Hiero Desteen (Omnibus)

by Sterling E. Lanier

  The sunken city came to an abrupt end not far ahead, he now told them. Another half day’s travel would have brought them to it and to dry land. The Palood curved away back to the north at this point and no longer strayed down to the Inland Sea. Instead, wide lands opened out, prairie and great forest, sweeping to the far distance and eventually the great salt ocean, the Lantik.

  But they were not to go east for a long while yet; rather, their route lay south, across the eastern arm of the Inland Sea itself. Somewhere to the east of Neeyana, the trading port from which Luchare’s captors had sailed, Brother Aldo hoped to strike a certain forest trail, without alerting the enemy.

  That evening, on dry land, around a hidden campfire, buried deep in some brush, they again sought to plan for the future.

  “If you have no objection, I should like to try the Forty Symbols,” Hiero said to Brother Aldo. Gorm had vanished on some private errand, and they were using speech.

  “Why should I object? Precognition is an art, if that is the right word, of which we Eleveners know little. Our teaching lies in other areas of the mind and spirit. But I cannot for the life of me see why it is wrong to use such a talent in a good cause. Save for the fear of becoming skilled enough to read one’s own death. That might deter some people.”

  “You may watch if you wish,” the priest said as he drew forth the box and the alb of his office. “There is nothing secret about any of this. We don’t regard it as being hidden, although we do think of it as a service.”

  When Hiero eventually came out of the brief trance, he saw Aldo watching him closely, and next to the old man, Luchare, her eyes gleaming with suppressed excitement.

  “There is some danger to your method, some that I had not quite foreseen,” Aldo said. “Your mind was quite open and the power of the thought more than enough to reveal you to a mental listener close by. I cast over you a net of surface thought, a sort of mental screen, simulating the local small thoughts of animal and plant—oh, yes, plants have thoughts, though perhaps not the kind you are aware of—to deceive any spy who might be about.”

  “Thanks,” Hiero grunted. He opened his hand and peered at the symbols now exposed on his palm.

  The Fish lay uppermost. Water again! “That’s no surprise,” he said, after explaining it to the Elevener.

  Next, there were the familiar little Boots. “Half my life has been a journey. Now we have a journey involving water. Well, we knew that too.” The hawk nose lowered over the small, third symbol. It was the House.

  “What’s that one?” the girl asked eagerly. “Is it good or bad?”

  “Neither,” was the answer. “It’s the House. The sign itself is a peaked roof. Its meanings are various and unfriendly. You know, or I guess perhaps you don’t, that the signs are very, very old. Many of the instructions and meanings of their first makers are obscure, open to several interpretations. This is one of them. It can mean simply ‘“danger indoors.’ Or it can mean ‘get under cover!’ Or it can mean an enemy building, or even a town or city, is near. Not much help, really.”

  Hiero looked at the fourth symbol. It was a minute Sword and Shield interlocked. “That means personal combat for the one who casts the symbols.” He looked at Luchare and smiled at the worry in her eyes. “I’ve drawn it three times in my life so far. I’m still here.” There was no more to say. He put the signs away and called to Klootz to come and be rubbed down.

  All three of them had been riding the morse, albeit at a slow pace. It was no great strain on him, and he had been feeding fairly well. Even at his deceptive amble, he covered the ground faster than a man could walk, and went straight through things a man would have had to walk around.

  Two hours’ jog the next morning along the shore brought them to a small cove set deep in one side of a towering headland. As they appeared on the beach, Brother Aldo cupped his hands and let out a ringing shout, startling both the humans and the bear, who had been sniffing some tracks beside the path. Klootz twitched an ear.

  To the surprise of Hiero and Luchare, a section of low woodland on the far side of the cove began to move. Out from a shallow indentation in the shore pushed a stout little, two-masted ship. Tree branches had been lashed to her lateen-rigged masts and more branches and bushes woven into a great net which covered most of the hull.

  Perhaps a hundred feet long over all, she was painted brown and rose high at both bow and stern. There was a tiny deck cabin amidships between the masts and various bales and bundles lying about here and there. Men moved briskly on deck about various tasks, and a small rowing boat now pushed off and came shooting in to meet them as they came down to the water.

  They dismounted, and the two sailors who were rowing splashed out and pulled the boat up on the beach. This allowed the man in the stem to step out dry-shod. He did so and came swaggering up to them. Luchare put her hand to her mouth to suppress a giggle.

  “This is Captain Gimp,” Brother Aldo said. “He has waited for me patiently and has been of great service, both in the past and recently as well. No more-renowned captain of merchants sails the Inland Sea. Captain, let me introduce friends and your new passengers.”

  Captain Gimp bowed profoundly. He was extremely short and very wide, a washtub of a man Luchare thought. His original, color was hard to make out, for he was so brown and weathered it might have been anything. He was bald, or perhaps shaved, for a short, smoke-blackened pigtail thrust straight back like a bow, or rather, stern sprit. He wore a kilt of dirty, greased leather, boots of undressed hide, and a green coat of wool, much stained and worn. He limped a little, hence his name, Hiero guessed, and his black eyes were beady with impudent humor. His hands, at the end of long arms, were surprising, being as dirty as the rest of him, but with long, delicate fingers. He carried no visible weapon.

  “Glad to make yer acquaintance, all,” he said in understandable but accented batwah when the introductions were complete. “The Brother’s word is good enough for me. Now turn your dear pets loose and let’s get aboard. Wind’s fair for the southward and it may shift.” He spat something he was chewing in Gorm’s direction even as he spoke and started to turn away.

  The bear, who had been sitting up on his haunches sniffing the warm morning breeze, moved like lightning. One broad paw shot out and intercepted the wad of spittle. Next, the young bear rose on his hind legs and advanced on the dumbfounded sailor, who stood only a few feet away. Reaching him, Gorm peered solicitously into his face from an inch away, snorted loudly, and then wiped his paw down the dirty green coat. The coat now bore a new stain, as well as several leaves. Gorm sat down again and looked up at Captain Gimp.

  The captain finally emerged from his trance, his face now a shade paler under the accumulation of smoke, dirt, and weather. Surprisingly, to Hiero at any rate, he crossed himself.

  “Well, ride me under,” he exploded. “I never see the half of that. That animal can talk! Who’s he belong to?” he asked, swiveling on the others, who were all smiling. “I’ll buy him! Just name your own price! I’m as fair as any master afloat; ask the Brother here, now, if you don’t believe me!”

  It was some time before it could be brought home to the little sailor that Gorm was not for sale and that he could think as well as a man. The captain was still muttering to himself when Brother Aldo asked him to warp his ship in near the beach so that a plank could be run and the bull morse taken aboard also. This, however, seemed to be altogether too much.

  “Look now, Brother,” he said to the old man, “I’ve carried those kaws on occasion, back when I had an old storeship, on local journeys, mind you, a day here or there. But I can’t take that great ox of a thing. What would people think? My ship, Foam Girl, the finest thing in the trade, a dung barge? I ask you, now? It’s not considerate of you, Brother. Talking bears, women who ain’t proper slaves or wives, that funny-looking northerner-—no offense, mister—and now this animal mountain. No, it’s too much; I won’t do it; my mind’s made up.”

 
By the time they were aboard, it was almost noon. Once his arguments had been beaten down, the squat little captain proved both helpful and extremely efficient. A log pen was quickly built next to the deck cabin, and Klootz was secured by broad straps so that he could not slip.

  The crew, Hiero noticed as the ship eased out of the cove, were a wildly varied lot. There were dark men who, with their curly hair, could have been Luchare’s or Brother Aldo’s cousins. But there were men in appearance like himself, though he heard no Metz spoken, and also there were others. He saw two, half-naked men with pale skins and high cheekbones, whose eyes were an icy blue and whose hair was fiery red. He had read of red-haired men in the ancient past, but had no idea that they still existed.

  “They come from an island in the far North, from what used long ago to be called the Green Land, I believe,” said Brother Aldo, who had followed his glance. “They were probably outlawed, to be so far from home.”

  “Do your Eleveners reach so far?” Hiero asked. He clutched the rail as the Foam Girl emerged from the cove and a strong wind in the great triangular sails made her heel sharply.

  “We do reach there, though we are called something else, a habit of ours in many lands,” Aldo said. “One of the assistant witch doctors of the white savages who were trying to kill Luchare was an Elevener. That’s how I got on your track, my boy.” He smiled sadly at Hiero. “Yes, he would have let the birds kill her. He had no choice, and he was next in line to be chief wizard, or shaman. You see that then he could have influenced the whole tribe, to who knows what good end. The enemy works on such primitive people, too, and we cannot neglect such chances. I am sorry, but that’s the situation.”

  “In other words,” Hiero said bitterly, “you’d turn on me if you had a change of mind about how much good it would do you. Not a very inviting thought when we’re so dependent on you.”

  “I’m sorry,” Brother Aldo said. “I was trying to be honest with you, Hiero. I openly allied myself to you and gave my word. Now, the man I just spoke of made a calculated decision to remain silent in pursuit of a long-held purpose. Can you see no difference at all?”

  “Possibly,” the Metz priest said in a curt tone. “I am not trained as a casuist or debater of legalisms. It sounds a bit cold-blooded.

  Now I think I’ll rest. I haven’t slept in anything like a bed since Manoon.” He nodded and walked off to the little cabin, whence Luchare had already retired, taking the bear with her, for Gorm, surprisingly, was seasick and wanted to be shut up, away from the sight of the wind-tossed whitecaps.

  As Hiero moved away, he missed the pain in Brother Aldo’s eyes, which followed him until the cabin door closed.

  The following day and for several more, the weather held fair. The travelers, even Gorm, grew accustomed to the wave motion and enjoyed roaming the little ship. Klootz fretted, but Hiero spent a lot of time grooming him and keeping him soothed. Also, the old Brother seemed able to calm him at will, and Hiero actually felt a bit of jealousy at the morse’s fondness for Aldo.

  The bear became a prime favorite with the polyglot crew, who considered him merely a very clever, trained beast and fed him sweet things such as tree-sap candy and honeycakes until his furry sides bulged.

  Luchare and Hiero had a marvelous time. The small cabin at last gave them some privacy and they made love constantly, with the fire and passion of superb health and no complexes. Hiero was worried at first, since the Metz Republic had a universally known drug used to prevent childbirth and he had none with him. But a quiet word to Brother Aldo about his fears produced some of it, or a workable substitute. In fact, the old Elevener had quite an exten- . sive pharmacopeia stowed away in a small sea chest, and Hiero and he discussed various medicines by the hour.

  Captain Gimp also proved an entertaining companion. Despite his funny face and bow legs, the little freshwater mariner ran a taut ship. Foam Girl was as clean as her captain was soiled, and her strange mixture of a crew, though noisy and ragged, were also well disciplined. Most of them carried long sheath knives, and stores of boarding pikes and swords were racked in lockers around the cabin. A portable arrow engine, a device like a huge bow firing across a grooved table, could be mounted on the little poop abaft the wheel. It shot six long arrows at once and looked to the priest-warrior like a useful weapon.

  “Never know what you’ll need, not in these waters,” Gimp said, while discussing his ship’s armament. “There’s giant fish—-and sometimes we go after ‘em with harpoons—and great beasts and pirates out for loot. There’s slavers as’ll turn pirate in a trice if given a chance. And then there’s the Unclean. Been more of them about in the last few years. And some of their boats go by magic.

  No sails, nothing. You can’t outfight or outrun them, not if what I hear is true.” Reflecting on the lightning gun and his stay on the Dead Isle, Hiero silently agreed.

  Life abounded in the sun-flecked waters of the Inland Sea. Schools of fish leaped from the surface, driven by larger predators surging up from the deeps. Once, as the Foam Girl passed a small, rocky islet, a half-dozen sleek, giant, flippered forms, great, toothed jaws snapping at the end of long necks, roared at them from the shingle on which they lay basking. Gimp’s name for them was Ot’r, and he kept a wary eye on them until the island was out of sight.

  “They have good fur and meat too,” he said, “but it takes a whole proper flotilla and trained harpooners to go hunting that gentry.”

  It was the fifth morning, a gray one, windy and full of scudding cloud, since leaving the northern coast. Hiero lay sleeping, his tousled head pillowed on Luchare’s dark, gleaming breast, when a sailor’s horny hand beating at the cabin door aroused them both.

  Hurrying on deck, they found Brother Aldo and the little captain standing near the wheel, staring back beyond the wake. The reason was obvious. A great, dark, three-masted ship, all her square, brown sails set, was coming up behind them with the calm inevitability of Fate. Even Hiero, no trained mariner, could see that the newcomer was eating up the distance between the two vessels. Her decks were black with men, and an ominous twinkle showed among them. She bore a huge black banner at the main truck, and gaudy red and white animals, monsters, and human skulls were painted on her sails.

  Hiero looked at the nearest streamers on the mizzen ratline. These showed the wind to be dead astern and growing stronger. The day was an overcast one, with a promise of coming rain, but visibility was at least a good mile. They were seemingly trapped.

  Next, he stared at Aldo, their minds meshing as he did so, but on a “closed circuit,” limited to the two of them alone.

  Unclean?

  No, I think not, was the answer, at least not directly. But a pirate, evil, yes, and cruel. And I think also, searching this part of the Inland Sea, perhaps on orders. The Unclean net is wide. When their own ship did not come back, they must have sent out new instructions, some to those they totally rule, others to those whom they merely influence and lead as yet. Their pawns rather than their servants, it appears to me. Try your own mind. Some of them seem not unprotected, which makes me even more suspicious.

  Hiero closed his eyes, gripped the taffrail, and concentrated. Captain Gimp peered through a battered telescope, mumbling oaths through his quid. On the deck below, the first mate, a saturnine, black-skinned man with one eye, served out weapons in silence to the little ship’s crew. The team of three men who manned the arrow engine were setting up their contrivance only a yard away.

  Brother Aldo was right, Hiero realized at once. The crew of the strange ship, a large one, were indeed evil through and through. But it was the human evil of wicked men, the scum which has always infested unguarded seas since the first pirate robbed the first trader, five thousand years before the corning of Christ.

  Yet their leaders’ minds were guarded! All the Metz could get was an individual aura radiating from each one, an aura of power and evil. But the thoughts themselves were warded, even against attacks on the new band he had taught hims
elf to use on Manoon. The Unclean truly learned quickly! For only they could have provided the devices and training which made his mental weapons useless. But not quite useless, he reflected. Only four of the minds on the ship were shielded from him, and the crew’s were totally open.

  He felt for the steersman of the pirate, for such he now knew it to be without any question. The man’s name, he learned, was Horg, and his life had been evil, his mind a reeking cesspool. Turn the wheel, Horg, my boy; edge off now, that’s it, away a few points, now quick! Yaw; the ship’s in great danger! Hurry!

  An exclamation from Captain Gimp made him open his eyes. Astern of them, the square-rigger had come up into the wind, her sails all flapping, the ship in irons. Hiero shut his eyes and simultaneously felt Horg’s mind die, as the life went out of the man. The enemy wasted no time, though they had lost a quarter of a mile.

  But as the big ship came around and back on course, a groan went up from the Foam Girl’s idle sailors, who had been watching in fascination. A torrent of oaths from the square little skipper drove them back to their work and cleared the poop again, save for the helmsman, the arrow engine crew, Aldo, Luchare, and Hiero.

  Once again, the priest probed for the helmsman. But whoever was the master of the great ship was a quick thinker. One of the four shielded minds now steered the ship. Undaunted, Hiero found a nearby sailor. His name was Gimmer, and his mind, if possible, was more repellent than that of the dead Horg.

  The helmsman is your deadly enemy. He hates you. He is taking you into danger. He will kill you. You must kill him first! Quickly! Now! Coldly and ruthlessly, Hiero drove the craven will to the assault. Ordinarily a sensitive and kindly man, he had no compunction about slaying creatures such as these sealice. Wasting false sentiment over the truly wicked was no part of an Abbey warrior-priest’s training. The world was harsh enough on decent folk without coddling vermin.