Doomstalker (16 page)

The taller silth beckoned Marika. For all her exhaustion, the pup had been trying to help the huntresses, mainly by gathering firewood. They had reached a stretch where tall trees flanked the river, climbing the sides of steep hills. Oddly, the land became more rugged as the river ran west, though from the plateau where the Degnan packstead lay it did not seem so, for the general tendency of the land was slowly downward.

“Pup,” the taller silth said, “there has been a change in you. We would try to understand why overnight you have come to dislike us so.”

“This,” Marika said curtly.

“This? What does ‘this’ mean?”

Marika was not possessed of a fear the way the huntresses were. She did not know silth, because no one had told her about them. She said, “You sit there and watch while Grauel and Barlog work not only for their own benefit but yours. At the packstead you contributed. Some. In things that were not entirely of the pack to do.” Meaning remove bodies.

The elder silth did not understand. The younger did, but was irked. “We did when there was none else to do. We are silth. Silth do not work with their paws. That is the province of —”

“You have two feet and two paws and are in good health. Better health than we, for you walk us into the earth. You are capable. In our pack you would starve if you did not do your share.”

Fire flashed in the older silth’s eyes. The taller, after another moment of irritation, seemed amused. “You have much to learn, little one. If we did these things you speak of, we would not be seen as silth anymore.”

“Is being silth, then, all arrogance? We had arrogant huntresses in our pack. But they worked like everyone else. Or they went hungry.”

“We do our share in other ways, pup.”

“Like by protecting the packs who pay tribute? That is the excuse I have always heard for the senior huntresses traveling to the packfast every spring. To pay the tribute which guarantees protection. This winter makes me suspect the protection bought may be from the packfast silth, not from killers from outside the upper Ponath. Your protection certainly has done the packs no good. You have saved three lives. Maybe. While packs all over the upper Ponath have been exterminated. So do not brag to me of the wonderful share you do unless you show me much more than you have.”

“Feisty little bitch,” the taller silth said, aside to the elder.

The older was at the brink of rage, an inch from explosion. But Marika had stoked her own anger to the point where she did not care, was not afraid. She noted that Grauel and Barlog had stopped pushing snow around and were watching, poised, uncertain, but with paws near weapons.

This was not good. She had best get her temper cooled or there would be difficulties none of them could handle.

Marika turned her back on the silth. She said, “As strength goes.” Though this seemed a perversion of that old saw.

She won a point, though. The tall silth began pitching in after, just long enough to make it appear she was not yielding to a mere pup.

“Be careful, Marika,” Grauel snapped when they were a distance away, collecting wood. “Silth are not known for patience or understanding.”

“Well, they made me mad.”

“They make everyone mad, pup. Because they can get away with doing any damned thing they want. They have the power.”

“I will watch my tongue.”

“I doubt that. You have grown overbold with no one to slap your ears. Come. This is enough wood.”

Marika returned to their little encampment wondering at Grauel. And at Barlog. The agony of the Degnan did not, truly, seem to have touched them deeply.

II

Neither Grauel nor Barlog said a word, but the covert looks they cast at the fire made it clear they did not consider it a wise comfort. Smoke, even when not seen, could be smelled for miles.

The silth saw and understood their discomfort. The taller might have agreed with them, once the cooking was finished, but the elder was in a stubborn mood, not about to take advice from anyone.

The fire burned on.

The huntresses had dug a hollow beneath the fallen tree large enough for the five of them, and deep enough to shelter them from the wind entirely. As the sun rose, the silth crept into the shelter and bundled against one another for warmth. Marika was not far behind. Only in sleep would she find surcease from aches both physical and spiritual. Grauel followed her. But Barlog did not.

“Where is Barlog?” Marika asked, half asleep already. It was a morning in which the world was still. There was no sound except the whine of the wind and the crackle of frozen tree branches. When the wind died momentarily, there was, too, a distinct rushing sound, water surging through rapids in the river. Most places, as Marika had seen, the river was entirely frozen over and indistinguishable from the rest of the landscape.

“She will watch,” Grauel replied.

The silth had said nothing about setting a watch. Had, in fact, implied that even asleep they could sense the approach of strangers long before the huntresses might.

Marika just nodded and let sleep take her.

She half wakened when Barlog came to trade places with Grauel, and again when Grauel changed with Barlog once more. But she remained completely unaware of anything the next time Barlog came inside. She did not waken because that was when she was ensnarled in the first of the dreams.

A dark place. Stuffy. Fear. Weakness and pain. Fever and thirst and hunger. A musty smell and cold dampness. But most of all pain and hunger and the terror of death.

It was like no dream Marika had ever had, and there was no escaping it.

It was a dream in which nothing ever happened. It was a static state of being, almost the worst she could imagine. Nightmares were supposed to revolve around flight, pursuit, the inexorable approach of something dread, tireless, and without mercy. But this was like being in the mind of someone dying slowly inside a cave. Inside the mind of someone insane, barely aware of continued life.

She wakened to smoke and smells and silence. The wind had ceased blowing. For a while she lay there shuddering, trying to make sense of the dream. The Wise insisted dreams were true, though seldom literal.

But it slipped away too quickly, too soon became nothing more than a state of malaise.

Grauel had a fresh fire blazing and food cooking when Marika finally crawled out of the shelter. The sun was well on its way down. Night would be along soon after they ate, packed, and took care of personal essentials. She settled beside Grauel, took over tending the fire. Barlog joined them a moment later, while the silth were still stretching and grumbling inside the shelter.

“They are out there,” Barlog said. Grauel nodded. “Just watching right now. But we will hear from them before we reach the packfast.”

Grauel nodded again. She said, “Do not bother our superior witches with it. They know most all there is to know. They must know this, too.”

Barlog grunted. “Walk warily tonight. And stay close. Marika, stay alert. If something happens, just get down into the snow. Dive right in and let it bury you if you can.”

Marika put another piece of wood onto the fire. She said nothing, and did nothing, till the taller silth came from the shelter, stretched, and surveyed the surrounding land. She came to the fire and checked the cook pot. Her nose wrinkled momentarily. Travel rations were not tasty, even to huntresses accustomed to eating them.

She said, “We will pass the rapids soon after nightfall. We will walk atop the river after that. The going will be easiest there.”

Aside, Barlog told Marika, “So we traveled coming east. The river is much easier than the forest, where you never know what lies beneath the snow.”

“Will the ice hold?”

“The ice is several feet thick. It will hold anything.”

As though the silth were not there, Grauel said, “There are several wide places in the river where we will be very exposed visually. And several narrow places ideal for an ambush.” She described what lay ahead in detail, for Marika’s benefit.

The silth was irked but said nothing. The older came out of the shelter and asked, “Is that pot ready?”

“Almost,” Grauel replied.

Rested, even the older silth was more cooperative. She began moving snow about so that their pause here would be less noticeable after their departure.

Grauel and Barlog exchanged looks, but did not tell her she was wasting her time. “Let them believe what they want to believe,” Barlog said.

The taller silth caught that and responded with a puzzled expression. None of the three Degnan told her they thought the effort pointless because the nomads knew where they were already.

Biter rose early that night, full and in headlong flight from Chaser, which was not far behind. The travelers reached the river as that second major moon rose, setting their shadows aspin. Once again the silth wanted to push hard. This time Grauel and Barlog refused to be pushed. They moved at their own pace, weapons in paw, seeming to study every step before they took it. Marika sensed that they were very tense.

The silth sensed it too, and for that reason, perhaps, they did not press, though clearly they thought all the caution wasted.

And wasted it seemed, for as the sun returned to the world it found them unscathed, having made no contact whatsoever with the enemies Grauel and Barlog believed were stalking them.

But the huntresses were not prepared to admit error. They trusted their instincts. Again they set a watch during the day.

Again nothing happened during the day. Except that Marika dreamed.

It was the same, and different. All the closeness, pain, terror, darkness, hunger were there. The smells and damp and cold were there. But this time she was a little more conscious and aware. She was trying to claw her way up something, climbing somewhere, and the mountain in the dark was the tallest mountain in the world. She kept passing out, and crying out, but no one answered, and she seemed to be making no real ground. She had a blazing fever that came and went, and when it was at its pitch she saw things that could not possibly be there. Things like glowing balls, like worms of light, like diaphanous moths the size of loghouses that flew through earth and air with equal ease.

Death’s breath was winter on the back of her neck.

If she could just get to the top, to food, to water, to help.

One of her soft cries alerted Grauel, who wakened her gently and scratched her ears till shuddering and panting went away.

The temperature rose a little that day and stayed up during the following night. With the temperature rise came more snow and bitter winds that snarled along the valley of the east fork, flinging pellets of snow into faces. The travelers fashioned themselves masks. Grauel suggested they hole up till the worst was past. The silth refused. The only reason they would halt, storm or no, was to avoid getting lost: There was no chance of that here. If they strayed from the river they would begin climbing uphill. They would run into trees.

Marika wished she could come through by day instead of by night in snow. What little she could see suggested this was impressive country, far grander than any nearer home.

There was no trouble with nomads that night either, nor during the following day. Grauel and Barlog insisted the northerners were still out there, though, tracking the party.

Marika had no dreams. She hoped the horror was over.

The weather persisted foul. The taller silth said, as they huddled in a shelter where they had gone to ground early, “We will be in trouble if this persists. We have food for only one more day. We are yet two from Akard. If we are delayed much more we will get very hungry before we reach home.” She glanced at the older silth. The old one had begun showing the strain of the journey.

Neither huntress said a word, though each had suggested pushing too hard meant wasting energy that might be needed later.

Marika asked, “Akard? What is that?”

“It is the name of what you call the packfast, pup.”

She was puzzled. Was Akard the name of the silth pack there?

The storm slackened around noon. The travelers clung to their shelter only till shadows began gathering in the river canyon. The sun fell behind the high hills while there were yet hours of daylight left.

The silth wanted to make up lost time. “We go now,” the taller said. And the older hoisted herself up, though it was obvious that standing was now an effort for her.

Marika and the huntresses were compelled to admire the old silth’s spirit. She did not complain once, did not yield to the infirmity of her flesh.

Again Grauel and Barlog would not be rushed. Both went to the fore, and advanced with arrows across their bows, studying every shadow along the banks. Their noses wriggled as they sniffed the wind. The silth were amused. They said there were no nomads anywhere near. But they humored the huntresses. The old one could not move much faster anyway. The taller one covered the rear.

Marika carried her short steel knife bared. She was not that impressed with silth skills, for all she knew them more intimately than did Grauel or Barlog.

It happened at twilight.

The snow on one bank erupted. Four buried savages charged. The silth were so startled they just stood there.

Grauel and Barlog released their arrows. Two nomads staggered, began flopping as poison spread through their bodies. There was no time for second arrows. Barlog ducked under a javelin thrust and used her bow to tangle a nomad’s legs. Grauel smacked another across the back of the neck with her bow.

Marika flung herself onto the back of the huntress Barlog tripped, driving her knife with all her weight. It was a good piece of iron taken from her dead dam’s belt. It slid into flesh easily and true.

Barlog saw that nomad down, whirled to help Grauel, dropping her bow to draw her sword.

Javelins rained down. One struck the older silth but did not penetrate her heavy travel apparel. Another wobbled past Marika’s nose and she remembered what she had been told to do if they were attacked. She threw herself into the snow and tried to burrow.