Doomstalker (12 page)

That scores of them were dying under the hail of poisoned arrows seemed not to bother them at all.

There were so many...

Scores reached the interior unscathed. They hurled themselves upon the pups and males. Scores more died. Every weapon, no matter how crude, had been treated with the poison.

The old females atop the loghouses sped arrows as fast as they could bend their bows — and could do nothing to stem the endless flood. For a moment Marika recalled the kropek sweeping over the barricades in Plenthzo Valley. This was the same thing. Madness unstoppable.

Here, there, nomads tried to claw their way up the slick ice on the loghouses, to get at the old archers. At first they had no luck.

Marika whimpered. The stockade was almost bare of defenders. It would be but a matter of minutes... Terror filled her. The grauken. The cannibal. The wehrlen had promised to devour the pups. And she could do nothing from her vantage. Nothing but wait.

She saw Gerrien go down under a pile of savages, snarling till the last, her teeth sunk in an enemy throat. She watched her dam fall a moment later in identical fashion, and wailed in her grief. She wanted to jump down, to flee into the forest, but she could not. Nomads surrounded the base of the watchtower.

No one was going to escape.

She watched Zamberlin writhe out his life, screaming, on a nomad spear. She saw Solfrank die after wielding an axe as viciously as any huntress. Three nomads preceded him into the embrace of the All. She watched the old females atop the loghouses begin falling to thrown axes and spears. These nomads carried no bows, little difference though that made now.

She saw Kublin race out from under a platform, side open in a bloody wound. He was trying to reach his dam’s loghouse. Two slavering nomads pursued him.

Black emotion boiled inside Marika, hot and furious. Something took control. She saw Kublin’s pursuers through a dark fog, moving in slowed motion. For a time it was as though she could see through them, see them without their skins. And she could see drifting ghosts, like the ghosts of all her foredams, hovering over the action. She willed a lethal curse upon the hearts of Kublin’s pursuers.

They pitched forward, shrieking, losing their weapons, clawing their breasts.

Marika gaped. What? Had she done that? Could she kill with the touch?

She tried again. Nothing happened this time. Nothing at all. Whimpering, she strained to bring up that hot blackness again, to save what remained of her pack. It would not come.

The nomads began assaulting the loghouse doors. They broke through Gerrien’s. In moments the shrieks of the very old and very young filled the square. A nomad came out carrying a yearling pup, dashed its brains out against the doorpost. Others followed him, also carrying terrified pups. Broken little bodies went into a heap. More nomads poured inside. Some brought out loot. Some brought torches. They began trying to fire the other loghouses — not an easy task.

The fighting soon dwindled to a single knot of huntresses clumped near Skiljan’s door. Only two old females remained atop the roofs, still valiantly sending arrows. Nomads began to lose interest in battle. Some bore plunder out of loghouses already breached, or began squabbling over food. Others started butchering the pups taken from Gerrien’s loghouse. Some prepared a huge bonfire of captured firewood. The victory celebration began before the Degnan were all slain.

And Marika saw it all from her watchtower trap.

A nomad came up the ladder. She drove her knife into his eye. He stiffened as the poison surged through him, plunged back down. His fellows below cursed her, threw stones and spears, harmed her not at all. The wicker of the stand turned their missiles.

She looked at the wehrlen, standing alone, leaning upon his spear, smug in victory. And the blackness came up without her willing it. It came so fast she almost missed her chance to shape it. She saw him naked of flesh, saw ghosts, and, startled, willed his heart to burst. Through the darkness she saw him leap in agony — then her thrust recoiled. It turned and struck back. She tried to dodge physically, crouched, whimpered.

Whatever happened, it did her no harm. It only terrified her more. When she rose and peeped over the wicker, she saw the wehrlen still rooted, clinging to his spear for support. She had not destroyed him, but she had hurt him. Badly. Only a powerful will kept him erect.

Gamely, Marika began seeking that blackness again.

The last defenders of Skiljan’s doorway went down. Someone seized Kublin and hurled him away to fall among the countless bodies bloodying the square. He moved a little, tried to drag himself away. Marika screamed silently, willing him to lie still, to pretend he was dead. Maybe the cannibals would overlook him. He stopped moving.

The nomads began using axes on doors that would not yield to brute force. The door to Skiljan’s loghouse boomed like a great drum. As each stroke fell, Marika jumped. She wondered how soon some nomad would realize that an axe was the tool to bring her down.

The door to Skiljan’s loghouse went. Marika heard both Pohsit and Zertan shriek powerful curses. Her granddam sprang out with vigor drawn from the All knew where, slashing with claws painted with poison. She killed three before she went down herself.

Marika did not see what became of Pohsit. The tower began to creak ominously.

She sent up a prayer to the All and clutched her bloody knife. One more to go with her into the dark. Just one more.

II

Marika surveyed her homeland. This was what she would leave behind. To the north, forests and hills which rose in time to become the low mountains of the Zhotak. Beyond, taiga, tundra, and permanent ice. That was the direction from which winter and the grauken came.

Below, they were roasting pups already. The smell of seared meth flesh made Marika lose her breakfast. The nomads circling her tower cursed her.

Eastward lay rolling hills white with snow, looking like the bare bones of the earth. Beyond the Plenthzo Valley the hills rose higher and formed the finest otec territory.

Southward, the land descended slowly to the east branch of the Hainlin, then in the extreme distance rose again to wooded hills almost invisible because the line between white earth and pale gray cloud could not be distinguished. Marika never had traveled beyond the river. She knew the south only through stories.

The west was very like the east, except the rolling hills were mostly bare of trees and there were no higher hills looming in the far distance. In fact, the hills descended. The land continued a slow drop all the way to the meeting of rivers where the stone packfast stood so many days away.

Thought of the packfast made her recall the messengers, Grauel and Barlog. The messengers bringing help that would arrive too late.

She felt a hint of a touch.

For a moment she thought it just the tower vibrating to the pounding blows of the axes below.

Another hint.

This was the thing itself.

She spun, looked at the wehrlen. He had recovered somewhat. Now he was moving toward the packstead, using his spear like a crutch. He seemed totally oblivious to all the bodies and the racks of heads which his followers had overturned. Four fifths of this meth had been slaughtered. Did he not care?

She noted his enfeeblement and gloried in what she had done. In what the Degnan had accomplished. There would be no more nomad terror in the upper Ponath.

A touch, though. If not from him, then who?

She recalled the messengers once more, and the response she had elicited from the old meth in the packfast. How close were Grauel and Barlog and their paltry aid? Maybe she had enough of this bizarre talent to at least speed them warning about the nomad.

She opened out, and reached out, and was astonished.

They were close. Very close. That way... She looked more closely at the land. For a moment she saw only the scrubby conical trees which dotted the snowscape. Then she realized that a few of those trees were different. They stood where no trees had stood before. And they were moving toward the packstead in short bursts.

Not trees at all. Three meth in black. Meth very like the one dam had slain near Machen Cave. Their clothing was like hers, like nothing Marika had ever seen, loose, voluminous, whipping in the wind. They came toward the packstead like the advance of winter, inexorable, a tall one in the middle, one of normal height to either side.

Behind them hundreds of yards, Marika now distinguished Grauel and Barlog crouched near a true tree. The two huntresses from Gerrien’s loghouse had realized the magnitude of the disaster before them. They were too shaken to come ahead.

The axe kept slamming against the leg of the tower. They were taking long enough, Marika thought. Were they intentionally trying to torment her? Or was it just that the axe was in abominable condition?

The three black figures were two hundred yards away now, no longer making any effort to conceal their approach. A nomad spotted them, shouted, and pointed. Dozens more nomads clambered onto the platforms behind the stockade. The male chopping at the watchtower stopped for a moment.

The three dark figures halted. The one in the middle raised both paws and pointed forefingers at the palisade.

Marika saw nothing. It was nothing physical. But her mind reeled away from an impact as strong as the wehrlen’s counterattack. And nomads began screaming and falling off the stockade, clawing at their chests just the way Kublin’s attackers had.

The screaming ended. A deep silence filled the packstead. Nomads looked at nomads suddenly dead. The male below the tower dropped his axe. Mouths opened but nothing came forth.

Then an excited babble did break out. More nomads mounted the stockade.

This time all three dark meth raised their arms, and every nomad on the palisade fell, shrieking and clawing their chests.

Nomads boiled through the spiral, clambered over the stockade, all rushing the three, murder in their hearts and eyes. A handful besieged the wehrlen, who seemed to have halted to regain his breath. Marika could not guess what confused tale he heard, but did see him shudder and, as if by pure will, pull himself together.

Those nomads who chose to attack the meth in black died by the score. Not one got closer than a dozen feet.

The meth in black began circling round the stockade, toward the mouth of the spiral.

The wehrlen watched them come into view. He did something. One of the three mouthed a faint cry and dropped. The others halted. The taller did something with her fingers. The wehrlen stiffened. Marika felt his surprise. Rigid as old death, he fell slowly forward.

Nomad witnesses howled in despair. They ran. It did them no good. The fastest and last to fall covered no more than twenty yards.

The two in black knelt over the third. Marika saw the tall one’s head shake. They rose and walked the spiral into the packfast. A few dozen nomads remained inside. They scaled the stockade, trying to flee.

It was all very baffling to Marika.

The two entered the packstead’s interior. A last few nomads died before they could hurl spears. Of the scores and scores of fallen, not one showed any sort of wound.

The dark two strode to the heart of the square, stepping over but otherwise ignoring the dead. There they halted, turned slowly, surveyed the carnage. They seemed aware of Marika but indifferent to her presence in the tower. The taller said something. The shorter went to the door of Logusz’s loghouse. A moment later, inside, nomads began screaming. She moved across to Foehse’s loghouse. Screams again. She then seemed satisfied.

Marika finally shook her knotted muscles into motion. Terror had left her so shaky she nearly fell twice getting down. She grabbed the axe from the male who had been chopping the tower leg, rushed toward the place where she had seen Kublin last.

Kublin was the only one of her blood who might still be living.

She had to dig him out from under a heap of nomads. He was breathing still, and bleeding still. She held him close and wept, believing, though she had neither healer’s knowledge nor skill, that nothing could be done.

Somehow it all became concentrated in Kublin. All the grief and loss. The blackness welled within her. She saw ghosts all around her thickly, as though the spirits of the dead were reluctant to leave the place of battle. She looked inside Kublin, through Kublin, as though he were transparent. She saw the depth of his bruises and wounds. Angrily, she willed him health instead of death.

Kublin’s eyes opened momentarily. “Marika?”

“Yes, Kublin. I’m here, Kublin. Kublin, you were so brave today.”

“You were in the tower, Marika. How did you get down?”

“Help came, Kub. We won. They’re all dead. All the nomads. The messengers came back in time.” A lie. In time for what? Of all the Degnan other than the messengers themselves, only she and Kublin remained alive. And he was about to die.

Well, at least he could go into the arms of the All thinking something had been accomplished.

“Brave,” Kublin echoed. “When it was time. When it counted. It was easier than I thought, Marika. Because I didn’t have to worry.”

“Yes, Kublin. You were a hero. You were as great as any of the huntresses today.”

He rewarded her with that big winning look he got that made her love him above all her other siblings, then he relaxed. When she finally decided that he had stopped living, she wept.

Seldom, seldom did a meth female shed tears, unless in ritual. The two who wore black turned to stare at her, but neither made any move to approach her. They exchanged the occasional word or two while they watched.

The messengers came into the packstead. At last. Numb from shock, they surveyed the carnage. Grauel let out one prolonged, pained howl of torment. Barlog came to Marika, gently scratched the top of her head, as one did with infants in pain or distress. Marika wondered what had become of her hat. Why hadn’t she felt the cold nipping at her ears?

Having collected herself, Grauel joined the two meth who wore black.