Hiero Desteen (Omnibus) (15 page)

Amid spluttered cries and curses, whose nature was evident from the looks and gestures of those who made them, the morse again bore his two riders away down the strand into the east.

The long rays of the half-set sun cast gigantic shadows before them as they went. Hiero now had released his death grip on the girl, and she sat firmly in front of him, apparently none the worse for the experience. The cut on her shoulder and back had begun to bleed again, though, and he signaled the morse to come to a halt after a mile or two. Lifting her down, he smiled as he saw that she still clung to the spear.

"You can put that back," he said, pointing at the saddle socket in which it belonged.

She gabbled something, looked about, shrugged as she saw no visible danger, and (reluctantly, he thought) restored the weapon to its place.

As Hiero got out his medical kit, she watched with interest, and when he indicated that he wanted to sew up the lips of the wound before bandaging it, she merely nodded. Whether this indicated native trust, ignorance of suturing, or what, Hiero had no idea. Even with the Abbey's salve it was a painful process, but aside from tightening her lips once or twice, she gave no sign that it hurt. Finally the wound was stitched and bandaged, and the priest lifted her up on the morse again, while he repacked his belongings. When he was through, he noticed that she was leaning over Klootz's long neck and scratching behind his flapping ears, something he loved dearly. Hiero gave her another good grade for liking and understanding animals.

Once mounted, he looked back, but he could see no sign of pursuit. Inland rose the same lines of dunes which had accompanied them all the way so far, except where the rock spines of the subsoil broke through, and he felt sure the swamp began and still stretched endlessly on, only a few miles beyond that.

It was late evening now, the low clouds red in the west and the sun's disc altogether gone. It was high time to look for a campsite, but they had only come a few miles and he had no idea how good the savages were at tracking. His decision to kill the shaman might have merely enraged them instead of helping to hinder pursuit by forcing them to mourn ritually the death of a leader. The girl, too, ought to have rest and food very soon. She might be as tough as she appeared, but what she had been through that day would have tired a strong man. The priest himself felt weary and he had endured far less.

Another hour's ride, and in the full dark, more water loomed up. It was impossible to see how broad it was, and it would be insane to try swimming it in the dark. Reluctantly, Hiero turned the morse inland, following the bank of the stream or inlet, and keeping double watch in case anything large came out of it and wanted dinner.

Their progress was necessarily slow and grew slower yet as cacti, vines, and woody plants grew more common. Eventually, peering about on the side away from the water, Hiero caught sight of a dark hillock somewhat to their left. He steered Klootz that way and to his surprise found that the "hillock" was an enormous, rounded bush or low tree, about forty feet high, with a stout, central trunk. Its branches hung nearly to the ground and provided as close to a natural tent as one could hope to find.

Once "inside," after they had unloaded and unsaddled the morse, Hiero dismissed him to feed and mount guard, simultaneously. He decided to risk a very small fire of twigs, and after he had gathered them and got it lit, realized that no good reason for it existed, save to look at the girl. This discovery annoyed him.

She had sat quietly, arms around her knees while he unloaded and puttered. As he got food from the packs and water from the big canteen, she accepted a share in silence, but made no effort to talk. Eventually, the short meal over, she brushed a few crumbs from her lap and once again stared levelly and impersonally at him over the light of the wee fire. It was obviously time for some attempt to communicate.

Actually, it took only four tries. She did not speak Metz or Inyan of the western type, or understand the silent sign language. But when Hiero tried
batwah,
the trade language of the merchants, she smiled for the first time and answered. Her accent was very odd, if not downright bad, he thought, and many of her nouns were utterly strange to him. He guessed, rightly, as it proved, that he came from a place at one end of a very long trade route and that she was from far off, either near or at its other extremity.

"What kind of man are you?" was her first remark. "You look something like a slaver, like those who sold me, but you ride that wonderful fighting animal, and you got me away from those pale-skinned barbarians. But you owe me nothing. Why did you do it?"

"Let's have a few facts first from you," he countered. "What's your name and who are you and where do you come from?"

"I am Luchare," she said. Her voice was rather high-pitched but not nasal. She spoke with pride, not arrogance, just pride.
I am who I am,
was the unspoken message, that of one who valued herself. Hiero liked her, but kept that fact to himself.

"Very interesting, Luchare," he said, "and a pretty name, no doubt of it. But what about my other questions? Where is your home? How did you get here?"
And what am. I to do about you?
was the unspoken one.

"I ran away from my home," she said. Her voice, like his, was now flat and emotionless, but she watched him carefully, her eyes bright in the firelight. "My home is far off, far beyond this sea. I think there." She turned and pointed unerringly to the northwest, in the direction of the Republic.

"I think it unlikely," the priest said in a dry tone, "because that's where
I
come from, and I never heard of anyone like you before. But don't worry about direction," he added in a voice he tried to soften; "that's not important. Tell me about your country. Is it like this? What are your people like? You called those white people who set the birds on you 'barbarians.' That's an odd term for a slave girl to use."

Their conversation, it may be added, was not at first this smooth and continuous. There were many gaps, fumblings for alternate terms, corrections of pronunciation, and explanation of new words. But both were highly intelligent and quick at adapting. As a result, it went at an increasing rate of progress.

"My people are a mighty and strong one," she said firmly. "They live in great cities of stone, not dirty huts of hide and leaves. They are great warriors too, and not even the big, homed one could have saved you as he did this afternoon if it had been they you fought."

Just like a woman,
Hiero thought bitterly;
give Klootz all the credit.
"AM right," he said, "your people are great and strong. But what are you doing here, which I gather must be a long way off from wherever you started?"

"First," she said firmly, "it would be more correct if you told me who
you axe,
where you are from, and what rank you held in your own country,"

"I am Per Hiero Desteen, Priest, Scholar, and Senior Killmanof the Church Universal. And I fail to see why a bare-rumped chit of a slave girl cares what the rank of the man who has rescued her from an exceedingly nasty death is!" He glared angrily at her, but he might as well have spared himself the effort.

"Your church can't be all that universal," she said calmly, "if I haven't heard of it. Which is not surprising, since it just so happens,

Sir Priest, that we happen to have the only true church in my country, and if someone went around looking like you, with silly paint on his face, saying he was a priest, they'd put him in the house for mad people. And furthermore," she went on in the same flat, lecturing voice, "I was not always a slave girl, as any man with breeding, sense or manners could tell who looked at me!"

Despite his Abbey training in handling people, Hiero found her very annoying. "I beg your pardon, your ladyship," he rejoined acidly. "You were, I suppose, a princess in your own mighty kingdom, perhaps betrothed to an unwelcome suitor and forced to flee as a result, rather than marry him?"

Luchare stared, open-mouthed at him. "How did you know that? Are you some spy of my father's or of Efrem's, sent to bring me back?"

Hiero in turn stared back hard at her, before laughing in a nasty way. "My God, you've grabbed up the fantasy of every girl-child who has first heard the legends of the ancient past. Now stop trying to waste my time on this silliness, will you? I want to know about wherever you come from, and I solemnly warn you, I have my own methods of finding out, even if the manners you boast of, plus a little common gratitude, don't get me the answers I want freely given! Now start talking! Where in the known universe do you come from, and if you really don't know even that, at least tell me the name of the place, what it's like, and how you got here!"

The girl looked at him darkly, her eyes narrowed as if in thought. Then, as if she had come to a decision, her face cleared, and she spoke reasonably and in softer tones.

"I am very sorry, Per Hiero—is that right?—I honestly didn't mean to be rude. I've made believe I was someone extra important so long that it's hard to be normal again. I come from a country which I guess is south of here, only, as you saw just now, I don't know where south is. I did really live in a city, and the country, especially the wilds, is not what I'm used to. Oh, yes, my country is called D'alwah, and part of it lies on the coast, the salt sea of Lantik, What else did you want to know?"

"Well," Hiero said more cheerfully, "that's quite a bit better. I'm not really as nasty as I just sounded. Only remember that I'm fond of straight talk, my girl. Save the fairy tales for the kids from now on and we'll get along. To start with, how did you get into the fix where I found you?"

As the tiny fire grew dimmer, until it was only an unregarded, winking ember, Luchare spun her tale. Hiero still believed not more than two-thirds of it, but even that was interesting enough to hold him riveted.

Judging from her description, she did indeed come from the far South and East, in fact just about where he himself wanted to go. Which made him listen to every word she dropped with extra special attention.

Her country was a land of wailed cities and giant trees, a tropical forest which reached up to the very sky. It was also a land of constant warfare, of blood and death, of great beasts and warlike men. A church and a priesthood not too unlike that of the Abbeys, so far as he could gather, governed the religion of the people and preached peace and cooperation. But the priests were seemingly incapable of stopping the constant warfare between the various city-states. These states were socially stratified, with castes of nobles, merchants, artisans, and peasants, plus autocratic rulers. There were standing armies, just as large as could be economically maintained without crippling their respective countries through taxation exacted from the peasants to maintain them.

Hiero was frankly incredulous. "Can your people read and write?" he asked. "Have they any of the old books of the past? Do you know of The Death?"

Of course they could read and write, she retorted. Or at least the priesthood and most of the nobles could. The poor were kept too busy to learn, except the few who got into the church. The merchants could do simple, practical arithmetic. What more was needed? As for The Death, everyone knew about it. Were not many of the Lost Cities nearby, and some of the deserts of The Death too? But books from the pre-Death age were forbidden, except perhaps to the priesthood. She herself had never seen one, though she had heard of their existence and also that anyone who found one had to turn it over to the authorities on pain of death.

"Good God!" the Metz exploded. "Your people—-and I'm assuming that most of what you've told me is the truth—have picked up all the discarded social junk of the dead past at its worst. I knew some of the traders down here had slaves, but I thought they were probably the most primitive people we knew about. The Eastern League at Otwah can't have heard about you either, because they're not far behind us. Kingdoms, peasants, internecine warfare, armies, slavery, and general illiteracy! What your D'alwah place needs is a thorough housecleaning!"

I lis obvious disgust silenced the girl, who bit her full lower lip in anger at his open contempt. She was nothing near being stupid, and she knew that her strange rescuer was both a clever and, more, a learned man. For the first time in a long while, Luchare began to wonder if her longed-for homeland was quite as perfect as her dreams made it.

"I'm sorry," Hiero said abruptly. "I was rude about your country, and you had nothing to do with making it the way it is. I've never seen it, and it's probably a very nice place. It sounds interesting, anyway. Please go on with your own story. I'd like to hear what brought you so far from the Lantik Sea. I know how far away
that
is, at least up in the North."

"Well," she began, a little doubtfully, "I ran away, from my—my slave master, who was cruel to me. I really did," she said earnestly, her dark eyes large in the dim light.

"Oh, I believe you. Go on from there. How long ago was that?"

It had been well over a year, Luchare thought. It had been hard at first, and she had learned to steal food from peasant huts. Wild animals had almost caught her on several occasions, but she had got toughened up and had weapons too, also stolen, a spear and a knife. She had lived thus on the cultivated lands at the edge of a great jungle for several months, until one day she had fallen from a tree, breaking her ankle. While waiting for the inevitable prowling animal to find her, an Elevener had come instead.

"What, you have them too?" he interrupted. "I had no idea they went so far. What do they do in your society? Are they well thought of, do people trust them?" He was really excited, for here at last was an actual link between the two widely separated areas from which they came.

The "Eleveners," the mysterious followers of the so-called Eleventh Commandment, were a group of wandering men whose little-known order dated back to The Death itself and perhaps even before. They wore simple clothes of brown cloth, were strict vegetarians, and carried no weapons beyond a belt knife and a wooden staff. They seldom appeared in groups and indeed were usually alone. They wandered from place to place, harming no one, occasionally doing some work for keep, teaching children their letters or watching flocks. They were skilled physicians and always ready to help the sick and injured. They hated the works of the Unclean, but sought no trouble with anyone, unless actually attacked. They had strange powers over animals, and even the Leemutes usually avoided them.