Warlock by Glen Cook Read Free Book Online Page A

wall.”
    Dorteka did not reply. She, too, was fighting anger.
    “If I must have company and protection, send my packmates, Grauel and Barlog. I am certain they would be happy to accept your instructions.” Her sarcasm was lost on Dorteka.
    She and Grauel and Barlog had been at odds almost since the confrontation with the most senior. The two huntresses had been making every effort to appear to be perfect subjects of the Community. Marika did not want them to surrender quite so fast.
    “I will consider that. If you insist on going out there.”
    “I want to, mistress.”
    The great ground-level gate rolled back. Grauel and Barlog stepped out warily. Marika followed, surprised at their reluctance. Behind her, Dorteka said, “Be back before dark, Marika. Or no more passes.”
    “Yes, mistress. Come on!” She ran, exulting in her freedom. Grauel and Barlog struggled to keep pace. “Isn’t it wonderful?”
    “It stinks,” Grauel said. “They live in their own ordure, Marika.”
    And Barlog; “Where are you going?” Already it was evident that Marika had a definite destination in mind.
    “To the tradermale enclosure. To see their flying machines.”
    “I might have guessed,” Barlog grumbled. “Slow down. We’re not as young as you are. Marika, all this obsession with flying is not healthy. Meth were not meant for it. Marika! Will you slow down?”
    Marika glanced back. The two huntresses were struggling with the cumbersome long rifles they carried. “Why did you bring those?” She knew Grauel preferred the weapon she had gotten from Bagnel.
    “Orders, Marika. Pure and simple and malicious orders. There are some silth who hope you’ll get killed out here. The only reason you get a pretense of a bodyguard is because you have the most senior’s favor.”
    “Pretense?”
    “Any other silth would have at least six guards. If she was insane enough to come out on foot. And they would not be so shoddily armed. They would not have let us come except that we are two they won’t miss if something happens.”
    “That’s silly. Nobody has been attacked since we’ve been here. I think all that is just scare talk. Good old grauken in the bushes.”
    “No one has been foolish enough to walk these streets either, Marika.”
    Marika did not want to argue. She wanted to see airships. She pressed ahead. The tradermales built machines that flew. She had seen them in her education tapes and from her tower in the nether distance, but it was hard to connect vision screen images and remote specks with anything real. The airfield lay too far from the cloister for examination from her tower.
    An aircraft was circling as Marika approached the fence surrounding the tradermale enclave. It swooped, touched down, rolled along a long concrete strip, and came to a halt with one final metallic belch. Marika checked Grauel and Barlog for their reactions. They had seen nothing like it before. Servants of the silth saw very little of the world, and tradermale aircraft were not permitted to fly near the cloister.
    They might have been watching carrion birds land upon a corpse.
    “Let’s get closer,” Marika said. She trotted along the fence, toward a group of buildings. Grauel and Barlog hurried after her, glancing over their shoulders at the aircraft and at two big transport dirigibles resting in cradles on the far side of the concrete strip.
    The advantage of being silth, Marika believed, was that you could do any All-bedamned thing you wanted. Ordinary meth would grind their teeth and endure. She breezed into an open doorway, past a desk where a sleepy tradermale watched a vision screen, dashed down a long hallway and out onto the field proper, ignoring the startled shout that pursued her. She headed for the freighters.
    The nearest was a monster. The closer she ran, the more she was awed.
    “Oh,” Grauel said at last, and slowed. Marika stopped to wait. Grauel breathed, “All bless us. It is as big as a mountain.”
    “Yes.”