For some time, Gorm moved at a steady pace which was no more than a good walk for the bull morse. The warrior-priest kept a keen watch. A veteran woodsman, he noted that he and his mount were being led over underlying granite spines of firm ground and also that the woods were very quiet. The great forest of Kanda, where undisturbed, was full of life, in the trees, on the ground, and even in the air. Now the land was silent. No squirrels chattered at the travelers, birds were few and shy, and not a trace of the larger creatures, such as deer, was to be seen. In the windless hush of the late summer afternoon, the almost noiseless progress of the three yet sounded very loud in Hiero’s ears. A sense of oppression was in his mind, almost of pressure from outside, as if the atmosphere itself had somehow grown denser.
Hiero crossed himself. This strange silence and spiritual oppression were not normal and could only come from the forces of darkness, from the Unclean, or some lair of theirs.
Abruptly, Gorm stopped. Through some signal that even his owner could not catch, the giant morse was given an order. Instantly, he too stopped and just as instantly lay down, crouching beside a great pile of deadfalls. Klootz weighed just a trifle under a ton, but he sank to his knees with the grace of a dancer and without a sound. Ten feet in front of the morse’s moist and pendulous nose, the bear crouched, peering around a bush. On the neck of the morse, Hiero too lay stretched out, peering forward and trying to see what had alarmed their guide so.
All three were looking down into a broad, shallow hollow in the land, thinly planted with seedling alders and low brash. As they watched, from the tall forest on the other side of the dip and well to their right, a column of a dozen or so figures emerged.
Hiero had thought he was familiar with many types of Leemute, the Man-rats and Hairy Howlers, the Were-bears (which were not bears at all), the Slimers, and several others besides. But these were new and, like all Leemutes, unpleasant to look at. They were short, no more than four feet tall on the average but very broad and squat, and walked erect on their hind legs, their bushy tails dragging behind. They were completely covered with long, dripping, oily-looking fur of a yellow-brown hue, and their beady-eyed faces were pointed and evil. It would have been hard to trace their ancestry back to a genetic accident in a wolverine family after The Death, even for a contemporary expert, and Hiero simply catalogued them as a new and dangerous breed. For they had actual hands, and their rounded heads and gleaming eyes indicated intelligence of a high if nasty order. They wore no clothing, but each carried a long-handled wooden club, in the head of which was set glittering fragments of obsidian. A wave of evil purpose went before them like a cloud of gas as they moved one behind the other, in a curious hopping gait, which still covered the ground at a good speed. Every few feet, the leader stopped to sniff the air and then dropped to all fours to check the earth, while the others peered about on every side. The three on the knoll above them froze into immobility, trying not to breathe. The evil Furhoppers, as Hiero promptly named them, were perhaps two hundred yards off and, if they continued their present course, would pass down over the shallow slope of the bowl and up the other side, moving off to the left of the three’s position. But when the line of crouching figures reached the center of the depression, it halted. Hiero tensed, one hand instinctively reaching for his reliquary and the poison it contained. For another figure had appeared and was advancing on the Furhoppers.
It was apparently a tall man, garbed in a long cloak of a dark gray, which was closely wrapped around him and showed only his sandaled feet. His hood was thrown back, and his naked, hairless head was revealed in the rays of the evening sun. His skin was so pale as to appear deadwhite, and his eyes were a shifting color, impossible to see at this distance. On the right breast of his cloak was a spiral symbol, also difficult to see, etched in a dark scarlet, of interwoven lines and circles. He seemed to carry no visible weapons, but an aura of both spiritual power and cold menace radiated from him, as the chill of a great iceberg goes out from it to warn seafarers.
This was an extraordinary chance, for good or ill, and Hiero knew it. The Unclean had been rumored and more than rumored for centuries to have human directors, a race of men totally given over to evil and wizardry. On several occasions such people had been reportedly glimpsed directing attacks on Abbey convoys or settlements, but the information was vague and contradictory. On two occasions, however, men had been killed trying to penetrate the secret training rooms and guarded files of Abbey Central in Sask. Each time, the bodies of the slain had almost instantly dissolved into piles of corruption, leaving nothing to be investigated, save for ordinary clothing, which might have been acquired anywhere. But in each case, the Abbey guardians and priests had been warned by mental alarms of the spirit, not of the flesh, and in each case the man—or entity—had penetrated through many men on guard who recalled seeing nothing. This creature before him now could only be one of these mysterious men who were thought to rule the Unclean. No normal man, not even an outlaw, would or could associate with a foul pack such as this, and yet, as the man strode to them, the savage creatures cringed aside in evident fear.
The leader of the Fur creatures, crouching low, came up to the man and the two moved a little apart, while the others milled restlessly about, grunting and whining in low tones. Hiero could see that man’s lips move and the yellow fangs of the Furhopper chief flash in answer. They were actually talking, not using mind speech, one to the other! Even as he inwardly shrank in loathing from the whole gang, the scientist in Hiero could not help applauding the feat. With normal speech, there would be no betraying mental currents, such as made him afraid to address Klootz more than was absolutely necessary and had caused the bear to impress mental silence upon them.
Now, the conversation apparently over, the man seemed to dismiss the pack of hideous creatures and, turning about, simply walked away in the direction from which he had come. This was to the south and east. The Furhoppers surrounded their leader, who snarled something out which silenced them. In a moment they had formed their line again and were tramping the dead leaves back on the way they had come, which was from the west.
As the gray-cloaked man disappeared in one direction and the Furhoppermutes in the other, all three creatures on the edge of the bowl relaxed a little. But no one used mind, speech; they simply sat quietly and waited.
After what must have been a good half hour, Gorm the bear slowly rose and stretched. He looked around at Klootz and his rider, sending no message, but his meaning was plain. The big morse arose as silently as he had lain down, and from his vantage high on the great back, Hiero surveyed the silent forest before them.
The setting sun slanted down through the pines and maples and lit the patchy undergrowth in flashes of vivid green, turning various piles of dead leaves into russet and gold. Ancient logs glowed with color as green moss and gray lichen were caught in the last patches of sunlight. How beautiful the land is, the priest reflected, and yet how full of evil under its loveliness.
But Gorm was all business, and as he lurched down into the hollow, Klootz followed him, his great forked hooves making no more sound in the leaves than a mouse would have.
To Hiero’s alarm, the small bear was headed for the exact spot on the far side of the depression into which the sinister person in the cloak had gone. While desperately anxious to know more about this dark being and his purposes, Hiero did not want a direct encounter with him. His mission, far to the East, came first above all else. He dared not send a mental message, not with the enemy so close about them that the sense of mental oppression was still a weight on his spirit, and he could think of no way to halt, or redirect, the bear except by physical means.