Hiero Desteen (Omnibus) (3 page)

As he was repacking the saddlebag, the morse, who still remained on guard, snorted suddenly. Hiero turned, his heavy blade drawn out over his left shoulder and in a ward position as if by magic. Only then he saw the small bear.

Bears had changed over the millennia like everything else, that is, all bears had changed in some ways. This was a black bear, and a twentieth-century zoologist would have seen nothing odd about its body at first glance, except a larger and more rounded fore- head. If he had looked, not at, but into, the eyes, more might have been glimpsed. Bears were never stupid; now they were, unevenly perhaps, approaching non-animal levels. It was alone, Hiero saw, and nothing else was around.

The bear looked about half-grown and stood on its hind legs, front paws hanging limp in front of it.
It might weigh a hundred and fifty pounds,
Hiero thought.
It might weigh somewhat more and not be half-grown at all, but a new type altogether.
His mind probed at the animal, and he kept his guard up. The thought he got in return was strong.

Friend
—
human friend—food
(a plea).
Friend
—
help
—
danger
(a feeling of heat).
Friend
—
bear
(himself—identity feeling)—
help
—
danger.
This was surprisingly vibrant and clear. Hiero was used to conversing with wild things, although with an effort, but this animal had almost the power of a trained human. What a lot there was in the world!

As the man lowered his short sword and relaxed, the bear settled on its haunches also. Hiero sent a thought at Klootz and told him to stay on guard, noting in passing that the big bull seemed to feel the bear was harmless.

Reaching into his saddlebags, Hiero brought out some dried, pressed
pemeekan.
The ancient travel food of the North, animal fat, maple sugar, and dried berries pressed into a cake, still kept its old name unchanged. As he broke off a piece and threw it to the bear, Hiero sent another thought.

Who/what are you? What/who brings danger?

The bear caught the
pemeekan
between his paws in a very human gesture and snapped it up in one bite. His thoughts were confused for a moment, then cleared up.

Food
(good/satisfying)—
more? Bad things come
—
hunt
—
hunt humans, animals
—
hunt
this
human
—
not far behind now
—
not far in front
—
death lies all around
—
bear
(himself)
help human?

There was a last blurred thought which the man realized was the bear giving his own name. It was unpronounceable, but Gorm was a fairly close approximation. Under the clear and obvious thoughts, Hiero learned more. Gorm was a young bear, only about three years old, and relatively new to this area, having come from the East. But the danger was real, and it was closing in on all sides as they stood there. For a briefly glimpsed instant,
through
the bear's mind, Hiero caught a flash of utter, cold malignity, an impression of something bloated and soft in a secret place, spinning a web of terror throughout the forest. The bear had shown him this deliberately, he now saw, to impress upon him the danger. Lee-mutes, the Unclean! Nothing else caused such horror and hatred in normal man or beast. Beside him, Klootz snorted and stamped a great forehoof. He had caught a good deal of what had passed between the two and didn't like it.

Hiero turned and finished packing, his back to Gorm. He was convinced there was no danger from the half-grown cub and that the bear was both frightened himself and anxious to be of help. Civilized men seldom hunted bears any longer, and the old enmity of pioneer and bruin no longer existed.

Swinging up into his high saddle, the man sent a thought of inquiry to the animal on the ground.
Where?

Follow
—
safety
—
danger first
—
slow—follow,
came the answer as Gorm dropped to all fours and scuttled away from the clearing. Without even being urged, Klootz swung in his wake, maintaining a pace which kept him about fifteen feet to the rear. The fact that the morse trusted the young bear was a major factor in Hiero's own decision to do so. The morse stock was bred for alertness as well as strength and skill, and their mental watchdog capabilities were considered quite as important as their physical qualities.

They went south, back the way Klootz had come, and soon recrossed the road. Here, the bear did something which made Hiero blink. Signaling them to stop, Gorm recrossed the dirt track and then dragged himself back by his front legs, his fat rear end obliterating Klootz's broad tracks! Only the passage of the buffer herd and a smeared place now showed on the dust of the road.

Follow
(Gorm)—
walk hard ground
(quietly)—
not leave mark,
came the thought. Following it, there came one more:
Not speak
—
watch
(me)
only
—
others listen
(for)—
speak
—
danger.

Hiero nodded to himself. The bear was indeed clever, very clever. There must be a nest of Leemutes or some center or other nearby. If mind speech was used, it might well be picked up and some terror or other be sent on their tracks. He remembered that flash of shuddersome, gelid hatred the bear had shown him, and a tingle ran down his spine.

For some time, Gorm moved at a steady pace which was no more than a good walk for the bull morse. The warrior-priest kept a keen watch. A veteran woodsman, he noted that he and his mount were being led over underlying granite spines of firm ground and also that the woods were very quiet. The great forest of Kanda, where undisturbed, was full of life, in the trees, on the ground, and even in the air. Now the land was silent. No squirrels chattered at the travelers, birds were few and shy, and not a trace of the larger creatures, such as deer, was to be seen. In the windless hush of the late summer afternoon, the almost noiseless progress of the three yet sounded very loud in Hiero's ears. A sense of oppression was in his mind, almost of pressure from outside, as if the atmosphere itself had somehow grown denser.

Hiero crossed himself. This strange silence and spiritual oppression were not normal and could only come from the forces of darkness, from the Unclean, or some lair of theirs.

Abruptly, Gorm stopped. Through some signal that even his owner could not catch, the giant morse was given an order. Instantly, he too stopped and just as instantly lay down, crouching beside a great pile of deadfalls. Klootz weighed just a trifle under a ton, but he sank to his knees with the grace of a dancer and without a sound. Ten feet in front of the morse's moist and pendulous nose, the bear crouched, peering around a bush. On the neck of the morse, Hiero too lay stretched out, peering forward and trying to see what had alarmed their guide so.

All three were looking down into a broad, shallow hollow in the land, thinly planted with seedling alders and low brash. As they watched, from the tall forest on the other side of the dip and well to their right, a column of a dozen or so figures emerged.

Hiero had thought he was familiar with many types of Leemute, the Man-rats and Hairy Howlers, the Were-bears (which were not bears at all), the Slimers, and several others besides. But these were new and, like all Leemutes, unpleasant to look at. They were short, no more than four feet tall on the average but very broad and squat, and walked erect on their hind legs, their bushy tails dragging behind. They were completely covered with long, dripping, oily-looking fur of a yellow-brown hue, and their beady-eyed faces were pointed and evil. It would have been hard to trace their ancestry back to a genetic accident in a wolverine family after The Death, even for a contemporary expert, and Hiero simply catalogued them as a new and dangerous breed. For they had actual
hands,
and their rounded heads and gleaming eyes indicated intelligence of a high if nasty order. They wore no clothing, but each carried a long-handled wooden club, in the head of which was set glittering fragments of obsidian. A wave of evil purpose went before them like a cloud of gas as they moved one behind the other, in a curious hopping gait, which still covered the ground at a good speed. Every few feet, the leader stopped to sniff the air and then dropped to all fours to check the earth, while the others peered about on every side. The three on the knoll above them froze into immobility, trying not to breathe. The evil Furhoppers, as Hiero promptly named them, were perhaps two hundred yards off and, if they continued their present course, would pass down over the shallow slope of the bowl and up the other side, moving off to the left of the three's position. But when the line of crouching figures reached the center of the depression, it halted. Hiero tensed, one hand instinctively reaching for his reliquary and the poison it contained. For another figure had appeared and was advancing on the Furhoppers.

It was apparently a tall man, garbed in a long cloak of a dark gray, which was closely wrapped around him and showed only his sandaled feet. His hood was thrown back, and his naked, hairless head was revealed in the rays of the evening sun. His skin was so pale as to appear deadwhite, and his eyes were a shifting color, impossible to see at this distance. On the right breast of his cloak was a spiral symbol, also difficult to see, etched in a dark scarlet, of interwoven lines and circles. He seemed to carry no visible weapons, but an aura of both spiritual power and cold menace radiated from him, as the chill of a great iceberg goes out from it to warn seafarers.

This was an extraordinary chance, for good or ill, and Hiero knew it. The Unclean had been rumored and more than rumored for centuries to have human directors, a race of men totally given over to evil and wizardry. On several occasions such people had been reportedly glimpsed directing attacks on Abbey convoys or settlements, but the information was vague and contradictory. On two occasions, however, men had been killed trying to penetrate the secret training rooms and guarded files of Abbey Central in Sask. Each time, the bodies of the slain had almost instantly
dissolved
into piles of corruption, leaving nothing to be investigated, save for ordinary clothing, which might have been acquired anywhere. But in each case, the Abbey guardians and priests had been warned by mental alarms of the spirit, not of the flesh, and in each case the man—or entity—had penetrated through many men on guard who recalled seeing nothing. This creature before him now could only be one of these mysterious men who were thought to rule the Unclean. No normal man, not even an outlaw, would or could associate with a foul pack such as this, and yet, as the man strode to them, the savage creatures cringed aside in evident fear.

The leader of the Fur creatures, crouching low, came up to the man and the two moved a little apart, while the others milled restlessly about, grunting and whining in low tones. Hiero could see that man's lips move and the yellow fangs of the Furhopper chief flash in answer. They were actually talking, not using mind speech, one to the other! Even as he inwardly shrank in loathing from the whole gang, the scientist in Hiero could not help applauding the feat. With normal speech, there would be no betraying mental currents, such as made him afraid to address Klootz more than was absolutely necessary and had caused the bear to impress mental silence upon them.

Now, the conversation apparently over, the man seemed to dismiss the pack of hideous creatures and, turning about, simply walked away in the direction from which he had come. This was to the south and east. The Furhoppers surrounded their leader, who snarled something out which silenced them. In a moment they had formed their line again and were tramping the dead leaves back on the way they had come, which was from the west.

As the gray-cloaked man disappeared in one direction and the Furhoppermutes in the other, all three creatures on the edge of the bowl relaxed a little. But no one used mind, speech; they simply sat quietly and waited.

After what must have been a good half hour, Gorm the bear slowly rose and stretched. He looked around at Klootz and his rider, sending no message, but his meaning was plain. The big morse arose as silently as he had lain down, and from his vantage high on the great back, Hiero surveyed the silent forest before them.

The setting sun slanted down through the pines and maples and lit the patchy undergrowth in flashes of vivid green, turning various piles of dead leaves into russet and gold. Ancient logs glowed with color as green moss and gray lichen were caught in the last patches of sunlight.
How beautiful the land is,
the priest reflected,
and yet how full of evil under its loveliness.

But Gorm was all business, and as he lurched down into the hollow, Klootz followed him, his great forked hooves making no more sound in the leaves than a mouse would have.

To Hiero's alarm, the small bear was headed for the exact spot on the far side of the depression into which the sinister person in the cloak had gone. While desperately anxious to know more about this dark being and his purposes, Hiero did not want a direct encounter with him. His mission, far to the East, came first above all else. He dared not send a mental message, not with the enemy so close about them that the sense of mental oppression was still a weight on his spirit, and he could think of no way to halt, or redirect, the bear except by physical means.

"Pssst," he hissed, and again.

Gorm looked back and saw the man gesturing violently to stop. He halted on a patch of leaves and let Klootz catch up.

Hiero, looking down at the bear, could think of nothing to do which would explain what he wanted. He was keeping a rigid mindblock on, and he had a more than strong feeling that loosing it would bring a pack of devils down upon them from every point of the compass. But Gorm saved him the trouble. Looking shrewdly up at Hiero for a moment, the bear bent down and swept aside some leaves with his curiously delicate paws. Exposing smooth earth, with one long claw he made a line and pointed it with an arrow, just as a man might. The line led on the way they were going. On both sides of the line and behind it, Gorm carefully scratched numerous small circles or spirals. Irresistibly, the priest was reminded of the spiral, interwoven symbol on the cloak of the enemy. The message was plain. Peril lay behind them and on either side, but despite the fact that they were following the sinister figure of the bald man, less danger lay on that route than on any other. The bear looked up and Hiero nodded. Gorm swept leaves over his artwork and started off again with no more ado. The man nudged his great mount, and Klootz followed obediently in the bear's wake.