The Witch Goddess

by Robert Adams

  Then, for almost two full weeks, there had been alarms— dozens, sometimes—every day and some nights as well. So many cliffside sentries had sent their companions galloping back with word of large bodies of Kuhmbuhluhners advancing across the ridges, or marching east or west along the track or even in the process of scaling the cliff faces, that the Ganiks and their ponies had been run ragged dashing hither and yon. Usually, moreover, when the mobs and the bullies reached the supposedly threatened areas, it was to see no trace of the purported threat and to hear only the witless babbling of the sentries about how the armored Kuhmbuhluhners had suddenly just vanished into thin air.

  Merle had at once suspected that hidden Kleesahks, down below, had addled the sentries' minds, convincing the hapless men that they really saw what they thought and reported they saw. He countered this wily tactic—more or less—by posting roving groups of a bully and a dozen or so men on a route that ran along some hundred yards behind the line of sentry posts. Their orders were to find a high point away from the edges and see if they could spot whatever the men directly on the edges reported. Sometimes this had worked, other times it had not.

  Then, half of a patrol had ridden back in from a circuit of the surrounding hills. All of the Ganiks in that hundred, even their leader, a bully named Weasel Welch, had been nearly out of their wits, literally white with fear. It seemed that at one minute the second hundred had been strung out behind them, and in the next minute they were gone, ponies and all!

  Merle had been gathering and mounting a force to go out looking for the men when they appeared to sentries along the cliffs. Bursting out of the woods, the other half of the patrol whipped their ponies along the track, riding in silence but with many a backward glance, as if old Plooshuhn himself were hot on their heels. Nor did one of them even so much as slow until all were back up on the shelf.

  The various versions of their story were all disjointed and vividly colored by their superstitious terror of the living dead, but by the expedient of taking a scrap from here and a bit from there, Merle was able to piece out the whole fabric of the fantastic tale.

  At one and the same time that the group behind had become invisible to the group ahead, so had the group ahead vanished from the sight of the group behind. What had replaced the leading group had been at first a wavery, unstable patch of smoky fog. As the shaken men had watched, this cloud had grown wider, higher, denser, and then out of it, mounted on his big, familiar, dappled Northorse, clad in stained and hacked and dented armor, had ridden the ghost of their dead leader, Buhbuh the Kleesahk!

  His contrabasso voice booming from within his closed helm, waving his six-foot sword in emphasis—as he always had done in vehemence—so violently that the long darts rattled in the case slung across his back, he had warned them all of the terrible fate awaiting them should they not heed his advice and flee the shelf to follow the farmer Ganiks south and west, but rather should try to fight this host which now opposed them. Many of this host actually were, he assured the terror-struck men, ghosts like himself, murderous and unkillable ghosts of those killed by the Ganik bunches over the years.

  The gist of the warnings had been that, should the bunch continue aggressive movements against the host now opposing them, many would die and many others would simply disappear… forever, snatched to an eternal death of torment by demons. Also, rocks and fire would fall from the skies as they had so fallen on the very day Buhbuh had died. Others who did not heed his warnings would have the earth open beneath them and swallow them up, entire.

  Some attested that Buhbuh had then just disappeared, but most claimed that the apparition had reined about and ridden back into the dense cloud of smoky fog, which then had slowly become smaller and more wavery before dissipating altogether.

  Being a rational man, Merle naturally did not believe a word of the tale. Of course, he recognized the possibility that it was another instance of Kleesahk witchery, but it did not smack of any illusions he had ever heard of Kleesahks casting. He thought it far more likely that, their weak and unstable minds already roiled by the occurrences of the last few days, this group had commenced to lose the stomach for fighting the Kuhmbuhluhners and Kleesahks and had convinced themselves and each other that the spirit of a respected leader had now given them firm grounds for running.

  He felt just then like either killing them all, then and there, or telling them to get on their ponies and skeedaddle, but realizing that either course might be a mistake with the other Ganiks so agitated, he set the tone by laughing at the men who claimed to have seen and heard Buhbuh, mocking them, making light of their fears. Loyally, the other bullies had emulated him… in public. Privately, however, they were all worried, confused and more than a little frightened. So, too, was Merle Bowley, but he confided in only one person: Erica.

  Soon after Bowley had taken up swimming and had discontinued the common Ganik practice of wearing clothing until it rotted off his body, Erica had become aware of a physical attraction to him and, never having seen any reason to stay chaste for long, had begun sharing her huge old bed with him, now and again. With hundreds of years of experience in lovemaking, Erica was a good teacher, and Bowley had proved to be a quick learner, so quick that both soon were deeply satisfied one with the other and Erica, for her own part, found herself constantly postponing her departure and even trying to think of ways to persuade him to accompany her when depart she finally did.

  Even in his primitive state, she had found Merle Bowley to be an admirable man, and that was before he became her lover, she took pains to remind herself. Could he enjoy the benefits of a proper education, of long exposure to a more sophisticated culture than the general brutishness of the bestial Ganiks, what wonders might come of his native intelligence, his rare innovativeness, his natural quality of leadership?

  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 d
one 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."

  "What," demanded Corbett mildly, "in the hell are toothache roots, Johnny?"

  Wordlessly, the Ganik dropped the reins over the pommel knob, thrust his good hand into a narrow bag hung from his belt and then held the open hand out for the officer's inspection. On the broad palm rested a half-dozen thin, grayish, stringy roots.

  'Try you sum, Majuh, they's good fer enythin' whut hurts you, enytahm it hurts you, and they don' mek you sleepy, lahk them stick-you thangs does, neithuh."

  Corbett accepted the proffered roots, but postponed trying them until a later time. However, from then on, he could save the almost expended supply of drugs for Braun.

  Burdened with the still-gnawing presentiment of trouble fast approaching, Corbett decided that the unit would remain for a week, maximum. If Braun showed no improvement in that time, they would pack up and push on, regardless.

  But, strangely enough, once the officer and his assistants had again gone through the long, hard, nauseating procedure of opening and draining the scientist's leg, Braun did begin to improve… if longer and increasingly longer periods of lucid consciousness filled with whimperings, free-flowing tears and querulous, nagging complaining about anything and everything could be classed as improvement.

  Despite the almost-constant annoyance, however, Corbett did consider Braun improved. He still was running a low-grade fever, but the officer thought that most likely was to be expected for a while, at least until he could get the injured man back to where he could receive the benefits of medical treatment by a real doctor.

  Jay Corbett intended to find an excuse for promoting the two troopers—Thurston and Farmer—who had been sharing the nursing of the whining and petulant scientist; they showed the patience of Job. What with keeping their patient and his bedding clean and dry—Braun pissed himself several times each day, claiming that his intense pain robbed him of all control, but Corbett, who had been in rather severe agony himself at various times, believed not a word of it and wished that he had the materials and knowledge to catheterize the selfish, childish bastard—cooking for him and themselves, feeding him, and seeing after their own mounts and the two that carried Braun's litter on the march, the officer wondered just how and when the two men managed to get any sleep at all.

  Toward the end of their second week in the valley camp, with the swellings noticeably subsiding in the visible portions of Braun's injured leg, most of the discolorations beginning to show signs of fading, and Braun himself becoming restive and all but unbearable to be around, Corbett had some of the men rig a padded seat and backrest under a shady tree near the bank of the swift-flowing stream and had the doctor— screaming and sobbing that they were killing him—borne down to and installed upon it.

  As trooper Thurston gently tucked a blanket around the scientist's legs and lower body, Braun raised his head, looked up at Corbett with te
ary eyes and said, between his snuffles, "Why can't you just shoot me and be done with it, Corbett? Does torturing me this way give you a charge? You know, surely, that if I do get back to the Center alive, you and the rest of these pigs will rue the day you hurt and humiliated me, don't you?" After a very long sniff and a swallow, he added, with a measure of his old arrogance and pomposity, "You know, even if these half-civilized bastards don't, just how powerful I am on the Council and the Board of Science, and I…"

  Jay Corbett used his command voice to the troopers. "Very good, men, thank you and dismiss. You, too, Thurston—I'll call you if I need you. "

  When the men were gone beyond easy listening, the officer squatted before Braun and said, "Doctor, you are right about one thing: I don't like you, I never have liked you, even in the happy centuries when I didn't know you very well. Now that I've come to know you far more intimately than I'd have ever preferred, come to know just what a rotten excuse for a human being Dr. Harry Braun is, my dislike for you has doubled, in spades! I think I've hidden that dislike of you from most of these men, but your own inexcusable behavior has eroded every bit of respect they ever had for you, and along with it, I'm afraid, went a good deal of the mystique that once surrounded all of us from the Center. Any day now, now that your ravings and tantrums have shown these sepoys of ours that our feet are clay, we can expect them to recognize us for the exploitive, parasitic vampires we really are and hoist us on our own petard. And you know, Braun, I can hardly wait for that day of final reckoning."

  Braun's face had paled to as light a hue as the dark Ahrmehnee skin would fade. "If such a day ever does come, you damned traitor, you won't be there to see it. You've just sealed your fate. When Dave Sternheimer hears what you just told me…"

  Corbett smiled coldly. "Ah, but you won't, Braun."

  "Oh, yes, he will," Braun snapped. "The only way you can prevent it is to kill me outright, stop torturing, degrading me, humiliating me in front of these trained apes of yours."