The Witch Goddess by Robert Adams

Author:Robert Adams
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9780451117922
Publisher: Roc
Published: 1982-09-07T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eight

The brothers, Lee-Roy and Abner, had impressed upon Erica the fact that she would need far more bullies as leader of the main bunch—at least two score. The men with whom she was riding north to the camp of the main bunch had been, it was true, bullies to the dark man she had shot, but they also were the same men who had acclaimed her a worthy successor to her victim, so she decided that they could all be depended upon to support her. These, plus the brothers, gave her a round score of bullies; the rest she could choose when she arrived.

The plan of escape that she devised while traveling north was simple and, she thought, simple of accomplishment. The impression she had been given of the total numbers of the main bunch was at least four thousand and perhaps as many as six thousand. Of these, only a few hundred would be required to clear away enough of the rubble from the site of the landslide for her to locate and retrieve the Center transceiver and its powerpack; these new transceivers were virtually indestructible, especially so when enclosed, as the parts of this one had been when buried, in their waterproof, shockproof cases.

She knew that she was too far north for helicopter rescue, but she also knew that two or three hundred Broomtown men and Center personnel with modern arms, plentiful ammunition and some explosives could go through even the thousands of Ganiks like Grant went through Richmond. All that she needed to do was to have the transceiver and powerpack dug out and brought back to the main Ganik camp. She could hook it up and, some night at the proper time, she could report her situation to the Center, then just leave the set on so that the rescue party could home in on it with their own equipment; true, it might take them some time to organize and come up this far, but the powerpacks were good, so Sternheimer asserted, for a solid three months without recharging.

As she and her party rode north, Erica resolved to start laying the groundwork for her scheme immediately she had been formally empowered as high chief or whatever. But such was not to be.

The camp of the main bunch was a surprise in many ways to Erica. It was situated not in some forest clearing as had been the smaller one, but on a wide, deep shelf hard against the southern and western flanks of a mountain. Several large collections of huts and cabins were separated from each other and from a knot of larger buildings built of stone by acres of gently rolling grassland, with rocky upthrusts of the underlying mountain's bones showing through the soil only here and there. Herds of ponies and a few horses and mules roamed and cropped this expanse, and Erica saw a few spots that looked to have once been cultivated.

From a distance, it did not appear to be a

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