Robert Adams - The Witch Goddess

Up atop the gap, however, the threatened flank attacks had failed to materialize, and Corbett now wondered if he might not have been wrong in his estimate of the Ganik leader’s strategic sense. Those two contingents sent around the gap might very well have been sent in pursuit of Gumpner, and against even one of those groups, the sergeant and his small force would be all but helpless.

Of course, there was nothing he could do about that dire contingency, not now. But he could content himself to a degree on the account of this main body. Their casualties had been staggering—there must be easily five or six score dead and seriously wounded Ganik bodies within and before that thick maze of branches, with perhaps another dozen between it and the breastwork. Even if they had been reinforced again after the attack began, there were certain to be too few left to mount any sort of organized pursuit of the other party.

In the little valley just north of the defile, Long Willy Kilgore and his sole remaining lieutenant, One-ear Carson, were experiencing increasing difficulty in haranguing those Ganiks still alive and unhurt into further attacks on the stubborn defenders of the gap-mouth.

Not even the addition of the thirty-odd men of Strong Tom’s as-yet-unblooded force had seemed to help, and Strong Tom himself had flatly refused to try to lead an assault, not wasting to leave the fine, rare prize his bunch had taken—a young, toothsome Ahrmehnee woman, unconscious from a clubbing and now bound belly-down across the rude saddle of a led pony.

But at last, having correctly pointed out that as only one or two of the fire sticks still were speaking—their magical fires apparently having burned out—Long Willy convinced some fifty men, most of Strong Tom’s bunch, and all led by One-ear, to advance against the tiny band of warlocks. It was very bad timing, but Long Willy did not know that until far too late.

When the watcher atop the root ball informed Corbett of the return to the valley of what looked to be the entire eastern contingent of Ganiks, the officer had all three of the men atop the eastern verge climb back down and share out their full cartridge boxes with the men behind the breastwork. And before more than a third of that hundred and fifty rounds had been fired, One-ear Carson’s grudging wave were all either dead, wounded or in full flight back to the safety of the vale.

Never a man to flog a dead pony, Long Willy Kilgore made up his mind quickly. “A’right, thet there bunch, they’s jest too strowng fer us. We loses us enymore mens, we gone be easy meat fer eny damn Kuhmbuhluhn paddyroll comes alowng. So le’s us jest git awn back to camp. We got us thet Ahrmnee gel, and one of them firesticks, them and a whole passel of stuff fer to ‘vide up ‘mong them as is lef’. Le’s git!”

“How ‘bout ol’ Johnny Skinhead and his bunch, Long Willy?” asked Strong Tom. “Rackon we ought’n send an’ let him know we going back?” Long Willy just shrugged. “He ketches them othuhs, he ketches ’em; ef he don’t, he don’t; eithuh way, he’ll come back to camp, sometime ‘r’t’othuh.”

Corbett didn’t, couldn’t, believe it at first. He could not bring himself to believe that the mob of Ganiks, who in one or two more frontal assaults could certainly have overrun his position, had simply ridden back north, out of the small valley, leaving all their dead, most of their wounded and a vast herd of riderless mountain ponies. So he kept his men standing to arms for nearly two more hours, crouched behind their stone bulwark, while wounded Ganiks whimpered and groaned and moaned and shrieked, while a veritable squadron of black buzzards swooped lower and ever lower above the stricken field, and noisy ravens crowded the ledges above the carnage.

At length, he led a half-dozen riflemen through the rough abattis which had served them so well, over the windrows of dead and dying Ganiks, he and his men giving mercy thrusts of their bayonets to those that happened to be in their path, and then down into the valley. They experienced but little difficulty in securing ponies from the herd the Ganiks had left behind, and the officer led them on a cautious patrol, scouting the former attackers’ line of withdrawal. Not until he was fully satisfied that there was no subterfuge involved, that the smelly, savage adversaries had truly, astoundingly, simply broken off the engagement and returned whence they had come, did he lead his tired but exuberant patrol back to the valley.

Back at the gap, he took six fresh men and six more ponies, then followed the track of the eastern group of Ganiks, seeking a way to reach the floor of the defile from the mountains on that side, but there was none that a horse or pony could negotiate, although there were many places where agile men might go up or down.

Full dark had fallen before he once more returned to the valley to find Corporal Cash and the remainder of the force encamped a bit upstream of the ford. Inside a ring of rifle pits hacked into the stony soil with the rude weapons of dead Ganiks, the played-out troopers were feasting on chunks of spit-broiled pony steak.

“Did you remember the animals we left up the defile, Cash?” were Corbett’s first words, upon dismounting slowly, with a cracking of joints.

“Yes, sir,” the young man replied. “I had them led up as far as the breastwork, then had the men bring them armloads of mown grass and enough water to slake them. There’s just no way we could get them through those tree branches, sir.”

“Very good, Cash,” Corbett nodded, “but you’d best detail a guard on them for tonight. Every predator and scavenger from twenty kilometers around is going to be converging on that pile of corpses before sunup.”

While the noncom went about choosing men for the horse and pony guard, Corbett stalked on stiff, aching legs over to the butchered pony carcass and employed his bootknife to hack off as much meat as he thought he could eat, then set about the cooking of the stringy stuff. Once his belly was full of half-burned, half-raw meat, the officer took a final turn about the encampment, then rolled himself in a horseblanket and fell promptly asleep.

Erica wavered in and out of consciousness for nearly a week. When, finally, she again became aware of her surroundings, she found herself in a dim, smoky and incredibly filthy, stinking hutlike cabin of unpeeled logs, chinked with clay and roofed with moldy thatch. Conifer tips stuffed the ill-cured and rotten-smelling hide on which she lay, and another of the rotting hides had been thrown over her naked body.

With the onset of full consciousness, however, came cold, crawling terror. Not only did she not know where she lay or how she had gotten there, but she could recall no event of her life, from birth to the present. She did not even know her own name! She whimpered without conscious thought.

But then she did begin to think. Closing her eyes, she earnestly sought memories, any memories. She could dimly see a figure mounted on a horse. No, a mule, it was, and the one so mounted was a man. She knew that she knew him, knew him of old, knew him well and should know his name, but she did not.

She recalled struggling with him for something held in one of his hands, then he hurt her. Seemingly of their own volition, her fingers sought out her right breast under the covering of stinking hide, finding it still sore to the touch. And, after that, there was no memory, nothing.

“But my name, I must have one.” Unknowingly, she spoke aloud.

Immediately, there was a rustling in the far corner of the room. Shortly, a skinny, misshapen female shuffled across the floor of packed earth to squat before the woman on the hide mattress. The newcomer stank far worse than the rotted hides. Parting her lips to disclose gapped rows of discolored teeth, she began to speak.