The Unforsaken Hiero

III. SUMMONED—AND FOLLOWED

A gleam of light, reflected off a piece of shiny rock, glanced into the tiny cave, striking the worn, unshaven face of the silent human. With a faint sigh, Hiero awoke and peered out of his refuge through the screen of rubble he had built up the night before.

The hollow lay under the morning sun as he had first seen it the day before. The strange plants had unfolded again and were soaking up the warm blaze. A few of them looked gnawed, but none seemed seriously injured. At the moment, however, his own needs were paramount. He inspected the remains of last night’s dinner with no great longing, but started to tear at the high-smelling flesh. He must have food, and this was all there was available.

His brief meal over, he wrapped the now scanty remains of the animal in its scrap of hide and walked over to the pool to have a long, filling drink. Then, crouched on his haunches, he looked about.

The first thing he noticed was that the remains of the animal had been stripped of any scrap of meat by the foraging ants. But the skin was intact, as were the white bones. He eyed the surrounding rocks. Sharp flakes of stone lay here and there, and he noted some with the greasy sheen and flaked appearance of some flintlike material. He stirred himself and became busy. Less than an hour later by his inner clock, he prepared to leave the oasis, but in far better guise than when he had stumbled into it.

On his head was an odd hat, contrived from the slender bones of the beast, with leaves of some of the small plants woven over them. From his shoulders hung two crude bags made from the same hide, one filled with water from the pool and leaking only a little, the other containing the remains of the meat, some crude bone needles, and a number of sharp pieces of flint. He was clean and had even managed a rough shave with a bit of fat and some sharp shards of flint. Best of all, his bag held a small, heavy pebble of some massive, iron-bearing mineral which he had tested with the flint to form sparks. Should he find suitable fuel, he now had fire!

On the western rim of the strange little bowl, he paused and looked down the gentle slope. He felt an odd pang. When he was lost and helpless, the oasis had succored him. Again, he bowed his head in prayer, then turned and topped the rise, to set off down the gentle slope of the bowl’s western edge. He moved at a steady lope. In his right hand was the stone fragment he had picked up where he slew the Death Hart. Now it had a crudely chipped-away grip and looked not unlike a rude sword, though the thing was all point and no edge.

He found himself back in the full glare of the desert heat once more. The light struck off the blue sand and broken black rock of the surface. But there was an encouraging change now. Tufts of scrubby weed, brown and even greenish in hue, sprouted from shaded crevices. Here and there, barrel-shaped cacti had begun to appear. They contained moisture which could be squeezed from the spiny pulp at need. The land was definitely improving. He jogged on while trying once more to draw a rough idea of his present location.

The stars he had seen the previous evening appeared only a little different from those of D’alwah, so he was probably not very much north or south of the palace. But he had come a long way on that damned kaw litter. Joseato’s murmur to Amibale was easy to recall. They wanted Hiero far off and deep in drugs before his throat was to be cut! They had known that the shock of his physical death might well reach one as attuned to him as Luchare. The fact of his disappearance would frighten and wound her, but she would retain hope. So again—where was he now?

West. He must have been brought almost due west, to the very borders of the kingdom or beyond. He recalled the maps he had studied of the realm and its borders, then concentrated once more on his memory of last night’s stars. He had come somewhat south, he was sure. Not much, perhaps, but enough to throw his directional sense off a bit. Should he turn north now, he would probably find himself in plains of some length. There he might find men, maybe friendly, maybe not. It was too big a risk to take.

Further, he had to assume that Joseato and Amibale, plus whatever Unclean minds gave them orders or advice, were very careful; their meticulous plot proved they could be just that. Would they assume he was dead when the pallid dwarfs who had conducted him west did not report? Those bodies had not been found by the folk who blew the hunting horns. Even now, the enemy might be issuing new orders to track him down, if they had not already done so.

Where would they look for him? Why, toward the North, from which he had come originally and to which he could be expected to return for aid. Unarmed, he dared not go south or east into the waiting nets of the Unclean. He had to go north!

Well, he would return to the North—but not by the route they might be watching. He must strike even farther west, into the country off the map. Then he could turn north, becoming lost to his foes, to reappear when and where they could not expect him.

He was leaving Luchare behind, and his inner soul winced at the thought. She was not dead, he knew, despite his loss of mental strength; they were linked forever and he would know if she were dead, just as she would know if he were to perish. She had Mitrash of the guard and the hidden help of the Eleveners to protect her. She had Klootz, who would obey her when Hiero was not there. She had her royal father, who had been told enough to alert him. The mad young duke and the cunning priest would not find it easy to outwit her.

Trouble was coming to D’alwah—indeed, was already there. As prince and heir, he had tried to rally the southern kingdom against the Unclean peril. He had been interrupted, his plans broken and set aside, if not destroyed. But he was the sole emissary of the Metz Republic in this strange world of the far South. It was his duty to go on, to find new weapons, to keep up the fight. His lost mental powers might be reborn someday, but if not—so be it. Something else, other weapons, would have to do instead. While life lasted, he must go on, ignoring all personal calls in the interest of the greater task the Abbey Fathers and Brother Aldo had laid on him.

All day, under the burning sky, the bronzed figure trotted patiently along. His sharp eyes missed nothing of his surroundings as he ate up the miles. Small, dun-colored birds appeared, peering at him from rocky outcroppings, and the different types of cacti and desert shrubs increased. Slowly, almost imperceptibly, the bluish tint was fading from the soil. A colony of little striped rodents chattered at him from an assemblage of holes in a sandy bank, but did not seem really concerned at his passing. Looking back, he could see them return to their own affairs while he was still within easy vision. This was an attitude on the part of the locals that he welcomed; it meant that men were little known in this land and hence not feared.

What he wanted at the moment was anonymity. Each league put behind him took him deeper into country where he would be lost to his foes. There would be time enough later to look for allies. This was a time to hide, to vanish utterly from human knowledge.

As the day drew to a close, he began to look for shelter. Food was no longer a problem. In his pouch, along with the rancid meat, he had a dozen cactus fruits, their needled fuzz carefully rubbed off. There were cacti of a different, smaller sort far to the north in the Kandan woods, and he knew them to be highly nutritious. Further, he had found a hollowed-out nest of some fairly large bird or reptile and had cracked the four hen-sized eggs and gulped them down on the spot. Metz Rovers were past masters at living off the country, and he had no fear of starving, especially since the land before him grew more benign with the waning of the desert. He sensed more life all about him. With the coming of night, there would also appear prowlers. It was a time to seek shelter again. Presently, in the red glow of sunset, he thought he saw what he sought.

An hour later, he felt he could relax, at least as much as anyone could relax in an unknown wilderness. He had found a low hillock of rock with one steep side. Halfway up this face was a shallow ledge, shallow but deep enough in the rock for him to lie down under the small overhang. There was also a little hollow in the ledge itself, well back from the lip. In this cavity, protected from most of the rare desert rains, Hiero found the remains of ancient ashes. The sides of the shelf curled around to enclose him as he sat over his tiny fire, made with a bundle of easily gathered twigs from the dry soil below. Only from the south and very near could his small light have been seen. The smear of ash looked incredibly old, made from fires created Heaven only knew how far back in time.

As he stirred his tiny glow with a twig, Hiero could have posed for the figure of some Apache hunter of the immemorial past, only the black mustache testifying to the mixed ancestry of the Metz. He had finished the meat, now charred into something resembling palatability by the fire, and a half dozen of the sweet and fully ripe red cactus fruits. Half his water, foul from its skin container, was untouched. He did not need it, but it would be saved; nasty as it was, it was still water. Beside him on the rock lay several long, dead cactus branches, their dried spines burned off with care. Thrust into the tiny fire, they would become instant torches, a potent weapon should any wild creature try to clamber up to Hiero’s perch and use him for its own repast.

Half-turning his body to gather a few more sticks from the pile behind him, he saw something which he had missed on his first exploration of the ledge. Faintly etched into the rock behind and above his head were pictures, revealed by the glow of the fire striking up at them. They were worn, old beyond reckoning, and he could read little of them. There were stick figures of men and four-legged beasts, though what they were was impossible to say. He felt strangely cheered by this fresh proof that men had used this place, however long ago.

He looked out over the flat landscape before him, stretching out under moon and stars until it was lost in the dimness of the South. The stars burned far and bright. The black of scrub and rock made the shadowed country seem a monochrome illusion, a sharply limned mirror image of the bright world he had traversed under the azure sky of the day.

A howl rang out from the middle distance, to be answered by a chorus of similar yells farther off. From the sounds, the Metz judged the makers to be pack hunters of some size. He hoped they were not on his track, though he had protected himself as well as he could. The calls were not unlike those of the wolves of his own Northland, though higher in pitch, and he smiled reminiscently. Whatever the creatures sought, however, it was not he, and he listened with only part of his attention as the hunt swept away south out of earshot. As the sound died, he allowed his minute fire to do the same, leaving only a bed of glowing coals. He would wake, he knew, at frequent enough intervals to renew it.

Not for the first time, he wondered what lay ahead of him. It was useless to speculate, he knew. His Forty Symbols, the precognition markers he had been trained to use since childhood, and the crystal globe that accompanied them were far back with his other belongings in D’alwah City. Even had they not been, his ability to use them was gone, and they would have been so much useless trash. He would have to face the future as most other humans of this day and age did and take what came as God and His Son sent.

Presently he fell into a light slumber, knowing his senses would awaken him at need. At first his sleep was dreamless. After a while, his fist clenched and his jaw tightened. His slumber remained unbroken and his breath still came evenly. Nothing moved out in the plain below him, save for the ordinary life of the waste places of the earth. No menacing sound broke the silence of the night.

Yet deep in the mind of the warrior, a faint alert flickered. Perhaps not all of his former powers had quite been silenced and suppressed. Some minute synapse had been started up or impinged upon, some blanketed circuit half-alerted. Into his mind came a thought of hills—smoky, purple hills, with mist rising from folded valleys, their rounded tops a mixture of forest and steep meadow. Strange hills, never seen in life, far lower than the mighty Stonies, the great Shining Mountains of his far-off home, but—hills! He sighed in his sleep and threw one brown arm across his face. In his dream the hills receded, but not altogether. Somewhere deep in his subconscious, their memory lingered. He would see those hills. They were very beautiful.

He awoke before dawn the next day and went hunting. The faint coolness of the desert morning dissipated quickly, and he was warm in a few seconds as he searched for tracks. Soon, under some flat-topped trees, a new sign of better ground, he found a slot, the mark of some dainty, hoofed mammal. The tracks were fresh, and his fine nose could even catch a faint musky warmth where the beast had rubbed itself against a scraggy trunk and left a few brown hairs. He followed cautiously, noting that the animal was not afraid, but lazing along, snatching a mouthful of leaf here and there. The faint breeze blowing came from its direction to him. Soon he saw it moving ahead in the dawn light, a lone antelope of small breed, with lyrate horns and brindle hair.

Now he readied a new weapon, made the day before as he trudged across the scrubland and finished to reasonable perfection before he ate on the ledge he had found. It was a new weapon to him, or rather, for him, one he had only read about in Abbey books. Yet to humanity and throughout history, it was so old that it had no age. Three cords hung from his right hand; at the end of each was a rounded stone, tightly secured to its own cord of leather. The three strips of hide were joined at the base where his hand gripped them.

Suddenly, having stolen as close as he could in safety, he rose from a bush and hurled the device in a whirling motion at the startled animal’s legs.

He was amazed at his easy success, but not so much that he did not leap forward and brain the poor brute as it struggled to escape the twisted thongs which held the forelegs fast. His stone spike, reversed, was more than equal to the job. As he began the butchery, he stole more than one respectful glance at the crude bolas which lay beside him on the ground. Nor did he forget to give thanks to God.

Minutes later, he was loping back to his little hill, a full load of meat slung over his shoulder in the beast’s own hide. He had buried the remainder to avoid drawing scavengers, though he had little fear of daytime hunters in this remote wilderness.

The Metz priest relighted his small fire and, cutting as much of the meat as he could carry with ease into strips, began to smoke it. Meanwhile, he ate hugely, strength pouring into his wiry frame with each swallow. As he did, he contemplated the two curved, black horns he had dug free from the skull. They weighed little and he had no doubt he would find uses for them as well, though each was no longer than his forearm. Finishing his meal, he packed the meat in a new hide bag, swallowed the last of the murky water, and brushed out traces of his passing as best as he could. He also examined his sandals with care. Though scratched and scuffed, they were still very sound and had no need yet of patching or mending. Soon he was on his way again, threading a path through the bushes and scrub, once more with his face set to the distant West.

For four days the land rolled past him. The bush gave way slowly but surely to denser and taller vegetation, so that, though the terrain was still flat and open, it had now become a prairie interspersed with groves of trees and no longer even semi-desert. Water appeared, first in the form of rare pools, then as shallow, muddy streams, winding here and there in sandy beds. The land was rising too, hardly more than an inch a mile, but steadily and constantly.

Hiero saw no sign whatsoever of any human activity. The camp on the tiny ledge was the only sign that human beings had ever been in the land at all. It was hard to realize the truth of his teachings in the Republic’s classrooms and remember that all of this vast country had teemed with people millennia ago—so many people that his whole nation would have been lost and unnoticed among them. Not for the first time, he mused on the mighty past and the awful changes brought by The Death. Whatever its sins thousands of years before, humanity had paid an awful price; the fires of the atom and the scourges of the plagues had exacted a toll beyond conception. And this was what the Unclean wanted restored! He tightened his lips and vowed yet again that he would do whatever was possible to see that they did not succeed.

If human life was absent, animal life was certainly not. The Metz could have eaten at fresh kills three times a day, had he chosen. He could also have served as meat himself, had he not been constantly wary.

Antelope of many kinds now appeared, roaming in vast herds, some so large that he felt it wiser to skirt them. It seemed to be calving time for many varieties, and he had no wish to challenge the forests of horns, either those of the mothers or of the great males who guarded the rim of the herds. There were deer too, and they were in herds as well, though he saw only antlerless bucks at this season.

But there were other beasts totally unfamiliar to him. Some were small, but others were so huge that he gave them the widest berth possible. One gathering of giants recalled the great thing that had blundered through his jungle camp on the journey south, months before. They had great trunks sprouting from their huge brown heads, vast pillarlike legs, and mouths with great, curving, ivory tusks. Along the increasing streams he saw other beasts, smooth-skinned, with heads prolonged into enormous snouts, in bulk no less than the other kind, though with shorter legs. All seemed to be more or less peaceful plant eaters, and he took care to disturb none of them. Once in the distance he saw a group of animals leaping with tremendous bounds of their long hind legs and realized they must be some variety of hopper, perhaps the ancestral type of his lost mount, Segi. He thought sadly of Segi and Klootz, then put the thought behind him. He could not bear to think of Luchare and he needed all his strength of purpose to proceed, knowing that every league took her and her country farther and farther away.

Around and about these thousands of plant eaters, there prowled and lurked the carnivores. Again and again, Hiero had to take to a handy tree and, on one occasion, to fight for his perch on the tree itself. This was when a tawny, catlike beast, as big as he was, followed him into the branches in one flowing bound. A smashing blow with the stone spike, glancing off its flat skull, left it half-stunned and bleeding at the tree’s foot. From thence it limped off, snarling, in search of easier prey.

In this encounter he had been lucky, however. Some of the meat eaters were of a bulk far beyond his strength to battle. There was a far larger cat, with a short bobtail and striped spine of black and gold, so huge it could attack all but the most enormous of the herbivores. It had gigantic fangs, protruding well below the lower jaw, and seemed to haunt the watercourses. Hiero grew very wary indeed about drinking and filling his water bag. There were also wolves, big beasts very much like those of the Northland, but lighter and ruddier in color, and a host of smaller, jackal-like hunters as well. These and most of the other killers were, fortunately, nocturnal to a degree; though they made the night ring with their wild screams and roars, by then Hiero was careful to be high in a tree fork, selected well in advance by sunset.

It was true that he could have stopped and made himself better weapons than he now carried, but somehow he did not want to stop at all. Some compulsion, very faint at first and growing only by almost imperceptible degrees, made him want to travel as fast as he could, stopping only when absolutely necessary. He killed such small beasts as were on his line of march and lighted fires only to smoke the barest minimum of parched meat. He had commenced moving more to the south than he had planned, but he seemed to brush the thought aside, when it occurred to him, as being somehow unimportant. Ever so faintly, beyond his blurred abilities to recognize, a control had been set on his movements. Yet it never interfered with day-to-day business, and he was in no other way less alert and ready for what came.

On the sixth day after leaving the hillock where he had seen the ash, he topped a ridge somewhat more lofty than any he had observed in the days before. There, far to the southwest, was a distant line of blue. It could only be hills, and the sight sent a thrill through him. These were the hills of his dream a week back, though he did not consciously recall either them or the dream itself. How beautiful they looked and how desirable! He must go there and see them, must walk their slopes and forested heights. This wish, now imbedded in his mind, was no bar to his ultimate purpose. The fact that he was, in truth, straying away from the line to the west and north he had planned for himself days earlier simply did not register in his conscious thoughts at all. Lightly and delicately, the fisher had laid the lure, and the fish swam forward, unknowing.

The next thing that came to his notice was far different and an entirely practical and down-to-earth matter. He was being followed!

Several times during the day he had felt that something was on his trail. It was now late afternoon again, with the sun hovering over the far lands before him, yet he knew the thing was still there. Twice during the past hours he had noted birds rising in the distance behind him, and the notice had been filed in his memory. He had not seen or heard any other sign of whatever it was, but he sensed its presence still coming. The powers of his mind, the telepathic networks, might be dead, yet he had no doubt. The skills and feelings of a lifelong hunter had not been dulled, and he knew, as an animal knows, that he was being tracked.

He wondered if it were one of the giant wolves. The members of the cat family were not scent hunters; they never had been, and this faculty had not changed since the beginning of time. But there were many other possibilities. He did not discount the chance of something entirely new, some creature he had never seen before. The wilderness of what had once been called North America was full of strange life, as he had only too-good cause to remember.

Still, he was puzzled. Whatever it was did not seem to be moving on at any great pace; indeed, there were times when the feeling that it was there at all grew very faint in his awareness. It was as if the thing had turned aside or simply stopped. Then the feeling would recur with renewed strength, as if what followed had picked up his marks and was advancing again at an increased speed. This dallying was not the hallmark of the wolf or dog family. Could it be another human? He had seen no smoke of any fires, but the thing or person might have lighted as few and as small ones as he had.

He decided there was nothing he could do at present, save to be even more wary and to see that his march stayed closer to useful trees. Whatever, or whoever, was tracking him down would at some point draw near enough for him to get a look, hopefully from some safe position. He continued on his way toward the southwest and the distant hills, but his eyes roved in search of good ambush locations as he went.

That night, secure in the fork of a lofty oak, he spent a good part of the dark hours awake and listening. But the cacophony of the savanna and the teeming night seemed much the same as ever. The howls and shrieks of the hunters and their prey were no different from what they had been for recent nights past. Once a group of the great, trunked giants meandered near his tree, on their way to some water hole, no doubt, and he stayed very still as the vast bulks drifted by. His tree was tall and sturdy, but he had no wish to see what those titanic shoulders could do if aroused. Presently, with soft squeals from their huge calves, each three times the size of the man, the monsters passed on. Long afterward, Hiero roused to a concerted bellowing of fury which, distant though it was, made the earth tremble. He guessed that some carnivore, possibly a great saberfang, had tried for a calf and that he was hearing the herd in response. Otherwise the night was normal, and he slept at last, undisturbed by any other sounds, however furious.

With dawn, he was on his way again toward the hills, one eye cocked for signs of pursuit, the other scanning the route ahead, so that he was never too far from a tall tree or a great termite mound. The latter, some many times steeper than the surrounding bushes, had begun to appear more and more frequently, and they provided useful places of quick safety and good lookout points.

He took position on one of these at noon, pausing both to rest and to eat his frugal meal of dried meat and berries. Much of the lower scrub was full of the latter, and he had found many of them edible and tasty.

A sudden uprush of a flock of birds, calling and piping in alarm, came suddenly from a few meters off, back on the track by which he had come. Laying down his meat carefully, he crouched just below the far side of the termite hill and watched keenly along the line of his previous march. He had no doubt that his mysterious tracker was close upon him and he was determined to get a look. He had a clump of tall trees at his back, picked out well in advance, should the sunbaked anthill prove inadequate as a defense.

Presently he saw some dense bushes move. Something large was pushing slowly through them. His legs tensed, ready to spring into instant flight. The bulk of whatever was advancing seemed formidable.

Then a glint of something bright and flashing caught his eye, and the next moment the thing moved into the open. A grin of mingled joy and pure amazement broke over Hiero’s features, and he could hardly restrain himself from yelling aloud.

Hopping sedately toward the mound, as if wanting to gain the shelter of his comfortable stable, came the shape of a giant hopper. On his back was strapped the owner’s saddle, stirrup-boots lashed to their girth so as not to swing loose. Various articles of gear hung on the harness as well, also securely fastened in place. Segi had come to seek his master.

There was no mistaking the great brute. Hiero knew his own harness. If more evidence were needed, the sharp point of his beloved spear, once a part of Klootz’ saddle in the North, thrust up along the hopper’s withers, tied so as not to catch on branches as the animal moved.

Hiero rose and then slid slowly down the face of the mound, calling to the hopper as he came. Segi put one ear back in mild surprise at the sight of the man but seemed in no way disconcerted or inclined to flee. When Hiero came close, he lowered his great head and sniffed the man thoroughly. Satisfied, he raised himself to his full height again and leaned back on his great tail, looking proudly and haughtily about, as if to say, “Well, I’ve done my job. The rest is up to others.”

For a long time, Hiero stood with his face buried in the hopper’s great tan shoulder, a prey to raw emotion. That out of the empty wastes such a thing could happen! He had to control himself for a number of minutes. Segi stood patiently, his long ears twitching at flies, but otherwise quite content to wait and see what his owner wanted next.

At length, the man got himself in hand and, patting the great flanks, began to inspect what the hopper had brought him.

First there was the short spear, its broad, steel head and crossbars catching the light, a copy of the medieval boar spears of far-off and forgotten Europe. He freed it from its wrapping and laid it handily by on the ground. Next, also strapped to the saddle, he found something else and again almost whooped with delight. There, leather sheath and all, was the pick of all his weapons, the terrible short sword of the North, the ancient weapon given him at graduation from the Metz Academy. As long as his forearm, curved on one side and straight and edgeless on its back, the bolo of the lost empire gleamed with oily sheen in the sun. The worn badge of the circle with its flaming top and the faded “U.S.A.” marks seemed to him a pledge from the past of future victory to come. When he had strapped the shoulder belt on and the heavy weight had settled across his back, hilt ready to his hand over his left shoulder, then indeed did he feel complete.

Spear and sword—yes, here was his dagger, the six-inch, two-edged blade with buckhorn handle—all complete. Next he found a broad leather belt, and then a leather box, heavy though small. His casting pieces and crystal! There were two packs of dried meat, sealed for long journeys. His excitement blazed. He knew who had sent this!

Where was her message? His fingers fumbled as he went over the saddle again like a squirrel going through a pile of nuts. Here was a leather water bottle, a small one, wisely chosen for use on foot and also when mounted. Damn it, where was that message? He knew it was there as well he knew the sender’s scent and the feel of her skin! (

He forced himself to stop and think finally, while the patient Segi leaned down and snooted at his black hair. Use your head, stupid! Suppose Segi had been killed? Would she leave a note pinned to his right ear for anyone, including the enemy, to read? Think, the way she did for you, you oaf!

Eventually, he found it by sheer patience. It was wrapped in a tiny packet of fine, oiled leather, no bigger than his finger joint and jammed up into the far side of the saddle horn itself.

With trembling fingers, he unwrapped it and, with the sun beating down on his head, began to read. Above him, the hopper’s nostrils flared at intervals, picking up the varied smells eddying past in the light breeze. But none seemed to convey any danger, and the towering figure stayed relaxed on his great haunches while his master read and reread the parchment message from his far-off mate.

“My Love,” it began, “I know you are not dead. Where you are, what they have done, I know not. The Unclean have done something, somehow. If you are not dead and I cannot reach your mind, they must be the ones. I would have sent this by Klootz, but he is gone. The stablemen said he went mad in the night, rearing and bellowing in his stall. When they tried to calm him, he broke the stall gates as if they were matchwood and fled through the stable yards into the night. Some guards say he tore through the northern gate at the hour before dawn, and he has not been seen since. He may follow you, so be alert. An assassin tried to kill Danyale at the end of the ball. The man has not yet spoken. The king is hurt but will live. My cousin Amibale has vanished also, and none can or will say where. The priest Joseato is missing too. The high priest says he knows nothing. The troops seem loyal, and Mitrash is with me. He says to tell you that he has sent messages. God help you, my love. Segi has my message planted in his simple mind. If he can find you, he will. Come back to me.” It was unsigned, save for a single sweeping “L.”

Hiero was glad that none but Segi could see him now. Whoever heard of a Metz Senior Killman, the pick of the woodsrunners of the North, with two runnels of water flowing down his sweaty face?

After a while he could see again, and he marveled at the wonder of his wife. Hardly out of girlhood, but what a woman! She had never lost her head for a second. Hiero was not dead, so send a message. Klootz was gone, so send the next best thing, Segi, the pick of hopperdom and a beast who had already learned to know and love him. He shook his head in admiration. He would be willing to bet that she had issued all the right orders to the guards as well and that she and Danyale and the kingdom were in as good a state of defense as could be managed. And she had found the sudden departure of Duke Amibale and the priest suspicious, that too was clear. They would not find it easier to surprise her, even with her mate gone.

Mitrash had sent messages, had he? A good man. The messages had gone to the Brotherhood of the Eleventh Commandment, Hiero was sure. Even now, a long way off somewhere, Brother Aldo and his fellow councilors might well know what had happened and be moving in their turn. The Metz felt a tremendous sense of relief. Luchare and her father were safe, as safe as anyone these days, and the kingdom was alerted. He had all the help she could send, and now the rest was up to him. Only Klootz’s fate puzzled him. Where could the morse have gotten to?

He patted Segi again and talked soothingly to him. The big hopper had really done wonders. Hampered by his saddle and harness, he had come hundreds upon hundreds of leagues, somehow patiently following his vanished master. He looked fine, too, hardly gaunted at all. Despite all that Hiero had been taught about the hopper’s capabilities, he was still amazed. Segi must have crossed the dreadful desert, too, going without water for days; and when through it, he had come unflinchingly on, dodging predators, snatching bits of leaf as he hopped, and never ceasing until Hiero was found. How many men, Hiero mused to himself, would have done as much, would have persevered into an unknown wilderness out of pure affection? Do I, does any man, deserve such devotion?

In a few seconds, he had run up the termite mound and secured his few possessions. In another, he freed the stirrup-boots and mounted. His head behind but on a level with his steed’s, he gently urged the hopper on, south and west, their heads pointed into the sunset and at the distant blue line. The calling hills still held Hiero in their grip; unthinking, he urged his strange mount forward to whatever fate lay hidden in their distant folds.