The Hounds of Skaith-Volume II of The Book of Skaith

by Leigh Brackett

  Not know, N'Chaka. Wandsmen angry. Gerd lifted his head, and his eyes caught the light of Old Sun so that they burned like coals. Wandsmen want to kill.

  5

  Very quietly Stark said to Ashton, "Don't make any threatening moves. Stay close to me."

  Ashton nodded, looking uneasily at the nine gaunt giants who stood almost as tall as the riding animals. He settled himself in the saddle and took a firmer grip on the rein.

  Stark forgot him for the moment.

  The Northhounds were incapable of understanding the complexities of their betrayal. According to pack law, they had followed a new leader, one who had established beyond doubt his right to lead. They had followed him to the Citadel; and the servants, the Yur, to whom they owed no loyalty, had attacked them with arrows. They did not understand why. They only understood the wounds, and their rage had been deadly. But they had offered no threat of harm to the Wandsmen, the Lords Protector. They had forbidden N'Chaka to touch them. As they saw it, they had been loyal to their trust. They were to prevent all humans from reaching the Citadel, but they did not regard N'Chaka as human. They saw nothing wrong in allowing him to go there.

  Yet, when Ferdias ordered Gerd to kill N'Chaka in the Citadel, Gerd had wavered dangerously. Only the knowledge of what N'Chaka had done to Flay decided the outcome.

  Now there would be another test.

  Stark thought of Flay, of the death of Flay, torn and bleeding on the plain. He made the thoughts strong. And he said:

  Watch the servants. They may send more arrows to us.

  Gerd's lips pulled back. He growled. The gash across his own hip was still raw and painful.

  We watch.

  Stark kicked his beast into a walk, down the slope of sand toward the Lords Protector. Ashton followed. The hounds padded beside Stark, carrying their heads low, snarling.

  The Yur remained motionless, staring at the pack with their shining copper-colored eyes that were like the inlaid eyes of statues, reflecting light but no depth. Their faces were beautiful to see, but so alike that they were all the same face, a face totally lacking in expression. Yet Stark could smell the fear, the rank sweat of it upon them. They had not forgotten what the Northhounds had done to their brothers.

  Old Sun had completed his rising. Ferdias poured out the last of the wine. The chanting stopped. The seven old men waited by the ashes of the fire.

  The Earthmen and the hounds reached the bottom of the slope and halted before the Lords Protector. Stark slid off the saddle-pad, coming to the ground with the easy grace of a leopard.

  "We will have six of your beasts, Ferdias," he said. "The best and strongest. Have your servants bring them now, but bid them take care." He put his hand on Gerd's high shoulders.

  Ferdias inclined his head slightly and gave the order.

  Nervous activity began among the Yur. Ashton dismounted carefully. They waited.

  The Lords Protector looked at the Earthmen as at two incarnate blasphemies.

  Especially they looked at Stark.

  Seven iron men, they were believers in a creed and a way of life, the only ones they knew. Skaith was their world, Skaith's peoples their people. They had served all their lives to the best of their considerable abilities, honoring the ancient law—succor the weak, feed the hungry, shelter the homeless, strive always for the greatest good of the greatest number.

  They were good men. Not even Stark could question their goodness.

  He could question the lengths to which that goodness had been carried. Lengths that had made the blood-bath at Irnan inevitable and had brought about the deaths of equally good men and women who wanted the freedom to choose their own path among the stars.

  Despite his hatred, Stark felt a certain sympathy for the Lords Protector. A little more than a decade was hardly time enough in which to absorb the enormous implications of what had happened. Skaith's little sky had been a tight-closed shell for all the ages of its existence. Uncounted generations had lived and died within that shell, seeing nothing beyond. Now, with a single dagger-stroke, that sky was torn open and Skaith stared out upon the galaxy—stunning in its immensity, thronged with unimagined worlds and peoples, ablaze with the glare of alien suns, busy with life where Skaith was concerned only with her long dying.

  Small wonder that new thoughts were stirring. And small wonder that these well-nigh all-powerful men were desperately afraid of what the future might hold. If Irnan succeeded in her revolt, and other stable populations, those who supplied the food and commodities to support the vast army of Farers, should join with her in emigrating to freer worlds, all the dependants of the Lords Protector would be left destitute and the whole order would be destroyed.

  "It is not right or decent," said Ferdias slowly, "that any creature in human form should control the Northhounds on their own level, as a beast."

  "He will not control them long," said a small lean man with intense black eyes. "They cannot live where Old Sun is stronger."

  "That is true," said Ferdias. "They are bred for the cold north."

  Stark shrugged. He was not worried about that day. He was worried about this one. Gerd moved uneasily, and Stark let his hand slide down to the hound's broad head.

  "Why do we not kill this person here at once?" said the black-eyed man. "The hounds will not touch us."

  "Can you be sure?" said Ferdias. "We have never killed a Northhound, and they regard him as one of their own."

  "Besides," said Stark, "I'd set them on the Yur. Then you'd be alone, at the mercy of the Runners, the bellies without minds. Even the Lords Protector are not safe from them."

  Another one of the six spoke up, a tall gaunt man whose wild hair was blowing across his face. His eyes glared out through it as from a thicket. He shouted at Stark.

  "You cannot hope to live. You cannot hope to see Irnan again or the ships at Skeg."

  Ferdias said, "I think it is useless to argue with Stark that he has no hope of doing whatever it is he intends to do. This was argued when he determined to fulfill the prophecy of Irnan."

  "A prophecy of traitors!" cried the wild-haired man. "Very well, he has fulfilled it. He has taken back the man Ashton and burned our sacred roof over our heads. But that is the end of the prophecy, and the end of the Dark Man. He is no more fated."

  "Unless there should be another prophecy," said Ferdias, and smiled without the slightest warmth or mirth. "But that is hardly likely. Gerrith goes to her own fate. And by her words, since Mordach destroyed the Robe and Crown, there is no longer a wise woman for Irnan."

  "Wise woman or not," said Ashton, "and prophecies be damned, the change will come. Skaith herself will force it on you. The change can be peaceful, controlled by you, or it can be hideously violent. If you have the wisdom and the foresight to bring Skaith into the Union—"

  Ferdias said, "We have listened to you for many months, Ashton. Our opinions have not been altered, not even by the fall of the Citadel." His gaze dwelt again on Stark, and the hounds muttered and whined and were restless. "You hope to destroy us by revealing to the world that we are not immortals but only men, only Wandsmen grown older. Perhaps this may come about. It has not happened yet. The Harsenyi nomads will carry the tale of the Citadel's fall in their wanderings, but it will be a long time in the telling. No doubt you sent messengers of your own, or tried to, to take word swiftly to Irnan. Messengers can be intercepted. Irnan is under siege. We hold all the Fertile Belt. We hold Skeg, your only hope of escape, and the starport is under guard at all times—you can hardly hope to reach it without being captured. And Skaith herself is your enemy. She is a cruel mother, but she is ours, and we know her. You do not."

  He turned abruptly. "The beasts are ready. Take them and go."

  Stark and Ashton mounted.

  Ferdias spoke aloud to Gerd, so that Stark too might hear him. "Go now with N'Chaka. You will come back to us when it is time."

  The Earthmen rode out of the camp with the hounds behind them.

  They rode
for some distance. The camp was lost behind them in the dunes.

  Stark's muscles relaxed as the adrenaline stopped flowing. Sweat broke out on him, clammy beneath his furs. Ashton's face was a study in hard-drawn lines. Neither man spoke. Then at last Ashton sighed and shook his head and said softly, "Christ! I thought surely they'd try to turn the brutes against us."

  "They were afraid to," Stark said. "But there will be another time."

  The hounds trotted peacefully.

  "It seems such a primitive idea," Ashton said, "setting them to guard the Citadel."

  "That's what they wanted. The Lords Protector had men-at-arms in plenty to defend them during the Wandering, but men will face other men and weapons they can see. The great white hounds appearing suddenly out of the snow—wraiths with demon eyes and a supernatural power to kill—was something most men preferred to avoid, and of course the ones who didn't, died. In time the legend became even more effective than the fact."

  "The Lords Protector must have killed many people who only wanted help."

  "The Lords Protector have always been realists. The important thing was that the Citadel should remain sacrosanct, a mystery and a power hidden from men. A few lives had to be sacrificed for the good of the many." Stark's face hardened. "You weren't at Irnan, Simon, tied to a post, waiting to be flayed alive by the will of Mordach, the Chief Wandsman. You didn't hear the mob howl, you didn't smell the blood when Yarrod was slaughtered and torn."

  Gerrith did. Gerrith was there, stripped naked but not shamed before the mob, defying Mordach, calling out to the people of Irnan in the clear strong voice of prophecy. Irnan is finished here on Skaith, you must build a new city, on a new world, out among the stars. She had waited there for death, beside him. As had Halk, and those three who had died at Thyra trying to reach the Citadel.

  Ashton had his own bitter memories of captivity and threatened death. He was only alive himself because the Lords Protector had not quite dared to be deprived of his knowledge of this new and unknown foe they had to deal with—the vast Outside.

  "I know how they think," he said. "But they're not being realists about the future. The viable surface of this planet gets smaller every year. The marginal peoples are already beginning to move as the cold drives them and the food supplies dwindle. The Lords Protector are perfectly aware of this. If they don't act in time, they'll have another slaughter on their hands, such as they had at the time of the Wandering."

  "It was the slaughter that gave them their power," Stark said. "They can accept another one as long as they retain their power which they will never give up."

  "We're asking them to do more than give up power. We're asking them to cease being. Where does a Lord Protector go when he has nothing left to protect? They have meaning only in the existing context of Skaith. If we take away that context, they disappear."

  "That," said Stark, "is the best fate I could ask for them."

  He picked up the reins. The road markers marched away in the morning. Gelmar was somewhere ahead.

  With Gerrith.

  The men made much better time now, changing mounts frequently. The pack load was shared between two led animals. The beasts were by no means fresh, but they were stronger than the ones that had been left behind. Stark pushed them without mercy.

  Gelmar was pushing, too. Three times they came upon dead animals. Stark half-expected to find Halk's body left by the wayside. The man had taken a great wound at Thyra, and this pace would no doubt finish him.

  "Perhaps Halk is dead," Ashton suggested, "and they're carrying the corpse. They can display him just as well, pickled in wine and honey."

  The wind blew fitfully, veering with a kind of spiteful malice so that it could kick sand in their faces no matter how they turned them. Toward noon a haze came out of the north and spread across the sky. Old Sun sickened, and the face of the desert was troubled.

  Ashton said, "The Runners often come with the sandstorms. In force."

  They drove their mounts to the limit and beyond, passing each marker as an individual triumph. The beasts groaned as they went. The hounds ran with their jaws wide and their tongues lolling.

  The haze thickened. The light of the ginger star yellowed and darkened. The wind struck at the men with vicious little cat's-paws. Sky, sun and desert lost definition, became merged into one strange brassy twilight.

  In that distanceless and horizonless half-gloom Stark and Ashton came to the top of a ridge and saw Gelmar's party ahead, a line of dark figures clotted together, puffs of blowing sand rising beneath them as they moved.

  6

  Stark said to Gerd, Run. Send fear to the servants if they fight. Hold them all until I come.

  Gerd called his pack together. They fled away, nine pale shadows. They bayed, and the terrible voices rang down the wind. The people of Gelmar's party heard and faltered in their going.

  Stark handed his lead-reins to Ashton and flogged his beast into a lumbering gallop.

  A spume of sand had begun to blow from the tops of the dunes. The wind was settling into the northeast quadrant. Stark lost the voices of the hounds. For a time he lost sight of the party, because of a dusty thickness in the lower air that came down like a curtain on the flat below the ridge. When he saw them again, blurred shapes of men and animals rubbed with a dark thumb on an ocher canvas, they were standing perfectly still. Only the hounds moved, circling.

  Stark rode up to the group. The face he was looking for was not the first one he saw. That was Gelmar's. The Chief Wandsman of Skeg sat his mount a little apart from the others, as though perhaps he had turned to intercept the hounds. The strain of the journey showed on him and on the three other Wandsmen who accompanied him. Stark knew them all by sight but only one by name—that was Vasth, who had wrapped his ruined face in a scarf against the cold. Halk had struck him down at Irnan, on that day when the city rose and killed its Wandsmen. Vasth was apparently the only survivor. His remaining eye peered at Stark, a vicious glitter between the wrappings.

  Gelmar had changed considerably since Stark first met him, tall and lordly in his red robe, secure in his unquestioned authority, ordering the mob at Skeg. The Wandsman had taken his initial shock that night, when Stark laid violent hands on his sacred person and made it clear to him that he could die as easily as any other man. He had received further shocks, all connected with Stark. Now he looked at the Earthman, not as would a superior being with power unlimited, but as a tired man, one who was exasperated, thwarted and quite humanly angry—seeing another defeat, but not beaten. Gelmar was not ever going to be beaten as long as he could breathe.

  Gerd ranged himself at Stark's side. Wandsmen angry we follow N'Chaka.

  Angry with N'Chaka. Not you.

  Gerd whined. Never angry at Flay.

  Flay is dead. Ferdias say follow me, for now.

  Gerd subsided, unsatisfied.

  Gelmar smiled briefly, having understood Gerd's side of the exchange. "You'll have difficulty holding them. They're not equipped to serve two masters."

  "Would you care to put it to the test now?"

  Gelmar shook his head. "No more than Ferdias did."

  The Yur, ten or eleven of them scattered along the line, were standing quiet. Some were on foot, and they seemed less tired than the mounted Wandsmen. But they were bred for strength. They stared at the hounds with their blank bright eyes, and Stark thought they were puzzled rather than afraid. They knew what had happened at the Citadel, but they hadn't seen it. They were armed with bows and light lances, swords and daggers at their belts.

  "The servants," Stark said, "will lay down their arms, very carefully. If any hostile move is made, the hounds will kill."

  "Would you leave us at the mercy of the Runners?" cried one of the lesser Wandsmen.

  "That concerns me not at all," said Stark. "You have a dagger at your own waist. Discard it." He motioned to Gelmar. "Give the order."

  "The hounds will not harm us," said Vasth. His voice came muffled through the sca
rf.

  Gelmar said with cold impatience. "There is a sandstorm blowing. We need the Yur." To Stark he said, "The Runners come with the storms, living where other creatures would die. They come in strength, devouring everything in their path."

  "So I have heard," said Stark. "Give the order."

  Gelmar gave the order. The Yur dropped their weapons into the blowing sand, Gelmar loosened his own belt.

  Stark kept his eyes on Vasth.

  Gerd said, Wandsman throw knife, kill N'Chaka.

  I know. Touch him, Gerd.

  Not hurt Wandsman.

  No hurt. Touch.

  Gerd's baleful gaze turned to the Wandsman. Vasth was stricken with a sudden trembling. He made a strangled sound and let the dagger fall.

  "Stand quiet now," said Stark, and called. "Gerrith!"

  There was a covered litter slung between two animals. She came from beside it, shaking back the fur hood that covered her head. The wind picked up thick strands of hair the color of warm bronze. She smiled and spoke his name, and her eyes were like sunlight.

  "Come here by me," he said.

  She reined her beast to the side away from Gerd. Her face had been thinned by the long journeying, all the way from Irnan, across the Barrens and through the haunted darklands to the Citadel. The fine bones were clear under honed flesh and taut skin colored by the winds of Skaith to a darker bronze than her hair. Proud and splendid Gerrith. Stark was shaken by a stabbing warmth.

  "I knew you were coming, Stark," she said. "I knew the Citadel had fallen, long before Ferdias' messenger reached us. But we must go on now, quickly."

  "I have no mind to stay." The wind had strengthened, driving the sand. The weapons were already half-buried. The world had become much smaller. The twilight had deepened so that even the faces of the Wandsmen and the Yur were indistinct. "Is Halk living?"

  "Barely. He must have rest."

  Ashton appeared dimly out of the murk with the led beasts. "Let them go, Simon," Stark said. "Gerrith, can you two handle the litter?"

  They went at once and took the places of the two servants who had been leading the animals. Then they rejoined Stark.