Hiero Desteen (Omnibus) (26 page)

He occupied himself with searching the neighboring trees and shrubs until he found one he lilted, a low, tough thing whose shiny black wood met his chopping blade with a resounding "clang" when he cut at it. Off and on, he worked at securing some heavy pieces of this wood all day, and by nightfall and the recommencement of their journey, he had what he wanted. He had been forced to resharpen his sword and his best knife many times, particularly the latter.

"It's for a crossbow," he explained, when Luchare questioned him. "A Killman, a trained soldier, that is, ought to be able to make a complete set of weapons out of almost anything. I have no thrower any longer, and a heavy crossbow is the next best thing I know. I may use animal horn later, if I can get any, and I need metal and feathers or something for bolts. It will take a while, but I've got nothing better to do."

"Could you show me how?"

"Why not? I've got more than enough wood for a second one here. The better we're armed, the more chances we have. Look here, I'm whittling on this stock. The butt end runs so—"

It was hard to explain at night while they were riding, but during the next day he was able to sketch on sand, so now both of them whittled away on their weapons, chatting companionably as they did. Long spells of outward silence usually meant that they were talking to Gorm, who lay and watched them as they worked. Hiero had outlined the route ahead as he saw it, and warned the bear that the area seemed to be very dangerous and filled with the Dead Cities. To his surprise, Gorm seemed somewhat contemptuous.

I
have been in some of them to the north, the places of your human past,
he explained.
They are evil; Unclean things there, what you call the Man-rats and others, but they are clumsy and do not use their noses and ears, almost as bad as you two,
he added.
I am not afraid of such places.

Hiero learned that the young bear had indeed ventured into several of the ruined towns of Kanda at one time or another, though he became evasive when asked why.
The Elder folk have us do it,
he finally sent, and would say nothing more. But the priest gathered that it was some kind of test, perhaps an emergence into adulthood.

He was quick to tell Gorm that the vast Dead Cities of the South were nothing like the abandoned places he might have seen in most of Kanda, being far larger and apt to be ten times as dangerous. Luchare chimed in to add her views.

"There are several of them, in D'alwah," she said to Hiero. "Tell him plainly, you're better than I, that no one, save for the Unclean, goes there at all. Strange things, horrible things, are said to lurk there, creatures which are not found elsewhere,"

Perhaps,
was the bear's calm answer.
I
am always careful. But we must go there anyway, so why worry?

"My people have a few strange instruments," Luchare offered. "They are either very old or copied from very old ones, made before The Death, it is said. The priests and a few nobles whom they trust keep them. When it becomes necessary for someone to go near a Dead City, or one of the Deserts of The Death, one of these is taken out of safekeeping and sent along. It tells you when the invisible death is still there, the fleshrot"

"Yes," Hiero said absently, eyeing the grain of the wood as he whittled at his crossbow. "I know what you mean. We have them too. What you call the 'invisible death' is actually lingering atomic radiation. We can't produce it, but we know about it up north." He laid down the bow and watched the setting sun a moment before continuing. "As long as you're with us, you won't need one." He smiled. "Klootz and I are trained to detect it with our bodies. And I suspect our fat friend can do it too." A question to Gorm elicited the fact that he knew well the danger of hard radiation and could detect its sources easily.

Luchare marveled inwardly. She would rather have been flayed alive than let it show, but every attribute Hiero demonstrated seemed to put him on another and higher plane from herself. In her heart, she felt that her pride in her exalted origin was simply a last defense against admitting that a foreigner of no particular birth was too good for a girl from the barbarous South, no matter how lofty her social position.

Both too preoccupied and too honorable to probe her mind and a prey to conflicting emotions himself, Hiero saw nothing on her face to indicate any of them.

"Let's take another look at the maps," he now said. "We are fast getting into what seems a very nasty area. Did you hear the frogs last night?"

They had all heard the increasing racket of the amphibian chorus, and all knew what it meant. The Palood was angling toward the coast again. The soggy world of fen and marsh met the symbols of the half-drowned cities on the Unclean map and could not be far ahead.

"Look, if we can get through here," he went on, "this symbol down the coast might well be your Neeyana, Luchare. Now, I can't read the peculiar script they use and, knowing them, it may be in code as well. But see." His finger indicated a wavy line going away east from the southeastern corner of the Inland Sea. "This looks as if it might be the trail you came over with the people who took you captive. This blob here, then, looks like a good bet for a Desert of The Death. See, it has the same mark as these circle things just ahead that must be Dead Cities.

"Now, then, beyond that desert, here to the south, are three more cities, Dead Cities. One is very close to the desert marking.

Those three are marked on my own maps too, the first more heavily. They are among the few that are. This is where I'm supposed to start looking for—what I need." He rolled up the set of maps and carefully restored them to the saddlebag.

Again they set out in the half-light of evening. Not only were the frogs growing louder, but the buzzing, biting insects had made an unwelcome reappearance also. Hiero's salve was now exhausted, and there was little they could do but grimly endure, slapping when the nuisances became unbearable.

Once more, Klootz began slopping through puddles and mires. The great reeds and. giant dock leaves now rose up in the dark again, replacing the dry land growth through which they had marched for so long.

All through the night they moved on at a walk. Twice they had to circle broad pools from which bubbles of marsh gas rose and burst. Once Klootz stamped a great hoof down on a pale snake, an adder of some sort which made the mistake of striking at him. Hiero roved the night with his brain, searching for danger, but he was too unfamiliar with his abilities to be very sanguine. An amphibian mind is the same whether the creature is twenty yards long or three inches, and it gives off much the same emotional values and neural reactions. No true "thought" occurs at all. Thus, if the priest were trying to see if the thing he was inspecting was one of the huge frog monsters which had almost attacked him before, he had only the view from the animal's own eyes, dim at best, to give him a scale of reference. Once indeed, they heard one of the great creatures bellow, but the sound came from far away.

The first faint glimmer of dawn was barely beginning to lighten the east when they came to a halt. A few moments earlier, Hiero had ordered Klootz to stop and had got down himself to test the surface on which they were traveling.

"Thought so," he muttered half to himself. "There's only an inch or so of muck here. I heard the hooves strike something hard quite a way back." He raised his voice so the girl could hear. "I think we're on a road, or at least something once constructed, a thing artificial."
Gorm, come back and tell me what you think,

Man-built, very old,
was the bear's verdict. They stood listening to the frog and insect chorus on the v/arm night, while clouds of gnats and mosquitoes descended on them. Hiero felt the bite of a leech through a tear on his ankle and, looking down, saw that the morse's legs were covered with the black, worm shapes, clearly visible in the waning of moonset.

"Day's coming," he said. "We'll have to find cover." He instructed the bear to look for shelter and began to walk by the morse's head.

The decision was soon made for them. With no warning, they rounded a clump of the big reeds and found a still expanse of open water before them, broken only by dark hillocks and peculiar, tall, peaked islands, fast taking shape in the dawning light. Looking about, Hiero spied a low mound not far away to one side, which had some vegetation growing on it. He remounted, and Gorm and the morse floundered through muck, for they quickly left the firm surface, until they reached the place.

Klootz heaved himself out of the mud, which would have been up to a human neck, with a sucking noise, and the two humans quickly dismounted. They were on a flat-topped island in the mud, about ten yards square. Thick bushes and even a small palm grew on it, but none of the marsh plants, proving that it was solid ground. While looking at its curiously regular edges, the priest unsaddled the morse and began to pick leeches off his mount's body.

"This is an ancient building, I feel sure," he said at length, yanking the last rubbery body off Klootz and hurling it out into the marsh. "We're standing on a flat roof. God Himself knows how much is sunk below us. This building could have been tall enough to reach, well, the height of a hundred men. The muck might be easily that deep."

They covered themselves against the insects as well as they could, and then all crouched down under the cover of the palm tree and bushes, to pass the day as best they might. Hiero made sure that they were covered from above by cutting a few branches and laying them over the four bodies. They would be hot, dirty, and uncomfortable, but also hard to see.

As the day flooded the landscape with light, their spirits sank, at least those of the humans did. Klootz ate steadily at every piece of browse within reach, and Gorm managed to sleep, keeping his bearish thoughts to himself.

But the landscape, or rather waterscape, which now lay before them could hardly be considered inspiring, even with a clear sky above and a warm sun.

The Inland Sea had vanished. As far as the eye could reach, there was water, but it was brown and still. From it, stretching equally far out of sight, thrust the ruins of a vast and ancient metropolis, the hecatomb of a vanished race. Some of the buildings were higher than tall trees. Their original height made the imagination boggle, for now they rose from the unplumbed water. Smaller ones, or perhaps those which simply had sunk further into the surrounding mud, were only domed islets, covered with vegetation, like the one on which the travelers now lay concealed. Others were between these two types, and they made up the majority, rising a few storeys from the water, their tops alone heavily laced with plant growth. Even through these clustering plants and the wear of millennia, the destruction by some inconceivable force was still visible. Many of the ruins were shattered and broken, as if by some titanic blow, one which combined both fire and shock. Water plants, huge lily pads and arrowweed, others like great floats of green bladders, covered much of the still water. Here and there, great piles of logs lay tumbled, many overgrown with vines and creepers, the wreckage hurled in by past storms.

The brown and black building's had dark and gaping windows showing in many places where vegetation had not obscured them. Here and there, amazingly, a fragment of incredibly ancient glass still glinted in the sun and occasionally even a scrap of some rustproof metal. It was a drear and sad prospect to see, a world of death and old ruin, old beyond memory.

The voices of the frogs had died down with the coming of the sun, but the insects still buzzed and stung, although mercifully in far lesser numbers.

Other life there was little, save for a few scattered flocks of some small, dark birds, which flew silently about the roofs of some of the buildings. Large blotches of white stained other buildings, looking to Hiero like the marks of nesting birds of a larger sort, but the birds themselves were absent. Perhaps the season was over and they had gone elsewhere.

The priest probed the area with his mind and found nothing. In the waters and under them, there was much life, but it was not of a kind he could reach or understand, having no intelligence, only appetites and fears.

Yet he did not like the place. Even in the sun, there was a brooding presence to it, a feeling that all was not well.

All day they watched the buildings and the water, but saw nothing beyond the movements of small creatures of mud and pool. The afternoon drew on and the sun sank lower toward the west. The first frog voices began to sound, hesitantly at first, then louder. The insect voices also restarted, and their humming battalions attacked in new numbers.

"Let's get out of here," the priest choked, spitting out a cloud of bugs.

They repacked Klootz and mounted. Hiero saw nothing for it but to try and move around the shoreline, muddy though it was, and circle the forgotten city. The water between the buildings, he felt sure, was too deep and also too extensive to try swimming. Who knew what lurked under the surface?

Hardly had they started, indeed Gorm had barely put a front paw off the islet, when they all froze.

The insect and batrachian chorus ceased. Over the still lagoons and through the ruined towers of the ancients, there rang a long, echoing wail. As they listened, it came again. "Aowh, aowh, aaaaouh," it sobbed, rising and falling on the evening air. Three times the mournful notes hung suspended, their place of origin a mystery. Then there was silence.

As the four listened, a frog spoke hesitantly, then another. Soon the full, croaking orchestra was in full swing again.

"Could you tell where it came from?" Luchare asked.

"No, and neither could Gorm. It seemed to be some distance away, out in the water, but I don't like it. There is an intelligence here; I feel it in my bones. Something malignant, evil, watching, and waiting. We must stop a while longer while I think. I don't like this plunging into the night with no protection. The Unclean may be here, hidden perhaps by a mind shield."

Full night was almost upon them. Only a red line showed the sun's last light. Hiero dismounted, his brow wrinkled.
Ought we to turn back? But where?
He felt he was being stupid. There must be some plan, some more sensible method of doing things, that he was missing.
Damn! He
slapped at the swarming mosquitoes, more in frustration than anything else.