Hiero, and leave me alone! I’ll try to turn it. Hurry!
Now everyone could hear the monster. A footfall, so ponderous it actually shook the forest floor, began to echo at a steadily increasing beat. Great snorts and grunts sounded.
Get away from the fires! came the old man’s thought.
Hastily Hiero passed it on, and Gimp and the men began to scurry away to either side. Luchare pulled Klootz’s head around, and the two tugged him off behind the buttress root of a great tree, clearing the flimsy camp barrier as they did.
Now the incredible steps broke into a crashing run, and almost at the same time, the creature gave voice. Its fight with the slain attacker must have been further away than he realized, the priest thought, as that awful, ringing bellow almost shattered his eardrums.
Out of the dark it came, perhaps just such a titanic bulk as must have peopled the earth for millions of years in the past, before the coming of man. Now, due to incredible hard radiation and consequent forced mutation, the same conditions of life had once again given such creatures another, second chance. Its great, brown head, short-trunked on a heavy, columnar neck and carrying upper and lower pairs of ivory tusks, towered up at least twenty feet above the terrified men. The close-furred giant body sloped from pillarlike front legs to shorter ones in the rear, and as it passed, the Metz saw its tiny tail, a mere afterthought, flapping in the air. Fresh wounds on its flanks gleamed red in the firelight, and the small, ruby eyes gleamed also as it sought for fresh enemies. But the fires seemed to distract it. It charged straight and hard at the nearest and careened right through it, sending burning logs spinning in every direction. Its voice rising to a new volume, it charged the next fire and scattered that also. Without ceasing its incredible rush, it blundered across the little clearing, through the barrier, and into a gap between two monster trees. Even as the light died, it vanished from sight. Everyone stood, appalled, in the gathering gloom, listening as it lumbered on and away, crashing a course off into the distance, still roaring hideously as the pain of its burned feet, added to the previous wounds, reached the tiny brain. Almost before one realized it, the sound had died away in the distance and the “normal” noises of the night forest once again resumed.
“All right, men,” Brother Aldo’s voice came cheerfully. “Let’s get those fires going again and build up the barrier. It won’t be back, but other things may. Hurry up now; no time for idling.” The old Elevener, appearing out of nowhere, stood in the middle of the clearing, helping Gimp and Hiero direct the work, until all was as before, except that the barrier was now chest-high at least. When new watches had been set, he told Gimp to turn over command to Blutho and join them. At this point they discovered that three men were missing, all ordinary seamen.
“Probably ran off in a panic and got lost or ate by something,” Gimp said philosophically. “If people won’t listen, what can you do? I tell them no-good swipes a thousand times, ‘Stay here with us,’ but they know better!”
“I’m afraid you’re right,” Aldo said. “Let us be glad it’s not worse. At least I can detect no Unclean activity, only the Poros, that poor, simple beast which blundered into us.”
“Poor beast!” Luchare burst out. “That great horror!”
“Well, yes, I think so,” was the gentle answer. “This is his forest, you know, princess, not yours. He had just been in a terrible fight and he thought he saw more enemies in us. I sent him to bathe his burned feet in the Inland Sea,” he added, “and now he’ll feel better.” His tone was exactly that of a nurse whose spoiled charge had been soothed.
Hiero smiled to himself. The Eleveners were indeed the guardians of all life! He rather approved, he realized, though it would take a long time for him to see the Brobdingnagian Poros as the simple-minded child that Brother Aldo obviously did.
“Now that that’s over, I think I can keep us from being bothered by any more of the forest people, at least tonight. And I have found the trail, you’ll be glad to know.” The old fellow beamed at them in pleasure and stroked his curly beard affectionately.
“I’ll be glad to know a lot of things,” Gimp said aggressively, “such as who’s going to pay me for a new ship, not that there’s another like old Foam Girl, mind. And all her cargo, too, gone in a wink, plus the juicy plunder I claimed from Roke’s ship, and hard-won that was. All in all, Brother, I could have retired on that lot, and my men too. Who’s to pay us, eh, and when and also where? Are you going to wander about in this wood until we’re all ate by something like that walking mountain we just missed?” Despite his gloomy words, Hiero noted that the little seaman’s eyes were still bright and his ridiculous pigtail still perky. Though he would have died rather than admit it, Gimp was a pure romantic, actually one of those people who revel in constant excitement and new ventures. He liked pay, of course, if he could get it, but it was only secondary, and so was his grumbling. Now he cocked an eye from Hiero to the old man in question.
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’11 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 ail 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 man’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.
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