Hiero's Journey

2. IN THE BEGINNING

“We are losing, Hiero, slowly but surely, we are losing.” The Father Abbot’s brown-robed form paced his underground study chamber as he spoke, thin arms locked behind his back. “Faith alone is not enough. Never was, for that matter. Again and again in recent years, we have become conscious of a will, or group of wills, working with the utmost secrecy and deliberation against us. The human-seeming things which tried to invade Abbey Central and almost succeeded are only a small part of the problem, though of great importance. But there is much, much more, which the Council in its wisdom has kept from the people. No agent of the newsletters has, or will, hear a word of it.” He paused, and his lined, dark face with its pointed, white beard and drooping mustaches softened into a grin. “None of us have even told our wives.” In an instant he was serious again, and picking up a piece of white chalk, strode over to a slate blackboard. The Most Reverend Kulase Demero had begun a most successful career as a teacher of the young, and old habits die hard.

“Look here,” he said crisply as he began to write. “A large convoy two years ago was ambushed well north of the Inland Sea, on the main road from Otwah. Ten loads of old-time laboratory instruments taken and some found destroyed later. Those instruments came from an undamaged pre-Death site on the Eastern Ocean and, we think, were experimental matter involving advanced weaponry of which we now know nothing. We’ll call that item number one.” He continued, glancing over at intervals to see that Hiero, seated at a long table facing him, was paying due attention, just as he had done with a thousand pupils in the past. “Two, we sent a complete regiment of soldiers, under a good sub-abbot, twenty priests, a construction crew as good as any we had, and full supplies for all for six months, to start a new fishery-based Abbey up on the Huzon Gulf, to the far Northeast, in the cold woods. You have heard of that, I imagine, as it was too big to keep quiet. Despite all precautions, continuous mental communication with our own Comm chambers at Abbey Central and at other Abbeys, the whole force, roughly eleven hundred picked men and women, vanished utterly. Our only warning was a total and sudden lapse of communication. A Rover team found the site deserted and most of the remaining supplies being plundered by wild animals a half month later. There were vague traces of some element of the Unclean, but nothing you could put your finger on. Eleven hundred of our best! This was and is a terrible blow. So I say, we’ll call that number two.” He paused and looked at Hiero.

“Any comment?”

“Not yet, Father,” Hiero said placidly. Those who did not know him sometimes thought him phlegmatic, but the abbot had watched his man for years and knew better. He grunted and turned back to his blackboard.

“That was about eighteen months ago. Next, which I’ll call number three, was the affair of the ship. Damned few members of the Council know about that, so I’ll assume you don’t. About two months after we lost the Abbey colony, which would have become Abbey Saint Joan,” and another look of pain crossed his face, “a great ship was reported to us by certain trusted persons on the Beesee coast to the west, well to the north of Vank and the great Dead Zone there, in a nest of rocky, wooded islands called the Bellas. These people are not Metz, but older still, in fact—”

“In fact, purebred Inyans,” Hiero agreed. “And there are quite a few of them scattered about here and there, but they live in small hunting groups and won’t come in and amalgamate. Some are good people, others trade with the Unclean and maybe worse. Now let’s stop the baby stuff, Father. I’m not a first-year student, you know.”

For a second, the Father Abbot looked perfectly furious, then he laughed.

“Sorry, but I’m so used to explaining things in this manner to the average village councilman or even some of my more elevated colleagues on the Grand Council that it gets to be a habit. Now, where were we? Oh, yes, the ship.

“This ship, a big, odd-looking one, much bigger than any fishing boat we have, was reported wrecked on one of the outer islands of the Bella group. And there were people aboard from somewhere else, probably the other side of the Pacific! The ship was breaking up on the rocks, and the weather was bad. Our Inyan friends tried to get the people, who were yellow-skinned, just as the records say the East Pacific people should be, and just as the few rare fishermen who get wrecked here are, off in their small boats. We were already sending a cavalry squadron from the east, at Abbey St. Mark, as fast as we could. There are fairly good roads to that part of the coast.

“Well, when our people got there, nothing was left. The wreck was utterly gone, not a trace of it left. Three small Inyan camps on the coast, gathered for the salmon fishing, were gone too, with only a few traces that they had been there. But we found an old man in the woods, or he found us, an ancient cripple who had been taking a sweat bath and thus had been missed when the attack came. A horde of Leemutes, some sort of Hairy Howlers, I gather, had appeared from out of the water. They were riding great animals which looked something like the really big seals we see once in a while on that coast. They stormed the shore camps, killing everything that moved and hurling the dead and all their possessions into the sea. The old man did not know what had happened to the ship, which he had only heard of and not seen, but it must have met the same treatment. Who knows what new knowledge from the Lost Years we missed that time? Are you beginning to see a pattern?”

“I think so,” Hiero answered. “We are being physically penned in, you feel, but more than that, we are being blocked off from knowledge, especially any knowledge which might prove dangerous to the Unclean, to the Leemutes. And the plan is concerted, is organized, so that when we do hear of any new knowledge, it is instantly snatched from our grasp.”

“Exactly,” the abbot said. “That’s exactly what I think. And so do others. But there’s more yet. Listen a moment.

“A year ago, twenty of our best young scientists, men. and women both, who were working on problems of mental control, in a number of new and fascinating aspects, decided to have a joint meeting. They came here to Sask City from all over the Republic. Parment wasn’t in session, but the Abbey Council, as the Upper House, was, and we received word of the meeting, and our permanent scientific subcommittee knew all about it, of course. A routine Abbey guard, two men for the doors, was provided. Now one of the two, a sharp fellow, thought he counted twenty-one scholars going in one morning, after the group had been meeting for several days.

“If it were not for him—! Even as it was, things were bad enough. The guardsman looked through a window in time to see the twenty killing one another, in total silence, by strangling, bludgeoning, pocket knives, whatever was handy. He burst in yelling and broke the compulsion. There were six dead and eight more badly wounded. As you might expect, those with the strongest mental powers of will were the least injured. We could prove that from their school records.” The abbot sighed. He had ceased his pacing and now sat on a bench opposite Hiero.

“The scholars remembered little. They too had the vague feeling that another person was present at some point, but they could not describe him, or it. The guard at the back door had been conscious of nothing at all. But to us, what must have happened is clear. It should be to you. Is it?”

“A mind of great power, I suppose,” the younger man said. “One of the legendary dark adepts of the Unclean I’ve heard rumored. Is it, or they, really something besides a fairy tale?”

“I fear so,” the abbot said. “Look, you understand the mental powers as well as any young man of the Metz. To accomplish this very daring stroke, aimed, mark you, at our freshest brains, our own greatest asset and greatest danger to any foe, a mind of extraordinary power, as you say, had to be close. Had to be physically close, that is, to the persons under the compulsion. There can be no doubt that the lad on guard (who by the way is now getting advanced training) had a good mind and indeed retained the memory of seeing an extra person enter. Once inside, while simultaneously holding an invisibility spell upon their minds, the creature worked on tiny, everyday resentments until they were built into murderous compulsions to kill. But there’s another implication you may have missed as well.”

“The silence.” Hiero smiled. “No, I got that.”

“Good boy,” his superior said. “You do have brains, Hiero, under that lazy mask. Yes, the silence. What a mind! To compel them, twenty good minds, to slay one another in total silence! Noise would have spoiled the plan, so they had to be silent. I don’t think there are four men in the Republic who could perform that feat.”

“And you’re one of them, of course,” Hiero said. “Is there more, or do we now get down to specifics involving me personally?”

“You knew about the two who almost got into our inner files and research centers at Abbey Central,” his superior said. “We may call them case number four, I suppose. What they were is beyond our present knowledge. If they were actually human men, then how was it possible for their very flesh and bone to dissolve into the substance of an amoeba? The Unclean is overreaching us, Hiero.

“There are many other cases of interest if they are considered as part of the whole thing. Small parties of trained explorers, men like yourself, ambushed or worse, vanished, in areas where no one should have known they had gone. Messengers with matters of unusual importance for the Eastern League at Otwah, or perhaps from them to us, also vanished, causing delays of up to a year on matters of common concern. And so on. It all adds up to one thing; a web, Hiero, a deadly, tightening web, is being drawn in upon us, even as we sit and wait to find out what is going so wrong!” The lean old man fixed his keen eyes on Hiero. “I still haven’t heard any very searching questions from my prize pupil. But I need them: we all do. Hiero, you can’t be mentally lazy any longer. You’ve been doing work any journeyman priest-exorcist could do, mixed with a lot of forest running and plain loafing. Your scores at Abbey Central, and you know it, were some of the highest ever achieved. And you’re not even trying! Now listen to me, Per Desteen. I am addressing you as both your Godly and your temporal superior, and I want your attention at its peak! Those of us on the Council who know about you have been giving you rope for years, for two reasons. One was the hope that you would develop responsibility by yourself, always the best way, of course. The other reason, mainly advanced by me, young man, was so that you could get experience in many areas. Well, the time for idling is now, this minute, officially over. Am I plain? Now, sir, let’s have some intelligent questioning, because I have a lot more to say.”

Black eyes snapping with anger, Hiero was now sitting upright, glaring at his friend and mentor, any pretense of being bored gone forever. “So that’s what you think of me, is it?” he grated. “A sort of chartered ne’er-do-well and good fellow. That’s not fair, Most Reverend Father, and you know it!”

Abbot Demero simply sat looking at him, his wise eyes sympathetic, but not yielding, and Hiero felt his anger ebb away. There was truth, a good deal of it, in the charges, and being an essentially honest man, he could not deny it.

“I apologize for anger and impudence, Father Abbot,” he said heavily. “I suppose I’m not really much of a priest, or a soldier either, for that matter. What can I do for the Council?”

“A good question, Hiero,” the Abbot said briskly, “but not really the one I wanted, because it comes last, or ought to, and I want more thoughts from you first. Look now, my friend, what are your conclusions about what I have told you? I mean strengths, weaknesses, reliability, for that matter, plausibility, and above all—solutions, remedies. Let’s hear your own ideas now.”

“Well,” Hiero said slowly, “one thing hit me from the very first, and it grew as the tragedies you related mounted. There has to be treason, at least one highly placed traitor somewhere in the Republic and probably more. I don’t like saying this, but I have to, to be honest. What about the Council itself?”

“Good,” the abbot said. “You’re still able to think. Yes, there’s treason, and it’s being carefully, very carefully, searched out as we sit here. As for my peers, and your superiors, on the Council, you have no business knowing what steps might be taken if we ever should suspect a traitor in such an unlikely place. Therefore I shall tell you nothing about any such possible theoretical procedures.”

Two smiles met across the table. The old abbot had refused information and (literally) told Hiero nothing. As well as everything, including the fact that the Abbey Council itself was nonimmune from suspicion.

“I can’t argue against a conspiracy,” Hiero resumed. “We are definitely getting a series of blows, savage ones, from someone. And what you tell me is the final word. It must be coordinated. Since we are meeting here at a sealed office and talking, at your insistence, you must be worried about some sort of betrayal even here. If our minds concentrate on a subject, even if we speak aloud, there are currents set up audible to an adept, especially one such as you describe. What are you doing to keep this from happening?” He folded his arms on his chest and stared at the abbot in turn.

“This,” the abbot said simply. While they had been talking, the younger man had not noticed a plain wooden box, perhaps eighteen inches high, at one end of the table. The abbot lifted its lid and exposed a curious mechanism, a small, flat pendulum of some polished, ivorylike material, suspended motionless from a delicate wooden crossbar. Close on either side of the pendulum, two oval discs hung from the slender supports.

“There is a core of a very curious substance, something out of the Lost Years, which I’ll tell you about someday, in that pendulum. If any thought, power, or what have you had come upon us, I think there is a ninety-eight percent chance that tiny weight would have rung against a side support piece. We’ve been testing it for two years, and it hasn’t failed yet. In fact, it or a duplicate is what trapped the two spies at Abbey Central. Needless to say, very few of us know about it.”

“I see,” Hiero said, eyeing the little signal device. “Very reassuring. Let’s hope it works, sir. Now, you wanted more thoughts, I believe. I only have one. There must be a plan, something to reverse this steady constriction you fear, and I’m to be part of it. It must need a younger man than yourself, and so some physical hazard is involved. Perhaps a journey, a probe into some guessed-at area held, or thought to be held, by the enemy? A reconnaissance of some sort? Beyond that, I’m in the dark.”

“Think a little harder,” Abbot Demero suggested.

“All right,” Hiero said. “A weapon, or weapons, exist somewhere. As a result, one extraordinarily gallant man may barely manage to penetrate the Unclean enemy lines, relying on cunning, stealth, and sheer heroism, where a whole army could not get through. Frankly,” he added, “I’m getting a bit tired of the mystery. Beyond the sarcasm I just gave you, I really have no suggestions and I hardly think a children’s romance of the lone paladin against overpowering odds is what you’re after. Come on, Father Abbot,” he said impatiently, “what on earth are you after anyway?”

The Abbot looked a little nonplussed before he spoke, which in turn gave Hiero a bit of a start.

“Damnation, Hiero, you must operate on a level we can’t tap! You see, that happens to be exactly what I want. You and a few other highly trained men are something of a secret weapon. We want you to go and try to raid some of the Lost Cities in the far South, in the hope, which I confess to be dim, that you will indeed give us some secret of the past before the Unclean overwhelm us.”

Despite himself, the younger priest was instantly fascinated. He had been as far east as Otwah and into many wild areas of the North, but the far South was a closed book to almost everyone. For every mutated plant or animal in the northern part of the Kandan continent, there were a dozen in the South. There were rumored to be monsters so awful that a herd of morse would be but a mouthful to one of them, and trees so huge that it would take a man half a day to walk around the bole of one. Most of these tales could no doubt be relegated to fancy, rumor, and trappers’ lies, but Hiero knew enough to know there was a grain of truth in many of them. He himself had been just far enough to see the southern end of the Taig and its countless pines and the beginning of the monster trees of the southern forest edge, which had few conifers, but many deciduous trees of far greater size. The lost empire of the once fabled United States had lain there, and every school child knew that The Death had hit it harder than anywhere else in the world, causing horrible changes to all life, such as had barely touched northern Kanda. Endless marshes, inland seas, and vast tracts of poisoned desert, the latter lit by the undying, blue, bale fires of the Dead Zones, were said to exist in the unknown area. And the Lost Cities themselves, the very places he was to go, they were the worst of all! Metz children were frightened into obedience with tales of the towering, vine-hung cliffs of the ancient, tottering buildings, even a glimpse of which was said to bring a horrid end. There were Lost Cities in the north country too, but most had long been either isolated or explored, that is, if known at all. And on them, in any case, the terrors of The Death had been laid lightly. Daring rovers and free rangers occasionally risked the anger of the Abbeys, political, not religious, and explored to the South, but few departed thus and fewer returned. All this flashed through Hiero’s brain on the instant, as he looked into Demero’s wise old eyes.

He sat back, for once effectively silenced, and the long, window-less room, lit only by the fluors on the wall, stayed quiet while both men took thought. It was Hiero who broke the silence, at length.

“Do you have any idea what it is I am to seek for, sir?” he asked quietly. “Or is it anything, just something that may turn up?”

“Well, there’s that all right,” the older man said. “But we’re a bit more hopeful and knowledgeable, mind you, than that. We’re looking for weapons, obviously. Now, The Death was caused by weapons. We don’t want those again, certainly. The plagues, the nuclear poisons, all those things ought to stay buried. Unless the Unclean revive them, and I fear that mightily, I tell you! No, we want none such. But there are other things of power which are more or less intangible, at least in ordinary terms.” He seemed to change his thoughts, and for a moment Hiero was puzzled.

“Did you ever reflect on our own central files at Abbey Central, Hiero?” the abbot asked, leaning forward eagerly.

“Of course, Father,” the priest answered. “I mean, what do you mean “reflect?”

“What do you think of them, that’s what I mean,” Demero snapped. “Are they efficient, are they useful? They cover an area of over two square miles underground, and they employ over two hundred highly trained priests and scholars. Is it worth it?”

Hiero saw that his old master was leading up to something, but for his soul he couldn’t see what it was.

“Why, of course, certainly they’re valuable,” he said, thinking hard. “Without their collected and collated information, we’d never be able to get anything done. Half our research effort is simply adding to the information in those files. What’s the point?”

“The point is this,” Demero said. “When I ask for information, information, mind you, which I know to be somewhere in the files, it often takes days to get it Then, perhaps I need to balance several facts against each other; let us say the rainfall in the east of Sask province, the yield of crops in the south, the latest news of buffer migrations. So, it takes more time to get these. Then, with the help of others, I balance them, weigh them together, and make decisions. But you know all this, right?”

“Of course,” Hiero said, intrigued by the other’s manner, “but what of it? That’s what’s done with information; it gets utilized. So what does that prove?”

“All right,” his elder resumed. “Now, suppose, just suppose I had gone to the files and told the files, not, mind you, the librarians, the files themselves, all I have just told you about our danger. Don’t interrupt, boy, I haven’t lost my sense yet. The files themselves next put all known information on this subject together and in ten minutes gave me back a sheet of paper which said as follows: If you do x, y, and z in that order, the enemy should be totally defeated.’ ” He paused, a gleam in his eye. “What do you think of that, eh?”

“Talking files?” Hiero said, one eyebrow cocked. “I assume, of course, you’re not joking. We have begun to re-explore this radio thing, I know, but that’s just people and an instrument. You’re talking about a—well, a machine, a thing, holding all information and dispensing not just odd facts, but conclusions. Are you telling me such a thing is possible?”

The abbot sat back, satisfied. “Yes, son, not only possible, but well known at one time, in the years before The Death. The machines were called ‘computers.’ Some of the scientists doing research on the archives of the lost age are led to believe that certain computers existed that were larger than this building we’re in. Can you begin to imagine the possibilities?”

Hiero sat staring at the wall behind Abbot Demero, his mind racing. If such things existed, and he knew the abbot would not lightly mention a possibility as a fact, the world could be changed overnight. All the knowledge of the past might very well still be in existence somewhere. It was a frightening thought, for it meant that all the secrets of the age of The Death were presumably hidden and available as well.

“I see you’re beginning to reflect a little on the possibilities,” the old priest said. “The Science Committee has picked you to go south and east, far to the East, where we have reason to believe these things may still lie buried in certain of their lost caverns. Five other men will go elsewhere. It’s best none of you know the others’ plans.” He did not elaborate, nor need to. If any of the six should fall into the hands of the Unclean alive, the less they knew of their colleagues’ venturings the better.

“Now come over here, Hiero, and I’ll go over the maps with you. They have the latest information of these probable computer sites. You mustn’t expect to find a vast sort of library, you know. The information was apparently coded in different ways and put in the great machines in ways we only dimly comprehend. You’ll get a briefing from some scholars who’ve gone furthest into the field later…”

And so the tale had gone. Telling this all to the bear, clever as the animal was, was simply not possible, if only because bears, even mutant bears, didn’t read or write. But Hiero patiently and steadily made certain facts clear. In the blackest hours, before the first light of dawn, the man finally relaxed and willed himself to snatch a little sleep. Gorm now understood that his friend was on a long journey, but to Hiero’s gratification, he still wanted to come. Also, the bear had enough reasoning power to understand that there was knowledge he could not understand; in fact, he might have been the first of his species to grasp the idea of abstract knowledge. He knew that the man was a foe of the Leemutes and that they were seeking something in a far land to hurt these evil things. With this knowledge he was content, and now he also rested, occasionally letting out the faint, puffing snore of a sleeping bear. Standing over the two, still saddled, his legs locked tight at the knee joints, the great morse kept his unbroken watch, in a state perhaps between dreaming and waking, but with all his magnificent senses alert for the first sign of danger. Klootz was not tired, and his kind did not lie down to sleep in any case, although they sometimes rested with their legs tucked under them. But tonight he rocked and swayed, chewing his cud and missing nothing that passed in the night, a sentinel without compare.

At first light, Hiero felt a velvet touch on his forehead and looked up to see the great, damp muzzle an inch from his. Satisfied that his master was awake, Klootz carefully lifted his huge hooves from either side of the man’s body and moved out of the little grove into the gray dawn. In a moment the crunch of shredded bushes being devoured signaled that his breakfast had commenced.

Hiero rubbed his eyes. He was stiff, but not unduly so. It would have been better to have unpacked his bedroll and made a bed of spruce tips, but he had simply been too tired and too busy the night before. Besides, he was a seasoned woodsman, and a night spent on dry ground meant little to him. He looked over and saw Gorm was also awake and giving himself a wash with a long, pink tongue.

Any water about? he sent.

Listen (you can) hear it, came not from the bear but from the bull morse. A mental picture of a small stream a hundred yards off came to the man, and he rose and followed Klootz, who was ambling that way.

In twenty minutes, all had washed, eaten, and were ready for their new day’s travel. Hiero ruefully checked his pemeekan supply. The way Gorm ate, it would be gone in no time and they would have to stop and hunt. This, aside from carrying an unnecessary extra element of danger, would further delay them.

Gorm caught his thought, which was unguarded. Try and save the sweet food, he sent. I can find much of my own. Once again, the brains and unselfishness of the strange creature who had appeared in his life out of nowhere made Hiero blink.

Hiero next rubbed Klootz down with a double handful of thick moss. He felt guilty for having left the big animal saddled and packed all night, but the morse seemed none the worse for it, and a roll in the little brook, which sent water cascading up the banks, put him in fine fettle.

The sun was now fully up and the forest was alive with sound and movement. Birds were everywhere, and as they began to travel, the priest glimpsed startled deer and small rabbits, as well as a sounder of Grokon passing along a distant aisle of the pines, even the striped young hoglets considerably larger than Hiero himself.

Gorm, the night before, had attempted to explain the route he thought best to follow. The man could only grasp parts of it, but he gathered that a considerable marsh lay to the south and that it was necessary to cross it at its narrowest place. The road on which he and Klootz had journeyed for the last week was a place of great peril, watched by many unseen eyes. It was only luck that the two had come so far undisturbed, for no people had used that road in a long time, or if they had, they had not lived to go very far upon it. On no account must they return to it for any reason. The fact that so few human beings traveled alone through the wild might have dulled the watchfulness of the Unclean and allowed morse and man to come as far as they had. But now, surely the whole area would be on guard. And when the slain wizard was inevitably discovered, they could expect a hue and cry of massive proportions indeed to be set on foot by the enemy, so Gorm indicated. Once again, mind speech was to be halted, or at least understood by man and bear to be held to a minimum.

They had gone perhaps three hours from the night’s resting place when they received proof that they were not to journey undisturbed and unsought. The three were fording a shallow brook when Hiero felt the morse stiffen under him and at the same time saw the young bear come erect on the bank just ahead. A second later, his own, less alert senses were assaulted. He had never felt anything quite like it before. It was as if something strange clawed for his mind. A savage, questing force somehow probed at his inner being. He drew on all his own years of training and managed to make no response, keeping the pressure and the call, for there was an element of that too, away, repelling it by not acknowledging it. For what seemed like a long minute and was probably very little time, a mere instant, the searching presence seemed to hover over him in an almost physical way; then it moved on. He knew it had gone on elsewhere, but he was not absolutely sure he had managed to deceive or deflect it. He looked first at Gorm and in turn saw the bear’s weak little eyes fixed on him.

Something bad hunts, came the message. I was (only) a bear. It left me and did not (see) me.

I (think) it missed me, Hiero sent. And Klootz also, for it is not hunting four-footed animals, at least not yet.

There will be other things (like the) evil fur things of yesterday, came the bear’s thought. This forest is full of many creatures who (serve/hunt for) the evil power. Many of them go on four legs and have good noses.

The priest found less and less trouble understanding the bear. The whole exchange, plus a new decision, now to utilize the stream, was over in a split second.

All day long, they followed the brook, for it was little more, down its winding path. As much as possible, they stayed actually in the water, so as to leave as few tracks as possible. The force or entity which had tried to locate them did not reveal itself further. They saw fewer animals, though, and none of the larger ones at all. Once a great, foot-long water beetle sought to bite Gorm with its savage pincers, but he avoided it easily, and Klootz, following close behind, brought a great, flattening hoof squarely down upon its armored back. Very few of the giant insects bred from The Death’s radiation were much of a menace, since they tended to be slow-moving and clumsy.

They made an early camp on an island. The stream which Hiero had not been able to locate on his maps, probably because it was too small, broadened a little, without getting more than two feet deep, and the little, willow-hung islet might have been designed for them.

While the bear went shambling off in search of food and Klootz, now unsaddled, wrenched succulent water plants from the stream bed, the man ate a frugal supper of biscuit and pemeekan while he tried to analyze what he had learned in the last few days. There was sunlight still, and Hiero had camped early because he needed light. He wanted very much to examine the various articles he had taken from the dead man, and this was the first opportunity.

The metal rod came first. A little less than an inch thick and about a foot long, of a very hard, bluish substance, not unlike patinated bronze, at first sight it looked unornamented. A closer look showed Hiero that four tiny knobs, set in a curved line, were sticking out of the sides. Hesitantly, he pushed one. At once an extension of the rod’s other end began. The thing was a cylinder, with many tubes beautifully fitting one inside the other. While Hiero watched, it extended itself until it was a slender wand about five feet long. He pushed the same button again and it began to retract into itself once more. He stopped it by pushing it a third time. Next, he tried another button, the central one of the three. Two flat, oval discs on the end of two delicate arms emerged from the supposedly featureless rod, and each stopped at a six-inch distance away from the rod, forming a prong set at right angles to the rod’s body. Hiero turned the rod over and examined it from every angle, but he could not fathom the purpose of the discs. He raised the rod’s lower end to eye level to examine the discs better, but they were featureless. He tried to look at the rod’s body again, while holding it upright, but he forgot the discs on their arms and — they banged into his forehead, just over his eyes. Annoyed with himself, he started to lower them when suddenly he stopped and gently put them back where they had been. They fit! Excited, he held the rod upright and extended it to its fullest length, keeping the two ovals on their extensions clamped to his forehead. He was now beginning to get an idea of what he held, and with great care, he slowly pressed the third tiny knob.

A tremendous voice slammed into his mind with overpowering force, almost physically knocking him over. Where have you been? Why have you not communicated? Some strange creatures or groups of them are moving through our area almost undetected. The normals may be assaulting us with something new. There was a sudden pause, and the dazed Hiero could nearly feel the almost tangible suspicion in the other mind. Who is this? came the mind voice. Do you hear, I—click. The priest had managed to shut it off.

He leaned back against a tree trunk, both frightened and angry with himself. The strange device was apparently both a communicator and an amplifier of great strength, obviously increasing the distance over which mental speech could be sent at least tenfold. He had never heard of such a thing, and he doubted any Abbey scientist had, either. He must get this object back to the Abbey research centers if he did nothing else. The thought that the Unclean even possessed a thing like this was nerve-racking. No wonder the abbot has the jumps, he thought. He looked at the rod again and then carefully made it shut and the two head pieces go back into the handle, noting as he did so that the machining was beautifully turned and that the metal was one he had never before seen. He was about to wrap it carefully and put it away when he remembered the fourth button. This was not next to the others but nearer the butt end and to one side. He considered it for a moment and then wedged the rod, extension end up, between two heavy rocks. Next he broke off a slender willow sapling about eight feet long and carefully positioned himself behind its parent willow tree, while reaching for the enigmatic button with his new pole. The thought that the sinister makers of this thing might have built in a self-destruct device was late in coming, he reflected, but might still save his life. He checked and saw that the morse bull was several hundred feet upstream and then, with only his hand exposed, probed for the button. Face pressed to the tree, he heard one swift metallic sound, as if a great spring had been released, and then silence. He waited an instant and then looked cautiously around the tree. He got up at once and tossed the stick aside. The amazing rod’s last trick was both simple and entirely unexpected. It had fully extended itself again, this time in a single instantaneous motion. But now, projecting from the end was not the blunt cap of before, but a two-edged, razor-sharp lance head. It was over half an inch wide and almost as long as the original, folded-up rod itself. Hiero bent the extended rod sideways, but the tough metal gave very little. He hefted the thing at shoulder height. It was a perfectly balanced javelin. Lowering it, he eyed the edges of the blade and confirmed his first impression that they were smeared with some sticky substance. Undoubtedly not a face cream, he reflected. He shut his new prize carefully up again and put it away.

Next came the knife. It was a short, one-edged thing in a leather sheath and had been used recently, being sticky with dried blood. There appeared to be nothing odd about it, and he cleaned it and put it away too, after ascertaining it bore no marks of any kind.

He now examined the rounded object which had looked to him earlier like a small compass. Many of his colleagues, indeed most people, still used compasses, but Hiero did not. He had a built-in sense of direction and while in school had won many bets by being blindfolded and always picking out the correct compass points.

It was obvious at once that if this was a compass, it was no compass he had ever seen before. There were no obvious compass bearings, no directions and their subdivisions. Instead, there was a thing like a circular wheel, or round track, under the glass plate on top. Set at intervals next to this track were symbols of some kind with which he was totally unfamiliar, for they were neither numbers nor letters he had ever seen before. On the circular track was a round, fiery bead of light, which swayed gently as he rocked the case in his hand, just like the air bubble in a carpenter’s level. Hiero examined the symbols again. There were four larger ones set where the main directions on a proper compass should be. He aligned the four symbols one by one to a map of his own and managed to pick the one near the loop end of the object as north. But the fiery bead was not fixing itself on north or any of the four points when so used! If the damned thing isn’t a compass, what is it? he wondered to himself. Reluctantly, he replaced it in its pouch and stowed it away again, determined to re-examine it again soon.

Last of all came the rolls of yellowish, parchmentlike material. He tried to rip a page corner experimentally and found that it tore, but with great difficulty. It was certainly not a paper, nor was it parchment either, but a synthetic material the like of which he had never before glimpsed.

Most of the papers bore writing, closely spaced and not printed, in a dark, reddish ink, which looked unpleasantly like dried blood, especially in the fast-waning light. Like the lettering or whatever on the compass thing, the symbols were totally unintelligible to Hiero. But one piece was mostly taken up by a large map, and this he studied with great care. It somewhat resembled his own map in general outline. The Inland Sea was there and, he thought, several familiar roads to the north. The main east-west Otwah road was quite clear. Most of the marks were obscure, though, especially many in the South. Rivers and swamps seemed to have been carefully drawn in signs he used himself, and he felt that the map might prove a useful guide. Many marks were thought-provoking. He was reasonably sure he had found some of the ruined cities of the pre-Death eras, for the few such sites marked on his own map were in the same places. But the alien map had many more of them, as well as much else that was strange.

Eventually, that too was put away and he prepared a bed, digging hollows for hip and shoulder and spreading his bedroll. Without being ordered, Klootz was feeding close to the island, and his master knew he had nothing to worry about, at least that was physical, in the way of nocturnal danger. The bear had not returned, but Hiero had earlier agreed on a travel plan with him, and he was confident Gorm would be back when wanted. He curled up with a sigh and dropped off while the last light of day still. lingered in the west.

He was awakened by rain, a light spatter on his upturned face. It was very dark and the damp clouds had rolled out of the east, bringing moisture from the distant seas. He was about to pull his hood over his face and go back to sleep when a wet reek of fur strongly assaulted his nose. Gorm was standing next to him, and the bear’s whole manner demanded attention.

Something comes in the night (perhaps) many things, but one for certain (emphatic)! We must go the way we planned/discussed. Listen!

Sitting up, the man did indeed listen intently. He was conscious of Klootz standing quietly nearby, his great ears also belled into the rainy night. For a moment, the falling raindrops and the muted gurgle of the stream were all that was audible. Then, far away in the west, at the very limit of Hiero’s hearing, there came a sound.

It was a high, keening shriek, rising to almost the level of inaudibility and dying away then into silence. Twice it sounded, and then only the listening night could be heard. But no one, neither man nor beast, needed to hear it again. There was a menace implicit in that distant cry which raised the hackles on one’s back. It was a hunter and it was on a track. In the situation they were in, it was no time to debate on whose track was whatever had screamed. The long-expected pursuit was upon them, and it was time to go.

For a seasoned traveler like Hiero, it was hardly more than a minute’s work to break camp, including packing. Once up in the saddle, he loosened the great knife in its back sheath and, slouching comfortably, let the bear lead the way, Klootz ambling along in his wake through the shallow water. Hiero’s time sense was not as good as his directional sense, but he had a fair idea of the present hour, about two a.m. Like many of the ancient mechanisms, clocks had been rediscovered, but they were large and clumsy. A woodsman of Hiero’s caliber had no need for such things, indeed would have discarded a wristwatch if one had been available. Living in the wild for long periods gave you a built-in clock in your own body.

The rain lifted a little and became a fine mist. The animals did not mind getting wet particularly, although the bear liked to sleep in a dry place, and Hiero’s tanned leather was treated with various water repellents which made him almost completely watertight. In any case, it was still warm in the last days of summer.

The little party traveled hardly any more slowly at night than during daylight. Hiero could rely on the sense of the two beasts to move without stumbling at a good pace, even when sight was at a minimum.

For two hours of steady and undisturbed travel, they followed the little stream bed, which still kept its same dimensions. Hiero eventually signaled a halt and swung down on the bank to stretch and do a few muscle-limbering exercises. Gorm flopped down next to him, also grateful for a rest. Bears can and do travel long distances, but steady marching, day in and day out, is not their habit. Klootz browsed in the shallows, adding more supplies to the many pounds of plant food he had already devoured that day. An eater of green stuffs never really stops unless asleep, since the nourishment is so much less than from a direct protein intake.

The priest now briefly said his morning prayers, a process the animals ignored as incomprehensible. The bear was mildly interested, but only mildly. Hiero, however, had detected that casual interest earlier and made a note in his mnemonic files that discussing religion with an intelligent animal might prove immensely rewarding.

Prayers over, Hiero stood listening in the dark. As he did, for the first time since they had left camp on the island, the faint scream of the hunter broke through the misty night. It was unmistakably a lot closer than at first. With a smothered oath, Hiero mounted and this time sent a thought to Gorm as he did so. Hurry up, you, or we’ll be trapped!’ The young bear led off again at a splashing gallop, and spray fountained as the big morse lumbered after him through the shallows, his wide hooves coming down on the invisible water like dinner plates.

As he rode, listening hard, the man tried to think rationally and analyze their danger. He had no idea what followed on their tracks. Whatever it was, it seemed to be a night hunter of uncommon skill, and perhaps it was a pack of them. And whatever it (or they) were, it was moving incredibly fast. The bear and the morse had not been loafing, indeed, for nighttime had been setting a good pace. But neither walking in the running water nor moving at a steady clip had thrown whatever pursued off their track. What could it be?

One faintly encouraging thought rose to Hiero’s mind at this point. Anything moving that fast probably could not carry, and certainly could not lead, any human master. Whatever atrocity was tracking them down almost had to be running unleashed and free. At least, Hiero reasoned, following this train of thought, if I’m right, I won’t have to worry about facing someone like S’nerg. It was probably a purely physical danger.

Even as the thoughts came to him, the evil cry, clearly audible over the splashing, again welled up in the distance. The near distance, he observed. The hunter, whatever it was, could certainly move. Damn, the pursuit was going to catch up with them while it was still dark! This could be very bad. It was at least an hour to first light-Leaning over, he fumbled in his left saddlebag and finally located by touch the packet he wanted. To a stranger it would have appeared no easy task, doing this blind while the morse’s great body lurched along underneath him, but he had practiced many times in the past and had little trouble securing what he wanted. Next, he loosened the strap on his holstered thrower so that it could be whipped out in a hurry. As an afterthought, he reached into the saddlebag again and took out the murderous rod he had taken from S’nerg’s dead body. As an emergency weapon, should he lose his regular spear, it might be of great use, and he tucked it into his belt. The spear itself was in its socket at the saddlebow, ready to his hand at need.

Now he concentrated his mind on his steed and the bear. Find an open place, close to the stream if possible, he sent. We must fight. Whatever comes is too fast to run away from. In the back of his mind was the thought that Gorm, invaluable as he had proved in the recent past, must be tired now and probably not much use as a fighter. If the small bear could get even a few moments’ rest, it might make some fleeting difference. The Abbey Battle Code was never out of a trained Killman’s mind. “Use every tiny advantage and perhaps the enemy will use one less,” ran one of the ABC rules.

The bear did not answer as he galloped on, but Hiero knew he understood. As for Klootz, the rapport between man and mount was so strong that he knew the great bull was already seething with rage and ready for a battle of any size, shape, or description. An Abbey morse did not like being chivied over the land by anyone, regardless of who it might be.

Behind them, the chilling cry broke out again, a hideous, thin screaming in the quiet, moist night. This time Hiero thought he could distinguish several voices and he knew the distance was shortening. It was logical. A solitary hunter, no matter how powerful, might be immobilized by sheer accident. A pack was always more effective. But a pack of what?

Here, the thought came suddenly from Gorm. A place of grass and no trees. Is this what you want?

Yes, the man sent. Lie down and rest until they come. Do not fight if you can help it. He urged the morse out of the water and onto the sward of a natural forest opening. The very first faint light in the east had appeared, not enough for any detail to show, but enough so that he could barely see they were in a natural clearing, one which sloped gently to the stream’s edge. As Klootz stood silently dripping and the exhausted bear lay panting off to one side, Hiero considered tactics. The glade was perhaps a hundred yards wide at its tip by the brook. It was roughly shaped like a half-moon, and the forest edge at its center was two hundred feet from the water. He urged the morse on until Klootz now stood almost exactly in the clearing’s center, back to the trees, but fifty feet away from them, so that nothing could use the trees as cover to leap upon them from behind. Hiero reached into his saddlebag and extracted his beryllium-copper helmet, round and unornamented, save for the cross and sword on the forepeak. It fitted over his cap and was his sole piece of armor. He put it on and tried to catch the minds of their pursuers. He found blind, ravening appetite, more than one, coming fast, unreachable at any level he could influence!

Man and morse waited, alert and ready. They had done all they could. Gorm was silent now also, hidden somewhere in the black shadows and ready to pounce if possible.

They had not long to wait. The blackness of the dying night was still almost totally unrelieved when from up the shallow stream, the way they had followed, came the sounds of splashing water and many clawed feet striking on rocks. Sensing rather than actually seeing their attackers, the Killman-priest twisted the heads of the two objects he had been holding and hurled them away, one to the right and one to the left. As they hit the ground, the two flares burst into life and a white, incandescent glow illumined the whole area.

At once, Hiero saw that he and his animal allies had made a basic, if unavoidable, error in traveling down the stream and keeping to the water. The five sleek, sinister shapes poised at the brook’s edge resembled grossly enlarged mink or some other water weasels quite enough to indicate that a river bed was the last, place in which anyone ought to try to elude them. No wonder they came so fast, Hiero thought as the momentary surprise of the lights froze the creatures in place.

Their undershot, sharklike jaws and vicious teeth glistened in the light as they blinked their beady eyes and then recovered. Each one, from wet muzzle to long tailtip, was at least ten feet and could hardly have weighed any less than a full-grown man. Collars of bluish metal glinted and betrayed their wearers’ allegiance, even as they scuttled out of the water and rushed to the attack, snarling as they came.

Hiero fired the thrower and dropped it all in one motion. It took too long to reload, and these things were coming too fast. But the tiny rocket went true. The leading animal, head hit, simply blew up in a burst of orange fire, and the one next to it writhed aside, screaming shrilly and dragging a broken leg.

As the other three paused, shaken by the explosion and the death of the leader, Klootz charged with a bellow of fury. Spear couched, Hiero gripped the bull’s barrel, ready to strike.

The wounded fury could not escape, and the morse’s pile-driver front hooves crushed its life out in a terrible, smashing blow. Another one, leaping straight up at Hiero, took the heavy spear in its throat, right up to the crossbars. The savage brute fell back, choking on its own blood, and Hiero let the spear go with it, whipping out his heavy sword-knife as he did so.

The remaining two fell back for an instant, but for true muste-lids, like all weasels, the thought of retreat never occurred to them. Separating, their grinning masks of fury showing the white fangs, they attacked like streaks of dark, undulating lightning, leaping at the rider and not the mount, and from two sides at once.

Fortunately for Hiero, he had worked out such a development with Klootz many times over on the Abbey’s training fields. Automatically, the bull took the opponent to his left and paid no attention to the other, leaving that one to his master.

Rising in the saddle, Hiero cut down at the upthrust, rapid head in one terrible chopping blow. The solid bite of the ancient blade could be felt all the way up to his powerful shoulder. The giant weasel-thing was dead before it hit the ground, its narrow skull cloven almost in half.

But even as he recovered, the man felt a terrible pain in his left leg. Overconfident, Klootz had underestimated the speed of his enemy. Even as his great hoof had come dashing down, the last of the hunting pack had swerved aside and altered its spring in midair. A slash at Hiero’s calf had opened the flesh almost to the bone, and he swayed in the saddle from shock as the animal leaped away.

The bull was not to be taken twice this way. Knowing his rider and master was hurt sent him stark mad, but with a cold fury. He advanced slowly on the surviving hunter, rocking gently from side to side, grotesquely mimicking the way a playful fawn minces up to another baby opponent.

A fury to the end, the last servant of the Unclean sprang from a crouch, again at the drooping rider and not the morse. But Klootz, now on guard, was not deceived by the supple, twisting spring. A great, cloven hoof shot straight out, and the lashing blow caught the leaping death squarely in its midsection. There was an audible crack, and the next instant, the sleek-furred monster was writhing on the grass with a broken back. Not for long. In one savage rush, the infuriated bull morse trampled the creature into a pulp, even while it still snapped and tried to sink its teeth into its giant foe.

Hiero hung limply in the saddle while the morse lowered his own great body gently to the ground so that the man could dismount. The priest wobbled off Klootz’s back and collapsed against one of the bull’s huge, sweaty sides, breathing hard and trying to keep from fainting. Finally he looked up and saw the anxious face of Gorm looking at him from a few feet away.

I was ready but it was too quick, came from the strange mind. Can I help?

No, Hiero sent. I must bandage/cure myself. Watch for any danger while I do so. The bear padded off and left him.

Painfully, the priest removed his slashed leather boot, now full of blood, and examined the wound. It appeared clean, but any animal bite ought to be dressed quickly. He fumbled in the saddlebags, conscious of waves of blackness hovering over his pain-racked mind. The flares had gone out long since, but they had served their purpose. Dawn light was flooding into the clearing, and the chirping of the awakening birds seemed ironic after the blaze of sudden death, which had heralded the morning, and the five grim shapes on the reddened grass.

Hiero finally got the medicine kit out and gingerly spread the healing salve thickly over the long, bleeding wound. He next bandaged it as tightly as he could. It probably needed stitching, but in his present condition he simply wasn’t up to it. When he was sure he had done all he could, he gulped a Lucinoge tablet. The mind expander was also a narcotic of sorts, and as he sank into slumber he could feel his muscles relax. His last thought was a mild worry that something or someone might take over his mind while he was unconscious. Then he remembered no more.