again, for the last time at Akard. They were few, but not so few as when the nomad silth had been more numerous. And the big dark killer still hovered on high, as though waiting to be used and fed. She called it down.

She ravened among the besiegers, fueling herself with fear and anger and an unquenchable lust for requiting what had been done to the Degnan. She allowed all the hidden shadows, so long repressed, to the fore, and gave them free rein. But she was one silth alone, and the nomads were growing skilled at evading silth attack, at hiding under a mantle of protection extended by their own wild silth, who were in the packfast themselves. Blood ran deep, but Marika feared not deep enough. The savages continued to hammer at the last bastion.

The day proceeded, and despite Marika's efforts the siege turned worse. One after another, her companions were hit by fire coming through the two windows. There was no place to hide from ricochets. The nomads tried to throw explosives inside, and that she forestalled each time, but each time it distracted her from her effort to destroy the wild silth.

Collapse was moments away She knew she could hold no longer, that her will did have its limits. And as she faced the absolute, resolute, and unyielding herself, she found that she had only the old regret. There would be no Mourning for the Degnan. And a new. There would be no journey to Maksche, which might have been the next step on her road leading toward the stars.

The hammer of weaponry rose toward the insane. Bagnel dared not return fire, for a swarming buzz of metal now came through the windows. The pellets were chewing Braydic's machines into chopped metal and glass.

The firing ceased. Bagnel bounced up for a look. Braydic whimpered. "Now they will come."

Marika nodded. And did something she never did before. She hugged Grauel and Barlog in turn.

Pups of the upper Ponath packs hugged no one but their dams, and that seldom after their first few years.

The two huntresses were touched.

Stray nomad weapons resumed a sporadic fire apparently meant to keep Bagnel away from his window.

Grauel rejoined the tradermale. She was trying to learn to use a rifle. Bagnel's companion could no longer lift his.

A slumping Marika suddenly went rigid. Her jaw dropped. "Wait! Something ... "

Something mighty, something terrible in its power, was roaring toward her up the valley of the Hainlin. For a moment she was paralyzed by her terror of that raging shadow. Then she hurled herself to the one window facing down the river.

She saw three great daggerlike crosses hurtling up the river's course, above the devastation left by the flood released with the collapse of the dams. They charged into the teeth of the wind, flying like great raptors fifty feet above the surface in an absolutely rigid V formation.

"What are they?" Grauel whispered from Marika's side.

"I do not know."

"Looks like meth on them," Barlog murmured from Marika's other side.

"I do not know," Marika said again. She had begun shaking all over. A fierce and dreadful shadow-of-touch rolled ahead of the crosses, boiling with a mindless terror.

A tremendous explosion thundered out behind them. Its force threw the three of them together, against the stone of the wall. Marika gasped for breath. Grauel turned, pointed her rifle. It began to bark counterpoint to Bagnel's, which was speaking already.

Nomad shapes appeared in the dust boiling around the gap in the wall blown by the charge.

Marika clung to the window and stared out.

The three rushing crosses rose, screaming into the sky, parting.