“I don’t know. We’ll have to keep paddling, that’s all. Maybe we’ll find an island or a cove or something. Perhaps an opening in the side of one of these buildings. One without an occupant,” he added.
Despite the steady increase of light, they had little choice, save to keep moving. The gentle current was growing stronger, for one thing, and for another, no more large breaks in the walls of stone occurred. The eddying stream helped now, though; the opening at the far end of the long line of buildings drew rapidly closer, far more rapidly than if they had been forced to propel themselves unaided. And the current also had prevented the formation of any mats of vegetation, so that no more cutting was necessary.
Still, it was almost noon when the raft shot from the darkness between the lines of towering ruins and out into the sunlight. For a moment the passengers were dazzled by the light, but when they saw clearly, Luchare let out an exclamation of delight and, dropping her paddle, clapped her hands together.
They had emerged into, and now were drifting in, a small lake whose clear blue water indicated great depth and a probable close connection with the Inland Sea. Around its fringe, many buildings formed a ring, save in one direction, the south, where a wide gap was evident.
But it was the middle of the lake that held their attention. A small, green island, covered with bushes and palm trees and showing patches of grass here and there, rose out of the lake’s waters. Bright-colored flowers, yellows and blues, glowed amid the herbage. And flocks of small birds circled here and there, while a raft of mingled geese and ducks, brown and white, fed in the shallows on the side facing the raft. After the days and nights in the gloom and stench, the insects and frogs, the fear and the labor, the place looked like Paradise.
“Come on, Hiero,” she urged. “Let’s get over there quickly. That place is big enough even to have a spring. We can get clean. Those trees may have fruit, and we can probably get a few ducks. Hurry!”
But the priest stood immobile, holding his paddle. True, the island did indeed look inviting. Perhaps too much so! He had not forgotten, tired though he was, the stealthy sensations of the past few days, the weird calling in the twilight, the feeling that the party were somehow being kept under observation. This place was still surrounded by the drowned city and its ravaged buildings, attractive though it looked.
But fatigue won over caution. They had to rest somewhere, and both he and Luchare were nearly at the end of their respective ropes. Also, the need for food, fresh food, and clean water was urgent. And the animals needed them both as well.
“Come on, then,” he said and began to paddle. “At least we can hide there for the rest of the day. But don’t talk so loudly! This place is no Abbey home for the aged and unwell! I still sense some strange mental undercurrent that scares me, that I can’t pin down.”
A gently sloping beach on one end made the little island almost perfect. And there was a spring, or rather a dew pond, filled with clear, sweet water, set in the island’s center and surrounded by tall ferns and sweet-smelling flowers. To make matters complete, Hiero found a bed of freshwater clams in the shallows of the beach, and the three carnivores feasted on the raw, juicy shellfish until they could hold no more. Klootz paid the clams no attention but began to put away pounds of grass and shrubbery at once.
By mid-afternoon, washed, cleaned, and with full stomachs, all were fast asleep, save for Klootz, who still roved the island, selecting the finest bits of leaf and twig while mounting an alert watch at the same time. Even he had rolled in the clear water, and now he was engaged at intervals in rubbing the last of the soft velvet off his great rack of gleaming, black antlers. At times he paused and looked about, then, seeing nothing, fell to eating again.
So exhausted were the two humans that they slept through the afternoon and most of the entire night that followed. Hiero awoke in the darkness before dawn and realized at once what had happened. Before he could even form a self-reproach, the bear’s voice echoed in his mind. You needed the rest. Nothing has come near. But still—something watches. I know it, just as I know the sun rises.
We must be alert, Hiero replied. He stretched, feeling so stiff that he could hardly move, although the sleep had done him a lot of good.
Luchare awoke at the movement from her place nearby. “Is that today’s new sun, that dim glow? We must have had a long sleep. But I still feel like sleeping again. Is that wicked?”
“No, it’s not. We’re both still exhausted. I’m going to declare a rest day. I think we can finish those crossbows and cut some bolts for them too, which will make me feel a lot better. We’re going to need some missile weapons for hunting, if for no other reason,”
The day began more pleasantly than any in weeks. Hiero managed to finish his own crossbow and to cut some bolts from seasoned dead saplings washed up on the island’s shore.
Luchare was no help, for she spent most of the time arranging her hair, bathing, and pelting Hiero with bunches of flower petals whenever she caught him looking “too serious.” At mid-afternoon, he gave up on any further work simply to lie with his head in her lap while she gossiped about her past life and speculated on their future together.
“I hope we have a long and happy one, love,” he said at last. “But we’re a far and distant way from it now. And you’ve never mentioned, in all your gabble, just what led you to run away from D’alwah. An arranged marriage, one might guess?”
She gasped in astonishment. “I knew it! You were too peering into my mind!”
“No.” He smiled up at the indignant face and with his finger transferred a kiss on the end of the dark, aquiline nose. “You admitted you were no slave once before. You’re the daughter of one of your great nobles, I imagine, because, by your own admission, only the priesthood and the nobility get a chance to learn as much as you have. So it was a fairly easy guess. How great a noble is your father, in your own country’s terms, I mean?”
“The greatest,” she said in dull tones. There was a silence.
“The actual king, eh?” Hiero no longer smiled. “Now that’s a pity. Are you the only child? It might be important.”
“I had one older brother, but he was killed in a battle with the Unclean. My father wanted me to marry and cement an alliance with the next most powerful state. I knew, everyone knows, ail about Efrem of Chespek. He beats and tortures his concubines. His first queen went mad and he had her blinded, divorced her as not being legally married, since the kings cannot marry people who are physically maimed, you see, and put her in a nunnery. That’s what I was running away from.”
“Can’t say as I much blame you,” Hiero said, chewing a grass stem. “I rather was hoping to establish contact with various countries, especially yours, so that I could open a trade route and, more important, we could start to recivilize your area. Stealing a princess, the only princess, is a bad start.”
She bristled. “What do you mean ‘recivilize?’ I’ll have you know, Per Desteen, my bearded priestling, D’alwah is a great and powerful nation, with two walled cities and countless churches and other big palaces and buildings of stone. To say nothing of a great and brave army!”
Hiero smiled affectionately at her and said nothing. He rolled over on his stomach and still said nothing, his chin pillowed on his arms, apparently staring away off over the lake.
“I see,” she said after an even longer pause. “Those things aren’t enough to be called civilized by themselves, are they, Hiero?”
“Well, what do you think?” he asked. “They go along with a basis of chattel slavery, a stranglehold on wealth and education by a small, propertied class, crushing taxes, a state religion which seems to have degenerated, at least in part, into sheer superstition, and finally, incessant, bloody warfare with your neighbors. That last would be too silly and meaningless in any case, but it weakens your society terribly, just when it needs its strength the most to fight the Unclean and the ravening monsters of your own forests. Now, you tell me if that’s civilization. I’d call
it pretty advanced barbarism and a plain path downhill to complete ruin.”
“I suppose you’re right,” she said. “It’s just that, having been raised as the royal princess of D’alwah and flattered and lied to by everyone from the time I could talk, I had no way of knowing anything could, or should, rather, be any different.”
“I know,” he said, patting her shoulder. “The amazing thing, little princess, is that you turned out the way you did. Not only lovely but smart, smart enough to admit you don’t know everything. The only kind of brains worth having, that is.”
Her face bent over his, and he pulled her down. The tall grass hid them from any observation, and he breathed into her ear, “Now?”
“I’m afraid,” was the husky, low-voiced answer. “I’m a virgin. That’s one reason I was supposed to be so valuable.”
“You’ll be my wife when we can find another priest. As far as I’m concerned, you’re my wife right now. And my love. Forever and ever, until God calls us home. That’s what our marriage service says.”
Her lips came down on his then and silenced him. The grasses waved gently in the afternoon sun. Once there sounded a small cry, so soft and brief that even the bear could hardly hear it These humans! he thought. At least that’s over with and we can concentrate on other matters. He drowsed too in the warm sunlight, half-listening to the grinding sounds of Klootz remorselessly demolishing his cud, over and over. The island slept, the silence broken only by the muted call of birds and insect hum.
They both awoke in early evening, or rather were awakened. Neither one said a word as they quickly drew on their clothes. The messages from Gorm, Awake! They come! had hit their two sleeping brains like a thunderclap. In the instant that this took, the terrible wailing cry which had grown so familiar to them came again, louder than they had ever heard it, and this time it did not cease.
“Aoough, aaaouugh, aaaooough!”
Now, in great volume, it came from all around them. In the half-light over the twilight lagoon, their island no longer seemed a haven of safety, but a tiny morsel of helpless sanity in a chaotic and implacable world. Hiero himself spared a brief and regretful thought for their first love-making, sandwiched between perils and duties, a moment already pre-doomed to evanescence.
With the morse and the bear, they rapidly took stations in the center of their island. Around them, the booming menacing wail grew louder still. “Aoough, aaaooough, aaough!”
Now, clearly outlined in the yet strong light, the travelers saw their enemies, and all knew at once that they had been watched from the beginning of their voyage through the drowned metropolis.
From every side but the open south they came, in small, narrow craft, half raft, half canoe, apparently made of tightly bound reeds, pointed at either end. From out between the encircling buildings, across the quarter mile of open water around the island, the strange craft surged, propelled by their owners’ webbed hands, as well as paddles. And the white heads in the water between the boats showed where many more were coming fast by simply using their native element.
A new Leemute! Take a frog, Hiero thought, and stand him up; give him a high-vaulted skull and a pallid skin, white and sickly-looking. Give him evil black eyes, like huge bubbles of sparkling, vicious jet. Give him almost man size. Give him knives of bone, as white as his skin, and spears offish bone and bleached bone clubs. And give him hate! As the things came steadily on, the priest thought of Gorm’s first impression. A frog that thinks. Must have been a scout and we’ve been stalked.
The wailing, sobbing cry which had filled the air suddenly ceased. And only then did Hiero realize that the frog-things themselves were utterly silent. The strange noise had come from the buildings all around them but not from the creatures themselves. Was it a signal to attack? Who had made it? Many other questions filled his mind, but there was no time for any of them. The first attackers had reached the island and were swarming ashore.
The priest’s first instinct had been correct: get away from the lagoon and meet the frog creatures on dry land. They ran awkwardly, half-hopping, half-scuttling, and were obviously far less at ease with solid dirt under their great, webbed toes than with the swamp ooze or water. Still, there were many of them and only four of the travelers. But now Hiero had lapsed into the cold killing fit of his Abbey training. Defeat was not even a consideration. Luchare got the first one. Her long lance, the extendible javelin Hiero had taken from the Unclean priest, licked out, and a frog-thing’s throat opened in scarlet. A shower of the barbed bone spears came whistling and everyone ducked. One struck Hiero full on the breast and he gasped. It had hardly penetrated the skin! The amphibian Leemutes were no spearmen. Apparently their skinny arms were not shaped for throwing. Even so, though this was a boost to morale, quickly communicated to the others, there were apparently hundreds of the ugly creatures swarming up the gentle slope from the water. And they will be getting harder to see. Hiero thought, for the light was now fading fast.
But again, the things’ own physical characteristics worked against them! As the light died, they became more, not less, visible! A strange, spectral glow emanated from their dank, squamous skins, and they were thus outlined in their own luminescence. A weird and frightening sight, no doubt, but not to trained fighters, and by this time Luchare was one too!
Klootz! Hiero sent. To me!
The big morse had been guarding the left flank while the bear held the right, keeping his ground and scything with his great antlers at any Leemute who ventured near. They were afraid of him, and few of them tried that side.
Now he lunged forward between Hiero and Luchare and, at a word, crouched. Both swung up into the big saddle, one spear couched to the left, the other to the right.
“Charge!” the priest shouted. Around the island, you big clown, sent his mind. Clean up on them! Follow us, Gorm!
Hiero had suddenly seen the best, indeed the only, method of attack. Once the strange characteristics of the frog-things became apparent, it was obvious. Individually no menace, they yet swarmed in such numbers that they might pull down an immobile foe if allowed to. But if attacked, and on solid earth where their weak land legs made them doubly vulnerable, things might be different!
The giant bull morse was a creature such as they had never seen, and he was almost invulnerable to their feeble darts, which could barely do more than annoy him. The low bushes and the few trees were no impediment to his charge at all, and he simply tore through the glow of the crowding frog creatures as if they were not there. Their gaping mouths, rimmed with needle fangs, opened voicelessly in terror and rage. But save for the stamping, snorting, and grunts of the morse, the growling of the bear, and the gasps of the humans, the strange battle was fought in utter silence. Even as he thrust savagely with his spear, Hiero wondered at the creatures. He had been able to detect no mental activity at all, and since they seemed voiceless, how on earth did the creatures communicate? Twice around the islet they charged, scattering havoc through their phosphorescent foes.
Suddenly, they had won, at least for the present. With no signal that either human could see or hear, a scuttling, shambling rush back to the lagoon began. One instant they were surrounded by a hideous, glowing pack of nightmare demons; the next, innumerable blobs of living light were ebbing away to the water’s edge. Even as Hiero signaled a halt, he observed that the dead and wounded were being taken too. Probably to eat, he thought sourly, unwilling to concede any decent values to the squattering Leemutes.
“They’re gone,” Luchare breathed, bloody lance resting across the saddlebow in front of her.
“Yes, but not very far; look!”
The island now was surrounded by a ring of cold fire! The amphibian horde lay in the water, aboard their reed boats or simply floating; it was hard to tell in the dark. But one thing was obvious: they were not going away. “I think they’ll be back all right, come first light probably,” the priest continued. “Anyone hurt here?” Are you all right, Gorm? Klootz, any wounds?
Klootz shook his great antlers angrily. Drops of dark, evil-smelling blood flew back and caught his two riders in the face.
“Phew! I guess you’re all right too?”
The man and woman dismounted and stood looking through the night at the weird cordon of light for a moment.
“Come on,” Hiero said at length. “Let’s clean our weapons and get some food into us. Then we can rest again. I’ll take first watch. I’ve almost finished my crossbow, and I want to start to cut and trim some quarrels and bolts. The moon’s rising again, and there should be enough light.”
“I’m not staying asleep while you work!” his young lady stated flatly. “Maybe we can finish both of the bows between us.”
The love and trust in her voice caused a pang deep in Hiero’s breast. He had not admitted how forlorn it all looked, even to himself. What could the morning bring but another attack, one in overwhelming numbers this time? His ideas about completing the crossbows were only to avoid having to face the inevitable. Ringed by water and countless aquatic foes, what help could they count on in escaping? None.
A true Killman never gives up, said one part of his training. A priest trusts in God, said another. You’ve been stuck before; look at Manoon, now, said a third. He laughed, a quick, short bark, and Luchare looked curiously at him. But she said nothing. She was learning that her strange lover was a man of moods.
“All right,” he said, “let’s get busy, then. Our two fur people can keep watch.”
It must have been well after midnight when Hiero suddenly stiffened, his sensitive hands pausing, immobile over their work of cutting vanes for the crossbow bolts. A strange mental signal had come to him. Something inimical moved in the night, but behind a shield he could not penetrate. Yet he was conscious of it coming, like a menacing cloud, which still conceals whatever lies within its heart.
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