Doomstalker (15 page)

The silth laid down their ladles and bowls, closed their eyes. In a moment the taller nodded and said, “There are a dozen of them. Quietly taking food.”

Marika listened no more. Barlog had snatched up a bow and was headed for the door, not bothering to don a coat. Marika scampered after her, tried to restrain her. She failed, and in an instant was out in the snow again, still trying to hold the huntress back.

Her judgment was better than Barlog’s. As the huntress pushed outside, an arrow ripped past her ear and buried itself in the loghouse wall.

Barlog drew her own arrow to her ear, let fly at a shadow as another arrow streaked out of the falling snow. The latter missed. Barlog’s brought a yip of pain.

The door shoved against Marika’s back. Grauel pushed outside, cursing Barlog for her folly. She readied her own bow, crouched, sought a target.

Marika flopped onto her belly. Barlog, too, crouched. Arrows whipped overhead, stuck in or bounced off the loghouse. They heard confused shouting in dialect as the nomads debated the advisability of flight. A shaft from Grauel’s bow found a shadow. That settled the matter for the nomads. They hefted their wounded and ran. They were not about to stay in a place so well known to death.

Where were the silth? Marika wondered. Why didn’t they do something?

Grauel and Barlog made fierce noises and chased after the nomads — making sure they did not catch up. Marika followed, feeling foolish as she yipped around the spiral.

The nomads vanished in the snowfall. Grauel and Barlog showed no inclination to pursue them through that, where an ambush could so easily be laid. Grauel held Marika back. “Enough, pup. They are gone.”

During all the excitement Marika never felt a hint of touch. The silth had done nothing.

She challenged them about it the moment she returned to the loghouse.

The taller seemed amused. “One must think beyond the moment if one is to be silth, little one. Go reflect on why it might be useful to allow some raiders to escape.”

Marika did as she was told, sullenly. After her nerves settled, she began to see that it might indeed be beneficial if word spread that the Degnan packstead was defended still. Beneficial to the remaining Laspe anyway.

She began to entertain second thoughts about emigrating to the silth packfast.

That afternoon the silth gave her another infusion of chaphe to drink. They made Grauel and Barlog drink of it and rest, too. And when night fell and Biter rose to scatter the world with her silvery rays, the two females said, “It is time to leave.”

Between them, Marika, Grauel, and Barlog found a hundred reasons for delaying. The two females in black might have been stone, for all they were moved. They brought forth travel packs which they had assembled while the three Degnan slept. “You will take these with you.”

Marika, too stupefied to argue much, went through hers. It contained food, extra clothing, and a few items that might come in handy during the trek. She found a few personal possessions also, gifts from Kublin, Skiljan, and her granddam that had meant much to her once and might again after time banished the pain. She eyed the silth suspiciously. How had they known?

Resigned, Grauel and Barlog began shrugging into the coats. Marika pulled on her otec boots, the best she owned. No sense leaving them for Laspe scavengers.

A thought hit her. “Grauel. Our books. We cannot leave our books.”

Grauel exchanged startled glances with Barlog. Barlog nodded. Both huntresses settled down with stubborn expressions upon their faces.

“Books are heavy, pup,” the taller silth said. “You will tire of carrying them soon. Then what? Cast them into the river? Better they stay where they will be appreciated and used.”

“They are the treasure of the Degnan,” Marika insisted, answering the silth but speaking to the huntresses. “We have to take the Chronicle. If we lose the Chronicle, then we really are dead.”

Grauel and Barlog agreed with a fervor that startled the silth.

Few wilderness packs had the sense of place in time and history that had marked the Degnan. Few had the Degnan respect for heritage. Many had no more notion of their past than the stories of their oldest Wise, who erroneously told revised versions of tales passed down by their own granddams.

Grauel and Barlog were embarrassed. It shamed them that they had not thought of the Chronicle themselves. So long as it existed and was kept, the Degnan would exist somewhere. They became immovably stubborn. The silth could not intimidate them into motion.

“Very well,” the taller said, ignoring the angry mutter of her companion. “Gather your books. But hurry. We are wasting moonlight. The sky may not stay clear long. The north spawns storms in litters.”

The two huntresses took torches and left Skiljan’s loghouse, made rounds of all the other five. They collected every book of the pack that had not been destroyed. Marika brought out the six from the place where Saettle had kept those of Skiljan’s loghouse. When all were gathered, there were ten.

“They are right,” she admitted reluctantly. “They are heavy.”

They were big, hand-inscribed tomes with massive wood and leather boards and bindings. Some weighed as much as fifteen pounds.

Marika set the three volumes of the Chronicle aside, looked to the huntresses for confirmation. Grauel said, “I could carry two.”

Barlog nodded. “I will carry two also.”

That made four. Marika said, “I think I could carry two, if they were light ones.” She pushed the massive Chronicle volumes toward the huntresses. Grauel took two, Barlog the other. No more than two would be lost if one of them did not reach the packfast.

Three books had to be selected from the remaining seven. Marika asked the huntresses, “Which do you think will be the most useful?”

Grauel thought for a moment. “I do not know. I am not bookish.”

“Nor am I,” Barlog said. “I hunt. We will have little real use for them. We just want to save what we can.”

Marika exposed her teeth in an expression of exasperation.

“You choose,” Grauel said. “You are the studious one.”

Marika’s exasperation became more marked. A decision of her own, a major one, as though she were an adult already. She was not prepared mentally.

On first impulse she was tempted to select those that had belonged to her own loghouse. But Barlog reminded her that Gerrien’s loghouse had possessed a book on agriculture that, once its precepts had been accepted, had improved the pack’s yields, reducing the labor of survival.

One of the silth said, “You will have no need of a book about farming. You will not be working in the fields. Leave it for those who will have more need.”

So. A choice made.

Marika dithered after rejecting only one more book, a collection of old stories read for the pleasure of small pups. There would be no need of that where they were going.

The older silth came around the fire, arrayed the books before Marika after the manner of terrac fortune plaques, which the sagans so often consulted. “Close your eyes, Marika. Empty your mind. Let the All come in and touch you. Then you reach out and touch books. Those shall be the ones you take.”

Grauel grumbled, “That is sheer chance.”

Barlog added, “Witch’s ways,” and looked very upset. Just the way the Wise did whenever talk turned to the silth.

They were afraid. Finally, Marika began to realize what lay at the root of all their attitudes toward the silth. Sheer terror.

She did exactly as she was told. Moments later her paw seemed to move of its own accord. She felt leather under her fingers, could not recall which book lay where.

“No,” said the older silth. “Keep your eyes closed.”

Grauel grumbled something to Barlog.

“You two,” the old silth said. “Pack the books as she chooses them. Place the others in the place where books are stored.”

Marika’s paw jerked to another book. For a moment it seemed something had hold of her wrist. And on the level of the touch, she sensed something with that darkshadow presence she associated with the things she called ghosts.

Again, and done.

The old silth spoke. “Open your eyes, pup. Get your coat. It is time to travel.”

Unquestioning, Marika did as she was told. Coat on, she raised her pack and snugged it upon her shoulders the way Pobuda had shown her, finally, coming back from the hunt in Plenthzo Valley. She felt uncomfortable under the unaccustomed weight. Recalling the march to and from the hunt, and the deep, wet snow, she knew she would become far more uncomfortable before she reached the silth packfast.

Maybe she would end up discarding the books.

Maybe the silth had been trying to do her a favor, trying to talk her out of taking the books.

There were no farewells from or for the Laspe, who watched preparations for departure with increasing relief. As they stepped to the windskins, though, Marika heard the Laspe Wise begin a prayer to the All. It wished them a safe journey.

It was something.

As she trudged around the spiral of the stockade, the new snow dragging at her boots, Marika asked the silth ahead, “Why are we leaving now? Could we not travel just as safely in the daytime?”

“We are silth, pup. We travel at night.”

The other, from behind Marika, said, “The night is our own. We are the daughters of the night and come and go as we will.”

Marika shivered in a cold that had nothing to do with the wind off the Zhotak.

And around her, in the light of many moons, all the world glimmered black and bone.

BOOK TWO: AKARD

Chapter Seven

I

There was nothing to compare with it in Marika’s brief experience of life. Never had she been so totally, utterly miserable, so cold, so punished. And the first night of travel was only hours old.

She knew how Kublin must feel — must have felt, she reminded herself with a wince of emotion — when trying to keep up with Zambi and his friends.

The new, wet snow was a quicksand that dragged at her boots every step, though they had placed her next to last in the file, with only Barlog behind her to guard their backs. Her pack was an immense dead weight that, she was sure, would crush her right down into the earth’s white shroud and leave her unable, ever, to rise to the surface again. The wind off the Zhotak had risen, flinging tatters of gray cloud across the faces of the moons, gnawing at her right cheek till she was sure she would lose half her face to frostbite. The temperature dropped steadily.

That was a positive sign only in that if it fell enough they could be reasonably sure they would not face another blizzard soon.

All that backbreaking labor, trying to clear the packstead of bodies, came back to haunt her. She ached everywhere. Her muscles never quite loosened up.

Grauel was breaking trail. She tried to keep the pace down. But the silth pressed, and it was hard for the huntress to slack off when the older of the two could keep a more rigorous pace.

Once, during the first brief rest halt, Grauel and the taller silth fell into whispered argument. Grauel wanted to go more slowly. She said, “We are in enemy territory, sister. It would be wiser to move cautiously, staying alert. We do not want to stumble into nomads in our haste.”

“It is the night. The night is ours, huntress. And we can watch where you cannot.”

Grauel admitted that possibility. But she said, “They have their witchcrafts, too. As they have demonstrated. It would not be smart to put all our trust into a single —”

“Enough. We will not argue. We are not accustomed to argument. That is a lesson you will learn hard if you do not learn it in the course of this journey.”

Marika stared at the snow between her feet and tried to imagine how far they had yet to travel. As she recalled her geography, the packfast lay sixty miles west of the packstead. They had come, at most, five miles so far. At this pace they would be three or four nights making the journey. In summer it could be done in two days.

Grauel did not argue further. Even so, her posture made it obvious she was in internal revolt, that she was awed by and frightened of the silth, yet held them in a certain contempt. Her body language was not overlooked by the silth either. Sometime after the journey resumed Marika caught snatches of an exchange between the two. They were not pleased with Grauel.

The elder said, “But what can you expect of a savage? She was not raised with a proper respect.”

A hint of a snarl stretched Marika’s lips. A proper respect? Where was the proper respect of the silth for a huntress of Grauel’s ability? Where was a proper respect for Grauel’s experience and knowledge? Grauel had not been arguing for the sake of argument, like some bored Wise meth with time to kill.

It did not look that promising a future, this going into exile at the packfast. No one would be pleased with anyone else’s ways.

She was not some male to bend the neck, Marika thought. If the silth thought so, they would find they had more trouble than they bargained for.

But defiance was soon forgotten in the pain and weariness of the trek. One boot in front of the other and, worse, the mind always free to remember. Always open to invasion from the past.

The real pain, the heart pain, began then.

More than once Barlog nearly trampled her, coming forward in her own foggy plod to find Marika stopped, lost within herself.

The exasperation of the silth grew by the hour.

They were weary of the wilderness. They were anxious to return home. They had very little patience left for indulging Degnan survivors.

That being the case, Marika wondered why they did not just go on at their own pace. They had no obligation to the Degnan, it would seem, in their own minds from the way they talked. As though the infeudation to which Skiljan and Gerrien had appealed for protection was at best a story with which the silth of the packfast justified their robberies to packs supposedly beholden to them. As though the rights and obligations were all one-sided, no matter what was promised.

Marika began to develop her own keen contempt for the silth. In her agony and aching, it nurtured well. Before the silth ordered a day camp set in a windbreak in the lee of a monstrous fallen tree, Marika’s feeling had grown so strong the silth could read it. And they were baffled, for they had found her more open and unprejudiced than the older Degnan. They squattted together and spoke about it while Grauel and Barlog dug a better shelter into the snow drifted beneath the tree.