From down a well-trodden game trail, a great, black beast came quietly to the pool. He paused and surveyed the surroundings, his wide, flaring nostrils testing the air. Upon one shining haunch lay the still-bleeding marks of some savage claw. The mighty palmate antlers which crowned his huge head were stained and smeared with caked blood. Yet he did not look fearful in any way, only alert.
Eventually, he decided that the area was safe and slowly slid into the small pool until only his head protruded, the eyes always watching, the huge ears and blubber lips twitching at the slightest sound.
At length, with antlers and hide now clean and glistening, Klootz heaved his bulk from the far bank of the pool where the game trail continued on. As silently as he had come, he vanished down it—going north.
Hiero awoke and looked about him, then stretched and yawned. Another day had come. From his tree fork, he could see far over the savanna, his vision obscured only by other clumps of towering trees like his own. With each day of travel, the ground rose, and the trees grew thicker, but there were still wide spaces between them. He could see many drifting herds of game filtering here and there down the lanes. Most were antelope and related beasts which would spend the day in the bush, avoiding both insects and the runners who preyed upon them in the open. Others were returning to the grasslands after a visit to a water hole and a night of peril, the prey of grim hunters who struck them down as they drank.
Hiero leaned down from the branches and gave a low, echoing call. He had scanned the neighborhood and seen no sign of inimical life.
Presently an inquiring head peered over a tall bush; then the great hopper bounded into sight, as perky as if he had spent a night in his straw-filled stall.
The man climbed down and dug the saddle and other gear out of a thicket where he had cached them the evening before. He was always relieved that Segi was still alive when morning came.
“The fact is, my boy,” Hiero said, scratching between the long ears as the hopper leaned down and nuzzled him, “you are something of a problem. In fact, I wish you weren’t here at all. How’s that for gratitude, after all you’ve done for me, eh?” A long pink tongue swept over his face, and he spluttered and then laughed.
But he was only half-jesting. Segi’s safety was something that indeed did worry him, and he could see nothing much that he could do about it. It was all very well for the man to climb into a tree at night, but Segi, bred for the great plains, had no such defense during the dark hours. There was still a good deal of open ground around them, but with each dawn it grew less as they neared the hills. With the encroachment of the forest, it was going to be harder and harder for Segi to look after himself at night, with the wood alive with hungry maws. A hopper’s only defense lay in his nose, ears, and huge hind legs. For the last, he needed room, room to leap and dodge, to spring and evade. And this sort of room was becoming increasingly scarce.
All that Hiero could think of was to take off every bit of the harness at evening, so that Segi had at least the total use of his freedom. The Metz hoped with half his mind that each morning would find the animal gone, drawn to his distant home and at least possible safety. Fully girt with saddle and weapons, he had found his way to his master through trackless country alive with predators. He would have had a fair chance, then, with nothing on, of making his way back alive to the distant East.
But Segi would not leave. Whatever Luchare had impressed on his simple mind, allied to plain love for Hiero, was too strong a bond. He had found his man and he proposed to stay with him. No amount of slaps and orders could make him take the trail back. When Hiero crept from the tree one night and, risking his life all the while, tried to steal away, he found the big brute hopping along in his tracks, thereby doubling the risk. It was the last time he tried that maneuver. Had Hiero’s mind power been intact, he could have sent the hopper away in an instant. As it was … He sighed and patted the warm, brown flank absently. He had come to love the big animal a great deal in the last few days. Before, back in D’alwah, Segi had been a cherished and interesting pet, but nothing beyond that. Now there was much more, a deep, mutual affection. It was not the same as it had been with Klootz, of course. Hiero and the great morse had been raised together, and Klootz’ mind, after centuries of Abbey breeding, was far superior to Segi’s. Indeed, the Abbey men were uncertain just how clever the morses were becoming. As he ate his simple breakfast, Hiero wondered if Klootz were alive. He stilled the thought for Luchare which came next; he had no time for vain regrets.
Some hours later, he reined in Segi and peered under his hand at the heights in the west. They were in a long ride of the forest, and the trees were very tall. Hiero knew without being told that he was coming to a tip of the great jungle again, the forest of the South. The trees around him now, which would have been considered well grown in his northern home, were but the scrub and the outliers of the incredible growth of the real forest, the greatest jungle Earth had ever known. The strange life of the atom fires, spawned by the horrors of The Death, had, among its many effects, the vast increase in bulk of many of the plants. Above all, the great trees of what were now the northern tropics, aided perhaps by what the ancients called the Greenhouse Effect, had reached a size and majesty never known in the planet’s past.
And beyond those trees, no more than a good day’s march, he thought, there loomed the purple hills. He ached in his bones to be among them, and only his native kindness and good sense restrained him from spurring his mount on at too fast a pace.
Had the Metz even a third of his former powers, he would have known at once that he was being drawn and not acting under his own volition at all, though the thought that had pulled him gently but inexorably to the southwest for days was clever and subtle. But Hiero knew that he had lost all his skills—the thought reading, the shields, the forelooking, and the sheer force of his once mighty mind—weeks in the past. He had tried, over and over again, to reach out, to listen, somehow, somewhere to detect the presence of another intelligence. Every attempt had met with failure. The foul drug of Joseato’s administering had done its work only too well. Mentally he was as blind as a newborn baby, and maybe more so if the baby possessed innate powers.
Being this mentally blind himself, he had the feeling that he was a blank to those outside, as well. He was right, but only in part. The drug had been effective, horribly so. To most of the outer world, and certainly to the Unclean, Hiero was a mental nullity, a blank. Not even Luchare could have detected him. The hopper had followed him by scent, his fine-tuned nose able to pick up the man’s tracks even after several days. Dogs, some of them, could do as much.
But there were minds other than the Unclean’s, also sprung from The Death. Hiero knew this well, none better. But it had never occurred to him that he might still be reached, be tapped and beckoned on a hitherto unused level of his brain, one which had lain dormant all his life and which he had not, even in the last year, realized was there at all. Yet so it was.
All day he and Segi moved steadily if slowly into the uplands, using great care to avoid dense clumps of foliage and timber. With each mile, this became harder and harder. The land itself was no longer a help but a hindrance. Folds of ground appeared, at first shallow, but then growing deeper and more precipitous. These ravines were no strong barrier at first, but Hiero knew them to be fingers thrust out from the heights ahead, the channels from which the tropic rains rushed down to the plains below.