Hiero Desteen (Omnibus) (35 page)

It was too late for Bald Roke, seasoned battler though he was, to check himself. He tried with his own sword to deflect the terrible blow, but all the force in Gimp's squat frame was in its onward rush. The razor -edge of the great sword cut in below the pirate's elbow and severed his sword arm in turn as neatly as a scissor cuts a thread. Passing on through, it drove deep into his orange finery until checked with an audible sound by some bone. A shower of blood sprayed out as Roke strove to keep to his feet, even while life faded from his glazing eyes, He took two tottering steps toward his enemy, who never moved, spread out like a four-legged beast on the pitching deck. One arm still gripped the bloody sword, which had now slipped from the now scarlet tatter of Roke's dress.

Then, with a choked sigh, all ended, One instant Roke towered up, his poniard raised in a last defiance; the next, he lay a crumpled heap of blood-soaked rags, his severed forearm lying near him, still clutching his basket-hilt sword in its death grip. There was silence again.

Then the crew exploded. The shouting almost deafened Hiero, but he managed to lurch over and help the captain to his feet before embracing him. Then a dozen pair of hands tore them apart and carried them in triumph to
Foam Girl's
poop; there Luchare, her eyes blazing in triumph, waited for her lover.

Even as he hugged her in turn, forgetting Gimp's blood and the dark ichor of the Glith, Hiero suddenly began to laugh. For out of the ship's cabin, unbidden, had come a peevish thought.

What's all this noise? Why can't I get some sleep?

The lazy bear had slept through the whole night and the entire chase and subsequent battle. Now he was demanding to know what on earth was happening!

Still holding Luchare, Hiero watched in silence as the two bird giants, the Lowans, dived suddenly into the curling seas and disappeared, their vast bodies as easily handled as if they were dabchicks. He saw that Brother Aldo looked very weary, as weary as he himself felt, and he realized that the old man must have greatly exerted himself to have held the two bird-things obedient to his will for so long.

Gimp was now everywhere, personally looting Roke's corpse, bellowing orders, and calmly warping the
Foam Girl
alongside the
Bride
as if the latter were some peaceful barge he dealt with for hides every week in the year.

But his confidence seemed quite justified. Aside from some haggling over the worth of the
Bride's
cargo, there was no apparent animosity between, the crews. The pirates were as villainous a crew of unhung ruffians as Hiero had ever imagined, but not even the single, dirty-looking Howler offered so much as an insult. Indeed, various scurvy wretches bawled coarse praise of Hiero's skill with weapons along with sundry odious compliments to Luchare's appearance and probable amatory skills. These latter drove that young lady quickly into the cabin, her ears burning.

While Gimp checked
The Ravished Bride's
cargo along with a burly thug who was now her temporary new master, Hiero sat on a bench and expressed surprise to Brother Aldo that such utter scoundrels would honor anything at all, let alone freely give up valuable goods.

"A pirate ship did violate the Inland Seas Truce in my lifetime, Hiero, long ago, long, long ago, but I can still remember. Everyone, pirate, raider, and armed merchant, sought her for a season, and eventually she was found and trapped. The crew, such as were not killed outright in the battle, were first impaled, then flayed alive. The captain, who had caused it to happen, lost a joint on each finger and toe, arm and leg, every day until he died. The same severed joints, broiled, I believe, were his sole sustenance until then," the old man added thoughtfully. "If a captain even suggested such a thing now, I suspect his crew would kill him before he succeeded in drawing his weapons."

"But how about the Unclean? Surely they honor nothing? And where are those other two men with the mechanical mind blocks? I can't detect them any more. Have they somehow escaped?"

"That's interesting," Brother Aldo said, his eyes brightening. "Only one answer I can see. They're in the drink, my boy, put there by their own fellows for some foolery or other, such as suggesting a truce violation. Or maybe just simple fear of the Unclean devices by their shipmates. No, they haven't escaped."

"We'd better get the two mind locks that Roke and my friend, the Glith, had, in fact right now, while I think of it," the priest said, starting up with a groan. His side bore a great blackened bruise where he had struck the mast, and he ached all over.

Brother Aldo chuckled. He patted the leather pouch which hung over one shoulder, and something within clinked musically. "I had Gimp take care of that right away. None of the common sailors wanted to touch them anyway. We'll have a look at them, you and I, when a little leisure presents itself." As he spoke, some- thing stirred in the depths of Hiero's memory. Whatever it was could not rise to the surface, however, and he dismissed it with a sigh. Other matters came more easily to his attention.

"Would those birds really have attacked the pirates?" he asked.

"I'd have hated to do it, but yes, I think so. I think I could have made them." The chocolate skin of his face had lost its usual glow, and Hiero saw that Brother Aldo was a very old man indeed.
How old?
he wondered. Now, as they watched the two crews transshipping boxes and bales of goods from the large ship down a gangway to the
Foam Girl,
the Elevener went on. "Who knows how it would have ended? Six tons or so of squawking, flapping Lowans would make even that big ship look smaller, especially if they were trying to come aboard! They're not at all common, you know. I've seen them only three or four times in my life."

"It was a great feat, both to summon and to control such vast things," Hiero said in honest admiration.

The old man shrugged off the praise. "My business, Hiero, and I think you have learned more in a few months about such things than I did in a great many years. But something else is troubling you."

"Yes," the Metz said, his voice lowered so that no one nearby could hear him. "That thing I killed, the Glith, Hoke called it. It was a mighty hypnotist, you know, and damned near got me under a spell. Only Luchare's shriek brought me out. What was it? The crew threw its body overboard quickly, and I never got much of a look. Surely it belongs to the Unclean."

"I got little more of a look than you, but I did try to examine it when I took the mind lock from its neck. Gimp got the other one for me." Aldo paused. "We have heard rumors of new mutations, what you'd call Leemutes, new and more dreadful ones, which did not grow by accident from ancient genetic damage. No—these new creatures have been
bred
and trained from birth in the Unclean laboratories and fortresses. This Glith thing could be one such. Certainly I never saw anything like it before."

"It was like a loathsome reptile crossed with an even more wicked and repellent human," Hiero said.

"A very typical, concept of the Unclean it sounds, doesn't it?" Brother Aldo asked. He seemed to expect no answer and simply continued to stare blankly away over the gray and tossing seas.

The Forests of the South

Night lay over the ancient port of Neeyana. A few small craft moved on the surface of the moonlit harbor, mostly skiffs taking crews out to sailing ships at anchor. No cargo had moved on any of the long piers and wharves since sunset. In the narrow, murky streets leading to the harbor, a few dim lights glowed where a street held a few taverns for late roisterers. Now and again a furtive, solitary shape moved in the shadows, bent on some dubious errand or other, but no honest man ventured out at night in Neeyana unless well guarded or simply desperate. Too long had evil had its way with the old harbor town, and now only those under the protection of that same evil could walk unchallenged, save in broad daylight or in well-armed company. Yet cargo had to move, and no other seaport served this southeastern corner of the Inland Sea. Hence the east-west trade passed through Neeyana, in haste and fear on one side and grudging reluctance on that of the other, which ruled. A greater tribute could hardly have been paid the mercantile instinct of the human race than the fact that the trade continued and in some sense even flourished.

From high in a tower, indeed the actual highest point in Neeyana, two dark shapes watched over the nighted harbor below and the moon-rayed expanse of sea beyond, out to the black line marking the northern horizon.

"All seems useless against this fantastic crew of intruders," a harsh voice said. "Whatever we do, whatever weapons we use, it seems to make no difference, The chief enemy bursts our bonds, evades our strokes, and destroys our ships without trace. Nothing seems capable of arresting his progress, even momentarily. A pretty pass we've come to!"

"I agree," a second voice said, as like the first as a twin. "But consider. They, or he, for we have no idea what his allies actually represent, has now passed through two Circles. The Yellow, ours, lies before him, unless he turns back or goes elsewhere on a tangent. And both ideas seem to me unlikely. He has always moved in this direction since we first had word of his coming. And the Blue Master, S'duna, is also coming here!

"So he too will come here, our foe will, or at least near to here. In fact, I have news. He
is
coming. I just came from the instrument room. Two of the new Vocoders registered by the Blue Circle are moving this way across the sea. We have established that the Blue Brothers gave out four! Three to shipmen in this area, men we know well, led by Bald Roke. And one, mark you, to a Glith! The Glith was along to keep Roke under control if necessary."

"And now?" The first harsh voice was eager.

"Two of the instruments are gone, destroyed, at a guess. Two are turned off, but, of course, still registering on our screens. I would hazard the four original owners, the Glith included, are now dead and that the enemy, unwitting, has pocketed the two remaining instruments, perhaps for study. A guess, but I think rather a good one." There was a pause.

"Now, I believe, we can start to summon some of our own forces. The Yellow Brothers at least will not fail the cause!"

There was silence again as the two dark shapes, their hoods drawn in the moonlight, stared out over the old town. The stone parapet on which they leaned had long ago encircled the belfry of an ancient church, but the tall tower now housed only nightmare evil.

Far off in the east, a faint light gave promise of coming dawn. The figures turned and vanished from the tower.

"We will have to trust to our wits, at least as much as any Unclean chart, Hiero." Brother Aldo's long, dark forefinger pointed to a line on the map spread out before them. "For one thing," he went on, "we can't read all of it."

The bear drowsed in a corner of the little cabin's heaving deck, the flickering lantern light making him look larger than he was. At the round table, its base clamped to the deck, sat the Metz, Brother Aldo, Luchare, and Captain Gimp, all trying to interpret the secrets of the strange map.

"We Eleveners have learned to read some of their symbols, over the years, that is," Brother Aldo went on. "But things such as these maps have seldom fallen into our hands in my lifetime, which is not a short one. This must be a precious chance.

"See here!" His finger traced a thin, crooked line from the Inland Sea which inclined roughly southeast by east. "This is a trail I have not used in many seasons. It lies to the north of the track over which you were brought, princess. That particular one is the major route between the Lantik coast and this sea of fresh water on which we now ride. It goes to Neeyana,
here.
"His finger indicated a circle.

"Now, as you felt in your bones, child, Neeyana is wholly given over to evil. This mark I know well, an enemy mark, unchanged for hundreds of years. It means 'ours' and, see here, it overlies the whole city. Still, trade, some of it quite innocent, passes through. The Unclean suffer it, taxing it not too heavily, but gathering a good deal of information and also using the traders as a cover for their own agents and schemes.

"Well, so do we! And I would wager we generally know more of their plans than they do of ours.

"But I wonder." Again his gnarled finger traced the narrower line of the northern trail. "This goes through the forest, and Hiero, my friend, you have never seen our southern trees! Look here, now, look, a patch of another circle. Blue it is. Without trying to figure out the enemy color chart, I can tell you what that means. A desert, and deadly one, for it was caused by the radiation of The Death. These blighted deserts and similar strange, radioactive spots are generally shrinking, but they still exist, and a few even spread, so long was the life of the deadly cobalt bombs, and the stranger life they engendered. Hence the blue. For on our own maps these places are colored blue also, 'cobalt' being an ancient pre-Death word for that color.

"So, Hiero, the large Dead City you seek seems to lie near to that waste, or on its northern edge. In the distance are other Lost Cities, but much further on to the east. Still, I would feel better if I could see the map the Abbey rulers gave you. If you will trust me."

There was a brief silence. The lantern creaked at the end of its short chain. No one spoke.

"Surely you trust the good Brother, Master Hiero?" Captain Gimp burst out. He banged his fist on the table. "Why, he's saved all our lives a dozen times over in the past, and yours twice I knows of!"

Hiero laughed, his swarthy, hawk face clearing on the instant. "Sorry, Brother Aldo. You're quite right, Gimp. I apologize. But Abbot Demero laid it upon me to keep this secret. My mission, I mean, or at least its ultimate goal. I find it hard to trust anyone at all. The Unclean have so damned many disguises!

"Still, if I can't tell my real friends by now, I'd better give up! And I mean you too, Captain! Here's the map, then. What do you think, Brother?"

"Ah!" For a minute or so, the curly white beard almost touched the surface of the Abbey map as the old man pored over it. Then he straightened and looked at the others, dark eyes glowing, the whites like new ivory.