Hiero met no one and sensed nothing on the way to the little-used corridor from which he had come, but he was nonetheless nervous. A feeling was growing that somehow he had been detected. Once into the corridor, he quickened his pace, moving at a dog trot. All of Manoon seemed unconscious of his escape, but that feeling persisted.
The passage floor grew rougher, the jagged walls dripping cold water now and then, and the fluors were set even further apart.
This was a path to a seldom-used exit, one originally designed in the far past to serve as an emergency escape route in the event Manoon should suffer a siege. When Hiero had ransacked the now dead master’s mind, this way had been the one which the Unclean himself had regarded as the most secret and the least likely to be either searched or guarded.
The passage floor now began to slope upward at a light angle, which reassured Hiero, who had been wondering if he had made a mistake. But the floor was even rougher, and bits of rubble and even a few large rocks littered it. Also, it twisted, cutting down the dim light of the occasional fluors even more. His pace slowed to a walk.
The priest paused. Had he caught another faint sound, the rattle of a stone far to his rear? Once again he “swept” the airwaves for an Unclean human’s presence and detected nothing. If anything, a rat or some other vermin, he decided and went on. No human mind stirred in the fortress.
At length the passage straightened. It ran up now at a fairly steep angle, and a tiny gleam of light far away heralded its end. Encouraged, the Metz loped on, breathing evenly. He was beginning to feel the strain of all the mental effort, even more than the physical exertion, but he still had reserves to draw on.
He had passed the last dusty fluor and gone into the darkness beyond when the rattling scrape of claws on stone made him turn, freeing the heavy sword-knife and dagger together from the folds of the robe as he did.
One fluor’s light beyond the near one, a great dark bulk filled the tunnel from side to side, rolling along at a terrifying speed. At the same time, realizing somehow that he had been detected, the monster gave forth with a ghastly ululating bellow which filled the tunnel with deafening noise.
Chee-Chowk! Somehow the giant Howler had sensed Hiero’s escape and tracked him down. And the priest’s watch for Unclean human minds had made him forget they too had allies who thought in a different band altogether! But there was no time for self-recrimination.
As the Leemute passed under the last fluor just in front of him, Hiero caught the glint of the cleaverlike weapon the filthy thing carried in one great paw. Then the priest attacked.
He had transferred his sword, letting it droop from his dagger, or left hand, while he stooped and then hurled a fist-sized piece of rubble as hard as he could, straight into the fang-lined maw which shrieked at him. Straight and hard went the missile, and the chunk of limestone smashed into the hideous mouth, silencing the cries on the instant and making the brute halt in sudden agony, pawing the air with his free hand.
Behind the rock raced Hiero himself, sword now in the right hand, dagger in the left, using the downward slope of the tunnel to lend force to his charge.
Chee-Chowk tried to raise his own weapon, but using the long dagger as a main gauche, the defensive poniard of the forgotten Cinquecento, the priest beat it aside and struck a terrible blow at that awful, bleeding face which reared above him. The short, heavy blade, backed with utter desperation, for Hiero had no doubt as to the ultimate outcome if he should miss, came cleaving straight between the staring, red eyes. It drove into the skull beyond and split it with a “chunk” sound, as when a man splits a heavy tree knot with an axe.
That was all. The Howler’s giant body fell slowly forward, eyes glazed in death, and Hiero had to twist himself sideways to avoid being crushed. Even so, his sword was wrenched from his weakening grip, so deeply was it embedded in the head of his monstrous foe.
There was silence, broken only by the priest’s panting breath. As soon as he could think again, he tried to tear loose his sword and, while doing so, to use his brain to see if any general alarm had been given. But he could detect nothing. No mental clamor, no alert, nothing at all. The minds he was able to spot-check back in the main fortress were unconcerned, set only upon their own routine business. S’duna still lay in drugged slumber, a prey to evil visions.
Finally, Hiero tugged his weapon loose, and stooping, wiped it more or less clean on the dirty fur of the Leemute. He stood looking down at the huge bulk, whose muscular spasms went on despite death. “A pity, Chee-Chowk,” he mused aloud. “Perhaps if decent men had raised you, you’d have been just another kind of man, not a foul, night-haunting ogre.” Moved by the tragedy of the Leemute’s mere existence, he said a brief prayer and then turned and resumed his march up the tunnel. Already he could smell the fresh breezes over the dank airs of the tunnel and the stench of the dead Howler.
The light was much further than it looked, however, and it was more time than he cared to lose before he climbed the ramp to the end of the tunnel. His legs now really ached, and he had a strong feeling that a Chee-Chowk one-year-old would have been too much for him.
The emergency exit from the buried world of the Unclean was not barred by any door. The tunnel walls made a double zigzag, that was all, so that no one could see out or in, The last portion of the zag was a narrowing slit, through which one squeezed.
The Metz priest peered out cautiously. He had to shade his eyes, even though the sun was setting, until they grew accustomed to the normal light of the outside world. The bolt hole from which he peered was set high up, on the left arm of the bay to which the ship had come bearing him as a prisoner. He now faced east, and the light of the setting sun was coming from above and behind him. While Underground, he had come a long way out onto one arm of the two which guarded the harbor of Manoon.
Down a tumbled slope of rock and scree, on which nothing grew, the harbor lay before him. The few ships still rested silently at anchor, including the thin black craft which had captured him. A slight chop stirred the waters of the harbor, and looking to his left, the entrance, he could see whitecaps outside where a brisk breeze was blowing. And he could see something else.
There was only one wharf, the one to which he had been taken, below the road up to the castle. The castle glowered at him across the silent harbor and the bare rock which surrounded its walls. The gate was shut. No one paced the walls and no sound came from the edifice.
But just to the right of where Hiero now crouched, a path led down to a tiny cove with a bare shingle of pebble beach. Spread out upon this were a couple of fishing nets, and near them two small wooden boats were drawn up on the shore, held by anchors tossed up into the rocks at the end of their ropes. The priest decided that the rulers of the Dead Isle occasionally wanted fresh fish and made some of their servants go out and get it. Whatever the reason for those boats, they represented a chance. Their oars were plainly visible, simply shipped inside, and one of them even had a collapsible mast lying across its thwarts, a sail wrapped tightly about it.
Hiero had been maintaining a watch on the massed minds of the castle and its underground world. Still nothing stirred. Chee-Chowk apparently had followed his intended prey alone, not wishing to share what he no doubt thought of as a free dinner! But this could end at any time. Nevertheless, he decided to wait. The light was failing rapidly now, and it must be very close to sundown.