01. Spirits of Flux and Anchor (13 page)

"Now, not everybody is here, that's clear. That's one reason I need your help. If there's anybody you know who was in that train whose remains aren't there now, I want to know about it. We're only another hard day's ride from help, and if we know who to look for we might be able to save them. Also, whoever did this is still around. This hap- pened only a matter of hours ago at best, from the state of the remains- We have to act fairly quickly, because the Flux tends to break down dead or- ganic matter pretty quickly. I need to keep the duggers armed and on guard, so it's up to you. Volunteers?"

A dozen or so hands went up, including Cassie's, and he nodded and told them to come forward. They did, and walked straight into Hell itself.

Assuming the same size train, more than half the mules had been killed, the rest run off with the

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attackers. All of the remaining packs had been thoroughly ransacked, with the unwanted part of their contents just strewn about haphazardly. Both wagons had caught fire and been rendered useless, but it was clear that some of the contents there had been salvaged and probably loaded on the remaining mules -- and, perhaps, on the backs of the survivors.

All of the human bodies were stripped naked if they hadn't been to begin with, but it was easy to tell the duggers from the other group of exiles by their shape if nothing else. It was a stomach- churning chore to gather up all those bodies and lay them out so they could be potentially identi- fied and counted. Several times members of the party suddenly felt sick; a few threw up, a few more finally ran back to the rest, but were quickly replaced by others whose curiosity or consciences now prodded them.

Most of the victims had been shot, some several times, but others were run through with arrows or spears. Some who had obviously been only wounded when the train was overrun had been put to death, most often by beheading but occasionally by slow dismemberment, the horror still on their faces- Many of bodies had been chewed, with huge chunks of flesh just ripped from them, but it was unclear just what had done the chewing. What was clear was that whoever had overrun the train had been human, and probably in numbers far larger than the train's defenders.

Still, laid out, the bodies included some that could not be accounted for by duggers or exiles. These, too, had been treated just as harshly as the others, but they were clearly from some different place entirely.

For one thing, they resembled duggers but had some regularity to their dehumanizing aspects. They were mostly very tall, chunky females reminiscent

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of the kind that became Temple wardens, but all had undergone animalistic metamorphosis that might show madness on the part of the perpetra- tor but at least showed some conscious planning.

The most obvious thing was that they all had thick heads of hair that apparently hadn't been cut in years. The shortest hair length was below the waist. Their fingers seemed unnaturally long, too, and terminated in very long, thick, sharp claws. Some of the bodies seemed covered from the waist down in very short fur with animalistic patterns and colorations, almost horse-like in texture and appearance, and all of these had tails resembling various animals -- rabbit, horse, cat, they were all represented. Perhaps the most striking thing was their faces, though, with bushy, oddly upturned brows, and pink animal-like noses over mouths that seemed abnormally wide and which contained oversized, slightly protruding canines.

Although in a state of shock over the carnage, Cassie couldn't resist questions. "What -- what are they?" she asked Matson.

"People," he responded dryly. "Members of a cult. Looks like they got a fair number, too." This last was said without any sense of exhilaration or pleasure. Matson had been curiously more cold and withdrawn since they began, but there was no trace of meanness, authoritarianism, or any other emotional mannerism. He was either holding some- thing in very deeply or forced upon himself a re- markable detachment for the scene.

"Cult?" she prompted, treating him less like the slave master than as just someone else to talk to.

He nodded. "Say you get a dugger type with some talent for the Flux who not only gets out here but can survive. He or she goes nuts, of course, but it's a crafty sort of nuts. Eventually these kind of people pick up other lost balls out here, maybe one day stumbling across a stringer train and catch-

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ing a few escapees, something like that, or getting people trying to flee a Fluxland. This person gets 'em and imposes his particular kind of madness on them. They become his followers, his worshippers, his slaves -- his playthings. If there's enough power available in the leader or in the collection they form a pocket in the Flux. A place where they can live and feed themselves. A real tiny little worldlet. They're around, usually near stringer trails, so they can sneak up and collect our garbage. This one is a lot more than that, though. There are few of 'em that can have the power to take on and lick a stringer train, and those few get known, we switch routes, and they wind up isolated. That's what's so weird about this one."

"Huh?"

"Arden was the best stringer I ever knew, bar none. It would take an army to do this much dam- age to one of her trains, and she had the biggest, meanest duggers you ever saw. That's them over there. Any cult big enough and smart enough to take her is big or smart enough to take a Fluxland. It just couldn't remain hidden this long, then show up here, on a trail with no previous trouble. Some- thing smells here. Smells bad. / want these bas- tards\"

That last was said with such sudden force and emotion that she stepped back from him. Inside him, not too far from that totally businesslike surface, was an explosion she would not like to see directed at her, even unthinkingly.

She went over to where the bodies were being laid out. It was almost complete now, but she had to force herself to look at them. It was a sight that no church vision of Hell could equal. Those dead warriors from this strange cult -- how animalistic were they inside? More than they were outside? If so, could they or their kind have ripped out those pieces of flesh with their jaws? It was horrible to

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contemplate, but there seemed no other conclusion. What kind of sickness could breed ones like those?

Jomo, ugly and primitive as he was, was the only dugger she didn't fear. He came over to her and frowned, the effect producing hundreds of rip- ples in his broad hairless forehead. "Saw you talkin' to Master Matson. Best you not if you know what good for you."

"Why? He didn't seem to mind."

Jomo looked over at the mass of corpses. "You see any you know in this bunch?"

She nodded- "Several."

Jomo pointed a stubby finger at one off by itself, the figure of a woman, head shaved -- or what was left of it. Most of the body was a bloody mess. "That one not like you. That one Missy Arden. Great woman."

"Oh, I see... ."

"No, you not see at all! Missy Arden carry Matson

child!"

Suddenly she understood, and felt foolish. Of course, it made sense, only she had not, frankly, thought of stringers as having sex, let alone chil- dren- They were like doctors, teachers, priestesses --  when you met them in a store in town or maybe saw them in a public bathroom it was, somehow, shocking and unusual, as if they didn't do the sort of things real people did.

If Jomo was right, and he had no reason to lie, then Matson right now was at his most dangerous, and that could be as fearsome as these cult members.

"Coduro!" Matson bellowed, and a dugger on horseback reigned up, turned, and came over to him.

"Yeah, boss?"

"I give you my string," he said flatly. "Can you see it?"

The dugger looked startled. "Yeah! I -- can\" It

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seemed to awe him, although the others had no idea what was going on.

"You take the string to Persellus. We'll have some time because this cult or whatever it has to stash its booty. Maybe enough time for us, maybe not, but if you start now you should be able to avoid them. They might have a sentry or two just up the string, though, so be careful."

The dugger grinned, a sight that was in itself pretty gruesome to behold, and lifted his rifle. "I think maybe I like that."

"Well, don't let 'em bog you down, either. I want you in Persellus even if you have to kill your horse to do it, and you give the first important official you can meet the whole story. Tell 'em we're coming in, but also tell 'em the size and description of these bastards. We need protection to get in, even if I speed it up, and we better get this pest hole and eliminate it before they get strong enough and bold enough to make a try on Persellus. You tell 'em it's somebody with real wizard power. Tell 'em anything you want, but get them here with a big force as soon as you can!"

"Got'cha, boss. Rolling!" the dugger responded, then reared back on his horse and took off into the void which rapidly swallowed him up.

Matson walked back over to the mass of now neatly laid out bodies, and counted- Eleven of the beast-women, twelve duggers, Arden, of course, and twenty-^iine refugees from Anchor Logh who would grow no older. He looked that last group over, then frowned and walked up and down be- tween the bodies, nodding and mumbling to him- self, then looked up and saw Cassie. "You!"

She was startled. "Yes, sir?"

"Notice anything funny about this group? Any- thing particular strike you?"

She frowned, coming over although she really didn't want to come near that terror again. Ab-

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sently she looked down at one of the bodies and suddenly could not suppress a sob- "Oh, Holy Angels! It's poor Canty!" she managed.

Matson grunted, then took out and lit a cigar. "Cut the hysterics. We don't have time for it. I lost somebody close to me here, too. She's dead, and so's he. If you don't want us to be you'll put them behind you until you get a chance to do something about it and concentrate on us. Now, how many boys were in that Paring Rite shit?"

She fought back the tears as best she could. "Fifty," she told him.

He nodded. "And we have twenty-two in our group, so there were twenty-six in Arden's. We've got twenty-nine bodies from the other group here, and only three are female."

She snapped out of it and gasped. "And some of them were executed after they lost!"

He nodded- "Whoever our bastard is, he only likes the girls. All those fighters were women, and he took all the women while killing all the men- That sounds like Rory Montagne, but that son of a bitch doesn't have enough power for all this."

Despite Jomo's warning, and despite her own situation, she could not break away. It was obvi- ous that, no matter what happened to her later, right now Matson needed a relatively sane human to talk to and she had more or less elected herself. "Who is this Rory Montagne?"

"A cult leader from way back, but thousands of kilometers from here. He's a woman-hater, and, therefore, a church-hater as well."

"Seems to me he likes women, maybe too much," she pointed out.

"Oh, no. His hatred of the church is so absolute that his mission in life is the capture, submission, and humiliation of women. Every woman repre- sents the church to him, and every time one be- comes his slave or plaything he's scored in his own

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warped mind. But -- he never had this kind of strength or power before. They've been hunting him as long as I can remember, but he's always been a nuisance rather than a real threat. I can see why his attack was particularly savage, though. When he saw a woman stringer he just couldn't help himself." He paused for a moment, then seemed suddenly galvanized into action. "Can you ride a mule bareback?"

"I can ride anything with four legs," she assured him. "So can half of us."

Matson turned and called in the duggers. "We're going to fast march," he told them. "All speed. Cut loose all but totally essential cargo, and get the rest into the wagons. Toss what you have to. Spare rations only." They nodded and set to work. He turned back to Cassie- "Pick your best riders. I want two on each mule. Jomo is already cutting them loose and rigging basic bridles. The rest will cram into the two wagons and I don't care about comfort. I don't care how it's done, but everybody rides, understand?"

She nodded, then hesitated- "Uh -- what about the bodies? Shouldn't we bury or cremate them or something?"

"No time. Doesn't matter, anyway. In a week the Flux will have absorbed them, and in a month the rest will be gone, too. Anything that doesn't move for any length of time goes back to energy. Don't stand and worry about those things. They're dead. Move it!"

She did. Four of the twenty mules still had to carry supplies, so that left sixteen available. She went back, not really explaining anything, and started making choices. She wanted the largest people on the mules, to make more room in the wagons, so most of the boys were paired up, and that took eleven of the mules. Reserving one for herself and, she decided, Nadya, she assigned the