Keeping his thoughts to the catfolk on the lowest energy level, undetectable save at close range, he issued his orders. They would scout along on either side of the path, moving east and going very slowly and with the utmost care. His allies would signal in their own speech, which was highly unlikely to be sorted out from the myriad forest noises around them, if they found anything worthy of reporting. Meanwhile, he would bring up to the rear and screen everything in a circle with his own mental nets, M’reen would stay close to him on the left side of the trail with B’uorgh, while the other two would take the right. So it was decided and they set out, descending a mighty tangle of lianas and interwoven aerial roots until within a few feet of the earth. Then they dropped and separated.
Their progress was slow, but they covered the ground nonetheless. Every cluster of the widespread roots and great base flanges of the colossal trees had to be scouted and then circled after investigation. Since many of them were enormous in circumference, making the redwoods of the past look like saplings by comparison, this took time. They tried never to lose sight of the trail, while remaining invisible from any eyes that they might somehow have overlooked. Hiero had warned them to be especially wary of any attack from overhead, and he was soon proved right, even though they were not attacked.
A faint yowling call from Ch’uirsh on the far side of the trail brought them up short. Following B’uorgh’s hand signals, the three crept closer, until they were on the edge of the broad path and could see the spotted forms of the two young warriors on the other side. Ch’uirsh and Za’reekh were pointing upward along the route, to something in the fork of a great tree, overgrown with cable-sized vines and even bushes. Straining his eyes, Hiero finally picked out something alien in the mass of tangled foliage, some darker and more structured shape.
They spent five more minutes scouting the neighborhood before climbing cautiously upward. In another minute, they were in the neatly concealed watchtower of the enemy. It was a roofed platform of logs, cleverly bound about with living plants of all kinds and providing a clear view of the path below in both directions—and it was completely empty. That it had not been empty long was obvious. There was a pile of ripe but not yet rotten fruit in one corner; a rude cabinet in another held dried meat and even some hard biscuit. A perfectly good belt of heavy leather, with a brass buckle and studs, had been dropped under a half-full wineskin near the leaf-covered entrance. Smelling the wine, Hiero found it perfectly drinkable.
Over all the place hung a faint, sour odor, and it was one the man had no trouble identifying. Man-rats, he sent, using the lowest energy level of brain waves. The enemy has had a garrison of the foul things they bred here. There was at least one human as well, since they do not drink this stuff in the leather bag. They have been called away suddenly, and I would badly like to know why. He thought hard and came to a decision.
The other four crouched on their haunches, and, very carefully, Hiero sent a probe out in the direction of the Inland Sea. It could not lie more than a few miles to the north of their present position, and he wanted to know what was going on off their flank as they continued. Presently, he found a thing of interest, although exactly what he had found, he was not sure. There was something out there or a number of somethings, maybe, but the whole embodiment of whatever it was lay under a mental blanket, a cover concealing the nature and identity of what was hidden therein. All Hiero could detect was a mass like a huge mental cloud, an inchoate something which he could not pierce. Beyond all shadow of a doubt, the thing was moving; and it was moving, though not fast, in his direction.
He had felt nothing like this in his mind since the year before, when the Unclean ship with the lightning gun mounted forward had caught them all in the drowned city of the northern shore. After a while, he gave up on the area. He could do nothing more, and the mysterious, cloaked patch of energy could not be penetrated. He switched his attention instead, if possible using even more care, to the direction of what he felt sure was Neeyana. This was a real change!
Neeyana was boiling, in the sense of turbulent mental energy. It was as if an ants’ nest had been stirred with a stick, so violent and numerous were the thoughts he detected. His group must be even closer than he had thought, no more than a few miles out of the town boundaries. Now the empty trails and the missing guards made sense. From the various minds that he tapped, Hiero quickly learned that the place was under or about to come under attack! Everyone who could be mustered was being sent to the sea, to man defenses along the waterfront. The threat which had so galvanized the Unclean was coming from the water, and it took little deduction to identify it with the strange mass of sealed-off minds that he had just been searching out. What on earth could all this mean?
He managed to isolate one mind at length, that of a man, a thoroughly nasty man at that, who seemed to be some kind of under-officer of the town garrison. The man was directing a group of underlings who were putting up barricades of logs and sandbags on a street near the water’s edge, and they were working frantically. From the fellow’s brain, the Metz picked up the image of a great fleet, as many as thirty ships, coming from the North. Further, he learned that the Unclean wizards had not been able either to detect or to penetrate in any way the minds of the people on board those ships. This fact had become generally known pretty quickly, and the ordinary soldiers didn’t like it one bit! They were used to having things all their own way, casually killing anyone who disagreed, protected by their Dark Masters’ corrupted science and weapons, both mental and physical. Something had gone wrong, and the Unclean Lords had let the fact that they were taken by surprise become public knowledge a little too fast. Hiero probed further, his excitement growing as he did so.
The man whose skull he was ransacking had not lost all confidence, despite his evident worry. Two of the secret ships were coming. The strange fleet would see what would happen then, when the lightning guns began to speak.
Sitting back and closing his mind to all externals, Hiero made his head stop aching with the effort he had been using and simply tried to reason out what he and the others should be doing next. It was not easy. Yet with all this excitement and the attack corning from those who must somehow be his friends, a better opportunity to escape to the North might never reoccur. If his group could not get to the strange fleet, they might at least be able to steal a decent boat and flee during the confusion of battle. It had to be risked.
Quickly he informed the others of what was taking place ahead of them. We have to get into the town, near the great water somehow, while they are all concentrating on the sea. They must have had a bad scare, because I’m sure that they have pulled out all the landward patrols and guards to reinforce the town defenses. They may have left some small body of troops on this side, but there can’t be many of them. Kill if you have to—quietly. Don’t hurt shes or young; stun them or silence them only.
They now moved off at a much faster pace, with Hiero leading on one side of the trail, while B’uorgh took the point on the other.
As they passed along like shadows, in and out of the tree gloom and through the patches of mottled sunlight, Hiero concentrated on the road immediately ahead. He wanted no encounters with anyone and he was desperately afraid of running into someone or something protected by one of the Unclean mind shields, the lockets of bluish metal he remembered from the past. At his strongest, when he had possessed the power of mental compulsion and even the ability to kill with his mind alone, he had not been able to penetrate one of these mechanisms; he was sure he could not do so now. At the same time, in the back of his mind some half-remembered thing, also from the past, was stirring. He had forgotten something, and it was something he needed right now, this instant. What the devil was it? He shrugged mentally. It would not come, whatever it was, and he would have to wait until it surfaced of its own accord.