The Witch Goddess

by Robert Adams

  She knew that she was too far north for helicopter rescue, but she also knew that two or three hundred Broomtown men and Center personnel with modern arms, plentiful ammunition and some explosives could go through even the thousands of Ganiks like Grant went through Richmond. All that she needed to do was to have the transceiver and powerpack dug out and brought back to the main Ganik camp. She could hook it up and, some night at the proper time, she could report her situation to the Center, then just leave the set on so that the rescue party could home in on it with their own equipment; true, it might take them some time to organize and come up this far, but the powerpacks were good, so Sternheimer asserted, for a solid three months without recharging.

  As she and her party rode north, Erica resolved to start laying the groundwork for her scheme immediately she had been formally empowered as high chief or whatever. But such was not to be.

  The camp of the main bunch was a surprise in many ways to Erica. It was situated not in some forest clearing as had been the smaller one, but on a wide, deep shelf hard against the southern and western flanks of a mountain. Several large collections of huts and cabins were separated from each other and from a knot of larger buildings built of stone by acres of gently rolling grassland, with rocky upthrusts of the underlying mountain's bones showing through the soil only here and there. Herds of ponies and a few horses and mules roamed and cropped this expanse, and Erica saw a few spots that looked to have once been cultivated.

  From a distance, it did not appear to be a very easily defensible location—she doubted that even ten thousand Ganiks could have adequately manned the running miles of verge— but up closer, as the column made its way along the track that wound and twisted its serpentine course at the foot of the shelf, the defensive advantages of the location became clearer.

  There was but one incline up which mounted men could ride, and the aggregation of stone buildings crouched along the verge above it, the verge at that point being heightened by a dry-stone wall, tumbled in places, but mostly still some three meters high. In a host of other spots, strong, agile men could easily scale the sides of the shelf, but then would find themselves on foot against mounted, highly mobile defenders. Her bullies all assured her that since the shelf had been seized by the now-deceased Buhbuh some sixty years agone, it had never fallen to or really suffered much from storm or siege.

  She had expected to toe lodged in one of the stone buildings, but her escort passed among these structures, then angled to the north again. Skirting a long, narrow lake which was fed by small streams trickling down the higher slopes of the mountain among the roots of the black-green conifers, but which seemed to have no exit stream, they finally came to and set their mounts up a broad, shaly incline.

  At the top of the incline was another shelf, this one perhaps fifty meters in width and fifteen or twenty meters in depth. Beyond this shelf, a cavemouth led into the stony bowels of the mountain. This cavemouth had been quite long at one time, but boulders and timbers had been so placed as to wall up all but a single entrance some two meters wide and three high.

  The bullies dismounted outside, but led Erica, still on her fine horse, through the high portal and into the dim, cool cave.

  Before a week had passed, Corbett found it imperative to move on. Not only was the graze expended, but the ponies had browsed away most of the rougher herbiage as well.

  Harry Braun was, of course, in no shape to sit a mount, and there was no earthly way to maneuver a horse litter through the twisting, sharp-angled passage leading down to the track from the hidden plateau. But, Corbett decided, there was one other thing he could try, and if that failed, he would just have to leave a detachment behind, here, with the gravely ill Braun and push on to Broomtown with the main force.

  He had gotten from the captured Ganik, Johnny Skinhead, a fair idea of what lay behind, but only hearsay and guesses of what lay ahead. He had not used pentathol, since he felt himself unskilled in that mode of interrogation, but there had been no need of it, in any case. The captive had seemed beside himself with terror that he would be subjected to the identical "tortures" that he had watched Corbett, Gumpner and the rest "inflict" on Dr. Braun, so Corbett was reasonably certain that the injured Ganik had spoken what he took to be the whole truth.

  Later, after the officer had sedated the prisoner, after he and Gumpner and Cabell had performed as best they could under the circumstances to repair the damage done by the mace to the Ganik's shoulder, clavicle and humerus, and after the middle-aged savage was finally sure that he was not to be tortured, butchered and eaten by his captors, he became almost friendly and somewhat voluble.

  Unlike Jim-Beau, this older Ganik had willingly gobbled whatever was placed before him—game, pony flesh, wild tubers and the occasional fish. His explanation of this phenomenon was that there were three varieties of Ganiks—those like the late Jim-Beau who adhered strictly to the strictures of the old-time religion; an uncertain number of far-northwestern Ganiks who had drifted so far from that same religion that they now were, for all intents and purposes, heathen Kuhmbuhluhners; and then the vast majority of the free-roving, non-farmbound Ganiks, like Johnny Skinhead, who adhered to the religious customs only when and if said customs fitted their personal needs of the moment.

  From Johnny Skinhead's descriptions of them, Corbett could only assume that these Kuhmbuhluhners must be a misplaced group of folk from the Middle Kingdoms who had, for reasons he could not imagine, filtered down through the mountains from the northeast to settle among and enter into endless warfare against the Ganiks.

  Having traveled extensively in different bodies for the Center over the centuries, Corbett knew that there was a state called Kuhmbuhluhn—once a kingdom, it now was a duchy or an archduchy, he could not recall which, of the Ehleenee Confederation—and likely these mountain Kuhmbuhluhners were descended of settlers from that state. Thinking that they might make a promising project on the order of Broomtown, Corbett filed the knowledge away in his mind.

  Johnny Skinhead seemed not at all loath to accompany the column south, for although he mentioned that with or without a mount he would experience little difficulty in making the journey back to the camp of his "bunch," he was not anxious to go back in his present condition; according to his stories, any save the most primitive doctoring was unknown to the Ganiks and most seriously ill or badly injured members of the "bunches" usually ended up in the stewpots.

  Corbett had begun to develop a liking for the uncomplaining, outspoken old cannibal and at last agreed to his constant importuning and allowed him to accompany a hunting party, but only after the apparently ambidextrous oldster had demonstrated the ability to accurately cast darts with his left hand.

  To Sergeant Cabell, who was to command the hunt, he said privately, "I think he can be trusted not to try to harm one of us now, but don't take any chances with him, anyway.

  If he makes a break to escape, let him go. By the time he could get back to his people and lead them back here, we'll be well on the march to the south."

  But Johnny Skinhead made no escape attempt; indeed, he was the first rider to ascend back onto the plateau. The carcass of a huge deer had stiffened draped across his big pony's withers, and a bulging sack of wild sweet potatoes jounced on the mount's back behind the cantle.

  All of the hunters proved heavy-laden. Moreover, all were abrim with praise for the expertise and woods skills of the old Ganik. Most of the Broomtown men had lived off the wilderness for months at a time, yet Johnny Skinhead had made them look and feel like tenderfoot tyros at the art. As Corbett and those who had not gone out stood with the dog-tired hunters eying the plentiful supply of plant and animal food gathered from this area which they all thought to be hunted out, Sergeant Cabell voiced the feelings of his group.

  "That old bastard is a pure wonder, Major. He never forked that pony until today, yet before we'd gone three kilometers, he had him responding to knee pressure or something, because when he went after that big deer he darted,
he sure as hell wasn't using his reins.

  "Another thing—I think we ought to take him down to Broomtown and use him to teach classes on wild plants, 'cause he sure Lord knows more on that subject than anybody I ever met."

  The officer nodded. "Okay, Cabell, we will. But for God's sake, see if you can get the old stinker to bathe again before we hit the trail, and his hair and beard could stand some soap and water too, as well as a bit of shearing. He may very well be a wild man, but he doesn't have to look and smell like one when we ride into Broomtown."

  On the morning of their departure, Corbett sedated Braun heavily from the dwindling supply of drugs, then had him painstakingly strapped securely into the horse litter, hand-carried to the place where the outer slope began, then borne down to where he could be lowered with ropes to the shoulder of the track near its confluence with the stream that wound down from the hidden plateau. Once there, the troopers slung the litter between two of the pack mules, then squatted and waited while the rest of the column filed slowly down the twisting defile from above.

  Although the attack and massacre of Johnny Skinhead's party of Ganiks had been only a week earlier, the efficient system of nature had left very little on or along the track to show for it—a fleshless skull peeking empty eyesockets from half under a bush, a few scattered scraps of coarse, stained cloth, bits and pieces of inedible equipment; that was all.

  Under Corbett's direction, all of the iron-shod darts of the Ganiks had been collected from the site early on, along with the quivers for carrying them. Then he, Gumpner and those few troopers already adept at their use had overseen practice sessions on the plateau for those, the majority, who were not so good with the short, barbed missiles. Now, as they rode out and headed south, every man save only Dr. Braun bore a half-dozen darts in addition to his other weapons, for ammo was in short supply and they still had far to go through possibly hostile territory, and besides, it had always pained Corbett's thrifty heart to leave usable items of enemy equipment on a battlefield to rust and rot.

  With only a faint twinge of worry, the officer had given back to Johnny Skinhead both his horse and his old sword, personally helping the Ganik to rearrange both baldric and weapons belt to facilitate easy access for the left hand, and as they all headed south, the sometime prisoner rode with the mounted wounded, differing from them only in his nonuniform clothing, his long, straight sword in place of a saber and his lack of a firearm.

  While bullies with small parties of lesser Ganiks rode forth to summon to the main camp the leaders and senior bullies of the various smaller bunches, Erica and her two faithful bullies, Lee-Roy and Abner, undertook the exploration of the sprawling complex of interconnected caverns that had been Buhbuh the Kleesahk's home and headquarters for more than fifty years, prior to his recent death in battle.

  The outermost portion of the complex had been mostly filled with horse stalls of stone and timber and storage area for bags of grain and bales of hay and straw. Erica abhorred rats and mice and expected the rodents in such a milieu, but was told upon inquiry of one of the bullies that a resident pair of semi-domesticated stoats had long since eliminated that problem. On a couple of occasions after, the woman caught glimpses in the light of the torches and fat lamps of the soft-brown, snaky creatures, with their glittering eyes and their sharp white teeth.

  In the living area, most of the furnishings were vastly outsize—the frame of the bed sitting some meter and a half off the stone floor, its thick rawhide ropes supporting a hide mattress a good three meters long and almost that in width. With effort, she could get onto the bed, but the chairs and tables were an utter impossibility for her or anyone of average stature, and she resolved to see them either adapted or replaced.

  Living quarters lay to the right of an entry foyer. To the left, a high, broad passage led into a gigantic, irregularly shaped chamber. The soaring ceiling of this chamber was invisible, being beyond reach of torchlight. About the floor, which sloped gently upward at the edges, was pile upon pile of assorted loot—weapons, armor for both man and horse, saddles and other horse trappings, trousers and breeches of cloth or leather or both, shirts, blouses and jerkins, boots and brogans, bolts of fabrics, an incredible profusion of furs and hides, tools and utensils of every type and usage, pots of iron or copper and of every imaginable size and shape.

  Deeper into the mountain, beyond the three lofty chambers, were two passages and some dozen chambers far too regular in shape to have been wrought by nature. In the walls and floors of passages and chambers alike, round holes of uniform widths and depths told the story of heavy equipment once bolted in place.

  Erica thought that the sizes and shapes of some of these rooms and the arrangements of some of the holes were vaguely similar to those that had been within the volcanic mountain in the Hold of the Moon Maidens; but the equipment had all still been in place within that uneasy mountain, and here it all had been removed who knew how long ago.

  The ceiling heights of the rooms and the passages leading to them had been hewn to accommodate persons of average height and breadth—none was more than two hundred and fifty centimeters high or one hundred and fifty centimeters broad in the passages, although the rooms were relatively spacious—and she imagined that a creature of the Brobdingnagian proportions of Buhbuh the Kleesahk must have found any use of the complex uncomfortable, to say the least. Nonetheless, all of the better, more intrinsically valuable loot was stored in the man-made rooms, most of it in massive wooden chests. No one seemed to know the whereabouts of the keys to the huge iron locks. One bully opined that the Kleesahk had always carried most of them hung around his neck, so they were probably lost for good along with his body. So Erica had Lee-Roy and Abner "open" the locks with a sledge and a crowbar.

  The first they opened contained more weapons, but these were of faultless craftsmanship. The torchlight glittered on the colorful gems set in gilded hilts, on the acid-etched and silver-washed blades of axes, on slim daggers cased in sheaths of red-gold filigree. Another chest was elbow-deep with jewelry—finger rings, armlets, headbands, necklaces, earrings, nosestuds and lengths of flatlink chains, brooches and cloak pins; these were of gold, silver, electrum, copper, brass, bronze, tin, nickel, lead, and wrought iron, and most looked to be of Ahrmehnee design.

  The other bullies seemed as amazed at these finds as Erica and her senior bullies, Lee-Roy and Abner. Clearly the late Buhbuh had considered these chests and their contents to be personal treasure to be counted and gloated over in private. But none of it meant anything to Erica, while the continued goodwill of these Ganiks did, so she invited them and all of the other bullies remaining in camp to help themselves to the long-hidden loot she and they had uncovered.

  But Erica was granted only a few short days for such explorations of the caves and expropriations of the hoarded effects of her gargantuan predecessor, for certain of the groups sent out returned unexpectedly with grim tidings.

  With the deduction of the necessary guards to man the towers and other defenses along the single entry to Sandee's Cot and of the inevitable handful of sick and wounded men and women, Bili's squadron and Count Steev's force numbered about three hundred effectives, plus the Kleesahks and the prairiecats.

  After a couple of weeks of long-distance patrol sweeps with the entire available contingent, it was decided at the nightly officers' council to divide the force into thirds—one to be led by Bili and Rahksahnah, one to be led by Count Steev, and the last to be led by Acting Captain Frehd Brakit and Lieutenant Kahndoot. Count Steev's force would take two Kleesahks; each of the other forces would have one of the huge quasi-human creatures, plus one prairiecat.

  It was also decided that at no time, would they separate beyond the farspeak range of the Kleesahks, thus making it possible for one or both of the other troops to come to the aid of a troop if it found itself beset with more of the outlaw Ganiks than it could easily handle.

  So they began the meat of their campaign. Their initial targets were the widely sc
attered camps of the bunches of outlaw Ganiks, and when Bili learned that these preferred not to fight in the dark, he took to striking their camps by night, sending the prairiecat Whitetip and the Kleesahk Pah-Elmuh ahead to take out sentries and find and spring any man traps.

  When he and his force were in position and mounted, with weapons out and ready, he would have his Freefighter archers drop fire arrows into the thatch roofs of the camp structures, wait for the resulting fires to drive the sleepy Ganiks out, then lead his heavy cavalry in to cut down the generally unarmed outlaws, the archers and Ahrmehnee dart men remaining around the perimeter to bring down any that tried to flee the carnage within the camp.

  It was not his favorite mode of warfare, and the young thoheeks much preferred those occasions when they met or, more often, ambushed bands of mounted, armed Ganiks— when he could feel the shock of metal weapons on his armor, when the sounds that penetrated his helmet were the normal shouts and screams and warcries of real battle, not the despairing shrieks of doomed, helpless men being slaughtered like autumn hogs.

  Game was plentiful, much of it having fled from the fire-ravaged areas to the east, so the columns lived off the country, absenting themselves from their base at Sandee's Cot for a week or more at a time while they sought out more camps of cannibals to burn and butcher, roving bands to ambush or chase to earth, Ganik farms and steadings to put to the torch, trying to terrify the resident families in to leaving the area entirely and fleeing south or southwest.

  Bili and the officers had agreed that the forces should have one day of the peace and comfort of Sandee's Cot for each day they spent out on campaign, but such respites did not mean days of idleness. Bili was too astute a commander to permit such folly, even though he knew that the discipline exacted from Freeflghters or the High Lord's Army of the Confederation would be impossible of implementation in this heterogeneous force.