Free Book 1 - Doomstalker by Glen Cook Page A

The packstead looked
small because its stockade had been built close to the loghouses.
Let them think the packstead weaker than it was. They might do
something foolhardy and find their backs broken before they learned
the truth.
    Marika did not find that reasonable thinking. The nomad leaders
would have questioned meth from captured packsteads,
wouldn’t they? Surely they would have learned something about
the Degnan packstead.
    She gave them too much credit. They seemed wholly ignorant.
After a few hours of watching, circling, little rushes toward the
stockade by small groups trying to draw a response, a party of five
approached the gate slowly, looking to parlay. An old male
continued a few steps more after the other four halted. Speaking
with an accent which made him almost incomprehensible, he called
out, “Evacuate this packstead. Surrender your fortunes to the
Shaw. Become one with the Shaw in body and wealth, and none of you
will be harmed.”
    “What is he talking about?” huntresses asked one
another. “What is this ‘Shaw’?”
    The old male stepped closer. More carefully, trying to
approximate the upper Ponath dialect more closely, he repeated,
“Evacuate the packstead and you will not be
harmed.”
    Skiljan would not deign to speak with a rogue male. She
exchanged a meaningful glance with Gerrien, who nodded.
“Arrows,” Skiljan ordered, and named the five best
archers among the Degnan huntresses. “Loose!” An
instant later the nomads were down. “That is five we do not
have to fight,” Skiljan said, as pragmatic as ever.
    The crowd on the field sent up a terrible howl. They surged
forward, their charge a disorganized, chaotic sweep. The Degnan
sent arrows to meet them. A few went down.
    “They have ladders,” Marika said, peeping between
the sharpened points of two stockade logs. “Some of them have
ladders, Dam.”
    Skiljan boxed her ear, demanded, “What are you doing out
here? Get inside. Wise! Get these pups cleared off the stockade.
Marika. Tell Rechtern I want her.”
    Rechtern was the eldest of all the Degnan Wise, a resident of
Foehse’s loghouse. The All had been kind to her. Though she
had several years on the next oldest of the Wise, her mind remained
clear and her body spry.
    Marika scrambled down and, rubbing her ear, went looking for the
old female. She found her watching over the pups of Foehse’s
loghouse as they fled inside. She said, “Honored One, the
huntress Skiljan requests you come speak with her.” The forms
required one to speak so to the Wise, but, in fact, Skiljan’s
“request” amounted to an order. The iron rule of meth
society was stated bluntly in the maxim “As strength
goes.”
    Marika shadowed Rechtern back to the stockade, heard her dam
tell the old female, “Arm the males. We may not be able to
hold them at the stockade.” Only the Wise could authorize
arming the males. But a huntress such as Skiljan or Gerrien could
order the Wise. There were traditions, and rules, and realities.
“As strength goes.”
    Marika waited in the shadows, listening, shaking, irked because
she could not see what was happening. There were snarls and crashes
above and outside. There were cries of pain and screams of rage and
the clang of metal on metal. The nomads were trying to scale the
stockade. The huntresses were pushing them back. On the platforms
behind the inner circle of the palisade, old females still able to
bend a bow or hurl a javelin sped missiles at any target they
saw.
    A female cried out overhead. A body thumped down beside Marika,
a nomad female gravid but skeletally thin. A long, deep gash ran
from her dugs to her belly. Her entrails leaked out, steaming in
the cold. A metal knife slipped from her relaxing paw. Marika
snatched it up.
    Another body fell, barely missing her. This one was an old
female of the Degnan. She grunted, tried to rise. A howl of triumph
came from above. A huge, lank male leapt down, poised a
stone-tipped spear for the kill.
    Marika