The Witches of Karres

by James H. Schmiz

  “There is something else we can do,” he said. “And I guess we’ll have to try it now. I was hoping we wouldn’t. It’ll be a risky thing.”

  “What isn’t, here?” Hulik said reasonably. “And anything’s better than running and looking back to see if that Sheem horror is about to tap us on the shoulder!”

  “Let’s move on while I tell you, then,” the captain said. “Vezzarn’s right, of course, about Yango not caring too much about you two. He wants Dani. And he wants what I’ve got here.” He tapped the pocket containing the package of small but indispensable items they’d removed from the Venture just before leaving. “He can’t use the ship without it. And he’ll figure I’m hanging on to that. And to Dani.”

  “Right,” Hulik nodded. The captain pulled the package from his pocket.

  “So if the trail splits again here,” he said, “I’m the one the Spider will follow.”

  Hulik looked down at the package. “And what will I do?”

  “You’ll get down to the ship with this. There are a few separate pieces I’ll give you — you’ll need them all. Get them fitted back in and get the ship aloft. We’ll have Yango pinned then. With the nova guns—”

  Something occurred to him. “Uh, you can handle spaceguns, can’t you?”

  “Unfortunately,” Hulik said, “I can not handle spaceguns. Neither can I get a ship like that aloft, much less maneuver it in atmosphere. I doubt I could even fit all those little pieces you’re offering me back in where they belong.”

  The captain was silent.

  “Too bad Vezzarn panicked,” she told him. “He probably could do all that. But, of course, the Spider would kill you, and Yango would have Dani, anyway, before Vezzarn even reached the ship.”

  “No, not necessarily,” the captain said. “I’ve got something in mind there, too… Miss do Eldel, you could at least get into the ship and close it up until—”

  “Until Yango and the robot come back and burn out the lock? No, thanks! And it isn’t just those two. You know something else has followed us up here, don’t you?”

  The captain grunted. He’d known the slopes had remained unquiet throughout, and in a very odd way. After the first few encounters, nothing much seemed astir immediately around them. But, beginning perhaps a hundred yards off — above, below, on both sides — there’d been, as they climbed higher and threaded their way along the ravines, almost constant indications of covert activity. A suggestion of muted animal voices, the brief clattering of a dislodged stone, momentary shadowy motion. Not knowing whether his companions were aware of it or not, he’d kept quiet. A Sheem Spider seemed enough for anyone to be worrying about…

  “Little noises?” he asked. “Things in the thickets?”

  “Little noises,” Hulik nodded. “Things in the thickets. This and that. We’re being followed and watched. So is Yango. He’s had more than one reason, I think, for staying on the back of his Assassin most of the time.”

  “Whatever those creatures are, they’ve kept their distance,” the captain said. “They don’t seem to have been bothering Yango either.”

  “Almost anything would keep its distance from the Spider!” Hulik remarked. “And perhaps it’s your little witch who’s been holding them away from us. I wouldn’t know. But I’m sticking close to you two while I can, that’s all… So what do you have in mind to do about Yango?”

  The captain chewed his lip. “If it doesn’t work,” he said, “the Spider will have us.”

  “I should think so,” Hulik agreed.

  He glanced at her, said, “Let’s turn back then. We’re going in the wrong direction for that.”

  “Back along our trail?” Hulik said as they swung around.

  “A couple of hundred yards. I noticed a place that looked about right. Just before we saw the robot.” He indicated the cliffs looming over them. “It’ll take pretty steep climbing, I’m afraid!”

  “Up there? You’re not counting on outclimbing the Spider, are you?”

  “No. It should be able to go anywhere we can, faster.”

  “But you’ve thought of a way to stop it.”

  “Not directly,” said the captain. “But we might make Yango stop it — or stop Yango.”

  * * *

  There’d been a time when something had nested or laired on the big rock ledge jutting out from the cliff face and half overhung by it. Its cupped surface still held a litter of withered vegetation and splintered old bones, along with the musty smell of dried animal droppings. A narrow shelf zigzagging away to the right along the cliff might have been the occupant’s means of access.

  Winded and shaking, stretched out full length in the ancient filth, the captain hoped so. Almost any way down from here — except dangling from the jaws or a taloned leg of the Sheem Spider — must be better than the way they had come up. Peering over one corner of the ledge, he stared back along that route. About a hundred and twenty yards of ascent. From here it looked almost straight down and he wondered briefly again how they’d made it. In a kind of panicky rush, he decided, scrabbling for handholds and toeholds, steadying each other for an instant now and then when a solid-looking point crumbled and powdered as human weight came on it, not daring to hesitate or stop to think — to think, in particular, of the distance growing between them and the foot of the cliff below. And then he’d given the do Eldel’s smallish, firm rear a final desperate boost, come scrambling up over the corner of the ledge behind her, and collapsed on the mess half filling the wide, shallow, wonderfully horizontal rock cup.

  They unroped Goth from him then, and laid her down against the cliff under the sloping roof of the ledge. She scowled and murmured something, then abruptly turned over on her side, drew her knees up to her chin, and was gone and lost again, child face smoothing into placidity, in the dream worlds of Yango’s special drug. He and Hulik stretched out face down, one at each comer of the big stone lip, holding their guns, peering from behind a screen of the former occupant’s litter at the shadowy thickets and boulders below.

  They had come past there with Vezzarn, not many minutes before, along a shoulder of rock, scanning the lower slopes for any signs of pursuit. And there, in not many more minutes, Yango and the Spider must also appear. The robot might discover the trail was doubling back at that point and swerve with its rider directly towards the cliff. Or stride on and return. In either case the Agandar soon would know his quarry had gone up the rock.

  If he rode the robot up after them, they would have him. That was the plan. They’d let him get good and high. Their guns couldn’t harm the Sheem machine, but at four yards’ range they would tear the Agandar’s head from his shoulders if he didn’t make the right moves. Nothing more than the guns would be showing. The war robot’s beam would have only the ponderous ledge overhanging it and its master for a target.

  With a gun staring at him from either corner of the ledge, caught above a hundred yard drop, Yango wasn’t likely to argue. He’d toss up his control devices. They’d let the Spider take him back to the foot of the cliff then before they gave the gadgets the twist that deactivated and collapsed it…

  “And if,” Hulik had asked, “he does not come riding up on the thing? He might get ideas about this ledge and wait below while it climbs up without him to see if we’re hiding here or have gone on.”

  “Then we shoot Yango.”

  “That part will be a pleasure,” the do Eldel remarked. “But what will the robot do then?”

  They didn’t know that, but there was some reason to think the Sheem Spider would be no menace to them afterwards. It must have instructions not to kill in this situation — at least not to kill indiscriminately — until the Agandar had Goth safe. The instructions might hold it in check when they shot down Yango. Or they might not.

  * * *

  Something like a short, hard cannon-crack tore the air high above the valley, startled them both into lifting their heads. They looked at each other.

  “Thunder,” the captain said qu
ietly. “I’ve been hearing some off and on. The sound came again as he spoke, more distantly and from another angle, far off in the mountains.”

  “No,” Hulik said, “it’s them. They’re looking for us.”

  He glanced at her uneasily. She nodded towards the valley. “It goes with the great, deep sound we heard down there — and other things. They’ve been moving around us. Circling. They’re looking for us and they’re coming closer.”

  “Who’s looking for us?” asked the captain.

  “The owners of this world. We’ve disturbed them and they don’t like visitors. The things that’ve been following us are their spies. Old Horny was a spy — he flew off to tell about us. A while ago a shadow was moving along the other side of the valley. I thought they’d discovered us then but it went away again. It’s because we’re so small, I think. They don’t know what they’re looking for, and so far they haven’t been able to find us. But they’re getting close.”

  Her voice was low and even, her face quite calm. “We may stop Yango here, but I don’t think we’ll be able to get away from this world again. It’s too late for that! So it doesn’t really matter so much about the Spider.” She nodded towards the captain’s right. “It’s coming now, Captain!”

  He dropped his head back behind the tangle of dusty, withered stuff he’d arranged before him, watching the thickets below on the right through it. For a moment, half screened by the growth, a pale green glimmer moved among the rocks, then disappeared again. Still perhaps two hundred yards away! He glanced briefly back at Hulik. She’d flattened down, too, gun hand next to her chin, head lifted just enough to let her peer out from the left side of the ledge. Whatever fearful and fantastic thoughts she’d developed about this red-shadowed world, she evidently didn’t intend to let them interfere with concluding their business with the Agandar. If anything, her notions seemed to be steadying her as far as the Sheem Assassin was concerned — as if that were now an insignificant terror. She might, he thought uncomfortably, be not too far from a state of lunatic indifference to what happened next.

  No time to worry about it now. The green glow reappeared from around an outcropping; and with a smooth shifting of great jointed legs, the Spider moved into view, Yango riding it, gripping the narrow connecting section of the segmented body between his knees. The Spider’s head swung from side to side in a steady searching motion which seemed to keep time with the flowing walk; the paired jaws opened and closed. Seen at this small distance, it was difficult to think of it as a machine and not the awesome hunting animal which had been its model. But the machine was more deadly than the animal could ever have been…

  There was the faintest of rustling noises to the captain’s left. He turned his head, very cautiously because the Sheem Spider and its rider were moving across the rock shoulder directly in front of them now, saw with a start of dismay that Hulik had lifted her gun, was easing it forward through the concealing pile of litter before her, head tilted as she sighted along it. If she triggered the blaster now -

  But she didn’t. Whether she decided it was too long a shot in this dim air or remembered in time that only if they failed to trap Yango and his machine on the cliff were they to try to finish off the man, the captain couldn’t guess. But the robot’s long, gliding stride carried it on beyond a dense thicket at the left of the ledge, and it and the Agandar were out of sight again. Hulik slowly drew back her gun, remained motionless, peering down.

  There was silence for perhaps a minute. Not complete silence. The captain grew aware of whisperings of sound, shadow motion, stealthy stirrings, back along the stretch the Agandar had come. Yango had brought an escort up from the valley with him, as they had… Then, off on the left, some distance away, he heard the heavy singsong snarl of the Sheem Spider.

  Hulik twisted her head towards him, lips silently shaping the word “Vezzarn.” He nodded. The pursuit seemed checked for the moment at the point where Vezzarn’s trail had turned away from theirs.

  The snarls subsided. Silence again… and after some seconds he knew Yango was on his way back, because the minor rustlings below ended. The unseen escort was falling back as the robot approached. Perhaps another minute passed. He glanced over at Hulik, saw a new tension in her. But there was nothing visible as yet from his side of the ledge. The massively curved jut of the rock cut off part of his view.

  Then, over a hundred yards down, on the sloping ground at the foot of the cliff, the Sheem Spider came partly out from under the ledge. Two of the thick, bristling legs appeared first, followed by the head and a forward section of the body. It moved with stealthy deliberation, stopped again and stood dead still, head turned up, the double jaws continuing a slow chewing motion. He could make out the line of small, bright-yellow eyes across the upper part of the big head, but there was not enough of the thing in sight to tell him whether Yango was still on its back. Hulik knew, of course. The robot must have come gliding quietly through the thickets on their left and emerged almost directly below her.

  Shifting very cautiously — the thing seemed to be staring straight up at him — the captain turned his head behind his flimsy barricade, looked over at Hulik. She had her gun ready again, was sighting down along it, unmoving. The gun wasn’t aimed at the Spider; the angle wasn’t steep enough for that. So Yango -

  The captain’s eyes searched the part of the thickets he could see behind the robot. Something moved slightly there, moved again, stopped. A half-crouched figure interested in keeping as much screening vegetation as it could between itself and possible observers from above. The Agandar.

  The Spider still hadn’t stirred. The captain inched his gun forwards, brought it to bear on the center of the crouching man-shape. Not too good a target in that tangle, if it came to shooting! But perhaps it wouldn’t. If the robot’s sensor equipment couldn’t detect them here, if they made no incautious move, Yango still might decide they weren’t in the immediate neighborhood and remount the thing before it began its ascent along their trail…

  That thought ended abruptly.

  The robot reared, front sets of legs spread, swung in towards the cliff face and, with that, passed again beyond the captain’s limited range of vision. He didn’t see the clawed leg tips reach up, test the rough rock for holds and settle in; but he could hear them. Then there were momentary glimpses of the thing’s shaggy back, as it drew itself off the ground and came clambering up towards the ledge.

  Heart thudding, he took up the slack on the trigger, held the gun pointed as steadily as he could at Yango’s half hidden shape. When he heard Hulik’s blaster, he’d fire, too, at once. But otherwise wait — a few seconds longer; wait, in fact, as long as he possibly could! For Yango might move, present a better target, or he might discover some reason to check the robot’s ascent before it reached the ledge. If they fired now and missed -

  Sudden rattle and thud of dislodged rock below! The section of the robot’s back he could see at the moment jerked sharply. The thing had lost a hold, evidently found another at once for it was steady again — and startlingly close! Already it seemed to have covered more than half the distance to the ledge.

  And down in the thickets, apprehensive over the robot’s near-slip, Yango was coming to his feet — instantly recognizing his mistake and ducking again as Hulik’s blaster spat. The captain shot, too, but at a figure flattened down, twisting sideways through dense cover, then gone. He stopped shooting.

  From below the ledge came a noise somewhere between the robot’s usual snarl and the hiss of escaping steam. Hulik was still firing, methodically shredding the thicket about the point where the Agandar had last been in view. The captain came up on hands and knees, leaned forward, looked down at the robot.

  The thing had slewed halfway around on the cliff, head twisted at a grotesque angle as it stared at the whipping thicket. The hissing rose to giant shrieks. It swung back to its previous position. From between the black jaws protruded a thick gray tube, pointed up at the ledge. The captain threw hi
mself sideways, caught Hulik’s ankle, dragged her back through the lair litter to the cliff wall with him, pulled her around beside Goth.

  The ledge shuddered in earthquake throes as the Sheem robot’s war-beam slammed into it from below. It was thick, solid rock, and many tons of it, but it wasn’t battle-steel. It lasted for perhaps two seconds; then most of it separated into four great chunks and dropped. Halfway down, the falling mineral mass scraped the robot from the cliff and took it along. Through the thunderous crash of impact on the slope below the cliff came sharper explosive sounds which might have been force fields collapsing. When the captain and Hulik peered down from what was left of the ledge a moment later, they could make out a few scraps of what looked like shaggy brown fur lying about in the wreckage of rocks. The Spider hadn’t lasted either…

  * * *

  The captain sucked in a deep lungful of air, looked at Goth’s face. She was smiling a little, might have been peacefully asleep in her own bed. Some drug! “Better move!” he remarked unsteadily. He fished rope from his pocket, shoved his gun back into the pocket. “Think you hit Yango?”

  Hulik didn’t answer. She was sitting on her heels, face turned towards the dim red sky above the valley, lips parted, eyes remote. As if listening to something. “Hulik!” he said sharply.

  The do Eldel blinked, looked at him. “Yango? Yes… I got him twice, at least. He’s dead, I suppose.” Her voice was absent, indifferent.

  “Help me get Dani back up! We—”

  Thunderclap! Monstrously loud — the captain had the impression it had ripped the air no more than four hundred yards above them. Then a series of the same sounds, still deafening but receding quickly as if spaced along a straight line in the sky towards the mouth of the valley and beyond. There were no accompanying flashes of light. As the racket faded, a secondary commotion was erupting on the slopes about the foot of the cliff — hooting, howling, yapping voices, a flapping of wings, shadowy shapes gliding up into the air. And all that, too, moved rapidly away, subsided again.