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mental picture of a small stream a hundred yards off came to the man, and he
rose and followed Klootz, who was ambling that way.
In twenty minutes, all had washed, eaten, and were ready for their new day's
travel. Hiero ruefully checked hispemeekan supply. The way Gorm ate, it would
be gone in no time and they would have to stop and hunt. This, aside from
carrying an unnecessary extra element of danger, would further delay them.
Gorm caught his thought, which was unguarded. Try and save the sweet food, he
sent. / can find much of my own. Once again, the brains and unselfishness of
the strange creature who had appeared in his life out of nowhere made Hiero
blink.
Hiero next rubbed Klootz down with a double handful of thick moss. He felt
guilty for having left the big animal saddled and packed all night, but the
morse seemed none the worse for it, and a roll in the little brook, which sent
water cascading up the banks, put him in fine fettle.
The sun was now fully up and the forest was alive with sound and movement.
Birds were everywhere, and as they began to travel, the priest glimpsed
startled deer and small rabbits, as well as a sounder of Grokon passing along
a distant aisle of the pines, even the striped young hoglets considerably
larger than Hiero himself.
Gorm, the night before, had attempted to explain the route he thought best to
follow. The man could only grasp parts of it, but he gathered that a
considerable marsh lay to the south and that it was necessary to cross it at
its narrowest place. The road on which he and Klootz had journeyed for the
last week was a place of great peril, watched by many unseen eyes. It
IN THE BEGINNING
37
was only luck that the two had come so far undisturbed, for no people had used
that road in a long time, or if they had, they had not lived to go very far
upon it. On no account must they return to it for any reason. The fact that so
few human beings traveled alone through the wild might have dulled the
watchfulness of the Unclean and allowed morse and man to come as far as they
had. But now, surely the whole area would be on guard. And when the slain
wizard was inevitably discovered, they could expect a hue and cry of massive
proportions indeed to be set on foot by the enemy, so Gorm indicated. Once
again, mind speech was to be halted, or at least understood by man and bear to
be held to a minimum.
They had gone perhaps three hours from the night's resting place when they
received proof that they were not to journey undisturbed and unsought. The
three were fording a shallow brook when Hiero felt the morse stiffen under him
and at the same time saw the young bear come erect on the bank just ahead. A
second later, his own, less alert senses were assaulted. He had never felt
anything quite like it before. It was as if something strange clawed for his
mind. A savage, questing force somehow probed at his inner being. He drew on
all his own years of training and managed to make no response, keeping the
pressure and the call, for there was an element of that too, away, repelling
it by not acknowledging it. For what seemed like a long minute and was
probably very little time, a mere instant, the searching presence seemed to
hover over him in an almost physical way; then it moved on. He knew it had
gone on elsewhere, but he was not absolutely sure he had managed to deceive or
deflect it. He looked first at Gorm and in turn saw the bear's weak little
eyes fixed on him.
Something bad hunts, came the message. / was (only) a bear. It left me and did
not (see) me.
I (think) // missed me, Hiero sent. And Klootz also, for it is not hunting
four-footed animals, at least not yet.
There will be other things (like the) evil fur things of yesterday, came the
bear's thought. This forest is full of many creatures who (serve/hunt for) the
evil power. Many of them go on four legs and have good noses.
The priest found less and less trouble understanding the bear. The whole
exchange, plus a new decision, now to utilize the stream, was over in a split
second.
38 HIERO'S JOURNEY
All day long, they followed the brook, for it was little more, down its
winding path. As much as possible, they stayed actually in the water, so as to
leave as few tracks as possible. The force or entity which had tried.to locate
them did not reveal itself further. They saw fewer animals, though, and none
of the larger ones at all. Once a great, foot-long water beetle sought to bite
Gorm with its savage pincers, but he avoided it easily, and Klootz, following
close behind, brought a great, flattening hoof squarely down upon its armored
back. Very few of the giant insects bred from The Death's radiation were much
of a menace, since they tended to be slow-moving and clumsy.
They made an early camp on-an island. The stream which Hiero had not been able
to locate on his maps, probably because it was too small, broadened a little,
without getting more than two feet deep, and the little, willow-hung islet
might have been designed for them.
While the bear went shambling off in search of food and Klootz, now unsaddled,
wrenched succulent water plants from the stream bed, the man ate a frugal
supper of biscuit and pemeekan while he tried to analyze what he had learned
in the last few days. There was sunlight still, and Hiero had camped early
because he needed light. He wanted very much to examine the various articles
he had taken from the dead man, and this was the first opportunity.
The metal rod came first. A little less than an inch thick and about a foot
long, of a very hard, bluish substance, not unlike patinated bronze, at first
sight it looked unomamented. A closer look showed Hiero that four liny knobs,
set in a curved line, were sticking out of the sides. Hesitantly, he pushed
one. At once an extension of the rod's other end began. The thing was a
cylinder, with many tubes beautifully fitting one inside the other. While
Hiero watched, it extended itself until it was a slender wand about five feet
long. He pushed the same button again and it began to retract into itself once
more. He stopped it by pushing it a third time. Next, he tried another button,
the central one of the three. Two flat, ovat discs on the end of two delicate
arms emerged from the supposedly featureless rod, and each stopped at a
six-inch distance away from the rod, forming a prong set at right angles to
the rod's body. Hiero turned the rod over and examined it from every angle,
but he could not
IN THE BEGINNING 39
fathom the purpose of the discs. He raised the rod's lower end to eye level to
examine the discs better, but they were featureless. He tried to look at the
rod's body again, while holding it upright, but he forgot the discs on their
arms and they banged into his forehead, just over his eyes. Annoyed with
himself, he slarted to lower them when suddenly he stopped and gently put them
back where they had been. They fit! Exciled, he held the rod upright and
extended it to its fullest length, keeping the two ovals on their extensions
clamped to his forehead. He was now beginning lo gel an idea of what he held,
and with greal care, he slowly pressed the third tiny knob.
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