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recommencement of their journey, he had what he wanted. He had been forced to
resharpen his sword and his belt knife many times, particularly the latter.
"It's for a crossbow," he explained, when Luchare questioned him. "A Killman,
a trained soldier, that is, ought to be able to make a complete set of weapons
out of almost anything. I have no thrower any longer, and a heavy crossbow is
the next best thing I know. I may use animal horn later, if I can get any, and
I need metal and feathers or something for bolts.
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HIERO'S IOURNEY
It will take a while, but I've got nothing better to do."
"Could you show me how?"
"Why not? I've got more than enough wood for a second one here. The better
we're armed, the more chances we have. Look here, I'm whittling on this stock.
The butt end runs so "
It was hard to explain at night while they were riding, but during the next
day he was able to sketch on sand, so now both of them whittled away on their
weapons, chatting companion-ably as they did. Long spells of outward silence
usually meant that they were talking to Gorm, who lay and watched them as they
worked. Hiero had outlined the route ahead as he saw it, and warned the bear
that the area seemed to be very dangerous and filled with the Dead Cities. To
his surprise, Gorm seemed somewhat contemptuous.
/ have been in some of them to the north, the places of your human past, he
explained. They are evil; Unclean things there, what you call the Man-rats and
others, but they are clumsy and do not use their noses and ears, almost as bad
as you two, he added. / am not afraid of such places.
Hiero learned that the young bear had indeed ventured into several of the
ruined towns of Kanda at one time or another, though he became evasive when
asked why. The Elder folk have us do it, he finally sent, and would say
nothing more. But the priest gathered that it was some kind of test, perhaps
an emergence into adulthood.
He was quick to tell Gorm that the vast Dead Cities of the South were nothing
like the abandoned places he might have seen in most of Kanda, being far
larger and apt to be ten times as dangerous. Luchare chimed in to add her
views.
"There are several of them in D'alwah," she said to Hiero. "Tell him plainly,
you're better than I, that no one, save for the Unclean, goes there at all.
Strange things, horrible things, are said to lurk there, creatures which are
not found elsewhere."
Perhaps, was the bear's calm answer. / am always careful. But we must go there
anyway, so why worry?
"My people have a few strange instruments," Luchare offered. "They are either
very old or copied from very old ones, made before The Death, it is said. The
priests and a few nobles whom they trust keep them. When it becomes necessary
for someone to go near a Dead City, or one of the Deserts of The Death, one of
these is taken out of safekeeping and sent along.
THE FORGOTTEN CITY
167
It tells you when the invisible death is still there, the flesh-rot."
"Yes," Hiero said absently, eyeing the grain of the wood as he whittled at his
crossbow. "I know what you mean. We have them too. What you call the
'invisible death" is actually lingering atomic radiation. We can't produce it,
but we know about it up north." He laid down the bow and watched the setting
sun a moment before continuing. "As long as you're with us, you won't need
one." He smiled. "Klootz and I are trained to detect it with our bodies. And J
suspect our fat friend can do it too." A question to Gorm elicited the fact
that he knew well the danger of hard radiation and could detect its sources
easily.
Luchare marveled inwardly. She would rather have been flayed alive than let it
show, but every attribute Hiero demonstrated seemed to put him on another and
higher plane from herself. In her heart, she felt that her pride in her
exalted origin was simply a last defense against admitting that a foreigner of
no particular birth was too good for a girl from the barbarous South, no
matter how lofty her social position.
Both too preoccupied and too honorable to probe her mind and a prey to
conflicting emotions himself, Hiero saw nothing on her face to indicate any of
them.
"Let's take another look at the maps," he now said. "We are fast getting into
what seems a very nasty area. Did you hear the frogs last night?"
They had all heard the increasing racket of the amphibian chorus, and all knew
what it meant. The Palood was angling toward the coast again. The soggy world
of fen and marsh met the symbols of the half-drowned cities on the Unclean map
and could not be far ahead.
"Look, if we can get through here," he went on, "this symbol down the coast
might well be your Neeyana, Luchare. Now, I can't read the peculiar script
they use and, knowing them, it may be in code as well. But see." His finger
indicated a wavy line going away east from the southeastern comer of the
Inland Sea. "This looks as if it might be the trail you came over with the
people who took you captive. This blob here, then, looks like a good bet for a
Desert of The Death. See, it has the same mark as these circle things just
ahead that must be Dead Cities.
"Now, then, beyond that desert, here to the south, are three
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HlERO'S JOURNEY
more cities, Dead Cities. One is very close to the desert marking. Those three
are marked on my own maps too, the first more heavily. They are among the few
that are. This is where I'm supposed to start looking for what I need." He
rolled up the set of maps and carefully restored them to the saddlebag.
Again they set out in the half-light of evening. Not only were the frogs
growing louder, but the buzzing, biting insects had made an unwelcome
reappearance also. Micro's salve was now exhausted, and there was little they
could do but grimly endure, slapping when the nuisances became unbearable.
Once more, Klootz began slopping through puddles and mires. The great reeds
and giant dock leaves now rose up in the dark again, replacing the dry land
growth through which they had marched for so long.
All through the night they moved on at a walk. Twice they had to circle broad
pools from which bubbles of marsh gas rose and burst. Once Klootz stamped a
great hoof down on a pale snake, an adder of some sort which made the mistake
of striking at him. Hiero roved the night with his brain, searching for
danger, but he was too unfamiliar with his abilities to be very sanguine. An
amphibian mind is the same whether the creature is twenty yards long or three
inches, and it gives off much the same emotional values and neural reactions.
No true "thought" occurs at ail. Thus, if the priest were trying to see if the
thing he was inspecting was one of the huge frog monsters which had almost
attacked him before, he had only the view from the animal's own eyes, dim at
best, to give him a scale of reference. Once indeed, they heard one of the
great creatures bellow, but the sound came from far away.
The first faint glimmer of dawn was barely beginning to lighten the east when
they came to a halt. A few moments earlier, Hiero had ordered Klootz to stop
and had got down himself to test the surface on which they were traveling.
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