by Robert Adams
The officer shook his head, his lips still bent in his frigid smile. "After all I've been through and put many of my men through to get your living carcass this far, Braun, I mean to see that you get all the way back alive… alive enough, at least, to be able to transfer to another body before this one dies. Oh, yes, my good Doctor, you'll get back alive, because I have a use for a living Dr. Harry Braun, back at the Center. Oh, and you'll not be saying a word against me to Dr. Sternheimer or to anyone else… ever."
Braun sniffed disparagingly. "There's not a thing you can do to stop me, once I'm back, Corbett."
"No, there isn't, really, Braun," Corbett agreed, but then added, "However, if you do say more than is good for us, then I would find it necessary to tell Dr. Sternheimer of some of your misdeeds, you see. I know Dr. Sternheimer and his values quite well, Braun, and I know which of us two would get the really dirty end of the stick from him. I have said some things, agreed, but you, Braun, you have done things."
"What are you talking about, Corbett, Center rumors? Fagh, not even an undereducated yokel like you could be stupid enough to think Dave Sternheimer would believe—"
"Just shut up, Braun, unless you'd like to hurt—really hurt—for a while," Corbett snapped, then returned to his softly mocking tone. "No, Braun, no rumors these, but facts. You've been raving from fever for weeks now, when you weren't babbling under sedation. During that time, you've told me some very interesting things, Dr. Harry Braun. If Dr. Sternheimer and certain others knew of some of those things… well, I'll leave it to your mind. I think your imagination is likely more vivid than mine."
"I… what… what did I… you can't think anyone would believe anything I said in… in delirium?" spluttered Braun.
"No, not really," agreed the squatting officer blandly. "But Dr.
Sternheimer might decide to try pentothal or hypnotism, or maybe both together, and the things I'll tell him—if you force me to tell him—would give him some questions to ask, a place to start from.
"As to exactly what you told me, that is my—rather, our—secret, unless, until, you force me to make your various misdeeds public knowledge. You have been a very busy, very amoral, very malicious, backbiting, backstabbing, self-serving, utter bastard, over the centuries, haven't you, Braun?"
He paused, studying Braun as if he were some rare, loathsome insect impaled upon the point of a pin. "All right, in case your cesspool brain is churning up the thought that I'm just trying to delude you, that I really know nothing of any value or importance, I'll tell you one of the little dirty secrets you detailed to me.
"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?"
Chapter Twelve
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 t
he 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."
The tall young nobleman took a sip of ale and went on, "Now, I know that the men and women are getting a bit tired of digging pits and ditches and felling trees and hacking at brush."
There was a chorus of grunts and other indications of a fervent agreement. Bili waited for the noise to subside, then continued, "I know they're wondering just when we'll get in some fighting. Well, I shouldn't think it will be long now. We've stung them cruelly, we're doing more of it at this very minute, we'll do still more tomorrow. More Ganiks will ride south, undoubtedly, and at that juncture I feel certain that whoever is commanding will see the necessity of striking us while he still has the strength to give him a chance of victory over us. Another week, at most, will see it done, one way or the other, that's my feeling."
All the while that Bili spoke, the assembled men and women could hear from the near distance the creaking of ropes, the solid-sounding thunnks as massive, hard-swung timber met equally massive thickly padded crossbeam, indicating that one of the oversize siege engines had sped yet another load of stone to arc down upon the main camp of the unhappy Ganiks.
Lieutenant Frehd Brakit and his hard-working engine crews kept at it through most of the night, only halting when they had expended the last of their stones. Then they sped off one more load—another well-charred corpse—and stood down for a few hours of much-needed rest.
Erica, Merle Bowley, Horseface, Lee-Roy, Abner, Owl-eyes Hewlitt and a dozen more of the bullies rode from end to end of the shelf the next morning, assessing the damage… and the carnage. It was not until they were riding back that they saw the corpse floating in the lake. At Bowley's command, two of the better swimmers went out and towed the burned and much-battered thing back to shore.
"Enybody thank they knows 'im?" asked Bowley. "Be he anothern of ole Crushuh's bullies?"
"Yeah," nodded Horseface slowly. "I thank he be the one called hissef Bawlbustuh Engel. Looks lahk sumbody he done burnt thet pore man's bawls raht awf, his peckuh, too."
"Shitfahr!" exclaimed Bowley angrily. "Sumbody jes' tell me how in tarnashun is them Kuhmbuhluhn bastids and them fuckin' Kleesahks a-gittin' tortured-to-death bodies and a half a mountun wortht of rocks a night to come down awn us?"
"They've obviously got a battery or two of catapults—rock-throwing devices that are usually used against besieged cities—out there somewhere on one of those ridges," said Erica. "They must be the world's biggest catapults, too, to heave rocks the size of some of the monsters we've seen back there. And that's probably what the Kuhmbuhluhners and the Kleesahks were felling trees for when they first arrived, to build those catapults. Engines that big couldn't have been easily dragged overland to get here—it would've been far less trouble and labor to build them on the spot they were to occupy."
Merle nodded glumly. "I done heerd 'bout thangs lahk thet afore—thangs whut thows rocks and fahrbawls and big ole spears and awl. Probly ain't none the scouts seed 'em cawse of them damn Kleesahks a-hidin' 'em fum 'em. But why in hell ain't we-awl seed 'em fum up heah?"
"They probably have them camouflaged during the day," Erica said, then, noticing the blank looks, elucidated, "Have them covered with leafy branches, things like that, so the positions look just like part of the ridgeline from this distance. That also may be why they only use them by night. That way, we can't see where exactly the rocks are coming from and so we won't know which area to send our men against.
"That's what is going to have to be done, you know, Merle. We're going to have to send a strong force out there to find and to burn those catapults before the damned things pound every living thing on this shelf into blood pudding.
"If whoever did it only hadn't managed to thoroughly bollix up my rifle scope, I might be able to do some terrorizing of my own against those sons of bitches, but…" She shrugged.
Merle turned in his saddle. "Owl-eyes, Horseface, yawl git back down ther and git three, fo' hunnert mens—good mens, too, none of them shithaids, heanh. Don' brang nobody whut cain' see good at naht, neethuh. I wawnts 'em strung out awl lowng of the top edges of the shelf, tonaht. Moon's damn neah full,'t'naht, so sumbody they oughta see wher them fuckin' rocks and awl's a-comin' fum.
"We comes to know wher they a-settin' at, we'll tek us the whole dang bunch and go burn 'em up, then we'll stomp them fuckin' Kuhnbuhluhn bug-tits flat. Naow git!"
They got, and at moonrise Bowley's commands had been carried out, with nearly four hundred Ganiks standing or kneeling or sitting or squatting all along the winding, uneven edges of the cliffs. Nor were these inordinate numbers of sentries unnoticed by watchers just inside the forest beyond the track.
"Cat brother Chief," Whitetip farspoke Bili of Morguhn, "smelly ones beyond the counting are atop the cliffs, at least one of them to every two-leg length for all of the distance. But they do not seem armed for fighting and no ponies are with them. They simply stare out across the ridges."
"Someone over there has finally dusted off his brains," Bili smilingly mindspoke Pah-Elmuh and Rahksahnah. "Whitetip says that there's at least one Ganik to every couple of yards of the cliffs, and you can safely bet that with a full moon, or almost that, tonight, their orders are to spot our engines."
Rahksahnah sighed. "Then they'll probably attack the engines tomorrow. I wonder how many Maidens will die defending them?"
"None, if I can help it, my dear, and none of the men or the Kleesahks, either. I have other sights than those of operating siege engines planned for the hundreds of eyes on those cliffs tonight," Bili beamed into her mind.
"But I thought… thought you wanted them to attack, my Bili." There was puzzlement in her return beaming.
He nodded. "Oh, but I do—no war has ever yet been ended finally and completely without a battle. But there are still too many of them for our slender force to take on with any hope of success. I trust that the litt
le entertainment tonight will substantially reduce those numbers, send some hundreds more of them fleeing southward."
At Bill's word, Pah-Elmuh and all seventeen of his Kleesahks left at a ground-eating lope faster than the trot of a horse, weaving easily between the treetrunks and other obstacles of the nighttime woods. They soon were ranged in a single line facing the cliffs, just inside the woods that bounded the other side of the track at the base of those cliffs.
Pah-Elmuh hated bloodshed, thought all of mankind to be born hurters and killers, incredibly savage toward each other as well as toward beasts. Knowing of old how easily misled and frightened were the common run of Ganiks, it had been his original idea to use the esoteric powers of the Kleesahks to so terrify the cannibals that many if not most of them would flee rather than fight. Bili, seeing in this scheme his duty served with minimum losses from his small squadron, had approved the stratagem, making sure that his men and women cooperated to the fullest possible extent with Pah-Elmuh and the other hybrid semihumans. At the same time, however, the young commander had continued his preparations for the eventual attack by the hard core of the Ganiks. He felt that attack was inevitable, no matter how many cannibals, terrified by Pah-Elmuh and the rest, were sent fleeing as fast as their ponies would bear them down the tracks to the south.
The Kleesahks had carefully rehearsed the events which then unfolded before the gazes—fixed in awe and horror and gut-wrenching terror—of the Ganiks. Even the bullies there found their skins acrawl, while their minds dredged up the shuddery legends that had frightened them as children.
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.