“Why?”
“The whole world knows what is happening, Marika. Even if no one admits seeing it. Our hypothetical Serke councillor cannot risk losing face by conceding defeat. We are a much weaker Community. Theoretically, it is impossible for us to best the Serke.”
“What do you feel about that?”
“I feel scared, Marika.” It was a rare moment of honesty on Dorteka’s part. “This has been going on for eight years. The Serke councillors were all old when it started. They must be senile now. Senile meth do things without regard for consequences because they will not have to live with them. I am frightened by Gradwohl, too. She has a disregard for form and consequence herself, without the excuse of being senile. The way she has forced you onto the Community….”
“Have I failed her expectations, Dorteka?”
“That is not the point.”
“It is the only point. Gradwohl is not concerned about egos. The Reugge face the greatest challenge of their history. Survival itself may be the stake. Gradwohl believes I can play a critical role if she can delay the final crisis till I am ready.”
“There are those who are convinced that your critical role will be to preside over the sisterhood’s destruction.”
“That doomstalker superstition haunts my backtrail still?”
“Forget legend and superstition—though they are valid as ways of interpreting that which we know but do not understand. Consider personality. You are the least selfless silth I have ever encountered. I have yet to discern a genuine shred of devotion in you, to the Community or to the silth ideal. You fake. You pretend. You put on masks. But you walk among those who see through shadows and mists, Marika. You cannot convince anyone that you are some sweet lost pup from the Ponath.”
Marika began to pace. She wanted to issue some argument to refute Dorteka and could not think of a one she could wield with conviction.
“You are using the Reugge, Marika.”
“The Reugge are using me.”
“That is the way of—”
“I do not accept that, Dorteka. Take that back to Gradwohl if you want. Though I am sure she knows.”
Grauel witnessed this argument. She grew very tense as it proceeded, fearing it would pass beyond the verbal. Dorteka had been having increasing difficulty maintaining her self-restraint.
Marika had worked hard to bind Grauel and Barlog more closely to her. Again and again she tested them in pinches between loyalties to herself and loyalties to the greater community. They had stuck with her every time. She hoped she was laying the foundations of unshakable habit. A day might come when she would want them to stick with her through extreme circumstances.
For all she had known these two huntresses her entire life, Marika did not know them very well. Had she known them well, she would have realized no doubt of their loyalties ever existed.
Barlog entered the room. “A new report from Akard, Marika.”
“It’s early, isn’t it?
“Yes.”
“What is it?”
“Another sighting.”
“Another ghost darkship?”
“No. This time it’s a possible nomad force coming east on the Morthra Trail. Based on two unconfirmed sightings.”
“Well, that is no problem for us.”
The Morthra Trail was little more than a game track these days, lost beneath ten feet of snow. At one time it had connected Critza with a tradermale outpost on the Neybhor River, seventy miles to the west. The Neybhor marked the western frontier of Reugge claims in that part of the Ponath.
“Sounds like wishful thinking,” Marika said. “Or a drill being sprung on us by the most senior. But I suppose we do have to pass the word. Dorteka, you take the eastern arc. I will take the western.” Marika sealed her eyes, went inside, extended a thread of touch till she reached an underling in an outlying blockhouse. She relayed the information.
Two days later touch-word brought the news that Akard had lost contact with several western outposts. Darkships sent to investigate had found the garrisons dead. An aerial search for the culprits had begun.
One of the darkships fell out of touch.
Senior Educan sent out everything she had.
When found, the missing darkship was a tangle of titanium ruin. It had buried itself in the face of a mountain, evidently at high speed. The Mistress of the Ship and her bath appeared to have suffered no wounds before the crash.
“That is silth work,” Marika said. “Not nomads at all, but Serke.” She shivered. For an instant a premonition gripped her. Grim times were in the offing. Perhaps times that would shift the course of her life. “This must be the desperate move you predicted, Dorteka.”
The instructress was frightened. She seemed to have suffered a premonition of her own. “We have to get out of here, Marika.”
“Why?”
“They would send their very best. If they would go that far. We cannot withstand that. They will exterminate us, then ambush any help sent from Maksche.”
“Panic is not becoming in a silth,” Marika said, parroting a maxim learned at Akard. “You are better at the long touch than I am. Get Akard to send me a darkship.”
“Why?”
“Do it.”
“They will want to know why. If they have lost one already, they will want to hoard the ones that are left.”
“Invoke the most senior if you have to.”
Sighing, Dorteka started to go into touch.
“Dorteka. Wait. Find out which outposts were silenced. And where that darkship went down.”
“Yes, mistress,” Dorteka replied.
“Sarcasm does not become you. Hurry. Before those fools panic and run away.”
Dorteka went into touch. Her strained, twisting face betrayed her difficulty getting through, then an argument ensuing. Marika told Grauel, “If those fools don’t come across, I’ll hike down there and take a darkship myself. Why did they put Educan in charge? She is worse than Paustch ever was. She couldn’t…” Dorteka had come out of touch. “What did they say?”
“The darkship is coming. I had to lie, Marika. And I had to invoke Gradwohl. I hope you know what you are doing.”
“What state were they in?”
“You can guess.”
“Yes. Educan was packing. Grauel. Get my coats, boots, and weapons.” On the frontier Marika dressed as one of the huntresses, not as silth.
Dorteka studied a map while Marika dressed. Marika glanced over her shoulder. “A definite progression, yes?”
“It does look like a developing pattern.”
“Looks like? They will hit here next, then here, here, and then try Akard. No wonder Educan is in a dither. They will reach the Hainlin before dawn tomorrow.”
“You have that look in your eye, Marika. What are you going to do?”
No particular thought went into Marika’s answer. “Ambush them at Critza.” It was the thing that had to be done.
“They would sense our presence.”
“Not if we use our novices to keep our body heat concealed.”
“Marika….”
“We will hit them on huntress’s terms initially. Not as silth. They will not be looking for that. We will chew them up before they know what is happening.”
“Critza is not inside your proper territory.”
“If we do not do something, Educan will run off and leave us here. The Serke will not have to come after us. They can leave us to the grauken if they take Akard.”
“True. But—”
“Perhaps one of the reasons Gradwohl favors me is that I am not bound by tradition. Not if form’s sake means sticking my head into a kirn’s den.”
“Perhaps.”
“Contact the outposts. We will gather everyone. Grauel. Prepare for two days of patrol for the whole force.”
III
Marika kept the darkship aloft continuously, bringing huntresses to Critza, till she felt the Serke party could be within an hour of her ambush. The western
outposts had fallen as she had predicted. Akard was in a panic. The leadership there had so wilted, Marika no longer bothered trying to stay in touch.
A pair of darkships raced over, fleeing south, practically dripping meth and possessions. “That,” Marika observed, “is why we silth are so beloved, Dorteka. Educan has saved everything she owns. But how many huntresses and laborers were aboard?”
Dorteka did not try to defend Educan. She was as outraged as Marika was, if not quite for the same reasons. The Akard senior’s flight was indefensible on any grounds.
“Everyone in place?” Marika asked. There were no tracks in the snow, nothing to betray the ambush physically. The huntresses had dropped into their positions from the darkship. “See if you can detect anybody, Dorteka. If you do, get on the novice covering.” She could detect nothing with her own less skillful touch.
Fear proved to be a superb motivator. The novices hid everyone well.
“That is it for Chaser,” Marika said as the last of the major moons settled behind the opposite ridge. But there was light still. Dawn had begun to break under a rare clear sky. Long shadows of skeletal trees reached across the Hainlin. The endless cold had killed all the less hardy. They were naked of needles. Occasionally the stillness filled with the crash following some elder giant’s defeat in its battle with gravity. Farther north, where the winds kept the slopes scoured of snow, whole mountains were scattered with fallen trees, like straw in a grain field after harvest.
A far hum began to build in the hills opposite Critza. “Utter silence now,” Marika cautioned. “Total alertness. Nobody move for any reason. And hold your fire till I give the word. Hold your fire.” She hoped it would not be much longer. The cold gnawed her bones. They had dared light no fires. The smell of smoke would have betrayed them.
A machine thirty feet long and ten wide eased down the far slope, sliding between trees. It slipped out onto the clear highway of the rivercourse, surrounded by flying snow. For a moment Marika was puzzled. It seemed like a small darkship of odd shape, floating above the surface. It made a great deal of noise.
Then she recalled where she had seen such a vehicle. At the tradermale station at Maksche.
Ground-effect vehicle. Of course.
A second slithered through the trees, engine whining as it fought to keep from charging down the slope. Marika silently praised Grauel and Barlog for having established superb discipline among the huntresses. They were waiting as instructed.
They dared not open fire till all the craft were in the open.
She could see meth inside them, ten and an operator for each of those first two. At a guess she decided two silth and eight fighters aboard each. And definitely not nomads.
What had Bagnel told her about ground-effect vehicles? Yes. They were not sold or leased outside the brethren. Ever.
This ambush would stir one hell of a stink if she pulled it off.
A third and fourth vehicle left the forest. These two appeared to be supply carriers. No heads were visible through their domes, only unidentifiable heaps.
A fifth vehicle descended the slope, and a sixth. And still those already on the river hovered, waiting.
Marika ground her teeth. How much longer could fire discipline hold among huntresses already badly shaken by what faced them?
Not long. As the eighth vehicle appeared, making four carrying meth and four carrying supplies, a rifle cracked.
The huntress responsible was a competent sniper. Her bullet stabbed through a dome and killed an operator. The vehicle surged forward, gained speed rapidly, rose, and smashed into a bluff a third of a mile upriver. Its fuel exploded.
Long before that happened Marika’s every weapon had begun thundering at the Serke. For a while the vehicles were hidden by smoke and flying snow.
Two more vehicles came down into the storm of death.
“Get that darkship up over the trail,” Marika snapped at the Mistress of the Ship. “Wait. I am going with you. I do not want you following Educan. Dorteka. Keep hitting them. Get the personnel carriers first.”
A vehicle broke out of the fury and scooted away north, sideslipping around the burning vehicle upstream. “That was a transport. We will catch it later. Take it up.”
The darkship rose. At a hundred feet Marika could see that the remaining craft had been disabled. Huntresses had come out of some and were returning fire.
A fuel tank blew, spread fire to other crippled vehicles. The conflagration generated a battle between volatile fuel and melting snow. Burning fuel spread atop the running melt.
Marika reached with her touch and found several silth minds among the survivors, all bewildered, shocked, unready to respond. She jerked back, ducked through her loophole, grabbed the first suitable ghost she found, and hurtled down there. Slap. Slap. Slap. She dispatched three silth.
There were at least four more vehicles in the forest, all carrying silth and huntresses. They had halted. Marika flung herself that way, hammered at silth hearts and minds till she encountered one that hurled her back and nearly broke through her defenses.
She ducked back into the world long enough to order the darkship forward. The bath carried automatic weapons and grenades. She would wrestle the Serke sisters while the darkship crew demolished them with mundane weapons.
And so it went for a few minutes, the bath crippling two of the vehicles. Marika fenced with the strong Serke sister, and ducked around her occasionally, discovered that hers was the only Serke silth mind still conscious.
On the river the survivors of the ambush were getting organized. The Serke silth ducked away from Marika and went to prevent Dorteka and the novices from overwhelming her fighters.
The huntresses on the mountainside headed down to help their sisters. They fired on the darkship as they went.
You are a strong one, the Serke silth sent. But you will not survive this.
I have survived the Serke before, Marika retorted. This is the end of the Serke game. Here, today, you will all die. And you will leave the Reugge the proof needed to call the wrath of all the Communities down upon the Serke. You have fallen into the trap.
You are the one called Marika?
Yes. Which great Serke am I about to destroy?
None.
The silth slammed at her. Marika barely turned the blow, interposing her ghost between herself and that ruled by the Serke. She had made a tactical error. She had issued too strong a challenge before fully assessing the strength of the other’s ghost. It was more powerful than hers.
Bullets hummed around the darkship. One spanged off the metal framework. Marika wondered why the ship was not moving, making itself a more difficult target. She ducked into reality for a second, saw that one bath had been wounded and another had been knocked entirely off the darkship. The Mistress had only one bath to draw upon. She could do little but remain aloft, a target for rifle fire.
Marika flung a hasty touch Dorteka’s way. Dorteka. Get some mortar fire into the woods up here. Under the darkship. Before they bring us down and we are all lost.
The Serke attacked again. She wobbled under the blow, fought its effects, tried to locate a more powerful ghost. There was none to be reached quickly enough. There were some great ones high above that might have been drawn in had she had time, but the Serke would give her no time.
She dodged another stroke, slipped back into reality. Bombs had begun to fall on the slope below. Had she had the moment, Marika would have been amused. Those mortars were all captured weapons, taken from slain nomads. The brethren were adamant in their refusal to sell such weapons to the Reugge.
She located the Serke silth visually. The female stood beside her disabled vehicle. Marika tried a new tack, hammering at the snow in the trees above the meth.
A shower fell, distracting the silth. Marika used the moment won to stab at the huntresses firing on the darkship. She slew several. The others broke and ran.
The silth regained her composure, punched back, adding, You do not play
the game by the rules, pup.
Marika dodged, sent, I play to win. I own no rules. She struck at a tree instead of the silth. The brittle trunk cracked. The giant toppled—in the wrong direction. She cracked another, then fended off the silth again.
This was not going well. The Serke was wearing her down. And the darkship had begun to settle toward the surface. For the first time she felt uncertainty. The Serke sensed it, hurled mockeries her way.
Angered, she cracked several more trees. This time the Serke was forced to spend time dodging the physical threat.
Marika used the time to unsling her rifle and begin firing. Her bullets did not touch the silth, but they forced her to keep moving, ducking, too busy evading metal death to employ her talent.
Marika hurled a pair of grenades. One fell close. Its blast threw the silth ten feet and left her stunned.
Marika took careful aim, pumped three bullets into the sprawled form, the last through the brain.
“That should do—”
The darkship began to wobble, to slide sideways, to tilt.
The Mistress of the Ship had been hit by a stray bullet.
She had wanted to fly for so long. Marika’s thoughts were almost hysterical. She hadn’t wanted her first opportunity at flight to come at a time like this! She grabbed at the ship with her mind, trying to put into practice what she knew only as theory, while she edged out the long arm toward the wounded Mistress.
Tree branches crackled as the darkship settled. Marika was afraid a giant would snap and in its fall sweep her and the darkship to the surface.
Without her and the darkship, the Serke would win still.
The darkship was low. She’d probably survive the fall. Still, she had to do more than survive. She had to save the darkship. She had to be available to support her huntresses, who were in a furious firefight with the Serke huntresses. She had to…
She reached the Mistress of the Ship. Despite the meth’s salvageable condition, Marika pitched her off the position of power, ignored her cry of outrage as she fell. There was no time for niceties.
Marika closed into herself, felt for those-who-dwell, who had begun scattering, summoned them, made them stabilize the craft before it fell any farther. She drew upon the bath and willed the ship to rise.