Robert Adams - The Witch Goddess

Glowing with an unnatural bluish-green radiance, a pulsing light speedily became a huge and swirling cloud of dense, glowing mist, hovering over the west end of the track. Then, out of that mist, rode a huge armed Kleesahk mounted on a Northorse, glowing as intensely and unnaturally as the cloud that roiled along a few yards behind them. The figures seemed to waver in outline, from time to time, but none of the watchers on the cliffs above failed to recognize both—it was Buhbuh, dead Buhbuh, mounted on the dappled Northorse that had died with him back on the Tongue of Soormehlyuhn.

As the immense hooves of the Northorse paced some foot or more above the ground, the pumpkin-sized head of their dead leader, encased in his tub-sized helmet, was often on the same level—or so it seemed to them, impossible or not—as the unwilling watchers.

Waving his great sword with its very broad, very thick, six-foot-long blade, to emphasize his words as so often he had been seen to do in life, the apparition shouted at them in angry tones, his voice booming hollowly from out the closed and locked helmet.

“Stoopid muthuhfuckuhs!” the revenant roared. “Twicet afore I done give yawl mah warnin’. Them whut heeded me is still livin’ and breathin’ and they’ll awl keep a-doin’ it, too. You dumb, bug-tit bastids is plumb doomed lessen yawl gits a-headed souf afore of moonup, tomorra. The lucky ones, they’ll be kilt owtraht, but yawl pore bastids whut the demons done took them a fancy to, lahk they took a fancy to pore ole Crushuh Hinton…”

Slowly, the cliff side of the following mist became less opaque, and through it could be seen a human figure writhing helplessly among crackling tongues of multihued flames. Huge, phantasmal figures seemed to be moving about the wretch, now and then bending over him, and each time they did so, he shrieked in utter agony.

” Waaaaagh ! Don’, don’ pleez don’ do thet to me no mo’, aaaaarrrgh, PLEEEEZ !” None who had known him could doubt that the screaming, pleading, clearly suffering voice was that of the bunch leader, Crushuh Hinton, and already shuddering, shivering men began to whimper mindlessly in paroxysms of fear.

At a slow walk, the wraith of a Northorse bore his huge, spectral rider along the moonlit track, his progress followed by the boggled gaze of every Ganik along those cliffs. The ghostly rider was followed too by the cloud of luminous mist, within which dark, distorted figures still could be seen to move and from which still came the bloodcurdling shrieks and pleas and screams of Crushuh Hinton, now and then almost drowned out by the fiendish cackling of the demons as they tormented him.

Then the ghost again began to speak. “Thishere be the las’ warnin’ I’ll be a-givin’ you mens. I warned the fustes’ felluhs thet the demons they meant to kill sum and tek sum away; and the demons they did, they kilt near two hunert and took pore ole Crushuh and them othuh mens.

“I warned the nextes’ bunch the rocks they wuz a-gonna fawl agin, lahk they fawled everwher the day I died. And the rocks has done fell two nahts naow, and kilt and mashted up mo’ mens. One naht soon, naow, fahr is gonna fawl awn the shelf, demon-fahr, it’ll be. And then yawl’ll know them ole demons is a-pokin’ up the fahrs, a-gittin’ ’em ready fer yawl . The lucky ‘uns, they’ll be jes’ kilt—lahk I wuz, mah haid laid opun clear to mah eyes wif a big ole axe. Them whut the demons done took a fancy to, they’ll be a-jinin’ pore ole Crusher, right quick-lahk.

“Yawl ain’ gotchew lowng lef fer to git awn your ponies and do lahk I tol’ them mens to start out—ride souf, iffen you wawnts to live. Yawl won’ none of you see me aftuh’t’naht, no mo’. So yawl awl do whutawl I says, heanh?”

So saying, the phantasm reined about and rode, still not touching the beaten earth of the track with even a single big hoof, into the cloud glowing with wan, blue-green fire. As soon as he and the spectral horse were lost to view in the misty cloud, that cloud began to shrink in upon itself, to grow both denser and dimmer and, finally, to disappear from human sight. Erica had never seen Merle Bowley so disheartened, so beaten-looking. She quickly crossed the cave to him and laid a hand on his arm. “What is it, Merle? What’s happened now?”

He turned a dull-eyed gaze upon her, sighed deeply and said hoarsely, “Don’t be lookin’ fer your bullies, Lee-Roy and Abner, no more, Ehrkah. Them two wuz part of the bastids whut took awf this mornin’, a-ridin’ souf. Pore Owl-eyes and some othuhs of the mens trahd to stop ’em, and naow he and them’s awl daid, cut down or trompted ovuh.”

He pushed past her and sank tiredly into a chair. “Whut with awl the daid ‘uns and awl them whut done lit out, naow, the whole bunch is down to way lessen half of whut it wuz whin them Kuhmbuhluhn fuckuhs fust campted up ther in them ridges and commencted a-playin’ Kleesahk tricks awn us.”

She wondered fleetingly if this was the opportune moment to broach the subject of his coming with her up the airshaft, out of the cave and south, to the Center. Then she decided to wait just a little longer, until she was a bit more certain that his reaction would be one of cooperation rather than opposition to an escape from a place that was rapidly becoming a deathtrap and a situation waxing more and more untenable.

“So what will you do, Merle?” she asked.

“Whut I should awta done fer to staht out, Ehrkah. Hit them fuckin’ Kuhmbuhluhners with everthin I still got while I still got it fer to hit ’em with, thet’s whut!”

“When?”

“Naow is whin, Ehrkah. Today, soon’s Horseface and Counter and the rest as ain’ took awf kin git everbody armed and awn they ponies. You kin come iffen you’s a mind to, too, but bad as your fahrstick afrahts the ponies, be best you don’ brang ’er alawng, this tahm.”

Erica Arenstein was not about to ride deliberately into a hack-and-slash contest without a firearm of some sort, so she said, “No, Merle, I’ll await you here.”

He just nodded, stood up and, with her help, began to don his padded clothing, then the nearly full set of three-quarter plate he wore for serious raids or battles. Just before he set the helmet on his head, he took her body in one steel-sheathed arm and kissed her lips briefly, almost passionlessly. “I’ll try fer to mek it back, Ehrkah,” were his only words of parting and farewell. Then he settled the helm in its place, buckled the straps securely, stalked clanking out through the high entry, mounted his horse and set it down the terraces toward the lake and the plain beyond.

Everything had seemed to come down at once on Corbett and his hapless command, just as the line of cliffs had come down upon the doomed packtrain, weeks before. One good thing had happened, then nothing but bad.

A hunting party had pursued a wounded deer much farther south than they usually went and Sergeant Cabell had spotted in the near distance a familiar landmark which had told him that they were almost in the territory of one of the reasonably friendly tribes which lived a little to the north and west of Broomtown.

Upon the return of the hunters, Cabell hastened to make a full report to Corbett, and the officer smiled—it was to be his last smile for some time. “Then we’ve marched farther south than I’d reckoned. That would put us no more than a hundred—a hundred and ten at the outside—kilometers from Broomtown base, itself.

“We’ll give Braun a few more days, then we’ll hit the track again. It’ll be good to get back.”

But that evening’s examination and rebandaging of Dr. Braun’s leg had sent cold prickles racing along Corbett’s spine. Seeing the officer suddenly pale, Braun did too.