'When the fire gets a grip, won't the bear simply go out into the Rock Pit?'

'If it's already in by nightfall, they drop the gate between the hall and the pit. It's in at the moment*

'I don't fancy the idea of using a sword on a woman - even an Ortelgan priestess.'

'Neither do I; but my dear Mollo, this is war. You need not necessarily kill her, but at the least you'll have to do enough to stop her raising the alarm.'

'Well, suppose I do. The roof's burning and about to fall in on the bear and you've climbed down and joined me. What do we do then?'

'Vanish like ghosts at cock-crow.*

'But where? The only access to the lower city is through the Peacock Gate. We'il never get away.'

'There's quite a fair chance, actually. Santil advised me to look into it and I did, yesterday afternoon. As you know, the city walls run south and completely encircle Crandor; but high up, near the south-east corner, there's a disused postern in the wall. Santil told me it was made by some king long ago, no doubt for some unspeakable purpose of his own. Yesterday afternoon I walked up there, as Santil suggested, and had a look at it. It was all overgrown with brambles and weeds, but bolted only on the inside. I shouldn't think anyone's touched it for years. I oiled the bolts and made sure it can be opened. If anyone's gone there since and seen what I've done, that's too bad, but I doubt they will have. I had a nasty moment coming back, when I met the so-called king and General Zelda walking in that direction, but they turned back soon after I'd passed them. Anyway, that's our best chance and we can't do better than take it. If we can get as far as the upper slopes beyond the Barb without being caught, we may very well get through that gate and reach Santil's army in two or three days. No pursuit will go faster than I shall, I promise you.'

'I call it a thin chance. The whole thing's more than risky. And if we're caught -'

'Well, if you now feel that you'd prefer not to take part, my dear Mollo, by all means say so. But you said you'd risk anything to harm them. As far as I'm concerned, I haven't kept my skin whole these five years just to come here and risk nothing. Santil wants a resounding crash -1 must try to provide one.'

'Suppose, after all, I did kill the woman, couldn't we simply dive into the crowd and pretend complete ignorance? No one would be be able to identify us, and the fire might have been an accident -blown sparks on the wind.'

'You can certainly try that if you prefer, but they are bound to find out that the fire was no accident - I shall have to rip up the roof to get it to take properly. Suspicion will certainly fall on me - do you think it won't on you, after the motive you've been given today? Can you trust yourself to resist suspicion and enquiry convincingly for days on end? Besides, if the bear dies, the Ortelgans will be beside themselves. They are quite capable of torturing every delegate in the city to get a confession. No, on balance, I think I prefer my postern.'

'Perhaps you're right. Well, if we succeed and then manage to reach Erkcdis —'

'You will certainly not find him ungrateful, as no doubt you realize. You will do very, very much better for yourself than you would as governor of Kabin.'

'I believe that, certainly. Well, if I don't turn coward or think of any other stumbling-block before nightfall, I'm your man. But thank God there isn't long to wait.*

29 The Fire Festival

As dusk fell along the terraces of the Leopard Hill, with a green, yellow-streaked sky in the west and flutterings of bats against the last light, the new moon, visible all afternoon, began to gleam more brightly, seeming, as it moved towards its early setting, so frail and slender as almost to be insubstantial, no more than a ripple of the surrounding air catching the light like water undulating over a submerged rock. Small and lonely it looked, despite the nearby stars; fragile and fine as a greenfinch in spring, assailable as the innocence of a child wandering alone in a field of summer daisies. All below lay in silence and star-lit darkness, the city quieter than midnight, every fire extinguished, every voice silent, not a light that gleamed, not a girl that sang, not a flame that burned, not a beggar that whined for alms. This was the hour of the Quenching. The streets were deserted, the sandy squares, raked smooth at close of day, stood empty, ribbed and void as wind-frozen pools. Once the distant howl of a dog broke off short, as though quickly silenced. So still at last grew the moon-faint night that the sound of a boy's weeping, in a barracoon of the slave-market, carried as far as the Peacock Gate, where a single guard stood in the shadows, his arms folded, his spear leaning against the wall at his back. Above this expectant quiet, still as the spring fields outside the city, the wan crescent of light moved slowly on, like one compelled to travel towards a dark destination, of which he knows only that it will end his youth and change his life beyond foreseeing.

High on the Serpent tower Sheldra, cloaked against the night air, stood gazing westward, waiting for the lower horn of the declining moon to align itself with the pinnacle of the Bramba tower at the opposite corner. When at last it did so, the mile-wide silence was broken by her long, ululant cry of 'Shardik! Lord Shardik's fire!' A moment after, a streaking, dusky tongue of flame leapt up the thirty feet of the pitch-coated pine-trunk erected on the palace roof, appearing from the city below as a column of fire in the southern sky. From along the walls dividing the upper from the lower city, the priestess's wailing call was answered and repeated, as five similar but lesser flames rose, one after another, from the roofs of the equidistant guard-turrets, like serpents from their baskets as the reedy note of the snake-charmer. Then, from the lower city, there followed in appointed order the flames of the various gates and towers - the Blue Gate, the Gate of Lilies, the towers of the great clocks, the tower of Sel-Dolad, the tower of the Orphans and the tower of Leaves. Each flame soared into the night with the speed of a gymnast climbing a rope, and the poles burned in long, blazing waves, the fire rippling like water along their sides. So for a little they stood alone, indicating the length and breadth of the city where it lay upon the plain like a great raft moored under the steep of Crandor. And as they burned, their crackling alone breaking the silence that returned upon the ceasing of the cries from the towers, the streets began to fill with growing numbers of people emerging from their doors; some merely standing, like the sentry, in the dark, others groping slowly but purposefully towards the Caravan Market. Soon many were assembled there, all unspeaking, all standing patiently in a moonset, flame-flecked owl-light almost too dim for any to recognize his neighbour.

Then, far off against the Leopard Hill, appeared the flame of a single torch. Quickly it moved, bobbing, descending, racing down through the terraces towards the Barb, through the gardens and on towards the Peacock Gate, which stood ready open for the runner to enter the street of the Armourers and so come down to the Market and the reverent, waiting crowd. How many were gathered there? Hundreds, thousands. Very many men and some women also, each one the head of a household; justices and civic officers, foreign merchants, tally-keepers, builders and carpenters, the respectable widow side by side with Auntie from the jolly girls' house, hard-handed cobblers, harness-makers and weavers, the keepers of the itinerant labourers' hostels, the landlord of The Green Grove, the guardian of the provincial couriers' hospice and more, many more, stood shoulder to shoulder in silence, their only light the distant glinting of the tall flames which had summoned them from their homes, each carrying an unlit torch, to seek, as the gift of God, the blessing of the renewal of fire. The runner, a young officer of Ged-la-Dan's household, honoured with this task in recognition of courageous service in Lapan, carried his torch, lit from the new fire on the Palace roof, to the plinth of the Great Scales and there at last halted, silent and smiling, waiting a few moments to collect himself and to be sure of his effect before holding out the flame to the nearest suppliant, an old man wrapped in a patched, green cloak and leaning on a staff.

'Blest be the fire !' called the officer in a voice that carried across the square.

'Blest be Lord Shardik!' replied the old man quaveringly, and as he spoke lit his torch from the other's.

Now a handsome, middle-aged woman stepped forward, carrying in one hand her torch and in the other a yellow-painted wand, in token that she was deputizing for a husband absent at the war. There were many such in the crowd.

'Blest be the fire!' cried the young officer again, and 'Blest be Lord Shardik!' she answered, looking him in the eye with a smile that said, 'And blest be you too, my fine fellow.' Holding her lit torch aloft, she turned and set out for home, while a rough, heavily-built man, dressed like a drover, took her place before the plinth.

There was no jostling or haste, but a measured and joyous solemnity as torch after torch was lit. None might speak until the gift of fire had been bestowed upon him. Not all waited to receive fire from the actual torch carried from the Palace. Many, eager, took it as it was offered by those who were moving away across the square, until on all sides resounded the happy shouts of 'Blest be the fire!' and 'Blest be Lord Shardik!' Gradually the square became full of more and more points of light, like sparks spreading across the back of a hearth or the surface of a smouldering log. Soon the tossing, dancing flames were flowing out in every direction along the streets, while loosened tongues chattered like birds at first light and the rekindled lamps began to shine in one window after another. Then, on the roofs of the houses up and down the city, smaller fires began to burn. Some were poles, in imitation of those already lit on the gates and towers, others braziers full of wood or clearer fires of scented gums and incense-sprinkled charcoal. Feasting began and music, drinking in the taverns, dancing in the squares. Everywhere, the gift of light and warmth by night manifested the power over cold and darkness bestowed by God on Man and Man alone.

Beside the Barb, in the upper city above the Peacock Gate, another, graver messenger had arrived with his torch - none other than General Zelda, his full armour dully reflecting the smoky light as he strode towards the ripples lapping on the shore. Here, too, suppliants were waiting, but fewer and less fervent, their emotions modified by that detachment and self-conscious restraint which characterizes the aristocratic, wealthy or powerful participating in popular customs. Zelda's invocatory 'Blest be the fire' was spoken indeed with raised voice but in a formal, level tone, while the responding, 'Blest be Lord Shardik', though uttered sincerely, lacked the hearty ring of flower-girls or market porters in the lower city, breaking two hours' darkness and silence with the words appointed to commence one of the great frolics of the year.

Kelderek, robed in saffron and scarlet and attended by the priestesses of Shardik, stood waiting on the highest terrace of the Leopard Hill, surveying the city below; the torches spreading through the streets like water flowing from a sluice along dry irrigation channels; the multitudinous shapes of doors and windows emerging in light out of the darkness, as though called into existence by the new fires kindled within them; and nearer, the lines of flames lengthening, extending further along the shore of the Barb. So sometimes may news actually be seen to spread through a crowd, wind across a dusty plain, or sunrise down the western slope of a valley. About him burned the salts and gums and oils prepared for the fire festival, mysterious and splendid in combustion - kingfisher blue, cinnabar, violet, lemon and frost-green beryl - each transparent, gauzy fire, in its bronze bowl, carried upon rods between the shoulders of two women. The gong-like bells of the palace towers were ringing, their shuddering harmonies vibrating over the city, fading and returning like waves upon a shore. As he watched, the slip of the new moon sank at last below the western horizon and upon the lake appeared the gliding shape of a great dragon, a grinning monster all of fire, green-eyed and clawed, its jaws spouting a plume of white smoke that trailed behind it as it gathered way. Shouts of admiration and excitement broke out, young men's battle-cries and the stylized calls of the chase. Then, as the dragon reached the centre of the Barb, there sprang into being upon the further shore another fiery shape, erect upon its hind legs, thirty feet tall, round-eared, long-muzzled, snarling, one clawed fore-paw raised aloft As the cries of 'Shardik! Lord Shardik's fire!' rose higher and echoed from the walls about the garden, the figure of a naked man, bearing a torch in each hand, appeared in the bear's jaws. One moment he paused on that high, bright platform; then leapt out above the water. Secured to his shoulders and unrolling behind him was a long strip of tarred canvas which, burning, made it appear as though the bear were salivating fire. The leaper, plunging into the water below, slipped out of his harness and swam to the shore. Another followed, and now it was the shape of a fiery arrow which fell from the bear's mouth to the water. Quicker and quicker came the leapers, so that the flaming shapes of swords, spears and axes poured from between the bear's teeth to hurtle down over the lake. At length, as the dragon, belching smoke, glided beneath the towering effigy of Shardik, a burning noose dropped to encircle the prow forming its throat. The lights of its hot eyes went out and amid shouts of triumph its smoky breath died away as it floated captive at the glowing, ember-shaggy feet

Meanwhile, Kelderek and his train had already begun to descend the terraces in slow procession. The chanting of the priestesses rose about him with a sound that wrung his heart, for it was that same andphony that he had first heard in the forests of western Ortelga. Then, the voices of Rantzay and the Tuginda had formed part of a wall of sound encircling a summit of the spirit, sublime above the mortal world of fear and ignorance. Yet of this memory his grave, lean face showed no outward sign. His clasped hands were untrembling and his body, beneath the heavy robes, moved firmly on towards the appointed destination. The plant-scents of the night, thin and evanescent in the early spring air, mingled with the resinous odours of the coloured fires and the drift of torch-smoke on the breeze; and bemused, perhaps, by these and by his fast since sunrise, by his memories and the sound of the singing, he imagined first one and then another companion to be walking beside him towards the torch-lit garden and the dragon-reflecting lake: a dark girl wearing a broad, golden collar, who laughed and plunged the point of an arrow into her white arm before turning to him a face wan with fear: a tall, gaunt woman, limping exhausted on a staff, her sweating hands clutching a box where bladders lay packed in moss: and an old, red-eyed hag, who tottered at his elbow in filthy rags, bearing in her arms a dead child and imploring his help in mumbled words beyond his understanding. So real did they seem that dread and foreboding came upon him, pacing on. 'Shardik,' he prayed, 'senandril, Lord Shardik. Accept my life. Redeem the world, and begin with me.'

And now he is come to the garden, where the lords and ladies fall back before him and the barons raise their swords in salutation of the power entrusted by God to the priest-king. The priestesses' singing dies away, the copper bells are silent, the fiery bear and the dragon have done their strife and burn low with none to regard. The people about the shore cease their shouts and cheering, so that the distant sound of the lower city's riot rises up from below the walls. The priest-king walks forward alone, before the eyes of armed barons and of the envoys of his vassal provinces, towards the brink of a deep, inshore pool — the Pool of Light, Here, unhelped by man or woman, he must divest himself of his heavy robes and crown and stand naked, in the sharp night air, to thrust his feet into sandals of lead placed ready for him on the verge. Below him, deep in the pool, there burns amidst the darkness and water a single light - a light enclosed in a hollow, crystal sphere secured to a rock, fanned with air and emitting its heat and smoke through hidden vents. This is the fire of Fleitil, devised long ago for the worship of Cran, but now made a part of the fire-festival of Shardik. Down the flight of underwater steps the king will go, his feet weighted to carry him to the floor of the pool, and thence release himself and rise through the water, bearing that miraculous globe of light. Already he has moved forward, feeling for each stone step with ponderous feet and slowly descending in a silence broken only by the water lapping about his knees, his loins, his neck.

But hark! What dreadful sound is that, breaking the reverent hush of Ortelgan warriors and Beklan lords, slicing like a sword across the crowded garden and the empty lake? Heads turn, voices break out. A moment's silence and it is repeated - the roar of a great animal in rage, in fear and pain; so loud, so fierce and savage that women clutch the arms of their men, as at the sound of thunder or of fighting, and young boys feign unconcern, ill-concealing their involuntary fear. The lady Sheldra, waiting close to the king at the water-steps, turns about and stands tense, raising one hand to shield her eyes from the torchlight as she tries to see across the garden to the dark oudine of the King's House beyond. The roaring ceases and is followed by heavy, vibrating thuds, as though some soft but massive object were striking against the wall of that cavernous, echoing place.

Kelderek, who had already drawn breath to submerge and drop from the lowest step'to the bed of the pool, gave an inarticulate cry and struggled to release himself from the weighted sandals. A moment more and he drew the pins, pulled himself out of the water and stood dripping on the paved verge. The murmurs about him grew louder, unfriendly and fearful. 'What has happened?' 'What is he about?' 'To break off - unlucky!' 'An unlucky act — no good will come of itl' 'Sacrilege!' In the crowd near by, a woman began to weep with quick, nervous whimperings of fear.

Kelderek, paying them no heed, bent down, as though to dress himself again in the stiff, heavy vestments lying at his feet. In his haste his hands fumbled with the fastenings, the robe fell sideways and, flinging it down, he began to push his way, naked as he was, through the group of priestesses about him. Sheldra put her hand on his arm.

'My lord -'

'Get out of the way!' answered Kelderek, roughly flinging her off.

'What's the matter, Kelderek?' said Zelda, coming forward and speaking low and quickly at his shoulder. 'Don't be foolish, man! What are you about?'

'Shardik! Shardik!' shouted Kelderek. 'Follow me, for God's sake!’

He ran, twigs and stones piercing his bare feet Bleeding, his naked body shoved and forced its way between men in armour and shrieking, scandalized women, whose brooches and belt-buckles scratched his flesh. A man tried to bar his path and he felled him with a blow of his fist, yelling again, ' Shardik 1 Get out of the way!'

'Stop! Come back!' called Zelda, pursuing and trying to clutch him. 'The bear's only frightened of the fire, Kelderek! It's the noise and smell of the smoke's upset it! Stop this blasphemy! Stop him!' he shouted to a group of officers a little way ahead.

They stared irresolutely and Kelderek broke through them, tripped and fell, got up and again dashed forward, his wet body smeared from head to foot with dirt, blood and the leafy fragments of the garden. Grotesque in appearance, as dirty and lost to dignity as some wretched butt of the barrack-room stripped, pelted and chased by his loutish comrades for their mean sport, he ran on, heedless of everything but the noise from the hall now close in front of him. As he reached that same terrace on which he had joined Zelda the day before, he stopped and turned to those following him.

'The roof! The roof's on fire! Get up there and put it out!'

'He's out of his mind!' cried Zelda. 'Kelderek, you fool, don't you realize there's a fire burning on every roof in Bekla tonight? For God's sake -'

'Not up there! Do you think I don't know? Where are the sentries? Get them up there — send men to search round the far side!'

Alone, he rushed through the south door, along the ambulatory and into the hall. The place was dim, lit by no more than five or six torches fixed along the smoke-streaked walls. By the cage-bars in the centre of the hall Zilthe was sprawled face-down, her head lying in a puddle of blood that oozed over the stones. From the roof above came sounds of crackling and burning, and something heavy shifted and slipped with a rending noise. A sudden spurt of flame came and went and sparks floated down, dying as they fell.

Shardik, swaying from side to side like a fir-tree when woodmen rock it at the base to loosen the roots, was standing erect at the further end of the hall, beating with his huge paws on the closed gate and roaring with rage and fear as the fire burned more strongly above him. In his back was a jagged gash as long as a man's forearm and near him lay a bloody spear which, evidently torn from one of the panoplies on the wall, must have fallen out of the wound as he rose on his hind legs.

Before the bars, with his back to Kelderek, stood a man armed with a bow. This also he must have snatched from the wall, for from either end still dangled the broken leather thongs by which it had been fastened. A heavy-headed arrow lay on the string and the man, no doubt unaccustomed to the weapon, was fumbling as he drew it. Kelderek, naked and unarmed as he was, rushed forward. The man, turning, dodged quickly, drew his dagger and stabbed him in the left shoulder. The next moment Kelderek had flung himself upon him, biting, kicking and clawing, and borne him to the ground. He did not feel whatever wounds he received, nor the pain in his thumbs as he pressed them, almost to breaking, into the man's throat and beat the back of his head against the floor. He sank his teeth in him like a beast, released his hold an instant to batter him, then clutched him once more and tore him, as a savage guard-hound tears a robber whom he has caught in his master's house.

When Zelda and those with him entered the hall, bearing the dead body of a sentry and holding under guard Elleroth, Ban of Sarkid and envoy of Lapan, whom they had overpowered in the act of climbing down from the roof, they found the king, covered from head to foot in blood and dirt, bleeding from five or six stab-wounds and weeping as he bent over the young priestess on the floor. The lacerated body beside him was that of Mollo, envoy of Kabin, who had been actually torn and battered to death at the king's bare hands.

30 'Elleroth Condemned

With a flow of relief like that felt by a child when light is brought into the dark room where he is lying afraid, Kelderek realized that he had been dreaming. The child desists from frightening himself with the fancy that the oak chest might be a crouching animal, and accepts that the grotesque face peering down upon him is nothing but a pattern of lines in the rafters; and at once other, true proportions, not actually revealed by, but nevertheless consequent upon the bringing of the light, are plain. The distant sound outside the window, though unaltered from a few moments before, is now, clearly, not faint, evil laughter but the croaking of frogs: while, by a subtle shift of emphasis, the smell of new-sawn wood, of penned cattle or of drying skins, which just now seemed so menacing, the very smell of fear, alters in its effect as it becomes linked with familiar people and bright, diurnal things. But with those things return almost at once the shadows which they cast Will he be scolded because he cried out in his fear? Or has someone perhaps discovered that yesterday he did what he should not? He has only exchanged one kind of anxiety for another.

In Kelderek's wakening mind, the misty topography of thought seemed to turn as though upon a pivot; dream and reality took up their proper places and he recognized the true aspect and features of his situation. He had not, he realized, been summoned to the presence of Bel-ka-Trazet — that was a dream — and therefore, thank God, he need no longer try to devise how best to defend himself. The aching pain in his body was certainly real, but was due not to blows received from the High Baron's men, but to his fight with the intruder in the hall. He was not, after all, in danger of death, yet instead there now returned to him the recollection of all that he had forgotten in sleep - the wounding of Shardik, the burning hall, Zilthe lying on the stones and his own injuries. How long had he been asleep? Suddenly, as a wall crumbles at the point where it is most vulnerable, the drowsy, undiscriminating progress of his awakening was broken by the realization that he did not know what had become of Shardik. At once he cried out 'Shardik!', opened his eyes and tried to start up.

It was daylight and he was lying in his own bed. Through the southern window, with its view over the Barb, a pale sun was shining. It seemed an hour or two after dawn. His left hand was bound up - his shoulder too, he could feel, and the opposite thigh. Biting his lip with pain, he sat up and put his feet to the floor. As he did so Sheldra came into the room.

'My lord -'

'Shardik! What has become of Lord Shardik?'

'My lord, General Zelda has come to speak with you. He is in haste. He says it is important.'

She hurried out, while he shouted feebly after her, 'Shardik! Shardik!' She returned with Zelda, who was cloaked and booted as though for a journey.

'Shardik!' he cried, and tried to stand, but stumbled back on the bed. 'Is he alive? Will he live?'

'Like master, like man,' replied Zelda with a smile. 'Shardik is alive, but it's a deep wound and he needs rest and care.'

'How long have I been asleep?'

'This is the second day since you were hurt.'

'We gave you a drug, my lord,' said Sheldra. 'The knife-blade broke off short in your thigh, but that we were able to take out.'

'Zilthe? What of Zilthe'

'She is alive, but her brain is damaged. She tries to speak, but can find no words. It will be long, or never, before she can serve Lord Shardik again.'

Kelderek put his head in his hands, thinking with anguish of the quicksilver lass who had once mistaken him for the quarry and shot an arrow between his arm and body; she who, standing alone in the waning moonlight, had seen Lord Shardik strike down the treacherous messenger on the road to Gelt.

'Kelderek,' said Zelda, interrupting his thoughts, 'no doubt you need to rest; but nevertheless you must listen to me, for time is very short and I have to be gone. There are things to be done, but the ordering of them I must leave in your care. That should do well enough, for the whole city desires only to serve and obey you. They know that it was you alone who saved Lord Shardik's life from those villains.'

Kelderek raised his head and looked at him in silence.

'Yesterday, at dawn,' went on Zelda, 'a messenger reached Bekla from the army in Lapan. His news was that Santil-ke-Erketlis, after sending a force to distract our attention with a pretended attack west of Ikat, had himself passed us on the east flank and was marching north through Tonilda.'

'What does he intend?'

'That we don't know - he may not have any preconceived aim, apart from seeking support in the eastern provinces. But he will probably form an aim in the light of whatever support he gets. We've got to follow and try to contain him, that's certain. A general Like Erketlis wouldn't begin a march unless he felt sure he could make something of it. Ged-la-Dan left yesterday morning. I've stayed to see to the raising of three more companies and some extra supplies - the city governor will tell you the details. I'm off now, with every man I've been able to impress: they're waiting for me in the Caravan Market; and a cheap lot they are, I'm afraid.'

'Where are you making for?'

'Thettit-Tonilda. Our army's coming north after Erketlis, so somewhere between here and Thettit I'm bound to strike their line of march. The trouble is that Erketlis achieved so much surprise -he must be nearly two days ahead of them.'

'I wish I could come with you.'

'I wish it too. Would to God Lord Shardik could join us for a new battle! I can see it all — darkness falling and Erketlis struck down with one blow of his paw. Heal him, Kelderek; restore him, for all our sakes! I'll see you get news — every day, if possible.' -

'But one thing more I must learn at once. What happened two nights ago? It was Mollo of Kabin, wasn't it, who wounded Lord Shardik? But who fired the roof of the hall; and why?'

'I'll tell you,' answered Zelda, 'and fools we were not to foresee it. It was Elleroth, Ban of Sarkid; he who passed us when we were walking that day above the Barb. If you'd not acted as you did in leaping from the pool, Lord Shardik would have died at the hands of that precious pair. The roof would have fallen in on him and on Zilthe, and both the traitors would have escaped.'

'But Elleroth - is he dead too?'

'No. He was taken alive as he came down from the roof. It will be your task to see him executed.' 'To see him executed? I?'

'Who else? You are the king, and the priest of Shardik.'

'I have little relish for it, even when I think what he tried to do. To kill in battle is one thing; an execution is another.'

'Come, Kelderek Play-with-the-Children, we can't afford to have you turn squeamish. The man's murdered an Ortelgan sentry and attempted a sacrilegious crime, wicked beyond belief. Obviously he must be executed before you and in the presence of every baron and provincial delegate in Bekla. Indeed, you will have to require the attendance of all Ortelgans of any rank or standing whatever -there are so few left in the city and the Ortelgans ought to outnumber the provincial delegates by at least three to one.'

Kelderek was silent, looking down and picking at the blanket. At length, ashamed of his weakness, he asked hesitantly, 'Must - must he be tortured? Burned?*

Zelda turned towards the window overlooking the Barb and stood gazing out across the water. After a little he said, 'This is not a question either of indulging mercy or of gratifying revenge, but simply of achieving an effect for political reasons. People have got to see the man die and to be convinced, by what is done, that we are right and he is wrong. Now if a man — a bandit, say — is to be executed to impress the poor and ignorant and deter them from law-breaking, it is best if he dies a cruel death, for such people have no imagination and lead hard, rough lives themselves. A quick death seems little hardship to them. It is necessary that the man should be humiliated and deprived of his dignity before their mean minds can take in the lesson. But with men of the better sort, it's another matter. If we torture a man like Elleroth of Sarkid, his courage is likely to excite admiration and pity and many of the delegates, who are men of rank, may even end by feeling contempt for us. We would do better to aim at arousing respect for our mercy. Although it is only just that he should the, it is with regret that we kill such a man - that is what we must give out. It is your affair, Kelderek, but since you ask me, I would advise you to have him beheaded with a sword. It will be enough, with a man of Elleroth's standing, that we put him to death at all.'

'Very well. He shall be executed in the hall, in the presence of Lord Shardik.'

'I should have told you. The fire did much harm before we could quench it. Baltis says the roof is in a bad state and will take some time to repair.'

'Is he the best judge? Has no one else been up to see it?'

'I cannot tell, Kelderek. You forget the news I told you of the war. All is at sixes and sevens, and you must see to this yourself. Lord Shardik is your mystery, and one which you have shown that you understand. Of the roof, I can tell you only what the man told me. Order the matter as you think best, so long as Elleroth is executed before all the delegates. And now, good-bye. Only keep the city as well as you have kept Lord Shardik, and all may yet be well. Pray for the defeat of Erketlis, and wait for news.'

He was gone and Kelderek, full of pain and tired to exhaustion, could remain awake hardly long enough for his wounds to be dressed before lying down to sleep again.

The next day, however, already troubled by the delay in commencing his task and anxious to have it done and finished, he sent for the city governor and the garrison commander and set about the arrangements. He was determined that the execution should take place in the hall and in the presence of Shardik, since he felt it to be just and right that Elleroth should the upon the scene of his crime. Also, he thought, there, more than anywhere else, he himself would be seen as the agent of Shardik, invested with the implacable and divine authority proper to one putting to death an aristocrat and the hereditary lord of a province twice as large as Ortelga.

The roof of the hall, he was informed, though in a precarious state and unable to be repaired until some heavy lengths of timber could be brought in to replace the two central tie-beams, was nevertheless safe enough for an assembly.

'The way we see it, my lord,' said Baltis, half-turning for corroboration to the Beklan master-builder standing at his elbow, 'it's sound enough unless there was to be any real violence — rioting or fighting or anything the like of that. The roof's supported by the walls, d'ye see, but the tie-beams - that's to say, the cross-beams — they've been that much burned that there's some might not stand up to a heavy shaking.'

'Would shouting be dangerous?' asked Kelderek, 'or a man struggling, perhaps?'

' Oh no, my lord, it'd need a lot more than that to make it go - like the old woman's ox. Even if the beams wasn't to be repaired, they'd still stand up for months very like, although the rain'd be in through the holes, of course.'

'Very well,' replied Kelderek. 'You have leave to go.' Then, turning to the governor, he said, 'The execution will take place tomorrow morning, in the hall of the King's House. You will see to it that not less than a hundred and fifty Ortelgan and Beklan lords and citizens are present - more if possible. No one is to carry arms, and the provincial delegates are to be separated and dispersed about the hall - no more than two delegates to be seated together. The rest I leave in your hands. The lady Sheldra, however, will be caring for Lord Shardik and you are to meet her early tomorrow and take account of her wishes. When all is ready to your satisfaction, she will come here to summon me.'

31 The Live Coal

The night turned cold, near to frost, and soon after midnight a white fog began to fill all the lower city, creeping slowly higher to cover at last the still waters of the Barb and thicken about the Palace and the upper city until there was no seeing from one building to the next. It muffled the coughing of the sentries and the stamping of their feet for warmth - or was it, thought Kelderek, standing cloaked in the bitter draught at the window of his room, that they slapped themselves and stamped rather to break the close, lonely silence? The fog drifted into the room and thickened his breathing; his sleeves, his beard felt chill and damp to the touch. Once he heard swans' wings overhead, flying above the fog, the rhythmic, unhindered sound recalling to him the far-off Telthearna. It faded into the distance, poignant as the whistling of a drover's boy to the cars of a man in a prison cell. He thought of Elleroth, without doubt awake like himself, and wondered whether he too had heard the swans. Who were his guards? Had they allowed him to send any message to Sarkid, to settle his affairs, to appoint any friend to act for him? Ought he not himself to have enquired about these things - to have spoken with Elleroth? He went to the door and called

‘Sheldra!' There was no reply and he went into the corridor and called again.

'My lord!' answered the girl drowsily, and after a little came towards him carrying a light, her sleep-bleared face peering from the hood of her cloak.

'Listen!' he said, 'I am going to see Elleroth. You are to —'

He saw her startled look as the sleep was jolted from her brain. She fell back a step, raising the lamp higher. In her face he saw the impossibility of what he had said, the head-shakings behind his back, the soldiers' speculations, the later questions of Zelda and Ged-la-Dan; the icy indifference of Elleroth himself to the ill-timed solicitude of the Ortelgan medicine-man; and the growth and spread among the common people of some misconceived tale.

'No,' he said. 'It's no matter. I spoke what I did not intend — it was some remnant of a dream. I came to ask whether you have seen Lord Shardik since sunset.'

'Not I, my lord, but two of the girls are with him. Shall I go down?'

'No,' he said again. 'No, go back to bed. It's nothing. Only the fog troubles me — I have been imagining some harm to Lord Shardik.'

Still she paused, her heavy face expressing her bewilderment. He turned, left her and went back to his room. The flame of the lamp shed a cheerless nimbus on the fog hanging in the air. He lay prone upon the bed and rested his head on his bent forearm.

He thought of all the blood that had been shed - of the battle of the Foothills and crying of the wounded as the victorious Ortelgans mustered in the falling darkness; of the smashing of the Tamarrik Gate and the cacophonous, smoking hours that followed; of the gallows on Mount Crandor and the skulls in the hall below. Elleroth, a nobleman of unquestioned courage and honour, bending all his endeavours to the task, had almost succeeded in burning to death the wounded Shardik. And soon, when he was laid across a bench like a pig and the blood came spurting from his neck, few of those about him would feel the horror and sorrow natural to the heart of any peasant's child.

He was unaccountably seized with misgiving, by a premonition so vague and undefined that he could make nothing of it. No, he thought, this could be no divination on his part. The plain truth was that, despite his horror of Elleroth's deed, he had little stomach for this cold-blooded business. 'They should have killed him as he came down from the roof,' he said aloud; shivered in the cold, and huddled himself under the rugs.

He drowsed fitfully, woke, drowsed and woke again. Thought dissolved into fantasy and, not dreaming yet not awake, he imagined himself stepping through his embrasured window as from the fissured opening of a cave; and emerging, saw again under starlight the Ledges descending between the trees of Quiso. He was about to bound away down their steep pitch but, pausing at a sound from behind him, turned and found himself face to face with the old, muttering hag of Gelt, who stooped and laid at his feet —

He cried out and started up. The fog sail filled the room, but it was murky daylight and in the corridor he could hear the voices of the servants. His bound wounds throbbed and ached. He called for water and then, robing himself without help and laying his crown and staff ready on the bed, sat down to wait for Sheldra.

Soon there came from the terrace below sounds of footsteps and low voices. Those who were to attend the execution must be converging on the hall. He did not look out, but remained on the edge of the bed, staring before him, the dark robe covering him from his shoulders to the ground. Elleroth, he thought, must also be waiting; he did not know where; perhaps not far away — perhaps near enough to hear the footsteps and voices diminish and silence return - a waiting, expectant silence.

When he heard Sheldra's step in the corridor, he rose at once and went to the door before she could reach it. He realized that he wished to prevent the need for him to hear her voice, that voice which would sound no different had she come to tell him that Lord Shardik had raised the dead to life and established peace from Ikat to the Telthearna. As he stepped across the threshold she was waiting and looked at him impassively, her face expressing neither dread nor excitement. He nodded gravely and she, unspeaking, turned about to precede him. Beyond her the other women were waiting, their stiff robes filling the narrow corridor from wall to wall. He raised his hand to silence their whispering and asked,

'Lord Shardik - what is his mood? Is he disturbed by the crowd?'

'He is restless, my lord, and looks fiercely about him,' answered one of the girls.

'He is impatient to sec his enemy brought before him,' said another. She gave a quick laugh and at once fell silent, biting her lip as Kelderek turned his head and stared coldly at her.

At his word they began to file slowly along the corridor, preceded by the beat of the gong. Looking down as he reached the head of the stairway, he saw the fog trailing through the open doorway and the young soldier at the entrance shifting his feet and gazing up at them. One of the girls stumbled, recovering herself with a hand that slapped against the wall. An officer appeared, looked up at Sheldra, nodded and went out through the door. She turned her head and whispered, 'He has gone to fetch the prisoner, my lord.'

Now they were entering the hall. He would scarcely have recognized it, so much closer and smaller did it seem to have grown. This was no longer the echoing space of flame-shot dusk where he had kept watch so many nights in solitude and where he had leapt empty-handed upon the Kabin envoy at his evil task. Except along the line of a narrow path extending before him between two ropes, men stood pressed together from wall to wall. There was a confusion of heads, robes, cloaks, armour, and of faces turned towards him, swaying and bobbing as each sought to catch a glimpse of him over and round his neighbour. Above them, the fog hung like the smoke of bonfires in the cold air. The charred, irregular gaps in the roof showed only as lighter patches of fog. Though the clothes of the spectators were of every hue — some gaudy and barbaric as nomads' or brigands' garb — yet in this dank gloom their brightness and variety seemed soaked away, like the colours of sodden leaves in autumn.

The floor had been covered with a mixture of sand and sawdust, so that no sound came from his footsteps or from those of the women pacing before him. At the centre of the hall an open space had been left in front of the bars and here, in an attempt to clear and warm the air, a brazier of charcoal had been set. The light smoke and fume drifted one way and another. Men coughed, and patches of the heaped fuel glowed as the draught blew them brighter. Close to the brazier stood a heavy bench, on which the three soldiers who were to carry out the execution had laid their gear - a long sword with a two-handed hilt, a sack of bran to soak up the blood and three cloaks, neatly folded, with which to cover the head and body as soon as the blow had been struck.

In the centre of the space a bronze disc had been placed on the floor, and upon this Kelderek, with the women flanking him on either side, took up his position, facing the bench and the waiting soldiers. For an instant his teeth chattered. He clenched them, raised his head; and found himself looking into the eyes of Shardik.

Insubstantial the bear appeared, monstrous, shadowy in the smoky, foggy gloom, like some djinn emergent from the fire and brooding darkly above it in the half-light. He had come close to the bars and, rising on his hind legs, stood peering down, his fore-paws resting on one of the iron tics. Seen through the heat and fume from the brazier his outline wavered, spectral and indistinct. Looking up at him, Kelderek was momentarily bemused, overcome by that dream-like state, experienced sometimes in fever, in which the mind is deceived as to the size and distance of objects, so that the shape against the light of a fly on a window-sill is supposed that of a house on the skyline, or the falling of a distant torrent is mistaken for the rustle of wall-hangings or curtains. Across a great distance Shardik, both bear and mountain-summit, inclined his divine head to perceive his priest, minute upon the plain below. In those far-off, gigantic eyes Kelderek — and he alone, it seemed, for none else moved or spoke - could discern unease, danger, impending disaster grim and foreboding as the rumbling of a long-silent volcano. Pity, too, he saw, for himself, as though it were he and not Elleroth who was the victim condemned to kneel at the bench, and Shardik his grave judge and executioner.

'Accept my life, Lord Shardik,' he said aloud, and as he uttered the familiar words awoke from the trance. The heads of the women on either side turned towards him, the illusion dissolved, the distance diminished to a few yards and the bear, more than twice his own height, dropped on all fours and resumed its uneasy rambling up and down the length of the bars. He saw the oozing scab of the half-healed spear-wound in its back and heard its feet stumbling through the thick, dry straw.

'He is not well,' he thought and, oblivious of all else, would have stepped forward even then, had not Sheldra laid a hand on his arm, motioning with her eyes towards the opening from the ambulatory on his right

To the low, steady beat of a drum, two files of Ortelgan soldiers were entering the hall, their feet on the sand as soundless as his own had been. Between them walked Elleroth, Ban of Sarkid. He was very pale, his forehead sweating in the cold, his face drawn and streaked with sleeplessness: but his step was firm; and as he turned his eyes here and there he contrived to appear to be observing the scene in the hall with a detached and condescending air. Beyond him, Shardik had begun to prowl more violently, with a restless, dominating ferocity of which none in the hall could remain unaware; but Elleroth ignored him, affecting interest only in the packed mass of spectators to his left Kelderek thought, 'He has already considered how best to keep his dignity and determined upon this part to act' He remembered how once he himself, sure of immediate death, had lain waiting for the leopard to spring from the bank above; and thought, 'He is so much afraid that his sight and hearing are misted over. But he knew it would be so, and he has rehearsed these moments.' He called to mind the plot of which Elleroth was guilty and tried to recover the anger and hatred which had filled him on the night of the fire festival: but could feel only a mounting sense of dread and apprehension, as though some precarious tower of wrong piled upon wrong were about to topple and fall. He closed his eyes, but at once felt himself swaying, and opened them again as the drum ceased, the soldiers drew apart and Elleroth stepped forward from among them.

He was dressed plainly but finely, in the traditional style of a nobleman of Sarkid - much as he might have dressed, Kelderek supposed, to feast his tenants at home or to entertain friends at a dinner party. His veltron, pleated saffron and white, was of new cloth, embroidered with silk, and the slashed gores of his breeches were cross-stitched with an intricate, diapered pattern in silver filigree, a month's work for two women. The long pin at his shoulder was also silver, quite plain, such as might have belonged to any man of means. Kelderek wondered whether it might be a keepsake from some comrade of the slave wars - from Mollo himself, perhaps? He wore no jewels, no neck-chain, bracelet or ring; but now, as he stepped out from among the soldiers, he drew from his sleeve a gold pendant and chain, slipped it over his head and adjusted it at his neck. As it was recognized, murmurs arose among the spectators. It represented a couchant stag, the personal emblem of Santil-ke-Erketlis and his entourage.

Elleroth came to the bench and paused, looking down at what was on it. Those nearest saw him brace himself against a quick tremor. Then, stooping, he felt the edge of the blade with one finger. As he straightened, his eyes met those of the executioner with a tense, forced smile and he spoke for the first time.

'No doubt you know how to use that thing or you wouldn't be here. I shall give you little trouble and I hope you'll do as much for me.'

The fellow nodded awkwardly, evidently at a loss to know whether he should reply. But as Elleroth handed him a small leather bag, murmuring, 'That's among yourselves,' he drew the strings, looked into it and, wide-eyed, began to stammer out his thanks in words so banal and out of place as to seem both shameful and macabre. Elleroth checked him with a gesture, stepped forward to face Kelderek and inclined his head with the coldest suggestion of a formal greeting.

Kelderek had already instructed the governor that a herald was to describe the crime committed by Elleroth and Mollo and conclude by announcing the sentence of death. There was no interruption as this was now done, the only sounds to be heard besides the herald's voice being the intermittent growling of the bear and its rough, spasmodic movements among the dry straw. 'He is still feverish,' thought Kelderek. 'This disturbance and the crowd have unsettled him and will delay his recovery.' Each time he looked up, it was to meet the cold, contemptuous gaze of the condemned man, one side of his face cast into shadow by the light from the brazier. Whether assumed or real, he could not out-stare that indifference; and finally bent his head, pretending abstraction as the herald described the burning roof, the wounding of Shardik and his own frenzied onslaught upon Mollo in the hall. Whisperings of foreboding seemed all about him, intermittent and impalpable as the bitter draught from the ambulatory and the thin streams of fog trailing like cobwebs down the walls.

The herald ceased at length and silence fell. Sheldra touched his hand and, recollecting himself, he began to utter to Elleroth, in imperfect Beklan, the words which he had prepared.

'Elleroth, formerly Ban of Sarkid, you have heard the recital of your crime and the sentence passed upon you. That sentence, which must now be carried out, is a merciful one, as becomes the power of Bekla and the divine majesty of Lord Shardik. But in further token of that mercy and of the might of Lord Shardik, who has no need to. fear his enemies, I now grant you consent to speak if you so desire: after which we wish you a courageous, dignified and painless death, calling upon all to witness that cruelty is no part of our justice.'

Elleroth remained silent so long that at length Kelderek looked up, only to encounter once more his stare and realize that the condemned man must have been waiting for him to do this. Yet still he could feel no anger, even while he once more dropped his eyes and Elleroth began to speak in Beklan.

His first words came high and thin, with little gasping pauses, but he quickly checked himself, resuming in a strained but firmer tone, which gathered strength as he continued.

'Beklans, delegates of the provinces, and Ortelgans. To all of you assembled here today, in this northern cold and fog, to see me the, I am grateful for hearing me speak. Yet when a dead man speaks you must look to hear nothing but plain words.'

At this moment Shardik came once more to the bars, rising on his hind legs directly behind Elleroth and looking intently out across the hall. The glow from the brazier threw an amber light up the length of his shaggy pelt, so that Elleroth appeared to be standing before some high, firclit doorway fashioned, larger than life, in the shape of a bear. Two or three of the soldiers looked over their shoulders, flinching, and were checked by a low word from their officer; but Elleroth neither turned his head nor paid them attention.

'I know that there are those here who would not hesitate to acknowledge their friendship with me if they did not know that to do so would avail me nothing; but I fear that some of you are secretly disappointed and perhaps - a few - even ashamed to sec me, the Ban of Sarkid, led here to the as a criminal and conspirator. To you I say that what may seem a shameful death is not felt as such by me. Neither Mollo, who is dead, nor I, who am about to die, broke any oath given to our enemies. We told no lies and used no treachery. The man I killed was a soldier, armed and on duty. The worst that can be said of us is that a poor girl, watching in this hall, was struck down and badly injured, and for this, though I did not strike the blow, I am most sincerely sorry. But I must tell you, and tell you all plainly, that what Mollo and I undertook was an act of war against rebels and robbers: and against a superstitious, cruel and barbarous cult, in the name of which evil deeds have been committed.'

'Silence!' cried Kelderek, above the murmurs and muttering from behind him. 'Speak no more of this, Lord Elleroth, or I shall be forced to bring your speech to an end.'

'It will end soon enough,' replied Elleroth. 'If you doubt it, bear-magician, ask the inhabitants of Gelt; or those who can remember that decent, honest fellow Gel-Ethlin and his men — ask them. Or you can seek nearer home, and ask those who built gallows for children on the slopes of Crandor. They will tell you how soon your Ortelgans can stop the breath that a man - or a child - needs for speaking. Nevertheless, I will say no more of this, for I have said what I intended, my words have been heard and there is another matter of which I must speak before I end. This is a thing which concerns only my own home and family and that house of Sarkid of which I am about to cease to be-the head. For that reason I will speak in my own tongue — though not for long. From those who will not understand me, I beg for patience. From those who understand, I beg their help after my death. For even though it may seem the least likely of possibilities, it may be that somewhere, somehow, the chance will be granted to one of you to help me when I am dead, and to mend as bitter a sorrow as ever darkened the heart of a father and brought grief to an old and honourable house. Many of you will have heard the lament called the Tears of Sarkid. Listen, then, and judge whether they may not fall for me, as for the Lord Deparioth long ago.'

As Elleroth began speaking in Yeldashay, Kelderek wondered how many of those in the hall understood his words. It had been an error to allow him to address them. Yet in Bekla this privilege had always been accorded to any nobleman condemned to die, and to have withheld it would have undone much of the effect of granting him a merciful death. However he had gone about the business, he reflected bitterly, nevertheless a man like Elleroth, with his self-possession and aristocratic assurance, would have been bound to make his mark, and to contrive to show the Ortelgans as harsh and uncivilized.

Suddenly his attention was caught by an alteration in the tone of the voice. Looking up, he was astonished at the change that had come over the proud, haggard figure before him. Elleroth, with a look of the most earnest supplication, was leaning forward, speaking in a tone of passionate intensity and gazing from one to another about the hall. As Kelderek looked at him in amazement, he saw tears in his eyes. The Ban of Sarkid was weeping: yet clearly not for his own misfortune, for here and there, at his back, Kelderek could hear answering murmurs of sympathy and encouragement. He frowned, mustering his smattering of Yeldashay in an effort to understand what Elleroth was saying.

misery no different from that suffered by many common men,' he made out; but lost the thread and could not distinguish the next words. Then 'cruelty to the innocent and helpless' — 'long searching to no avail -' After an interval he discerned '— the heir of a great house —' and then, spoken with a sob, '— the vile, shameful Ortelgan slave-trade.'

To his right Kelderek saw Maltrit, the captain of the guard, lay his hand on the hilt of his sword, looking quickly round as the murmuring grew throughout the hall. He nodded to him and gestured quickly with his hand twice, palm upward. Maltrit picked up a spear, hammered the butt on the floor and shouted 'Silence! Silence!' Once more Kelderek forced himself to look Elleroth in the eye. 'You must needs have done now, my lord,' he said. 'We have been generous to you. I ask you now to repay us with restraint and courage'

Elleroth paused, as though collecting himself after his passionate words, and Kelderek saw return to his grey face the look of one striving to master fear. Then, in a tone in which controlled hysteria mingled oddly with stinging contempt, he said in Beklan, 'Restraint and courage? My dear riparian witch-doctor, I fear I am short on both - almost as short as you. But at least I have one advantage - I haven't got to go any further. You see, it's going to be such a terribly long way for you. You can't realize how far. Do you remember how you came up from the Telthearna, all slippity-slop for a spree? You came to Gelt - they remember it well, I'm told - and then you went on. You went to the foothills and laid about you in the twilight and the rain. And then your meaty boys smashed the Tamarrik Gate -do you remember that, or did you perhaps fail to notice what it looked like? And then, of course, you got mixed up in a war with people who quite unaccountably felt that they didn't like you. What a long, long way it's been! Thank goodness I shall be having a rest now. Cut you won't, my dear waterside wizard. No, no — the sky will grow dark, cold rain will fall and all trace of the right way will be blotted out. You will be all alone. And still you will have to go on. There will be ghosts in the dark and voices in the air, disgusting prophecies coming true I wouldn't wonder and absent faces present on every side, as the man said. And still you will have to go on. The last bridge will fall behind you and the last lights will go out, followed by the sun, the moon and the stars; and still you will have to go on. You will come to regions more desolate and wretched than you ever dreamed could exist, places of sorrow created entirely by that mean superstition which you yourself have put about for so long. But still you will have to go on.'

Kelderek stared back at him, frozen by the intensity and conviction of his words. His own premonition had returned upon him, closer now, its outline more distinct - a sense of loneliness, danger and approaching calamity.

'The thought makes me feel quite cold,' said Elleroth, controlling his trembling with an effort. 'Perhaps I should warm myself for a short spell before the man with the chopper interrupts these joyous, carefree moments.'

He turned quickly. Two paces took him to the side of the brazier. Maltrit stepped forward, uncertain of his intention yet ready to forestall any irregular or desperate act; but Elleroth merely smiled at him, shaking his head as easily and graciously as though declining the advances of Hydraste herself. Then, as Maltrit stood back, responding instinctively to his smooth and authoritative manner, Elleroth, with a selective air, deliberately plunged his left hand into the brazier and drew out a burning coal. Holding it up in his fingers, as though displaying for the admiration of friends some fine jewel or crystal artifact, he looked once more at Kelderek. The appalling pain had twisted his face into a sickening travesty of relaxed good humour and his words, when they came, were distorted - grotesque mouthings, an approximation to speech which was nevertheless clear enough to be understood. The sweat ran from his forehead and he shook with agony, yet still he held up the live coal in his hand and aped horribly the manner of one at case among his comrades.

'You see - bear king — you holding live coal —' (Kelderek could smell burning flesh, could see his fingers blackening and supposed that he must be burned to the bone: yet still, transfixed by the white eyes writhing in his face, remained where he stood.) 'How long you a'le go on? Burn you up, hobble pain, carrying burning fire.*

'Stop him!' cried Kelderek to Maltrit, Elleroth bowed.

'No need - 'blige you all. Come now, little pain' - he staggered a moment, but recovered himself — 'little pain - nothing some 'flicted by 'telgans, 'sure you. Let's make haste.'

With assumed carelessness and without looking behind him, he tossed the coal high over his shoulder, waved his hand to the crowd in the hall, strode quickly to the bench and knelt down beside it. The coal, fanned brighter by its course through the air, flew steeply over the bars and fell into the straw close to where Shardik had paused a moment in his restless prowling. In seconds a little nest of fire had appeared, the small, clear flames between the blades of straw seeming, at first, as still as those trailing mosses that grow among the branches of trees in a swamp. Then they began to climb, fresh smoke joined that already in the foggy air and a crackling sound was heard as the fire spread across the floor.

With an unnatural, high-pitched cry of fear, Shardik sprang backwards, arching the huge ridge of his back like a cat facing an enemy. Then, in panic, he fled across the breadth of the hall. Blindly, he ran full tilt against one of the columns on the opposite side, and as he recoiled, half-stunned, the wall shook as though from the blow of a ram.

The bear got up, rocking dizzily, looked about it and then once more ran headlong from the now fast-spreading fire. It struck the bars with its full weight and remained struggling as though among the strands of a net. As it rose once more on its hind legs, one of the ties running from the bars to the wall was pressed against its chest and in frenzy it beat at it again and again. The bolted end of the tie pulled out of the wall, dragging with it the two countersunk stones into which it was morticed.

At this moment Kelderek heard overhead a heavy, grinding movement and, looking up, saw a patch of light in the roof slowly narrowing before his eyes. Staring at it, he suddenly realized that the great beam above him was moving, tipping, slowly turning like a key in a lock. A moment more and one end, no longer supported by the wall, began to scrape and splinter its way down the stonework like a giant's finger.

As the beam fell, Kelderek flung himself across the floor, away from the bars. It dropped obliquely across the line of the ironwork, smashing down a quarter of its length to a depth of three or four feet. Then it settled, one end suspended in that iron tangle and the other canted against the opposite wall, and the bars bent and drooped beneath it like blades of grass. Slowly, the whole mass of wreckage continued to subside downwards. Behind it, the fire still spread through the straw and the air grew thicker with smoke.

Shouting and tumult filled the hall. Many were looking round for the nearest way out, others trying to keep order or to call their friends together. At the doors the soldiers stood uncertainly, waiting for orders from their officers, who could not make themselves heard above the din.

Only Shardik - Shardik and one other - moved with unhesitating certainty. Out of the burning straw, over the broken bars came the bear, clawing at the iron with a noise like the storming of a breach.

As, when a dam gives way in some high valley of the hills, the water falls in a thunderous mass through the gap and pours on in obedience not to any will of its own but simply to inanimate, natural law: overwhelming or sweeping aside all that hinders it, changed in an instant from a controlled source of gain and power to a destructive force, killing as it runs to waste and devastating as it escapes from the restraint of those who supposed that they had made it safely their own — so Shardik, in the savagery of his fear, made his way, smashing and clambering, over the broken bars.

As those below the dam, dwelling or working in the very path of the water, perceive with terror that a disaster which none envisaged is even now upon them, indeflexible and leaving no recourse but immediate, headlong flight - so those in the hall realized that Shardik had broken loose and was among them.

And as those further away from the dam, hearing, wherever they may be, the rumble of the collapsing wall, the roaring of water and the unexpected tumult, stand still, looking at one another wide-eyed; recognizing the sounds of disaster, but as yet ignorant that what they have heard imports nothing less than the work of years ruined, the destruction of their prosperity and the discredit of their name -so those in the upper city, outside the hall: the peering sentinels on the wall, the gardeners and cattle-men coughing and shivering at their work along the shores of the Barb, the delegates' servants loitering at their masters' doors, the youths abandoning archery practice for the morning, the court ladies, muffled against the cold, looking southwards from the roof of the Barons' Palace for the sun to clear the shoulder of Crandor and disperse the fog - all heard the fall of the beam, the clang of the bars and the uproar that followed. Each in his own manner realized that some calamity must have befallen and, fearful but not yet suspecting the truth, began to move towards the House of the King, questioning those whom he met on the way.

As Shardik came clambering over the pile of wreckage, fragments of iron and wood were scattered and it shifted and sank beneath his weight. He mounted on the tie-beam and for a moment crouched there, looking down into the hall, dire as a cat in a loft to the mice who run squeaking. Then, as the beam began to tilt under him, he leapt clumsily down, landing on the stones between the brazier and the execution bench. All about him men were clamouring and pushing, striking and tearing at one another in their effort to escape. Yet at first he went no further, but remained ramping from side to side - a movement frighteningly expressive of fury and violence about to break forth. Then he rose on his hind legs, looking, above the heads of the fugitives, for a way out.

It was at this terrible moment, before more than a few had succeeded in forcing their way through the doors and while Shardik still stood towering above the crowd like some atrid ogre, that Elleroth leapt to his feet. Snatching up the executioner's sword from the bench before him, he ran across the empty, deserted space round the bear, passing within a foot of it. A dozen men, pressed and jostling together, were blocking the northern entrance to the ambulatory and through these he cut his way, slashing and thrusting. Kelderek, still lying where he had flung himself to avoid the falling beam, saw his sword arm striking and the shrivelled left hand hanging at his side. Then he was gone through the arch, and the crowd closed behind him.

Kelderek rose to his knees and was instantly knocked to the floor. His head struck the stone and he rolled over, dazed by the blow. When he looked up it was to see Shardik clawing and cuffing his way towards that same door by which he himself, with the women, had entered the hall half an hour before. Already three or four bodies lay in the bear's wake, while on either side men clamoured hysterically and trampled one another, some actually beating with their hands against the columns, or trying to climb the sheer brickwork that closed the arcades.

Shardik came to the doorway and peered round it, resembling grotesquely some hesitant wayfarer about to set out on a stormy night. At the same moment the figure of Elleroth appeared for an instant beyond him, running from left to right past the opening. Then Shardik's bulk closed the entire aperture, and as he passed through it there came from beyond a single, terrified scream.

When Kelderek readied the door, the first object that met his eyes was the body of the young soldier who had stared up at him as he descended the staircase that morning. It was lying face down, and from the almost-severed neck a stream of blood was pouring across the floor. Through this the bear had trodden, and its bloody tracks led out to the terrace and across the grass. Following them into the gardens, Kelderek came almost face to face with Shardik as he emerged from the thick mist along the shore. The bear, running in a lumbering canter round the western end of the Barb, passed him and disappeared up the pasture slope beyond.

Book IV

Uriah: and Kabin

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.

1. 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'