[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

Klootz stood silently dripping and the exhausted bear lay panting off to one
side, Hiero considered tactics. The glade was perhaps a hundred yards wide at
its tip by the brook. It was roughly shaped like a half-moon, and the forest
edge at its center was two hundred feet from the water. He urged the morse on
until Klootz now stood almost exactly in the clearing's center, back to the
trees, but fifty feet away from them, so that nothing could use the trees as
cover to leap upon them from behind. Hiero reached into his saddlebag and
extracted his beryllium-copper helmet, round and unomamented, save for the
cross and sword on the forepeak. It fitted over his cap and was his sole piece
of armor. He put it on and tried to catch the minds of their pursuers. He
found blind, ravening appetite, more than one, coming fast, unreachable at any
level he could influence!
Man and morse waited, alert and ready. They had done all they could. Gorm was
silent now also, hidden somewhere in the black shadows and ready to pounce if
possible.
They had not long to wait. The blackness of the dying night was still almost
totally unrelieved when from up the shallow stream, the way they had followed,
came the sounds of splashing water and many clawed feet striking on rocks.
Sensing rather than actually seeing their attackers, the Killman-priest
twisted the heads of the two objects he had been holding and hurled them away,
one to the right and one to the left. As they hit the ground, the two flares
burst into life and a white, incandescent glow iullumined the whole area.
At once, Hiero saw that he and his animal allies had made a basic if
unavoidable, error in traveling down the stream and keeping to the water. The
five sleek, sinister shapes poised at
46 HlERO'S JOURNEY
the brook's edge resembled grossly enlarged mink or some other water weasels
quite enough to indicate that a river bed was the last place in which anyone
ought to try to elude them. No wonder they came so fast, Hiero thought as the
momentary surprise of the lights froze the creatures in place.
Their undershot, sharklike jaws and vicious teeth glistened in the light as
they blinked their beady eyes and then recovered. Each one. from wet muzzle to
long tailtip, was at least ten feet and could hardly have weighed any less
than a full-grown man. Collars of bluish metal glinted and betrayed their
wearers' allegiance, even as they scuttled out of the water and rushed to the
attack, snarling as they came.
Hiero fired the thrower and dropped it all in one motion. It took too long to
reload, and these things were coming too fast. But the tiny rocket went true.
The leading animal, head hit, simply blew up in a burst of orange fire, and
the one next to it writhed aside, screaming shrilly and dragging a broken leg.
As the other three paused, shaken by the explosion and the death of the
leader, Klootz charged with a bellow of fury. Spear couched,.Hiero gripped the
bull's barrel, ready to strike.
The wounded fury could not escape, and the morse's pile-driver front hooves
crushed its life out in a terrible, smashing blow. Another one, leaping
straight up at Hiero, took the heavy spear in its throat, right up to the
crossbars. The savage brute fell back, choking on its own blood, and Hiero let
the spear go with it, whipping out his heavy sword-knife as he did so.
The remaining two fell back for an instant, but for true musteiids, like all
weasels, the thought of retreat never occurred to them. Separating, their
grinning masks of fury showing the white fangs, they attacked like streaks of
dark, undulating lightning, leaping at the rider and not the mount, and from
two sides at once.
Fortunately for Hiero, he had worked out such a development with Klootz many
times over on the Abbey's training fields. Automatically, the bull took the
opponent to his left and paid no attention to the other, leaving that one to
his master.
Rising in the saddle, Hiero cut down at the upthrust, rapid head in one
terrible chopping blow: The solid bite of the ancient blade could be felt all
the way up to his powerful shoulder. The giant weasel-thing was dead before it
hit the ground, its narrow skull cloven almost in half.
IN THE BEGINNING
47
But even as he recovered, the man felt a terrible pain in his left leg.
Overconfident, Klootz had underestimated the speed of his enemy. Even as his
great hoof had come dashing down, the last of the hunting pack had swerved
aside and altered its spring in midair. A slash at Hiero's calf had opened the
flesh almost to the bone, and he swayed in the saddle from shock as the animal
leaped away.
The bull was not to be taken twice this way. Knowing his rider and master was
hurt sent him stark mad, but with a cold fury. He advanced slowly on the
surviving hunter, rocking gently from side to side, grotesquely mimicking the
way a playful fawn minces up to another baby opponent.
A fury to the end, the last servant of the Unclean sprang from a crouch, again
at the drooping rider and not the morse. But KJootz, now on guard, was not
deceived by the supple, twisting spring. A great, cloven hoof shot straight
out, and the lashing blow caught the leaping death squarely in its
midsec-tion. There was an audible crack, and the next instant, the
sleek-furred monster was writhing on the grass with a broken back. Not for
long. In one savage rush, the infuriated bull morse trampled the creature into
a pulp, even while it still snapped and tried to sink its teeth into its giant
foe.
Hiero hung limply in the saddle while the morse lowered his own great body
gently to the ground so that the man could dismount. The priest wobbled off
Klootz's back and collapsed against one of the bull's huge, sweaty sides,
breathing hard and trying to keep from fainting. Finally he looked up and saw
the anxious face of Gorm looking at him from a few feet away.
/ was ready but it was too quick, came from the strange mind. Can I help?
No, Hiero sent. / must bandage/cure myself. Watch for any danger while I do
so. The bear padded off and left him.
Painfully, the priest removed his slashed leather boot, now full of blood, and
examined the wound. It appeared clean, but any animal bite ought to be dressed
quickly. He fumbled in the saddlebags, conscious of waves of blackness
hovering over his pain-racked mind. The flares had gone out long since, but
they had served their purpose. Dawn light was flooding into the clearing, and
the chirping of the awakening birds seemed ironic after the blaze of sudden
death, which had heralded the morning, and the five grim shapes on the
reddened grass.
48 HlERO'S JOURNEY
Hiero finally got the medicine kit out and gingerly spread the healing salve
thickly over the long, bleeding wound. He next bandaged it as tightly as he
could. It probably needed stitching, but in his present condition he simply
wasn't up to it. When he was sure he had done all he could, he gulped a
Lucinoge tablet. The mind expander was also a narcotic of sorts, and as he
sank into slumber he could feel his rriuscles relax. His last thought was a
mild worry that something or someone might take over his mind while he was
unconscious. Then he remembered no more. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]