Hiero Desteen (Omnibus) Page 8

  As they now stood looking at one another, the priest could not help smiling ruefully. All three of them were soaked, and mud caked the legs of the four-foots. The clinging bog smell was vile, and there was no way of getting rid of it, not until they got out of the swamps, at any rate. One advantage the caked mud gave the animals was that it at least partially protected them from the incessant, droning attack of the mosquitoes. Slapping at himself, Hiero wondered if his protective ointment would last. He was used to bug bites, as any woodsman had to be, but the legions which rose from the Palood were something else again! To make matters worse, huge brown leeches had to be picked off the two animals at almost every stop, filthy things which haunted every pool of water.

  The first day was spent huddled in a thicket of the towering green reeds. Determined not to be caught out in the open muck or water by one of the flying enemy during daylight, Hiero had hacked a careful way into the reeds which he thought unlikely to be seen from above. By the time the sun was fully up, they were well hidden in the heart of the reeds, but little more, if any, comfortable than if they had been in the open. It was a cloudless morning, and the August sun grew steadily hotter as the day advanced. The mosquitoes, shunning the light, were overjoyed to find helpless targets buried deep in the shade and attacked in new armies. Minute gnats and crawling bugs, mercifully absent during the hours of darkness, joined the onslaught and helped make them all miserable. As if that were not enough, the leeches, too, emerged from the water and, suckers waving, inched onto the three at every chance.

  The man cut what he could spare from his own mosquito net and managed to rig crude muzzle screens for the two tortured beasts so that they could at least breathe in comfort without inhaling clouds of flying, stinging pests. Beyond plastering themselves with as much mud as possible, there was little else they could do. At least, Hiero thought, there was no water shortage. Where the pools were not churned up or too shallow, he had found the water to be perfectly clean and needing only to be strained once to remove insects and other vermin before being added to his canteens.

  Food was another matter. There was some grouse, quite a lot of pemeekan, and even more of the biscuit left in the saddlebags, but he was aware that it really ought to be saved as much as possible. The morse would simply have to be allowed to feed before they started the night’s journey; there was certainly enough succulent vegetation growing in or near the water. But what could the poor bear do but eat the dwindling rations along with himself? Aha! Aha!

  He fumbled quickly in the near saddlebag, momentarily forgetting the insects and the cloying heat. Sure enough, the fishing equipment was still in its case. Let’s see now, he thought, can I reach the water from here with a throw?

  Carefully tying a shiny, weighted lure to the gut line, he threw it out into the channel which ran, brown and turbid, a few yards from the mouth of the tunnel he had carved for them in the roadbed.

  On the third cast, a violent tug signified some luck; and soon a fat, striped fish, a perch of some unknown sort, he thought, weighing about three pounds, was flapping its tail on the packed mud bank. Before his luck ran out, he had caught two more of them. He gave one to Gorm, who fell upon it and seemed to find it excellent. The other two he cleaned and scaled, packing one away for later and eating one now himself. He had eaten raw fish many times before, and examination showed these not to be infested with worms, as was sometimes the case. Certainly lighting a fire would be the absolute height of folly, knowing that the heavens were no longer free of inimical eyes. He ate one of the dry biscuits with the fish and a small lump of pemeekan, since the fish contained no fat or oil. Then he curled up for a nap, doing his best to ignore the vermin, winged and legged, and to endure as stoically as his two allies.

  At nightfall, having seen nothing of the winged watcher during the day, he told Klootz to go and eat; and soon the steady maceration of water plants added to the insect and frog drone. Some sorts of small birds appeared in quantity in the evening sky for the first time, and he could hear their many shrill calls as they hawked for insects over the marshland. He sourly felt that about eight million more of them would be needed to diminish the mosquito population in some degree. He shared two biscuits and the other fish with the small bear, who also had found and dug himself two whitish roots or tubers from the mud. Tasting one of them gingerly, Hiero felt the sting of some powerful acid and knew that he would be unable to supplement his own diet with this particular plant.

  Giving the big morse an hour to feed, Hiero decided, would be about all the time he could spare. The marshes had to be traversed and the sooner the better. As things were now, they could travel only during the night, and even that time was cut into by feeding and finding shelter.

  Kiootz came willingly enough, and his master noticed that he had not bathed, that only his head and legs as far as the hock were wet. Since the big morse loved water and wallowed at every opportunity, this was surprising.

  Something (nature unknown) in the deep water (under/watching), came the thought when the priest sent a question. Bad too/ very bad (to) fight.

  This matter-of-fact statement from his mount made Hiero blink. He saddled hastily and, calling Gorm, rode to the far side of the reed island they were on. Moonlit shallows stretched away before them, broken by many mud banks, and no deep, open water was visible except far off and to one side. The man was very glad they had swum the other channel the night before and wondered what the morse had sensed lurking out there. It never occurred to him to question Klootz’s judgment or his keen senses. If he said there was something bad out in the water, then there was, and if he was afraid of it, it must be pretty horrendous. It could be anything, from a colossal snapper to one of the great frog monsters they had encountered previously. Or something nastier still, Hiero reflected. He had wondered earlier why the flying watcher had made no appearance during the day. Perhaps the answer was too simple. The great marsh was (rightly) thought so dangerous that the Unclean either could not believe he had entered it or, if they did, were confident he would never emerge. Both conclusions made logical sense, he admitted to himself.

  Once during the night they heard the vast, bellowing cry of a giant amphibian, but the sound came from far away and to one side, in the distant East. Again, later, from a tangle of tall vegetation they were skirting, there came a mighty hissing, as if the grandfather of ail snakes were suddenly angry. They made haste to leave the area, and although Hiero was careful to watch the back trail for an hour or so, nothing appeared to be following them. Gorm was very cautious in the lead, testing all the mud patches they traversed to be sure that they were not some quicksand or ooze which would sink the whole party. Twice such areas were found, but the bear seemed quite able to tell them from the rest of the landscape, and the man gradually relaxed his fear of being mired in some sucking bog.

  The damp air was stirred by fitful breezes, and ever-stranger odors came to them as they went deeper and deeper into the watery waste. It occurred to the priest, watching Klootz’s broad hooves flatten on the mud, that he might well be the first man to try the swamp with both a steed who was semi-aquatic and a priceless guide and outrider such as the young bear. This might mean that they would succeed and get through where others had failed.

  They spent another miserable day, this time in the rain, which fortunately was warm. Gorm had located another mound of rotted plant matter from which reeds and giant docks were growing, and once again Hiero hollowed out a cave into which they all had to crawl.

  It was still raining at evening, and Hiero had caught no more fish, despite repeated efforts. He and the bear shared some grouse, biscuit, and pemeekan, but the animal could discover none of the roots he had found earlier. Klootz, however, seemed quite pleased with the water plants near their mound, and there was no deep water nearby, so that he was able to have a roll in the muddy shallows.

  Eventually Gorm led off again, with a fine drizzle still falling and little if any light to illuminate their way. Possibly as a result
, they had to swim on two occasions, though fortunately without incident.

  In actuality, they were all very lucky, if Hiero had only bothered to think for a moment. For three days, they had safely penetrated the great wilderness of water and yet had seen or encountered few of the monstrous life forms which inhabited it. And despite the swarms of noxious insects which caused them all such misery, Hiero, much the most susceptible, had caught none of the sickening fevers which made even the very borders of the Palood feared.

  Once again, the priest hacked away into an island of partly growing, partly dead plant matter. After adjusting the mosquito masks on the animals, he put on his own and prepared for another soggy, leech-and bug-ridden day of itching and cursing. They were camped on the edge of a dark, deep lagoon, but he ignored the black water, his wariness for once strangely lulled.

  The priest was so tired, however, that he soon fell asleep, despite the bites and the steamy heat. As the day passed, he lay in a sort of drugged torpor and the two animals slept also, hardly moving and simply enduring, while even the thick mud-plastered hides of the morse and the bear were drilled again and again by the sucking worms and clouds of waiting gnats and stinging flies.

  Exhausted they must all have been, but there perhaps was more to it than that. Deep in one of the saddlebags, a tiny bead of light glowed under a glass dial, brightened, dimmed, and then grew bright again. Forces and currents, invisible to the eye but nonetheless powerful, moved through the steaming fog which lay on the Palood. In dark places, unknown to normal mankind, consultations were held, fears explored, and decisions taken. Curious things stirred under the slime, and the Unclean concentrated their vast powers on the heart of the bog, where a telltale glow on one of their hidden control boards told them a deadly enemy of unknown power, a foe to their fell purposes, now lay concealed. From drowned cities, lost and buried forever under the fens and mud of the marshland, came the flicker of strange movement and unnatural life.

  The morning grew old. A pale sun shone through a watery fog and yellowish vapor rack. No wind disturbed the quiet pools, and the tops of the tall reeds and docks hung limp in the mists and humid steams which rose from the surface of the great fen. Still the three drowsed on, occasionally murmuring or groaning softly in the tip of their overlong sleep. Afternoon passed and still they lay, unmoving. The light died slowly as the sun sank into the cloudy west. Now the white fogs of night began to rise from the meres and dark waters, mingling with those left from the day, until vision shrank and one could see only in streaks where the veils curled aside before reclosing and forming new banks of haze and murk.

  At this dree hour came the Dweller in the Mist. From what foul den or lurking place it issued, none would ever know. The ghastly cosmic forces unleashed by The Death had made the mingling of strange life possible, and things had grown and thought which should never have known the breath of life. Of such was the Dweller. How it had found the three, only it, or perhaps the Lords of the Unclean, could have said. Perhaps the telltale in the saddlebag helped. It had found them, and that was enough.

  Some warning gave Hiero a fighting chance, some spark sent by the trained soul the Abbey fathers had taught, to the trained mind which they had disciplined. He woke, clutching the silver cross and sword upon its neck thong, and saw before him the doom which had stolen upon them as they slept.

  The vapors had parted briefly over the dark lagoon which lay before the entrance to their refuge. Around a corner of the next islet of mud and reeds came a small boat. It was hardly more than a skiff, of some black wood, with a rounded bow and stern. On it, standing erect and motionless, was a figure swathed in a whitish cloak and hood. What propelled the strange craft was not apparent, but it moved steadily through the oily water, coming straight for the place where the priest now sat, staring.

  Before the shrouded figure in the pale draperies, there came out a wave of fell power and evil intent which struck Hiero and piled over him like some vast and clammy net. Beside him, the two faithful beasts apparently slept on, unmoving. The force which the Dweller commanded held them in their places, if not asleep, at least numbed into unconsciousness. The man knew that something had caught them all unaware which might, in truth, destroy the bodies of the two animals, but which was really directed at him, and the aim of which was the total enslavement of his mind and soul. Here, he knew on the instant, was the embodiment of the warning given by the little Eyed Cross.

  All this flashed through his mind as he prepared to do battle and the black skiff glided to a halt, nosing into the soft mud bank not ten feet from where he sat. From the place of his inner being, Hiero looked into the shadows under the pale hood; and from that caverned place, the Dweller’s eyes, two pits of ocherous evil, stared silently back.

  In one sense, though only the broadest, it was another mental struggle, such as Hiero had waged unsuccessfully against S’nerg.

  But there were important differences. The Unclean wizard, bad as he was, was still a man, and his control owed much to simple hypnotic techniques, amplified and strengthened by years of training and practice in telepathic control. That which was called the Dweller was not remotely human, and the powers it drew upon were somehow inherent and natural to it. It sought control by a form of mental parasitism, as a vampire sucks blood by instinct, rather than by any design. Its form of attack was non-physical but two-pronged.

  Hiero felt an intensification of the smothering, clinging feeling which had announced the Dweller’s coming. His mind, his body, his inner processes, his center of being, felt steadily constricted and squeezed, as well as feeling a constant drain of energy. In addition, however, a subtle feeling of pleasure was projected at the same time, a sense that the Dweller meant all that was good and beneficial, both to his physical and to his spiritual well-being. There was a subtle biological side effect, sexual in nature, which filled Hiero’s mind with mingled loathing and delight at one and the same time. The overall attack was very powerful. The psychic energy of the swamp-thing seemed almost a visible aura around its shrouded head, the bulk and shape of which, even under its wrappings, looked all wrong and somehow not physically possible or proper.

  One hand clutching the Cross and Sword on his breast, the priest fought grimly back. The part of his total being which was being seduced by the promise of unspeakable pleasures he concentrated on memories of strength and austerity. Such were the Abbey choir services of the motet evenings, the mental courts where novices battled one another in silent struggles of the mind. He had obtained just enough time before the Dweller’s net was cast to start reciting the table of logarithms with yet another part of his brain. Long ago, the Abbey masters had learned that the ancient mathematical formulas were a strong defense against mental attack. Based as they were on logic, repetition, and disciplined series, they formed a strong barrier, when properly utilized, against the illogic and confusion which, of necessity, were the chief mental weapons of the Unclean. Yet it was a struggle which Hiero felt to be steadily going against him. The draining power of the Dweller seemed inexhaustible. Each time the priest blocked off an avenue into his mind by which it tried to lure him into acquiescence, another similar attack would commence on some other flaw in his psyche. And the steady compression of what Hiero felt to be a net never ceased its remorseless constriction as well. The appeals to his gross senses and the black, strangling clutch at his thought processes seemed more and more hopeless to combat.

  Yet, even as his will seemed to him to weaken, his courage and resolution actually flared higher in response to the danger. And an unexpected help came, unrealized in fact at this time, from the dead mind of S’nerg, whom the priest had slain. His struggle with the adept had given Hiero’s own dormant powers a new strength of which he had as yet no conception. He battled on, therefore, no hint of yielding in his soul, determined that if this nightmare from the swamp murk were to conquer him, it would only be at the price of his death!

  The physical world about him had completely disappeared. He was con
scious of only the black foulness before him, the veil from which stared the twin pools of lambent horror, the eyes of the Dweller! And in those eyes he saw, or sensed, for the first time, something change, some shift or evasion. So close now was his rapport with the thing before him that he realized at once what had happened. It was no longer attacking! The doubt, faint as it was, had interfered with the stream of projections and mental bolts which the Dweller had been using, and even the tiny hesitation had broken the flow of its concentration. To gain the victories to which it had been used, weakness and weariness must help and undisciplined minds must inevitably yield to the frightful powers it both controlled and lived by.

  For the first time, Hiero’s mind reached out and, in a way impossible for a non-telepath to imagine, struck back at the Dweller. The stroke was not one of great strength, being both hesitant and clumsy. But the thing almost visibly staggered. It had never been challenged so in all its foul existence, prowling the swamp and its borders for prey. What became of its victims was best unthought. To what hell they had been lured and their subsequent fate there, no one would ever know, but Hiero always felt that some joint serfdom of physical pain and soul suffering was their fate.

  Again he lashed out with a mental bolt and this time actually saw the horrid spots of spectral light which were its eyes blink in response. Gaining confidence with each probe he directed, he felt new strength surge through him. For the first time in a long while, or what seemed so, he became aware of the world about him and felt the night air on his face and saw the hooded shape before him and its place in the scheme of things, not as an inchoate force, but as a vile object to be destroyed. He next struck at the net of thought which the Dweller had tried to use to compress his mind in a cage, and one strong blow shattered the invisible bonds completely. Now, rejoicing in the clean surge of energy which he was using, he shaped a web of his own, willing the strands of psychic energy to form a pattern of power which would hold the living horror which was the Dweller enmeshed in its own turn. Remorselessly, calling on the Trinity and all the saints to aid, he began to choke the monster’s mind and dark spirit as it had tried to do to him.