Hiero's Journey hd-1

by Sterling E. Lanier

  Captain Gimp chose this moment to try a maneuver of his own. He bawled an order, and the two big lateen sails slatted as the wheel spun and Foam Girl came up into the wind, pointing as high as she was able to. Instantly the ship’s motion changed into a steep up-and-down chop as she began to attack the waves instead of riding with them, as she had done on the previous reach. She now was heading almost due west, seeming to charge the gray clouds racing down from the northwest.

  “Square-rigger’s no good at pointing,” Gimp shouted to his passengers as they clung to the heaving rail. “Maybe we can get above him.” He was seeking the protection of the wind itself, trying to move Foam Girl closer to the wind than the enemy vessel. The wind would provide an invisible barrier if the trick could be worked.

  It could not. The great, lean hull of their pursuer came around beautifully in line with their stern. The square yards, tiny figures scrambling along the yardarms, lay almost fiat, and the trysails and stunsails set fore and aft between the mast now showed as they took the weight of the wind. With the help of these sails and a huge gaff spanker on the mizzenmast, the big stranger began to overtake them even more easily than before, for her hull’s length and height out of the water made far less of the steep wave action than the little Foam Girl.

  “She’s really unprintably lovely,” Captain Gimp shouted in admiration. The squat sailor instinctively responded to the beauty of the other vessel’s design, even though it might mean his own destruction. He bawled another order and Foam Girl paid off, back on her old course to the southeast, with the wind in her quarter. At least this way she did not have to fight the seas as well, but could ride them. Behind her, close enough to see her black hull lift and the white bow wave, the pursuer came back too. She was less than half a mile away. A white figurehead, looking like a woman’s body, glistened with wetness.

  Can you do anything? the Metz asked Brother Aldo, once again mind-to-mind.

  I am seeking what large water creatures are found here, was the old man’s answer. So far, I have found nothing. But I sense motion not far away. However, it is uncertain, and I need a little time. Can you reach one of the archers you spoke of, or are you too tired? Any delay will help.

  “I thought so!” Gimp shouted. His one-eyed mate had come and whispered something to him before slinking back to his control of the lower deck.

  “Bald Roke is the man we have to deal with,” the captain continued. “We can’t be taken alive. His crew are cannibals and worse.” Luchare wondered to herself how you got “worse” but said nothing. “That ship’s The Ravished Bride, and she’s manned by men, and other things, worse than any afloat. Bald Roke would skin his own sister alive for two coppers and a belly laugh. A good sailor, though, rot his dirty bowels, and that ship’s a bloody marvel.”

  Hiero only half-heard him. Once again he was seeking the unguarded minds of the enemy. He passed two non-human minds, one a Howler’s, the other something new to him, and then found what he was seeking. In a lower crosstree crouched an archer armed with a crossbow, his gaze sweeping the deck as he watched for any sign of mutiny or other dangerous behavior. Hiero did not seek his name or anything else. With the utmost of mental strength he had left, he simply went after the man’s own nerve endings, using the captive forebrain like a pair of pliers. The archer screamed in horror as his weapon rose to aim at the Bride’s helmsman despite his passionate attempt to force it down.

  Once again, Hiero failed, though not by much. The bow went off and the quarrel sped on its way to bury itself in human flesh. But not the helmsman’s. Instead, the bolt drove into the brain of a man standing nearby. At the same time, the archer himself died as three arrows and a thrown spear struck him in turn. Hiero clearly saw the captain of the enemy, who gave the order, through the archer’s fading sight, even as the man pitched from his lofty seat into the heaving sea. Tall, gaunt to emaciation, dressed in fantastic orange velvet, covered with jewels, his brown skull gleaming in the half-light, Bald Roke was a strange and repellent figure. His thin, clean-shaven face was disfigured by a scar running across it at the bridge of his nose, a crooked weal marking some past scuffle. Hiero felt him staring even as the priest withdrew from the dying body of his unwilling ally. Something else he saw too. Around the enemy leader’s neck was a heavy chain of familiar bluish metal, and from it hung a massive, square pendant of the same, almost a shallow box. This was the source of the other’s protection, the priest knew, a mechanical mind shield. He felt even wearier as he opened his own eyes again. Was there no weapon he could command against the hidden skills of the Unclean adepts?

  But he was, mercifully, given no time to waste on self-pity.

  “In the name of Blessed Saint Francis the Ecologist, they come!” Brother Aldo shouted. “Behold the children of the great waters!”

  As he spoke, Captain Gimp ordered Foam Girl again into the wind and simultaneously had the sails lowered. They came down with a crash, and ail ran to the starboard rail to gaze at the new arrivals.

  Protruding from the water between the two vessels, for The Ravished Bride now also came up into the wind and brailed her sails also, were two great heads. For a moment Hiero did not realize what he was seeing, and then he gasped, for they were birds, although of monstrous size. The sleek, giant bodies were almost invisible under the tossing waters, but each was at least two-thirds the length of the Foam Girl herself. The beautiful heads and thick necks were not, apparently, feathered, but almost scaled and a lovely, soft green. The titanic beaks were straight, rounded javelins, each at least twelve feet long. The great, bright eyes darted nervously about from one ship to the other, but the enormous invisible paddles kept the two avian monsters in place, responsive to the old Elevener’s will.

  “I won’t have them attack if we can scare the other ship off,” Brother Aido said to the priest. “Even the Lowan are not invulnerable, and that ship is full of weapons,”

  For a moment the two vessels hung, bowsprits to the wind, while the crews simply stared at one another and the birds, each seeming to wait for the other to take some action. Then a human voice, speaking batwah, rose above the wind and carried easily over the two hundred feet of foaming water.

  “Ahoy, there, is that you, Gimp, you little tub of rat puke? Speak up, lardguts, if you’re not afraid to.”

  Bald Roke, his orange suit glittering even in the gray light of the cloudy sky, hung rakishly from one of his ratlines, leering across at the Foam Girl. As he shouted, his crew exploded in a storm of laughter and obscene jeers, glad to have a relief from the strain of watching the great birds, whose appearance seemed sheer magic to them.

  “I’m here, Roke, you dirty corpse-eater!” Gimp yelled in reply. “Better get your carrion barge out of here before we turn our little friends loose on it!”

  “Will you indeed?” Roke said, smiling” gently. He seemed to ignore the giant birds, and Hiero silently gave him credit for possessing his share of nerve, Roke went on.

  “Tell you what, fatty, I think whoever runs these two pretty chickens would have turned ’em loose already, that is, if he dared. What do you think of that, now?” Again his crew screamed in delight, and a sea of edged weapons was brandished as they did. Moke waved one skinny hand and they quieted instantly.

  “We could take you, birdies and all, you little blubber bag, but it might cost me some paint,” the pirate continued, staring hard at the silent group on the poop of Foam Girl. “So, being inclined for fun, I’ll make you an offer, a generous one. Give us the dirty-looking rat with the paint on his nose and the whiskers, and the girl. In return, you’re free to depart. What say you, short pizzie?”

  Gimp answered instantly, but not before spitting into the sea. “Go fry your crew of man-eaters in human grease, Roke. You’ll get nought from us. But you brag, don’t you, about how tough you are, skinhead? I dare you to fight me for a free passage, under Inland Seas Truce, man against man, hand weapons of choice. What do you say to that, you bony bag of slave girl’s gauds?” This time i
t was the Foam Girl’s crew who shouted and brandished weapons, while the Bride’s crew were silenced. The wonderful birds still held their place, as if they were mere ducks on some farm pond, Hiero thought absently.

  After a brief colloquy with two of his subordinates, Roke swung back into the rigging, a vicious look on his face, the smile gone.

  “All right, you little blot of slime weed, I take you. Anchor, and so will I. But not us two alone, see. Me and one of my mates will meet you and that brown-skinned savage with the painted face. Otherwise no go, and I gives the order to attack. What do you say now, turdhead?”

  “They’re determined on you, Master Desteen,” Captain Gimp said in a low voice. “They want you somehow, and what’s more, Roke’ll risk his whole ship and crew to get you. Can you fight? Are you game?”

  “Try me,” Hiero said, slapping him on the back. In truth, he was tired, but he saw no way out of this. “Will these dirty rogues keep such a bargain if they lose?”

  “Oh, yes!” Gimp was shocked. “Even the worst sea scum will honor a Seas Truce for single combat. Oh, yes, have no fear. But Roke is a notable fighter. And who knows whom he’ll bring with him? We’d better get ready.” Captain Gimp turned and waved assent to Roke, who left the rigging at once.

  Hiero now saw a ship’s boat launched from The Ravished Bride; and while Gimp armed himself, he explained that the challenging vessel was always the scene of the combat.

  “We have nought to lose,” he went on. “All of the others will be slaves if we two are killed. But at least not killed and eaten. And if we win, we get their cargo or a good part of it; all we can carry, at any rate.”

  Luchare helped Hiero strip to his pants and soft boots. Daughter of soldier-kings, she said nothing and did not need to, but he could feel her body trembling through her hands. He knew she would not survive him by a minute, should he fall. Brother Aldo simply patted his hand and then turned away, back to his control of the birds.

  Hiero weighed his short sword. He then turned and, from a pile on deck, selected a heavy, square brass shield, curved from side to side, for his left arm. His poniard was thrust, unsheathed, into his belt. With his bronze helmet on, he was ready. Gimp was now stripped to his kilt and was barefoot as well. He bore no shield, but a long, gently curved sword, rather slender, something on the order of an immense saber, save that the point was slightly angled. It was designed, obviously, for both hands. His arms were very long and rippled with muscle as he waved the big sword delicately about. He no longer appeared comic, and his square jaw was set.

  The boat of the enemy grated alongside. Over the rail first came the bald head of the pirate captain, and behind him came his partner. Hiero shuddered inwardly. A Leemute, and one of unknown type! And it also wore a mind shield about its neck.

  The creature was as tall as a man and, Hiero realized, might really be descended from men. It wore only a short leather jerkin, but its natural skin was a mass of tiny, dull gray scales. It had no visible nose or ears, only holes in both places, and its dull eyes were lashless under massive, bony brows. In one powerful arm it carried a single-edged, heavy axe; in the other, a small shield. The crew shrank away from it.

  Bald Roke still wore his orange finery, and numerous rings glittered on his hands. Brooches and necklaces spangled his stained jacket, which had slashed sleeves for easy movement. He carried a slender, straight sword with a basket hilt and, in the other hand, a long, two-edged dagger.

  The men of Foam Girl now scattered to the extremes of bow and stern, with a good few hanging on to the ratlines, but all well out of sword stroke.

  “We fight around the ship, Skinny,” Gimp said, “up to the fore-peak line and back to these steps. No holds barred, no survivors. You get forward now, we’ll stay here. At my word we’ll start for each other, you and Corpseface there against me and my friend.”

  The creature with Roke snarled, displaying a mouthful of sharp, yellow fangs, but Roke laughed jeeringly.

  “Suits me, Low-pockets. But you and your mind-twisting magician here ain’t met a Glith before. Loaned to me, he was, by good friends up north and west of here. We’ll see how funny you think he is in a minute.”

  Hiero spoke for the first time, in a calm voice which nevertheless carried easily. “I know your fine friends, Captain Roke. They are among the living dead. The grave yawns for all of them and for this creature and for you as well.” His vibrant tone seemed to carry flat certainty.

  For a second, Roke appeared to pale. If the horrid thing with him, the Glith, was new to the company of Foam Girl, the Metz priest was equally so to him; and despite his new amulet’s protection, Roke was unsure of himself. But he was a hardy scoundrel and rallied.

  “Glad you found a voice, Whiskers. We’ll mark your pretty paint in a few seconds. Come on, Daleeth, let’s get forr-ard.”

  In a moment all was ready. The ship fell silent, save for the creak of timbers and straining cordage as her anchor line sawed the hawsehole. The two rogues who had rowed Roke and the Glith over clung to shrouds above the rail by their boat’s painter, eyes glittering with excitement. A sea bird called, far off, a faint, piercing cry.

  From his place to Hiero’s right, Gimp shouted, “Go!” and marched forward. The four, two and two, one to each bulwark, advanced cautiously toward one another. This care alone would have told anyone of experience that trained warriors were meeting. There would be no headlong rushes and novice blunderings here. All four of them knew their business.

  Hiero faced the Glith, and the two captains, tall and short, each other. They met on either side of the little cabin, almost exactly amidships. A vagrant gleam of sunshine momentarily pierced the racing clouds and illumined the foul creature’s axehead as it advanced, but aside from that, it was a thing of dead hues, gray-scaled skin, gray garment, and lustreless eyes. Yet it was alert, and every rippling muscle revealed power and agility. Nevertheless, it advanced slowly, very slowly. As it came cautiously on, Hiero heard the clash of metal to his left, where the other two had commenced. As any trained swordsman does, he watched fixedly his foe’s eyes for a sign of its intentions.

  Those eyes! Great, somber, empty pools, seeming to have no bottom. Even as he watched, they grew larger. Larger! The Glith was no more than a few yards away, its axe poised on its shoulder, shield lowered. And all Hiero could see were the eyes, the round, lightless caverns of emptiness, which seemed to swell and grow until all else faded. Far off, he heard a woman scream. Luchare! The eyes vanished, shrunk to normal size, and the consciousness of where he was returned. Almost too late!

  Reflex and training saved Hiero. The old, retired Ranger Sergeant who had first trained him had always stressed one point in the Abbey school of arms. Close in! “Look,” the old veteran had insisted, “always try to close in quick, particularly if your opponent looks better than you. There’s no monkey tricks with sword or spear at someone’s throat from two inches away, boys. Give luck and plain meanness a chance!”

  Hiero felt the wind of the heavy axe as he dived under it, not trying a blow, but simply shoving with his shield’s boss at the Glith’s body. Until he was ready and again unshaken, he wanted no more of those eyes!

  Hypnotism! No mind shield guarded against that! Roke, or perhaps the creature itself, had been very clever. Almost, Hiero had been lured into the axe, like a calf to the slaughter, helpless to avert the death stroke. Had not Luchare screamed, he would now be dead.

  He wrestled now with the scaled thing, his shield arm holding off its axe above him, its own shield keeping his sword arm locked in turn. It gave off a mephitic foulness, and its skin seemed to radiate a chill. Its hissing breath was a charnel stench, but he kept his head lowered to avoid the eyes. God, but it was strong!

  Hiero summoned all his own strength and simply shoved, at the same time springing backward. The axe fell again, but he was beyond its reach. For a second, he faced his enemy, panting slightly, watching the pointed chin and the shoulders, but never seeking the eyes. He crossed his sh
ield over so that it hid his body and lowered his short sword so that it hung at the end of his arm. Dimly, he was conscious of the clash of arms continuing on the other side of the cabin, but he kept his attention riveted on his foe. He heard Klootz bellow hideously, knowing his master was in peril, but he paid no heed.

  It advanced again, axe held high. Was it inviting a low thrust? he wondered. He had trouble breaking the habit of years and never looking at the enemy’s eyes, but somehow he managed it.

  Then the Glith charged. As it came, the axe came down in a sweeping stroke and Hiero sprang back, ready to spring in again as the axe struck the deck. He had fought few axemen, and it was almost the death of him for the second time. The Glith’s powerful arms straightened and the blade of the axe swung, cutting a sideways arc with all its speed undiminished, straight at Hiero’s knees.

  This time, instinct took over and the priest leaped straight up in the air. Even so, the follow-through of the Glith’s shield arm struck his thigh, a second after the axe itself hissed by under his feet. The impact sent him reeling backward. The downward heave of the deck now caught him dead wrong as he went, and he stumbled away, fighting for his feet, fetching up with a ringing crash against the mizzenmast. With a grating cry as hideous to the ears as its appearance was to the eyes, the Glith charged again, axe on high, clawed toes raking the planks of the deck.

  But Hiero had never quite left his feet, though now he was crouching. And this was the chance he had been waiting for. As the Glith leaped forward, the edge of the square brass shield, like some strange quoit, came spinning at its legs with all the force the Metz could put behind it. When he had crossed the shield over his torso moments before, Hiero had also freed the arm straps which held it, in preparation for just this maneuver.

  The skimming shield now took the brawny legs out from under the alien creature as neatly as if it had been tripped. The Glith crashed to the deck, prostrate, arms outfiung, its noseless visage striking the wood with an audible thud. Even as it struggled to rise, the heavy, short sword came down on its scaled head, splitting it as a crow splits a cobnut. There was a rush of dark matter, the great limbs twitched once, and then the foul life departed.