Brother Aldo knew his man. "Why, Captain, can't your hardy men stand a little discomfort? Surely those who've ridden out gales and fought cannibal slavers and angry sea beasts aren't afraid of a few days' walk in the woods?"
Luchare and Hiero grinned at each other in silent companionship. "Few days* walk in the woods" indeed! But it was the right note to strike with the squat little seaman.
"I've got the toughest crew afloat," he boasted. "Why, Roke's men would all have run when that big beast come rampaging through here. No, those men'll follow me through hot pitch. But what about our pay? And where are we going now?" His voice was eager on the last question.
"Well," Aldo said, "I have no real right to promise anything like this, but if, mind you, if our Ruling Council agrees with me, all your damages will be paid, including the loss of your ship. After all, you are on Eleventh Commandment business, are you not?"
"Your word's good with me, Brother," Gimp said. "You can't say fairer than that. But what now?"
"I can supply some answers there, Gimp," the Metz interjected. "We're going southeast, the Brother and I, and I guess you and the crew had better come too." He waved his hand around at the monster tree trunks and the shadows at their feet. "I don't imagine your men are going to want to strike off alone, are they? Three are gone already. I've probed the night with my mind and so has Aldo, and we detect nothing. I fear they indeed have provided someone a quick dinner. Can you make this danger plain to those who remain? We must stay together."
"Yes," Aldo added, "and tell them Hiero will command the whole expedition from now on. This trip is land work, and we need land discipline and experience. I will assist him, of course, and you'll remain in direct command of your own people."
"Suits me," the sailor said. "There won't be no problem about that. I've got thirty men, no, twenty-seven; forgot those scourings that run off. Plus me and Blutho. We have food for two weeks, but only seven big water skins. How's this place for water?"
"I'll find you water and game too," Aldo answered. "We'll leave at dawn. The trail is less than a mile from here, overgrown but still a. good road. The beasts use it and so can we, but humans don't seem to have been over it for a long time, at least as well as I can tell in the dark."
As the moon gleamed through the far-off branches and the fires died down to orange coals, they talked on, planning as well as possible the next day's march. At intervals, Hiero probed the night for enemy mind sweeps, but encountered nothing suspicious. The high forest teemed with life, but it was natural to it, predators and prey, fur, scale, and feather.
Eventually they slept, though with watches set and regular changes of guard.
The next morning Klootz, to his annoyance, was loaded with supplies. Behave yourself, Hiero told him. I'll get to ride you soon enough. The morse bull was, in fact, trained to carry burdens on occasion, so that his irritation was a matter of pride. He had carried urgently needed supplies to more than one isolated Kandan village in the past. Now he shook his great, black antlers and brayed until Luchare's ears rang. The forest answered with a chorus of screams and yells, and the day's march began.
First went Hiero and the bear, scouting the path. Next came the mate and his picked crew of axe and cutlass men, ready to cut through any bad obstructions. The main body of seamen under Gimp came next, all armed with swords and pikes. A small group of picked bowmen followed, and last of all, the morse, Luchare, and the old Elevener. While he disliked being separated from them, Hiero himself had chosen this march order as being the most sensible. It gave them a telepath at each end of the column, and danger was more likely to come from in front than the rear.
As Brother Aldo had promised, they soon struck the old trail. Hiero's instinct told him that it ran almost due southeast; and although small bushes broke its surface here and there, it was still easy marching. The sailors cheered up and began to sing, songs which Luchare appeared determined to ignore while carefully memorizing some of the worst to try later on her lover. Part of the cheer, Hiero learned when they stopped for a noon meal, was due to a crafty rumor of Gimp's that they were in search of a great buried treasure. This artless tale has seldom failed to arouse sailors of any time or nation, nor did it now.
Hiero could not help wishing as he strode along, alert for any movement, that he and Luchare were alone to explore the wonderful green world all about them. The heat had now come to seem normal and, in the shadows of the great trees, not even very oppressive. Stinging insects were surprisingly few, perhaps because bird life was so abundant and varied.
Monkeys, large and small, chattered overhead, and other small beasts, of unknown types to the Metz, scuttled up and down the looping vines and tendriled growths which shrouded the monster trees. Occasional huge footprints in the earth, none very new, renewed the knowledge that not all the life of the forest was small. And once, the bear shied suddenly from what appeared to be a smooth, shallow ditch across the trail itself. Hiero raised a hand to halt the column and summoned Brother Aldo. The great, rounded fold in the leaf mold of the road was stunning in its implied message, but the old man confirmed it.
"Yes, my dear boy, a serpent. Let us hope we do not meet it. They are very hard to control mentally and almost invulnerable to any weapon. I should judge this one to be eighty feet." He said no more and walked away. Hiero led off again, considerably shaken and now even more alert.
Occasionally, due perhaps to outcroppings of poorer soil or perhaps of hidden rock, the forest opened, and grassy glades filled with flowers formed sunlit breaks in the green gloom. It was in one of these that a new menace revealed itself.
The priest and his attendant, the bear, were halfway across the glade, which was no more than a hundred yards in extent, when something long and lean, or rather two somethings, erupted from the edge of the wood to their left and raced for the column at a speed so incredible that Hiero never could decide on it afterward. At first heading for him, the two creatures swerved and plucked the two leading axemen behind Hiero instead, sweeping them, off their feet without even breaking stride or hesitating. Before anyone could even raise a weapon, they were gone! A vague visual impression was left on Hiero's forebrain of animals rather like giant, distorted foxes on legs like stilts, mottled dark brown on a fawn background, each one with a crewman gripped in great, grinning jaws. There had not been time even for the men to scream. Belatedly, he realized, he had used his mind to deflect the attackers from himself, used it subconsciously, as a man half-asleep raises an arm to defend himself from a blow. He explained this to Aldo when they all halted and also tried to excuse his conduct. But it was Luchare who snapped him out of it.
"Don't be so stupid! I'm sorry those men were killed, too, but you didn't kill them! And how many of us are alive because you have the abilities and courage to use them when you do! Now say a prayer for those two poor souls and go back to being our leader!" She turned on her heel and stamped off to the rear of the line again, Klootz following obediently in her wake.
"We're down to twenty-five lads now, but she's right, Master Hiero, she's right, you know. Without you, there wouldn't be none of us. No one blames you, I can tell you that." Gimp had overheard the dialogue, and his earnest, perspiring face now expressed his feelings.
Brother Aldo patted his shoulder affectionately. "Hiero, why not blame me instead? I am supposed to know these woods and the dwellers in them. Yet I never even noted or felt the minds of those swift creatures which took those two. In fact, to be honest, they are totally new to me, and not yet in our records at the Central Institute, I suspect. So take heart. And remember, we all still rely on you."
"All right, I suppose I couldn't help it. But I feel damned inadequate to serve as leader all the same. Let's go." The seamen marched in silence for a long while after that.
At dusk, they found another campsite between three great trees and built a strong barrier around it. But late that night, something large reached over it and simply removed one of the two seamen posted as sentries. The ma
n's fading scream alerted the camp, but his mate had been facing the other way and thus had no real idea what had happened.
"His mind doesn't exist," Hiero said in a low voice after a moment. "He's dead, thank God. What are we going to do, Aldo? We can't go on this way. By odds it ought to be one of us next. These poor devils are getting grabbed because they have no concept of what dangers to expect. Should one of us stand watch, do you think? I'm at my wits' end!"
Eventually it was decided that Hiero and Luchare (she insisted on that) should keep a waking, if not talking, watch half the night, and Brother Aldo and the bear, who were great friends, the other half. This in addition to two seamen, who would walk guard on roughly each quarter of the night. It seemed to work, since for the next two nights there were no attacks, though Hiero felt that this was due to luck more than anything else.
On the fourth day since leaving the coast, they came at length to a fork in the trail. Both the left and right paths seemed to go roughly in the direction they wanted, but one inclined somewhat to the east, the other more to the south.
They called a halt to consider this matter, since in any case it was almost time for the noon break and meal. Hiero's and the girl's crossbows, and their heavy, bronze-tipped quarrels, had supplied them with plenty of small game, got by ranging only a little wide of the trail. The local wild creatures, though often savage enough, were singularly unwary of men, a fact that Brother Aldo and the priest found encouraging, for it showed that few human travelers had used this country.
As they inspected all of the maps, Brother Aldo looked increasingly doubtful.
"No fork shows here at all! Long ago, but, mind you, my memory is still fair, I used this road and there was no such fork then. Yet roads made by game, and this trail simply took one over, you know, don't change much over the centuries. Not unless the land itself does, if a river, say, should dry up or a new volcano arise."
He walked over to the fork and peered down at the actual junction of roads, where a colossal tree, against which he resembled a fly on a wall, towered up at the apex of a broadening triangle of forest. The men were eating silently, watching as their leaders debated. Overhead, the unending canopy of green shielded them from the burning sun. The mighty wood lay somnolent under the hush of noon, only an occasional bird song drifting down through the leaves.
Aldo came striding back, his eyes still downcast.
"We'll take the southern fork, I think, unless there's an objection. It would seem to skirt the desert on the map more than the old road did. I never went that far myself, but turned off before the open spaces began. But I am still puzzled as to why a plain fork like this should exist on a road no one human uses, for animals simply don't do such things." Thus they crossed over the border into the realm of Vilah-ree, unknowing.
For some miles, the new road, or rather trail, for it was no different from the one they had been using, marched steadily on, winding around and through the great tree trunks as it had for days. But late in the afternoon, Hiero became conscious of a change and held up a hand to halt the column and at the same time to summon Luchare, Aldo, and Gimp to him.
"So you've noticed too," was the old man's comment. "What do you think?"
"We're going down a very long, gentle slope, into a river valley, I guess. The trees are mostly the same, but there are many more hanging mosses and lichens and great ferns too. The ground isn't wet, but the air's damper. And I hear a lot of new bird calls and songs. What have you noticed, Aldo?"
"That animals are very few, and mostly far up in the trees. No large beasts use this trail at all, no dung, no footmarks, nothing. And yet I seem to feel something hovering at the edge of my thought, almost in reach but not quite. Your mind, boy, is more powerful than mine in many ways. Try using it and see what you can pick up. But do be careful!"
Luchare looked anxious for a second; then her ebony face became a mask as she assumed the role of the king's daughter. Gimp looked nervously about them at the leaf-strewn ground. This was out of his sphere of knowledge entirely. Hiero closed his eyes and leaned on his spear, which he had thrust point downward into the soft earth, while he sent his mind abroad.
He touched upon the minds of many small, shy creatures at first: birds high above, lizards on tree limbs, toads and snakes in the mold of the forest floor. Wider and wider he sent his mental net, seeking for any trace of intelligence with every atom of his powerful brain. At length he was sure that, for very many miles in a circle from where they now stood, no mind existed which he could contact on an equal level. He began to withdraw mentally, closing and tightening the mental circumference of his "net," but still watching closely for any trace of an observer, spy, or enemy.
Then a strange thing began to happen. He caught no trace of coherent thought, no actual communication, but he knew all the same that someone was there! And in his mind a face commenced to form! The face of a woman!
Or was it? he wondered. The face was long, the chin pointed, as were the small ears, just visible under the helmet of hair. And the hair itself? If it was hair, he wondered. The tight, almost caplike covering looked as much like feathers as it did anything else and seemed to ripple with almost a life of its own. And the eyes! Long and slanted, with vertical, yellow pupils, their color was a shifting, opalescent green. No human had such eyes! Green indeed was the overall impression which the face conveyed. The pale, smooth skin and the strange hair seemed to have overtones of green, as if the forest had exuded a mist which covered the creature who watched him. Yet it was a female presence which observed him.
For he was under observation. That much was clear. The strange and beautiful (for it was both) face saw him, and although he could detect neither mind speech nor mental contact of any sort he knew, yet he was sure that the entity behind the strange eyes was fully aware of him and his companions. And he knew too that he had been allowed to see the face of his watcher. As this thought stirred in his mind, the image vanished, like a burst bubble, one moment clear, the next utterly gone. But still the watch over them was not relaxed. This also he knew. He brought his mind back to the trail and opened his eyes, to find the others still watching him.
"You have found something," Aldo said instantly. "I can see it in your eyes."
"Something, yes, or someone. We are under close observation. But I can feel no mind touch at all, which is strange and, frankly, makes me nervous. Even the Unclean mind shields are detectable as an impression or shape, though the thoughts they hide are not. But here ..."
As he tried to explain the picture he had received, he saw a storm of fury begin in his love's eyes and instantly stopped the narrative to take hold of her shoulders and shake her gently.
"Now look, foolish one, a female seen once is no cause for jealousy. I said she was lovely in a way, yes; but, I feel, not altogether human either. So stop the female anger, eh, and let me go on?" His clear gaze met her eyes, and at length she smiled.
"All right, I guess I am jealous. But I don't like beautiful green women, whom I can't even see, looking at my man!"
"Quite so," Brother Aldo said impatiently, "but we have other concerns, princess. Hiero, does this strange creature, who must be one of a group, seem dangerous?"
"I don't know, frankly. But I do feel there is power there, and power of a kind I can't even grasp, behind that face. That in itself is quite enough to make me nervous."
"But what are we to do? Shouldn't we go back, before this invisible witch or whatever casts a spell on us?" What little he could grasp of Hiero's tale made Captain Gimp very nervous. He was a man who could face any physical danger with a bold face, but unseen (to him) green faces and mental warfare were something else again.
You know, he may have a point. This was Aldo's mind speaking directly to Hiero. Maybe we are being warned and should go back, retrace our path, and take the other trail. But he was interrupted from a strange source.
You cannot go back, came the bear's calm message. The way is guarded now. You can only go forward, where t
he���(his thought was untranslatable, but conveyed an impression of great power) wish you to. His mind said nothing more, and he simply sat up on his haunches and sniffed the damp airs drifting down the trail.
Can you hear���whoever is watching us? Do they, or she, talk to you? Do you know their purposes?
I cannot tell you how I know, Hiero, was the answer, I was told to say what I said, but not by the way you use your mind. It is the same way I know which is the way home. I just KNOW, that's all. Gorm's thought conveyed the idea that the process he was talking about was quite inexplicable in human terms. As a matter of fact, he was partly wrong, for Hiero's own sense of direction was almost as good as the bear's. But the sub-mental communication wave or channel being used was certainly nothing either the old Elevener or the Metz priest had ever dreamed of.
What blocks the return path? was Hiero's next question.
Listen, came the answer.
From far back up the long, gradual slope down which they had lately come, there echoed a cry. The rippling calls of the strange birds above them were hushed, and only the cry could be heard, though it came from a long, long way. It was hard to describe. Luchare called it a "cross between a moan and a growl." Hiero thought it sounded more like the howl of an inconceivable wolf in great pain. Brother Aldo kept his own counsel. Whatever it was, it had to be very large, and the note of savagery in its voice was unmistakable. One word that subsumed all others in describing the sound might have been "disquieting."
Hiero Desteen: 01 - Hiero's Journey Page 29
