Warlock by Andre Norton

“What do we do?”

“Link with the others. See if you can reach Thorvald so—” he ordered.

This time the first link was not Charis, but Lantee and his will strengthened hers in her search for the curl-cat. Tsstu replied with a kind of fretfulness, but she picked up the wolverines.

A line cast out, spinning . . . then the catch of response.

“Wait!” That caution came back link by link. “The witches are moving. Wait for their signal.” Break off as the animals dropped contact.

“What can they do?” Charis demanded of Lantee.

“Your guess is as good as mine.” He was tense. “The medic’s just come in.”

Silence. How well could he play his role, Charis wondered a little fretfully. But if the medic had given up hope of reviving the Survey man, he might not examine him too closely now. She lay listening for any sound which might come through the walls.

The door of her room opened and the medic came in with a tray on which there was food, real food, not rations. He put it down on a drop-table and turned around to look at her. Charis tried to look like one awakening from a nap. The man’s expression was set and the motion with which he indicated the food was abrupt.

“You’d better eat. You’ll need it!”

She sat up, pushing back her hair, striving to present bewilderment.

“If you’re smart,” he continued, “you’ll tell the captain all about it now. He’s an expert on grab raids. If you don’t know what that means, you’ll soon discover the hard way.”

Charis was afraid to ask what this warning did mean. To cling to her cloak of being a dazed fugitive was her only defense.

“You can’t hide it—not any longer. Not with a complete burn-out of the sensatator this time.”

Charis tensed. The linkage—twice the linkage—had at last registered on whatever safeguard the invaders had mounted.

“So you do understand that?” The medic nodded. “I thought you would. Now, you had better talk and fast! The captain might just turn you over to the bulls.”

“The snakes!” Charis found words at last. “You mean give me to the snakes?” She did not have to counterfeit her repulsion.

“That gets to you, does it? It should; they hate the Power. And they’ll willingly destroy anyone who uses it if they can. So—make your deal with the captain. He’s willing to offer a good one.”

“Simkin!”

There was such urgency in that hail that the medic whirled to the door. There was a growing murmur of sound—some of it sharp, the rest shouting. The medic ran, leaving the door open. Charis was up and into Lantee’s room instantly.

The hissing blatt-blatt of a blaster in action came now. And she had heard that claking before when the birds had hunted her along the Warlockian cliff.

Then, like a swifter beat of her heart, a pulse along all the veins and arteries of her body—

“Now!”

The signal was not spoken but to it all of Charis responded. She saw Lantee slide from the cot in one supple, coordinated movement—as ready as she.

XVIII

Lantee waved Charis back and took the lead as they approached the outer door. The Company guard still stood there, his back blocking their passage, intent upon what was happening outside, his blaster drawn and moving as if he were trying to align its sights on some very elusive mark.

The Survey man crossed the anteroom with the caution of a stalking feline as the din outside covered any sound within. But some instinct must have warned the guard. He turned his head, sighted Lantee and, giving a cry, tried to bring his blaster up and around.

Too late! Just what Lantee did Charis was not sure. The blow he struck was certainly not any conventional one. As the guard crumpled, the blaster fell to the floor and skidded. Charis pounced and closed fingers about the ugly weapon. She tossed it, as she straightened, to Lantee and he caught it easily.

They looked out into a scene of wild confusion, though their view of it was limited to a small segment of the base. Men in yellow uniforms crouched under cover and laced the air with blaster rays, apparently trying to strike back at some menace in the sky. Two of the Wyvern males lay either dead or unconscious by the door of a dome to the right, across from the one in which Shann and Charis had been prisoners. And there were burned and blasted clakers littering the ground in all directions.

“There—” Lantee gestured to the dome by which the Wyvern bodies sprawled. “It’s in there.”

But to try to reach that would set them up as targets for the marksmen now concentrating on the clakers. The din of the attack cries was lessening; fewer bodies struck the ground. Charis saw Lantee’s lips thin, his face assume a grim cast, and she knew he was tensing for action.

“Run! I’ll cover you.”

She measured the distance by eye. Not far, but at his moment that open space stretched as an endless plain. And the Wyvern males? Those in sight were motionless, but more could be inside that open door.

Charis gave a leap which carried her well into the open. She heard a shout and then the crackle of a blaster beam which was close enough to scorch her upper arm. She cried out, but somehow she kept to her feet and stumbled on into the door, tripping there over the body of a Wyvern. She sprawled forward into the interior, thereby saving her life as one of the murderous, saw-toothed spears flew past her. She rolled, coming up against the wall where she pushed up to look at her assailants.

Wyvern males—three of them, two still holding spears, one of whom raised his weapon with sadistic slowness. The Wyvern was enjoying her fear as well as the fact that he was now in command of the situation.

“Rrrrrrrruuggghhh.”

The Wyvern, his spear almost ready to throw, snapped around to face the door. A snarling ball of fury burst through it to launch at the natives. They howled, thrusting wildly at the wolverine. But the animal, using the advantage of its surprise attack to break past them, disappeared into the next room.

“Charis! You all right?”

Shann dodged in. The fabric of his tunic smoldered at rib level and he beat at it with his left hand.

“Surprisingly bad shots for Company men,” he commented.

“Maybe they’ve orders not to kill.” Charis tried to match his composure. But though she was on her feet now, she kept her back to the wall, facing the Wyverns, amazed that they had not launched a spear as yet. The eruption of the wolverine into their midst had shaken them oddly.

Shann gestured the three aliens back with his ready blaster.

“Move!” he ordered curtly. And the wariness in their yellow eyes told the two off-worlders that the natives were well aware of the potency of that weapon.

They retreated from the small outer room into the main room of the structure. There had been a good-sized com unit in here, but one glance told Charis that it could not serve them, for the installation had been deliberately rayed with blaster fire until it was half-melted in more than one place.

But that was not all that was in the room. On a base improvised from packing boxes was an intricate machine giving off an aura of rippling light. And, standing about that, almost as if they were cold and were warming their chilled bodies, were six male Wyverns. Now spears were leveled—until they sighted the blaster Shann held.

“Kill!” The word was scorching hate in Charis’s mind as it flashed from the warriors.

“And be killed!” Shann returned in the same mental speech.

The snouted, spike-combed heads bobbed. Their surprise, their unease close to the border of fear, played about them much as did the light that rippled from the machine they guarded.

Lantee could do just that—wipe out the Wyverns and the machine they were striving to shield with their bodies. In Charis’s thought, the natives were ready to die in that fashion. But was that the only answer?

“There might be a better one.” Shann’s thought came in reply to hers.

“Kill!” Not from the Wyverns now, but clear and as a feral demand. Taggi emerged from under the wreckage of the com.

“Here!” The small black shadow which had just flitted in sprang at Charis. The girl stooped and gathered up Tsstu. From her arms the curl-cat regarded the Wyverns with an unwinking stare.

“We die—you die!”

Clear-cut that warning. But the Wyvern who had made it did not raise his spear. Instead he placed his four-digited hands on the installation.

“He means it.” This time Lantee used audible speech. “There must be some sort of panic button in that that will blow up the whole thing if necessary. Move away!” He changed to mental order and gestured with the blaster.