Doomstalker

The day proceeded, and despite Marika's efforts the siege turned worse. One after another, her companions were hit by fire coming through the two windows. There was no place to hide from ricochets. The nomads tried to throw explosives inside, and that she forestalled each time, but each time it distracted her from her effort to destroy the wild silth.

Collapse was moments away She knew she could hold no longer, that her will did have its limits. And as she faced the absolute, resolute, and unyielding herself, she found that she had only the old regret. There would be no Mourning for the Degnan. And a new. There would be no journey to Maksche, which might have been the next step on her road leading toward the stars.

The hammer of weaponry rose toward the insane. Bagnel dared not return fire, for a swarming buzz of metal now came through the windows. The pellets were chewing Braydic's machines into chopped metal and glass.

The firing ceased. Bagnel bounced up for a look. Braydic whimpered. "Now they will come."

Marika nodded. And did something she never did before. She hugged Grauel and Barlog in turn.

Pups of the upper Ponath packs hugged no one but their dams, and that seldom after their first few years.

The two huntresses were touched.

Stray nomad weapons resumed a sporadic fire apparently meant to keep Bagnel away from his window.

Grauel rejoined the tradermale. She was trying to learn to use a rifle. Bagnel's companion could no longer lift his.

A slumping Marika suddenly went rigid. Her jaw dropped. "Wait! Something ... "

Something mighty, something terrible in its power, was roaring toward her up the valley of the Hainlin. For a moment she was paralyzed by her terror of that raging shadow. Then she hurled herself to the one window facing down the river.

She saw three great daggerlike crosses hurtling up the river's course, above the devastation left by the flood released with the collapse of the dams. They charged into the teeth of the wind, flying like great raptors fifty feet above the surface in an absolutely rigid V formation.

"What are they?" Grauel whispered from Marika's side.

"I do not know."

"Looks like meth on them," Barlog murmured from Marika's other side.

"I do not know," Marika said again. She had begun shaking all over. A fierce and dreadful shadow-of-touch rolled ahead of the crosses, boiling with a mindless terror.

A tremendous explosion thundered out behind them. Its force threw the three of them together, against the stone of the wall. Marika gasped for breath. Grauel turned, pointed her rifle. It began to bark counterpoint to Bagnel's, which was speaking already.

Nomad shapes appeared in the dust boiling around the gap in the wall blown by the charge.

Marika clung to the window and stared out.

The three rushing crosses rose, screaming into the sky, parting.