Hiero Desteen (Omnibus) (79 page)

The four shining heads, the four pallid, impassive faces, moved with him as he went on. "And S'ryath saw
him
as he fled the wreck of Neeyana. Whatever may be said, it was
he
who destroyed those ships! I have heard reports from our spies of the crude things the Metz have put on the waters. They could not have done so, I swear it. No, it was Per Desteen, who will hang on my torture racks before he dies slowly. Curse him! He himself is a mutation and does not even know it. How could he leave the distant South a drugged prisoner, helpless, utterly doomed, and then appear many hundreds of leagues to the north at exactly the right time? Perhaps those accursed Eleveners know something about this. One thing is certain—he had help and help that we know nothing about. There are currents working against us; I grow more sure of it daily. Something impalpable, something that lurks and pries and frustrates our plans in ways we cannot prevent. I shall root it or them out! Exterminate them!"

He ceased pacing and turned to face the others again. With another almost visible effort, he controlled his fury, and the faint flush over the pale cheekbones disappeared. He began to give orders, seek out information, and formulate plans. His colleagues leaned forward, their styluses ready, and proceeded to make notes as he spoke.

There were no horn calls, no salutes, and no ceremony as the patrol went forth from Namcush Fort. It was the cloudy dark just before the coming of dawn. Hiero wanted no eyes to spy out his leaving. He had bidden farewell to the Father Abbot in his chambers earlier, and that was sufficient. The little party left by a small postern, not by the main gate. Its members loped along the back alleys of the port, avoiding even the few Metz guard details until they came to the edge of the small town. Here they left the path entirely and at once plunged into the fringing bush which the inhabitants burned yearly to clear their garden patches. In less than a half hour, the last trace of civilization was behind them, and they were deep in the southern borders of the Taig, the mighty forest which spanned the continent, heading north.

Hiero led, his garb no different from that of the others, except that he no longer wore the painted leaf and caduceus, the looped snakes and rod, on his forehead.

"I'm no longer ail Abbey, Father," he had said bluntly to Demero, who had noted its absence. "Now I fight for two realms. I hope you'll forgive me. It was you who sent me south. I
am
the prince of D'alwah! I cannot wear the badge of the northern armies any longer."

The old man had looked hard at him, then laid a gentle hand on his shoulder. "My son, you are still a priest, and that is what counts to God. I have no fears for your faith. And it is the work of the Faith to reclaim our brothers in every land. You still wear the Cross and the Sword and you got new insignia as soon as you went on our ships. You are still ours. If we share you with another land, the church can but approve. You are a missionary, Hiero. Wear what you will and take my blessings,"

Musing on this conversation as he paced along under the great pines, Hiero wondered.
Was he still a priest?
He was certainly not the same priest. When he compared himself with Per Sagenay, he wondered if he were a priest at all. Even old Demero, much as Hiero loved and respected him, was more soldier and politician than saint or preacher.

Hiero sighed. Well, they all loved God, they all called themselves Christian, and that was about all one could say. The Lord presumably needed all kinds of help, even that of non-saints. He turned his thoughts aside and looked back at his command. He thought he might have a good one, man for man perhaps the best in the whole northern array.

Right behind him came Per Maluin, shield on his arm and his favorite weapon, one he preferred to any spear, over his brawny shoulders. This was a colossal billhook, one of the oldest weapons in the world, the peasants' tool of ancient, lost Europe and their last argument against the tyranny of their masters. On a curved axe handle, four feet long, was set a thin, brush-cutting, hooked blade like a deformed axehead. This tool, the ancestor of all later pole arms, was a dreadful implement in the hands of a master, and Per Edard was such. As Hiero looked back, the giant winked at him, his face alight with delight. A born woodsrunner, Maluin reveled in tasks such as this.

Behind him came B'uorgh and M'reen, and with them Per Sagenay. To Hiero's amazement, the quiet young priest and the catfolk had taken to one another at once. Moreover, Sagenay was learning, with amazing speed, to tune in on the odd wavelength the Children of the Wind used for mind speech. Already he could communicate better with them than anyone save Hiero. This would not have surprised Hiero in an Elevener, but the average Metz had little contact with alien minds, while the Eleventh Brotherhood was trained for it.

The younger man bore a longbow as well as a sword and dagger; he had said modestly that he had some skill with it.

The two young warriors of the cat people, Ch'uirsh and Za'reekh, were out on opposing flanks, out of sight but keeping mind touch.

In the rear came two more humans, but they were not priests, though they were legends along the border and far beyond. These were the twins, Reyn and Geor Mantan. Dark, lean men, identical in appearance, their age was unknown. Hiero guessed they might be in their fifties, but it was only a guess. Years before, they had come back to their small forest steading and found the mangled and tortured bodies of their wives and children in the ashes of their cabins. From then on, they had but one purpose, to seek out and slay the Unclean wherever they found them. Veterans of a hundred grim battles in the shadows of the woods, they spoke little but did much. Many thousands of lives had been saved by their sudden appearance, warning of a Leemute raid or ambush.

They did not serve the Church Universal or any other organized body. They appeared like shadows at intervals, always together, and got what supplies they needed, then vanished once more into the darkness, on the trail of their unending vengeance. They were known from the Otwah League to the Beesee coast, and none would deny them anything they sought in the way of food or help. They were, Hiero thought, like two grim hounds, silent and relentless. Abbot Demero had found them through some personal, arcane method and persuaded them not only to volunteer for this expedition but even to accept Hiero's orders, a feat that made Hiero, no soft citizen himself, wonder in amazement.

These two bore weapons of their own, used by almost no one else in the North, six-foot tubes of some strange, dark wood— blowguns which fired darts tipped with deadly poison, a secret brew of their own devising, said to slay on the instant. They carried the darts in slung pouches and also wore long knives and belt-axes, whose heads were tipped on one side with a long spike. Grim and fell they looked, like messengers of Fate in their stained leather. Hiero knew that woodsmen and hunters such as these were worth more than a host of ordinary men. Even the catfolk drew back as they passed to change positions, so dread was the fight of their sunken eyes.

Down the long aisles of the great pines and spruces and between clumps of the sprawling palmettos, silent as ghosts, the little company flitted. As it went along, the dawn came pink in the east, and the chirping and warbling of countless birds began to greet the coming day. Tiny, dark figures, moving between the shaggy boles of the trees, never stopping, never keeping to a straight path, they were in view for but a brief instant—then they were gone, and it was as if they had never been.

In the Taig

It was late summer noon again in the north. Clouds of tiny gnats and midges swirled in the shafts of sunlight slanting down through the great trees. Here and there, blankets of leaf shadow fell, where the multitudes of conifers had yielded to some deciduous giant, a mutated maple or poplar, creating an even deeper shade than that cast by the needles of the mighty pines. In favored places, huge thickets sprouted among outcroppings of lichened dolomite or granite; blueberries, myrtles, and countless other plants sprang up to grasp at the sunlight wherever the trees could not find sufficient soil to root.

In the leaf mold under one such shaded place, the camp had been pitched, and an argument was in process. The two Mantans were not there, being out on the perimeters on watch. Hiero was confronting his brother priests, and the four catfolks were off to one side, considering this matter none of their business. They played with their knives and watched the three humans with slitted eyes, content to wait on events.

"Look, Hiero," Maluin said earnestly, "we've seen nothing. Not one sign of anything. Not one trace, not one piece of evidence that there is any movement in these parts. We are well south of any trail used by our people. We apparently are also well to the west of the area where you first encountered the enemy last year. This country is simply empty! There is nothing here. So I'll ask you again, why are we hanging around? I don't want to leave, I don't want to go home. I want to
move,
go somewhere where we can be useful,
do
something. You know I will follow anywhere you say. But what is the reason for this dawdling, this staying here in one area, and a damned small area at that? You say this is the proper place, and God knows, I'm not disputing your experience. But could you please give me a reason! Per Sagenay feels the same way. Neither of us is new to the enemy or life up here. Why treat us as if we were new-joined recruits and dumb ones to boot?" He leaned back and lighted his short clay pipe again. He was the only one who smoked; as he held the spark lighter in his huge fist, he looked like the epitome of casual strength, relaxed and yet forceful. He watched Hiero narrowly over the pipe bowl, and Hiero had some trouble in meeting his eyes.

"I gather you feel the same, Per Sagenay?"

"No-oh," was the answer, given in equable tones. "Yet you have not asked me to try to read the symbols. This is one of my small talents, and while I will, as Per Maluin has been careful to point out, obey any and all instructions that you care to give us, still I am a little puzzled. No forelooking and no sign that some of the greatest foresters of the North can discern. But you feel that we should linger in this precise spot, as if we awaited something. Perhaps if you shared some of your thoughts with us, we might be able to help." The soft, clear voice fell silent, and, like Malum, Sagenay lounged back on the bank of moss which shrouded the upthrust of rock behind them.

Hiero stood and stretched, then reseated himself. In the silence that followed, he seemed to be listening to the bird song which welled around them, his eyes for the nonce cast down. Finally he spoke.

"I could tell you all sorts of things, bring up the past, mention that I am a sensitive, and still tell you nothing. I'll be honest and say I simply don't
know
anything. We have been on the trail for almost three weeks. Two days ago, I felt—no other word for it-felt that this area we are in was crucial, that we ought to stay here. I can't tell you why. I don't know why. There is inimical life here somewhere; I feel it, I sense it, in some way I can't explain. There is also something else, Something is coming here. The catfolk don't see it, you two don't, nor do the Mantans, who excel all of us combined in woodcraft. But I do! We are at some sort of meeting place. I know it. For years, all of this area has been a blank to the Abbeys. We operate west of it and north of it. To the southeast lies the Palood and the Inland Sea. This angle is unknown. You know all that. I tell you, something is building here. I won't permit your talent, Per Sagenay, for one reason. The enemy has learned what I could do. We don't know what they can do, what they could have taught themselves in the past year. One of the things about the talent for forelooking that almost got me killed in the past is that it leaves one's own mind open. I won't have it! We are on the verge, the border, of some vast movement. Our business here is to probe it, not to let it know of us at all. I have sensed out and over a wide area. This forest about us is a blank indeed. A mental blank! No such thing should occur. Oh, the younger life, the Grokon, the deer, the hares, all are here. But they are muted, quiescent, and in far fewer numbers than they should be. Only the tiny, innocuous creatures—the birds, the mice, the insects—are in norma! numbers." He leaned back and rested on one elbow. Then he added, "You will, I fear, have to take me on trust. Something is going to happen here, and we must wait for it."

It was Sagenay who finished the argument. "Per Desteen, you are the leader. All else is unimportant. Those who spread evil are all about us, and you are not only our commander but our chief warning signal. I have no more to say. Your thoughts are the only ones that matter."

The quiet voice left an empty space behind it. Maluin grunted several times and then waved one finger at Hiero in mock warning. He, too, settled back, and the three lay silent, staring over the ashes of their tiny fire. Yet all were alert, waiting for anything that would disturb the ether, any trace of trouble, any hint that they were not alone in the seemingly innocent depths of the great continent-wide wood.

All of them were travel-stained and travel-worn. They had marched, a very long way north and east of Namcush to reach this unknown land. Not even the Mantans, veterans of a multitude of journeys in the untracked wilds, had ever roamed these parts. Their only guide now was the instinct of their leader.

Hiero had warned his comrades that they must always stay under the cloak of the trees. He remembered well that not too far to the east, he had first glimpsed and then contacted the flying device which lifted an enemy adept far aloft
in
the heavens. Since his reports, passed through Brother Aldo, had arrived at the central command post of the Abbeys, much thought and research had been devoted to his warning. As a result, he had some tentative information at his disposal. The thing he had seen was deemed to be an unpowered glider, a concept long lost but recorded in the central files. While its maneuverings in the air were nothing un- known in theory, no one had ever thought of a method of getting such a thing launched and up into the higher atmosphere. This was now being eagerly pursued, but as yet only the foe possessed the secret. And only Hiero had ever seen such a machine, which might mean that it was both rare and difficult to handle.