Robert Adams - The Witch Goddess

She shrugged unconcernedly. “If Harry dies, he dies… but I don’t think he will; he’s too much of a bastard to do anything that would make me that happy, damn him. Oh, he’ll suffer enough, sitting a saddle with that broken leg, and they once said that suffering was good for the soul, but there’s not enough suffering in the world to do his soul any good. I’ll see to it that he gets just enough painkiller to keep him from going into shock. He’ll moan and bitch and scream and threaten, of course, but don’t worry about it, Jay.”

But of course Jay Corbett did worry about Braun’s condition and kept him on his horse litter until it became crystal-clear that the column’s further progress over and around the trailless, forested and brush-grown hills so encumbered was impossible. Then he had the warkak removed from his charger and placed upon the back of the best-gaited of the riding mules, figuring correctly that the high, flared pommel and cantle would afford Braun more support than the lower stock saddle.

Five or six kilometers into the second day’s march, the column crossed another trail, but Corbett had them push on to the west of this one too, having the last few men erase from it all marks of their passage across it.

Finally, when they were into what appeared to be true wilderness, bearing no visible signs of man, he turned them back to the south, marching by compass bearing, the progress slow and wearing on both men and beasts. But not for two more full days was there any trace of mankind, any sounds other than natural wooded-mountain sounds of insect and bird and wild beast, any sign of lurking danger.

When that danger finally did manifest itself, it was with dramatic—and, for many of the marching men, deadly—suddenness.

After the first full day of cross-country marching, even Erica gave over urging speed. Speed was simply impossible, except on those rare occasions when the column chanced upon a deer trail or a shallow stream angling more or less south. Otherwise, the sometime vanguard—sore-muscled, sweating in spite of the chilly air, faces whealed and bloody from thorns and lashing branches—were compelled to hack a path through the thick brush of rhododendron and mountain laurel and red barberry with sabers and battleaxes.

Nor could even the hardened veterans keep up such exhausting labor for any length of time. Corbett found it necessary to split his small force into three sections, with one under Gumpner, one under Cabell and the third under his personal command, each section taking a two-hour stint at forging the trail. Only Erica, the prisoner, Dr. Braun and the other wounded were exempted from the hard labor, even Corbett taking a turn at hacking down brush and branches with his saber.

Since scattered areas were still burning, although mostly well west of the party, Corbett forbore adding the further hardship of cold camps, so the nagged men had at least hot food and light by which to hone new edges on their well-used weapons. Most had hot food, anyway. The prisoner, however, had refused to eat from the start, frantically forgoing any flesh—pony, venison or even rabbit—and making do with the raw roots of certain plants he dug or pulled up, spiced with the stray worm or grub or insect. This nauseating diet was his only sustenance… until the night one of the wounded men died.

Because of the utter dearth of signs of mankind since the second trail had been crossed and because of the state of complete exhaustion the trail-cutting caused, Corbett had mounted only perimeter guards at night, leaving all the rest to much-needed sleep around the coals of the cookfires.

He and the others were awakened near dawning by an enraged shout, followed by a shriek of agony, to behold a grisly sight. The hobbled prisoner lay at the feet of a perimeter guard who, his face mirroring disgust and murderous fury, was at that moment in the act of drawing his saber.

Corbett’s order halted the guard, and a second order had fresh fuel added to the coals of the nearest fire, thus giving Erica and all the men a view of the grim tableau.

The lower face, the beard and even the front of the filthy shirt of the prisoner were running blood. His manacled hands were red from fingertips to wrist, and streams of the blood had streaked his hairy arms to the elbows. One of those gory hands clutched a bloody flake of stone and the other a shiny, gelatinous-looking chunk of tissue that Corbett at first failed to recognize. Even as they all watched him, the shaggy prisoner, still whimpering, brought that which he held up to his mouth, tore off a bit of it, chewed and swallowed. At this, the perimeter guard whirled about and doubled, retching.

When, shortly, Corbett saw the newly dead body of Corliss, with its abdomen raggedly opened and most of its liver excised, it was all that he could do to hold down his own gorge, and he deeply regretted having stopped the guard from sabering the savage cannibal.

Upon questioning, the prisoner sniveled, “Ah din’t kill ‘im. He jest died and ah ’uz so hongry.”

“My God, man,” replied Corbett, “you’ve been offered, and flatly refused , food every time the rest of us ate, so there’s no excuse for what you just did. What kind of sick, unnatural creature are you?”

But the shaggy man clammed up, sullenly, and another shot of Erica’s drug was required to get more out of him; then they were all half sorry they had heard what they had. It cost them all any remaining appetite for breakfast.

As the officer and Erica paced slowly, leading their fine horses side by side, in the wake of Gumpner’s hacking, cursing section, Corbett shook his head, saying, ”’ t still can’t say I understand any of it, Doctor; these Ganiks wear the skins of animals, yet they can’t or won’t eat them, preferring human flesh, even the bodies of their own families.”

Erica shrugged. “Possibly it’s because you were a soldier and seldom if ever ran up against the emotional basket cases that made up the environmental branches of the anti-industrial revolution, Jay. As a scientist, I worked for both industry and government and I had to face and debate more of the nuts than I care to recall.

“The ancestors of this creature were the types that delayed for years the construction of a badly needed dam in Tennessee in order to supposedly save the spawning area of a three-inch fish that, it later developed, was not only not endangered, but not especially rare, either. As cracked as many or most of those eco-freaks were, yes, I can see how their descendants emerged into the unprepossessing likes of Jim-Beau. And if they are all as incestuous as his family seems to be, you can see how any earlier-extant strains of insanity were bred deeper and wider with every new generation.

“It would seem that the catch words of that ancient, addle-pated movement have become gods and devils to their inheritors. ‘Organic farmers’ are become ‘Ganiks,’ their principal god, ‘Kahnzuhvaishuhn,’ was once ‘conservation,’ just as their most evil and most feared devil, ‘Plooshuhn,’ was once ‘pollution.’

“I can fully empathize with you and your men, Jay, for I find everything about Jim-Beau disgusting, too. But nonetheless, he is a fascinating specimen that should be studied in depth at the Center; that’s why I won’t allow him to be killed. He’ll have to be watched closely, of course, for the rest of the trip back. Corliss quite probably died naturally, in his sleep, from his injuries; but then too, our Jim-Beau, our ‘hongry’ Jim-Beau, just may have hastened him along into death, for his own personal gastronomic reasons.”

Near dusk of the second day’s march, Jay Corbett and his section hacked their way out into a track which seemed to meander in an east-west direction and was clearly too wide and well defined to be a mere game track. Also, there was a mound of fresh-turned dirt on the southern verge that looked suspiciously like a small grave.