“Cult?” she prompted, treating him less like the slave master than as just someone else to talk to.
He nodded. “Say you get a dugger type with some talent for the Flux who not only gets out here but can survive. He or she goes nuts, of course, but it’s a crafty sort of nuts. Eventually these kind of people pick up other lost balls out here, maybe one day stumbling across a stringer train and catch-SOUL RIDER: SPIRITS OF FLUX AND ANCHOR 105
ing a few escapees, something like that, or getting people trying to flee a Fluxland. This person gets ‘em and imposes his particular kind of madness on them. They become his followers, his worshippers, his slaveshis playthings. If there’s enough power available in the leader or in the collection they form a pocket in the Flux. A place where they can live and feed themselves. A real tiny little worldlet.
They’re around, usually near stringer trails, so they can sneak up and collect our garbage. This one is a lot more than that, though. There are few of ‘em that can have the power to take on and lick a stringer train, and those few get known, we switch routes, and they wind up isolated. That’s what’s so weird about this one.”
“Huh?”
“Arden was the best stringer I ever knew, bar none. It would take an army to do this much damage to one of her trains, and she had the biggest, Page 69
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meanest duggers you ever saw. That’s them over there. Any cult big enough and smart enough to take her is big or smart enough to take a Fluxland.
It just couldn’t remain hidden this long, then show up here, on a trail with no previous trouble. Something smells here. Smells bad. / want these bastards”
That last was said with such sudden force and emotion that she stepped back from him. Inside him, not too far from that totally businesslike surface, was an explosion she would not like to see directed at her, even unthinkingly.
She went over to where the bodies were being laid out. It was almost complete now, but she had to force herself to look at them. It was a sight that no church vision of Hell could equal. Those dead warriors from this strange culthow animalistic were they inside? More than they were outside? If so, could they or their kind have ripped out those pieces of flesh with their jaws? It was horrible to Jack L. ChaXker
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contemplate, but there seemed no other conclusion.
What kind of sickness could breed ones like those?
Jomo, ugly and primitive as he was, was the only dugger she didn’t fear. He came over to her and frowned, the effect producing hundreds of ripples in his broad hairless forehead. “Saw you talkin’
to Master Matson. Best you not if you know what good for you.”
“Why? He didn’t seem to mind.”
Jomo looked over at the mass of corpses. “You see any you know in this bunch?”
She nodded- “Several.”
Jomo pointed a stubby finger at one off by itself, the figure of a woman, head shavedor what was left of it. Most of the body was a bloody mess.
“That one not like you. That one Missy Arden.
Great woman.”
“Oh, I see… .”
“No, you not see at all! Missy Arden carry Matson child!”
Suddenly she understood, and felt foolish. Of course, it made sense, only she had not, frankly, thought of stringers as having sex, let alone children-They were like doctors, teachers, priestesses
when you met them in a store in town or maybe saw them in a public bathroom it was, somehow, shocking and unusual, as if they didn’t do the sort of things real people did.
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If Jomo was right, and he had no reason to lie, then Matson right now was at his most dangerous, and that could be as fearsome as these cult members.
“Coduro!” Matson bellowed, and a dugger on horseback reigned up, turned, and came over to him.
“Yeah, boss?”
“I give you my string,” he said flatly. “Can you see it?”
The dugger looked startled. “Yeah! Ican” It SOUL RIDER: SPIRITS OF FLUX AND ANCHOR 107
seemed to awe him, although the others had no idea what was going on.
“You take the string to Persellus. We’ll have some time because this cult or whatever it has to stash its booty. Maybe enough time for us, maybe not, but if you start now you should be able to avoid them. They might have a sentry or two just up the string, though, so be careful.”
The dugger grinned, a sight that was in itself pretty gruesome to behold, and lifted his rifle. “I think maybe I like that.”
“Well, don’t let ‘em bog you down, either. I want you in Persellus even if you have to kill your horse to do it, and you give the first important official you can meet the whole story. Tell ‘em we’re coming in, but also tell ‘em the size and description of these bastards. We need protection to get in, even if I speed it up, and we better get this pest hole and eliminate it before they get strong enough and bold enough to make a try on Persellus.
You tell ‘em it’s somebody with real wizard power.
Tell ‘em anything you want, but get them here with a big force as soon as you can!”
“Got’cha, boss. Rolling!” the dugger responded, then reared back on his horse and took off into the void which rapidly swallowed him up.
Matson walked back over to the mass of now neatly laid out bodies, and counted-Eleven of the beast-women, twelve duggers, Arden, of course, and twenty-^iine refugees from Anchor Logh who would grow no older. He looked that last group over, then frowned and walked up and down between the bodies, nodding and mumbling to himself, then looked up and saw Cassie. “You!”
She was startled. “Yes, sir?”
“Notice anything funny about this group? Anything particular strike you?”
She frowned, coming over although she really Page 71
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didn’t want to come near that terror again. Ab-Jack L. Chalker
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sently she looked down at one of the bodies and suddenly could not suppress a sob- “Oh, Holy Angels! It’s poor Canty!” she managed.
Matson grunted, then took out and lit a cigar.
“Cut the hysterics. We don’t have time for it. I lost somebody close to me here, too. She’s dead, and so’s he. If you don’t want us to be you’ll put them behind you until you get a chance to do something about it and concentrate on us. Now, how many boys were in that Paring Rite shit?”
She fought back the tears as best she could.
“Fifty,” she told him.
He nodded. “And we have twenty-two in our group, so there were twenty-six in Arden’s. We’ve got twenty-nine bodies from the other group here, and only three are female.”
She snapped out of it and gasped. “And some of them were executed after they lost!”
He nodded- “Whoever our bastard is, he only likes the girls. All those fighters were women, and he took all the women while killing all the men-That sounds like Rory Montagne, but that son of a bitch doesn’t have enough power for all this.”
Despite Jomo’s warning, and despite her own situation, she could not break away. It was obvious that, no matter what happened to her later, right now Matson needed a relatively sane human to talk to and she had more or less elected herself.
“Who is this Rory Montagne?”
“A cult leader from way back, but thousands of kilometers from here. He’s a woman-hater, and, therefore, a church-hater as well.”
“Seems to me he likes women, maybe too much,”
she pointed out.
“Oh, no. His hatred of the church is so absolute that his mission in life is the capture, submission, and humiliation of women. Every woman represents the church to him, and every time one becomes his slave or plaything he’s scored in his own SOUL RIDER: SPIRITS OF FLUX AND ANCHOR 109
warped mind. Buthe never had this kind of strength or power before. They’ve been hunting him as long as I can remember, but he’s always been a nuisance rather than a real threat. I can see why his attack was particularly savage, though.
When he saw a woman stringer he just couldn’t help himself.” He paused for a moment, then Page 72
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seemed suddenly galvanized into action. “Can you ride a mule bareback?”
“I can ride anything with four legs,” she assured him. “So can half of us.”
Matson turned and called in the duggers. “We’re going to fast march,” he told them. “All speed. Cut loose all but totally essential cargo, and get the rest into the wagons. Toss what you have to. Spare rations only.” They nodded and set to work. He turned back to Cassie- “Pick your best riders. I want two on each mule. Jomo is already cutting them loose and rigging basic bridles. The rest will cram into the two wagons and I don’t care about comfort. I don’t care how it’s done, but everybody rides, understand?”
She nodded, then hesitated- “Uhwhat about the bodies? Shouldn’t we bury or cremate them or something?”
“No time. Doesn’t matter, anyway. In a week the Flux will have absorbed them, and in a month the rest will be gone, too. Anything that doesn’t move for any length of time goes back to energy.
Don’t stand and worry about those things. They’re dead. Move it!”
She did. Four of the twenty mules still had to carry supplies, so that left sixteen available. She went back, not really explaining anything, and started making choices. She wanted the largest people on the mules, to make more room in the wagons, so most of the boys were paired up, and that took eleven of the mules. Reserving one for herself and, she decided, Nadya, she assigned the Jack L. Chalker
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rest to the larger girls with some riding experience.
That still left twenty-two people to fit someplace, and some food and hay had to remain in the wagons. She managed to get twelve in the cook’s wagon, although very cramped and uncomfortably, but because of the bulk she only could get eight in the hay wagon. When she could get no volunteers among the girls to sit next to the driving duggers, who were the worst sort of the lot, she pulled Ivon, and the poor fellow with the mule’s head off their mounts, replaced them with girls, and stuck them on the wagon seats.
Ivon didn’t seem too thrilled, but he had too much self-image to refuse to do it. The driver, a hulking, hunched creature with bulging, mismatched eyes and a tongue hanging out of its mouth, giggled and snorted at him and seemed to be having a good time sensing his discomfort.
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looked very strange, but it was a much shorter train now and easier to guard. Jomo had improvised a four-across bridle and rein combination for the four remaining pack mules, and managed them while somehow perched in front of the pack on one of them. Cassie. in the first row of mules with riders, admired the troll-like man’s tremendous skill.
They were underway before Nadya, hanging on to her for dear life, asked, “What suddenly made you an honorary dugger?”
Cassie smiled. “I don’t know. I guess I’ve been a professional shoulder to cry on all my life. I never could figure it out but I’m not asking questions.”
They did make better speed, but the combination of mules and mostly inexperienced mule riders did not make for a really good pace, and mules tended to set their new pace and come to a halt when they wanted a drink from the canisters un-SOUL RIDER: SPIRITS OF FLUX AND ANCHOR 111
der the hay wagon or when they were just too tired. Matson’s powers could give them more energy and will, but even he could only do so much with a mule, and it was almost fifty kilometers to this land of Persellus.
They made very good time, but there came a time when the mules and even the horses really couldn’t be pushed much further. They needed a rest, and the riders, although still haunted by visions of the slaughter they’d just left behind, particularly the visions of the dead faces of people they’d known and shared a lot with over the past weeks, could take only so much on mule back, bare as their own bottoms were.
Finally Matson called a halt, and they got down, many feeling terrible pain from muscles they had seldom used. They were not allowed to rest just yet, though. The mules had to be tended First, and this time individually, and the stringer and his duggers arranged a security line, or as much of one as they could with most of the packs and hay left behind. The mules would be their primary fortress, although the remaining hay bales were hauled out and spaced around the encampment as firing positions. Only then were they allowed to eat the hard bread and cold beans that was all that was saved, and get drinks of water themselves.
When they were finished, Matson walked over to the group. “Any of you know how to shoot a rifle or shotgun?” he asked them.
There was no response. All save the border guards and the police were forbidden any access to firearms in Anchor Logh.
“I was afraid of that,” Matson sighed. “All right, Page 74
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we’re still going to sleep in shifts. I want at least two of you up with each dugger at each gun position, and I want a few more on watch in the gaps. It may bore the hell out of you but you just remember your friends back there and what hap-112 Jack L. Chalker
pened to them. If you’d rather live, then you try and not be bored. If you see anything, and I mean anything out there, or even if you just imagine you do, you sing out. The first one that goes to sleep on duty gets to be another of my mules. The First one who misses something and doesn’t give a warning will wish he or she was a mule!” He looked over at Cassie. “You! What’s your name?”
“They call me Cassie, sir.”
He snorted. “Too long. You’re Cass. Anybody ever call you that?”
“A lot of people.”
“Better to have a strong, one-syllable name that can be yelled in a pinch anyway. You’re strong and you have a knack with people. I’m putting you in charge and that means the rest of you take orders from her like you would from me or my people. Cass, you pick your guards for each period, then get some sleep.”
She was amazed. “Yes, sir!” she responded, shaking her head a bit. She was no more amazed and awe-struck by the sudden promotion than the rest of them, some of whom looked a little resentful.
Well, so what? she told herself. Maybe she’d become a dugger herself or something. It sure beat some of the alternatives.
The attack began slowly, with a cautious sounding out. Two duggers, looking battered and bleeding, reeled into view and began half walking, half crawling towards the circle-The alarm was sounded almost immediately, and in an instant everyone was awake and tensely at what positions they could take.
“Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot! We’re from the Arden train!” one of them called out weakly.
“You stop now or this scattergun’s gonna end things for you in the next three seconds,” Matson SOUL RIDER: SPIRITS OF FLUX AND ANCHOR 113
shouted back. “How the hell do I know who or what you are?”
“We’re from the train, the Arden train,” gasped the talkative one, but both stopped where they were. “Happened hours ago. They were all around us… .”
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“What was her whip’s name?” he shouted back, unmoved. “You have three more seconds!”
“Whipwhat?” the wounded dugger gasped, looking confused.
“If you don’t even know the name of Cuso, then there’s no reason to let you live,” the stringer said icily, raising his shotgun.
“Oh, Cuso! Sure, sure. I thought you meant”
“Her name was Herot, you scum!” Matson snarled at them and opened fire.
The air was suddenly alive with shapes; terrible, nameless, gibbering monsters who were all hating eyes and gaping, tooth-filled mouths, the dark monsters of nightmare and madness, dripping blood and screaming foully at them.
Matson and his duggers opened up on them, ignoring the flying things and at all times shooting low. From the mass of the monstrous attackers came occasional screams of agony as bullets and shot found their mark in the sea of terrible illusion.
But there was one hell of a lot of them. Matson took a moment to concentrate, and his head snapped back, then forward again with his eyes suddenly burning with power and concentration.
“Armies of the void, attend me!” he commanded loudly over the din of battle, and suddenly, around the outer perimeter of the train appeared hundreds of huge, dark apelike shapes with eyes of red fire. The monsters, so huge and thick that they completely shielded the train, started roaring back at the attacking shapes and then slowly advanced outward.
It was a clever maneuver, Matson’s best trick-114 Jack L. Chalker
The attacking cult had only limited power on its own, and that concentrated in its leader, but it, used illusion with great skill and cunning, creating for their prey what they themselves feared most and sending it forth in the hopes that those nightmares might equally terrify others.