Doomstalker

  Skiljan slowed and turned away from the herd, to give the flood room to break around the barriers.

  But the herd did not swing. It drove straight ahead at full speed, into the obstacles.

  How many tons of kropek flesh in that raging tide? More than could be calculated. The barriers collapsed. Kropek climbed over kropek. The air filled with squeals of anger and agony.

  Beyond, scores of huntresses were in flight. They had expected the herd to break up and pass around them. Now they used their speed advantage to angle away from that unstoppable wave. Most of them made it.

  Skiljan did not pick up the pace again. When the Degnan came even with the barricade, they stopped, well away from the flow. Skiljan said, “There will be many stragglers here once the main herd passes.”

  Marika thought about loosing an arrow. Pobuda read her mind. “You would be wasting your shafts, pup. Save them.”

  It seemed hours before the last of the herd passed.

  Skiljan was right. There were many stragglers, though those kropek that had gone down early were now little more than bloody stains in the trampled earth. The pack moved in, began the slaughter.

  The stragglers clumped up in a compact mass. The heavily tusked females faced outward, held the line while the quicker, more agile males awaited a chance to leap upon their tormentors.

  Down the valley the herd became congested at the narrow place. It had to force its way through a storm of missiles hurled by scores of huntresses safely perched atop high rocks. Over the next few days most of the wounded kropek would be run down and finished.

  Marika tried luring one forth from the group encircled at the broken barrier. She had no luck.

  Her talent — if such it was, and not a curse — was terribly unreliable.

  The huntresses began picking on the more volatile males among the stragglers, one at a time. Tormented sufficiently, the beast would launch a furious charge that would expose it to attack from all sides. That made for slow work, but the number of animals dragged away for cooling out and butchering increased steadily.

  There was no mercy in the huntresses, and seemingly no end to the hunt. With nightfall the males built fires from the remains of the barricades. Their light reflected redly from the eyes of the kropek still besieged. None of those rushed forward now. Which made it a standoff for the time being, though missiles kept arcing in, doing some damage. Very limited damage. Striking from head on, most just bounced off.

  Fires burned all along the valley. Everywhere, on both sides of the river, meth were butchering, and gorging on organ meats. Marika thought her stomach would burst.

  From the end of the floodplain came the continued squeal and rumble of kropek trying to force the narrows.

  Skiljan finally allowed Marika to retrieve her bedroll, then to go settle down with the other pups, where she found Kublin in a state of exhaustion so acute she was frightened. But he did not complain. In that he was becoming something more admirable than Zamberlin, who carped about everything, though nature had equipped him far better to take it.

  Before Marika parted from her dam, though, Skiljan said, “Think on what you have seen today. Reflect carefully. For meth sometimes behave very much like kropek. They develop momentum in a certain direction and nothing will turn them.”

  Marika reflected, but she would not understand the whole lesson for a long time.

  Chapter Five

  I

  Marika was in the watchtower when the nomads returned the morning after her dam’s night raid. She got no chance to descend.

  Perhaps two hundred advanced toward the packstead, coming from the direction of the Laspe packstead. They halted beyond the reach of bows, howled, brandished weapons and fetishes. Their Wise moved among them, blessing. The huntresses among them carried standards surmounted by the skulls of meth and artfs, and the tails of kirns. Kirns were huge omnivores of the Zhotak, supposed by the nomads to be holy. Their ferocity and cunning and perseverance were legend. Thus the significance of their tails.

  A big young male came forward, teeth bared as he stepped over and around bodies left from the night before. He shouted, “Abandon the stead and you will be forgiven all. Resist and your pups will be eaten.”

  A bold one for a male, Marika thought. He must be the rogue the Wise called the wehrlen. What other male would be so daring?

  Skiljan sped an arrow. She was good, and should not have missed, yet her shaft drifted aside. A breeze, Marika supposed.

  But her dam missed twice more, a thing unprecedented. No adjustment brought her nearer her mark. The nomads cheered. The mad male howled mockingly and offered his back. He stalked away slowly.

  He had his answer.

  Skiljan shouted, “Rogue! You dare the wrath of the All, flouting the laws of our foredams. If you truly believe yourself chosen, meet me in bloodfight.”

  A murmur of horror ran around the stockade. Was Skiljan mad too? Meet a male in bloodfight? Unheard of. Unprecedented. Disgusting. The creatures were not to be taken seriously.

  Marika understood instantly, though. It was a ploy to weaken the wehrlen in the sight of his followers. They would believe him a coward if he refused. His position had to be precarious, for males did not lead and packs did not unite. Marika recalled the kropek hunt. Was this something like that, the nomads joining in the face of extremity?

  The threat the wehrlen posed could be disrupted with a few well-chosen words, or by the proposed duel, the outcome of which could not be in doubt. No male could stand against a huntress of Skiljan’s speed, ferocity, and skill.

  The wehrlen turned, bared his teeth in mockery, bowed slightly, then walked on.

  The ploy had failed. The nomads could not hear Skiljan’s challenge.

  The wehrlen reached them, took a spear from one, leaned upon it. After a moment he waved a languorous paw in the direction of the packstead.

  The two hundred howled and charged.

  The Degnan were better prepared today. All the archers faced the rush. Poisoned shafts stormed into the horde. Scores fell before the charge reached the stockade. Skiljan had placed half the archers where the rush could not reach them till it had crossed the outer stockade. Those huntresses kept speeding arrows once close fighting had been joined.

  Old females still capable of bending bows were perched atop the loghouses. The females on the stockade were disposed so that those nomads who got over would find some paths easier than others. These paths concentrated them for the older archers. Skiljan had all the captured swords up front, and those were put to deadly use.

  Nomads seized places on the shelf behind the stockade. They used their ladders to span the gap to the inner stockade, scrambled across. Many were hit and fell into the gap between barriers.

  The armed males and older pups crouched in shadow under the inner platform. When nomads jumped down they attacked the invaders from in back. A great many nomads died there, and those who survived that found the loghouses sealed against them. When they turned on the males and pups, the archers atop the loghouses shot them down.

  It was a great slaughter. Marika’s heart hammered as she saw hope rising. They could do it again! Already over half the attackers were down. The others would flee, probably, as soon as they realized they had been set up for killing.

  Hope died.

  A horde of nomads came howling out of the forest from the direction of Machen Cave. They numbered several times the party which had attacked already. They were coming against the north wall, and the Degnan had concentrated at the point of assault on the east.

  Marika screamed at her dam and pointed. Skiljan looked. Her face went slack. A nomad nearly got her before she recovered her equilibrium.

  These new attackers surged up to the stockade, scarcely touched by arrows. They boiled around its base like maggots in an old carcass. Their ladders rose. Up they came, seized a foothold. Parties advanced along the platforms to right and left. Some spanned ladders across to the second circle. Others began chopping through th
e gate, seeking to penetrate the packstead by the traditional route.

  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 s
tood 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.