"Gelmar. Tell your people to move."
The cavalcade moved, reluctantly, thinking of weapons left behind. Riders hunched in saddles, covered faces from stinging sand. Little drifts piled on Halk's litter.
They passed a marker, and Stark was squinting ahead trying to see the next one when Gerd said:
Humans. There.
Stark rode closer to Gelmar. "What humans? Hooded Men? The wayhouse?"
Gelmar nodded.
They went on.
When Stark reckoned they were far enough away from the buried weapons to make impractical any attempt to recover them, he reached out and caught Gelmar's bridle.
"We leave you here. Follow too closely and your servants die."
Kill Yur? Gerd asked hopefully.
Not unless I tell you.
"After you have secured the wayhouse," Gelmar said, "what then?"
"He will leave us to die in the sand," said Vasth "May Old Sun shrivel the men from the stars!"
The cavalcade had halted, bunching together behind Gelmar.
"I would prefer to show you the same mercy you have shown us," said Stark. "But if you make it to the wayhouse, I'll not deny you shelter."
Gelmar smiled. "You could not. The hounds would force you to let us in."
"I know," said Stark. "Otherwise I might be less generous."
He rode away from the party, with Ashton and Gerrith and the litter.
Lead us to humans, he said to Gerd, knowing that Gelmar would be following the same mental beacon. They could forget about the markers.
They plunged on, across whaleback dunes that blurred and shifted shape beneath them. The litter swayed and jolted. Stark was sorry for Halk, but there was no help for it. The desert cried out in torment, a great hissing gritty wail rose and circled and fell away again to a deep moaning.
Then, abruptly, the wind dropped. The lower air cleared in the sudden stillness. Old Sun shone raggedly above. From the top of a ridge they saw the wayhouse half a mile or so ahead, a thick low structure of stone with a series of drift-walls about it to keep the desert out.
Ashton pointed away and said, "God Almighty."
A tsunami, a tidal wave of sand, rushed toward them out of the northeast. It filled the whole horizon. Its crest of dusty foam curled halfway up the sky. Below, it was a brightish ocher shading down through dirty reds and browns to a boiling darkness at the bottom that was almost black.
Stark saw a scudding of many shapes that ran fleetly before the edges of that blackness.
For the second time Gerd said, Things come.
Gelmar's party appeared on the back trail, clear in the placid air. They paused and looked northeastward, then came on again at a run.
Stark lashed the beasts forward. The wave had a voice, a roaring almost too deep for the human ear to register. The heart felt it, and the marrow of the bones, and the spasming gut. Even the animals forgot their weariness.
All at once Gerd spoke urgently in Stark's mind. Wandsman says come, N'Chaka. Come now or things kill.
He turned with the pack and raced away down the back trail, answering Gelmar's call.
7
Stark said, Gerd, come back!
The hounds ran on.
Danger, N'Chaka. Guard Wandsmen. You come.
"What is it?" shouted Ashton, his voice a thin thread against the far-off roaring. "Where are they going?"
"To guard the Wandsmen." The overriding imperative, the instinct bred in the bone. And Gelmar's cry for help must have been urgent enough, what with his escort unarmed and the Runners coming. Stark swore. If he let the pack go without him, N'Chaka might never regain his authority. He could not make the hounds return to him. Neither could he afford to let Gelmar get control of them.
"I have to go with them." He waved the others on. "Get to the wayhouse, Simon." Gerrith's face, pale under the bronze, and framed in dark fur, stared at him. The litter careened wildly, the muffled form within it so still that Stark wondered if any life was left. "Go!" he yelled. "Go!" He reined his beast around and sent it staggering after the hounds, his thoughts as black as the base of the sand wave.
He met Gelmar's party in a space between two dunes. All the Yur were on foot now, running more strongly than the beasts. Two ran at the head of each Wandsman's mount, helping it along. The Northhounds hovered on the flanks.
Gelmar looked at Stark with a certain cruel amusement. "I wondered if you'd come."
Stark did not answer. He fell in at the head of the party, sword in hand. The crest of the wave, outspeeding the base, began to spread overhead. Dirty veils of grit trailed down from it. The air was thickening again. When they topped a dune, Stark could see the wall of sand sweeping nearer.
The Runners scudded before it as if riding a sandstorm gave them even more pleasure than sex or feeding. It was a game, such as Stark had seen strong-winged birds play with storm winds, and there was a sinister beauty in the flickering movement of bending shapes, a sort of dark dance, swift and doomsome. He could not count the creatures, but he guessed at half a hundred. Perhaps more.
They were not moving at random. They had a goal. "The wayhouse?"
"There is food there. Men and animals."
"How do they attack?"
"With the stormfront. While their victims are stunned and suffocating, they feed. They survive the dust, and they seem to enjoy the violence. They strike like Strayer's Hammer."
Strayer was a god of the forges worshipped by certain iron-working folk on the other side of the mountains. Stark had had some experience of that hammer.
"We must have shelter," he said, "before the sand wave hits, or we'll be so scattered that even the hounds won't be able to help us."
From the next ridge Stark made out the smudged images of Ashton, Gerrith and the litter. They had reached the walls and begun to pass through a gate. Stark lost sight of them as he came sliding down to the flat. Flying grit blinded him. The ground shook. The huge solemn roaring filled the world. Half a mile.
Seven and a half minutes walking. Half of that running flat out for your life.
Stay close, Gerd! Lead to humans! Gerd's head pressed his knee. He felt the hound tremble.
No worse than snowblind storm on Worldheart. Lead, Gerd!
Grith came shouldering up beside her mate. We lead.
The air was a darkening turmoil. They fled across the face of the storm, toward the walls they could no longer see.
Things come, N'Chaka.
Kill?
Too far. Soon.
Hurry, then!
Wind plucked at them, trying to lift them into the sky. Stark counted seconds. At one hundred and seventy a wall loomed in the murk, so close that they almost came against it. The gate. The gate!
Here, N'Chaka.
An opening. They passed through it. Now that they were within the walls the fury of the wind seemed to abate somewhat, or else there was a space of dead air just before the wave. They could see the squat stone house ahead, beyond an inner wall and forever out of reach. They could see, much closer to them, some long low pens for the sheltering of animals, roofed over and open to the south, empty.
They could see the wave burst over the northeast walls in great boiling spouts of sand, dun-colored against black.
The Runners came with the boiling sand spouts, skimming the ground with outstretched arms. They were filled with a demoniac energy, as though they drew strength from the dynamics of wind and erupting desert.
Stark dropped from the back of his foundering beast and caught tight hold of Gerd's coarse neck-fur with his left hand. The Yur were behind him, fairly carrying the Wandsmen, the hounds hanging close, shoulders jostling. The pens offered no security but they were shelter of a sort, better than the open. They flung themselves under the nearest roof, against the nearest wall.
The wave hit.
Black, roar, dust, cracking, shaking, world falling. The wind hated them for cheating it. The air beneath the roof was thick with sand, and the sand had faces in
it, gargoyle faces, film-eyed and browless, with great snapping teeth.
Kill!
The hounds killed.
Part of the roof ripped away. Runners were there, kicking, tearing. Their strength was appalling. The hounds killed, but some of the Runners plummeted down through the holes, onto the prey beneath. The Yur had placed the Wandsmen in a corner and formed a human wall across their front. They had only their hands to fight with. Runner jaws clamped on the living flesh and did not let go.
Stark killed with a furious loathing, slashing at anything that moved in the blind dust. There was a foul stink. The screaming of the Runners in rage and hunger and deadly fear came thin and terrible through the storm.
The hounds killed until they were tired.
Too many, N'Chaka. Strong.
Kill, kill, or Wandsmen die!
He did not care if the Wandsmen died. He only wanted to live himself.
The hounds killed.
The last of the Runner pack went whimpering away after the passing storm, to seek easier prey. There were heaps of ugly bodies left behind. But the hounds were too weary for play. They sat and hung their heads and let their tongues loll.
N'Chaka, we thirst.
Spent and shaken, Stark stood staring at the pack.
"They have their limits," said Gelmar. His face was ashen. "Of course they have." One of the Yur was beside him. "Give him your sword." And again, impatiently, "Your sword, Stark! Unless you wish to do the thing yourself."
The Wandsmen were unharmed. Two of the Yur were dead. Three others had been torn beyond hope. Runner corpses were still attached to them, blood dripping from obscene jaws.
Stark handed over his sword.
Quickly and efficiently the Yur gave each the mercy-stroke. The eyes of the victims watched without emotion and became only a shade less bright in the beautiful blank faces as death overtook them. The uninjured servants stood by impassively. When he was finished, the Yur wiped the blade and returned the sword to Stark.
And it had all happened in the space of a few minutes. The concentrated savagery of the attack had been shocking. Stark realized that Gelmar was looking at the Runner bodies with a sort of horrified fascination.
"Never seen them before?"
"Only from a distance. And never . . ." Gelmar seemed to hesitate over some inner thought. "Never so many."
"Each year they come in greater numbers, Lord."
It was a new voice, authoritative and strong. Stark saw that four men had appeared in the open side of the pen. They were little more than shadows in the blowing dust. Hooded cloaks of leather, dyed the color of bittersweet, whipped about tall lean bodies. Faces were hidden behind wrappings of cloth of the same color, all but the eyes, which were blue and piercing. The man who had spoken stood in the chief's place ahead of the others. Pendant upon his forehead, under the hood, was a dull orange stone set in gold, much scratched and worn.
"We saw you just before the storm struck, Lord, but we were not able to come."
He was staring, as they all were, at the bodies of the Runners.
"The Northhounds did this?"
Gelmar said, "Yes."
The Hooded Man made a sign in the air and muttered something, glancing sidelong at the great hounds. Then he straightened and spoke to Gelmar. But his cold gaze had turned to Stark.
"In the house are two men and a woman who came just before you. The gray-headed man we saw before, when the Wandsmen brought him north some months ago. They admitted they had been your prisoners. They told us that this stranger leads the Northhounds, so that they no longer obey you, and that we must take orders from him. We know, of course, that this is a lie."
He tossed back his cloak to show a sword, short and wickedly curved, and a knife whose iron grip looped over the knuckles for striking and was set with cruel studs.
"How do you wish us to take this man, Lord—alive or dead?"
8
Gerd moved his head and growled, catching the man's thought.
N'Chaka?
Send fear. Him! Not kill!
Gerd's hellhound gaze fixed on this tall chief of the Ochar, First-Come of the Seven Hearths of Kheb, and crumpled him sobbing into the dust like a terror-stricken child. His companions were too astonished to move.
"No!" cried Gelmar. "Stop it, Gerd!"
The hound whined irritably. N'Chaka?
Stark dropped his sword and caught Gerd's head, both sides, by the skin of his jowls.
Wandsmen not threatened. N'Chaka is. Who do you follow?
Have it out now, Stark thought. Now. Or we're back where we started, all of us—Gerrith, myself, Simon, Halk—all prisoners of the Wandsmen.
He drew houndskin tight between his fingers, stared into hot hound eyes.
Send fear.
The Ochar chief gasped and groveled in the sand.
"No," said Gelmar, who came and put his hand on Gerd's shoulder. "I forbid you, Gerd. You belong to us, to the Wandsmen. Obey me."
The Ochar chief ceased to struggle. He continued to sob. The three other men had moved away from him, as if he had been suddenly bewitched and they feared to be caught by the same spell. They appeared bewildered, unable to believe what they saw.
Gerd made an almost human cry. N'Chaka! Not know. He was tired, and the fight had left him edgy and upset. The smell of blood was strong. He pulled against Stark's hands. He threw himself from side to side, and his claws tore the dust.
Stark held him. Choose, Gerd. Whom do you follow?
A dangerous light had begun to kindle in Gerd's eyes. Abruptly the hound stood still, quivering in every muscle.
Stark braced himself.
The pack, by custom, would not interfere. The matter was between himself and Gerd. But they would see to it that no one else interfered, in a physical sense. There would be no danger of a knife in the back.
"Kill, Gerd," said Gelmar, his hand on the hound's shoulder. "This man will lead you all to death."
And Stark said, You cannot kill me, Gerd. Remember Flay.
The bolt of fear struck him. It shriveled his brain and turned his bones to water. It set his heart pounding until it threatened to burst against his ribs. But he held his grip. And a fierce cry came from out of his deep past, I am N'Chaka. I do not die.
The fear kept on.
Stark's pale eyes changed. His mouth changed. A sound came from his throat. He was no longer seeing Gerd as Gerd. He was seeing older, faraway things, the Fear-Bringers—the eternal enemy with all his many faces of dread, hunger, storm, quake, deadly night, deadlier day, the stalking hunter snuffling after heart-blood.
All life is fear. You have never felt it, hound. Death never feels it. Hound, I will teach you fear.
His grip shifted suddenly to Gerd's throat, gathered loose skin on either side, gathered and twisted, twisted and gathered, until the hound began to strangle, and still his fingers worked, and he said:
Do you see, Gerd, how it feels to die?
N'Chaka . . . !
The fear stopped.
Gerd dropped down, jaws wide, muzzle drawn in a snarling rictus. He put his chin on the ground.
Follow . . . strongest.
Stark let go. He straightened up. His eyes were still strange, all the humanness gone out of them. Gelmar stepped back, as though retreating from something unclean.
But he said, "You will not always be the strongest, Stark. Human or beast, your flesh is vulnerable. One day it will bleed, and the hounds will tear you."
The Ochar chief had risen to his knees. He wept tears of rage and shame.
"Do not let me live," he said. "You have put disgrace upon me before my tribesmen."
Stark said, "There is no disgrace. Is one man stronger than all these?" He pointed to the Runner bodies.
The Ochar chief got slowly to his feet. "No. But just now you withstood."
"I am not of your world. No man born of Skaith can stand against the Northhounds. And lest your tribesmen think shame of you, I will show them the tru
th of that."
Gerd squatted on his haunches, stretching his neck and hacking. Stark called the pack and they came around him, eyes averted lest they should seem to challenge him.
He gave an order, and the three Ochar were smitten with a palsy. They opened their mouths beneath the orange wrappings and cried out. They ran stumbling away.
"Now," said Stark to the chief, "we will go to the house. Gelmar, take your people. Walk ahead of us." To the Ochar he said, "How are you called?"
"Ekmal."
"Stay by me, Ekmal. And remember that the hounds hear your thoughts."
He ordered the hounds to watch but not to kill unless he told them to.
The Wandsmen went ahead, hating him. The Yur, beautiful and blank, walked with the Wandsmen. Ekmal walked beside Stark, his hands well away from his girdle and the sharp blades. The hounds came at Stark's heels. The wind still blew and the air was brown, but a man could move in it if he had to.
Men in cloaks of orange leather were bringing animals out of the house, where they had been taken for safety. The animals were tall, with long legs and wide paws splayed and furred for the sand. They stepped daintily. They were all colors, black and yellow and brown, barred and spotted. Their arched necks bore slender heads set with intelligent amber eyes.
The men leading them had met the three Ochar who were fleeing from the hounds. They stood shouting at each other with much gesticulating. Then they all turned and stared, and some of them reached for weapons.
Stark said, "Speak to them, Ekmal."
"Put down your arms!" Ekmal cried. "These demon dogs have killed a hundred Runners. Obey this man or he will set them on us."
The men muttered among themselves, but they took their hands from their hilts. Ekmal turned to Stark.
"What do you wish of us?"
"Water for the hounds. Have all your beasts brought out and fitted to carry us—myself and your three captives. Have food . . ."
"All the beasts? We cannot!"
"All the beasts. With food and water."
"But without beasts we're prisoned here!" Ekmal had the desert man's horror of being left afoot.
"Exactly," said Stark. "And so will the Wandsmen be, and the Lords Protector when they come, if they survived the storm."
The Hounds of Skaith-Volume II of The Book of Skaith Page 4
