Hiero Desteen (Omnibus) Page 10

  But all was not lifeless. From the shore below them, and out some few leagues into the bay, great leaves, round and many yards across, floated on the smooth mirror of the water. White flowers, blooms of some enormous lily, opened here and there, and the intoxicating perfume they gave off was so strong that Hiero could almost feel the fragrance as a material thing.

  In the open water between the giant lily pads, great, dark bodies noisily churned the water into boils of foam and then vanished, only to reappear and shatter the calm surface somewhere else a hundred feet away. A herd of some enormous, feeding animals were disporting themselves, wallowing and splashing in the relative shallows near shore, and as they rose and sank, small waves rolled up the gentle beach and the huge round leaves of the lilies dipped and rocked on the water, set in uneasy motion.

  Hiero sat down with a sigh to watch. His hopes of a clean bath in the sea were obviously doomed to postponement. Even allowing for the distortion of night, any one of those things down there would make four of Klootz, big as he was, Gorm and the morse sniffed the breeze in loud snorts, excited at the smells of the night and the noise of the sportive behemoths. Hiero bade them lie down and wait with him.

  Presently one of the creatures emerged from the water and waddled out upon the sand directly below the watchers. It was huge, long, and low, balanced on four short, sturdy legs, each with three wide toes. There was a great, blunt head, shaped like a long-snouted keg. It yawned suddenly, displaying a pale gullet in the moonlight, which also glinted on huge tusks set at each corner of the gaping jaws. As the water ran off its great back in runnels, a short, plush coat of fur began to dry and give the animal a lighter shade of color. Something in looks like a cross between a pre-Death hog, a hippopotamus, and even a Brobdingnagian seal, what its ancestors had been was a mystery. It began to graze contentedly on some short-stemmed plants, and the contrast between its peaceable eating habits and otherwise horrendous demeanor made Hiero chuckle.

  Faint as the sound was, the great beast heard it and its small ears flapped vigorously as it looked suspiciously about. Deciding the neighborhood was apparently dangerous, even though it could see nothing, it lumbered back into the water, twitching a tiny curled tail, and rejoined its fellows among the enormous lily pads.

  Happening to glance beyond the herd and out to sea, the priest caught an even more wonderful sight, which left him dumb with amazement and awe.

  From the quiet water out near the mouth of the bay, there soared into the moonlit night the black outline of a monster fish, long and slender with a sharp-pointed head, identical in appearance with the pike Hiero was used to hooking in every cool northern lake. For a fleeting instant he felt himself back in his piney wilderness looking at a leaping catch, not on the unknown shores of the warm sea of the South. Then, as he shook his head to clear his vision, the scale of what he was seeing came home to him.

  “God in Heaven!” he murmured aloud. The titanic, falling shape hit the shining water with a crack which echoed like the noise of a colossal thrower shell, and the sound echoed back from the distant cliffs. The fish he had just seen could have swallowed one of the ponderous water beasts below him in two bites!

  He looked down in amazement. A few ripples stirred the giant leaves, and tiny wavelets lapped the shore, but otherwise nothing stirred. Only streaks of iridescent oil on the dark water told him that he had not been dreaming. The advent of the leviathan he had just seen had made the herd of great water hogs vanish as silently as if they had never been there at all.

  He waited with his impatient allies for a few more moments, but since the waters remained silent and undisturbed, he decided the big animals must have dived and gone elsewhere. In any event, the dirt and filth accumulated during the journey through the swamps were too unbearable to stand any longer unless absolutely necessary.

  Thrower cocked and the butt resting on his hips, Hiero urged his big mount down the white face of the dune. Klootz simply sat on his broad bottom, braced his splayed-out front legs, and slid, the bear sliding along next to him.

  Once at the bottom, they all paused and looked about them, keen ears and noses testing the breeze for signs of danger. Seeing and hearing nothing, the calm bay before them still undisturbed, they tramped over to the water’s edge. To the intense annoyance of the big morse, after unsaddling him, his master told him to stand guard. He stamped off up the beach, grumbling, and took a stance on a hillock of sand, shaking his still-soft antlers in anger.

  Gorm waded carefully into water about six inches deep and then, lying down, began to roll over and over, emitting “whoofs” of sheer pleasure. Hiero painfully removed his filthy clothes, save for his linen and shorts, and laid them in the sandy shallows, weighted down by a large rock, to soak. He next carefully cleaned his undressed leather boots with a knife and a stiff brush, the latter taken from a saddlebag. This done, he was ready for his own bath. He also did not go very far in. He was a fine swimmer, but the recent glimpse of the local wildlife had cured him of any desire to leap out into the depths. Even where he was, he kept a wary eye out for any suspicious-looking ripples or surges. However, nothing disturbed his long-overdue wash, and he finally had had enough and came out, bringing with him the bear, whose sodden fur, pressed to his plump body, made him look a third smaller.

  Grunting with joy, the big bull now rolled happily in the shallows, and chewed up several bales of the nearer lily roots and leaves when he was done, actually diving for some of them, which made Hiero very nervous. Not until Klootz too was out on the beach and drying off under the warmth of the August night did the man totally relax.

  Working by feel, Hiero shaved, a rough but adequate job, and even trimmed his short mustache and his black hair also, so that it hung less heavily over his ears. With a second set of clean leather clothes from the saddlebags and his old ones now drying over some stones, he was able to enjoy the feeling of content that comes from cleanliness after a prolonged spell of enduring compulsory dirt.

  A little back from the beach, a spur of gray granite thrust itself out from the sand dunes which had flowed around it over the centuries. Here, the man thought, would be a good place to camp for a day. The rock furnished a shelter on its rearward face, away from the sea, where an overhanging shelf gave access to a narrow cave.

  Soon all the contents of the bags were stowed in the cave, and Hiero and the bear were snoring away in close harmony, while the faithful Klootz, chewing his cud and belching comfortably at intervals, maintained an unwearied sentinel’s position just in front of the cave’s entrance. just as Hiero dropped off into a deep and untroubled sleep, he was conscious once again of the harsh, far-off screaming of many birds, and mingled with it this time, a muffled resonance, a faint vibration of some kind which he could not identify. Even while his tired brain attempted to form a coherent thought about the distant sounds, sleep overcame him.

  He awoke in late morning, feeling better than he had in a week. Had it only been a week since he had left the unused, dusty road far to the North?

  He went out of the little cleft in the rocks and found a warm, fresh breeze blowing from the lake, which was a sparkling blue, flecked with many whitecaps. Offshore, a great drift of swans was resting, honking and gabbling. They looked as if a great mound of soft snow had been sent down unseasonably from the High Arctic.

  His two allies were so full of high spirits that they were playing a game out on the open sand. The small bear would charge at the morse, snarling in apparent savagery, and the big bull would try desperately to hook him with his palmate antlers, always “missing” by a least a full bear length. When that happened, the bear would tear around in circles, trying to catch his stub of a tail, while Klootz would rear up on his hind feet and paw the air madly with his immense, bony front legs and platterlike hooves.

  Hiero was so amused at the two that for a moment he forgot the possible danger of the aerial spy they had encountered previously. When he did remember, he quickly scanned the sunlit heavens, but except fo
r a few small, puffy clouds, they were empty of motion. Nevertheless, he was disturbed. They had escaped several unpleasant deaths only by the narrowest of margins, and only a good day’s ride away had he himself managed to destroy the telltale instrument which he had so thoughtlessly carried in his saddlebags. A sudden feeling of euphoria could get them all killed just as quickly as a blunder into an obvious trap. It was when you were feeling at your best that you were apt to relax, sometimes with fatal results!

  He saw nothing dangerous, however, and could not help wishing he had four legs of his own so that he could join the game. As he watched, keeping a weather eye out in all directions, he thought about his further plans. For over four days the flying thing had apparently been absent. Why not try daylight travel? As they moved along the seashore, going east, it would be dangerous enough moving even in daylight, and they would need the extra vision time given by the rays of the sun. That was it, he decided. Unless he saw the flyer or found some hitherto unknown danger menacing them, they would travel by day from now on.

  The two animals noticed him at this point and came gamboling over, sending up showers of sand.

  Feeling good, eh, sent Hiero. You’re a fine pair of guards! I could have been eaten/caught/killed by now (time past)!

  They both knew he was fooling and paid not the slightest attention, except that Klootz butted him gently with his antlers, making him stagger and catch hold, lest he fall. He felt the horn, hard and getting sharper, under the soft velvet as he did so, and indeed, a piece of the latter peeled off in his hand.

  Ha! he sent. Stand still, you big oaf, and (let me) try to clean you (up a bit) scrape/peel/rub.

  The morse shook his head ornaments vigorously and then stood quietly while Hiero tested each section to see how loose the covering was. Like most male deer, Klootz had to grow new antlers each year, and it not only took a lot of energy but made him nervous and itched badly as well, particularly when, as now, the velvet was peeling and shredding to reveal the hard core beneath. The Abbey scientists had long ago discarded the idea of breeding the antlers out. For almost half the year they provided superb weapons of defense, and in addition, they made their wearers feel tough and confident. It was decided that the energy saved by eliminating them would be a bad bargain, and anyone who wanted to ride or drive an antlerless cow, such as most farmers used, could do so.

  Hiero peeled a small amount of the covering off with his fingers, but whenever he met any resistance, let it alone. He and Klootz both knew how much help was needed and when to stop, for it had been six full seasons since they had chosen each other at the great annual calf roundup. Hiero next got out a small steel mirror and touched up his face, shaving more carefully and repainting his rank badges, now almost obliterated. This done, he repacked.

  Soon they were swinging along up the edge of the beach, Hiero in the saddle and the bear lumbering over the hard-packed sand and shingle out in front. It was not long before they came upon signs that they were back in lands used by humans.

  From a pile of riprap, sticks, and dried weed, which lay on the shore in a little cover, a polished human skull looked blankly up at Hiero. He dismounted and examined it thoughtfully. There was a gaping hole in the occipital region, and a few faint shreds of dried tissue there indicated the thing to be not too old. He put it down reverently and, mounting, rode on. It might be an accident, indeed there were a thousand ways of accounting for its appearance, but why a fairly fresh skull and no body at all, not even one bone? That hole looked as if something (or someone) had gone after the brains. He suppressed a grimace and said a oneline prayer for the repose of the skull’s owner, assuming charitably that the man (or woman) had been a Christian.

  They rested briefly at noon in the shade of a large, leaning tree of a variety new to Hiero. He recognized it as a palm of some unknown type from pictures he had seen and realized that winter could hardly be too severe in these parts if such a plant could endure it. The scrub palmettos of the Taig were able to grow only through buried trunks. He must be even further south than he had realized.

  During the still heat of early afternoon they had one encounter with a foe, but it passed off without doing any harm. Rounding a shoulder of rock, and actually in shallow water, since the beach had briefly disappeared, they suddenly found a large, black-spotted, yellow cat tearing at a carcass on the next patch of open sand.

  The big cat raised bloody fangs and snarled in angry warning.

  Go! Suddenly deciding to test something, Hiero used a bolt from his new armory of mental weapons. Leave! Out of our way or you will die!

  The animal cringed as if hit a blow by a stick. Its ears flattened, and emitting a frightened “miaow,” like a vast kitten which had been spanked, it left the beach in one huge bound and vanished into the dunes in a second. Hiero was thunderstruck at his own success and then burst into laughter.

  He got off and picked up the carcass, a small, striped antelope of some sort, hardly touched by the cat. It must have just been beginning to feed. Here was easily obtained food for himself and Gorm! He slung it carefully before him on the saddle. Klootz did not ruffle a long ear. Blood was nothing new to him, and he had carried far worse burdens than this one.

  Sometime later, the priest, idly glancing out to sea, reined his mount up sharply, making him snort with annoyance. Sorry, an accident, Hiero sent absently. Far out on the blue, wave-flecked water, two small, black triangles were outlined against the horizon. The ship was moving along in the same direction they were, the man decided after watching it for a few moments, but far faster. Also, it seemed to be going away as well as east, so that even as he watched, it sank below the edge of the sea.

  As he rode on, he made a note to keep more of an eye seaward. A telescope could probably pick Klootz and his rider out a long way off, and he had no desire to end up in one of the pagan galleys he had read of, chained to an oar with a whip instead of meals. Also, the Unclean had ships too, of some curious types, and they were supposed to haunt little-used parts of the vast freshwater sea.

  They were approaching a dark promontory of rock some hundreds of feet high which projected out into the water for a short distance when the noise first came to them. It was late afternoon by then, and they had seen nothing of note for a considerable time. Hiero was wondering how deep the choppy water was at the foot of the rock massif and whether the going would be safer, if more time-consuming, inland when the rattling, screeching cry, the noise of a bird redoubled tenfold, fell upon his ears. Again, and yet again, it rang out, and then he saw it.

  Briefly, over the crest of the towering, jagged rock in front of them, soared a brown bird whose saillike wingspread could not have been less than thirty feet. Before it dipped down again on the far side of the peak, it opened its long, hook-tipped beak and let out a repetition of the scream he had just heard. Other echoing screams answered it, and told him that more than one of the great birds were aloft just out of sight.

  Then, mingled with the rasping cries of the birds, an unmistakable drum thundered out, a long roll of muffled thunder. When it ceased, he heard the massed yelling of a horde of people mixed with the piercing cacophony of the birds. Again the great drum rumbled, silencing for a moment the other noises. This was the noise Hiero had heard the previous dawn!

  By this time, at his master’s urging, Klootz was racing for the seaward base of the jutting rock. Behind him, tongue lolling out, Gorm galloped, laboring to keep up.

  Not curiosity alone impelled Hiero to goad the morse on. The base of the rock was an obvious place to hide, should one of the huge birds sight him. The look of that immense hooked beak was dismaying, and the priest had no belief in his invulnerability from a flock of things that size.

  Splashing through the shallows and circling the water-lapped boulders at the foot of the precipice, man and morse picked their way around the looming granite elbow and finally, both cautious, peered around the outer rim to see what had caused all the peculiar noises. Behind them, allowing them to brave
whatever danger there might be, the young bear paused, waiting on events.

  The first thing Hiero was conscious of was the stake and the girl; the next, the great birds; and last of all, the spectators. He did not at first notice the shaman, or witch doctor, and his crew.

  A short stretch of curved beach sloped gently away from the sea, up to a high and artificial-looking bank of packed earth which backed the beach, cutting off any glimpse of further inland. A sort of arena, or amphitheater, was thus formed, one side wall being the cliff around which Hiero and Klootz now peered, the other being a similar, abrupt, rocky hillock a few hundred yards away. The sea, lapping at the white sand, formed the fourth side. The little beach was swept spotlessly clean, only the tall, wooden stake in the center interfering with the symmetry of the smooth, white sand.

  Tied to the stake by a length of supple, twisted rawhide perhaps fifty feet long, was a very dark-skinned, almost naked girl. A scanty rag about her loins was her only garment, and her feet were bare. Her massed, tightly curling black hair tossed freely in the vigor of her movements. The rawhide was tied tightly to another lashing which secured both her wrists together in front of her. As a result, she could run, leap, dodge, or hide, turn or fall, but only in a fifty-foot arc around the wooden stake. She was doing all these things, her body a sweat-oiled blaze of dark movement as she sprang and crouched, ducked and spun, in her hopeless battle against the winged death.

  The great birds! There were about eight of them, Hiero saw in one glance. Somewhat like giant gulls, but brown, not white, and with savage beaks, they circled and wove, always slashing down at the leashed prisoner. Like gulls too, their great feet were webbed, and thus they seemed only to use their murderous beaks as weapons. But that was enough. Despite her most desperate efforts, it was obvious the girl could only hold them off a little longer. As he watched, she scooped fine sand into her bound hands and hurled a cloud of it at the head of a swooping flier, which shied off with a scream of rage. But a long, bloody wound on her glistening back showed that the girl had not warded off all the attacks from above.