Hiero Desteen (Omnibus) Page 11

  As the bird sheered off, the crowd let out a yell of derision. They made Hiero look at them then, with more than a passing glance. They sat in wicker-roofed lines of dirt seats, arranged in tiers on the earth back at the rear of the arena they had so obviously created. The roofs were not because of the sun, obviously, but rather to keep the birds from selecting an impromptu victim from among the screaming audience.

  They were very light-skinned, Hiero saw, an archaic human stock he had only glimpsed among the southern traders once or twice, or else learned of through the old books, and many of them had light brown or even blondish hair. All, men, women, and children, seemed to be half-naked and all were armed, no doubt as extra insurance against the birds. They were waving every type of sword, spear, and axe as they yelled a raucous encouragement to the flying deaths.

  To one side, a group of kilted men, hideously masked and with towering plumes of feathers, presided over a bank of giant, polished drums. These people had no protection from the birds and apparently no fear of them either. Now, as Hiero watched, they bent to their drums and, under the direction of the most gorgeously masked and feathered, the obvious high priest, beat out another rumbling roll of thunder on the tali, black cylinders. The audience screamed anew, and their cries were taken up by the birds, who swooped again, their shrieks drowning out the human yowling. Then, suddenly, all noise ceased, and the arena was silent in shocked surprise at what they now saw.

  Hiero had ordered Klootz to charge and unlimbered the thrower almost without thinking. He also held two more of the tiny rockets in his mouth, praying he might get a chance to reload. As the bull morse tore out of the shallows and around the corner of the cliff, his rider noted in passing that a group of swarthy men, in good cloth clothes and leather hats quite unlike the rest of the audience, occupied the seats nearest to his end. Like all the others, they were gaping in amazement.

  The great birds, seeing the charging bull and his rider as some terrible combined beast, flared lightly up like great feathers from their attempted kill. All except one, which was so intent upon the girl that it noticed nothing else.

  She had fallen in a wild leap, and in falling had apparently knocked all her wind out. She was crawling, but as the bird sailed down, she seemed to sense it and turned face up with her bound hands raised in front of her.

  She’s still trying to fight, the priest thought in admiration. That’s really a tough one. He was aiming his thrower as carefully as was possible, to intersect the great bird’s swoop, Practice over a long period of time in handling all of his weapons while mounted made this sort of thing a matter of trained reflex, but never exactly what could be called easy. One went through the proper motions and then simply prayed.

  The prayer or the training, possibly both, worked. The propel-lant fired perfectly, and the rocket hit the bird monster smack between the shoulders. There was an incandescent blaze of white fire and the two great, brown wings, no longer connected to one another, sailed to the ground, a few charred rags drifting away from between them.

  Hiero had slashed the leather thong connecting the girl to the post and pulled her across the saddle on top of the stiffening antelope carcass before the still-stunned audience began to wake up. Circling high above, one of the great birds screamed once, fearful of coming lower or perhaps mourning the death of a mate.

  As if the cry were a signal, an answering yell of rage broke from the flock’s aroused patrons. Mounting in one movement, Hiero knew his spell was broken and that a shower of lethal missiles was next on the agenda.

  “Travel, boy!” he shouted aloud, whacking Klootz with the wooden stock of his thrower. Only as he yelled did he remember the two shells in his teeth and the fact that in yelling he had to let them fall. He bolstered the thrower, pressing the girl tightly to the pommel with his left hand. Fortunately, she was either stunned or had good sense, for she made no move and lay absolutely limp, face down.

  As they raced in the only possible direction, the water’s edge at the far side of the arena to the east, Hiero saw the first spear hit the sand by one of Klootz’s great legs. The next instant he heard the whistle of more, and worse, of arrows, one of which buried itself in the thick saddle with an audible “thonk.”

  But his chief attention was ahead. The tall, plumed priest who led the drummers had abandoned his drums and, followed by his gaudily dressed followers, was rushing down to block their escape. As they neared him, the rain of arrows ceased, since the crowd did not wish to kill their own men.

  The priest ran well in front of his men, waving a long sword, and Hiero made a very quick decision. The high shaman had discarded his mask; in the pale, narrow face and blazing blue eyes, Hiero read both fanaticism and intelligence. This was not a follower one needed or wanted. The man could have been avoided, but weakening the opposition was a better strategy.

  Kill him, Klootz! he sent, even as he tightened his grip on the helpless girl, for he knew what was coming.

  The great bull swerved slightly to the left and ran as if to pass just in front of the leader of the enemy. The shaman, fearful of missing his blow, ran a trifle harder. And as his arm went back for a hard cut, he died.

  With hardly a break in his stride, the battle-trained morse lashed out in one of his awful, stiff kicks, using his giant left foreleg. The terrible hoof took the priest squarely in the stomach and hurled him, broken-backed and gushing his life blood away, back into the arms of his followers. The morse raced on, and before the first yell of rage and despair had rung out, he was already in the shallows and thundering around the wall of the eastern cliff.

  To his delight, Hiero saw that the empty beach stretched for miles into the distance before them. Nobody on foot was going to catch them now, and he urged Klootz on, hoping to make the lead as long as possible. The only obstacle he could see was a small river, whose waters glinted in the late afternoon sun about a half mile off. It did not look particularly wide or deep, and he felt sure that only the middle would require swimming, if indeed any of it would.

  He looked back and saw a few black figures on the sand near the cliff, waving their arms and leaping up and down, and he smiled in contempt. Then, as the act of looking back made his memory work, a sudden thought came to him. Gorm! Where was his friend and guide? Had he been slain? Even as he thought this, his mount caught the thought and answered, once again surprising the priest with the realization that he would probably never know just how smart Klootz was.

  He (will) follow/track/smell out (later), came from the morse’s mind. He goes (away) not/near water. Having delivered this message, the morse lapsed into silence and once more concentrated on running steadily over the long, white strand toward the rapidly approaching river.

  The shrill screech of one of the giant birds came to Hiero and he looked up quickly, wondering if they were going to attack or could be somehow controlled, perhaps by the priests. He could not take time off from his escape to concentrate mentally and probe the bird minds, or indeed any minds at this point. He had not forgotten the lonely skull and the hole in its back where a great beak had almost certainly probed. To his relief, the little flock of remaining birds was circling far above, and even as he watched, they flew out to sea, no doubt heading for some distant island rookery. The interruption of their routine of human sacrifice apparently had confused them and rendered them incapable of further harm.

  A torrent of high-pitched, angry, and unintelligible speech suddenly broke out from the rescued prisoner, and at the same time she began to kick and squirm vigorously. Hiero reined up and looked around. The river was a few hundred yards off still, and the antlike figures of their enemies were barely visible in the distance behind them.

  “I might as well free you, young woman,” he said aloud, and hauled the girl upright, turning her as he did, so that she sat facing him over the front of the saddle, the dead antelope serving as a seat for her. He had been reaching for his belt knife to cut the leather which still bound her wrists together, but at the first good
look at her, his hand stopped and he simply stared. Quite unabashed, she stared back.

  She was totally unlike anyone he had ever seen before, but in spite of that, lovely, in a rather wild and untamed way. Her skin was far darker than his, a warm chocolate, as contrasted with his copper color, and her great, dark eyes were no lighter in shade than his own black. Her nose was moderately long and very straight, her nostrils quite widely flared out, and her dark lips very full and pouting. The great mass of her hair was a tangled, uncombed heap of tight, almost screwed, black curls, each of which looked like black wire. Her firm, brown breasts were not large and gave the priest the feeling that she was considerably younger than he had first supposed. Metz women covered their upper bodies, but he instinctively sensed that nakedness meant nothing to this one. He doubted somehow that the loss of the very short and ragged skirt she wore would have bothered her at all.

  She had been studying his bronzed, hawk-nosed face, with its short, black mustache even as he had studied her, and now she held up her bound hands and said something impatient in her unknown language. Obviously, she wanted to be cut loose; Hiero did so and then lifted her again and turned her forward, so that she now sat astride in front of him, facing in the same direction. He noted in doing so that her slim waist seemed to be muscled with steel and leather.

  Once again he urged Klootz on toward the river. For some reason he could not fathom, some thought at the very back of his mind, the sight of the not-very-imposing stream disturbed him. It was as if some important fact were tied to it which it was necessary to remember. Something to do with the people back there, perhaps? Now what the devil was it, anyway? A feeling of guilt at risking the possible success of his whole venture at a moment’s hazard for a girl he had never seen before? Could it be that? No, not that, damn it, the river. Think of the river!

  The flash of mnemonic lightning hit his mind a bit late, in fact, just as they reached the river’s brink and saw the long, log canoe, hard-driven by a dozen paddlers, sweeping down the muddy center channel at them. As the white-skinned rowers spotted them, a fierce yell rang out, and they bent even harder to their paddles.

  The village, of course! Hidden from any sea raiders, it must lie up this river, since he had not passed it earlier. What had been plaguing his mind was the buried realization that there had to be a village close by from which all those women and children could have walked. Now a message had been sent to the village guard, perhaps, indeed almost certainly by crude but adequate telepathy. This art was common not just in Metzland, but among almost all living people at least in some small degree. The savage priests were probably pretty good.

  As all this flashed through his mind, he was feverishly loading the thrower and at the same time kicking Klootz into the water. If they got trapped on this bank , . . ! Better now to take a chance in the water. The channel was probably only a few yards wide; once they were across, the level beach stretched on out of sight, empty and inviting.

  In front of him, saying nothing, the girl reached down and lifted the broad spear out of its saddle sling. The casual arrogance of the gesture made Hiero grin in spite of their predicament. This was indeed a tough, young animal!

  Hiero’s luck with the thrower ran out this time, but it was partly his own fault, as he was the first to admit. He waited too long to fire, so that when Klootz stepped off into the channel at the exact instant the rocket shell ignited, the aim was hopelessly spoiled. Not only that, but the canoe was too close to allow a reload, its sharp prow thrusting down upon them in midstream, even as the morse swam mightily for the shallower water on the other side.

  But they had never seen, let alone fought, a morse before, nor had they any conception of the deadly Abbey killer teams of morse and man. Hiero threw both arms around the girl, gripped tight with his legs, and ordered Klootz to dive. Dive, boy, down! his mind sent. Come (up) under them! As the bull porpoised down under the surface toward the oncoming canoe, Hiero saw the slack-jawed surprise on the faces of the pale savages, several of whom had dropped their paddles and had lifted weapons for the kill.

  Klootz, through cleverness or luck, Hiero never would learn, came up gently, though firmly, from off the river bottom, which was not far under. Hiero, eyes shut, crouching over his rescued prize in an effort to shield her, felt the bottom of the canoe slide off his own back, pressing him down even harder, flattening him on top of the girl and the dead antelope. When the sliding canoe hit his crupper, though, which was the next thing to happen, Klootz abandoned gentleness and simply heaved up with all the enormous power in his great hindquarters.

  The two half-drowned humans and morse erupted out of the water and into the light as the loaded canoe, hurled straight up in the air, broke and threw its occupants in various directions into the churning water. They could all swim and there seemed to be none dead, Hiero noted in relief as Klootz splashed through the muddy shallows and out on to the eastern marge. The priest could be ruthless enough to enemies of decent humanity and the Abbey, but he disliked killing men and women whose chief fault was ignorance, for which they ought not to be blamed.

  Amid spluttered cries and curses, whose nature was evident from the looks and gestures of those who made them, the morse again bore his two riders away down the strand into the east.

  The long rays of the half-set sun cast gigantic shadows before them as they went. Hiero now had released his death grip on the girl, and she sat firmly in front of him, apparently none the worse for the experience. The cut on her shoulder and back had begun to bleed again, though, and he signaled the morse to come to a halt after a mile or two. Lifting her down, he smiled as he saw that she still clung to the spear.

  “You can put that back,” he said, pointing at the saddle socket in which it belonged.

  She gabbled something, looked about, shrugged as she saw no visible danger, and (reluctantly, he thought) restored the weapon to its place.

  As Hiero got out his medical kit, she watched with interest, and when he indicated that he wanted to sew up the lips of the wound before bandaging it, she merely nodded. Whether this indicated native trust, ignorance of suturing, or what, Hiero had no idea. Even with the Abbey’s salve it was a painful process, but aside from tightening her lips once or twice, she gave no sign that it hurt. Finally the wound was stitched and bandaged, and the priest lifted her up on the morse again, while he repacked his belongings. When he was through, he noticed that she was leaning over Klootz’s long neck and scratching behind his flapping ears, something he loved dearly. Hiero gave her another good grade for liking and understanding animals.

  Once mounted, he looked back, but he could see no sign of pursuit. Inland rose the same lines of dunes which had accompanied them all the way so far, except where the rock spines of the subsoil broke through, and he felt sure the swamp began and still stretched endlessly on, only a few miles beyond that.

  It was late evening now, the low clouds red in the west and the sun’s disc altogether gone. It was high time to look for a campsite, but they had only come a few miles and he had no idea how good the savages were at tracking. His decision to kill the shaman might have merely enraged them instead of helping to hinder pursuit by forcing them to mourn ritually the death of a leader. The girl, too, ought to have rest and food very soon. She might be as tough as she appeared, but what she had been through that day would have tired a strong man. The priest himself felt weary and he had endured far less.

  Another hour’s ride, and in the full dark, more water loomed up. It was impossible to see how broad it was, and it would be insane to try swimming it in the dark. Reluctantly, Hiero turned the morse inland, following the bank of the stream or inlet, and keeping double watch in case anything large came out of it and wanted dinner.

  Their progress was necessarily slow and grew slower yet as cacti, vines, and woody plants grew more common. Eventually, peering about on the side away from the water, Hiero caught sight of a dark hillock somewhat to their left. He steered Klootz that way and to his surprise
found that the “hillock” was an enormous, rounded bush or low tree, about forty feet high, with a stout, central trunk. Its branches hung nearly to the ground and provided as close to a natural tent as one could hope to find.

  Once “inside,” after they had unloaded and unsaddled the morse, Hiero dismissed him to feed and mount guard, simultaneously. He decided to risk a very small fire of twigs, and after he had gathered them and got it lit, realized that no good reason for it existed, save to look at the girl. This discovery annoyed him.

  She had sat quietly, arms around her knees while he unloaded and puttered. As he got food from the packs and water from the big canteen, she accepted a share in silence, but made no effort to talk. Eventually, the short meal over, she brushed a few crumbs from her lap and once again stared levelly and impersonally at him over the light of the wee fire. It was obviously time for some attempt to communicate.

  Actually, it took only four tries. She did not speak Metz or Inyan of the western type, or understand the silent sign language. But when Hiero tried batwah, the trade language of the merchants, she smiled for the first time and answered. Her accent was very odd, if not downright bad, he thought, and many of her nouns were utterly strange to him. He guessed, rightly, as it proved, that he came from a place at one end of a very long trade route and that she was from far off, either near or at its other extremity.

  “What kind of man are you?” was her first remark. “You look something like a slaver, like those who sold me, but you ride that wonderful fighting animal, and you got me away from those pale-skinned barbarians. But you owe me nothing. Why did you do it?”