As the reports came in, Luchare took counsel with her few remaining advisors. As best they could, they gave orders to fight their way to the northern gates. Some of the troops made it, but many stayed behind forever. When Luchare tried to assemble what was left outside the north walls, it was clear that the army-had no more than a quarter of its original strength remaining, and that in frightful shape. There was no alternative except retreat—really flight. Duke Amibale and his friends, the Unclean and their allies, had been grossly underestimated. Unless she could rally the rest of the country quickly, the kingdom was lost to all intents and purposes.
As she rode in a daze through the steaming night of the South, Luchare tried to form coherent thoughts. She was so tired! None of them had had more than a catnap for over three days.
She wondered where Hiero was. Her faith that he was alive, she knew at times, might prove unreal. But they were so closely linked that she simply could not believe he was gone forever. Somewhere, somehow, he would come back to her. She had to keep on believing. As she slumped lower in the high-cantled saddle of her hopper, she never noticed that Count Hamili had taken the beast’s reins from her limp fingers and transferred them to one of the guards. Numb with exhaustion, she allowed herself to be led on into the darkness.
Hiero awoke all of an instant. His narrow bed on the third floor of the new fort by the Namcush piers creaked as he sat up. Instinctively, he reached for his sword. What had wakened him? He peered at the open window, through which faint moonbeams glimmered. Listening, he heard the challenge of a sentry and the reply. The faint sound of lapping water came to him, along with other small noises of the night. There seemed to be nothing, but—he had learned to trust his instincts. Somewhere deep in his mind, a tiny warning bell had rung. Then, outside in the corridor, he heard the very faint scrape of movement, hardly more than a rustle of muted sound.
As noiseless as the night itself, he rose, sword in hand, and padded over to the door of the bedchamber, listening intently and probing with his mind as he did. Nothing, no mind, no feeling of one at all. But there had been the sound, and he knew that on the other side of the plank door was a presence! Something had stolen upon him. In this place of friends, there should be no such shielded thought!
His doubts were dramatically resolved. From deep in the wooden fort, far below his sleeping quarters, a horn sounded the alarm call, and the blast of the horn was echoed by others, all giving warning that some enemy was there.
At the same time, his door burst open with a crash, and a bulky form hurtled into the small room, arm overhead and a weapon glinting as it charged toward his now empty cot.
The assassin never had time to learn his mistake. Hiero’s heavy, short sword, sweeping from behind and one side, struck the juncture of neck and shoulder with awful force. There was a single, choked grunt of agony as the razor-sharp edge went home, and a fountain of blood spurted in the dim light. Then the shape fell forward, struck dead on the spot by that one blow.
Hiero whirled to face the dark shape of the door, but the assailant had apparently been alone. He could detect no presence outside. Yet he remained crouching and ready until the light of torches and the sound of men came down the corridor. Only then did he step out and hail the patrol guards.
Ten minutes later, after the room was cleared of all but himself and the abbot, he was staring down at what had come in the night to slay him.
“Aldo mentioned them, I recall,” Demero said. “I gather you had a previous encounter with one, out on the Inland Sea. A foul thing, even for a Leemute—and all of them are foul. What do you call it again?”
“A Glith. That was what Roke the pirate called it before we killed it and him.” He stared down at the gray skull, earless and noseless, the fanged jaws agape in death and the mighty limbs, covered with fine scales, all asprawl. The thing wore the harness of a Metz soldier, but it could not have passed for a human in any kind of light. The heavy axe it had borne lay half under Hiero’s bed.
“How did it get in here?” the old priest mused. “The alarm was given by one of those pendulum devices our scientists cooked up. I showed you one before you went off south, remember?”
“It may have been given, but it was way late,” was the answer as Hiero knelt to examine the corpse further. Already a foul stench was in the room, despite the open window. “Look here. It wears the mind shield. I expected that. God knows what warned me. I guess I’m becoming attuned to the presence of the enemy somehow. But I had only a few seconds to spare.”
He crushed the small box and crumpled the chain before going on. “What I’d really like to know is, if that shield was working—and it was—how did your pendulum thing work at all?”
“I don’t think the scientists themselves altogether understand that device,” Demero said. “The warning was late, as you say. Still, there was a warning. Perhaps it also works, though more slowly, on a level of emotion somehow. A pretty puzzle to set before the big brains when I get time to do so. But what I want to know is, how did this Glith pass the sentries at all?”
“I see what you mean. And I think I know the answer or can guess at it. Have the sentries examined as fast as you can by a psychmedic, one who knows the human brain. One of these things almost hypnotized me once. They have strong mesmeric powers. I’d be willing to bet that there is an unexplained lapse in the memory of some guard, maybe more than one. The damned brutes are probably bred for it. Anything else occur to you, Father?”
“Oh, yes. I’m not quite senile, not yet at any rate. It wanted you. It took a big risk to locate this chamber, son. And that means two things. I’ll have to have the garrison mind-probed in depth. Though I think you may be right, and it could have got its information by mental compulsion. But I see further, and so do you. It came looking for you, so that means it was sent. The Unclean know you are here or at least suspect it. Others may have been sent to other places. The important thing is that they know you are alive, and that is something we hoped was not so. I wonder how?”
“I don’t know. But only one thing makes sense. Someone or some thing saw me in Neeyana. No other way it could have happened. They move fast, don’t they?” Hiero’s eyes slitted as he stared down at the repulsive corpse on the floor. “It makes me feel proud in a funny way. They certainly hate me.”
The abbot smiled. “You were never very good at your classic studies, Hiero. Many, many thousands of years ago, far across the sea, there was a mighty king with a personal motto. Can’t recall much about the man, whether he was good or bad. But I recall the motto. It ran, Oderint dum Metuant. Let them hate me so that they fear me, that is, in Latin. You see, my boy, there’s the answer. As I told you yesterday, I worry about your powers. But you terrify the enemy. I think they would trade several regiments of our Guards if they could get you instead. I had hoped to use you as a secret weapon. Now I’ll just settle for weapon, period. Do you have any ideas?”