Dorteka, though, resisted for a moment before going under.
She returned to flesh. "All right, Kublin. Now. Start running. Go. Take one of your vehicles and get out of here. This may cost me. Don't slow down for anything. Get away. I can't cover you for long."
"Marika ... "
"Go. And you'd better never cross my path again, in any circumstances. I'm risking everything I've become for your sake."
"Marika ... "
"You damned fool, shut up and get out of here!" She almost shrieked it. The pain of it had begun gnawing at her already.
Kublin ran.
The other prisoners watched him go, a few of the males rising, taking a pace or two as if to follow, then freezing when they saw the look in Marika's eye. Their mouths opened to protest as, slowly, as if of its own volition, Grauel's rifle turned in her paws and began to bark.
They tried to scatter. She emptied the rifle. Then she drew the pistol and finished it.
Grauel and the surviving bath sister rushed out of the snowfall. "What happened?" Grauel demanded.
"They tried to run away. I started to nod off and they tried to run away."
Grauel did not believe her. Already she had counted bodies. But she did not say anything. The bath looked studiedly blank. Marika asked her, "How do you feel this morning? Able to help me move ship?"
"Yes, mistress."
"Good. We'll start toward Akard as soon as Dorteka finishes with the nomads."
The firing was rolling toward the river quickly, Marika realized.
Then she gasped, suddenly aware of what she had done. By knocking out the novices so Kublin could slip away, she had robbed her huntresses of their major advantage in the fight. They had no silth to support them. She plunged into the hollowness inside herself, reached out, found a ghost, flogged it across the river.
She had done it for sure. The huntresses were in retreat from a nomad party that had to number more than two hundred. Most of the novices had been found and slain where she had left them unconscious.
Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.
She captured a stronger ghost. With it she hit the nomads hard, decimating them. They remained unaware of what was happening because so few could see one another through the snowfall. They came on, and they kept overtaking Marika's huntresses.
She extricated Barlog from a difficult situation, scanned the slopes, killing here and there, and by the time she returned to Barlog found the huntress trapped again.
Only a dozen of her meth made it to the river.
Only when they assembled before taking up the pursuit in the open did the nomads discover how terribly they had been hurt.
Marika ravened among them then, and they panicked, scattered.
She searched for Kublin. She found him starting up the far slope safely downstream from the action. She stayed with him till he reached an operable vehicle, silencing any nomad who came too near. Though he seemed aware of their presence almost as soon as she, and shied away. And as he had said, he knew the land and made use of its masking features.
Even so, she hovered over him while he transferred fuel to fill one vehicle's tanks, then got it going. As it began climbing the trail over which the attack had come, Marika hurried back to her proper form.
When she came out she was more exhausted than she had been the evening before.
"Marika?" Grauel asked. "Are you all right?"
"I will be. I need food and rest. Get me something to eat." The firing had stopped entirely. "Any word from over there?"
"Not yet. You went?"
"Yes. It looked awful. There were hundreds of savages. And Dorteka guessed wrong. There were silth with them. Wild silth. Most of our meth are dead, I think. Certainly most of the novices are. I could find no sign of them."
Grauel's lips twitched, but she said nothing. Marika wondered what thoughts lay behind her expressionless eyes.
Huntresses began to straggle in almost as soon as Grauel had gotten a cookfire going. Only seven showed. Marika turned inward and remained that way, loathing herself. She had fouled up about as bad as it was possible to do. That All-be-damned Kublin. Why did he have to turn up? Why couldn't he have stayed dead? Why had fate dragged him across her trail just now?
"Marika? Food." Grauel gave her of the first to come from the fire. She ate mechanically.
Dorteka staggered out of the snowfall fifteen minutes after Marika began eating. She settled beside the fire. Grauel gave her food and drink. Like all the rest of them, she ate and stared into the flames. Marika did not wonder what she saw there.
After a while Dorteka rose and trudged toward where the prisoners had been held. She was gone fifteen minutes. Marika was only marginally aware that she had gone.
Dorteka returned. She settled beyond the fire, opposite Marika. "The prisoners tried to get away during the fighting?"
"Yes," Marika said, without looking up. She accepted another cup of broth from Grauel. The broth was the best thing for a silth who reached this exhausted state.
"One got away. A trail runs down the slope. I heard an engine over there while I was coming back. Must have been one of the males."
"I do not know. I thought I got them all." She shrugged. "If one got away he will take warning to the rest."
"Who was he, Marika?"
"I do not know."
"You helped him. Your touch cannot be disguised. You were directly responsible for the deaths of all of our novices and most of the huntresses. Who was he, Marika? What is this thing you have with males of the brotherhood? Why was the escape of this one so important you destroyed yourself?"
Was there no end to it?
Marika clutched Grauel's revolver beneath her coat. "You believe what you have said. Yes. I see that. What are you going to do about it, Dorteka?"
"You have left me no choice, Marika."
Powder burned Marika's paw. The bullet struck Dorteka in the forehead, threw her backward. She lay spasming in the snow, her surprise lingering in the air of touch.
The huntresses yelped and began to rise, to grab for weapons. Grauel and Barlog did the same, but slowed by tangled loyalties.
This would be the ultimate test of their faith, Marika thought as she slipped through her loophole, grabbed a ghost, and struck at the seven.
The last fell. Marika waited for the bullet that would tell her Grauel or Barlog had turned against her. It did not come. She returned to flesh, found both huntresses staring at her in horror. As was the bath from the darkship, who had been sleeping for so long Marika had forgotten her.
She summoned what remained of her strength and energy and rose, collected a rifle, put several bullets into each of the downed huntresses so it would look like nomads had slain them.
"Marika!" Barlog snarled.
Grauel laid warning fingers upon her wrist.
Marika said, "The snow will cover everything. We will report a huge battle with savages. We will be the only survivors. We will be stricken with sorrow. The Reugge do not Mourn their dead. There is no reason anyone should investigate. Now we rest."
Her companions radiated the sort of fear huntresses betrayed only in the presence of the mad. Marika ignored them.
She would pull it off. She was sure she would. Grauel and Barlog would say nothing. Their loyalties had passed the ultimate test. And now their fates were inextricably entwined with hers.
II Just a few minutes more, Marika thought at the All. Just a few more miles. They had to be close.
The limping darkship was just a hundred feet up, and settling lower all the time. And making but slight headway. Snowflakes swirled around Marika. The north wind pushed at her almost as hard as she was able to push against it. When she risked opening her eyes to glance back, she could barely distinguish the bath at the girder's far end. Grauel and Barlog, riding the tips of the crossarm, were scarcely more visible.