Part 17 (2/2)

The boiling clouds turned copper with the rising of Old Sun. The Northhounds trotted unconcerned through a wilderness of humped rock and gaping blow-holes. Stark went with them while the ground boomed and shook and the steam spurted.

He had not planned it this way. He had not thought that a direct attack on the Citadel would be possible. But this unexpected, and highly uncertain, weapon had been put into his hand, and he had decided to use it Now.

As swiftly and brutally as possible.

The thermal area seemed to go on forever. Then suddenly they had pa.s.sed through it, and the mountains were there, and the Citadel.

Dark and strong and solid, clinging to the mountain flank, the compact shape of its walls and towers looking like an outcrop of the native rock. The fortress and fountainhead, from which a handful of men ruled a planet.

He could understand why it had been built here, hidden behind its perpetual curtain. In the days of the Wandering, when everything was chaos, this place would have been isolated from the main streams of migration, and therefore relatively safe. Tall crags protected the Citadel at back and side, the thermal pits guarded its front. With all that, and the Northhounds, the Lords Protector need not have worried overmuch about bands of plunderers coming south over the pa.s.ses. From the size of the Citadel, they would have garrisoned fewer than a hundred men, and they would not have needed more.

How many men would be there now, after all these centuries of peace? He did not know. He looked at the Northhounds and hoped that they would be adequate. Otherwise, any number would be too many against one man with a knife.

There were sentries on the walls, bright-eyed men with blank faces. They saw Stark at the edge of the cloud with the pack behind him, and even over the roaring of the vent-holes Stark could hear their sudden shouting.

Hurry! he told the Northhounds.

No hurry, said the young dog, whose name was Gerd.

The Northhounds trotted on toward the base of the Citadel, courses of stone laid in upon the rock.

They will kill you, Stark told them, and ran, dodging this way and that.

Arrows began to fly from the walls. In the roiling copper shadow they flew. None hit Stark, though he felt the wind of them. Some stuck in the ground. Two hit Northhounds.

I said they would kill you.

He was under the base of the Citadel now, where the arrows could not reach him.

Why, N'Chaka?

It was a cry of puzzled anguish. The Northhounds began to run.

They believe you have come to attack them.

We have always been faithful.

A third hound rolled over screaming, an arrow through his flanks.

They doubt you now.

And small wonder. For the first time since the first whelp of them was born, they had let in an intruder. They had brought in an intruder.

The Northhounds bayed.

There was a hole in the rock. They ran into it. The cave was large and dry, sheltered from the wind. It smelled of kennel and there were troughs where the hounds were fed. At the back was a door of thick iron bars with heavy bolts on the inner side.

Stark went to the door. He could sense the bewilderment and rage in their beast minds.

They tried to kill you. Why did you not send fear to them?

Gerd growled and whimpered. He was one of the first two hit. The arrow had gashed his rump painfully. We never sent fear to those. We will now.

Stark reached through to the bolts and began to draw them.

Are there humans in the Citadel?

Gerd answered irritably, With Wandsmen.

If they were with the Wandsmen, or the Lords Protector, it was no concern of Gerd's.

But there are humans? You can touch their minds?

Human. One mind. Touch.

One mind. One human.

Gerrith?

Halk?

Ashton?

Stark opened the door. Come and kill for N'Chaka.

They came.

There was a hall with storerooms on either side, and then a rough stair that went up into darkness. Stark climbed as fast as he dared, much faster than was wise, his knife in his hand. The people of the Citadel were surprised, shocked, off-guard, and he wanted to use that advantage. At the top was a ma.s.sive iron door to be shut if anyone managed to pa.s.s living through the Northhound's kennel, and a windla.s.s arrangement to drop a section of the stair. Beyond was a chamber cluttered with the debris of long occupancy, things working their way down the scale to eventual burial in the thermal pits. A barred slit let in daylight, which was only a little better than no light at all.

A broader stair led up from this room, into a long low hall lighted at intervals by lamps. There were no windows. Row upon row of wooden racks crammed the s.p.a.ce, leaning and sagging under the weight of endless rolls of parchment.

The records, Stark guessed, of generations of Wandsmen who had come to the Citadel to report and confer concerning their work in the world.

They looked as though they would burn well. So did the enormous timbers that sustained the roof.

There was a stair on the opposite side of the hall. He was halfway to it when a body of men came plunging down. They might have been on their way to close that iron door.

They stopped dead when they saw the Northhounds. The hounds never came inside the Citadel. They could not conceive of such a thing happening. Yet it had happened.

Their faces and their bright eyes remained expressionless even after the Northhounds had sent fear.

Kill, said Stark, and the pack killed. They were very angry, very swift. When they had finished, he picked up a sword, leaving belt and scabbard untouched. The sword would wipe clean.

He started up the stair.

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