Shardik (16 page)

Without getting up or taking his eyes from the bear,
Bel
-ka-Trazet groped in the water behind him, picked up a stone and tossed it into
the
darkness beyond the bank. As it fell the bear turned its head and the Baron stepped quickly into the pool, wading under the cascade and into the narrow space between the curtain of falling water and the bank behind. Kelderek remained where he was as the bear once more looked down at him. Its eyes were dull and there was a trembling, now in the front legs and now in the head itself. Suddenly the creature’s massive shoulders convulsed. In a low, sharp voice, Bel-ka-Trazet said, ‘Kelderek, come back here!’

Once more the hunter found himself without fear, sharing, with spontaneous insight at which he had no time to wonder, the bear’s own perceptions. They, he knew, were dulled with pain. Feeling that pain, he felt also the impulse to wander blin
dly away, to seek relief in restl
essness and movement. To strike, to kill would have been a still greater relief, but the pain had induced an insuperable feebleness and confusion. He realized now that the bear had not seen him. It was peering, not at him but at
the
slope of
the
bank and hesitating, in its weakness, to descend it As he still stood motionless, it sank slowly down until he could feel upon his face the moisture of its breath. Again Bel-ka-Trazet called, ‘Kelderek!’

The bear was sliding, toppling forward. Its fall was like the collapse of a bridge in a flood. As though through the creature’s own dimmed eyes,
Kelderek
saw the ground at the foot of the bank rising to meet him and lurched aside from the suddenly-perceived figure of a man - himself. FIc was standing in the water as Shardik, with a commotion like
that
of shipwreck, clawed, fell and rolled to the edge of the pool. He watched him as a child watches grown men fighting - intensely, shockingly aware, yet at the same time unafraid for himself. At length the bear lay still. Its eyes were closed and one of the wounds along its flank had begun to bleed, slow and
thick
as cream, upon the grass.

It was growing light and
Kelderek
could hear from behind him
the
first raucous cries in the awakening forest. Without a word
^-
Bel-ka-Trazet stepped through the waterfall, drew his knife and dropped on one knee in front of the motionless bulk. The bear’s 86 head was sunk on its chest, so that the long jaw covered the slack of the throat. The Baron was moving to one side for his blow when
Kelderek
stepped forward and twisted the knife out of his hand.

Bel-ka-Trazet turned on him with a cold rage so terrible that the hunter’s words froze on his lips.

‘You dare to lay your hands on
me!’
whispered the Baron through his teeth. ‘Give me that knife!’

Confronted, for the second time, by the anger and authority of the High Baron of Ortelga, Kelderek actually staggered, as though he had been struck. To himself, a man of no rank or position, obedience to authority was almost second nature. He dropped his eyes, shuffled his feet and began to mutter unintelligibly.

‘Give me that knife,’ repeated Bel-ka-Trazet
quietly
.

Suddenly
Kelderek
turned and fled. Clutching the knife, he stumbled
through
the pool and clambered to the top of the bank. Looking back, he saw that Bel-ka-Trazet was not pursuing him, but had lifted a heavy rock in both hands and was standing beside the bear, holding it above his head.

With a hysterical feeling like that of a man leaping for his life from a high place, Kelderek picked up a stone and threw it. It struck
Bel
-ka-Trazet on the back of the neck. As he flung back his head and sank to his knees, the rock slipped from between his hands and fell across the calf of his right leg. For a few moments he knelt quite still, head thrown u
pwards and mouth gaping wide; then, with
out haste, he released his leg, stood up and looked at Kelderek with an air of purposeful intent more frightening even than his anger.

The hunter knew that if he were not himself to die, he must now go down and kill Bel-ka-Trazet - and
that
he could not do it. With a low cry he raised his hands to his face and ran blindly up the course of the brook.

He had gone perhaps fifty yards when someone gripped his arm. ‘
Kelderek
,’ said the Tuginda’s voice, ‘what has happened?’

Unable to answer, bemused as the bear itself, he could only point, with a shaking arm, back towards the fall. At once sh
e hastened away, followed by She
ldra and four or five of the girls carrying their bows.

He listened, but could hear nothing. Still full of fear and irresolution, he wondered whether he might yet escape Bel-ka-Trazet by hiding in the forest and later, somehow, contriving to cross to the mainland. He was about to resume his flight when suddenly it occurred to him that he was no longer alone and defenceless against the Baron, as he had been three days before. He was the messenger
of Shardik, the bringer of God’s ti
dings to Quiso. Certainly the Tuginda, if she knew what had been attempted and prevented by the pool that morning, would never stand by and allow Bel-ka-
Trazet
to kill him.

‘We
are
the Vessels, she and I,’ he
thought
. ‘She will save me. Shardik himself will save me; not for love, or because I have done him any service, but simply because he has need of me and dicrefore it is ordained that I am to live. God is to shatter the Vessels to fragments and Himself fashion them again to His purpose. Whatever that may mean, it cannot mean my death at the hands of Bel-ka-
Trazet
.’

He rose to his feet, splashed through the brook and made his way back to the fall. Below him the High Baron, leaning on his staff, was deep in talk
with
the Tuginda. Neithe
r looked up as he appeared above them. One of
the
girls had stripped herself to
the
waist and, on her knees, was staunching with her own garments the flow of blood from the bear’s opened wound
. The rest were standing togethe
r a
little
distance away, silent and watchful as cattle round a gate.

‘Well, I have done what I could, saiyett,’ said the Baron grimly. ‘Yes, if I could I would have killed your bear sure enough, but it was not to be.’

‘That in itself should make you think again,’ she answered.

‘What I think of th
is business will not change,’ said he. ‘I do not know what you intend, saiyett, but I will tell you what I intend. The fire has brought a large bear to this island. Bears are mischievous, dangerous crea
tures, and people who think othe
rwise come to loss and harm through them. As long as it remains in this lonely place, to risk lives is not worthwhile, but if it moves down
the
island and begins to plague Ortelga, I promise you I will have it killed.’

‘And I intend nothing but to wait upon the will of God,’ replied the Tuginda.

Bel-ka-Trazet shrugged again. ‘I only hope the will of God will not turn out to be your own death, saiyett. But now that you know what I intended, perhaps you have it in mind to tell your women to put
me
to death? Certainly I am in your power.’

‘Since I have no plans and you have been prevented from killing Lord Shardik, you are doing us no harm.’ She turned away with an air of indifference, but he strode after her.

‘Then two things more,
saiyett
. First, since I am to live, perhaps you will permit me now to return to Ortelga. If you will give me a canoe, I will see that it returns to you. Then, as for the hunter fellow, I have already told you what he has just
done. He is my subject, not
yours. I trust you will not hinder me from finding and killing him.’

‘I am sending two of the girls to Quiso with a canoe. They will put you off at
Ortelga
. I cannot spare the hunter. He is necessary to me.’

With this the Tuginda walked away and began speaking to the girls
with
complete absorption, pointing first up the slope and then down towards
the
river as she gave her instructions. For a moment, the Baron seemed about to follow her again. Th
en he shrugged his shoulders, tu
rned and climbed the bank, passed
Kelderek
without a glance and walked on in the direction of the camp. He was suppressing a limp and his terrible face appeared so grey and haggard that Kelderek, who had been preparing to defend himself as best he could, trembled and averted his eyes as though from some fearful apparition. ‘He is afraid!’ he thought, ‘He knows now that he cannot prevail against Lord Shardik, and he is afraid!’

Suddenly he sprang forward, calling, ‘My lord! O my lord, forgive me!’ But the Baron, as though he had heard nothing, stalked on and Kelderek stood looking after him - at the livid bruise across the back of his neck and the heavy, black pelt swinging from side to side above the grass.

He never saw
Bel
-ka-Trazet again.

13
The Singing

All
that
day Shardik lay beside the brook, shaded, as the sun crossed the meridian, by the bank above and
the
boughs of
the
melikon. The two girls who had been watching in
the
pit during the night had acted prud
ently
enough when the bear first struggled to its feet and wandered up the slope. At first they had thought
that
it was too weak to reach the top, but when it had actually done so and then, though almost exhausted, had begun to make its way downhill towards
the
brook, the older girl, Muni, had followed it, while her comrade went to wake the Tuginda. In fact, Muni had been only a short distance away when Shardik collapsed beside the pool, but had not seen Kelderek in her haste to return and bring
the
Tuginda to the place.

The girls sent to Quiso were back before midnight, for without the long detour across
the
river their upstream journey was much shorter than the first. They brought fresh supplies of the cleansing ointment, together with oth
er medicines and a herbal narcoti
c. This the Tuginda immediately administered to the bear herself, soaked in thin segments of tendriona. For some hours
the
drug had little effect, but by morning Shardik was sleeping heavily and did not stir while
the
burns were cleaned once more.

On the afternoon of the following day, as
Kelderek
was returning from
the
forest, where he had been
setting snares, he came upon She
ldra standing on the open grass a little way from
the
camp. Following her gaze he saw, some distance off,
the
figure of an unusually tall woman, cloaked and cowled, striding up
the
slope beside the brook. He recognized her as
the
lantern-bearer whom he had met by night upon the shore of Quiso. Still further away, by the river, s
ix or seven other women were e
vid
ently
setting out for the camp, each carrying a load.

‘Who is that?’ asked
Kelderek
, pointing.

‘Rantzay,’ replied Sheldra, without turning her eyes towards him.

There was still not one of
the
girls with whom Kelderek felt a
t case. Even among themselve
s they spoke
little
, using
words as they used knives or thre
ad, simply as a means to complete their tasks. There was no contempt for him, however, in
their
sombre reticence, which in fact he found daunting for precisely the opposite reason -
because it suggested respect and seemed to confer upon him a dignity, even an authority, to which he was unused. They saw him, not as the girls in
Ortelga
saw a young man but, as they saw everything else, in the light of the cult to which their lives were devoted. Their manner showed
that
they
felt him to be a person of importance, the one who had first seen and recognized Lord Shardik and had then come, at
the
risk of his. life, to bring the news to
the
Tuginda. She
ldra’s present reply was not intended contemptuously. She had answered him as briefly as she would have answered any of her companions and had even, perhaps, forgotten
that
he, unlike them, did not know th
e island priestesses by name. She felt it an omission rathe
r
than
a slight
that
she should in effect have told him nothing. She had not used as many words as were necessary for informing him, just as she might (though practical and competent) have put too little water in a pail or not enough wood on the fire. Sure of this at least, he summoned the confidence to speak firmly.

‘Tell me who Rantzay is,’ he said, ‘and why she and those other women have been brought here.’