Robert Adams - The Witch Goddess

“I am aware, thanks to your babbling, that you murdered Erica Arenstein, back there in that defile. You lured her into dismounting to help you, then you tried to shoot her. When that didn’t work, you caved in her head with the barrel of your pistol. Then you just left her there where she’d fallen, rode on to catch up with Gumpner and the others and concocted a fable about her having been killed by Ganiks.

“Now, Braun, you know, I know, the whole damn Center knows, how Dr. Sternheimer feels—felt—about Erica, not that he ever would publicly admit it, for reasons I won’t here enter into. But I do not think that he would be at all merciful to the man who coldly murdered his secret light-o’-love and left her body to be found and eaten by cannibals. Do you?”

“All right, damn you, I believe you,” said the tight-lipped scientist. “What’s the bottom line? What do you want? There’s no possible way I can get you a seat on the Board; you’re not a scientist or physician, not even a psychologist. And you’re already on the Council. So what?”

Corbett shrugged. “Just some cooperation, Braun, that’s all. A little friendly cooperation is all that I want from you. I want your vote on anything I propose in Council, from now on, for starters. I want to know that I’ll also have your voice speaking for my interests at meetings of the Board.”

He paused, as if about to add more, then smiled—really smiled, this time—and, patting Braun’s good leg gently, said, “But we can go into all of this another time, old man, when perhaps you’ll be feeling better. We don’t want to overture you on this first day out of bed, do we?”

After a very early and very urgent summons had taken him from her bed, Merle Bowley returned a little before midday, his face drawn with worry. After two full goblets of one of the strongest of the old wines Erica had found stored far back in the warren of cave rooms, the senior bully slumped into a chair and gave her the shocking news.

“More’n two hunnert of Crushuh Hinton’s bunch is a-layin’ daid in they cabins, Ehrkah—throats cut, haids bashted in or choketed. Ole Crushuh hissef, ‘long with everbody was in his cabin, is gone , no trace of ’em nowher, and it stinks so bad of brimstone in ther a body cain’ hardly breathe fer it”

Erica wrinkled her forehead, trying to make some rhyme or reason out of all of this. “But Merle, why in the world would he have killed all his men in their sleep? Could he have just flipped out?”

Bowley shook his head forcefully. “ He din’t kill ’em, Ehrkah! It was a bunch of Kuhmbuhluhners and Kleesahks musta come up the cliffs las’ naht, you kin see wher they come up, not a dozen feet fum wher the dang sentries wuz at And they tracks goes raht crost of the ground inta the bunch’s camp, then back the same way they come in— twenny, thutty mens and mebbe twenny Kleesahks, too.”

“I can see why they’d kill those Ganiks, Merle,” said Erica. “After all, they are at war with us. But why carry any away?”

He sighed deeply, and his worried frown deepened. “I shore don’ know the answers yet, Ehrkah… but I got me a plumb awful feelin’ we-awls gonna fin’ out damn quick-like.”

The bodies of the murdered Ganiks were, of course, not allowed to go to waste, but were equally divided among the other bunches of Ganiks. It was while One-ear McNamara’s bunch were butchering their share that a nearby herd of the ponies suddenly tore off at a mad, terrified gallop, and when a brace of One-ear’s subordinates loped out to try to find out what had spooked the small equines, their discovery was grisly and frightening.

The terribly burned cadaver of one of Crushuh Hinton’s bullies lay upon the rocky ground. In addition to the profusion of savage burns, the body seemed not to possess an unbroken bone, and, moreover, the skull and body had burst open, as if it had fallen from a considerable height.

Then, even as they were running at top speed back to tell of this horror, the similarly charred body of another of the missing bunch leader’s bullies plunged from out of the clear sky to slam onto the ground a few yards ahead of them.

Borne by white-faced men with trembling lips riding lathered ponies, the news of these upsetting occurrences Was still being spread throughout the scattered camps on the shelf when the only patrol that had ridden out that day came up onto the shelf at a hard gallop to gasp out to everyone within hearing that dead Buhbuh had appeared to them as to the previous patrol and reiterated his warnings. The ghostly Kleesahk had informed them that demons had taken earthly forms in order to kill most of Crushuh Hinton’s men and carry off for the demonic purpose of fiendish and endless torture that bully and his followers. He had gone on to say that there remained but little time for the Ganiks to safely flee southward. Those unwise enough to remain would know, when the stones and boulders began to fall from the sky, that very soon the earth would open to swallow them up.

Then, as with the other patrol so visited, the apparition had reined about and ridden slowly out of sight into the misty haze that had produced him. The patrol had reined about, too. Frightened out of their wits, they had raced pellmell for the relative safety of the shelf camps.

Sometime during that night, between four and five hundred Ganiks gathered their meager possessions, mounted their ponies and filed down the single trail to head south along the main track, having clubbed down the bully commanding the trail guards and persuaded those guards to accompany them south.

When the murder and defections were discovered early the next morning, Horseface, Counter and several others were all for mounting a sizable force, chasing down the deserters and either killing them or bringing them back for torture, but Merle would not hear of it, saying that the Kuhmbuhluhners would like nothing better than to witness them fighting amongst themselves.

“Let ’em go. They wuz awl the weaklin’s, the scairtycats, enyhaow. Weuns is bettuh awf ‘thout ’em.”

But despite his nonchalant facade, Erica could tell that her lover was shaken, deeply shaken by the shattering series of events. It was to get worse… sooner than anyone thought.

For that night rocks began bombarding the length and breadth of the shelf. They ranged in size from chunks about as big as a clenched fist to monstrous boulders weighing two or three hundred pounds. Almost every camp was hit by some of them, and roofs were holed or smashed in entirely, walls were splintered and knocked askew, Ganiks were killed and injured. And the words on almost every lip in the unsleeping camps were the dire predictions of Buhbuh the Kleesahk’s ghost.

And when the sleepy, nervous patrol rode out the next day, that was the last anyone saw of them. Merle and the other bullies could not make up their minds whether the patrol had been wiped out by the encircling Kuhmbuhluhners or had simply deserted and ridden south. Merle himself suspected the latter, reasoning that if the patrol had been ambushed and massacred, at least a few of the ponies—many of which had been foaled and reared among the herds on the shelf— would have wandered back, even if no men had survived.

“We’ve whittled the odds down a trifle, now,” Bili of Morguhn, smiling broadly in high good humor, remarked to the gathering of officers of his heterogeneous force. “I have no way of knowing how many of the stinking savages the rocks killed or incapacitated last night or how many they are getting this night, but close on to six hundred of the Ganiks have ridden south along the main track. And I don’t doubt but that more of them will leave after that prisoner, Hinton, has serenaded them a few times tomorrow. Pah-Elmuh has so worked on the bastard’s mind that I think he really believes that he’s being tortured by demons. His screams will lift the hairs on your nape. Let’s just hope his voice and heart both hold out long enough to do us some good, to wreck the nerves of some hundreds more of those superstitious buggers.”