Hiero Desteen: 01 - Hiero's Journey (23 page)

Chee-Chowk! Somehow the giant Howler had sensed Hiero's escape and tracked him down. And the priest's watch for Unclean human minds had made him forget they too had allies who thought in a different band altogether! But there was no time for self-recrimination.

As the Leemute passed under the last fluor just in front of him, Hiero caught the glint of the cleaverlike weapon the filthy thing carried in one great paw. Then the priest attacked.

He had transferred his sword, letting it droop from his dagger, or left hand, while he stooped and then hurled a fist-sized piece of rubble as hard as he could, straight into the fang-lined maw which shrieked at him. Straight and hard went the missile, and the chunk of limestone smashed into the hideous mouth, silencing the cries on the instant and making the brute halt in sudden agony, pawing the air with his free hand.

Behind the rock raced Hiero himself, sword now in the right hand, dagger in the left, using the downward slope of the tunnel to lend force to his charge.

Chee-Chowk tried to raise his own weapon, but using the long dagger as a
main gauche,
the defensive poniard of the forgotten
Cinquecento,
the priest beat it aside and struck a terrible blow at that awful, bleeding face which reared above him. The short, heavy blade, backed with utter desperation, for Hiero had no doubt as to the ultimate outcome if he should miss, came cleaving straight between the staring, red eyes. It drove into the skull beyond and split it with a "chunk" sound, as when a man splits a heavy tree knot with an axe.

That was all. The Howler's giant body fell slowly forward, eyes glazed in death, and Hiero had to twist himself sideways to avoid being crushed. Even so, his sword was wrenched from his weakening grip, so deeply was it embedded in the head of his monstrous foe.

There was silence, broken only by the priest's panting breath. As soon as he could think again, he tried to tear loose his sword and, while doing so, to use his brain to see if any general alarm had been given. But he could detect nothing. No mental clamor, no alert, nothing at all. The minds he was able to spot-check back in the main fortress were unconcerned, set only upon their own routine business. S'duna still lay in drugged slumber, a prey to evil visions.

Finally, Hiero tugged his weapon loose, and stooping, wiped it more or less clean on the dirty fur of the Leemute. He stood looking down at the huge bulk, whose muscular spasms went on despite death. "A pity, Chee-Chowk," he mused aloud. "Perhaps if decent men had raised you, you'd have been just another kind of man, not a foul, night-haunting ogre." Moved by the tragedy of the Leemute's mere existence, he said a brief prayer and then turned and resumed his march up the tunnel. Already he could smell the fresh breezes over the dank airs of the tunnel and the stench of the dead Howler.

The light was much further than it looked, however, and it was more time than he cared to lose before he climbed the ramp to the end of the tunnel. His legs now really ached, and he had a strong feeling that a Chee-Chowk one-year-old would have been too much for him.

The emergency exit from the buried world of the Unclean was not barred by any door. The tunnel walls made a double zigzag, that was all, so that no one could see out or in, The last portion of the zag was a narrowing slit, through which one squeezed.

The Metz priest peered out cautiously. He had to shade his eyes, even though the sun was setting, until they grew accustomed to the normal light of the outside world. The bolt hole from which he peered was set high up, on the left arm of the bay to which the ship had come bearing him as a prisoner. He now faced east, and the light of the setting sun was coming from above and behind him. While Underground, he had come a long way out onto one arm of the two which guarded the harbor of Manoon.

Down a tumbled slope of rock and scree, on which nothing grew, the harbor lay before him. The few ships still rested silently at anchor, including the thin black craft which had captured him. A slight chop stirred the waters of the harbor, and looking to his left, the entrance, he could see whitecaps outside where a brisk breeze was blowing. And he could see something else.

There was only one wharf, the one to which he had been taken, below the road up to the castle. The castle glowered at him across the silent harbor and the bare rock which surrounded its walls. The gate was shut. No one paced the walls and no sound came from the edifice.

But just to the right of where Hiero now crouched, a path led down to a tiny cove with a bare shingle of pebble beach. Spread out upon this were a couple of fishing nets, and near them two small wooden boats were drawn up on the shore, held by anchors tossed up into the rocks at the end of their ropes. The priest decided that the rulers of the Dead Isle occasionally wanted fresh fish and made some of their servants go out and get it. Whatever the reason for those boats, they represented a chance. Their oars were plainly visible, simply shipped inside, and one of them even had a collapsible mast lying across its thwarts, a sail wrapped tightly about it.

Hiero had been maintaining a watch on the massed minds of the castle and its underground world. Still nothing stirred. Chee-Chowk apparently had followed his intended prey alone, not wishing to share what he no doubt thought of as a free dinner! But this could end at any time. Nevertheless, he decided to wait. The light was failing rapidly now, and it must be very close to sundown.

Nightfall would aid his chances enormously. It was a risk worth taking.

The shadows rapidly grew longer. No lights came on in the squat bulk of the castle, and its sinister outline grew harder and harder to make out. Nor were any lights visible in the harbor.
Not even an anchor watch,
thought Hiero, who had some experience of the Beesee coast and its seamen. These people were overconfident, he decided, too arrogant to believe anything could challenge them or their fortress. Their very lack of apprehension would be a shield to one of God's servants. Or would it? He remembered S'duna's comment in the boat, about Manoon's having "many guardians." Best to go cautiously.

A few stars had glimmered through the flying clouds, but no moon, and soon even the stars were invisible. The wind was making up now, and it moaned among the empty, barren rocks of the Dead Isle. The voices of the countless dishonored slain, the tortured victims of the Unclean, Hiero thought, and resolved that, come what might, he would not be among them.

He felt his way slowly down the slope, all senses alert, but heard nothing and sensed nothing with his mind.

Soon he made out the outline of the small boats. He felt his way around the one with the mast and freed its anchor. Then, with the anchor rope over his shoulder, he began to drag the boat into the water. It was a sturdy little thing, and it took some doing. Twice he had to pause and rest, each time checking the dark mass of the fortress for lights.

Finally he got the boat launched and, climbing aboard, stepped the mast, though leaving the sail furled. Then he went back and smashed a hole in the other boat with a heavy rock, first transferring its oars to his own in case he needed spares. In another moment he was afloat, had two oars in the tholes, and was pulling along the shore for the harbor mouth.

He rowed carefully, glancing ahead for rocks and not trying to make any speed. His little craft was almost invisible in the black shadows of the overhanging rocks, and he followed each dip and twist of the shore with precision. At one point he had to pass quite close to one of the larger moored vessels he had glimpsed earlier, but it was soon past and nothing stirred aboard it; nor could he detect any mind. His greatest problem was the increasing chop of the short, stiff waves as he neared the harbor mouth. Spray was already coming aboard, but he was grateful for the fact that at least he would be in no danger from thirst.

Two oval, flat pieces of wood, which sat on pins secured to the sides of the boat near the tholes for the oars, had caught his eye. Though he had never seen leeboards before, for his own people did not use them, he quickly grasped their purpose. The round-bottomed little boat would go faster sideways than forward under sail and might even turn over without a steadying influence. The leeboards rotated on bolts secured to the boat's side, and one of them could be dropped on the side away from the wind when the sail went up. The priest had been in enough craft with sails, even though they had had fixed keels, to understand what tacking into the wind meant, and he could see what he had to do to make use of the fishing boat's best powers.

Even though he was prepared for it, the full force of the wind at the entrance caught him by surprise. Actually, it was not gale force or anything like it, but in the tiny boat, only a dozen feet long, it felt far more severe than it was. A capful of water, caught from a wave top, slammed into the back of Hiero's bare head and ran down his neck under the cloak, making him shiver momentarily. But it was not really cold, little less than blood heat, and he pulled stoutly into the crests, pounding up and down, quickly developing a rhythm which allowed him to avoid shipping much water.

He was squarely in the middle of the entrance, fangs of black rock rearing up on either side, when all his mental alarms went off. Instantly he slapped on his own new spy-proof mind shield and simply listened to the clamor, while continuing to row his hardest.

He could hear S'duna's mind, almost incoherent with rage, as the Unclean was awakened and told the news. The minds of other adepts, how many Hiero could not now tell, also tuned in, and he felt the mental search pattern they established at once. But he also felt that it was harmless. His shield was impervious, giving him a mental invisibility the Unclean could not even detect, far less crack. He was much more worried about purely physical means of detection arid pursuit, and he felt sure the cold minds in Manoon would think of them, too, before very many more moments went by!

Luck, or something else, Hiero thought, mentally apologizing to God, was with him. He had barely rounded one of the corner rocks of the entrance when lights burst out on the walls of the castle. At the same time a flare hurled up by a rocket cast a spectral blue light over the harbor. Not two wavelengths to the left of the boat, Hiero saw the harbor's mouth almost as brightly illuminated as if it were day. But a wall of stone, the outer bastion of the Dead Isle itself, shielded him from view. Nevertheless, he was under no illusions about his safety. Once there had been time for logic to take over, the Unclean search would discover the missing boat. After all, how else could he leave the Dead Isle, save by water?

He shipped his oars and freed the sail from its lashings. It was a simple type, a kind called a "standing lug" in the Lost Millennia, and Hiero had seen similar rigs before. Next, deciding that he wanted to run along the island's coast in an easterly direction, he lowered the right leeboard into the water. Then he took one oar and locked its thole pin into a hole in the stern, so that he had a crude, but adequate, rudder.

It took a few moments to get the feel of the boat, and some of them were bad. Once he let her head fall off so far a bucket of water poured over the stem, but he managed to bring her up again and get her settled. Fortunately, the wind was steady from the west and did not blow in gusts. Also, the little craft was well balanced and, once given a chance, sailed stoutly along.

Hiero had been so busy mastering the boat and watching for rocks that he had let his mental probes slip, though not the shield, for that he had put on "automatic." Now he felt something new, a strange, unpleasant thrilling of the mental communication bands. It meant nothing to him and was not actively harmful, being merely a minor annoyance. Since he had no idea what it meant, however, it worried him.

Then, from the whitecapped water off to his left, beyond the shadow thrown by the island, an enormous coil of glistening rope, as thick around as his body, rose from a swell and sank again, clear in the light of the dying flare.

The worm-things of the harbor! Manoon had called new and awful pursuers from the slimy depths of the Inland Sea.

-

Luchare sat cross-legged and stared at the tiny, red fire in front of her. She shivered. But she was not cold, far from it. The young bear lay next to her, his head in her lap, and made faint woofing noises in his sleep. Beyond the mouth of the little gully, she could hear Klootz methodically chewing his cud even over the noise of the waves breaking on shore, and she knew that no unannounced danger could steal upon them in the night.

No, it was Hiero. The wonderful burst of communication had restored them all to life and purpose again. She herself had seriously contemplated suicide just before the priest had managed to reach their minds. Not that he had actually said anything to
her,
she thought illogically and quite angrily. No indeed, she was too stupid to hear him; a bear, a four-legged animal, was the only one smart enough, not a woman who—She shied away, even in her own mind, from the unspoken and unwanted thought. She, Luchare, daughter of Danyale IX, bothering to care about whether a common foreign priest, a lowborn, painted-faced nobody, talked to a stupid bear rather than to her! Ridiculous!

Overcome with sudden remorse, she stroked Gorm's shaggy head. "Clever bear," she whispered. "Clever bear, bring him back safely."

Their camp was set back in a pocket of a rock outcrop only a few hundred feet from the sea. As Gorm had told her, they needed to find a little bay or cove where they could lie undetected and to which Hiero could aim. Open to the sky, but otherwise walled except in front, it was a good location. Luchare, mindful of Hiero's warning, had built a screen of brush on the beach side, so that the fire was invisible unless you came within a few feet.