Hiero Desteen (Omnibus) (71 page)

Hiero's group hastened away, leaving behind the barking and chattering mob in the sea of verdant leaves. The two young males Were furious at being chivied along in this manner and pleaded to be allowed to go back and wipe out the horde, but B'uorgh's coughed orders put an end to that nonsense at once, and they subsided.

The man realized how lucky he was. He certainly had not been looking forward to his lonely but inevitable journey through the incredibly dangerous southern wood. For one thing, he had to sleep at times; for another, he had been there before, though in another part, and had some idea of the perils which lay hidden in the depths of the giant trees. He had been taken wholly by surprise, therefore, when the old Speaker called him to a sudden meeting and blandly informed him that four of her people would go with him. The war chief, the young Speaker-to-be, and the two younger warriors were all volunteers, but also came with her full consent and approval.

You go into great peril, as great as any you have been through, we think.
Hiero had informed the tribe, through necessity, of some of his recent adventures and had not even been sure that they believed him. The art of telling tall tales was well developed among this strange people.

The soft-furred hand laid its naked palm on his as the Speaker continued.
Hiero, you go to fight the ancient enemy of us all. Your she fights for you far away, and so do others. You are our friend. If the defilers, the cub-killers, the naked-faced mind-warpers, if they should be the victors, how long would we be safe, we whom they have forgotten, perhaps? Not long, we all think. We are few in number, and none outside knows of us as yet, save only you. But how long would thai last if the enemy with the terrible machines you tell of were to conquer all who now oppose them? No, we must help, for your errand, even though we do not fully comprehend it, is of the utmost importance. It must be so, for you do not lie and you have shown us how they hate you and have tried to kill you, not once but many times. You must be one of their chief est foes, if not the most important. Friends are for help, and you shall have ours. This chewed-up, old scar-fur of a B'uorgh can be replaced easily enough.
The doughty individual in question simply purred; he knew what condition he was in, moreover, looked it.

The Speaker sighed mentally.
I
would come myself to see new things and learn much of the outer world I will never know. But I can send M'reen. She will be my eyes and ears. l can train another, should she be lost, though she is a good mind. The two young males are idiots, like all males, both the young and the older. Still, they are among the best hunters in the pack. They can help guard you. And M'reen has the secret of the Wind of Death!

It had been hard to thank them all, especially since he alone knew, or at least had some idea, of what they were getting into. And they had done another thing without being asked, which made him feel even more warmly about them. They had sworn, quite simply, to leave the humans out in the villages alone and, while remaining secret, to kill no more of them for any reason. No more babies would be removed as pets, nor would solitary hunters be hounded to a terrified doom. This was a great concession.

Now here they were, Hiero mused, watching the blunt faces with their brows black-barred and lively, lambent eyes, the rippling muscles, and the ivory claws stretching as their owners eased their limbs. Who would have thought this only two weeks ago? For indeed they had been a fantastic help. It was very hard to winnow out thoughts in this life-infested jungle; though he did his best, not all inimical creatures were detectable in time. The great ape-things were very intelligent, and he, concentrating on lower carnivores and other predacious forms of existence, had missed them completely. It was the young Za'reekh who had heard the rustle of branches, unswayed by treetop breezes, and thus had warned them in time to turn from the ambush. The catfolk had no noses worth speaking of; indeed, Hiero's was far better. But their eyes and ears were fantastic and, in the often dim light, invaluable. It was M'reen who had heard the whispering rush of the oncoming brood of vipers and thus had turned them back, fortunately to a series of broad, flat limbs.

Their aid was well worth having, and they were good company too, though Ch'uirsh was going to get nailed one of these days for his practical jokes! Finding a giant worm from a bromeliad growth on one's chest in the small hours of the night was a bit much. The priest-warrior grinned to himself. He had flung the supposed serpent off with a yelp of horror before even getting a good look at it. B'uorgh, also wakened, had wanted to scalp the young hunter, but M'reen had given him a good talking-to instead. A Speaker-to-be, even a young one, in a female rage, had made Ch'uirsh's ears go back in instant regret for his folly. Hiero contented himself with a very brief lecture on the idiocy of frightening people who had a lot of real dangers on their minds. And that was that. It
had
been funny, though.

I
wonder where we are,
B'uorgh sent, after a companionable silence, while they listened to the monster in the slime below, now retreating noisily.
Can this sea, this mighty water, be far off, do you think, Hiero? I have viewed it in your mind, but frankly, I find it hard to believe, even so. So much water in one place!

Oh, it's there,
the man answered.
We have to cross it somehow. I simply have to get back to the real war, to find out what my own people are doing, to say nothing of the Unclean. I don't know if the weapon that I found, the machine that thinks for all—this
was as close to describing the computer idea as he could get—
ever ar-
r
ived in my country. I don't know if my country is even still defending itself I don't know if any messages have come from the South, from, my she and her country. The only thing I do know is that going all the way around the edge of the Inland Sea would take many months, assuming that we ever got there at all. We have to cross it and cross it fast.

There was a silence again as the cat minds considered yet once more all the marvelous new ideas. The great waters alone were wild enough in conception for folk who only knew the lazy little rivers of the savannas. But the idea of going on things that floated, like sticks on a rivulet! It was frightening, yes, but also wonderful.

These boats, these ships, I understand, I think,
M'reen sent.
But the way they move! I can understand that if many people put sticks in the water that push, the boat-thing moves forward. But that the wind itself can make the boat move, that is almost beyond any belief
For perhaps the fiftieth time, Hiero tried to explain what sails were and what it was that they did. The real joke, which he could not share, was that he was sure that the cat people would make marvelous sailors! They had no fear at all of heights and moved up and down smooth branches, well—like cats. He felt sure that a crew of trained catmen would rival the finest human sailors in existence. Probably they would need little or no training, either, once the principles were understood. Of course, there was a possible problem of seasickness, but he doubted that such a small thing would stop his friends for very long. As they fell into a drowsy slumber, he was still chuckling to himself at the thought of a great barque, such as
The Ravished Bride,
her rigging full of flitting, dancing figures, like spotted sprites.

The following day brought Hiero to a sudden halt. It was midaf-ternoon and they were moving rapidly along a highway of the world aloft, a series of interlaced branches of great size, almost as easy to run on as a town street. The man suddenly held up one hand, and the others stopped in their tracks as the message penetrated,

Hiero's mind had gone roving ahead in its usual manner, but he had been pushing it a bit harder and farther than he normally did. Then he realized they were already near the Inland Sea. There could be no other explanation for the void in the life auras he was accustomed to gathering into his head. The vast, teeming mass of sheer life which made up the collective biota of the titanic forest suddenly halted. There was a clear limit beyond which, with sharp finality, all surface life ceased. All
normal
surface life, that was!

Motioning the others to stillness, he crouched on the branch and listened with all his mental ability, for he was operating his power at extreme range. He was sensing men, men of so-called civilization, for the first time in months. And they were very much the wrong kind of men!

He was detecting the crew of an Unclean ship! No other explanation made any sense. They were closely grouped physically; that he could tell with ease. And they were out in the emptiness that he knew from the past, which could only mean the sea. The sea had many forms of life, but they did not as a rule operate on its surface, certainly not on bands of mental energy used by humans. And none of the natural forms of the great freshwater ocean would be likely to own an Unclean mind shield! One assortment of people, of whatever stock he could not tell, had such. He had learned in his flight from the North to detect these things when they were being used to send messages. In their closed or defensive condition, they revealed nothing. But the creature of the enemy was using this one to send. This left him open to detection by Hiero and, more than that, enabled the Metz to read the message. What was being sent was most interesting.

None of our ships have been sighted. Not even a trader of the common scum. It is as if the coast west of Neeyana had been swept clean somehow. I have received messages only from yourself. Suggest that a Brother be sent in one of the secret ships to investigate. We are two days' sail from Neeyana, but we are hampered by bad winds. There is a strong feeling among both the officers and the crew that something very funny is going on. We should have sighted the front-runners of the spring trade by now, but have seen nothing. We return to port unless I receive further orders. Message ends. Sulkas.

Hiero listened intently with every fiber of his senses, but could detect no answer. If there were one, it must be coming on some wavelength too attenuated, possibly by distance, for him to reach. But he rather thought not. Whoever Sulkas was, he was no member of the Unclean Brotherhood. The mind, though intelligent, was not of the same caliber, nor was it of the same "feel." This was some trusted servant, a pirate, perhaps, like the late Bald Roke, whom Hiero and Gimp had killed. While the catfolk chatted quietly among themselves, the priest settled down to try to analyze what he had heard.

The message had probably been sent at a fixed time. No reply was thought necessary for the present. Clearly, the Unclean, whom he knew controlled the port of Neeyana on the southern coast of the sea, were uneasy about something. This vessel, which had a crew of no more than a dozen, was sent out as a scout. The crew had found nothing save an empty ocean, and this made them in turn uneasy, for it should not have been so, not at this time of the year. The report had gone to home base, to Neeyana, for further action. A suggestion had been made that one of the Brothers, a robed wizard of the Unclean, should be sent on one of the "secret ships."

Hiero had no trouble guessing what was meant. He had been a prisoner on one of those secret ships, powered by some force he did not as yet understand, but of which he had many suspicions. He was reasonably sure, as was Brother Aldo of the Eleventh Brotherhood, that the Unclean had atomics! Both men felt that the metal vessels they had encountered were driven by the powers of the atom, the shunned, the abhorred, the unspeakable! In their hidden laboratories, the scientists of the Unclean had wrought many horrors. They had bred mutated animals as slaves, as they had tried to do with the cat people. But this was the Ultimate Crime. This was the final horror of The Death, something so awful that normal humanity shrank from even contemplating it.

Hiero remembered their group thrill of nausea when he, Lu-chare, Aldo, and the bear Gorm had first glimpsed the buried cavern of the past, where the great, plastic-shrouded machines had lain, the dispatchers of the ancient terror throughout the world. Aldo, the lover of all life, had almost fainted.

As Hiero sat now, brooding over what he had learned, his determination hardened. The Unclean were going to perish, root and branch, down to the last serf, the merest acolyte in the most minor degree. This was his mission, and he would not fail.

At length, he turned to his fellow venturers. He knew what he wanted to do, but it might prove a trifle hard to explain. Yet he must make the attempt.

We must be just south of the main road from the west to a city held by our enemies. One old road runs from the southeast to the northwest, springing from many other roads far away in the South. We must have been moving roughly parallel to it, though a goodish way off. It is the only way from the east to the port of Neeyana, at least through the forest. West of Neeyana there are other roads and eventually, I think, also more open country, at
l
east in part, but I have never been there or examined detailed maps of that region, except in the most casual way. The shores are very dangerous, and most traffic goes by ship.

He explained further what he had just been doing. There was an enemy vessel present out on the waters, and they must all be very, very careful from now on. If the Unclean ship were no more than two days' sail from the harbor of the foe, then there would soon be contact with someone, probably a someone they had no wish to meet unawares.

We must guard our minds,
he went on.
Use your speech aloud to one another and talk with me only if urgent. You people use an odd mental band and not one likely to be constantly watched, which is good. But the Unclean have many servants who are not human and with whom they must speak, so be careful! Also, the nonhumans watch and listen, as well as send messages on their own account. We must go like shadows from here on. Something strange out on the sea seems to have disturbed our enemies. I have no idea what it is, but anything that bothers them is likely to be in our favor.