Free Hiero Desteen (Omnibus) by Sterling E. Lanier

voices and he knew the distance was shortening. It was logical. A solitary hunter, no matter how powerful, might be immobilized by sheer accident. A pack was always more effective. But a pack of what?
    Here, the thought came suddenly from Gorm. A place of grass and no trees. Is this what you want?
    Yes, the man sent. Lie down and rest until they come. Do not fight if you can help it. He urged the morse out of the water and onto the sward of a natural forest opening. The very first faint light in the east had appeared, not enough for any detail to show, but enough so that he could barely see they were in a natural clearing, one which sloped gently to the stream's edge. As Klootz stood silently dripping and the exhausted bear lay panting off to one side, Hiero considered tactics. The glade was perhaps a hundred yards wide at its tip by the brook. It was roughly shaped like a half-moon, and the forest edge at its center was two hundred feet from the water. He urged the morse on until Klootz now stood almost exactly in the clearing's center, back to the trees, but fifty feet away from them, so that nothing could use the trees as cover to leap upon them from behind. Hiero reached into his saddlebag and extracted his beryllium-copper helmet, round and unornamented, save for the cross and sword on the forepeak. It fitted over his cap and was his sole piece of armor. He put it on and tried to catch the minds of their pursuers. He found blind, ravening appetite, more than one, coming fast, unreachable at any level he could influence!
    Man and morse waited, alert and ready. They had done all they could. Gorm was silent now also, hidden somewhere in the black shadows and ready to pounce if possible.
    They had not long to wait. The blackness of the dying night was still almost totally unrelieved when from up the shallow stream, the way they had followed, came the sounds of splashing water and many clawed feet striking on rocks. Sensing rather than actually seeing their attackers, the Killman-priest twisted the heads of the two objects he had been holding and hurled them away, one to the right and one to the left. As they hit the ground, the two flares burst into life and a white, incandescent glow illumined the whole area.
    At once, Hiero saw that he and his animal allies had made a basic, if unavoidable, error in traveling down the stream and keeping to the water. The five sleek, sinister shapes poised at the brook's edge resembled grossly enlarged mink or some other water weasels quite enough to indicate that a river bed was the last, place in which anyone ought to try to elude them. No wonder they came so fast, Hiero thought as the momentary surprise of the lights froze the creatures in place.
    Their undershot, sharklike jaws and vicious teeth glistened in the light as they blinked their beady eyes and then recovered. Each one, from wet muzzle to long tailtip, was at least ten feet and could hardly have weighed any less than a full-grown man. Collars of bluish metal glinted and betrayed their wearers' allegiance, even as they scuttled out of the water and rushed to the attack, snarling as they came.
    Hiero fired the thrower and dropped it all in one motion. It took too long to reload, and these things were coming too fast. But the tiny rocket went true. The leading animal, head hit, simply blew up in a burst of orange fire, and the one next to it writhed aside, screaming shrilly and dragging a broken leg.
    As the other three paused, shaken by the explosion and the death of the leader, Klootz charged with a bellow of fury. Spear couched, Hiero gripped the bull's barrel, ready to strike.
    The wounded fury could not escape, and the morse's pile-driver front hooves crushed its life out in a terrible, smashing blow. Another one, leaping straight up at Hiero, took the heavy spear in its throat, right up to the crossbars. The savage brute fell back, choking on its own blood, and Hiero let the spear go with it, whipping out his heavy