They smelled smoke before they reached the ridgeline. Some of the huntresses thought it from the hearth fires of Critza, but the tradermales showed a frightened excitement which had nothing to do with an anticipation of arriving home. They hurried as if to an appointment with terrible news.
Terrible news it was.
From the heights they looked down on the hold which had been the traders' headquarters. Somehow, one wall had been broken. Smoke still rose, though no fire could be seen. The snowfields surrounding the packfast were littered with bodies. Marika did not immediately recognize what they were, for they appeared small from her viewpoint.
Bagnel squatted on his hams and studied the disaster. For a long time he said nothing. When he did speak, it was in an emotionless monotone. "At least they did not take it cheaply. And some of ours escaped."
Not knowing why she did so exactly, Marika scratched his ears the way one did when comforting a pup. He had removed his hat to better listen for sounds from below.
He looked at her oddly, which caused her to feel a need to explain. "I saw all this happen at my packstead four years ago. Help came too late then, too."
"But it came."
"Yes. As it did here. Seen from an odd angle, you might think me repaying a debt."
"A small victory here, then. At horrible cost we have gotten the silth to be concerned." He donned his hat, stood. His iron gaze never left the smoking ruins. "You females stay here. My brothers and I will see what is to be seen." He and the other two started down the slope. Ten paces along, he stopped, turned to Marika. "If something happens to us, run for Akard. Do not waste a second on us. Save yourselves. It will be your turn soon enough."
Return to Akard? Marika thought. And how do that? They had come south carrying rations for three days, no one having given thought to the chance that they might find Critza destroyed. They had thought there would be food and shelter at the end of the trail, not the necessity to turn about and march right back to Akard.
No matter. She would survive. She had survived the trek to Akard when she was much younger. She would survive again.
She closed her eyes and went into that other place she had come to know so well, that place where she had begun to feel more at home than in the real world. She ducked through her loophole into a horde of ghosts in scarlet and indigo and aquamarine. The scene of the Critza massacre was a riot of color, like a mad drug dream. Why did they gather so? Were they in fact the souls of meth who had died here? She thought not. But she did not know what to think them otherwise.
It did not matter. Silth did not speculate much on the provenance of their power. They sensed ghosts and used them. Marika captured a strong one.
She rode the ghost downhill, floating a few yards behind Bagnel.
He did not much heed the fallen nomads. Marika ignored them, too, but could not help noticing many were ripped and torn like those she had seen at the site of the tradermale ambush last summer. Only a few-and all those inside the shattered wall-bore cut or stab wounds. And she never saw a one with an arrow in his or her corpse.
Odd.
Odder still the fortress, much of which recalled Braydic's communications center. Though Marika was sure much of what she saw had nothing to do with sending or receiving messages. Strange things. She would have liked to have gone down and laid on paws.
The agony of the tradermales was too painful to watch. Marika withdrew to her flesh. With the others she waited, crouched in the snow, leaning upon her javelin, so motionless winter's breath might have frozen her at last.
Bagnel spent hours prowling the ruins of Critza while the silth and huntresses shivered on the hillside. When he returned, he and his companions climbed slowly, bearing heavy burdens.
They arrived. Bagnel caught his breath, said, "There is nothing here for any of us now. Let us return and do what we may for Akard." His voice was as cold as the hillside, edged with hatred. "There is a small cave a few miles along the ridge. Assuming it is not occupied, we can rest there before we start back." He led off, and said nothing more till Marika asked what he had learned in the ruins.
"It was as bad as you can imagine. But a few did break out on the carriers. The pups, I suppose. Unless the nomads carried them off to their pots. There was very little left, though they did not manage to break the door to the armory. We recovered what weapons and ammunition we could carry. The rest ... you will know soon enough."
Marika looked at him oddly. Distracted, he was using many words she did not know.
"They stripped the place like scavengers strip a corpse. To the bone. Stone still sits upon stone there, but Critza is dead. After these thousand years. It has become but a memory."
Marika festered with questions. She asked none of them. It was a time for the tradermales to be alone with their grief.
A mile along his trail Bagnel halted. He and his brethren faced the direction they had come. Marika watched them curiously. They seemed to be waiting for something ...
A great gout of fire-stained smoke erupted over the ridge recently quit. It rolled high into the sky. A great rumbling thunder followed. Bagnel shuddered all over. His shoulders slumped. Without a word he turned and resumed the march.
Chapter Thirteen
I
"Thank the All," Grauel said with feeling as they rounded the last bend of the Hainlin and dimly saw Akard on its headland, brooding gray and silver a mile away. "Thank the All. They have not destroyed Akard."
There had been a growing, seldom voiced fear that their trek north would be rewarded with the sight of another gutted packfast, that they would round that final bend and find themselves doomed to the mocking grasp of the hunger already gnawing their bellies. Even the silth had feared, though logically they knew they would have received some sort of touch had the fortress been attacked.
But there the fortress stood, inviolate. The chill of the north wind was no longer so bitter. Marika bared her teeth and dared that wind to do its damnedest.
"This is where they ambushed us," Bagnel said. "One group pushed us while the other waited in that stand of trees there."
"Not this time," Marika replied. She looked through the blue-gray haze of lightly falling snow, seeing evidence of a nomad presence. The other silth did the same. The huntresses stood motionless, teeth chattering, arms ready.
Marika sensed nothing untoward anywhere. The only meth life lay within the packfast, brooding there upon its bluff.
"Come." She resumed walking.
There was no trail. Enough snow had fallen, and had been blown, to bury their southbound trail.
When they were closer and the packfast was more distinct, Marika saw that there had been changes. A long feather of rumpled snow trailed down the face of the bluff below the fortress, like the aftermath of an avalanche. Even as she walked and watched, meth appeared above and dumped a wheelbarrow load of snow, which tumbled down the feather.
The workers had been doing that all winter, keeping the roofs and inner courts clear, but the mound had never been so prominent. It had grown dramatically in five days. Marika was curious.
The workers saw them, too. Moments later something touched Marika. The other silth received touches too. The sisters would be waiting when they arrived, anticipating bad news.
Why else would they have returned so soon?
Marika sensed a distant alien presence as they began the climb from the river. The other silth sensed it, too. "On our trail," one said.
"No worry," the other observed. "We are far ahead, and within the protection of our sisters."
Even so, Marika was nervous. She watched the rivercourse as she climbed, and before long spotted the nomads. There were a score of them. They were traveling fast. Trail had been broken for them. But they never presented any real threat. They turned back after reaching the point were the travelers had begun their climb to the packfast.