Doomstalker (9 page)

There was a labor to occupy, but not to preoccupy. One by one, some with an almost furtive step, the Degnan went to the top of the palisade to gaze eastward, worrying.

Skiljan returned long after dark, traveling by Biter light, burdened with trophies and captured weapons. “No more than five escaped,” she announced with pride. “We chased them all the way to Toerne Creek, taking them one by one. We could have gotten them all, had we dared go farther. But the smoke of cookfires was heavy in the air.”

Again there was an assembly in Skiljan’s loghouse. Again the huntresses and old females, and now even a few males deemed sufficiently steady, debated what should be done. Marika was amazed to see Horvat speak before the assembly, though he said little but that the males of the loghouse were prepared to stand to arms with the rest of the pack. As though they had any choice.

Pobuda rose to observe, “There are weapons enough now with those that have been taken, so that even pups may be given a good knife. Let not what happened today occur again. Let none of the Degnan meet a spear with a hoe. Let this plunder be distributed, the best to those who will use it best, and be so held till this crisis has passed.”

Pobuda was Skiljan’s second. Marika knew she spoke words Skiljan had put into her mouth, for, though fierce, Pobuda never had a thought in her life. Skiljan was disarming a potential squabble over plunder before it began — or at least putting it off. Let the bickering and dickering be delayed till the nomad was safely gone from the upper Ponath.

None of the heads of loghouse demurred. Not even Logusz, who bore Skiljan no love at all, and crossed her often for the sheer pleasure of contrariness.

Skiljan said, “Pobuda speaks wisely. Let it be so. I saw that several shields were taken. And a dozen swords. Let those be given huntresses on the outer stockade.” A snarl of amusement stretched her lips. “They will make life difficult and death easy for the climbers of ladders.” She held up a sword, did a brief battle dance in which she pretended to strike down a nomad coming at her from below.

Marika stared at the sword and was amazed. She had not seen the long knife during the fighting. It flickered in the light from the firepit, scattering shards of red light. She shivered.

It was the first weapon she ever saw which had no purpose other than the killing of members of her own species. Every other had as its primary function use in the hunt.

“But these new weapons will not be enough,” Skiljan said. “Not nearly enough. There is much blood in this thing now. We have dared destroy those sent to destroy us. This wehrlen of the nomads, this ruler over many packs, if he is as mad as they say, will not let this lie. He cannot, for even a small defeat must reflect upon his power. He cannot have that firm a grip upon the huntresses who follow him. He cannot fail and survive. So we will see nomads again, tomorrow or the day after. He will come himself. And he will come in great strength, perhaps with his whole horde.”

A mutter of anger and of fear rippled through the assembly. Skiljan stood aside so the Wise might speak their minds.

“I wish we knew about this wehrlen,” Kublin whispered to Marika. “I wish we did not have to be enemies. It would be interesting to discover who he is, what he is trying to do really, why he is not content, like huntresses, just to take what he needs and go.”

Marika gave him a baffled look. What was this?

Rechtern was first of the Wise to speak. She said, “I have little to tell. But a question to ask. Where did Zhotak nomads acquire swords? Eh? Twelve swords were taken, all were borne by huntresses in their prime. They were swords of quality, too. Yet we here, between the north and the cities where such things are made, have never seen such blades. In fact, we know of swords only from hero stories told us by such as Saettle. The question again: Where did nomads acquire weapons of such quality, meant only for the slaying of meth?”

The entire performance was rhetorical, Marika realized. No one could answer knowledgeably, or even speculatively. The old female merely wished to raise an issue, to plant a seed against the return of summer.

There were no smiths among the meth of the upper Ponath. Nor were there any known to be among the nomads. All things of metal came from the cities of the south, and were sold by tradermales.

There would be hard questions asked when the tradermales appeared again.

After Rechtern almost all the Wise rose to speak in turn, including many who had nothing to say. That was the way of the old females. They talked long and long, harkening to ancient times to find something to compare with what had happened that day. Looking to precedent for action and response was second nature to the Wise.

The normal raid went nothing like what had happened. Seldom was a packstead destroyed, and then only in blood-feud, after a surprise attack. The last such in the upper Ponath had occurred in Zertan’s time. Meth just did not go in for wholesale slaughter.

The pack were awed by the scale of the killing, but not sickened. Death was. Killing was. Their confusion arose from enemy behavior, which was, it seemed, based on reasoning entirely outside their ken. Though hunger drove them, the nomads now lying dead outside the stockade had not come to the packstead simply to take food by force.

There were lessons. Saettle, even wounded, allowed no respite from the lessons. Marika asked for a reading about something similar to what had happened.

“Nothing resembles what happened here, pup. It is unprecedented in our books. Perhaps in the chronicles of the silth, who practice darkwar and whose written memories stretch back ten thousand years. But you are not here to talk over what has been talked over for so many hours. You are here to learn. Let us get on with our ciphers.”

“What is darkwar? What are the silth?” Marika asked. But her questions fell on deaf ears. The Wise could not be moved once their minds were set. She would be neither seen nor heard while she persisted. She abandoned the effort quickly.

Behind the students, arguments over tactics continued. Before them, and on the male side, weapons passed from paw to paw, being sharpened, being painted with poison once more. Both activities went on till well after Marika went to her furs and fell asleep despite all her curiosities and fears.

Once she wakened to what she felt might be a touch, panicky. But it did not come again. Restless, she reached toward the packfast, searching for the Degnan messengers. They were not in the place of stone.

She found them on the path homeward, hurrying by moonlight. Hope surged, but soon fell into the grasp of despair. Drawing closer to Grauel’s thoughts, she saw that only three from the packfast accompanied them. Aching, frightened, she reached for Kublin and snuggled. He murmured in his sleep, but did not waken.

II

The stir below caused a stir above. The gouge of elbows and toes and paws as pups clambered over her wakened Marika. Kublin was gone from her side.

It was the middle of the night still. Other slow pups were rubbing their eyes and asking what was happening. Marika crawled to the head of the ladder, where Kublin had gotten himself a good vantage point. Marika squeezed in beside him, oblivious to the growls of those she pushed aside. “What is it?” she asked.

“I don’t know. Somebody from Gerrien’s loghouse came. The huntresses are getting ready to go out.”

He was right. The huntresses were donning their heaviest furs. As if they expected to be out a long time. The males watched quietly from their end. Likewise the Wise, though Marika’s granddam was holding forth in a subdued voice, ignored by everyone. Pohsit, too, was speaking, but seemed to be sending prayers up to the All.

Pobuda began checking weapons.

Something stirred in shadows where nothing should be moving. Startled, Marika stared at the storage area along the west wall, right were male territory met Wise. She saw nothing.

But now she caught a similar hint of motion from shadows along the base of the east wall. And again when she looked there was nothing there.

There had to be, though. She sensed something on that same level where she sensed the distant messengers and the dread within Machen Cave. Yes. It was something like that. But not so big or terrible.

Now she could almost see it when she looked at it...

What was happening?

Frightened, Marika crawled back to her furs. She lay there thoughtfully for a while, recovering. Then she began considering how she might get out and follow the huntresses. But she abandoned that notion quickly. If they were leaving the packstead, as their dress and weaponry implied, it would be folly for a pup to tag along.

The grauken was out there.

Skiljan strode about impatiently, a captured sword in paw, a bow and quiver across her back.

Something had happened, and something more was about to happen.

Marika pulled her boots on.

Below, the huntresses began leaving the loghouse.

Marika pushed through the pups and descended the ladder. Kublin’s whisper pursued her. “Where are you going?”

“Outside.” She jumped as a paw clasped her shoulder. She whirled, found Pobuda’s broad face just inches from her own.

“What are you doing, pup?”

“I was going outside. To the tower. To watch. What is going on?”

Perhaps if she were not Skiljan’s pup, Pobuda would not have answered. But, after a moment’s reflection, the loghouse’s second huntress said, “A nomad encampment has been spotted in the woods. Near Machen Cave. They are going to raid it.”

Marika gaped.

“The tower, then. No farther, or I will chew your ears off and feed you to Skiljan when she gets back.”

Marika gulped, dispensed with the last thread of her notion about following the huntresses. Pobuda made no idle threats. She hadn’t the imagination.

Marika donned her otec coat under Pobuda’s baleful eye. Pobuda wanted to go hunting with the others. But if Skiljan went out, she had to remain. She was not pleased. Skiljan never delegated the active roles.

Marika pulled her hat down over her ears and ducked through the windskins before anyone could call her back.

Pohsit sped a look of hatred after her.

The packstead was cold and dark. Only a few of the lesser moons were up, shedding little light. The last of the expedition were slipping into the exit spiral. Other huntresses were on the stockade, shivering and bouncing to keep warm. Most of the huntresses were going out. It must be an important raid.

Marika started climbing the tower. A face loomed above, unrecognizable. She ignored it. Her thoughts turned to the sky. It was clear again tonight. Why had the weather been so good lately? One ice storm and a few flurries. That probably meant the next storm would be especially brutal, charged as it would be with all the energies pent during the good days.

The sentinel proved to be Solfrank. They eyed one another with teeth bared. Then Solfrank backed away from the head of the ladder, unable to face her down. She scrambled into the precarious wicker basket. Out on the snowfields, the huntresses were spreading out and moving northward, dark, silent blotches against trampled white.

“There,” Solfrank said, pointing. There was pride in his voice. He must be the cause of all the activity.

There was a glow in the forest in the direction of Machen Cave. A huge glow, as of a fire of epic proportion. A gout of sparks shot skyward, drifted down. Marika was astonished.

It must be some nomad ceremony. One did not build fires that could be seen for miles, and by potential foes, just to keep warm.

“How long has that been going on?”

“Only a little while. I spotted it right after I came on watch. It was just a little glow then. They must be burning half the forest now.”

Why, Marika wondered, was Skiljan risking exposing so many huntresses? Hundreds of nomads would be needed to build such a conflagration. Those wild meth could not be so foolish as to presume their fire would not be seen, could they?

She became very worried, certain her dam had made a tactical mistake. It must be a trap. A lure to draw the Degnan into an ambush. She wanted desperately to extend her touch. But she dared not while Solfrank was there to watch her. “How long do you have left?”

“Only a few minutes.”

“Do you want me to take over?”

“All right.” He went over the side of the basket before she could change her mind.

Solfrank, Marika reflected, was impressed by nothing but himself. That fire out there had no meaning except as a small personal triumph. It would get him some attention. He was possessed of no curiosity whatsoever.

Fine. Good.

The tower stopped shaking to his descent. She watched him scurry toward the warmth of Gerrien’s loghouse. The moment he entered, Marika faced north again and tried sensing her dam.

The touch was the strongest ever it had been. It seemed she was riding behind Skiljan’s eyes, seeing what she saw, though she could not capture her dam’s thoughts. Yet those became apparent enough when she directed the huntresses who accompanied her, for Marika could then see what they did, and even heard what they and her dam said part of the time.

Almost immediately the huntresses scattered to search out any nomad scouts who might be watching the packstead. They found none. They then filtered through the woods toward Machen Cave. They moved with extreme care, lest they alert sentinels.

Those did not materialize either. Marika sensed in her dam a growing contempt for the intelligence of the northerners.

Skiljan did not permit contempt to lessen her guard. She probed ahead carefully, lest she stumble into some trap.

But it was no trap. The nomads simply had not considered the possibility their bonfire might be seen from the Degnan packstead.

The fire lay on the south bank of the creek. It was huge. Marika was awed. Skiljan and her companions crouched in brush and watched as nomads piled more wood upon the blaze. The thunk of axes came from the opposite slope.

They were clearing the hill around the cave.

Hundreds of nomads hugged the fire’s warmth.

Skiljan and Gerrien whispered together. Marika eavesdropped.