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.
The sisters-and many of their dependents-were waiting in the main hall. Many were males. Marika was astonished. She asked Braydic, "What happened? What is this? Males inside the fortress."
"My truesister decided to bring everyone inside the wall. Nomads were prowling around out there every day while you were gone. In ever greater numbers. Only the workers have been going out. Armed."
Marika had noted the workers clearing the snow away from the north wall, hoisting it to the wall's top and barrowing it around to the spill visible from the river.
"They have gotten very bold," Braydic reported. "My truesister feared they might have good reason. We might even need the males."
Senior Koenic called for a report from Marika's party.
Bagnel did the talking. He kept it simple. "They were all slain," he said. "Everyone in Critza, both brethren and those we gave shelter. Except a pawful who got out on the carriers. The wall was breached with explosives. The nomads took some arms and everything else. They were unable to penetrate the armory. We blew that before we left the ruin. Though I am sufficiently realistic to know you would not, if you were to ask my advice, I would tell you you should ask your seniors to evacuate Akard. The stakes have been raised. The game has sharpened. This is the last stronghold. They will come soon and come strong, and they will make an end of you."
Marika was both mystified and startled. The former because she did not understand all Bagnel was saying, the latter because Senior Koenic was considering the advice seriously. After reflection, Senior Koenic replied, "All this will be reported. We are in continuous contact with Maksche. I have my hopes, but I do not believe they will take us out. It seems likely the Serke Community is helping the nomads in an effort to push the Reugge out of the Ponath. I expect policy will be to stand fast even in the face of assured disaster. To maintain the Reugge face and claim."
The tradermale shrugged. He seemed indifferent to the world now that his mission was complete. His home had been destroyed. His folk were all dead. For what did he have to live? Marika understood his feelings all too well.
She worried his remarks about the Serke and evacuation. That baffled her completely. It had something to do with those parts of her education that had been left vague deliberately. She did know that competition between sisterhoods could become quite vigorous, and that there were centuries of bad blood between the Serke and Reugge. But she never imagined that it could become so intense, so deadly, that, as the senior implied, one sisterhood would help creatures like the nomads to attack another.