The dreadful orbs froze his blood as he crouched on the summit. As in a dream, he saw the talons of the right forepaw begin to extend upward for the last time.
He rose to his feet in one lithe, flowing movement and, high above his head, he balanced the bigger of the two chunks of scree which he had hoarded against such a moment. It was a great, jagged thing, barely within his powers to lift.
The monster gaped, the vast, fang-lined jaws open, as it once more drew breath for that appalling sound. The rock came down with all the strength in Hiero’s tired body. Between the foam-flecked lips, past the cruel ranks of fang and tusk, it tore with the weight and speed of an avalanche, deep into the yawning gullet, a projectile of both murderous force and certainty. There was a sound as if some incredible axe had bitten into a vast, half-rotted log. A horrid, choked scream welled up, bubbling through ripped tissue and foul blood. Again came the thump of a tremendous fall, and then a flopping, scrabbling noise, punctuated by the thrashing and beating of giant limbs. Then there was silence, and the exhausted man felt a faint breeze stir his hair and the beat of life in his veins.
Slowly and painfully, Hiero inched his way forward once more and looked down at the base of the crag. His gaze was swimming and he knew he could not hold on to consciousness much longer, but one glance was sufficient.
The great bulk which lay below, limp and awful, could certainly never move again. The long neck writhed outward in the last agony, and a black stream of its life’s blood trickled and dripped over the ravine’s floor from the shattered skull, down into darkness. Hiero’s crude weapon had driven deep into the malformed head and had torn into the brain and the seat of the central nervous system. Unused to any opposition from its prey, the beast had succumbed to desperation, courage, and plain gravity.
The man tried to mouth a prayer, but got no further than the word “God.” Then he sank back into a drugged exhaustion. It was not true sleep, but the reaction of a totally overstrained mind and body, a sort of trance in which he knew himself to be alive, but was unable to do more than simply breathe. His eyes shut and his body slowly curled into a fetal position, while his brain reeled and spun through emptiness and nullity. Eventually he really slept, his soul adrift in the cosmos.
He awoke suddenly, all senses alert. His body felt as if it were aflame, and his tongue felt like a dry stick as he tried to run it over his cracked and broken lips.
Glancing up, he saw the fiery sun at zenith and knew that he had slept for many long hours. No more than half the night had gone before his encounter with the unholy Death Hart, and now it was once again noon. He felt faint and still utterly weary, but he forced himself to think, though even thought called for an almost physical effort. Water! Water and some cover. He could not survive another day in the appalling heat of this empty waste without liquid and shelter. He had to start at once while some faint energy remained in his flagging muscles, while he could still reason, and even search for help.
A quick look and the simultaneous realization of a noisome stench showed him the bloated carcass of his late enemy sprawled at the base of his refuge; rot had set in with blinding speed. Around the huge corpse, he caught small, flickering movements. Light glinted off lithe bodies as a horde of some scavenging vermin tore and burrowed into the foul meat of that huge decay. Focusing as well as he could and squinting in the desert glare, he could make out pointed heads, glittering green scales, and short legs, as well as the red glitter of many beady eyes. The things seemed to be some vile combination of rat and lizard, well suited to their home and as alien as the dead monster to the rest of life.
Looking about, the Metz selected yet another loose fragment of the rock on which he lay, this one a narrow splinter as long as his forearm, not unlike a crude stalactite. It was not much of a weapon, but it might be enough, should the things below be more than scavengers. In any case, he reminded himself grimly, he had no choice. He had to leave now.
He tucked the crude stone knife in his waist, where a thong supported his ragged leather shorts, and began to climb cautiously down. As he went, he watched the creatures carefully, alert for any signs that they might attack,
He was more than halfway down when they saw him, and then all movement ceased. At least a score of sharp muzzles pointed up, and the red eyes stared unblinkingly, the shimmering bodies frozen, as they watched him descend. Short-legged and no bigger than house cats, there was nevertheless enough of them to menace an exhausted and almost weaponless man. He stared at them for a moment, wondering if the needle claws and fangs he could now see could be poisoned. It would fit with everything else he had seen in this sun-blistered hell. It made no difference. There was still no choice but to go down. He did so, slowly and steadily, one hand ready to snatch the weapon from his side, should it be needed.
For one instant, as his foot touched the rock floor of the gully, he seemed to feel a wave of hate in his mind. Then, like an explosion of greenish light, the creatures were gone, and the stinking, torn bulk of the dead beast was the only other tenant of the place. Hiero leaned against the wall of the spire, limp with reaction. Apparently the things found him as alien as he them, and they had doubts enough about his powers not to challenge them.
Choking in the foetor billowing from the pile of carrion beside him, he set off up the canyon, moving at a walk, which was all he could manage. It was a relief to round the base of the rock at last and move up into cleaner air, but such relief was only momentary. He could die from the terrible sunfire as easily as from the fangs of any beast. The lizard-rats might have the last word in the end.
An hour later, he was again almost at the limit of his strength. He had reached the top of the ravine and found himself on the rim of a low plateau. The top of this mesa ran only a short distance to the north, but its broken, eroded surface stretched as far south as he could see, a brooding emptiness of umber and ebon minerals.
Short and weather-worn peaks rose here and there, and now and again shadows betrayed the presence of pits and cratered openings, as well as those of more jagged coulees and ravines, like that from which he had just emerged. The air was still under the blue vault above, and the heat of the sun burned down like a furnace on the grim and empty wastes.
He looked to the west and saw that the plateau, the worn surface of some ancient range of hills, extended for perhaps a kilometer in front of him. Raising his gaze, he noted that even more naked desert swept from the western edge almost to the horizon, but at the very limit of his sight, there to the southwest, was another faint, dark line. Could this be the end of the barrens and the recommencement of the great southern forest? He sighed. It made little difference, really. He would be helpless in a few hours if he could not find water and shelter.
Hiero looked hard at the foreground and presently noted something which caused his spirits to rise. Some distance off to his right front, there ran a low ridge which made him stare in speculation. It was hazy, wavering to a man’s height above the heated stones. There was no breeze, so it could not be either blown sand or dust. If his tired eyes were not playing him false, somewhere over there was moisture!
He set off again at the same patient walk, husbanding the last of his strength. He did not allow himself to hope too much. If moisture it were, it could well be some foul pool of reeking poisons, metallic compounds, and mineral salts, of a type whose very vapor could slay him. That such things were common enough in desert regions he knew from his studies, both in D’alwah and, farther back in time, in the northern Abbeys.
There was, of course, no option save to continue, and this he did. Soon he found himself at the base of the ridge over which the strange thickening of the atmosphere had appeared. The slope was neither very high nor difficult, but he moved with great care. His bones felt so brittle and weak that it was hard to believe that they could support him at all, while the thirst in his body was held off from stark madness only by a last effort of will.
Slowly, he drew himself to the top of the ridge and peered ov
er. A faint thrill of hope came to him as he watched, but he still held his weak body under rigid control.
Below lay a large, rounded pit, or crater, with walls which had once been steep, but which were now gashed and scarred with falls of rubble and seamed with numerous cracks and crevices. The floor of the pit was smooth and sand-covered in places, in others broken and tumbled. Here and there around the edges of the place were the irregular mouths of caves and the shadows of overhangs. And there was life.
Growing in patches and sometimes even dense clumps about the bottom were living plants. They resembled nothing Hiero had ever seen or heard of before, but they seemed to come in several types. There was a maroon and purple thing, like a vast barrel, with long, pendulous fronds drooping from its top and trailing about on the ground below. Another type looked somewhat like a huge starfish, set atop a fleshy, brown stalk. This type grew in clumps, as if distorted and ragged umbrellas were somehow grouped in bunches. Smaller growths, as if of some bristling, spiked grasses of yellowish green, waist-high, sprang from patches of sand. Nowhere was there a hint of movement. Nor was there a sign of water. Save for the strange plants, the natural arena appeared as arid as the rock to which he clung.
But it was there! His trained body, sensitive to many influences unknown by his ancestors, could feel it. His whole system knew there was water somewhere down below. That it was out of sight meant nothing. It was there and it was close, drinkable, lifesaving water!
Once more he swept the pit with his eyes. Worn though he was, the savage training of the Abbey schools still governed him. If there was water here, and he knew there was, and if there was life, even so strange as these plants, then there was danger. In an oasis, near water holes, there lurked the hunters. He glared over the crater floor again, step by step, trying his best to see into the shadows, past the cave openings, and under the ledges. Nothing moved; the place might have been some strange sculpture, the dream of an unknown artist.
He could wait no longer. He moved over a bit to his right, where one of the broken slides of shale reached almost to the rim, and started slowly down it, never taking his vision from the silent pit. As he drew closer to the bottom, he searched even harder for some sign of life other than the enigmatic plants. Surely there must be insects, even in a place as bizarre as this? Yes, there was something! just below him rose a low mound, knee-high, with many small openings into and from which tiny things came and went on incomprehensible errands. The anthill gave him a sense of comfort, the first familiar sight from his own world he had seen since his escape. He watched, entranced, as a column of the little things marched by a few meters distant. He noticed that they seemed to have paths which avoided any of the vegetation by a wide margin, but his wits were now so dazed with tiredness that he simply recorded the fact without drawing any conclusions from it.
Then he drew some conclusions with great rapidity. The edge of the column overran an invisible barrier near one of the solitary purple barrels. The reaction was rapid. The nearest of the trailing fronds whipped up and down like a flail. The intrusive edge of the column was gone. The frond folded itself over, and Hiero saw that an opening had appeared in the top of the barrel plant. The opening sucked, as a child licks its fingers. Then the frond, now cleansed, drooped and once more lay idle and seemingly harmless on the white sand.
Hiero stared hard at the barrel. This one was small, not up to his knee; but farther out in the pit, there were some which towered over his head and were as thick around as an Abbey tun of wine. Once again he turned his gaze on the ants that continued on their business, apparently undisturbed. But he saw now that they avoided all the plants, no matter of what variety, not simply the purple barrels. No doubt they had reason.
He put one foot on the floor of the strange pit, then another. No plants were close. He turned around and then surveyed the place from the ground level. Down here, the heat was not so strong, the air ever so slightly damp. Where is that damned water?
Even the mild blasphemy was enough to make him correct himself. He fell naturally into a kneeling position, arms outthrust, and let the spirit move him as it had in the past. His splayed arms pointed vaguely to the northeast. Rising slowly and carefully, he set out in that direction, carefully steering clear of any plants along the way.
Hiero limped and tottered on, some inner guide keeping him away from the vegetation. He had now reached the point of no return in terms of response, and his subconscious alone saw the quaver of the various things he came near. If a barrel plant shook as he approached or a clump of the spike grass wavered and leaned toward him, he saw it not. Along a mystic line of safety, he weaved between one danger and another, fell sidewise in one place, lurched back in another, but always kept to one direction.
In a moderately short time, he found himself under one of the overhanging cliffs he had noted from the rim. The heat, to a stranger, would have still been terrific. To him, fresh from the glow of the desert sun, it was like stepping out of a furnace into an ice palace. One moment he was in a place of raging heat; the next, he was shaded and cool. The light was dimmed and he found it hard to see. Above him, a great shelf of rock cut off the sunlight and most of the heat. He strove to peer ahead through the dimness and found himself on the edge of a still pool of clear water.
It reached as far as he could see to the left and right and back into the shadows before him. The smooth rock under his sandaled feet felt pleasantly cool. Without further ado, he collapsed on his face, falling with a splash across the margin of the pool.
Some vestige of the training he had spent his life receiving saved him from death. He took one gulp of the water, then turned on his back and allowed the coolness to soak into his skin. A man or woman of less iron will would have died on the spot, drinking to repletion. His background saved him. Something told him, even in extremity, that he was close to death, and he restrained his water-starved body. After a long while, he took another drink, less in size than the first, and after a longer period, another, this one less still. All the while he lay on the rock shelf, barely afloat.
The water tasted slightly acid, but was cool and pure. His body, trained in the detection and rejection of poisons, would have told him, had there been something wrong, even in the last extremity. It was simply water, filtered through strange rock perhaps, but nothing more. The delight of feeling it come through, or appearing to come through, his very skin held him in thrall. He floated in a sea of appreciation, reveling in the idea of wetness.
Eventually, after about the eighth cautious drink, sanity began to return. He suddenly saw the damp roof of the shelf above him and, with a great surge of emotion, realized that he was alive once more and that further plans could be made. Also, he felt a new want, one he had not permitted for a long time. He was hungry.
He took another drink, still measured. He did not want to become waterlogged.
He shot a glance at the roof of the stone above his head and another down at the pool on whose brink he had been lying. This must be a catchment basin, where the rare rains were collected and saved by nature, and where the whole ecosystem combined to create the oasis of the strange little pocket in which he found himself. Or into which he had stumbled. Or, said a side corner of his mind, into which he had been led. He examined this latter idea as calmly as he could and dismissed it. With the loss of his mental abilities, there had come a concomitant reliance on those of the body. He did not believe he could be led anywhere.
Eventually, he had absorbed all the water he could take and began to feel the first traces of a chill. This was enough warning, and he got out of the pool at once. Sitting on the bank—or rather, slope, for it was a very gentle gradient—he stared out at the rock-rimmed little valley which made up the pocket. Evening was coming, and he realized bemusedly that he had been lying in the shallows for most of the afternoon. The warmth of the sun was still strong, however, and he no longer felt any chill, despite the lengthening shadows.
As the dark of evening grew up
on the landscape, he watched the strange plants of the crater; and now, refreshed and with his faculties alert, he saw other things. There was a delicate movement among the bushes, almost as if a breath of wind were moving them in the utterly windless air, and he watched them as they put themselves to sleep. The barrel plants tucked their long fronds tightly about themselves like ladies’ cloaks, and the spike grasses withdrew into the ground, leaving only horny sheaths of dull brown on the surface, less than one-third of the original length. The starfish plants somehow withdrew into their own stalks, until nothing was left except a thing like a fat stump, devoid of adornment. The whole appearance of the little pocket changed, becoming even more still and silent.
As the long shadows crept across the basin floor before him, he continued watching, utterly motionless, but now from his belt he drew the narrow fragment of rock, hoarded since his descent from the crag far down the outer slope. His ears strained as the swift night of the desert fell like a mantle upon the crater. Soon he heard what he had been hoping to hear.
There were squeaks and scratching noises in the night. Hiero’s eyes, trained to the dark, saw small shadows darting here and there across the sands. Close to the rock on which he crouched stood the cone-stump into which a starfish plant had withdrawn. Now something the size of a small dog, with stumpy legs and a dragging tail, waddled around the base of the plant and sat up on its rump. It began to gnaw the plant-thing, its teeth making a grinding noise. Hiero surmised that it would never have dared to do so in the light of day. At night, the metabolism of the plants forced them to withdraw in nocturnal hibernation. Then they could be made into victims.
Hiero Desteen (Omnibus) Page 42