Doomstalker

  “You think, perhaps, that we are some of your tame packstead chattels?” Khronen asked. “Ah. The costume distracted me. I know you now. Yes. Very much the image of your dam. Even in your arrogance.” He looked over her shoulder. Marika sensed that Arhdwehr had come up behind her. But she did not look back.

  A hard-eyed male near Khronen said, “And at such a young age, too. Pity.” His gaze never left her face.

  All those eyes continued to bore into her.

  It was a moment of crisis, she knew. A moment when the wrong word could cause a lot of trouble. Khronen was right. These were not the sort of males to which she was accustomed. She sensed that they would as soon battle her as be polite. That there was no awe of her in them, either because she was female or because she was silth.

  What sort of male did not fear silth?

  Barlog returned. “This is the only blade I found.” Other than those close to male paws, of course.

  Marika took it. “Grauel, give me one of those we captured.” One was in her paw in a moment. She examined both blades, shrugged, presented both to Arhdwehr. Arhdwehr scarcely glanced at them.

  “Not the same maker. Pup, suppose you take this opportunity to restrain your natural exuberance and allow one with a more diplomatic nature to handle communication?” She stepped past Marika, passed both weapons to Khronen, who was the oldest of the males. Some were little older than Marika. In fact, many had the look of upper Ponath refugees.

  Grauel whispered, “That was well-done.”

  “What?” Marika asked.

  “She saved you from trouble, salvaged your pride, and put you in your place with a single sentence. Well-done, indeed.”

  Marika had not seen that in it. But when she glanced around she saw that the other huntresses had read it that way. Instead of being irked, though, she was relieved to be out of the confrontation with Khronen.

  She stepped up behind Arhdwehr, who had settled to the earth facing Khronen. The tradermale had seated himself, too. He barely glanced at the blades before passing them to the tradermale on his right. That one had not shifted his eyes to Arhdwehr. His gaze, frankly curious, bored into Marika as though trying to unmask her secret heart. There was an air of strength about him that made Marika suspect he was as important here as was Khronen.

  He passed the blades back to Arhdwehr.

  Khronen continued, “I know, sister. That is why we are here. Seeking the source. And doing much what you are.”

  “Which is?”

  “Exterminating vermin.”

  “The last I heard, the upper Ponath was classified a Tech Two Zone.”

  “Your communications are more reliable than mine, sister. I have no far-toucher. I presume it still is. Is the pup your commer? I would not have guessed it of one of the Degnan.”

  Marika’s ears twitched. Something about the way he said that... He was lying.

  “Dark-walker,” Arhdwehr replied. She slipped a paw into a belt pouch, removed something shiny, passed it over. “Those who shatter the law should take care to clean up their back trail.”

  Khronen fingered the object, grunted, passed it to his right. Both males stared at Marika. Khronen’s face became blank. “Dark-sider, eh? So young, and with her dam’s temperament. A dangerous combination.”

  “Impetuous and undisciplined, yes. But let us discuss matters more appropriate to the moment. You will be in communication with Critza after we depart. Remind your seniors that Critza’s walls mark the limit of brethren extraterritoriality in the upper Ponath. Only within those limits is overteching permissible. Most Senior Gradwohl is immutably determined on such points.”

  “We will relay your admonition, if we should discover a male far-toucher hidden in the crowd here. Though I doubt anyone there needs the reminder. How was the hunting, sister?” He did not look at Arhdwehr at all, but continued to stare at Marika. So did the male on his right.

  She wondered what was on their minds.

  “You would know better than I, I suspect,” Arhdwehr replied. “You have eyes that see even where silth cannot.”

  “Here? In a Tech Two Zone? I fear not, sister. We have had a bit of luck, I admit. We have helped a few hundred savages rejoin the All. But I fear it is like bailing a river with a leaky teacup. They will breed faster than we can manufacture javelins.”

  Marika had noticed few pups anywhere. The numbers of old and young both were disproportionately small among the nomads she had encountered.

  Some sort of fencing was going on between Arhdwehr and the tradermale. But whatever it was about, it was not dangerous. The other males went back to what they had been doing, occasionally glancing her way as though she were some strange beast that talked and behaved with inexcusable manners. She began to feel very young and very ignorant and very self-conscious.

  She backed several steps away. “Grauel, there is more going on in this world than we know.”

  “You are catching on only now?”

  “I mean —”

  “I know what you mean, pup. And I had thought your innocence was feigned. Perhaps you do not hear as much in silth quarters as we do in ours.”

  “Silth do not gossip, Grauel.”

  Barlog said, “Perhaps she does not hear because she does not listen. She sees no one but that communicator creature.” Barlog continued to watch Khronen with as much intensity as he watched Marika. “They say you may be in line for a great future, pup. I say you will never see it until you begin to see. And to hear. To look and to listen. Each dust mote has a message and lesson, if you will but heed it.”

  “Indeed?” Barlog sounded like one of her teachers. “Perhaps you are right. Do you know Khroten, Barlog? Is there something between you two?”

  “No.”

  “He was Laspe. Dam knew him when he was a pup.”

  Barlog had no comment.

  Arhdwehr rose, walked back to where she had left her javelin stuck into the earth. She yanked it free, trotted up the trail along which the hunting party had approached the male camp. The others followed in a ragged file. Baffled, Marika joined them. Grauel trotted ahead of her, Barlog behind. She glanced back before she left the clearing. Khronen was watching her still. As was his companion. They were talking.

  Marika wondered if the party ought not to double back after a while —

  Arhdwehr kept a steady pace all the way to the place where they had left their packs. Marika fell into the rhythm of the run and spent the time trying to unravel the significance of what had happened during that long and bloody day.

  Two nights later the hunting party crossed the east fork of the Hainlin, headed north. The remainder of the season was uneventful. Marika spent most of her time trying to learn the lesson Barlog claimed she needed to learn. And she practiced pretending to be what she was supposed to be. She succeeded well enough. She managed to get back on Arhdwehr’s good side. As much as ever anyone could be.

  Early snows chased them back to Akard ten days earlier than planned. Marika suspected the upper Ponath was in for a winter more fierce than the past three.

  She also felt she had wasted a summer. All that blood and anger had done nothing to weaken the nomads. The great hunt had been but a gesture made to mollify those shrill and mysterious silth who ruled the Reugge from afar. Only one result was certain. Many familiar faces had vanished from among Akard’s population.

  Marika visited Braydic even before she made her initial courtesy call upon Gorry. She told Braydic all about her summer, hoping the communicator’s reactions would illuminate some of what she had seen. But she learned very little.

  Braydic understood what she was doing. She was amused. “In time, Marika. In time. When you go to Maksche.”

  “Maksche?”

  “Next summer. A certainty, I think, from hints my truesister has dropped. If we get through this winter.”

  If.

  Chapter Twelve

  I

  Marika was four years too young to be considered a true silth sister, yet she had
exhausted the knowledge of those who taught her. In less than four years she had devoured knowledge others sometimes did not master in a lifetime. The sisters were more frightened of her than ever. They very much wanted to pass her on to the Maksche cloister immediately, but they could not.

  It was yet the heart of the fourth winter. Nothing would move for months. The snows lay fifteen to twenty feet deep. In the north, in places, the wind sweeping across the fields had drifted it to the top of the packfast wall. The workers had dug tunnels underneath in order to connect the fortress with the powerhouse. It was essential that the plume water be kept running. If the powerhouse froze up, there would be no communication with the rest of the Reugge sisterhood.

  The times were strange in more than the personal way Marika knew. By staying near Braydic whenever she was free, she had begun to catch snatches of messages drifting in from Maksche. Messages that disturbed the older silth more then ever.

  For a long time the Reugge Community had been involved in a sort of low-grade, ongoing conflict with the more powerful Serke sisterhood. Lately there had been some strong provocations from the stronger order. There were some who suspected a connection with strange events in the upper Ponath, though no hard accusations were made even in secret. The Akard sisters were afraid there was truth in that, and that the provocation here would escalate.

  As near as Marika could tell, it seemed to be packwar on a grand scale. She had never seen packwar, but she had heard. In the upper Ponath that meant a few isolated skirmishes, harassment of another pack’s huntresses, a rather quick peak into a confrontation which settled everything. Often the fighting was ritualized and consisted entirely of counting coup, with the big battle ending the moment of the first death.

  Unless there was blood in it. Bloodfeud was different. Bloodfeud might be fought till one side fled or boasted no more survivors. But bloodfeud was exceedingly rare. Only a few of the Wise of the Degnan had been able to recall the last time bloodfeud plagued the upper Ponath.

  The louder the north wind howled and the more bitter its bite, the more Marika met it in her place upon the wall, and whispered back of the coldness and darkness that had found their homes within her mind. There were moments when she suspected she was at least half what Gorry accused, so savage were some of her hatreds.

  So it was that she was in her place when the messengers came from Critza, with nomad huntresses upon their tails. She saw the males floundering, recognized their outer wear, saw they were on the edge of collapse from exhaustion. She sensed the triumph in the savages closing in behind them, climbing the slope from the river. She went down inside herself, through her loophole, and reached out over a greater distance than ever before. She ripped the hearts out of the chests of the savages, setting the Hainlin canyons echoing with their screams. Then she touched the messengers and guided them to a point where they could clamber up the snowdrifts to the top of the wall.

  She went to meet them, gliding along the icy rampart, not entirely certain how she knew what they were or why their visit would be important, but knowing it all the same. She would bring them inside.

  Males inside the packfast proper was unprecedented. The older silth would be enraged by the desecration. Yet Marika was absolutely certain she would be doing right by bringing them across the wall.

  Their breaths fogged about them and whipped away on the wind. They panted violently, lung-searingly. Marika sensed that they had been forced to travel long and hard, with death ever snapping at their tails. One collapsed into the powder snow before she reached them.

  “Welcome to Akard, tradermales. I trust you bear a message of the utmost importance.”

  They looked at her with awe and fear, as most outsiders did, but the more so because she was young, and because she still radiated the darkness of death. “Yes,” said the tallest of the three. “News from Critza... It is you. The one called Marika...”

  She recognized him then. The male who had sat beside Khronen during last summer’s confrontation with males. That unshakable self-certainty and confidence were with him no more. That anger, that defiance, had fled him. He shivered not only from the wind.

  “It is I,” Marika replied, her voice as chill as the wind. “I hope I have not wasted myself guarding you from the savages.”

  “No. We believe the sisterhood will be very interested in the tidings we bring.” He was resilient. Already he had begun to recover himself.

  “Come with me. Stay close. Do not stray. You know that an exception is being made. I alone can shield you once we go inside.” She led them down, inside, into the great chamber where so often she had faced Gorry’s worst, and where all the convocations of the cloister took place. “You will wait here, within the confines of this symbol.” She indicated the floor. “If you stray, you will die.” She went in search of Gorry.

  Logic told her Gorry was not the one to inform. Gorry ran a bit short on basic sense. But tradition and custom, with virtually the force of law, demanded that she deal with her instructress first. It was up to Gorry to decide whether or not the situation required the attention of Senior Koenic.

  Perhaps fate took a hand. For Gorry was not alone when Marika found her. Three sisters were with her, including Khles Gibany, who was her superior. “Mistress,” Marika said, after impatiently working her way through all the appropriate ceremonials, “I have just come from the wall, where I watched a band of savages pursue three tradermales across the river. Deeming it unlikely that tradermales would be abroad in this weather and near Akard unless they had some critical communication to impart, I helped them to escape their pursuers and allowed them to scale the snowdrifts to the top of the wall. Upon inquiry, I learned that they did indeed bear a message from their senior addressed to the Akard cloister.”

  “And what was this message, pup?” Gorry asked. Her tone was only as civil as she deemed needful before witnesses. These days Gorry was civil only when appearances required. The passing of time made her ever more like Pohsit.

  “I did not enquire, mistress. The nature of the situation suggested that it was not for me to do so. It suggested that I should turn to sisters wiser than I. So I led them down to the main hall, where they might shed the chill in their bones. I told them to wait there. They did suggest that their senior wished them to relate their message before the assembled cloister. It would seem the news they bring is bad.”

  Gorry became righteous in the extreme. Outsiders allowed into the packfast! Male outsiders. Her sisters, following the lead of Khles Gibany, proved to be more flexible. They shushed Gorry and began questioning Marika closely.

  “I can tell you no more, sisters,” she said, “unless you wish to review my feelings while I stood upon the wall, and the consequent reasoning which lent credence to them.”

  Gibany rose and manipulated herself onto her crutches. “I will be back soon. I agree with your feelings, Marika. There is something afoot. I will speak with the senior.” She departed.

  While Gorry glared daggers at Marika for further unsettling her life, the other two silth continued questioning her. They were only killing time, though. Already it was in the paws of Senior Koenic.

  They saw the implications Marika had seen. The implications Gorry wished to ignore.

  Once upon a time, years earlier, Khles Gibany had told Marika, in response to a question about Gorry: “There are those among us, pup, who prefer to live in myth instead of fact.” Marika saw that clearly now.

  Tradermales liked silth even less than the run of meth. The silth stand on male role assumption was harder than any packstead female’s. The message brought by these males would have to be earthshaking, else they would not have come. And these days earthshaking news meant news about the nomads.

  The myth-liver was the first to articulate what everyone was thinking. “The damned Critza fester has been overrun. They are trying to get us to take them in. No, say I. No. No. No. Let them stay out there in the wilderness. Let them fill the cookpots of savages. It is their ilk who have a
rmed the grauken.”

  Grauken. Marika was startled to hear the word roll off a silth tongue.

  “I do not believe they bear tidings of the fall of Critza, mistress. They did not look dispossessed. They just look exhausted and distressed.” She did not put much force into her statement. She was being extremely careful with Gorry these days. And striving to build goodwill among the other sisters.

  Gibany returned. “We are to report to the hall. We will hear what the males have to say. Nothing will be decided till they have spoken.”

  II

  The leader of the tradermales, who made Marika so uneasy, called himself Bagnel. He was known to some of the sisters. He had spoken for his packfast before, though Marika did not recall having ever seen him anywhere but in that far clearing.

  Another lesson: pay attention to everything happening. There was no telling what might become important in later days.

  Bagnel’s history of dealing with silth had led to his selection as leader of his mission.

  “There were seven of us who left Critza,” he said, after explaining his circumstances. “Myself and our six strongest, best fighters. Nomads caught our wind immediately, though we followed your own example and traveled by night. Four of us fell along the way, exhausted, and were taken by savages. We could not stop to help.”

  Gorry made nasty remarks about males and was ignored by all but a small minority of the assembled sisters. Clever Bagnel had placed a debt upon Akard with his opening remarks. He implied that the news he carried was worth four of his brethren’s lives.

  “Go on,” the senior told him. “Gorry. Restrain yourself.”

  Marika stood behind her instructress, as was proper, and was embarrassed for her when she heard someone remark, “Old Gorry is getting senile.” It was an intimation that Gorry would not be taken seriously much longer. Though Marika nursed her own black hatred, she felt for the old female.

  “The journey took two days —”