Darkwar

by Glen Cook

  “I have reached a position of substance within my sisterhood, Bagnel. I am very young for it. My age alone has made me many foes. Therefore I have to consolidate my position and fashion a springboard to a greater future. I have chosen to do that in my usual way, by taking the offensive against enemies of the Community. My opponents inside the sisterhood are unable to fault that.” A pause for effect. “Those who get in my way can expect the worst.”

  “You intend to climb over me?”

  “If you get in my way.”

  “Marika, I am your friend.”

  “Bagnel, I value you as a friend. I have treasured your friendship. Often you were the only one I could turn to.”

  “And now you are so strong you do not need me anymore?”

  “Now I am so strong I do not need to blind myself to what you are doing. Nor was I ever so weak as to allow crimes to be committed simply because a friend was involved.”

  “Involved?”

  “Drop the act, Bagnel. You know the brethren are backing the Serke effort to steal the Ponath from us. You know the brethren have been sponsoring the terrorism practiced by disaffected males. It is another ploy against us. You use criminals now that there are no more nomads to be your proxies. You even flew in males from outside because Maksche did not produce enough villains of its own. Now, is that something I should ignore simply because one of the behind-scenes movers is a friend?”

  “You are mad, Marika.”

  “You will stop. Cease. Give me my prisoners and do nothing more. Or I will see the Brown Paw Bond torn apart like an otec rent by kagbeasts.”

  “You are totally insane. They have given you a taste of power and it has gone to your head. You begin imagining nonexistent plots.”

  “Phoo! Think, Bagnel. I struck near the mark, yes? Insofar as you know? Naturally, you have not been trusted with full knowledge. You deal with me. You traffic with silth. Can they trust you? When they hoard knowledge the way old Wise females hoard metal in the Ponath? You recall my great triumph up there, so called? Did you know that nomads had very little to do with it? Did you know that what I defeated was actually an invasion carried out by Serke and armed brethren, with a few hundred nomads along for show? If you do not know these things, then you have been used worse than I suspect.”

  Almost out of pity she stopped hitting him. She could see that he was hearing much of this for the first time. That, indeed, he had been used. That he did not want to believe, yet his faith was being terribly tested.

  “Enough of that. Friend. When you report to your factors, as inevitably you must before you dare yield the criminals I want, tell them for me that I can produce thirteen burned-out ground-effect vehicles, with their cargoes and the corpses of their drivers and passengers, anytime I feel inclined to assemble delegates from the various Communities.”

  Bagnel composed his features, but could not help staring.

  “You do not have to believe me, Bagnel. Just tell them what I said. Nice word, ‘driver.’ It is from the brethren secret speech, is it not? Not everyone aboard those vehicles died in the ambush.”

  “What is this madness you’re yammering?”

  He was innocent of guilty knowledge, she was now sure. A tool of his factors. But he had heard so many wild rumors that she now had him on the edge of typical male panic. Composed as he kept his face, his eyes glittered with fear. His hackles had risen and his head had dropped against his shoulders. She wanted to reach out to him, to touch him, to reassure him. To tell him she did not hold him personally responsible. She could not. There were witnesses. Any softening would be perceived as weakness by those who were not here and did not know them.

  “The message will register once you pass it along, Bagnel. Tell them the price of silence is their desertion of the Serke. Tell them they can tell the Serke that if they want to do us in, henceforth they must come at us directly, without help.”

  He began to understand. At least, to understand what she wanted him to understand. He whispered, “Marika. As a friend. Not as Bagnel the tradermale or Bagnel the security chief of this enclave. Don’t push this. You’ll get rolled under. I know nothing of the things you have talked about. I do know that you cannot withstand the forces that are ranged against the Reugge. If you really have the sort of evidence you claim, and I report it, they will kill you.”

  “I suspect they’ll be reluctant to try, Bagnel.” She spoke in a whisper herself, and pointed to one of the circling darkships, to make those watching think she was talking about her threats. “Their force commander in the Ponath was the Serke number four. Stronger than anyone but Bestrei herself. She’s dead. And I’m here.”

  “There are other ways to kill.”

  Marika rested a paw upon the butt of her rifle. “And I know them. They may have their way with the Reugge. But they will pay in blood. And pay and pay and pay. We have just started fighting, Gradwohl and I.”

  “Marika, please. You’re too young to be so ruled by ambition.”

  “There are things I want to do with my life, Bagnel. This struggle with the Serke is a distraction. This scramble is something I want to get over early. If I sound confident of the Reugge, that’s because I am. In the parlance of your brethren, I believe the hammer is in my paw. I’d rather you and your silth allies just went away and left us alone. I’d rather not fight. But I am ready to bring on the fire if that is the way they want it. You may tell them that we Reugge believe we have very little to lose. And more to gain than they can imagine.”

  Bagnel sighed. “You always were headstrong and deaf to advice. I will tell my factors what you’ve said. I’ll be very much interested in their response myself.”

  “I’m sure you will. As you walk over there, keep one eye on the darkships up top. Keep in mind that they have orders to kill anyone who tries to leave the enclave. You can shoot them down if you like. But I don’t think even the Serke will tolerate that.”

  “I hope you know what you’re doing, Marika. I really do. I think, though, that you don’t. I think you have made some grave and erroneous accusations, and based serious miscalculations upon them. I fear for you.”

  She was making a long bet, setting the price of protecting the rogues so high the brethren factors would have no choice but to surrender them. A success would cement her standing within the Community.

  She did not care if the silth liked her, so long as they respected and feared her.

  “I intend to be very careful, Bagnel. I give these things more thought than you credit me for. Go. Grauel and Barlog will be waiting here at the gate.” She walked through the building beside him, halted at the door to the airstrip, counted silently while he walked fifteen steps. “Bagnel!”

  “What?” he squeaked as he whirled.

  “Why is the Ponath worth risking the very existence of the brethren?”

  An instant of panic betrayed him. If he did not know, he had firmly founded suspicions. Perhaps because the tradermales of Critza had been involved from the beginning?

  “The plan is for the brethren to betray the Serke after they take over, isn’t it? The brethren think they have some way to force the Serke out without a struggle.”

  “Marika….”

  “I questioned some of the drivers who were with the Serke invaders, Bagnel. What they didn’t know was as interesting as what they did.”

  “Marika, you know very well I do not know what you are howling about. Tell me. Does Most Senior Gradwohl know what you are doing here?”

  “The most senior has ambitions greater than mine.”

  That was not a direct answer, but Bagnel nodded and resumed walking, his step tentative. He glanced at the circling darkships only once. His head lowered against his shoulders again.

  She had rattled him badly, Marika knew. Right now he was questioning everything he knew and believed about his bond. She regretted having had to use him so harshly. He was a friend.

  Given her victory, the day would come when things would balance.

  Wh
en she returned to the street outside the enclave, Grauel asked, “Are they going to cooperate?”

  “I think they will. You can put anything over on anybody if you sound tough enough and confident enough.”

  “And if they are guilty as charged?”

  “That will help a lot.”

  Barlog looked at one of the darkships. “Did you really order…?”

  “Yes. I could not run the bluff without being willing to play part of it out. They might test me.”

  Barlog winced, but said nothing.

  II

  Grauel received the rogue prisoners within the deadline. “But nine of them were given over dead, Marika,” she reported.

  “I expected that. They resisted being turned over, did they?”

  “That is what Bagnel told me.”

  “Want to bet the dead ones could have connected the brethren of the enclave with their movement?”

  “No bet. They had to get their weapons and explosives somewhere. Bagnel slipped me a letter, Marika. A personal communication, he said.”

  “He did?” She was surprised. After what she had put him through? “Let’s see what he has to say.”

  Bagnel said much in few words. He apologized for his brethren having betrayed the conventions. He had not believed her at the gate, but now he had no choice. He was ashamed. As his personal act of contrition, he appended two remarks. “Petroleum in the Zhotak. Pitchblende in the western Ponath.”

  Petroleum she understood instantly. She had to go to references to make sense of the other.

  She hurried to Gradwohl’s quarters. “My cultivating the male Bagnel has finally paid a dividend, mistress,” she reported. She did not mention the brethren yielding the criminals. Gradwohl’s meth would have reported all that already. “He has told me what is so important about our northern provinces.”

  “You broke him down? How? I had begun to think him as stubborn as you.”

  “I shamed him. I showed him how his factors had been making a fool of him, using him in schemes he would not have touched had they asked him directly. But no matter. He has turned over the rogues, and he has given me the reason behind all the years of terror.

  “Petroleum and pitchblende. Our natural resources. Considering what they were willing to risk, the deposits must be huge.”

  “Petroleum I understand.” It was a scarce commodity, very much in demand in the more advanced technological zones farther south. “But what is pitchblende? I have never heard of it.”

  “I had to look it up myself,” Marika admitted. “It is a radioactive ore. A source of the rare heavy elements radium and uranium. There is very little data available in our resources, but there is at least the implication that the heavy elements could become an energy source far more potent than petroleum or other fossil fuels. The brethren already use radioactives as power sources in some of their satellites.”

  “Space. I wonder…. Now I wonder why the Serke would….?”

  “Yes. Suddenly, it looks like we have seen everything backward, does it not? For a long time I thought the Serke were using the brethren. Now I think the brethren have been using the Serke the way the Serke used the nomads. The Serke promised a great prize and secret support. The savages had little real choice, pressed as they were by the onset of the ice age. The brethren in turn baited their snare with the petroleum of the Zhotak. And the Serke leapt on it like an otec onto the scraps of greasy bread huntresses use in their traps along the side creeks. I am sorry. The brethren. I believe they are interested in the pitchblende.”

  “You have evidence?”

  “Only intuition at this point.”

  Silth accepted intuition as a reliable data base. Gradwohl nodded. “Can you guess what their motives might be?”

  “I think that brings us full circle, back to the problem that put me in a position to learn what I have. I think their ultimate goal is the destruction of the silth. Not just the Reugge, a minor Community, but all silth everywhere.”

  “That is stretching intuition into the wildest conjecture, Marika. Into implausible conjecture.”

  “Perhaps. Yet there were those who said that about the connection between the rogues and the enclave brethren. And there is no evidence to the contrary. Nothing to show any great tradermale love for silth. Not so? Who does love us? We even hate ourselves.”

  “I will not permit that kind of talk, Marika.”

  “I am sorry, mistress. Sometimes I grow bitter and am unable to contain myself. May I proceed upon my assumptions?”

  “Proceed? It seems to me that you have handled the situation.” Gradwohl glared suspiciously, sensing that Marika wanted to cling to power momentarily gained. “Now it is time we started planning your Toghar ceremonies.”

  “There will be more incidents, mistress. The brethren have been allowed to create an alternative society. One with far greater appeal to the mass of meth. One in which silth are anachronistic and unnecessary. In nature, the species that is unnecessary soon vanishes.”

  “I am becoming fearful for your sanity, Marika. Intuition is a fine thing, but you persist in going far beyond intuition, into the far realms of speculation, then treating your fantasies as though they are fact. That is a dangerous habit.”

  “Mistress, the brethren have created a viable social alternative. Please think about that. Honestly. You will see what I mean. Their technology is like a demon that has been released from a bottle. We have let it run free for too long, and now there is no getting it back inside. We have let it run free so long that now it nearly possesses the power to destroy us. And we have no control over it. They have cunningly held that in their own paws so long that tradition now has the virtual force of law. Our own traditions of not working with our paws cripple us.”

  “My head understands your arguments. My heart insists you are wrong. But we cannot listen to our hearts always. I will reflect.”

  “We cannot confine ourselves to reacting to threats only, mistress. As in the old folklore, devils spawn devils faster than they can be banished. They will keep on gnawing off little chunks of us unless we go straight after the demons who raise the demons.”

  Gradwohl set aside a traditionalist silth’s exasperation with ideas almost heretical. That, more than her grasp of silth talents, was the ability that had fueled her rise to the first position among the Reugge. “All right, Marika. I will accept your arguments as a form of working hypothesis. You will be replacing Utiel soon. By stretching the imagination, the problems you conjure will fall within the purview of fourth chair. You may pursue solutions. But be careful who you challenge. It will be years yet before the Reugge are in any position to assert independence from the brethren.”

  Marika controlled her features carefully. She exulted inside. Saying that, Gradwohl revealed far more than she knew. She did believe! And somehow, though she did not want it known, she was moving to loosen the chains of tradermale technology.

  “As you wish, mistress. But let us not remain so enamored of our comforts that we allow ourselves to be destroyed for fear of losing them.”

  “The ceremonies, Marika. All your arguments, all your desires, all your ambitions are moot without Toghar. Will you stop ducking and changing the subject? Are we going to secure your future? Or deliver it into the paws of those who would see you fail?”

  Marika sighed. “Yes, mistress.”

  “Can we set a date, Marika? Sometime soon?”

  Fear twisted Marika’s guts. What was the matter with her? Toghar was simple. Countless silth had survived it. None that she had heard of had not. It was less to be feared than facing down the brethren over a few dozen criminals. Why could she not overcome her resistance? “Yes, mistress. I will begin my preparations immediately.”

  Maybe something would come up to delay it.

  III

  “Grauel…. I’m terrified.”

  “Thousands have been through it, Marika.”

  “Millions have been through birthing.”

  “No one has
ever died.” Hard edge to Grauel’s words.

  The birthing remark was the wrong thing to say before her two packmates. “It’s not that. I don’t know how to explain. I’m just scared. Worse than when the nomads came to the packstead. Worse than when they attacked Akard and we all knew we were not going to get out alive. Worse than when I was bluffing Bagnel about attacking brethren aircraft if they tried to leave the enclave.”

  “You were not bluffing.”

  “I guess not. I would have done it if he had forced me. But I didn’t want to. And I don’t want to do this.”

  “I know. I know you’re scared. When you’re genuinely terrified, you can’t shut up.”

  Startled, Marika asked, “Really? Do I give myself away so easily?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “You will have to educate me. I can no longer allow myself to be easily read.”

  Barlog stepped around Grauel, held out the white under-shift that was the first of the garments Marika would don. She appeared less empathetic than did Grauel. But when Marika leaned forward to allow her to slide the shift over her head, Barlog hugged her.

  Each huntress, in her own way, understood well the price of becoming silth. Grauel, who never could bear pups, and Barlog, who had not been allowed since accepting the Reugge bond. Barlog said, “It isn’t too late to leave, Marika.”

  “It’s too late, Barlog. Far too late. There’s nowhere we could go. Nor would they tolerate us trying. I know too much. And I have too many enemies, both within and outside the Community. The only way out is death.”

  “She’s right,” Grauel said. “I’ve heard the sisters talking. Many hope she won’t go through with it. There is a powerful faction ready to take all our heads.”

  Marika walked to a window, looked out on the cloister. “Remember when we rated nothing better than a cell under Akard?”

  “You’ve come a long way,” Grauel admitted. “You’ve done many things of which we couldn’t approve. Things I doubt we can forgive, even knowing what moved you. There are moments when I can’t help but believe what some say, that you’re a Jiana. But I guess you’ve only done what the All demands, and that you’ve had no more choice than we do.”