Shardik

32 The Postern

They tell – ah! they tell many things of Shardik's passing from Bekla, and of the manner of his setting out upon his dark journey to that unforeseeable desdnadon appointed by God. Many things? For how long, then, was he at large within the walls of Bekla, under Crandor's summit? For as long, perhaps, as a cloud may take, in the eyes of a watcher, to pass across the sky? A cloud passes across the sky and one sees a dragon, another a lion, another a towered citadel or blue promontory with trees upon it. Some tell what they saw and then others tell what they were told – many things. They say that the sun was darkened as Lord Shardik departed, that the walls of Bekla opened of their own accord to let him pass, that the trepsis, once white, has bloomed red since that day when the prints of his feet bloodied its flowers in passing. They say that he wept tears, that a warrior raised from the dead went before him with a drawn sword, that he was made invisible to all but the king. They tell many, shining things. And of what value is the grain of sand at the heart of a pearl?

Shardik, shouldering through the fog and scattering the terrified cattle as a seaward-running bramba disturbs lesser fish in crossing a pool, left the southern shore of the Barb and began to ascend the slope of the rough pasture beyond. Kelderek followed, hearing behind him the hubbub and clamour spreading across the city. To his right the Barons' Palace loomed indistinct and irregular, like an island of tall rocks at nightfall; and as he paused, uncertain of the direcdon taken by Shardik, a single bell began ringing, light and quick, from one of the towers. Coming upon the bear's tracks in a patch of soft ground, he was puzzled to sec fresh blood beside them, though the prints themselves were no longer bloody. A few moments later, through a chance rift in the fog, he caught sight of Shardik again, almost a bow-shot ahead on the slope, and glimpsed between his shoulders the red gash of the reopened wound.

This was a piece of ill-fortune that would make his task more difficult, and he considered it as he went cautiously on. Shardik's recapture could be only a matter of time, for the Peacock Gate and the Red Gate of the citadel were the only ways out of the upper city. Elleroth, too, wherever he might be, was unlikely to be able to climb the walls, lacking the use of one hand. It would be best now if he were found and killed without recapture. His guilt had appeared as manifesdy as could well be. Had he not himself spoken of a deliberate act of war? As a fugitive within the walls he could not remain at. large for long. No doubt Maltrit, that competent and reliable officer, was already searching for him. Kelderek looked around to see whether there was anyone within hail. The first person he fell in with could be sent to Maltrit with a message that Elleroth, when found, was to be killed at once. But what if those who were hunting for him were to encounter Shardik in the fog? In his frightened and confused state, and enraged by the pain of the wound Mollo had inflicted, the bear would be deadly dangerous – far too dangerous for any immediate attempt at recapture. The only possible way would be to remove all cattle from the upper city, together with anything else which might provide food, and then, leaving the Rock Pit open and baited, wait for hunger to compel Shardik to return. Yet the Power of God could not be left to wander alone, unwatched and unattended, while all his people took refuge from him. The priest-king must be seen to have the matter in hand. Besides, Shardik's condition might well grow worse before he came back to the pit. In tins unaccustomed cold, wounded and unfed, he might even die on the lonely, eastern heights of Crandor, for which he appeared to be making. He would have to be watched – by night as well as by day – a task with which scarcely anyone now remaining in the city could be reliably entrusted. If it were to be performed at all, the king would have to set an example. And his very knowledge of Shardik, of his cunning and ferocity and the ebb and flow of his savage anger, brought home to him the danger involved.

Higher on the slope, where the pasture-land merged into rough, rocky hillside, the air became somewhat clearer and Kelderek, looking back, could see the thicker mist white and level below him, blotting out the city, save for the towers that rose through it here and there. Beneath it, with never a soul to be seen, the noises of alarm were spreading far and wide, and as he listened to them he realized that it was from this frightening tumult that the bear was climbing to escape.

Almost a thousand feet above Bekla, a shoulder ran eastwards from the summit of Crandor. The line of the city wall, exploiting the crags and steep places along the mountain's flank, surmounted the eastern declivity of this ridge before turning westwards towards the Red Gate of the citadel. It was a wild, overgrown place, revealing little to the eye of one approaching from below. Kelderek, sweating in the cold air and flinging back the heavy robe that encumbered him, halted below the ridge, listening and watching the thicket where he had seen Shardik disappear among the trees. A little way to his left ran the wall, twenty feet high, the cloudy sky showing white here and there through the narrow loop-holes that overlooked the slope outside. On his right, a stream pattered down a rocky gully out of the thicket. It was the last place into which any man in his senses would follow a wounded bear.

He could hear nothing beyond the natural sounds of the mountainside. A buzzard, sailing sideways above him, gave its harsh, mewing cry and disappeared. A breeze rustled through the trees and died away. The unceasing water close by became at last the sound of the silence – that, and the noise still audible from the city below. Where was Shardik? He could not be far off, bounded as he was by the curve of the wall. Either he was already on the other side of the ridge and moving westwards towards the Red Gate, or else, which seemed more likely, he had taken refuge among the trees. If he were there now, he could hardly move away without being heard. There was nothing to be done but wait. Sooner or later one of the soldiers, searching, would come within earshot and could be sent back with a message.

Suddenly, from among the trees above, came sounds of splintering wood and the grinding and knocking of falling stones. Kelderek started. As he listened, there followed the same cry that he had heard across the cypress gardens by night – a loud growling of pain, utterable by none but Shardik. At this, trembling with fear and moving as in a trance, he stumbled his way up the track which the bear had already broken through the bushes and creepers, and peered into the half-light among the trees.

The grove was empty. At its eastern end, where the trees and bushes grew closely up to the sheer wall, was a ragged, irregular opening, bright with daylight. Approaching cautiously, he saw with astonishment that it was a broken doorway. Several lining-stones on both sides had been forced out of the jambs and lay tumbled about. The heavy wooden door, which opened outwards, must have been left open by one who had passed through, for there seemed to be no latch and the bolts were drawn. The upper hinge had been dragged from its setting in the jamb and the splintered door sagged, its lower corner embedded in the ground outside. The stone arch, though damaged, was still in place, but the downward-pointing, central cusp was covered with blood, like a weapon withdrawn from a wound. On the inner side of the doorway, just where a man might have stood to draw the bolts, Kelderek caught sight of something bright half-trodden into the ground. He stooped and picked it up. It was the golden stag emblem of Santil-ke-Erketlis, the pendant still threaded on the fine, snapped chain.

He stepped through the doorway. Below him, the mist was lifting from the great expanse of the Beklan plain – a shaggy, half-wild country, from which rose here and there the smoke of villages -stretching southward towards Lapan, east to Tonilda, northward to Kabin and the mountains of Gelt. A mile away, at the foot of the slope, plainly visible through the clearing air, ran the caravan road from Bekla to Ikat. Shardik, his back and shoulders covered with blood from the wound gored yet again by the cusp of the door, was descending the mountainside some two hundred feet below.

As he followed once more, picking his way and steadying himself with his hands against the crags, Kelderek began to realize how unfit he was for any long or arduous undertaking. Mollo, before he died, had stabbed or gashed him in half a dozen places and these half-healed wounds, which had been bearable enough as long as he kept his room, were now beginning to throb and to send sharp twinges of pain through his muscles. Once or twice he stumbled and almost lost his balance. Yet even when his uncertain feet sent dislodged stones rattling down the slope Shardik, below him, never once looked back or paid him any attention, but having reached the eastern foot of Crandor continued in the same direction. For fear of robbers, the scrub on either side of the caravan road had been roughly cut back to the length of almost a bowshot. This open place the bear crossed without hesitation and so entered upon the wilderness of the plain itself.

Kelderek, approaching the road, stopped and looked back at the eastern face he had descended. It puzzled him that, although so many travelled this road, he had never heard tell of the postern on the east ridge. The wall, he now perceived, ran by no means straight in its course and in the view from below was masked here and there by crags. The postern must lie – and had no doubt been deliberately sited – in some oblique angle of the wall, for he could not see it even now, when he knew whereabouts to look. As he turned to go on, wondering for what devious purpose it had been made and cursing the ill turn of fortune of which it had been the means, he caught sight of a man approaching up the road from the south. He waited: the man drew nearer and Kelderek saw that he was armed and carrying the red staff of an army courier. Here at last was the opportunity to send his news back to the city.

He now recognized the man as an Ortelgan a good deal older than himself, a certain master-fletcher formerly in the service of Ta-Kominion's family. That he should be on active service at his age was somewhat surprising, though in all probability it was at his own wish. In the old days on Ortelga the boys had altered his name, Kavass, to 'Old Kiss-me-arse', on account of the marked deference and respect with which he always treated his superiors. An excellent craftsman and an irritatingly child-like, simple and honest man, he had appeared to take a positive delight in asserting that those above him (whatever their origins) must know better than he and that faith and loyalty were a man's first duties. Now, recognizing the king, dishevelled and alone by the roadside, he at once raised his palm to his forehead and fell on one knee without the least show of surprise. He would no doubt have done so if he had come upon him festooned with trepsis and standing on his head.

Kelderek took his hand and raised him to his feet. 'You're old for a courier, Kavass,' he said. 'Wasn't there a younger man they could send?'

'Oh, I volunteered, my lord,' replied Kavass. 'These young fellows nowadays aren't so reliable as an older man, and when I set out there was no telling whether a courier would be able to get through to Bekla at all.' 'Where have you come from, then?'

'From Lapan, my lord. Our lot were detached on the right of General Ged-la-Dan's army, but it seems he had to march in a hurry and didn't stop to tell us where. So the captain, he says to me, "Well, Kavass," he says, "since we've lost touch with General Ged-la-Dan, and seem to have an open flank on the left as far as I can tell, you'd better go and get us some orders from Bekla. Ask whether we're to stay here, or fall back, or what." '

'Tell him from me to start marching towards Thettit-Tonilda. He should send another courier there at once to learn where General Ged-la-Dan is and get fresh orders. General Ged-la-Dan may have great need of him.' 'To Thettit-Tonilda? Very good, my lord.'

'Now listen, Kavass.' As simply as he could, Kelderek explained that both Shardik and an escaped enemy of Bekla were at large on the plain, and that searchers must be summoned at once, both to look for the fugitive and to take over from himself the task of following the bear.

'Very good, my lord,' said Kavass again. 'Where are they to come?' 'I shall follow Lord Shardik as best I can until they find me. I don't think he'll go either fast or far. No doubt I shall be able to send another message from some village.' 'Very good, my lord.'

'One other thing, Kavass. I'm afraid I must borrow your sword and whatever money you have. I may very well need them. I shall have to exchange clothes with you, too, like an old tale, and put on that jerkin and those breeches of yours. These robes are no good for hunting.'

'I'll take them back to the city, my lord. My goodness, they're going to wonder what I've been up to until I tell 'em I But don't you worry – you'll follow Lord Shardik all right. If only there were more that would simply trust him, my lord, as you and I do, and ask no questions, then the world would go right enough.'

'Yes, of course. Well – tell them to make haste,' said Kelderek, and at once set off into the plain. Already, he thought, he had delayed too long and might not easily recover sight of Shardik. Yet, thinking unconsciously in terms of the forest where he had learned his craft, he had forgotten that this was different country. Almost immediately he caught sight of the bear, a good half-mile to the north-east, moving as steadily as a traveller on a road. Except for the huts of a distant village, away to the right, the plain stretched empty as far as the eye could see.

Kelderek was in no doubt that he must continue to follow. In Shardik lay the whole power of Ortelga. If he were left to wander alone and unattended, it would be plain to the eyes of peasants -many no doubt still secretly hostile to their Ortelgan rulers – that something was wrong. News of his whereabouts might be falsified or concealed. Someone might wound him again or even, perhaps, succeed in killing him as he slept. It had been hard enough to trace him five years before, after the fall of Bekla and the retreat of Santil-ke-Erketlis. Despite his own pain and fatigue and the danger involved, it would in the long run be easier not to lose track of him now. Besides, Kavass was reliable and the searchers could hardly fail to find them both before nightfall. Weak though he was, he should be equal to that much.

33 The Village

All that day, while the sun moved round the sky at his back, Kelderek followed as Shardik plodded on. The bear's pace varied little. Sometimes he broke into a kind of heavy trot, but after a short distance would falter, throwing up his head repeatedly, as though trying to rid himself of irritant pain. Although the wound between his shoulders was no longer bleeding, it was clear, from his uneasy, stumbling gait and his whole air of discomfort, that it gave him no peace. Often he would rise on his hind legs and gaze about him over the plain; and Kelderek, afraid in that open place without cover, would either stand still or drop quickly to his knees and crouch down. But at least it was easy to keep him in sight from a distance; and for many hours, remaining a long bow-shot or more away, Kelderek moved quietly on over the grass and scrub, holding himself ready to run if the bear should turn and make towards him. Shardik, however, seemed unaware of being followed. Once, coming to a pool, he stopped to drink and to roll in the water; and once he lay for a while in a grove of myrtle bushes, planted for a landmark round one of the lonely wells used, time out of mind, by the wandering herdsmen. But both these halts ended when he started suddenly up, as though impatient of further delay, and set off once more across the plain.

Two or three times they came within sight of cattle grazing. Far off though they were, Kelderek could make out how the beasts turned and raised their heads all together, uneasy and suspicious of whatever unknown creature it might be that was coming. He hoped for the chance to call to one of the herd-boys and send him with a message, but always Shardik passed very wide of the herds and Kelderek, considering whether to leave him, would decide to await a better opportunity.

Late in the afternoon he saw by the sun that Shardik was no longer moving north-east but north. They had wandered deep into the plain – how far he could not tell – perhaps ten miles cast of the road that ran from Bekla to the Gelt foodiills. The bear showed no sign of stopping or turning back. Kelderek, who had expected that he would wander until he found food and then sleep, had not foreseen this steady journeying, without pause cither to eat or rest, by a creature recently wounded and confined for so long. He now realized that Shardik must be impelled by an overwhelming determination to escape from Bekla – to stop for nothing until he had left it far behind, and to avoid on his way all haunts of man. Instinct had turned him towards the mountains and these, if it were his intention to do so, he might well reach in two to three days. Once in that terrain he would be hard to recapture – last time it had cost lives and the burning of a tract of partly-inhabited country. Yet if enough men could only be mustered in time he might be turned and then, dangerous though it would be, perhaps driven, with noise and torches, into a stockade or some other secure place. It would indeed be a desperate business but whatever the outcome, the first need was to check him in his course. A message must be sent and helpers must come.

As the sun began to sink, the greens and browns of the long, gentle slopes changed first to lavender and then to mauve and grey. A cool, damp smell came from the grass and scrub. The lizards disappeared and small, furry animals – coneys, mice and some kind of long-tailed, leaping rat – began to come from their holes. The hard shadows softened and a thin, light dusk rose, as though out of the ground, in the lower parts of the shallow combes. Kelderek was now very tired and nagged by pain from the stab wound in his hip. Concentrating on remaining alert to Shardik, he became aware only gradually, like a man awakening, of distant human voices and the lowing of cattle. Looking about him, he saw in a hollow, a long way to his left, a village – huts, trees and the grey-shining dot of a pond. He could easily have overlooked it altogether, for the low, inconspicuous dwellings, irregular in outline and haphazard as trees or rocks, seemed, with their mixture of dun, grey and earth-brown colours, almost a natural part of the landscape. All that obtruded upon his weary sight and hearing were a little smoke, the movement of cattle and the far-off cries of the children who were driving them home.

At this moment Shardik, a quarter of a mile ahead, stopped and lay down in his tracks, as though too tired to go further. Kelderek waited, watching the faint shadow of a blade of grass beside a pebble. The shadow reached and crossed the pebble, but still Shardik did not get up. At length Kelderek set off for the village, looking behind him continually to be sure of the way back.

Before long he came to a track, and this led him to the cattle-pens on the village outskirts. Here all was in turmoil, the herd-boys chattering excitedly, rebuking one another, raising sudden cries, whacking, poking and running here and there as though cattle had never before been driven into a stockade since the world began. The thin beasts rolled their eyes white, slavered, lowed, josded and thrust their heads over each other's backs as they crowded into the pens. There was a flopping and smell of fresh dung and a haze of dust floated glittering in the light of the sunset. No one noticed Kelderek, who stood still to watch for a few moments and to take comfort and encouragement from the age-old, homely scene.

Suddenly one of the boys, catching sight of him, screamed aloud, pointed, burst into tears and began jabbering in a voice distraught with fear. The others, following his gaze, stared wide-eyed, two or three backing away, knuckles pressed to open mouths. The cattle, left to themselves, continued to enter the pens of their own accord. Kelderek smiled and walked forward, holding out both hands.

'Don't be afraid,' he said to the nearest child, 'I'm a traveller, and -'

The boy turned and ran from him; and thereupon the whole little crowd took to their heels, dashing away among the sheds until not one was to be seen. Kelderek, bewildered, walked on until he found himself fairly among the dusty houses. There was still nobody to be seen. He stopped and called out, 'I'm a traveller from Bekla. I need to see the elder. Where is his house?' No one answered and, walking to the nearest door, he beat on the timbers with the flat of his hand. It was opened by a scowling man carrying a heavy club.

'I am an Ortelgan and a captain of Bekla,' said Kelderek quickly. 'Hurt me and this village shall burn to the ground.'

Somewhere within a woman began to weep. The man answered, 'The quota's been taken. What do you want?' 'Where is the elder?'

The man pointed silently towards a larger house a little way off, nodded and shut the door.

The elder was grey, shrewd and dignified, a taker of his time, a user of convention and propriety to size up his man and gain opportunity to think. With impenetrable courtesy he greeted the stranger, gave orders to his women and, while they brought first water and a drin towel, and then food and drink (which Kelderek would not have refused if they had tasted twice as sour), talked carefully of the prospects for the summer grazing, the price of cattle, the wisdom and invincible strength of the present rulers of Bekla and the prosperity which they had undoubtedly brought upon the land. As he did so, his eyes missed nothing of the stranger's Ortelgan looks, his dress, his hunger and the bound wounds on his leg and forearm. At last, when he evidently felt that he had found out as much as he could and that no further advantage was to be gained from avoiding the point (whatever it might be), he paused, looked down at his folded hands and waited in silence.

'Could you spare a couple of lads for a trip to Bekla?' asked Kelderek. 'I'll pay you well.'

The elder continued silent for a little, weighing his words. At last he replied, 'I have the tally-stick, sir, given to me by the provincial governor when we provided our quota last autumn. I will show you.' 'I don't understand. What do you mean?'

'This is not a large village. The quota is two girls and four boys every three years. Of course, we give the governor a present of cattle, to show our gratitude to him for not fixing it higher. We are not due again for two and a half years. Have you a warrant?' 'Warrant? There's some mistake -'

The elder looked up quickly, smelling a rat and not slow to be after it. 'May I ask if you are a licensed dealer? If so, surely it is your business to know what arrangements are in force for this village?' 'I'm not a dealer at all. I -'

'Forgive me, sir,' said the elder crisply, his manner becoming somewhat less deferential, 'I cannot help finding that a trifle hard to believe. You are young, yet you assume an air of authority. You are wearing the ill-fitting and therefore probably – er – acquired clothes of a soldier. You have clearly walked far, probably by some lonely way, for you were very hungry: you have been recently wounded in several places – the wounds suggest to me a scuffle rather than battle – and if I am not wrong, you are an Ortelgan. You asked me for two boys for what you called a trip to Bekla and said you would pay me well. Perhaps, when you say that, there are some elders who reply "How much?" For my part, I hope to retain my people's respect and to die in my bed, but setting that aside, I don't care for your kind of business. We are all poor men here, but nevertheless these people are my people. The Ortelgans' law we are forced to obey, but as I told you, we are quit for two autumns to come. You cannot compel me to deal with you.' Kelderek sprang to his feet.

'I tell you I'm no slave-trader! You've completely misunderstood me! If I'm an unlicensed slave-trader, where's my gang?'

'That is what I would very much like to know – where and how many. But I warn you that my men are alert and we will resist you to the death.' Kelderek sat down again.

'Sir, you must believe me – I am no slave-trader – I am a lord of Bekla. If we-'

The deep twilight outside was suddenly filled with clamour – men shouting, trampling hooves and the bellowing of terrified cattle. Women began to scream, doors banged and feet ran past on the track. The elder stood up as a man burst into the room.

'A beast, my lord! Like nothing ever seen – a gigantic beast that stands erect – three times the height of a man – smashed the bars of the big cattle-pen like sticks – the cattle have gone mad – they've stampeded into the plain! Oh, my lord, the devil – the devil's upon us!'

Without a word and without hesitation the elder walked past him and out through the door. Kelderek could hear him calling his men by name, his voice growing fainter as he made his way towards the cattle-pens on the edge of the village.

34 The Streets of Uriah

From the darkness of the plain beyond the village, Kelderek watched the turmoil as a man in a tree might look down upon a fight below. The example set by the elder had had little effect upon his peasants and no concerted action had been organized against Shardik. Some had barred their doors and plainly did not mean to stir out of them. Others had set out – or at least had shouted in loud voices that they were setting out – in an attempt to recover, by moonlight, as many of the cattle as they could find. A crowd of men with torches were jabbering round the well in the centre of the village, but showed no sign of moving away from it. A few had accompanied the elder to the pens and were doing what they could to repair the bars and prevent the remaining cattle from breaking down the walls. Once or twice, momentarily, Kelderek had seen the enormous outline of Shardik moving against the flickering torchlight as he wandered on the village outskirts. Evidently he had little fear of these flames, so similar to those to which he must have become accustomed during his long captivity. There seemed no likelihood whatever of the villagers attacking him.

When at last the half-moon emerged from behind clouds, not so much enabling him to sec for any distance as restoring his awareness of the great expanse of the misty plain, Kelderek realized that Shardik was gone. Drawing Kavass's short-sword and limping forward to an empty, broken pen, he came first upon the body of the beast which the bear had been devouring and then upon a trembling, abandoned calf, trapped by the hoof in a split post. During the past hour this helpless little creature had been closer to Shardik than any living being, human or animal. Kelderek freed the hoof, carried the calf bodily as far as the next pen and set it down near a man who, with his back turned, was leaning over the rails. No one took any notice of him and he stood for a few moments with one arm round the calf, which licked his hand as he steadied it on its feet. Then it ran from him and he turned away.

A confused shouting broke out in the distance and he made towards it. Where there was fear and clamour, the likelihood was that Shardik would not be far away. Soon three or four men passed him, running back towards the village. One was whimpering in panic and none stopped or spoke to him. They were hardly gone before he made out, in the moonlight, the shaggy blackness of Shardik. Possibly he had been pursuing them – perhaps they had come upon him unexpectedly – but Kelderek, sensing his mood and temper with the familiarity of long years, knew by nothing he could have named that the bear had been disturbed rather than roused to rage by these hinds. Despite the danger, his pride revolted against joining their flight. Was he not lord of Bekla, the Eye of God, the priest-king of Shardik? As the bear loomed closer in the moon-dim solitude he lay down prone, eyes closed, head buried in his arms, and waited.

Shardik came down upon him like a cart and oxen upon a dog asleep in the road. One paw touched him; he felt the claws and heard them rattle. The bear's breath was moist upon his neck and shoulders. Once more he felt the old elation and terror, a giddy transport as of one balanced above a huge drop on a mountain summit. This was the priest-king's mystery. Not Zelda, not Ged-la-Dan nor Elleroth Ban of Sarkid, could have lain thus and put their lives in the power of Lord Shardik. But now there was none to see and none to know. This was an act of devotion more truly between himself and Shardik than any which he had performed either on Ortelga or in the King's House at Bekla. 'Accept my life, Lord Shardik,' he prayed silently. 'Accept my life, for it is yours.' Then, suddenly, the thought occurred to him, 'What if it were to come now, the great disclosure which I sought so long in Bekla, Lord Shardik's revelation of the truth?' Might it not well be now, when he and Shardik were alone as never since that day when he had lain helpless before the leopard?

But how was he to recognize the secret and what was he to expect? How would it be imparted – as an inspiration to his inward mind, or by some outward sign? And would he then die, or be spared to make it known to mankind? If the price were his life, he thought, then so be it.

The huge head was bent low, sniffing at his side, the breeze was shut off, the air was still as under the leeward wall of a house. 'Let me die if it must be so,' he prayed. 'Let me die – the pain will be nothing -I shall step out into all knowledge, all truth.'

Then Shardik was moving away. Desperately, he prayed once more. 'A sign, Lord Shardik – O my lord, at the least vouchsafe some sign, some clue to the nature of your sacred truth!' The sound of the bear's low, growling breath became inaudible before its tread ceased to shake the ground beneath him. Then, as he still lay half-rapt in his trance of worship and supplication, there came to his ear the weeping of a child.

He got to his feet. A boy, perhaps seven or eight years old, was standing a short distance off, evidently lost and beside himself with fear. Perhaps he had been with the men until they ran from Shardik, leaving him alone to save himself as best he could. Kelderek, trembling and confused now with the passing of the ecstatic fit, stumbled across the ground towards him. Bending down, he put an arm round the boy's shoulder and pointed to the distant flames of the torches round the cattle-pens. The boy could hardly speak for his tears, but at last Kelderek made out the words, 'The devil-creature!'

'It's gone – gone,' said Kelderek. 'Go on, don't be frightened, you'll be safe enough! Run home as quick as you can! That's the way, over there!'

Then, like one picking up once more a heavy burden, he set out to follow Shardik by night across the plain.

Still northward the bear went – north and something to the west, as he could see by the stars. They moved across the sky all night, but nothing else moved or changed in that loneliness. There was only the light, steady wind, the thrip, thrip of the dry stalks round his ankles, and here and there a famdy-shining pool, at which he would kneel to drink. By first light, which crept into the sky as gradually and surely as illness steals upon the body, he was tired to exhaustion. When he crossed a slow-moving brook and then found his feet resting upon smooth, level stones, the meaning did not at first pierce his cloud of fatigue. He stopped and looked about him. The flat stones stretched away to right and left He had just waded the conduit that ran from the Kabin reservoir to Bekla, and was now standing on the paved road to the Gelt foothills. Early as it was, he looked into the distance in the faint hope of seeing some traveller – a merchant, perhaps, bound for the Caravan Market and the scales of Fleitil; an army contractor from a province, or an Ortelgan messenger returning from the country beyond Gelt -anyone who could carry word to Bekla. But in each direction there was no one to be seen; nor could he make out even a hut or the distant smoke of a wayfarers' encampment. For much of its length, as he knew, the road ran through frequented country; might he, perhaps, be near one of the camping-stations for drovers and caravans – a few huts, a well and a tumbledown shelter for cattle? No, he could see nothing of the kind. It was bad luck to have reached the road at such an hour and to have struck so lonely a stretch. Bad luck – or was it the cunning of Shardik to have kept away from the road until he sensed that he could cross it unseen? Already he was some distance beyond it and climbing the opposite slope. Soon he would be across the ridge and out of sight. Yet still Kelderek lingered, hobbling and peering one way and the other in his disappointment and frustration. Long after he had realized that, even if someone were now to appear in the distance, he could not hope both to speak with him and to recover the trail of the bear, he still remained upon the road, as though there were some part of his mind that knew well that never again would he set eyes upon this great artifact of the empire which he had conquered and ruled. At last, with a long, sighing groan, like one who, having looked for help in vain, cannot tell what will now befall, he set off for the point where Shardik had disappeared over the crest.

An hour later, having limped painfully to the top of yet another ridge, nearly two miles to the north-west, he stood looking down upon a startlingly different land. This was no lonely plain of sparse herbage, but a great, natural enclosure, tended and frequented. Far off, round hillocks marked its further edge and between himself and these lay a rich, green vale several miles across. This, he realized, was nothing less than a single, enormous meadow or grazing-ground upon which, distant one from another, three or four herds were already at pasture in the sunrise. He could make out two villages, while on the horizon traces of smoke suggested others that drew their substance from this verdurous place. Not far below him, in a low-lying dip, the ground was broken – riven, indeed – in a most curious manner, so that he stared at it in wonder, as a man might stare at a sheer cliff or chain of waterfalls, or again, perhaps, at some rock to which chance and the weather of centuries have given an uncanny likeness – a crouching beast, say, or a skull. It was as though, ages gone, a giant had scored and scratched the surface of the plain with a pronged fork. Three clefts or ravines, roughly parallel and of almost equal length, lay side by side within the space of half a mile. So abrupt and narrow were these strange gorges that in each, the branches of the trees extending from either steep slope almost touched one another and closed the opening. Thus roofed over, the depths of the ravines could not be perceived. The sun, shining from behind the ridge on which he was standing, intensified the shadows which, he supposed, must lie perpetually within those almost subterranean groves. All about their edges the grass grew taller and no path seemed to approach them from any direction. As he stood gazing, the breeze stiffened for a moment, the cloud shadows on the plain rippled in long undulations and in the ravines the leaves of the topmost branches, barely rising above the surrounding grass, shook all together and were still.

At this, Kelderek felt a quick tremor of dread, a gain-giving of some menace which he could not define. It was as though something – some spirit inhabiting these places – had awakened, observed him and quickened at what it perceived. Yet there was nothing to be seen – except, indeed, the arched bulk of Shardik making his way towards the nearest of the three clefts. Slowly he trampled through the long grass and paused on the verge, turning his head from side to side and looking down. Then, as smoothly as an otter vanishing over the lip of a river bank, he disappeared into the concealment of the chasm.

He would sleep now, thought Kelderek; it was a day and a night since his escape, and even Shardik could not wander from Bekla to the mountains of Gelt without rest. No doubt if the plain had offered the least cover or refuge he would have stopped before. To Shardik, a creature of hills and forests, the plain must seem an evil place indeed, and his new liberty as comfortless as the captivity from which he had escaped. The ravines were clearly lonely, perhaps even avoided by the herdsmen, for no doubt they were dangerous to cattle and like enough their very strangeness made them objects of superstitious dread. The tangled twilight, smelling neither of beast nor man, would seem to Shardik a welcome seclusion. Indeed, he might well be reluctant to leave it, provided he were not forced to seek food.

The more Kelderek pondered, the more it seemed to him that the ravine offered an excellent chance of recapturing Shardik before he reached the mountains. His weary spirits rose as he began to plan what was best to be done. This time he must at all costs convince the local people of his good faith. He would promise them substantial rewards – whatever they asked, in effect: freedom from market-tolls, from the slave quotas, from military service – always provided that they could keep Shardik in the ravine until he was recaptured. It might not prove unduly difficult. A few goats, a few cows – water might already be there. A messenger could reach Bekla before sunset and helpers should be able to arrive before evening of the following day. Sheldra must be told to bring with her the necessary drugs.

If only he himself were not so much exhausted! He, too, would have to sleep if he were not to collapse. Should he simply lie down here and trust that Shardik would still be in the ravine when he woke? But the message to Bekla must be sent before he slept. He would have to make his way to one of the villages; but first he must find some herdsman and persuade him to keep watch on the ravine until he returned.

Suddenly he caught the sound of voices a little way off and turned quickly. Two men, who had evidently come up the slope before he had heard them, were walking slowly away from him along the ridge. It seemed strange that they should apparently not have seen him or, if they had, that they should not have spoken to him. He called out and hastened towards them. One was a youth of about seventeen, the other a tall, elderly man of solemn and authoritative appearance, wrapped in a blue cloak and carrying a staff as tall as himself. He certainly did not look like a peasant and Kelderek, as he stopped before him, felt that his luck had turned at last, to have met someone able both to understand what he needed and see that he got it.

'Sir,' said Kelderek, 'I beg you not to judge me by appearances. The truth is, I am worn out by wandering for a day and a night on the plain and I am in great need of your help. Will you sit down with me – for I don't think I can stand any longer – and let me tell you how I come to be here?' The old man laid his hand on Kelderek's shoulder.

'First tell me,' he said gravely, pointing with his staff to the ravines below, 'if you know it, the name of those places below us.'

'I don't know. I was never here before in my life. Why do you ask me?'

'Let us sit down. I am sorry for you, but now that you are here you need wander no more.'

Kelderek, so much dazed with fatigue that he could no longer weigh his words, began by saying that he was the king of Bekla. The old man showed neither surprise nor disbelief, only nodding his head and never averting his eyes, which expressed a kind of severe, detached pity, like that of an executioner, or a priest at the sacrificial altar. So disturbing was this look that after a little Kelderek turned his own eyes away and spoke gazing out over the green vale and the strange ravines. He said nothing of Elleroth and Mollo, or of the northward march of Santil-ke-Erketlis, but told only of the collapse of the roof of the hall, of the escape of Shardik and of how he himself had followed him, losing his companions in the mist and sending back a chance-found messenger with orders to his soldiers to follow and find him. He told of his journey over the plain and, pointing down the hill, of how Shardik – whose recapture was all-important – had taken cover in the cleft below, where no doubt he was now sleeping.

'And be sure of this, sir,' he ended, meeting the unwavering eyes once more and forcing himself to return their gaze. 'Any harm done to Lord Shardik or myself would be most terribly revenged, once discovered – as discovered it would certainly be. But the help of your people – for I take you to be a man of some standing here – in restoring Lord Shardik to Bekla – that will be acknowledged with the greatest generosity. When that task is done, you may name any reasonable reward and we will grant it.'

The old man remained silent. To Kelderek, puzzled, it seemed that although he had heard him with attention, he was nevertheless unconcerned either with the dread of revenge or the hope of reward. A quick glance at the youth showed only that he was waiting to do whatever his master might require. The old man rose and helped Kelderek to his feet.

'And now you need sleep,' he said, speaking kindly but firmly, as a parent might speak to a child after hearing his little tale of the day's adventures. 'I will go with you -'

Impatience came upon Kelderek, together with perplexity that such slight importance should apparently have been attached to his words.

'I need food,' he said, 'and a messenger must be sent to Bekla. The road is not far away – a man can reach Bekla by nightfall, though I assure you that long before that he will be bound to meet with some of my soldiers on the road!'

With no further word the old man motioned to the youth, who stood up, opened his scrip and put it into Kelderek's hands. It contained black bread, goat's cheese and half a dozen dried tendrionas – no doubt the end of the winter's store. Kelderek, determined to retain his dignity, nodded his thanks and laid it on the ground beside him.

'The message -' he began again. Still the old man said nothing and from behind his shoulder the youth replied, 'I will carry your message, sir. I will go at once.' While Kelderek was making him repeat two or three times both the message and his instructions, the old man stood leaning on his staff and looking at the ground. His air was one less of abstraction than of a detached, self-contained patience, like that of some lord or baron who, during a journey, waits while his servant goes to ask the way or question an inn-keeper. When Kelderek paid the youth, emphasizing how much more he would receive, first when he delivered the message and secondly when he had brought the soldiers back, he did not look at the money, expressed his thanks only with a bow and then at once set off in the direction of the road. Kelderek, suspicious, sat watching until he had gone a long way. At last he turned back to the old man, who had not moved.

'Sir,' he said, 'thank you for your help. I assure you I shall not forget it. As you say, I need sleep, but I must not go far from Lord Shardik, for if by chance he should wander again, it will be my sacred duty to follow him. Have you a man who can watch beside me and rouse me if need should be?'

'We will go down to that eastern cleft,' replied the old man. 'There you can find a shady place and I will send someone to watch while you sleep.'

Pressing one hand over his aching eyes, Kelderek made a last attempt to break through the other's grave reserve. 'My soldiers – great rewards – your people will bless you – I trust you, sir -' he lost the thread of his thought and faltered in Ortelgan 'lucky I came here -'

'God sent you. It is for us to do His will,' replied the old man. This, Kelderek supposed, must be some idiomatic reply to the thanks of a guest or traveller. He picked up the scrip and took his companion's offered arm. In silence they went down the slope, among the small domes of the ant-hills, the grassy tussocks and coneys' holes, until at length they came to the tall grass surrounding the ravines. Here, without a word, the old man stopped, bowed and was already striding away before Kelderek had grasped that he was going.

'We shall meet again?' he called, but the other gave no sign that he had heard. Kelderek shrugged his shoulders, picked up the scrip and sat down to eat.

The bread was hard and the juice long gone from the fruit. When he had eaten all there was, he felt thirsty. There was no water -unless, indeed, there might be a pool or spring in one of the ravines: but he was too tired to go and search all three. He decided to look into the nearest – it seemed unlikely that Shardik would be alert or attack him – and if he could neither see nor hear water he would simply do without until he had slept.

The tangled grass and weeds grew almost to his waist. In summer, he thought, the place must become almost impassable, a veritable thicket He had gone only a few yards when he stumbled over some hard object, stooped and picked it up. It was a sword, rusted almost to pieces, the hilt inlaid with a pattern of flowers and leaves in long-blackened silver – the sword of a nobleman. He swung idly at the grass, wondering how it came to be there, and as he did so the blade tore across like an old crust and flew into the nettles. He tossed the hilt after it and turned away.

Now that he saw it at close quarters, the lip of the ravine looked even more sharp and precipitous than from a distance. There was indeed something sinister about this place, unhusbanded and yield-less in the midst of the abundant land all about There was something strange, too, about the sound of the breeze in the leaves – an intermittent, deep moaning, like that of a winter wind in a huge chimney, but faint, as though far off. And now, to his sleep-starved fancy, it seemed that the sides of the cleft lay apart like an open wound, like the edges of a deep gash inflicted by a knife. He reached the edge and looked over.

The tops of the lower trees were spread beneath him. There was a hum and dart of insects and a glitter of leaves. Two great butter-flies, newly awakened from winter, were fanning their blood-red wings a yard below his eyes. Slowly his gaze travelled across the uneven expanse of the branches and back to the steep slope at his feet The wind blew, the boughs moved and suddenly – like a man who realizes that the smiling stranger with whom he is conversing is in fact a madman who means to attack and murder him -Kelderek started back, clutching at the bushes in fear.

Below the trees there was nothing but darkness – the darkness of a cavern, a darkness of sluggish air and faint, hollow sounds. Beyond the lowest tree-trunks the ground, bare and stony, receded downwards into twilight and thence into blackness. The sounds that he could hear were echoes; like those in a well, but magnified in rising from some greater, unimaginable depth. The cold air upon his face carried a faint dreadful odour – not of decay, but rather of a place which had never known cither life or death, a bottomless gulf, unlit and unvisited since time began. In a fascination of horror, lying upon his stomach, he groped behind him for a stone and tossed it down among the boughs. As he did so, some dim memory came rising towards the surface of his mind – night, fear and the bringer of an unknown fate moving in the dark; but his present terror was too sharp, and the memory left him like a dream. The stone tore its way down through the leaves, knocked against a branch and was gone. There was no other sound. Soft earth – dead leaves? He threw another, pitching it well out into the centre of the concave leaf-screen. There was no sound to tell when it struck the ground.

Shardik – where was he? Kelderek, the palms of his hands sweating, the soles of his feet tangling with dread of the pit over which he lay, peered into the gloom for the least sign of any ledge or shelf. There was none.

Suddenly, half in prayer, half in desperation, he cried aloud, 'Shardik! Lord Shardik!' And then it seemed as though every malignant ghost and night-walking phantom pent in that blackness were released to come rushing up at him. Their abominable cries were no longer echoes, they owed nothing to his voice. They were the voices of fever, of madness, of hell. At once deep and unbearably shrill, far-off and squealing into the nerves of his ear, pecking at his eyes and clustering in his lungs like a filthy dust to choke him, they spoke to him with vile glee of a damned eternity where the mere spectacle of themselves in the gloom would be torment unbearable. Sobbing, his forearms wrapped about his head, he crawled backwards, cowered down and covered his ears. Little by little the sounds died away, his normal perceptions returned and as he grew calmer he fell into a deep sleep.

For long hours he slept, feeling neither the spring sun nor the flies settling upon his limbs. The amorphous forces active in sleep, profound and inexpressible, moving far below that higher, twilit level where their fragments, drifting upwards, attract to themselves earthly images and become released in the bubbles called dreams, caused in him not the least bodily movement as, without substance, form or mass they pursued their courses within the universe of the solitary skull. When at last he woke, it was to become aware first, of daylight – the light of late afternoon – and then of a confused blaring of human cries, which faintly resembled the terrible voices of the morning. Yet, whether because he was no longer lying over the chasm or because it was not he himself who had cried out, these voices lacked the terror of those others. These, he knew, were the shouts of living men, together with their natural echoes. He raised himself cautiously and looked about him. To his left, out of the southerly end of the ravine, where Shardik had disappeared that morning, three or four men were clambering and running. Little, shaggy men they were, carrying spears – one cast his spear away as he ran – and plainly they were in terror. As he watched, another tripped, fell and rose again to his knees. Then the bushes along the lip were torn apart and Shardik appeared.

As, when villagers have taken away her calf from a strong cow, she bellows with rage, breaks the rails of the stockade and tramples her way through the village, afraid of none and filled only with distress and anger at the wrong she has suffered: the villagers fly before her and in her fury she smashes through the mud wall of a hut, so that her head and shoulders appear suddenly, to those within, as a grotesque, frightening source of destruction and fear; so Shardik burst through the tall weeds and bushes on the edge of the ravine and stood a moment, snarling, before he fell upon the kneeling man and killed him even as he cried out. Then, at once, he turned and began to make his way along the verge, coming on towards the place where Kelderek was lying. Kelderek lay prostrate in the long grass, holding his breath, and the bear passed not ten feet away. He heard its breathing – a liquid, choking sound like that made by a wounded man gasping for air. As soon as he dared, he looked up. Shardik was plodding away. In his neck was a fresh, deep wound, a jagged hole oozing blood.

Kelderek ran back along the edge of the ravine to where the men were gathered about the body of their comrade. As he approached, they picked up their spears and faced him, speaking quickly to each other in a thick argot of Beklan.

'What have you done?' cried Kelderek. 'By God's breath, I'll have you burned alive for this!' Sword in hand, he threatened the nearest man, who backed away, levelling his spear. 'Stand back, sir!' cried the man. 'Else tha'll force us -' 'Ah, kill him now, then!' said another.

'Nay,' put in the third quickly. 'He never went into the Streel. And after what's come about-'

'Where's your damned headman, priest, whatever he calls himself?' cried Kelderek. 'That old man in the blue cloak? He set you on to this. It was him I trusted, the treacherous liarl I tell you, every village on this cursed plain shall burn – Where is he?'

He broke off in surprise as the first man suddenly dropped his spear, went to the edge of the ravine and stood looking back at him, pointing downwards.

'Stand away, then,' said Kelderek. 'No – right away – over there. I don't trust you murderous dirt-eaters.'

Once more he knelt on the edge of the pit. But here, the first yards of the slope below him inclined gently. Not far down, half-concealed among the trees, was a level, grassy ledge with a little pool. Shardik, lying there, had flattened and crushed the grass. Half in the pool, face downwards, lay a man's body, wrapped about with a blue cloak. The back of the skull was smashed open to the brains and near by lay the bloody head of a spear. The shaft was nowhere to be seen. It might, perhaps, have fallen into the abyss.

Hearing a movement behind him, Kelderek leapt about. But the man who had returned was still unarmed.

'Now ye must go, sir,' he whispered, staring at Kelderek and trembling as at the supernatural. 'I never seen the like of this before, but I know what's appointed if ever they comes alive from the Streel. Now that ye've seen, ye'll know that the creature's passed beyond us and our power. It's the will of God. Only, in His name, sir, spare us and go!'

Upon this all three fell to their knees, clasping their hands and looking at him with such patent fear and supplication that he could not tell what to make of it.

'There's none will touch ye now, sir,' said the first man at last, 'neither we nor any others. If ye wish, I'll go with you, any way ye please, as far as the borders of Urtah. Only go!'

'Very well,' replied Kelderek, 'you shall come with me, and if any more of you dung-bred bastards try to betray me, you'll be the first to die. No – leave your spear and come.'

But after some three miles he turned loose his wretched, abject hostage, who seemed to fear him as he would a risen ghost; and once more went on alone, following warily the distant form of Shardik wandering northward across the vale.

35 Shardik's Prisoner

Little by little the knowledge grew upon Kelderek that he was a vagabond in strange country, without friends, far from help, straitened by need and moving in danger. It was not until later still that he realized also that he had become the prisoner of Shardik.

It was plain that the bear had been further weakened by its latest wound. Its pace was slower, and although it continued towards the hills – now clearly visible on the northern horizon – with the same resolution, it stopped to rest more often and from time to time showed its distress by sudden wincings and unnatural, sharp movements. Kelderek, who now feared less the sudden onset of its swift, inescapable charge, followed it more closely, sometimes actually calling, 'Courage, Lord Shardik!' or 'Peace, Lord Shardik, your power is of God!' Once or twice it seemed to him that Shardik recognized his voice and even took comfort from it.

The night came on sharp and although Shardik rested for several hours, lying in full view on the open ground, Kelderek for his part could not remain still, but paced about, watching from a distance until, when the night was nearly over, the bear suddenly got up, coughing pitifully, and set off once more, its laboured breadiing clearly audible across the silence.

Kelderek's hunger grew desperate and later that morning, seeing in the distance two shepherds settlng a fold of hurdles, he ran half a mile to them, intending to beg anything – a crust, a bone – while still keeping Shardik in sight. To his surprise they proved friendly, simple fellows, plainly pitying his want and fatigue and ready enough to help him when he told them that, although bound by a religious vow to follow the great creature which they could see in the distance, he had desperate need to send a message to Bekla. Encouraged by their goodwill, he went on to tell them of his escape the day before. As he finished he looked up to see them staring at one another in fear and consternation. 'The Streels! God have mercy!' muttered one. The other put half a loaf and a little cheese on the ground and backed away, saying, 'There's food!' and then, like the man with the spear, 'Do us no harm, sir – only go!' Yet here, indeed, they were more prompt than Kelderek, for thereupon both of them took to their heels, leaving their trimming-knives and mallets lying where they were among the hurdles.

That night Shardik made for a village and through this Kelderek passed unchallenged and seen of none, as though he had been some ghost or cursed spirit of legend, condemned to wander invisible to earthly eyes. On the outskirts Shardik killed two goats, but the poor beasts made little noise and no alarm was raised. When he had eaten and limped away Kelderek ate too, crouching in the dark to tear at the warm, raw flesh with fingers and teeth. Later he slept, too tired to wonder whether Shardik would be gone when he woke.

The singing of birds was in his ears before he opened his eyes, and at first this seemed natural and expected, the familiar sound of daybreak, until he recalled, with an instant sinking of the heart, that he was no more a lad in Ortelga, but a wretched man alone and lying on the Beklan plain. Yet on the plain, as well he knew, there were scarcely any trees and therefore no birds, save buzzards and larks. At this moment he heard men talking near by and, without moving, half-opened his eyes. He was lying near the track down which he had followed Shardik in the night. Beside him the flies were already crawling on the goat-leg which he had wrenched off and carried away with him. The country was no longer plain-land, but an arboreous wilderness interspersed with small fields and fruit orchards. At a little distance, the wooden rails of a bridge showed where the track crossed a river, and beyond lay a thick, tangled patch of woodland.

Four or five men were standing about twenty paces off, talking together in low voices and scowling in his direction. One was carrying a club and the others rough, hoe-like mattocks, the farming peasant's only tool. Their angry looks were mixed with a kind of uncertainty, and as it came to Kelderek that these were no doubt the owner of the goats and his neighbours, he realized also that he must indeed have become a figure of fear – armed, gaunt, ragged and filthy, his face and hands smeared with dried blood and a haunch of raw flesh lying beside him.

He leapt up suddenly and at this the men started, backing quickly away. Yet peasants though they were, he had still to reckon with them. After a little hesitation they advanced upon him, halting only when he drew Kavass's sword, set his back against a tree and threatened them in Ortelgan, caring nothing whether they understood him, but taking heart from the sound of his own voice.

'You just put that sword down, now, and come with us/ said one of the men gruffly. 'Ortelgan – Bekla!' cried Kelderek, pointing to himself.

'It's a thief you are,' said another, older man. 'And as for Bekla, it's a long way off and they'll not help you, for they've trouble enough of their own, by all accounts. You're in the wrong, now, whoever you are. You just come with us.'

Kelderek remained silent, waiting for them to rush him, but still they hesitated, and after a little he began to retreat watchfully down the track. They followed, shouting threats in their patois, which he could barely understand. He shouted angrily back and, feeling with his left hand the rails of the bridge close behind him, was about to turn and run when suddenly one of them pointed past him with a triumphant laugh. Looking quickly round, he saw two men approaching the bridge from the other side. Evidently there had been a wide hunt for the goat-robber.

The bridge was not high and Kelderek was about to vault the parapet – though this could have done little more than prolong the hunt – when all the men, both those in front of him and close behind, suddenly cried out and ran, pelting away in all directions. Unassailable and conclusive as nightfall on a battlefield, Shardik had come from the wood and was standing near the track, peering into the sunlight and miserably fumbling at his wounded neck with one huge paw. Slowly, and as though in pain, he made his way to the edge of the stream and drank, crouching not more than a few paces from the further end of the bridge. Then, dull-eyed, with dry muzzle and staring coat, he limped away into the cover of the thicket.

Still Kelderek stood on the bridge, oblivious of whether or not the peasants might return. At the commencement of this, the fourth day since he had left Bekla, he felt an almost complete exhaustion, beyond that merely of the body, a total doubting of the future and a longing, like that which comes upon the hard-pressed soldiers of an army which is losing, but has not yet lost, a battle, at any cost to desist from further struggle for the moment, to rest, let come what may, although they know that to do so means that the fight can be renewed only at greater disadvantage. The calf muscle of his right leg was strained and painful. Two of Mollo's stab wounds, those in his shoulder and hip, throbbed continually. But more dispiriting even than these was the knowledge that he had failed in his self-appointed task, inasmuch as Shardik could not now be recaptured before he reached the hills. Looking northward over the trees, he could see clearly the nearer slopes, green, brown and shadowy purple in the morning light. They might perhaps be six, eight miles away. Shardik too must have seen them. He would reach them by nightfall. Weeks – perhaps months – would now have to be spent in hunting him through that country – an old bear, grown cunning and desperate by reason of earlier capture. There was no remedy but that the Ortelgans would have to undertake the most wearisome of all labour – that which has to be performed in order to put right what should never have gone amiss.

That morning he had escaped certainly injury; possibly death, for it was unlikely that the rough justice of the peasants would have spared an Ortelgan: and who now would believe that he was the king of Bekla? An armed ruffian, forced to beg or rob in order to eat, could pursue his way only at the risk of life and limb. Of what use, indeed, was it for him now to continue to follow Shardik? The paved road could not be more than half a day's journey to the cast – perhaps much less. The time had come to return, to summon his subjects about him and plan the next step from Bekla. Had Elleroth been caught? And what news had come from the army in Tonilda?

He set off southward, deciding to follow the stream for a time and turn cast only when he was well away from the village. Soon his pace grew slower and more hesitant. He had gone perhaps half a mile when he stopped, frowning and slashing at the bushes in his perplexity. Now that he had actually left Shardik, he began to sec his situation in a different and daunting light. The consequences of return were incalculable. His own monarchy and power in Bekla were inseparable from Shardik. If it was he who had brought Shardik to the battle of the Foothills, it was Shardik who had brought him to the throne of Bekla and maintained him there. More than that, the fortune and might of the Ortelgans rested upon Shardik and upon the continuance of his own strange power to stand before him unharmed. Could he safely return to Bekla with the news that he had deserted the wounded Shardik and no longer knew where he was or even whether he were dead or alive? With the war in its present state, what effect would this have on the people? And what would they do to him?

Within an hour of leaving the bridge Kelderek had returned to it and made his way upstream to the northern end of the wood. There were no tracks and he concealed himself and waited. It was not until afternoon, however, that Shardik appeared once more and continued upon his slow journey – encouraged now, perhaps, by the smell of the hills on the north-west wind.

36 Shardik Gone

By afternoon of the next day Kelderek was on the point of collapse. Hunger, fatigue and lack of sleep had worked upon his body as beetles work upon a roof, rust on a cistern or fear on the soldier's heart – always taking a little more, leaving a little less to oppose the forces of gravity, of weather, of danger and fear. How does the end come? Perhaps an engineer, arriving at last to inspect and check, discovers that he can pierce with his finger the pitted, paper-thin plates of iron. Perhaps a comrade's jest or a missile narrowly missing its mark causes him who was once an honest soldier to bury his head in his hands, weeping and babbling; just as rotten purlins and rafters become at last no more than splinters, worm-holes and powder. Sometimes nothing occurs to precipitate the catastrophe and the slow decay, unhastened from without – of the water-tank in the windless desert or the commander of the lonely, precarious garrison – continues without interruption, till nothing is left that can be repaired. Already the king of Bekla was no more, but this the Ortelgan hunter had not yet perceived.

Shardik had reached the edge of the foothills a little after dawn. The place was wild and lonely, the country increasingly difficult. Kelderek clambered upward through dense trees or among tumbled rocks, where often he could not see thirty paces ahead. Sometimes, following an intuitive feeling that this must be the way the bear had taken, he would reach a patch of open ground only to conceal himself as Shardik came stumbling from the forest behind him. At almost any time he might have lost his life. But a change had come upon the bear – a change which, as the hours passed, became more plain to Kelderek, piercing his own sufferings with pity and at last with actual fear of what would befall.

As, in the splendid house of some great family, where once lights shone in scores of windows at night and carriages bearing relatives, friends and news came and went, the very evidence and means of grandeur and authority over all the surrounding countryside; but where now the lord, widowed, his heir killed in battle, has lost heart and begun to fail; as, in such a house, a few candles burn, lit at dusk by an old servant who does what he can and must needs leave the rest; so fragments of Shardik's strength and ferocity flickered, a shadow suggesting the presence that once had been. He wandered on, safe indeed from attack – for what would dare to attack him? – but almost, or so it seemed, without strength to fend for himself. Once, coming upon the body of a wolf not long dead, he made some sorry shift to eat it. It seemed to Kelderek that the bear's sight was weaker, and of this, after a time, he began to take advantage, following closer than he or the nimblest of the girls would have dared in the old days on Ortelga; and thus he was able to prolong his endurance even while his hope diminished of finding, in this wilderness, any to help him or carry his news to Bekla.

In the afternoon they climbed a steep valley, emerging on a ridge running eastward above the forests: and along this they continued their slow and mysterious journey. Once Kelderek, rousing himself from a waking fancy, in which his pains seemed torpid flies hanging upon his body, saw the bear ahead of him on a high rock, clear against the sky and gazing over the Beklan plain far below. It seemed to him that now it could go no further. Its body was hunched unnaturally and when at length it moved, one shoulder drooped in a kind of crippled limping. Yet when he himself reached the rock, it was to sec Shardik already crossing the spur below and as far away as before. Coming to the foot of the ridge, he found himself at the upper end of a bleak waste, bounded far off by forest like that through which they had climbed the day before. Of Shardik there was no sign.

It was now, as the light began to fail, that Kelderek's faculties at last disintegrated. Strength and thought alike failed him. He tried to look for the bear's tracks, but forgot what ground he had already searched and then what it was that he was seeking. Coming upon a pool, he drank and then, thrusting his feet for ease into the water, cried out at the fierce, stinging pain. He found a narrow path – no more than a coney's trod – between the tussocks and crept down it on hands and knees, muttering, 'Accept my life, Lord Shardik,' though the meaning of the words he could not recall. He tried to stand, but his sight grew clouded and sounds filled his ears, as of water, which he knew must be unreal.

The path led to a dry ravine and here for a long time he sat with his back against a tree, gazing unseeingly at the black streak of an old lightning-flash that had marked the rock opposite with the shape of a broken spear.

Dusk had fallen when at last he crawled up the further side. His physical collapse – for he could not walk – brought with it a sense of having become a creature lacking volition, passive as a tree in the wind or a weed in the stream. His last sensation was of lying prostrate, shivering and trying to drag himself forward by clutching the fibrous grasses between his fingers.

When he woke it was night, the moon clouded and the solitude stretching wide and indistinct about him. He sat up, coughing, and at once suppressed the sound with an arm across his mouth. He was afraid; partly of attracting some beast of prey, but more of the empty night and of his new and dreadful loneliness. Following Shardik, he had feared Shardik and nothing else. Now Shardik was gone; and as, when some severe and demanding leader, whom his men both respected and feared, is reported lost, they loiter silently, addressing themselves with assumed diligence to trivial or futile duties, in attempts to evade the thought that none will utter – that they are now without him whom they trusted to stand between them and the enemy – so Kelderek rubbed his cold limbs and coughed into the crook of his elbow, as though by concentrating on the ills of his body he could make himself immune to the silence, the desolate gloom and the sense of something hovering, glimpsed in the tail of his eye.

Suddenly he started, held his breath and turned his head, listening incredulously. Had he indeed heard, or only imagined, the sound of voices, far off? No, there was nothing. He stood up; and found that he could now walk, though slowly and with pain. But which way should he go, and with what purpose? Southward, for Bekla? Or should he try to find some refuge and remain until daylight, in the hope of coming once more upon Shardik?

And then beyond all doubt he heard, for no more than an instant, a distant clamour of voices in the night. It was come and gone; but that was no wonder, for it had been far off, and what had reached his car might well have been some momentary, louder outcry. If the distance or his own weakness had not deceived him, there had been many voices. Could the noise have come from a village where some gathering was being held? There was no light to be seen. He was not even sure from which direction the sound had come. Yet at the thought of shelter and food, of resting in safety among fellow men and of an end to his loneliness and danger, he began to hasten – or rather, to stagger – in any direction and in none until, realizing his foolishness, he sat down once more to listen.

At length – after how long he could not tell – the sound reached him again, perceived and then dying on the ear, like a wave, spent among tall reeds, that never breaks upon the shore. Released and at once quenched it seemed, as though a door far off had opened for a moment and as suddenly closed upon some concourse within. Yet it was a sound neither of invocation nor of festival, but rather of tumultuous disorder, of riot or confusion. To him, this in itself mattered little – a town in uproar would be nevertheless a town -but what town, in this place? Where was he, and could he be sure of help once it was known who he was?

He realized that he was once more groping his way in what now seemed to him the direction of the sound. The moon, still obscured among clouds, gave little light, but he could both see and feel that he was going gently downhill, among crags and bushes, and approaching what seemed a darker mass in the near-darkness – woodland it might be, or a confronting hillside.

His cloak caught on a thorn-bush and he turned to disentangle it. At this moment, from somewhere not a stone's throw away in the dark, there came an agonized cry, like that of a man dealt some terrible wound. The shock, like lightning striking dose at hand, momentarily bereft him of reason. As he stood trembling and staring into the dark, he heard a quick, loud gasp, followed by a few choking words of Beklan, uttered in a voice that ceased like a snapped thread. 'She'll give me a whole sackful of gold!' At once the silence returned, unbroken by the least noise either of struggle or of flight. 'Who's there?' called Kelderek. There was no answer, no sound. The man, whoever he might be, was either dead or unconscious. Who – what – had struck him down? Kelderek dropped on one knee, drew his sword and waited. Trying to control his breathing and the loosening of his bowels, he crouched still lower as the moon gleamed out a moment and vanished again. His fear was incapacitating and he knew himself too weak to strike a blow.

Was it Shardik who had killed the man? Why was there no noise? He looked up at the dimly luminous cloud-bank and saw beyond it a stretch of open sky. Next time the moon sailed clear he must be ready on the instant to look about him and act.

Below, at the foot of the slope, the trees were moving. The wind among them would reach him in a few moments. He waited. No wind came, yet the sound among the trees increased. It was not the rustling of leaves, it was not the boughs that were moving. Men were moving among the trees. Yes, their voices – surely – but they were gone – no, there they were once more – the voices he had heard – beyond all doubt now, human voices! They were the voices of Ortelgans – he could even catch a word here and there – Ortelgans, and approaching.

After all his dangers and sufferings, what an unbelievable stroke of good fortune! What had happened, and where was this place that he had reached? Either in some inexplicable way he had come upon soldiers of the army of Zelda and Ged-la-Dan – which might, after all, have marched almost anywhere during the past seven days – or else, more probably, these were men of his own guard from Bekla, searching for him and for Shardik as they had been ordered. Tears of relief came to his eyes and his blood surged as though at a lovers' meeting. As he stood up, he saw that the light was increasing. The moon was nearing the edge of the clouds. The voices were closer now, descending the hill through the trees. With a shout he stumbled down the slope towards them, calling 'I am Crendrik! I am Crendrik!'

He was on a road, a trodden way leading down towards the woods. Plainly, the night-marching soldiers were also on this road. He would see their lights in a moment, for lights they must surely be carrying. He tripped and fell, but struggled up at once and hastened on, still shouting. He came to the foot of the slope and stopped, looking up, this way and that, among the trees;

There was silence: no voices, no lights. He held his breath and listened, but no sound came from the road above. He called at the top of his voice, 'Don't go! Wait! Wait!' The echoes faded and died.

From the open slope behind him came a surge of voices shouting in anger and fear. Strangely unimmediate they were, fluctuating, dying and returning, like the voices of sick men trying to tell of things long gone by. At the same moment the last veil of cloud left the moon, the ground before him started up into misty light and he recognized the place where he was.

In nightmare a man may feel a touch upon his shoulder, look round and meet the glazed but hate-filled eyes of his mortal enemy, whom he knows to be dead; may open the door of his own familiar room and find himself stepping through it into a pit of grave-worms; may watch the smiling face of his beloved wither, crumble and putrefy before his eyes until her laughing teeth are surrounded by the bare, yellow skull. What if such as these – so impossible of occurrence, so ghastly as to seem descried through a window opening upon hell – were found no dreams but, destroying at a stroke every fragment of life's proved certainty, were to carry the mind, as the crocodile its living prey, down to some lower, unspeakable plane of reality, where sanity and reason, clutching in frenzy, feel all holds give way in the dark? There, in the moonlight, ran the road from Gelt; up the bare, sloping plateau, among scattered crags and bushes, to the crest over which showed faintly the rocks of the gorge beyond. To the right, in shadow, was the line of the ravine that had protected Gel-Ethlin's flank, and behind him lay those woods from which, more than five years before, Shardik had burst like a demon upon the Beklan leaders.

Dotted about the slope were low mounds, while some way off appeared the dark mass of a larger tumulus, on which grew two or three newly-sprung trees. Beside the road stood a flat, squared stone, roughly carved with a falcon emblem and a few symbols of script One of these, common in inscriptions about the streets and squares of Bekla, carried the meaning. At this place – 'All about, with never a man to be seen, faint sounds of battle swelled and receded like waves, resembling the noises of day and life as a foggy dawn resembles clear noon. Shouts of anger and death, desperate orders, sobbing, prayers for mercy, the ring of weapons, the trampling of feet – all light and half-sensed as the filamentary legs of a swarm of loathsome insects upon the face of a wounded man lying helpless in his blood. Kelderek, his arms clutched about his head, swayed, uttering cries like the blarings of an idiot – speech enough for converse with the malignant dead, and words enough in which to articulate madness and despair. As a leaf that, having lived all summer upon the bough, in autumn is plucked off and swept through the turbulent, roaring air towards the sodden darkness below; so severed, so flung down, so spent and discarded was he. He fell to the ground, babbling, and felt a rib-cage of unburied bones snap beneath his weight. He lurched, in the white light, over graves, over rusty, broken weapons, over a wheel covering the remains of some wretch who once, years before, had crept beneath it for vain protection. The bracken that filled his mouth was turned to worms, the sand in his eyes to the stinking dust of corruption. His capacity to suffer became infinite as, rotting with the fallen, he dissolved into innumerable grains suspended among the wave-voices, sucked back and rolled forward to break again and again upon the shore of the desolate battlefield where, upon him more dreadfully than upon any who had ever strayed there, unwarned to shun it, the butchered dead discharged their unhouselled misery and malice.

Who can describe the course of suffering to the end where no more can be endured? Who can express the unendurable vision of a world created solely for horror and torment – the struggling of the half-crushed beetle glued to the ground by its own entrails; the flapping, broken fish pecked to death by gulls upon the sand; the dying ape full of maggots, the young soldier, eviscerated, screaming in the arms of his comrades; the child who weeps alone, wounded for life by the desertion of those who have gone their selfish ways? Save us, O God, only place us where we may see the sun and eat a little bread until it is time to die, and we will ask nothing more. And when the snake devours the fallen fledgling before our eyes, then our indifference is Thy mercy.

In the first grey light, Kelderek stood up a man new-born of grief – lost of memory, devoid of purpose, unable to tell night from morning or friend from foe. Before him, along the crest, translucent as a rainbow, stood the Beklan battle-line, sword, shield and axe, the falcon banner, the long spears of Yelda, the gaudy finery of Deelguy: and he smiled at them, as a baby might laugh and crow, waking to see about her cot rebels and mutineers come to add her murder to those of the rest. But as he gazed, they faded like pictures in the fire, their armour transformed to the first glitter of morning on the rocks and bushes. So he wandered away in search of them, the soldiers, picking as he went the coloured flowers that caught his eye, eating leaves and grass and staunching, with a strip torn from his ragged garments, a long gash in his forearm. He followed the road down to the plain, not knowing his whereabouts and resting often, for though pain and fatigue now seemed to him the natural condition of man, yet still it was one that he sought to ease as best he could. A band of wayfarers who overtook him threw him an old loaf, relieved to perceive that he was harmless, and this, when he had tried it, he remembered to be good to cat. He cut himself a staff which, as he went, tapped and rattled on the stones, for the cold of extreme shock was upon him all day. Such sleep as he had was broken, for he dreamed continually of things he could not entirely recall – of fire and a great river, of enslaved children crying and a shaggy, clawed beast as tall as a roof-tree.

How long did he wander, and who were they who gave him shelter and helped him? Again, they tell tales – of birds that brought him food, of bats that guided him at dusk and beasts of prey that did him no harm when he shared their lairs. These are legends, but perhaps they scarcely distort the truth that he, capable of nothing, was kept alive by what was given him unsought. Pity for distress is felt most easily when it is plain that the sufferer is not to be feared, and even while he remained armed, none could fear a man who limped his way upon a stick, gazing about him and smiling at the sun. Some, by his clothes, thought him to be a deserting soldier, but others said No, he must be some three-quarter-witted vagabond who had stolen a soldier's gear or perhaps, in his necessity, stripped the dead. Yet none harmed him or drove him away – no doubt because his frailty was so evident and few care to feel that denial on their part may hasten a man to his death. One or two, indeed, of those who suffered him to sleep in sheds or out-houses – like the gate-keeper's wife at the stronghold of S'marr Torruin, warden of the Foothills – tried to persuade him to rest longer and then perhaps find work; for the war had taken many. But though he smiled, or played a while with the children in the dust, he seemed to understand but little, and his well-wishers would shake their heads as at length he took his staff and went haltingly on his way. Eastward he went, as before, but each day only a few miles, for he sat much in the sun in lonely places and for the most part kept to less-frequented country along the edge of the hills; feeling that here, if at all, he might happen once more upon that mighty, half-remembered creature which, as it seemed to him, he had lost and with whose life his own was in some shadowy but all-important respect bound up. Of the sound of distant voices he was greatly afraid and seldom approached a village, though once he allowed a tipsy herdsman to lead him home, feed him and take from him, either in robbery or payment, his sword.

Perhaps he wandered for five days, or six. Longer it can hardly have been when one evening, coming slowly over a shoulder of the lower hills, he saw below him the roofs of Kabin – Kabin of the Waters – that pleasant, walled town with its fruit groves on the south-west and, nearer at hand on the north, the sinuous length of the reservoir running between two green spurs; the surface, wrinkling and sliding under the wind, suggesting some lithe animal caged behind the outfall dam with its complex of gates and sluices. The place was busy – he could see a deal of movement both within and outside the walls; and as he sat on the hillside, gazing down at a cluster of huts and smoke that filled the meadows outside the town, he became aware of a party of soldiers – some eight or nine -approaching through the trees.

At once he jumped to his feet and ran towards them, raising one hand in greeting and calling 'Wait! Wait!' They stopped, staring in surprise at the confidence of this tattered vagrant, and turning uncertainly towards their tryzatt, a fatherly veteran with a stupid, good-natured face, who looked as though, having risen as high as he was likely to get in the service, he was all for an easy life.

'What's this, then, tryze?' asked one, as Kelderek stopped before them and stood with folded arms, looking them up and down.

The tryzatt pushed back his leadier helmet and rubbed his forehead with one hand.

'Dunno,' he replied at length. 'Some beggar's trick, I suppose. Come on, now,' he said, laying one hand on Kelderek's shoulder, 'you'll get nothing here, so just muck off, there's a good lad.' Kelderek put the hand aside and faced him squarely.

'Soldiers,' he said firmly. 'A message – Bekla -' He paused, frowning as they gathered about him, and then spoke again.

'Soldiers – Senandril, Lord Shardik – Belda, message -' He stopped again. 'Havin' us on, ain't her' said another of the men.

'Don't seem that way, not just,' said the tryzatt. "Seems to know what he wants all right. 'More like he knows we don't know his language.' 'What language is it, then?' asked the man.

'That's Ortelgan,' said the first soldier, spitting in the dust, 'Something about his life and a message.'

' 'Could be important, then,' said the tryzatt. ' 'Could be, if he's Ortelgan, and come to us with a message from Bekla. Can you tell us who you are?' he asked Kelderek, who met his eye but answered nothing.

'I reckon he's come from Bekla, but something's put things out of his mind, like – shock and that,' said the first soldier.

'That'll be it,' said the tryzatt. 'He's an Ortelgan – been working secretly for Lord Elleroth One-Hand maybe: and either those swine in Bekla tortured him – look what they did to the Ban, burned his bloody hand off, the bastards – or else his wits are turned with wandering all this way north to find us.'

'Poor devil, he looks all in,' said a dark man with a broad belt of Sarkid leatherwork bearing the Corn-Sheaves emblem. 'He must have walked till he dropped. After all, we couldn't be much further north if we tried, could we?'

'Well,' said the tryzatt, 'whatever it is, we'd better take him along. I've got to make a report by sunset, so the captain can sort him out then. Listen,' he said, raising his voice and speaking very slowly, in order to make sure that the foreigner standing two feet away from him could understand a language he did not know, 'you – come -with us. You – give – message – Captain, see?'

'Message,' replied Kelderek at once, repeating the Yeldashay. 'Message – Shardik.' He stopped and broke into a fit of coughing, leaning over his staff.

'All right, now don't you worry,' said the tryzatt reassuringly, buckling his belt, which he had slackened for the purpose of talking. 'We' – he pointed, miming with his hands – 'take – you – town -Captain – right? You'd better lend him a hand,' he added to the two men nearest him. 'We'll be 'alf the mucking night else.'

Kelderek, his arms drawn over the soldiers' shoulders for support, went with them down the hill. He was glad of their help, which was given respectfully enough – for they were uncertain what rank of man he might be. He for his part understood hardly a word of their talk and was in any case preoccupied in trying to remember what message it was that he had to send, now that he had at last found the soldiers who had vanished so mysteriously in the dawn. Perhaps, he thought, they might have some food to spare.

The main part of the army was encamped in the meadows outside the walls of Kabin, for the town and its inhabitants were being treated with clemency and in such dwellings as had been commandeered there was room for no more than the senior officers, their aides and servants and the specialist troops, such as scouts and pioneers, who were under the direct control of the commander-in-chief. The tryzatt and his men, who belonged to these, entered the town gates just as they were about to be shut for the night and, ignoring questions from comrades and bystanders, conducted Kelderek to a house under the south wall. Here a young officer wearing the stars of Ikat questioned him, first in Yeldashay and then, seeing that he understood very little, in Beklan. To this Kelderek replied that he had a message. Pressed, he repeated ' Bekla' but could say no more; and the young officer, unwilling to browbeat him and pitying his starved and filthy condition, gave orders to let him wash, eat and sleep. Next morning, as one of the cooks, a kindly fellow, was again washing his gashed arm, a second, older officer came into the room, accompanied by two soldiers, and greeted him with straightforward civility.

'My name is Tan-Rion,' he said in Beklan. 'You must excuse our haste and curiosity, but to an army in the field time is always precious. We need to know who you are. The tryzatt who found you says that you came to him of your own accord and told him that you had a message from Bekla. If you have a message, perhaps you can tell me what it is.'

Two full meals, a long and comfortable night's sleep and the attentions of the cook had calmed and to some extent restored Kelderek.

'The message – should have gone to Bekla,' he answered haltingly, 'but the best chance – is lost now.'

The officer looked puzzled. To Bekla? You are not bringing a message to us, then?' 'I – have to send a message.' 'Is your message to do with the fighting in Bekla?' 'Fighting?' asked Kelderek.

'You know that there has been a rising in Bekla? It began about nine days ago. As far as we know, fighting is still going on. Have you come from Deelguy, or whence?'

Confusion descended again upon Kelderek's mind. He was silent and the officer shrugged his shoulders.

'I am sorry – I can see that you are not yourself – but time may well be very short. We shall have to search you – that for a start'

Kelderek, who had become no stranger to humiliation, stood unresisting as the soldiers, not ungently and with a kind of rough courtesy, set about their task. They placed their findings on the window ledge – a stale crust, a strip of cobbler's leather, a reaper's whetstone which he had found lying in a ditch two days before, a handful of dried, aromatic herbs which the gate-keeper's wife had given him against lice and infection, and a talisman of red-veined stone which must once have belonged to Kavass.

'All right, mate,' said one of the soldiers, handing him back his jerkin. 'Steady, now. Nearly done, don't worry.'

Suddenly the other soldier whistled, swore under his breath and then, without another word, held out to the officer on the palm of his hand a small, bright object which glittered in the sunlight. It was the stag emblem of Santil-ke-Erketlis.

37 Lord One-Hand

The officer, startled, took the emblem and examined it, drawing the chain through the ring and fastening the clasp carefully, as though to allow himself time to think. At length, with an uncertainty that he had not shown before, he said, 'Will you be good enough to – to tell me – I am sure you will understand why I have to know -whether this is your own?'

Kelderek held out his hand in silence but the officer, after a moment's hesitadon, shook his head.

'Have you come here in search of the Commander-in-Chief himself? Perhaps you are a member of his household? If you can tell me it will make my task easier.'

Kelderek, to whom the memory was now beginning to return of much that had befallen him since leaving Bekla, sat down upon the bed and put his head in his hands. The officer waited patiently for him to speak. At last Kelderek said, 'Where is General Zelda? If he is here, I must sec him immediately.' 'General Zelda?' replied the officer in bewilderment.

One of the soldiers spoke to him in a low voice and together they went to the further end of the room.

'This man's an Ortelgan, sir,' said the soldier, 'or else I'm one myself.'

'I know that,' replied Tan-Rion. 'What of it? He's some agent of Lord Elleroth who's lost his wits.'

'I doubt he is, sir. If he's an Ortelgan, then clearly he's not a household officer of the Commander-in-Chief. You heard him ask for General Zelda. I agree it's plain that some shock's confused his mind, but my guess is that he's made his way into the middle of the wrong army without realizing it. If you come to think of it, he'd hardly be expecting to find us here in Kabin.' Tan-Rion considered.

'He could still have come by that emblem honestly. In his case it might be no more than a token to prove who he was working for. Nobody knows what strange people may have been reporting direct to General Erketlis or carrying his messages these last few months. Suppose, for instance, that Lord Elleroth made use of this man while he was in Bekla? When is General Erketlis expected to return, have you heard?'

'Not until the day after tomorrow, sir. He got wind of a big slave-column on the move west of Thettit-Tonilda and heading for Bekla; to reach it in time meant some very hard going, so the General took a hundred men from the Falaron regiment and said he'd do the job himself.'

'Very like him. I'm only afraid he may try that sort of thing once too often. Well, at that rate I suppose we'll have to keep this man until he gets back.'

'I suggest we might ask Lord One-Hand – Lord Elleroth – to see him, sir. If he recognizes him, as I gather you yourself think may be possible, then at least we shall know where we are, even if the man doesn't come round enough to tell us anything.'

After a few more fruitless questions to Kelderek, Tan-Rion, together with his two soldiers, conducted him out of the house and up on the town walls. Here, walking in the spring sunshine, they looked down upon the town on one side and on the other upon the huts and bivouacs of the camp in the fields outside. The smoke of fires was drifting on the breeze and in the market place a crowd was gathering in response to the long-drawn, stylized summons of a red-cloaked crier.

"Must have made his fortune since we came here, eh?' said a sentry on the wall to one of Tan-Rion's soldiers, jerking his thumb to where the crier below was already climbing on his rostrum.

'I dare say,' answered the soldier. 'I know I've done well enough out of him. He hangs about our place and offers to pay for anything we can tell him.' 'Well, just be careful how much you do tell him,' snapped Tan-Rion, turning his head. 'You bet, sir. We all want to stay alive.'

They descended from the wall by a flight of steps near the gate at which Kelderek had entered the town the night before and, passing through a square, came to a large, stone house where a sentry stood before the door. Kelderek and his escort were taken to a room which had formerly been that of the household steward, while Tan-Rion, after a few words with the captain of the guard, accompanied that officer through the house and into the garden.

The garden, green and formal, was shady with ornamental trees and shrubs – lexis, purple cresset and sharp-scented planella already opening its tiny, mauve-speckled flowers to the early sun. Through the midst, murmuring along its gravel bed, ran a brook channelled down from the reservoir. Along the verge, Elleroth was walking in conversation with a Yeldashay officer, a Deelguy baron and the governor of the town. He was gaunt and pale, his face haggard with pain and recent privation. His left hand, carried in a sling, was encased to the wrist in a great, padded glove of birch bark that covered and protected the dressings beneath. His sky-blue robe, a gift from the wardrobe of Santil-ke-Erketlis (for he had reached the army in rags), had been embroidered across the breast with the corn-sheaves of Sarkid, while the silver clasp of his belt was fashioned in the stag emblem. He walked leaning on a staff and those beside him carefully suited their pace to his. He nodded courteously to Tan-Rion and the guard commander, who stood deferentially aside, waiting until he should be ready to hear them.

'Of course,' Elleroth was saying to the governor, 'I cannot tell you what the Commander-in-Chief will decide. But clearly, whether the army remains here and for how long will depend not only on the movements of the enemy but also on the state of our own supplies. We're quite a long way from Ikat' – he smiled – 'and we shan't be loved up here much longer if we eat everybody out of house and home. The Ortelgan army are in the middle of their own country -or what they call their own country. I dare say we may decide to seek them out and fight them soon, before the balance begins to tip against us. I can assure you that General Erketlis has all this very much in mind. At the same time, there are two excellent reasons why we should like to stay here a little longer, provided you can bear with us – and I assure you that you would not, in the long run, be losers. In the first place, we are doing what we intended – what the enemy supposed we could never do and what we could not have done without help from Deelguy.' He bowed slightly to the baron, a heavy, swarthy man, showy as a macaw. 'We think that if we continue to hold the reservoir, the enemy may feel driven to attack us at a disadvantage. He for his part is probably waiting to see whether we shall stay here. So we want to look as though we shall.'

'You are not going to destroy the reservoir, my lord?' asked the governor anxiously.

'Only in the very last resort,' answered Elleroth cheerfully. 'But I'm sure that with your help we shall never come to that, shall we?' The governor replied with a wry smile and after a few moments Elleroth continued.

'The second reason is that we are anxious, while we are here, to hunt down as many slave-traders as we can. We have already caught not only several who hold warrants from the so-called king of Bekla, but also one or two of those who do not. But as you know, the country beyond the Vrako, right across to Zeray and up as far as the gap of Linsho, is wild and remote. Here, we are on its doorstep: Kabin is the ideal base from which to search it. If only we can gain the time, our patrols will be able to comb out the whole of that area. And believe it or not, we have received a reliable offer of help from Zeray itself.' 'From Zeray, my lord?' said the governor incredulously.

'From Zeray,' answered Elleroth. 'And you told me, didn't you,' he went on, turning with a smile to Tan-Rion, who was still waiting near by, 'that you had information about at least one unlicensed slave-trader who is believed to be either beyond the Vrako at this moment or else making towards it from Tonilda?'

'Yes, my lord,' replied Tan-Rion. 'The child-dealer, Genshed -a most cruel, evil man, from Terekenalt. But Trans-Vrako will be difficult country to search and he might very well give us the slip, even now.' 'Well, we shall have to do the best we can. So you see -'

'Any news of your own trouble, my lord?' broke in the Yeldashay officer impulsively. Elleroth bit his lip and paused a moment before answering.

'I'm afraid not – for the time being. So you see,' he resumed quickly to the governor, 'we are going to need all the help you can give us; and what I would like to learn from you is how we can best feed and supply the army while we stay here a little longer. Perhaps you will be so good as to think about it and we will have a talk with the Commander-in-Chief when he returns. We sincerely want to avoid making your people suffer and as I said, we will pay honestly for your help.'

The governor was about to withdraw when Elleroth suddenly added, 'By the way, the priestess from the Telthearna island – the wise woman – you gave her a safe-conduct, as I asked you?'

'Yes, my lord,' replied the governor, 'yesterday at noon. She has been gone these twenty hours.' 'Thank you.'

The governor bowed and went away through the trees. Elleroth stood still, watching a trout that hung on the edge of the current, motionless save for the flickering of its tail. It darted upstream and he sat down on a stone bench, easing his hand in the sling and shaking his head as though at some thought that preoccupied and distressed him. At length, recalling Tan-Rion, he looked up with a questioning smile.

"Sorry to bother you, sir,' said Tan-Rion briskly. 'Yesterday evening one of our patrols brought in a wandering Ortelgan who kept talking about a message to or from Bekla. This morning we found this on him and 1 thought best to come and show it to you at once.'

Elleroth took the stag emblem, looked at it, started, frowned and then examined it more closely. 'What does he look like, this man?' he asked at length.

'Like an Ortelgan, my lord,' replied Tan-Rion, 'spare and dark. It's hard to say much more – he's pretty well exhausted – half-starved and worn out. He must have had a very bad time.' 'I will see him immediately,' said Elleroth.

At the sight of Elleroth Kelderek's memory, by this time half-restored – like the safety of a swimmer whose limp feet, as he drifts, have already touched bottom here and there; or the consciousness of an awakening sleeper whose hearing has caught but who has not yet recognized for what they are the singing of the birds and the sound of rain – cleared as immediately as the misted surface of a mirror wiped by an impatient hand. The voices of the Yeldashay officers, the starred banner floating on the walls above the garden, the cognizances worn by the soldiers standing about him – all these assumed on the instant a single, appalling meaning. So might an old, sick man, smiling as his son's wife bent over his bed, grasp in a moment the terrible import of her look and of the pillow poised above his face. Kelderek gave a quick, gasping cry, staggered and would have fallen if the soldiers had not caught him under the arms. As they did so he struggled briefly, then recovered himself and stood staring, tense and wide-eyed as a bird held in a man's hand. 'How do you come to be here, Crendrik?' asked Elleroth. Kelderek made no reply. 'Are you seeking refuge from your own people?' He shook his head mutely and seemed about to faint. 'Let him sit down,' said Elleroth.

There was no second bench and one of the soldiers ran to bring a stool from the house. As he returned, two or three of the guard off duty followed him and stood peering from among the trees, until their tryzatt ordered them sharply back to the house.

'Crendrik,' said Elleroth, leaning towards him where he sat hunched upon the stool, 'I am asking you again. Are you here as a fugitive from Bekla?' 'I -I am no fugitive,' replied Kelderek in a low voice.

'We know that there has been a rising in Bekla. You say that that has nothing to do with your coming here, alone and exhausted?'

'I know nothing of it. I left Bekla within an hour of yourself – and by the same gate.' 'You were pursuing me?' 'No.'

Kelderek's face was set The guard commander seemed about to strike him, but Elleroth held up his hand and waited, looking at him intently.

'I was following Lord Shardik. That is my charge from God,' cried Kelderek with sudden violence and looking up for the first time. 'I have followed him from Bekla to the hills of Gelt' 'And then-?' 'I lost him; and later came upon your soldiers.' The sweat was standing on his forehead and his breath came in gasps. 'You thought they were your own?' 'It's no matter what I thought'

Elleroth searched for a moment among a bundle of scrolls and letters lying beside him on the bench. 'Is that your seal?' he asked, holding out a paper. Kelderek looked at it. 'Yes.' 'What is this paper?' Kelderek made no reply.

'I will tell you what it is,' said Elleroth. 'It is a licence issued by yourself in Bekla to a man called Nigon, authorizing him to enter Lapan and take up a quota of children as slaves. I have several similar papers here.'

The hatred and contempt of the men standing near by was like the oppression of snow unfallen from a winter sky. Kelderek, hunched upon the stool, was shaking as though with bitter cold. The scent of the planella came and went evanescent as the squeaking of bats at twilight.

'Well,' said Elleroth briskly, getting up from the bench, 'I have recovered this trinket, Crendrik, and you have nothing to tell us, it seems; so I can resume my work and you had better return to your business of seeking the bear.'

Tan-Rion drew in his breath sharply. The young Yeldashay officer started forward. 'My lord-' Again Elleroth raised his hand. *I have my reasons, Dethrin. Surely if anyone has the right to spare this man, it is I?'

'But, my lord,' protested Tan-Rion, 'this evil man – the priest-king of Shardik himself – Providence has delivered him into our hands – the people -'

'You may take my word for it that neither he nor the bear can harm us now. And if it is merely a matter of retribution that is troubling you, perhaps you will persuade the people to forgo it, as a favour to me. I have certain information which leads me to conclude that we should spare this man's life.'

His mild words were spoken with a firm directness which plainly admitted of no further argument. His officers were silent.

'You will go eastward, Crendrik,' said Elleroth. 'That will suit us both, since not only is it in the opposite direction from Bekla, but also happens to be the direction your bear has taken.'

From the square outside could now be heard a growing hubbub – murmuring, broken by angry shouts, raucous, inarticulate cries and the sharper voices of soldiers trying to control a crowd.

'We will give you food and fresh shoes,' said Elleroth, 'and that is as much as I can do for you. I can see well enough that you are in poor shape, but if you stay here you will be torn to pieces. You will not have forgotten that Mollo came from Kabin. Now understand this plainly. If ever again you allow yourself to fall into the hands of this army, you will be put to death. I repeat, you will be put to death. I should not be able to save you again.' He turned to the guard commander. 'See that he has an escort as far as the ford of the Vrako, and tell the crier to give out that it is my personal wish that no one should touch him.'

He nodded to the soldiers, who once more grasped Kelderek by the arms. They had already begun to lead him away when suddenly he wrenched himself about.

'Where is Lord Shardik?' he cried. 'What did you mean – he cannot harm you now?'

One of the soldiers jerked back his head by the hair, but Elleroth, motioning them to let him go, faced him once more.

'We have not hurt your bear, Crendrik,' he said. 'We had no need.'

Kelderek stared at him, trembling. Elleroth paused a moment. The noise of the crowd now filled the garden and the two soldiers, waiting, looked at one another sidelong.

'Your bear is dying, Crendrik,' said Ellerodi deliberately. 'One of our patrols came upon it in the hills three days ago and followed it eastward until it waded the upper Vrako. They were in no doubt. Other news has reached me also – never mind how – that you and the bear came alive from the Streels of Urtah. Of what befell you at the Streels you know more than I, but that is why your life is spared. I have no part in blood required of God. Now go!'

In the steward's room, one of the soldiers threw back his head and spat in Kelderek's face.

'You dirty bastard,' he said, 'burned his mucking hand off, did you?'

'And now he says we're to let you go,' said the other soldier. 'You damned, rotten Ortelgan slave-trader! Where's his son, eh? You saw to that, did you? You're the one that told Genshed what he had to do?'

'Where's his son?' repeated the first soldier, as Kelderek made no reply but stood with bent head, looking down at the floor.

'Didn't you hear me?' Taking Kelderek's chin in his hand, he forced it up and stared contemptuously into his eyes.

'I heard you,' mouthed Kelderek, his words distorted by the soldier's grip,' I don't know what you mean.' Both the soldiers gave short, derisive laughs. 'Oh, no,' said the second soldier. 'You're not the man who brought back slave-trading to Bekla, I suppose?' Kelderek nodded mutely.

'Oh, you admit that much? And of course you don't know that Lord Elleroth's eldest son disappeared more than a month ago, and that our patrols have been searching for him from Lapan to Kabin? No, you don't know anything, do you?' He raised his open hand, jeering as Kelderek flinched away.

'I know nothing of that,' replied Kelderek. 'But why do you blame the boy's disappearance on a slave-trader? A river, a wild beast -'

The soldier stared at him for a moment and then, apparently convinced that he really knew no more than he had said, answered 'We know who's got the lad. It's Genshed of Terekenalt.'

'I never heard of him. There's no man of that name licensed to trade in Beklan provinces.'

'You'd make the stars angry,' replied the soldier. 'Everyone's heard of him, the dirty swine. No, like enough he's not licensed in Bekla – even you wouldn't license him, I dare say. But he works for those that are licensed – if you call that work.' 'And you say this man has taken the Ban of Sarkid's heir?'

'Half a month ago, down in eastern Lapan, we captured a trader called Nigon, together with three overseers and forty slaves. I suppose you'll tell us you didn't know Nigon either?'

' No, I remember Nigon.'

'He told General Erketlis that Genshed had got the boy and was making north through Tonilda. Since then patrols have searched up through Tonilda as far as Thettit. If Genshed was ever there he's not there now.'

'But how could you expect me to know this?' cried Kelderek. 'If what you say is true, I don't know why Elleroth spared my life any more than you do.'

'He spared you, maybe,' said the first soldier. 'He's a fine gentleman, isn't he? But we're not, you slave-trading bastard. I reckon if anyone knows where Genshed is, it's you. What were you doing in these parts, and how else could he have got clean away?'

He picked up a heavy tally-stick lying on the steward's table and laughed as Kelderek flung up his arm.

'Stop that!' rapped the guard commander, appearing in the doorway. 'You heard what One-Hand said. You're to let him alone!'

'If they will let him alone, sir,' answered the soldier. 'Listen to them!' He pulled a stool to the high window, stood on it and looked out. The noise of the crowd had if anything increased, though no words were distinguishable. 'If they will let him alone, One-Hand's the only man they'd do it for.'

Sitting down apart, Kelderek shut his eyes and tried to collect his thoughts. A man may by chance overhear words which he knows to have been spoken with no malice towards himself – perhaps not even with reference to his own affairs – but which nevertheless, if they are true, import his personal misfortune or misery – words, perhaps, of a commercial venture foundered, of an army's defeat, of another man's fall or a woman's loss of honour. Having heard, he stands bewildered, striving by any means to set aside, to find grounds for disbelieving the news, or at least for rejecting the conclusion he has drawn, like an unlucky card, for his own personal fortune. But the very fact that the words did not refer directly to himself serves more than anything else to corroborate what he fears. Despite the desperate antics of his brain, he knows how more than likely it is that they are true. Yet still there is a faint possibility that they may not be. And so he remains, like a chess player who cannot bear to lose, still searching the position for the least chance of escape. So Kelderek sat, turning and turning in his mind the words which Elleroth had spoken. If Shardik were dying – but Shardik could not be dying. If Shardik were dying – if Shardik were dying, what business had he himself left in the world? Why did the sun still shine? What was now the intent of God? Sitting so rapt and still that at length his guards' attention wandered and they ceased to watch him, he contemplated the blank wall as though seeing there the likeness of a greater, incomprehensible void, stretching from pole to pole.

Elleroth's son – his heir – had fallen into the hands of an unlicensed slave-dealer? He himself knew – who better? – how possible it was. He had heard of diese men – had received many complaints of their activities in the remoter parts of the Beklan provinces. He knew that within the Ortelgan domains slaves were captured illegally who never reached the market at Bekla, being driven north through Tonilda and Kabin or west through Paltesh, to be sold in Katria or Terekenalt. Although the prescribed penalties were heavy, as long as the war lasted the probability of an unlicensed dealer's capture was remote. But that this man Genshed, whoever he might be, should have taken the son and heir of the Ban of Sarkid. No doubt he meant to demand a ransom if ever he got him safe to Terekenalt. But for what conceivable reason, with such a grief in his heart and such a wrong to lay to the charge of the hated priest-king of Bekla, had Elleroth insisted on sparing his life? For a while he pondered this riddle but could imagine no answer. His thoughts returned to Shardik, but at last he almost ceased to think at all, drowsing where he sat and hearing, sharper than the noise of the crowd, the plangent drip of water into a butt outside the window.

The guard commander returned and with him a burly, black-bearded officer, armed and helmeted, who stared at Kelderek, slapping his scabbard against his leg with nervous impatience. 'Is this the man?' The guard commander nodded.

'Come on, then, you, for God's sake, while we've still got them under some sort of control. I want to live, if you don't. Take this pack – shoes and two days' food – that's the Ban's orders. You can put the shoes on later.'

Kelderek followed him down the passage and through the courtyard to the gate-keeper's lodge. Under the arch behind the shut gate some twenty soldiers were drawn up in two files. The officer led Kelderek to a central place between them and then, taking up his own position immediately behind him, gripped him by the shoulder and spoke in his ear.

'Now you do as I say, do you see, or you'll never even have the chance to wish you had. You're going to walk across this blasted town to the east gate, because if you don't, I don't, and that's why you're going to. They're quiet now because they've been told it's the Ban's personal wish, but if anything provokes them, we're as good as dead. They don't like slave-traders and child butchers, you see. Don't say a word, dou't wave your bloody arms, don't do any damned thing; and above all, keep moving, do you understand? Right!' he shouted to the tryzatt in front. 'Get on with it, and God help us!'

The gate opened, the soldiers marched forward and Kelderek stepped at once into dazzling sunlight shining directly into his eyes. Blinded, he stumbled, and instantly the captain's hand was in his armpit, supporting and thrusting him on. 'You stop and I'll run you through.'

Coloured veils floated before his eyes, slowly dissolving and vanishing to disclose the road at his feet. He realized that he was bowed, neck thrust forward, peering down like a beggar on a stick. He straightened his shoulders, threw back his head and looked about him. The unexpected shock was so great that he stopped dead, raising one hand before his face as though to ward off a blow. 'Keep moving, damn you!'

The square was packed with people – men, women and children, standing on either side of the road, crowded at the windows, clinging to the roofs. Not a voice spoke, not a murmur was to be heard. All were staring at himself in silence, each pair of eyes following only him as the soldiers marched on across the square. Some of the men scowled and shook their fists, but none uttered a word. A young girl, dressed as a widow, stood with folded hands and tears unwiped upon her cheeks, while beside her an old woman shook continually as she craned her neck, her fallen-in mouth working in a palsied twitching. His eyes met for a second the round, solemn stare of a little boy. The people swayed like grass, unaware of their swaying as they moved their heads to keep him in their gaze. The silence was so complete that for a moment he had the illusion that these people were far away, too far to be heard from the lonely place where he walked between the soldiers, the only sound in his ears their regular tread that crunched upon the sand.

They left the square and entered a narrow, stone-paved street, where their footsteps echoed between the walls. Trying with all his will to look nowhere but ahead, he still felt the silence and the gaze of the people like a weapon raised above him. He met the eyes of a woman who threw up her arm, making the sign against evil; and dropped his head once more, like a cowering slave who expects a blow. He realized that he was breathing hard, that his steps had become more rapid than the soldiers', that he was almost running to keep his place among them. He saw himself as he must appear to the crowd – haggard, shrinking, contemptible, hastening before the captain like a beast driven up a lane.

The street led into the market-place and here, too, were the innumerable faces and the terrible silence. Not a woman was haggling, not a trader crying his wares; as they approached the fountain-basin – Kabin was full of fountains – the jet faltered and died away. He wondered who it was that had timed it so surely, and whether he had had orders to do so or had acted of his own accord; then tried to guess how far it might now be to the east gate, what it would look like when they reached it and what orders the captain would give. The cheek of the soldier beside him bore a long, white scar and he thought, 'If my right foot is the next to dislodge a stone, he got it in battle. If my left, then he got it in a fight when he was drunk.'

Not that these thoughts could come for an instant between his horror of the silence and of the eyes which he dared not meet. If it were not some sick fancy of his own fear and anguish, there was in this crowd a mounting tension, like that before the breaking of the rains. 'We must get there,' he muttered. 'At all costs, Lord Shardik, we must get there before the rains break.'

A cloud of flies flew up before his face, disturbed from a piece of offal lying in the road. He thought of the gylon fly, with its transparent body, hovering among the reeds along the Telthearna.' I have become a gylon fly – their eyes pass through me – through and through me – meeting those of others that pass through me from the other side. My bones are turning to water. I shall fall. He came, he came by night, Silence lay all about us. A sword passed through me, I am changed for ever. Senandril na kora, senandril na ro.' His thoughts, like a deserted child's, returning to the memory of loss and grief, came back to Elleroth's words in the garden. 'Your bear is dying, Crendrik -' 'Shut up and get on,' said the officer between his clenched teeth.

He did not know that he had spoken aloud. The dust whirled up in a sudden flurry of wind, yet of all the eyes around him not one seemed to close against it. The road was steeper now; they were climbing. He bent forward, dropping his head like an ox drawing a load uphill, looking down at the ground as he dragged himself on. They were leaving the market-place, yet the silence was pulling him backwards, the silence was a spell which held him fast. The weight of the thousands of eyes was a load he could never drag up this hill to the east gate. He faltered and then, stumbling backwards against the captain, turned his head and whispered, 'I can't go on.'

He felt the point of the captain's dagger thrust against his back, just above the waist.

'Ban of Sarkid or no Ban of Sarkid, I'll kill you before my men come to any harm. Get on!'

Suddenly the silence was broken by the cry of a child. The sound was like the flaring of a flame in darkness. The soldiers, who when he stumbled had stopped uncertainly, gathering about him and the captain, started as though at a trumpet and every head jerked round towards the noise. A little girl, perhaps five or six years old, running to cross the road before the soldiers came, had tripped and fallen headlong and now lay crying in the dust, less from pain, perhaps, than from the grim appearance of the soldiers at whose feet she found herself sprawling. A woman stepped out of the crowd, picked her up and bore her away, the sound of her voice, reassuring and comforting the child, carrying plainly back along the lane.

Kelderek raised his head and drew a deep breath into his lungs. The sound had broken the invisible but dreadful web in which, like a fly bound about with sticky thread, he had almost lost the power to struggle. As, when men break open at last a dry trench by the river, in which they have been repairing a canoe, the water comes flooding in, bringing back to the craft its true element and lifting it until it floats, so the sound of the child's voice restored to Kelderek the simple will and determination of common men to endure and survive, come what may. His life had been spared, no matter why; the sooner he was away from this town the better. B: the people hated him, then he had the answer – he would be gone.

Without further words to the captain he took up his pace once more, spurning the soft sand with his heels as he trudged up the hill. The people were pressing close now, the soldiers keeping them off with the shafts of their spears, the captain shouting 'Back! Keep back!' Ignoring them, he turned a corner at the top and at once found himself before the gate tower, the gate standing open, the guard turned out and drawn up on either side to prevent anyone following them out of the town. They tramped under the echoing arch. Without looking round he heard the gate grind and clang to and the bolts shot home. 'Don't stop,' said the captain, close behind him as ever.

Marching down a hill between trees, they came to a rocky ford across a torrent that swept down from the wooded hills on the left. Here the men, without waiting for orders, broke ranks, kneeling to drink or flinging themselves on the grass. The officer once again gripped Kelderek's shoulder and turned him about, so that they stood face to face.

'This is the Vrako – the boundary of Kabin province, as I dare say you know. The east gate of Kabin is shut for an hour by the Ban's orders and I shall be keeping this ford closed for the same length of time. You're to cross by this ford and after that you can go where you please.' He paused. 'One more thing. If the army get orders to patrol east of the Vrako, we shall be looking out for you; and you'll not escape again.'

He nodded to show that he had no more to say, and Kelderek, hearing behind him the growling curses of the soldiers – one threw a stone which struck a rock close by his knee – stumbled his way across the ford and so left them.