Hiero Desteen: 01 - Hiero's Journey (7 page)

For two hours of steady and undisturbed travel, they followed the little stream bed, which still kept its same dimensions. Hiero eventually signaled a halt and swung down on the bank to stretch and do a few muscle-limbering exercises. Gorm flopped down next to him, also grateful for a rest. Bears can and do travel long distances, but steady marching, day in and day out, is not their habit. Klootz browsed in the shallows, adding more supplies to the many pounds of plant food he had already devoured that day. An eater of green stuffs never really stops unless asleep, since the nourishment is so much less than from a direct protein intake,

The priest now briefly said his morning prayers, a process the animals ignored as incomprehensible. The bear was mildly interested, but only mildly. Hiero, however, had detected that casual interest earlier and made a note in his mnemonic files that discussing religion with an intelligent animal might prove immensely rewarding.

Prayers over, Hiero stood listening in the dark. As he did, for the first time since they had left camp on the island, the faint scream of the hunter broke through the misty night. It was unmistakably a lot closer than at first. With a smothered oath, Hiero mounted and this time sent a thought to Gorm as he did so.
Hurry up, you, or we'll be trapped!
' The young bear led off again at a splashing gallop, and spray fountained as the big morse lumbered after him through the shallows, his wide hooves coming down on the invisible water like dinner plates.

As he rode, listening hard, the man tried to think rationally and analyze their danger. He had no idea what followed on their tracks. Whatever it was, it seemed to be a night hunter of uncommon skill, and perhaps it was a pack of them. And whatever it (or they) were, it was moving incredibly fast. The bear and the morse had not been loafing, indeed, for nighttime had been setting a good pace. But neither walking in the running water nor moving at a steady clip had thrown whatever pursued off their track. What could it be?

One faintly encouraging thought rose to Hiero's mind at this point. Anything moving that fast probably could not carry, and certainly could not lead, any human master. Whatever atrocity was tracking them down almost had to be running unleashed and free.
At least,
Hiero reasoned, following this train of thought,
if I'm right, I won't have to worry about facing someone like S'nerg.
It was probably a purely physical danger.

Even as the thoughts came to him, the evil cry, clearly audible over the splashing, again welled up in the distance. The
near
distance, he observed. The hunter, whatever it was, could certainly move. Damn, the pursuit was going to catch up with them while it was still dark! This could be very bad. It was at least an hour to first light-Leaning over, he fumbled in his left saddlebag and finally located by touch the packet he wanted. To a stranger it would have appeared no easy task, doing this blind while the morse's great body lurched along underneath him, but he had practiced many times in the past and had little trouble securing what he wanted. Next, he loosened the strap on his holstered thrower so that it could be whipped out in a hurry. As an afterthought, he reached into the saddlebag again and took out the murderous rod he had taken from S'nerg's dead body. As an emergency weapon, should he lose his regular spear, it might be of great use, and he tucked it into his belt. The spear itself was in its socket at the saddlebow, ready to his hand at need.

Now he concentrated his mind on his steed and the bear.
Find an open place, close to the stream if possible,
he sent.
We must fight. Whatever comes is too fast to run away from.
In the back of his mind was the thought that Gorm, invaluable as he had proved in the recent past, must be tired now and probably not much use as a fighter. If the small bear could get even a few moments' rest, it might make some fleeting difference. The Abbey Battle Code was never out of a trained Killman's mind. "Use
every
tiny advantage and perhaps the enemy will use one less," ran one of the ABC rules.

The bear did not answer as he galloped on, but Hiero knew he understood. As for Klootz, the rapport between man and mount was so strong that he knew the great bull was already seething with rage and ready for a battle of any size, shape, or description. An Abbey morse did not like being chivied over the land by anyone, regardless of who it might be.

Behind them, the chilling cry broke out again, a hideous, thin screaming in the quiet, moist night. This time Hiero thought he could distinguish several voices and he knew the distance was shortening. It was logical. A solitary hunter, no matter how powerful, might be immobilized by sheer accident. A pack was always more effective. But a pack of what?

Here,
the thought came suddenly from Gorm.
A place of grass and no trees. Is this what you want?

Yes,
the man sent.
Lie down and rest until they come. Do not fight if you can help it.
He urged the morse out of the water and onto the sward of a natural forest opening. The very first faint light in the east had appeared, not enough for any detail to show, but enough so that he could barely see they were in a natural clearing, one which sloped gently to the stream's edge. As Klootz stood silently dripping and the exhausted bear lay panting off to one side, Hiero considered tactics. The glade was perhaps a hundred yards wide at its tip by the brook. It was roughly shaped like a half-moon, and the forest edge at its center was two hundred feet from the water. He urged the morse on until Klootz now stood almost exactly in the clearing's center, back to the trees, but fifty feet away from them, so that nothing could use the trees as cover to leap upon them from behind. Hiero reached into his saddlebag and extracted his beryllium-copper helmet, round and unornamented, save for the cross and sword on the forepeak. It fitted over his cap and was his sole piece of armor. He put it on and tried to catch the minds of their pursuers. He found blind, ravening appetite, more than one, coming fast, unreachable at any level he could influence!

Man and morse waited, alert and ready. They had done all they could. Gorm was silent now also, hidden somewhere in the black shadows and ready to pounce if possible.

They had not long to wait. The blackness of the dying night was still almost totally unrelieved when from up the shallow stream, the way they had followed, came the sounds of splashing water and many clawed feet striking on rocks. Sensing rather than actually seeing their attackers, the Killman-priest twisted the heads of the two objects he had been holding and hurled them away, one to the right and one to the left. As they hit the ground, the two flares burst into life and a white, incandescent glow illumined the whole area.

At once, Hiero saw that he and his animal allies had made a basic, if unavoidable, error in
traveling down the stream and keeping to the water. The five sleek, sinister shapes poised at the brook's edge resembled grossly enlarged mink or some other water weasels quite enough to indicate that a river bed was the last, place in which anyone ought to try to elude them.
No wonder they came so fast,
Hiero thought as the momentary surprise of the lights froze the creatures in place.

Their undershot, sharklike jaws and vicious teeth glistened in the light as they blinked their beady eyes and then recovered. Each one, from wet muzzle to long tailtip, was at least ten feet and could hardly have weighed any less than a full-grown man. Collars of bluish metal glinted and betrayed their wearers' allegiance, even as they scuttled out of the water and rushed to the attack, snarling as they came.

Hiero fired the thrower and dropped it all in one motion. It took too long to reload, and these things were coming too fast. But the tiny rocket went true. The leading animal, head hit, simply blew up in a burst of orange fire, and the one next to it writhed aside, screaming shrilly and dragging a broken leg.

As the other three paused, shaken by the explosion and the death of the leader, Klootz charged with a bellow of fury. Spear couched, Hiero gripped the bull's barrel, ready to strike.

The wounded fury could not escape, and the morse's pile-driver front hooves crushed its life out in a terrible, smashing blow. Another one, leaping straight up at Hiero, took the heavy spear in its throat, right up to the crossbars. The savage brute fell back, choking on its own blood, and Hiero let the spear go with it, whipping out his heavy sword-knife as he did so.

The remaining two fell back for an instant, but for true mustelids, like all weasels, the thought of retreat never occurred to them. Separating, their grinning masks of fury showing the white fangs, they attacked like streaks of dark, undulating lightning, leaping at the rider and not the mount, and from two sides at once.

Fortunately for Hiero, he had worked out such a development with Klootz many times over on the Abbey's training fields. Automatically, the bull took the opponent to his left and paid no attention to the other, leaving that one to his master.

Rising in the saddle, Hiero cut down at the upthrust, rapid head in one terrible chopping blow. The solid bite of the ancient blade could be felt all the way up to his powerful shoulder. The giant weasel-thing was dead before it hit the ground, its narrow skull cloven almost in half.

But even as he recovered, the man felt a terrible pain in his left leg. Overconfident, Klootz had underestimated the speed of his enemy. Even as his great hoof had come dashing down, the last of the hunting pack had swerved aside and altered its spring in midair. A slash at Hiero's calf had opened the flesh almost to the bone, and he swayed in the saddle from shock as the animal leaped away.

The bull was not to be taken twice this way. Knowing his rider and master was hurt sent him stark mad, but with a cold fury. He advanced slowly on the surviving hunter, rocking gently
from side to side, grotesquely mimicking the way a playful fawn minces up to another baby opponent.

A fury to the end, the last servant of the Unclean sprang from a crouch, again at the drooping rider and not the morse. But Klootz, now on guard, was not deceived by the supple, twisting spring. A great, cloven hoof shot straight out, and the lashing blow caught the leaping death squarely in its midsection. There was an audible crack, and the next instant, the sleek-furred monster was writhing on the grass with a broken back. Not for long. In one savage rush, the infuriated bull morse trampled the creature into a pulp, even while it still snapped and tried to sink its teeth into its giant foe.

Hiero hung limply in the saddle while the morse lowered his own great body gently to the ground so that the man could dismount. The priest wobbled off Klootz's back and collapsed against one of the bull's huge, sweaty sides, breathing hard and trying to keep from fainting. Finally he looked up and saw the anxious face of Gorm looking at him from a few feet away.

I
was ready but it was too quick,
came from the strange mind.
Can I help?

No,
Hiero sent.
I
must bandage/cure myself. Watch for any danger while I do so.
The bear padded off and left him.

Painfully, the priest removed his slashed leather boot, now full of blood, and examined the wound. It appeared clean, but any animal bite ought to be dressed quickly. He fumbled in the saddlebags, conscious of waves of blackness hovering over his pain-racked mind. The flares had gone out long since, but they had served their purpose. Dawn light was flooding into the clearing, and the chirping of the awakening birds seemed ironic after the blaze of sudden death, which had heralded the morning, and the five grim shapes on the reddened grass.

Hiero finally got the medicine kit out and gingerly spread the healing salve thickly over the long, bleeding wound. He next bandaged it as tightly as he could. It probably needed stitching, but in his present condition he simply wasn't up to it. When he was sure he had done all he could, he gulped a Lucinoge tablet. The mind expander was also a narcotic of sorts, and as he sank into slumber he could feel his muscles relax. His last thought was a mild worry that something or someone might take over his mind while he was unconscious. Then he remembered no more.

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