Doomstalker

by Glen Cook

  But it was neat — obsessively neat, reflecting Horvat’s personality. Bhlase moved about, studying this and that. Marika gawked. The male handed the lamp back to Kublin. Then he started piling leather bags and sealed pottery jars into Marika’s arms. “Those go to the firepit.”

  Though irked by his tone, Marika did as she was told. Bhlase followed with a load of his own. He ordered their plunder neatly, set the pups down, gave Kublin and Marika each a mortar and pestle. He settled between them with his legs surrounding a kettle. He drew a knife.

  Marika was astonished. The kettle was copper, the knife iron.

  Bhlase opened one leather bag and used a ceramic spoon to ladle dried, crushed leaves into Marika’s mortar bowl. “Grind that into powder. I’ll need ten more like that.”

  Marika began the dull task. Bhlase turned to Kublin. More, but different, dried, crushed leaves went into his mortar bowl. These gave off a pungent odor immediately. “Ten from you, too, Kublin.”

  Marika recalled that Bhlase had been accepted by Skiljan because of his knowledge of herbs and such, which exceeded that of Pohsit.

  But what were they doing?

  Bhlase had brought several items Marika connected only with cooking. A sieve. A cutting board. A grater. The grater he set into the kettle. He cut the wax seal off one of the jars and removed several wrinkled, almost meth-shaped roots. He grated them into the bowl. A bitter scent rose.

  “That is good enough, Marika.” He took her mortar bowl, dumped it into the sieve, flung the bigger remains into the firepit. They flashed and added a grassy aroma to the thousands of smells haunting the loghouse. “Nine more will do it. How is yours coming, Kublin? Yes. That is fine. Dump it here. Good. Nine more for you.”

  “Are you not scared, Bhlase?” Marika asked. He seemed unreasonably calm.

  “I have been through this before. When I was a pup, nomads besieged our packstead. They are ferocious but not very smart. Kill a few and they will run away till they have eaten their dead.”

  “That is awful.”

  “They are awful.” Bhlase finished grating roots. He put the grater aside, sieved again, then took up the cutting board. The jar he opened this time contained dead insects the size of the last joint on Marika’s smallest finger. He halved each longwise, cut each half crosswise, scraped the results into the kettle. After finishing the insects he opened a jar which at first seemed to contain only a milky fluid. After he poured that into the pot, though, he dumped several dozen fat white grubs onto his cutting board.

  “What are we making, Bhlase?” Kublin asked.

  “Poison. For the arrowheads and spearheads and javelins.”

  “Oh!” Marika nearly dropped her pestle.

  Bhlase was amused. “It is harmless now. Except for these.” He indicated the grubs, which he was dicing with care. “All this will have to simmer together for a long time.”

  “We have never used poisons,” Kublin said.

  “I was not here last time nomads came to the Degnan packstead,” Bhlase replied. Marika thought she detected a certain arrogance behind his words.

  “None of us were,” she countered. “That was so long ago Granddam was leader.”

  “That is true, too.” Bhlase broached another jar of grubs. And another after that. Kublin and Marika finished their grinding. Bhlase continued doing grubs till the copper kettle was filled to within three inches of its rim. He took that to a tripod Horvat had prepared, hung it, adjusted it just so over the fire. He beckoned.

  “I am going to build the fire just as it must be,” he said. “You two keep it exactly the same.” He thrust a long wooden spoon into the pot. “And stir it each few minutes. The insects tend to float. The grubs sink. Try not to breathe too much of the steam.”

  “For how long?” Kublin asked.

  “Till it is ready.”

  Marika and Kublin exchanged pained glances. Pups always got stuck with the boring jobs.

  Over by the other firepit, the huntresses and Wise were still trying to get the prisoner to say something useful. He still refused. The loghouse was growing chilly, what with the coming and going of meth from other loghouses.

  “Pohsit is enjoying herself,” Marika observed, stirring the poison. She kept rehearsing the formula in her mind. She had recognized all the ingredients. None were especially rare. It might become useful knowledge one day.

  Kublin looked at Pohsit, gulped, and concentrated on the fire.

  II

  So time fled. Sharpening of tools into weapons. Making of crude javelins, spears, and arrows. Males and older pups drilling with the cruder weapons over and over. The initial frenzy of preparation faded as nothing immediate occurred. The lookouts saw no sign of imminent nomad attack. No sign of nomads at all.

  Was the crisis over without actually beginning?

  The captive died never having said anything of interest — as Marika had expected. The huntresses dragged him out and hurled him off the stockade to lie in the snow before the gate, mute and mutilated. A warning.

  Marika wished she had had a chance to talk with the prisoner. She knew next to nothing about the lands beyond the Zhotak.

  The huntresses chafed at their confinement, though their restlessness sprang entirely from their minds. In winter they often went longer without leaving the packstead. There were disputes about whether or not the gate should be opened. Bitter cold continued to devour wood stores.

  Skiljan and Gerrien kept the gate sealed.

  The weather conspired to support them.

  Marika took her turn in the watchtower and saw the nothing she expected to see. Her watch was not long, but it was cold. An ice storm had coated everything with crystal. Footing was treacherous everywhere. Males not otherwise occupied cleared ice and snow and erected platforms behind the stockade so huntresses could hurl missiles from their vantage. A few tried to break stones loose from the pile kept for use in a possible raid, but they had trouble. The ice storm had frozen the pile into a single glob.

  Kublin called the alarm during his afternoon watch. The huntresses immediately assumed his imagination had gotten the best of him, he being a flighty pup and male to boot. But a pair of huntresses clambered up the tower, their weight making it creak and sway, as had been done with several earlier false alarms.

  Kublin was not a victim of his imagination, though at first he had trouble convincing the huntresses that he was indeed seeing what he saw. His eyes were very sharp. Once he did convince them, they dismissed him. He returned to the loghouse to bask in unaccustomed attention.

  “I saw smoke,” he announced proudly. “A lot of smoke, far away.”

  Skiljan questioned him vigorously — “What direction? How far? How high did it rise? What color was it?” — till he became confused and frustrated.

  His answers caused a stir.

  Marika had less experience of the far countryside than did her elders. It took her longer to understand.

  Smoke in that direction, east, at that distance, in that color, could mean only one thing. The packstead of their nearest neighbors, the Laspe, was burning. And packsteads did not burn unless intentionally set ablaze.

  The Degnan packstead frothed with argument again. The central question was: to send scouts or not. Skiljan and Gerrien wanted to know exactly what had happened. Many of those who only hours earlier had demanded the gate be opened now wanted it kept closed. Even a large portion of the Wise did not want to risk huntresses if the nomads were that close.

  Skiljan settled the question by fiat. She gathered a dozen huntresses of like mind and marched out. She had her companions arm as huntresses seldom did, with an assortment of missile weapons, hatchets and axes, knives, and even a few shields. Shields normally were used only in mock combats fought during the celebrations held at the turning of each season.

  Marika crowded into the watchtower with the sentry on duty. She watched her dam’s party slip and slide across the ice-encrusted snowfields till they vanished into the woods east of the packstea
d.

  When she returned to her loghouse, they gave her the iron axe her dam had been sharpening, and showed her what to do. Skiljan had taken it from the nomads she had slain. It had not been cared for properly. Many hours would be required to give it a proper edge.

  Not far away, Pobuda and several others — Wise, males, and huntresses who pretended to some skill in metalworking — were etching the blades of arrowheads and spears. Bhlase sat in the center of their circle with his pot of poison, carefully painting a brown, gummy substance into the etchings with a tiny brush. Marika noted that he wore gloves. The young huntress who carried the finished weapons away also wore gloves, and racked them out of the reach of the younger pups.

  Marika soon grew bored with grinding the axe’s edge. She had too much energy to sit still all the time. Too many strange thoughts fled through her mind while she ran the whetstone over that knicked piece of iron. She tried to banish the thoughts, to touch her dam.

  There were distractions. The touch came and went. She followed the scouting party peripatetically. Mostly, she tasted their fear. Kublin kept coming to her with questions in his eyes. She kept shaking her head till his curiosity frayed her temper. “Get away!” she snarled. “Leave me alone! I’ll tell you when there’s something to tell.”

  Sometimes she tried to touch Grauel, who carried the Degnan’s message to the packfast. She could not find Grauel. But she did not worry. Grauel was the best of the pack in field and forest. If she did not get through, none could, and there was no hope from that direction.

  The scouts returned at dusk, unharmed but grim. Again Skiljan’s loghouse filled with the adult female population of the packstead. This evening they were more subdued, for they sensed that the news was bad. Skiljan’s report was terse.

  “Nomads attacked the Laspe packstead. They managed to breach the palisade. They took the stores and weapons and tools, fired the loghouses, and ran away. They did not kill everyone, nor did they take many of the pups. Survivors we talked to said the nomads have taken the Brust packstead and are using it as their base.”

  End of report. What was not said was as frightening as what was. The Laspe, without stores or tools or weapons, would not survive. The Brust, of course, would all be dead already.

  Someone suggested the Laspe pack’s huntresses be brought into the Degnan packstead. “Extra paws to bear arms when the nomads come here. And thus the pack name would not die. Come summer they could take new males and rebuild.”

  Skiljan shook her head. “The nomads are barbarians but not fools. They did slay every female of pupbearing age. The huntresses forced them.” She looked at the huntress who had spoken as though she were a fool.

  That was the meth way — savagery to the last in defense of the pack. Only those too young or too old to lift a weapon would have been spared. The Laspe could be stricken from the roll of upper Ponath packs.

  Marika was amazed everyone took the news with such calm. Two packs known obliterated. It had been several generations since even one had been overrun completely. It was a huge disaster, and portended far worse to come.

  “What about the nomads?” someone asked. Despite tension, the gathering continued subdued, without snarling or jostling. “How heavy a price did they pay?”

  “Not a price dear enough. The Laspe survivors claimed there were ten tens of tens of attackers.”

  A disbelieving murmur ran through the gathering.

  “It does sound impossible. But they left their dead behind. We examined dozens of bodies. Most were armed males.” This assertion caused another stir, heavy with distress. “They wore fetishes identifiable as belonging to more than twenty different packs. We questioned a young male left for dead, that the Laspe had not yet tortured. His will was less strong than that of our recent guest. He had much to say before he died.”

  Another stir. Then everyone waited expectantly.

  Skiljan said, “He claimed the spring saw the rise of a powerful wehrlen among the nomads. A rogue male of no apparent pack, who came out of nowhere and who made his presence felt throughout the north in a very short time.”

  A further and greater stir, and now some mutters of fear.

  A wehrlen? Marika thought. What was that? It was a word she did not know. There was so much she did not know.

  At the far end of the loghouse, the males had ceased working and were paying close attention. They were startled and frightened. Their fur bristled. They knew, whatever a wehrlen was.

  Murmurs of “rogue” and “male silth” fluttered through the gathering. It seemed Marika was not alone in not recognizing the word.

  “He began by overwhelming the females of an especially strong and famous pack. Instead of gathering supplies for the winter, he marched that pack into the territory of a neighbor. He used the awe of his fighters and his powers to overcome its huntresses. He added it to the force he had already, and so on, expanding till he controlled scores of packs. The prisoner said the news of him began to run before him. He fired the north with a vision of conquest. He has entered the upper Ponath, not just because it is winter and the game has migrated out of the north, but to recapture the Ponath from us, whose foredams took the land from the ancestors of the nomads. The prisoner even suggested that the wehrlen one day wants to unite all the packs of the world. Under his paw.”

  The Wise muttered among themselves. Those who had opposed the sending of Grauel to the packfast put their heads together. After a time one rose to announce, “We withdraw our former objections to petitioning the silth. This is an abomination of the filthiest sort. There is no option but to respond with the power of the older abomination.”

  Only crazy old Zertan remained adamantly against having any intercourse with the packfast.

  Skiljan said, “Gerrien and I talked while returning from the Laspe packstead. It is our feeling that another message must be sent. The silth must know what we have learned today. It might encourage them to send help. If not that, they must know for their own sakes.”

  The motion carried. One of Gerrien’s huntresses, Barlog, was selected for the task and sent out immediately. Meth did not enjoy traveling by night, but that was the safer time. By dawn Barlog should be miles ahead of any nomad who might cross her trail.

  What could be done had been done. There was nothing more to discuss. The outsiders went away.

  Saettle called the pups to lessons.

  Marika took the opportunity to ask about the wehrlen. Saettle would not answer in front of the younger pups. She seemed embarrassed. She said, “Such monsters, like grauken, are better not discussed while they are howling outside the stockade.”

  It was plain enough there were no circumstances under which Saettle would explain. Baffled, Marika retreated to her furs.

  Kublin wanted to talk about it. “Zambi says —”

  “Zambi is a fool,” she snapped without hearing what her other littermate had to say. Then, aware that she was behaving foolishly herself, she called, “Zambi? Where are you? Come here.”

  Grumbling surlily, her other littermate came out of the far shadows, where he had been clustered with his cronies. He was big for his age. He looked old enough to leave the packstead already. He had gotten the size and strength and endurance that Kublin had been shorted. “What do you want?” he demanded.

  “I want to know what you know about this wehrlen thing.”

  Zamberlin rolled his eyes. “The All forfend. You waste my time...” He stopped. Marika’s lips were back, her eyes hot. “All right. All right. Don’t get all bothered. All I know is Poogie said Wart said he heard Horvat say a wehrlen is like a Wise meth, only a lot more so. Like a male sagan, I guess, only he don’t have to be old. Like a male silth, Horvat said. Only I don’t know what that is.”

  “Thank you, Zambi.”

  “Don’t call me that, Marika. My name is Zamberlin.”

  “Oh. Listen to the big guy. Go on back to your friends.”

  Kublin wanted to talk. Marika did not. She said, “Let me go to s
leep, Kub.” He let her be, but for a long time she lay curled in her furs thinking.

  Someone wakened her in the night for a brief stint in the watchtower. She bundled herself and went, and spent her time studying the sky. The clouds had cleared away. The stars were bright, though few and though only the two biggest moons were up, Biter and Chaser playing their eternal game of tag. The light they shed was not enough to mask the fainter stars.

  Still, only a few score were visible.

  Something strange, that sea of darkness above. Stars were other suns, the books said. So far away that one could not reach them if one walked a thousand lifetimes — if there was a road. According to Saettle’s new book, though, the meth of the south knew ways through the great dark. They wandered among the stars quite regularly...

  Silth. That name occurred in the new book, though in no way that explained what silth were, or why the Wise should fear them so. It was silth sisters, the book said, who ventured across the ocean of night.

  Nothing happened during Marika’s watch, as she had expected. Meth did not move by night if they could avoid it. The dark was a time of fear...

  How, then, did these silth creatures manage the gulf between the stars? How did they breathe? Saettle’s book said there was no air out there.

  Marika’s relief startled her. She felt the tower creak and sway, came back to reality with a guilty start. The nomads could have slipped to and over the palisade without her noticing.

  She returned to her furs and lay awake a long time, head aswirl with stars. She tried to follow the progress of the messengers and was startled at how clearly the touch came tonight. She could grasp wisps of their thoughts.

  Grauel was far down the river now, traveling by moonlight, and only hours away from the packfast. She had expected to arrive sooner but had been delayed by deep drifts in places, and by having to avoid nomads a few times. Barlog was making better time, gaining on the other huntress. She was thinking of continuing after sunrise.

  Emboldened by her success, Marika strayed farther afield, curious about the packfast itself. But she could not locate the place, and there was no one there she knew. There was no familiar resonance she could home in on.