“I can handle this, Marika. I have been unable to detect any silth accompanying them.”
Marika’s head had begun to throb. “Go ahead. I must eat something. I will be with you when I can.”
The firing was moving closer. Dorteka hurried off into the falling snow. Marika turned, stiffly returned to the fire where she had slept, snatched at scraps of food. She found a half-finished cup of soup that had gone cold, downed it. That helped some almost immediately.
Stiffly then, she moved on to the prisoners.
Grauel sat watching them, her eyes red with weariness. “What is all the racket, Marika?”
Marika glared at the prisoners. “Nomads. Our friends here had a band trailing them, probably to take the blame.” They must have known. “I wondered why the reports mentioned sighting nomads but not vehicles.” She paused for half a minute. “What do you think, Grauel? What should I do?”
“I can’t make a decision for you, Marika. I recall that you and Kublin were close. Closer than was healthy, some thought. But that was eight years ago. Nearly half your life. You’ve gone different paths. You’re strangers now.”
“Yes. There is no precedent. Whatever I do will be wrong, by Degnan law or by Reugge. Get some rest, Grauel. I’ll watch them while I’m thinking.”
“Rest? While there is fighting going on?”
“Yes. Dorteka says she can handle it.”
“If you say so.”
“Give me your weapons. In case they get ideas. I don’t know if my talents would respond right now.”
“Where are your weapons?”
“I left them where I fell asleep last night. Beside the big fire. Go on now.”
Grauel surrendered rifle and revolver, tottered away.
Marika stared at the prisoners for a few minutes. They were all alert now, listening to the firing as it moved closer. Marika suspected they would be very careful to give no provocation. They nurtured hopes of rescue, feeble as those hopes might be.
“Kublin. Come here.”
He came. There seemed to be no defiance left in him. But that could be for show. He was always a crafty pup.
“What do you have to say this morning?” she asked.
“Get me out of this, Marika. I don’t want to die.”
So. He knew how much real hope there was for a rescue by the nomads. “Will you stand witness for me?”
“No.”
That was an absolute, Marika understood. The brethren had won Kublin’s soul.
“I don’t want you to die, Kublin. But I don’t know how to save you.” She wanted to say a lot more, to lecture him about having asked for it, but she refrained. She recalled how well he had listened to lectures as a pup.
He shrugged. “That’s easy. Let me run. I overheard your huntresses saying there were two vehicles that weren’t damaged. If I could get to one...”
“That’s fine for you. But where would it leave me? How could I explain it?”
“Why would you have to explain anything?”
Marika indicated the other prisoners. “They would know. They would tell when they are interrogated. You see? You put me into a terrible position, Kublin. You face me with a choice I do not want to have to make.”
The firing beyond the river rose in pitch. The nomad band seemed to be very large. Dorteka might be having more trouble than she had expected.
“In the confusion that is causing, who is going to miss one prisoner? You could manipulate it, Marika.”
She did not like the tone of low cunning that had come into his voice. And she could not shake the feeling that he was not entirely what he seemed.
“My meth aren’t stupid, Kublin. You would be missed. And my novices would detect you sneaking toward those vehicles. They would kill you without a thought. They are hungry for blood. Especially for male blood, after what they have learned here.”
“Marika, this is Critza. Critza was my home for almost four years. I know this land...”
“Be quiet.” Marika folded in upon herself, going away, opening to the All. It was one of the early silth lessons. Open to intuition when you do not know what to do. Let the All speak to your soul.
The dream returned. The terrible dream with the pain and the fever and the fear and the helplessness. That had been Kublin. Her mind had been in touch with his while he was in his torment. And she had not known and had not been able to help.
Grauel was right. Though he appealed to the memory, this Kublin was not the Kublin with whom she had shared the loft in their dam’s loghouse. This was a Kublin who had gone his own way, who had become something... What had he become?
That horrible dream would not stay away.
Perhaps her mind was not running in appropriate channels. Perhaps her sanity had surrendered briefly to the insanity of the past several dozen hours, to the unending strain. Without conscious decision she captured a ghost, went hunting her novices, touched each of them lightly, striking them unconscious.
Dorteka, though, resisted for a moment before going under.
She returned to flesh. “All right, Kublin. Now. Start running. Go. Take one of your vehicles and get out of here. This may cost me. Don’t slow down for anything. Get away. I can’t cover you for long.”
“Marika...”
“Go. And you’d better never cross my path again, in any circumstances. I’m risking everything I’ve become for your sake.”
“Marika...”
“You damned fool, shut up and get out of here!” She almost shrieked it. The pain of it had begun gnawing at her already.
Kublin ran.
The other prisoners watched him go, a few of the males rising, taking a pace or two as if to follow, then freezing when they saw the look in Marika’s eye. Their mouths opened to protest as, slowly, as if of its own volition, Grauel’s rifle turned in her paws and began to bark.
They tried to scatter. She emptied the rifle. Then she drew the pistol and finished it.
Grauel and the surviving bath sister rushed out of the snowfall. “What happened?” Grauel demanded.
“They tried to run away. I started to nod off and they tried to run away.”
Grauel did not believe her. Already she had counted bodies. But she did not say anything. The bath looked studiedly blank. Marika asked her, “How do you feel this morning? Able to help me move ship?”
“Yes, mistress.”
“Good. We’ll start toward Akard as soon as Dorteka finishes with the nomads.”
The firing was rolling toward the river quickly, Marika realized.
Then she gasped, suddenly aware of what she had done. By knocking out the novices so Kublin could slip away, she had robbed her huntresses of their major advantage in the fight. They had no silth to support them. She plunged into the hollowness inside herself, reached out, found a ghost, flogged it across the river.
She had done it for sure. The huntresses were in retreat from a nomad party that had to number more than two hundred. Most of the novices had been found and slain where she had left them unconscious.
Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.
She captured a stronger ghost. With it she hit the nomads hard, decimating them. They remained unaware of what was happening because so few could see one another through the snowfall. They came on, and they kept overtaking Marika’s huntresses.
She extricated Barlog from a difficult situation, scanned the slopes, killing here and there, and by the time she returned to Barlog found the huntress trapped again.
Only a dozen of her meth made it to the river.
Only when they assembled before taking up the pursuit in the open did the nomads discover how terribly they had been hurt.
Marika ravened among them then, and they panicked, scattered.
She searched for Kublin. She found him starting up the far slope safely downstream from the action. She stayed with him till he reached an operable vehicle, silencing any nomad who came too near. Though he seemed aware of their presence almost as soon as she, and shied away.
And as he had said, he knew the land and made use of its masking features.
Even so, she hovered over him while he transferred fuel to fill one vehicle’s tanks, then got it going. As it began climbing the trail over which the attack had come, Marika hurried back to her proper form.
When she came out she was more exhausted than she had been the evening before.
“Marika?” Grauel asked. “Are you all right?”
“I will be. I need food and rest. Get me something to eat.” The firing had stopped entirely. “Any word from over there?”
“Not yet. You went?”
“Yes. It looked awful. There were hundreds of savages. And Dorteka guessed wrong. There were silth with them. Wild silth. Most of our meth are dead, I think. Certainly most of the novices are. I could find no sign of them.”
Grauel’s lips twitched, but she said nothing. Marika wondered what thoughts lay behind her expressionless eyes.
Huntresses began to straggle in almost as soon as Grauel had gotten a cookfire going. Only seven showed. Marika turned inward and remained that way, loathing herself. She had fouled up about as bad as it was possible to do. That All-be-damned Kublin. Why did he have to turn up? Why couldn’t he have stayed dead? Why had fate dragged him across her trail just now?
“Marika? Food.” Grauel gave her of the first to come from the fire. She ate mechanically.
Dorteka staggered out of the snowfall fifteen minutes after Marika began eating. She settled beside the fire. Grauel gave her food and drink. Like all the rest of them, she ate and stared into the flames. Marika did not wonder what she saw there.
After a while Dorteka rose and trudged toward where the prisoners had been held. She was gone fifteen minutes. Marika was only marginally aware that she had gone.
Dorteka returned. She settled beyond the fire, opposite Marika. “The prisoners tried to get away during the fighting?”
“Yes,” Marika said, without looking up. She accepted another cup of broth from Grauel. The broth was the best thing for a silth who reached this exhausted state.
“One got away. A trail runs down the slope. I heard an engine over there while I was coming back. Must have been one of the males.”
“I do not know. I thought I got them all.” She shrugged. “If one got away he will take warning to the rest.”
“Who was he, Marika?”
“I do not know.”
“You helped him. Your touch cannot be disguised. You were directly responsible for the deaths of all of our novices and most of the huntresses. Who was he, Marika? What is this thing you have with males of the brotherhood? Why was the escape of this one so important you destroyed yourself?”
Was there no end to it?
Marika clutched Grauel’s revolver beneath her coat. “You believe what you have said. Yes. I see that. What are you going to do about it, Dorteka?”
“You have left me no choice, Marika.”
Powder burned Marika’s paw. The bullet struck Dorteka in the forehead, threw her backward. She lay spasming in the snow, her surprise lingering in the air of touch.
The huntresses yelped and began to rise, to grab for weapons. Grauel and Barlog did the same, but slowed by tangled loyalties.
This would be the ultimate test of their faith, Marika thought as she slipped through her loophole, grabbed a ghost, and struck at the seven.
The last fell. Marika waited for the bullet that would tell her Grauel or Barlog had turned against her. It did not come. She returned to flesh, found both huntresses staring at her in horror. As was the bath from the darkship, who had been sleeping for so long Marika had forgotten her.
She summoned what remained of her strength and energy and rose, collected a rifle, put several bullets into each of the downed huntresses so it would look like nomads had slain them.
“Marika!” Barlog snarled.
Grauel laid warning fingers upon her wrist.
Marika said, “The snow will cover everything. We will report a huge battle with savages. We will be the only survivors. We will be stricken with sorrow. The Reugge do not Mourn their dead. There is no reason anyone should investigate. Now we rest.”
Her companions radiated the sort of fear huntresses betrayed only in the presence of the mad. Marika ignored them.
She would pull it off. She was sure she would. Grauel and Barlog would say nothing. Their loyalties had passed the ultimate test. And now their fates were inextricably entwined with hers.
II
Just a few minutes more, Marika thought at the All. Just a few more miles. They had to be close.
The limping darkship was just a hundred feet up, and settling lower all the time. And making but slight headway. Snowflakes swirled around Marika. The north wind pushed at her almost as hard as she was able to push against it. When she risked opening her eyes to glance back, she could barely distinguish the bath at the girder’s far end. Grauel and Barlog, riding the tips of the crossarm, were scarcely more visible.
The huntresses had little strength she could draw, but she took of them as well as of the bath. She also dredged deep into her own reserves. She knew she was not doing this right, that she was devouring far more energies than needful in her crude effort, but survival was the prize.
Only savage will kept the darkship aloft and moving.
Will was not enough. Cold gnawed without mercy. Weariness ravened as Marika rounded the last bend of the Hainlin before it forked around Akard, the ship’s rear grounding strut began to drag in the loose snow concealing the river’s face. Marika sucked one final dollop of strength from the bath and herself, raised the darkship a few yards, and threw it forward.
The draw was too much for the bath. Her heart exploded.
The rear of the darkship dropped into the snow. The ship began tilting left. The left arm caught. Grauel and Barlog tumbled off. The flying dagger tried to stand on its point. Marika arced through bitter air and, as snow met her, flung one desperate touch at the shadowy fortress looming above her.
III
Marika opened her eyes. She was in a cell walled with damp stone. A single candle provided weak light. She could not distinguish the features of the face above her. Her eyes refused to focus.
Had she damaged them? A moment of panic. Nothing was so helpless as a blind meth.
“Marika?”
“Is that you, Grauel?”
“Yes.”
“Where are we? Did we make it to Akard?”
“Yes. Most Senior Gradwohl is on comm from Maksche. She wants to talk to you.”
Marika tried to rise. Her limbs were quicksilver. “I can’t...”
“I’ll have you carried there.”
The face disappeared. Darkness and dreams returned. The dreams were grim. Ghosts wandered through them, taunting her. The most prominent was her littermate, Kublin.
She was lying in a litter when she revived. The smell of soup tempted her. She opened her eyes. Her vision was better this time. Barlog walked beside her, her gait the strained labor of a tired old Wise meth. She carried a steaming stoneware pot. Her face was as empty as that of death. The bitter chill behind her eyes when she met Marika’s gaze had nothing to do with weariness.
“How did we get here?” Marika croaked.
“You touched someone. They sent huntresses out after us.”
“How long ago?”
“Three days.”
“That long?”
“You went too far into yourself, they say. They say they had trouble keeping you anchored in this world.” Did she sound the slightest disappointed?
So many times Dorteka had warned her against putting all her trust in those-who-dwell. There were ways less perilous than walking the dark... So close.
Barlog said, “They sent huntresses to Critza to find out what happened there. In case you did not make it. Their fartoucher reported by touch this morning. The most senior wanted to know when she did. She wanted you wakened when that happened. Even she was not certain you could be drawn back.”
/>
Gradwohl had taken a direct interest? Mild trepidation fluttered through Marika. But she hadn’t the energy for real fear. “Give me a cup of that soup.”
Barlog stopped the stretcher-bearers long enough to dole out a mug of broth. Marika gulped it down. In moments she felt a surge of well-being.
The soup was drugged. But not with chaphe. That would have propelled her back into the realm of nightmare.
Barlog said, “The most senior did not think to question simple huntresses such as Grauel and I.”
Marika understood the unstated message.
Grauel met them at the comm room door. “I have placed a chair facing the screen, Marika. I will be over here, out of hearing, but watching. If you have trouble, signal me and we will develop technical difficulties.” The huntress chased the technicians out. There would be no outside witnesses.
“I can handle it,” Marika said, wondering if in fact she could match her show of confidence with actions. The most senior was difficult enough to fool even when Marika had full control of her faculties.
She kept her eyelids cracked as Grauel and Barlog levered her into the chair.
The face on the screen was not that of the most senior at all, but of Braydic. Braydic looked as if she had put in some hard hours of worry. Good Braydic. She would have to be remembered in times to come.
The distant communications technician said something to someone at her end, moved out of view of the pickup.
Gradwohl replaced her. The most senior appeared concerned but neither suspicious nor angry. Maybe the effort to make it look like the nomads had wiped out the ambush had been successful.
Marika opened her eyes. “Most senior. I am here.”
“I see. You look terrible.”
“They tell me I did stupid things, mistress. I may have. It was a desperate and narrow thing. But I think I will recover.”
“Tell me about it.”
Marika told the story exactly as it had happened till the moment she had discovered Kublin. She left her littermate out of it. She left her treachery out of it. Of course. “I am not sure why the nomads were following so far behind. Maybe the Serke outdistanced them in their eagerness to reach and silence Akard before help was summoned. Whatever, I was unprepared for the advent of nomads. They surprised us while I was unconscious and my huntresses were scattered, going through the damaged vehicles. They overran everyone and crossed the river before anyone wakened me. Then the prisoners broke away and added to the confusion.