Robert Adams - The Witch Goddess

Of course, his present body was already encroaching on middle age, but with her to sponsor him, to twist and to wheedle Dave Sternheimer as only she knew how, there was not a thing to prevent Bowley from receiving a new, young body and learning to transfer his mind to it. Other exceptional people had been brought into the Center in just that way, over the centuries. So why not Merle Bowley?

But first she had to get him away from here before his present body was chopped into catmeat by either the grim Kuhmbuhluhners or the increasingly hysterical Ganiks. Try as she might, she still could not blame the men of Kuhmbuhluhn for what they were doing, for the more she was around the common run of Ganiks, the more she felt that if any race fully deserved extermination, it was assuredly them.

Carefully following in Pah-Elmuh’s footsteps in order to avoid becoming the first victim of the various defensive mantraps ranged about the area, Bili examined the siege engines designed by Frehd Brakit and assembled under his and Pah-Elmuh’s supervision. They were without a doubt the largest specimens he had ever seen, of a size to dwarf him and every other pure-man on the site.

Looking at the towering pile of monstrous boulders that had been gathered for missiles, he was glad that he was not on one of the engine crews.

“They’re all ready, then, Brakit? Both here and at the other site?”

“Awaiting but your order, my lord duke. Within a quarter hour of receiving your word, the first boulders will be in the air,” was the quick reply.

“Very well, Brakit,” Bili nodded. “We won’t need you today, but stand ready from dawn tomorrow.”

Then, turning to the huge Kleesahk, he mindspoke, “El-muh, I’ll need you and all of the Kleesahks, tonight.”

Leaning on his long stabbing spear and listening to an endless story being recounted by Herb Cantrell, the mounted sentry who shared this dark and isolated post with him, Ratface Coulson was taking sensual pleasure in the cool breeze blowing from off the ridges and ruffling his hair and beard; the day just past had been a scorcher.

Herb had just reached an interesting portion of the tale when his pony, tethered a few yards behind them, began to whuffle and snort and stamp. Cantrell broke off, muttering “Naow, whutinell’s done got inta thet damn, dumb-ass pony, enyhaow? You rackon I awts to ride fo’ the p’trol, Ratface?”

“Sheeüt,” was the scornful reply of the spearman. “You’s nervouser nor a ole hen, Herb. Mos’ likely thet crazy critter jes’ got hissef a good whiff of treecat, is awl. It’s one out ther, and the wind be raht, raht naow.”

Clenching and reclenching his hand on the shaft of his own spear, Cantrell tried to keep a quaver from his voice. “You… you sees a treecat? Is… is he close ?”

“Aw, don’tchew got gettin’ your dang bow’ls in no uproar,” Herb chided. “Naw, I ain’ seed no treecat, but I did see me tracks of one, a big ‘un, too, day afore yestiddy, awn p’trol’ out ther.”

But it had not been a treecat that had spooked the pony. Rather had it been the thirty men and women and the twelve Kleesahks who had scaled the cliff face not ten feet from the sentry post and filed away in the darkness toward the nearest huddle of huts and tents.

Stealthily, the party had crossed the succession of ridges and hollows, using the trees and brush to help mask them and their movements until they were close enough to the shelf for the Kleesahks’ mental projections to cloud the minds of the sentries on the verges.

But the Kleesahk talent could hide only sight, not sound; therefore, none of this party wore armor of any description, and their weapons had been padded with folds of cloth or leather. Also, every member of the group was a mindspeaker.

Across the four hundred feet of rocky grassland, the men and women and Kleesahks moved almost as soundlessly as ghosts. They were clad from head to foot in cloth or soft leather in shades of black and dark green or brown, the angles of their faces darkened with streaks of soot. Because their mission was one of silent murder, none bore sword or saber. Daggers, dirks, a few hangers, short-handled belt axes, wire garrotes and a cosh or two—these were the ideal weapons for the grisly task that lay before them. Their tall, human leader carried the only other item which might, by stretching the meaning of the word, be classed as a weapon: a fist-sized chunk of yellow sulphur.

The gory job was done quickly and efficiently, and in only an hour, the dark, silent group made their way back toward the cliff-line. On the return, however, several of the huge Kleesahks bore the bound bodies of unconscious Ganiks slung across their broad backs… and Bili no longer carried his chunk of sulphur.

Major Jay Corbett had not liked the idea of another long halt, for all that they had seen no slightest trace of human life or passage, for all that Johnny Skinhead Kilgore assured him that they were well south of any of the Ganik settlements. Something deep in his mind had warned him to keep moving, fast. But he had had no option; it had been either halt for an indefinite period or stand ready to bury the corpse of Dr. Harry Braun, shortly.

Despite all of the drugs lavished on him and the care with which he had been handled since they had left the small hidden plateau, the injured scientist not only had not shown any signs of improvement, he seemed to be getting worse. When not comatose, he was more often raving than rational, and his confessed murder of his associate, Dr. Erica Arenstein, was thus no longer a secret privy only to Corbett and Gumpner. The entire command had heard it at least two or three times over.

Consequently, when old Johnny and the hunters chanced onto a reasonable site for a long-term encampment, Corbett first looked it over himself, then went back to lead the rest of his column to it.

If halt he had to, the location was good—more than two kilometers off the track, with three high ridges between it and the track. The valley was fairly broad as such valleys went, with more than adequate water and with many weeks’ worth of graze. Moreover, the spot he had chosen for the camp offered splendid defensibility, especially if the defenders were his Broomtown riflemen.

Within a couple of days, the veteran field soldiers had established a reasonably comfortable camp of lean-to shelters complete with soft and fragrant beds of blankets spread over close-packed conifer tips. Game had proved to be both plentiful and much easier to approach than it had been in the relatively heavily settled areas to the north.

Corbett had ridden out with both hunting and reconnaissance groups and, like all of them, had detected no traces of man except back, along the track, and even these had looked to be a year or more old. Old Johnny maintained, and the officer was more and more inclined to believe him, that those few who did ride south for whatever reason almost always used the wider, easier track farther east, along the border of the Ahrmehnee stahn . Nonetheless still tugged at by a vague unease, the major posted guards on the perimeter by day and by night.

In sharp contrast to the failing Braun, the middle-aged Ganik appeared to be the picture of health, despite his more recent injury. Although he had ridden every step of the way in the saddle of his horse, chatting and joking and cursing along with the troopers, and even had ridden along on several hunting parties, the bones of his arm and clavicle seemed to be knitting nicely, and after the first few days on the move he had declined Corbett’s offer of painkilling drugs.

“Aw, naw, them stickin’ thangs meks me sleepy, mos’ly. ‘Sides, I don’ need ’em no mo’—yestiddy awn the hunt, I founded me a whole bag fulla toothache roots.”