Doomstalker (29 page)

The first she found answered her question without her having to ask. The truth was graven on the silth’s face. She was frightened.

This, if ever there was one, was a time for a nomad attack. The power of the Akard silth would never be weaker.

Marika hurried back to her place, waved at the workers and Grauel.

The news had reached Senior Koenic, Marika saw. The silth of Akard had begun to come to the rampart. Outside, the working parties had begun gathering their tools. Everything seemed quite orderly, indicating preparation beforehand.

Indicating planning not communicated to Marika.

She was irked. They never bothered telling her anything, though she considered herself an important factor in Akard’s life and defense. What was wrong with these silth? Would they never consider her as more than a troublesome pup? Did she not have a great deal to contribute?

Workers already within the walls were being armed. Another facet of planning of which she had been left ignorant. She was surprised to see males mount the walls bearing javelins.

Marika sensed the nomads approaching before the last workers started for the packfast gate. She did not bother reporting. She reached out and touched Khles Gibany. They come. They are close. Hurry up.

Hobbling about, Gibany hurried the workers and formed a screen of huntresses bearing spears and shields. But she allowed no one to become precipitate. Even for silth tools were too precious to abandon.

Marika sensed the enemy in the snow. They were approaching Akard all across the ridge. There were thousands of them. Even now, after so many years of it, Marika could not imagine what force could have drawn so many together, nor what power kept them together. The horde the wehrlen had brought south had been implausible. This was impossible.

The forerunners of the host appeared out of the snow only a few hundred yards beyond Khles Gibany and the workers. They halted awhile, waiting for those behind to come up. Gibany remained cool, releasing no one to return to the fortress unburdened with tools.

Perhaps she was unconcerned because she believed she was safely under the umbrella of protection extended by her silth sisters.

Marika sensed a far presence not unlike that of her sisters. She tried to go down through her loophole to take a look, but when she got down there she could not find a single usable ghost. Without ghosts she could but touch, and there was little chance of touching without her reaching for someone she knew. It was certain she could effect nothing.

She returned to the world to find the forerunner nomads howling toward Gibany’s group. Fear seized her heart. Grauel was out there! Javelins arced through the air. A couple of nomads fell. Then the attackers smashed against huntress’s shields. Spears and swords hacked and slashed. The nomads screeched war cries. The line of huntresses staggered backward under the impact of superior numbers. A few nomads slipped through.

Marika realized that these attackers were the best the nomads had. Their most skilled huntresses. They were trying to effect something sudden. One nomad suddenly shrieked and clasped her chest, fell thrashing in the snow. Then another and another followed. The silth had found something to use against them, though their range seemed limited and the killing was nothing so impressive as other slaughters Marika had witnessed.

The swirl of combat began to separate out. Still forms scattered the snowfield. Not a few were Akard huntresses, though most were nomads. The nomads retreated a hundred yards. The silth seemed unable to reach them there. Marika went down through her loophole and found that it was indeed difficult to reach that far. There were a few ghosts now, but so puny as to be jokes. She retired and watched the nomad huntresses stand watch while the Akard workers and huntresses continued their withdrawal.

Khles Gibany. Where was Gibany? The crippled silth was no longer there to direct the retreat. Marika ducked through her loophole again and went searching.

She could not find a body... There. Somehow, the nomad huntresses had managed to take Gibany captive. What had they done? The Khles was unable to call upon her talent to help herself. And Marika, though she strained till it ached, could not apply enough force to set her free.

Nomad males with farming tools came forward. Two hundred yards from the snow break they began excavating trenches in the old hard-packed snow. They threw the dugout snow to the Akard side of the trench, used their shovel to beat it into a solid wall.

Marika became aware that someone had joined her. She glanced to her right, saw the tradermale Bagnel. “They learned at Critza,” he said. “Curse them.” He settled down on the icy stone and began assembling a metal contraption he had been carrying since his initial appearance at Akard. Marika saw his two brothers doing likewise elsewhere.

Out on the snow, beyond the trench, nomad workers had driven a tall post deep into the snow. Now they were laying a layer of rock and gravel around it. Others stood by with arms loaded with wood. Marika was puzzled till she saw several huntresses drag Gibany to the post.

They tied the one-legged silth so her foot dangled inches from the surface. They they piled wood around her. Even from where she watched Marika could sense Gibany’s fear and rage. Rage founded in the fact that she could do nothing to halt them, for all she was one of the most powerful silth of Akard.

“They are taunting us,” Marika snarled. “Showing us we are powerless against them.”

Bagnel grunted. He mounted his metal instrument upon a tripod, peered through a tube on top. He began twisting small knobs.

A runner carrying a torch came out of the snowfall, trotted up to where Gibany was bound. Marika slipped through her loophole once more, hearing Bagnel mutter “All right,” as she went.

There was not a ghost to be found. Not a thing she could do for Gibany, unless — as several silth seemed to be doing already — she extended her touch and tried to take away some of the fear and agony soon to come.

Thunder cracked in her right ear.

Marika came back to flesh snarling, in the full grip of a fight-flight reflex. Bagnel looked at her with wide, startled eyes. “Sorry,” he said. “I should have warned you.”

She shook with reaction while watching him fiddle with his knobs. “Right,” he said. And the end of his contraption spat fire and thunder. Far out on the snowscape, the nomad huntress bearing the torch leapt, spun, shrieked, collapsed, did not move again.

Marika gaped.

Facts began to add together. That time in the forest last summer, when she had heard those strange tak-takking noises. The time coming down the east fork with Khles Gibany and Gorry when the nomads attacked...

The instrument roared again. Another nomad flung away from Gibany.

Marika looked at the weapon in awe. “What is it?”

For a moment Bagnel looked at her oddly. Along the wall, his brethren were making similar instruments talk. “Oh,” he murmured. “That is right. You are Tech Two pup.” He swung the instrument slightly, seeking another target. “It is called a rifle. It spits a pellet of metal. The pellet is no bigger than the last joint of your littlest finger, but travels so fast it will punch right through a body.” His weapon spat thunder. So did those of his brethren. “Not much point to this, except to harass them.” Bam! “There are too many of them.”

Below, the last of the workers and huntresses were coming in the gate. Only one of Akard’s meth remained unsafe: Khles Gibany, tied to that post.

The nomad huntresses and workers had thrown themselves into the trench the workers had begun. Now Marika saw another wave hurrying forward from the forest beyond the fields. She could just make that out now. The snowfall was weakening.

Pinpoints of light flickered along the advancing nomad line, accompanied by a crackle like that of fat in a frying pan.

“Down, pup!” Bagnel snapped. “They are shooting back.”

Something snarled past Marika. It took a bite out of the earflap on her hat. Another something smacked into the wall and whined away. She got down.

Bagnel said, “They have the weapons they captured at Critza, plus whatever else someone gave them.” He sighted his weapon again, fired, looked at her with teeth exposed in a snarl of black humor. “Hang on. It is going to get exciting.”

Marika rose, looked out. Someone had managed to get the torch into the wood piled round Gibany’s foot. Gibany’s fear had drawn her... Once more through the loophole. Once more no ghosts of consequence. She reached with the touch to help Gibany endure. But half the silth on the wall were doing that, almost in a passive acceptance of fate. “No!” Marika said. “They will not do that. You. Bagnel. Show me how to use that thing.” She indicated his weapon.

He eyed her a moment, shook his head. “I am not sure what you want to do, pup. But you will not do it with this.” He patted the weapon. Snowflakes touching its tube were turning to steam. “It takes years to learn to use it properly.”

“Then you will do it. Put one of your deadly pellets into Khles, to free her from agony. We cannot save her. The talent is denied us today. But we can rob the savages of their mockery by sending her to rejoin the All.”

Bagnel gaped. “Mistress...”

Her expression was fierce, demanding.

“I could not, mistress. To raise paw against the silth. No matter the cause...”

Marika stared across the snow, ignoring the insect sounds swarming past her. Gibany had begun writhing in her bonds. The pain of the fire had torn all reason from her mind. She knew nothing but the agony now.

“Do it,” Marika said in a low and intense voice so filled with power the tradermale began looking around as if seeking a place to run. “Do it now. Free her. I will take all responsibility. Do you understand?”

Teeth grinding, Bagnel nodded. Paws shaking, he adjusted knobs. He paused to get a grip on himself.

His weapon barked.

Marika stared at Gibany, defying the nomad snipers.

The Khles bucked against her bonds, sagged. Marika ducked through her loophole, grabbed the best ghost available, went looking.

Gibany was free. She would know no more pain.

Back. “It is done. I am in your debt, tradermale.”

Bagnel showed her angry teeth. “You are a strange one, young mistress. And soon to be one joining your elder sister if you do not get yourself down.” A steady rain of metal pounded against the wall. Swarms whined past. Marika realized most must be meant for her. She was the only target visible to the nomads.

She sped them a hand gesture of defiance, lowered herself behind a merlon.

One of Bagnel’s brethren shouted at him, pointed. Out on the snowfield meth were running forward in tight bunches. Each bunch carried something. Bagnel and his comrades began shooting rapidly, concentrating on those groups. Some of the silth, too, managed to reach them. Marika saw nomads go down in the characteristic throes of silth death-sending. But three groups managed to carry their burdens into the snow trenches, where workers were still digging. Marika now understood why they were heaping the snow the way they were. It would block the paths of the pellets from the tradermales’ weapons.

More nomads came from the woods. Some carried heavy packs, some nothing at all. The latter rushed to the burdens their predecessors had dropped, grabbed them up, hustled them forward.

The crackle of nomad rifles continued unabated. Twice Marika heard someone on the wall shriek.

“Get down as flat as you can,” Bagnel told her. “And snuggle up tight against the merlon. They are going to start throwing the big stuff.”

Puffs of smoke sprouted and blossomed above the nomad trenches, vanished on the wind. Muted crumpings came a moment later, a sort of soft threatening thumping. Where had she heard that before? That time when tradermales ambushed the nomads she and Arhdwehr were chasing...

“Down,” Bagnel said, and yanked at her when she did not move fast enough to suit. He pressed her against the icy stone.

Something moaned softly in a rising pitch. There was a tremendous bang outside the wall, followed by a series of bangs, only one of which occurred behind the wall. That one precipitated a shriek which turned into the steady moan of a badly injured meth.

“They are getting the range,” Bagnel explained. “Once they find it the bombs will come steady.”

Where were the ghosts? How could silth battle this without their talents?

Why were the ghosts absent just when the savages elected to attack?

A second salvo came. Most fell short, though closer. Several did carry past the wall. They made a lot of noise but did little damage. The packfast was constructed of thick stone. Its builders had meant it to stand forever.

The entire third salvo fell inside the fortress. Marika sensed that that presaged a steady hammering.

A river of meth poured from the woods, burdened with ammunition for the engines throwing the bombs. Workers left their trenches and darted forward, hastily dug shallow holes in which to shelter. They worked their ways toward the snow break. Nomads carrying rifles followed them, only sporadically harassed by Bagnel and his brethren. The crackle of nomad rifle fire never slowed.

Several more packfast meth were hit.

“This is hopeless,” Marika whispered. “We cannot fight back.” She went down through her loophole again, and again found the ghost world all but barren. But this time she stayed, hoping for the stray chance to strike back. She sensed that many sisters were doing the same, with occasional success. Those who did find a tool spent their fury upon the crews of the bomb-throwing instruments.

Why was the ghost world so naked?

Marika waited with the patience of a hunting herdek, till the ghost she needed happened by. She pounced, seized it, commanded it, rode it out over the snowfields, past the nomads and their strange engines, through woods where thousands more nomads waited to move forward, and on to the very limit of her ability to control that feeble a ghost. And there she found the thing that she had sensed must exist, if only on the dimmest level.

A whole company of silth and wehrlen, gathered in one place, were pulling to them all the strong ghosts of the region. The air surrounding them boiled with color, denser than ever Marika had imagined. She thought the ghosts must be so numerous they would be visible to the eyes of untalented meth.