Shardik (28 page)

At this moment a messenger arrived from the governor of Kabin, sixteen miles to
the
east. The governor sent word that he was worried lest the rains should begin and the army withdraw to
Bekla
before reaching him. During the past ten or twelve days
the
level of the Kabin reservoir, from which water was brought by canal sixty miles to
Bekla
, had sunk until the lower walls had become exposed and a section had cracked in the heat. If a disaster were to be prevented the repair work ought to be carried out at once, before the rains raised the level again: but to complete the job in a matter of a day or two was beyond local resources.

Gel-Ethlin could recognize an emergency when he was faced with one. He sent at once for his most reliable senior officer and also for a certain Captain Han-Glat, a foreigner from Terckenalt, who knew more than anyone in the army about bridges, dams and soil movement. As soon as they appeared he told them what had happened and gave them a free hand to select the fittest troops, up to half the total strength, for a forced march to Kabin that night. As soon as possible after getting there they were to make a start on repairing the reservoir. He himself, with the rest of the men, would join them before evening of the following day.

By late afternoon they were gone, the soldiers grumbling but at least not mutinous. There was a good deal of limping and their pace was slow. Still, that was less worrying than the thought of the probable condition they would be in when they got to Kabin. Presumably, however, Han-Glat would need a few hours to survey the reservoir and decide what needed to be done, and this in itself would give them some rest. At any rate he,
Gel-Ethlin
, could hardly be criticized by headquarters in Bekla for the way he had gone about the matter. As night fell he went the rounds of the sentries and bivouacs - a shorter task than usual,
with
h
is command down to half-strength
- heard the casualty reports and authorized a handful of genuinely sick men to be sent back to
Bekla
by ox-cart; ate his supper, played three games of
tvari
with his staff captain (at which he lost fifteen
meld)
and went to bed.

The following morning he was up so early that he had the satisfaction of rousing some of his officers in person. But the low spirits of
the
men gave him much less satisfaction”. The news had got round that they were in for not only a forced march to Kabin, rains or no rains, but also for plenty of work when
they
got there. Even the best troops are apt to take it hard when ordered to do something arduous after having been led to believe that their work is virtually finished, and Gel-
Ethlin
had deliberately retained his second-best. Himself a sturdy, energetic man, staunch in adversity, he could hardly contain his annoyance at the stupidity of the soldiers in being unable to realize the serious nature of
the
news from Kabin. It was only with difficulty that
three
or four of his senior officers were able to convince him that it was hardly to be expected that they would.

‘It’s a curious thing, sir,’ said Kapparah - a leathery fifty-five-year-old who had survived a lifetime’s campaigning and prud
ently
turned all
the
loot that had stuck to his fingers into farmland on
the
borders of Sarkid - ‘it’s always struck me as a curious thing, that when you’re asking men to give a little extra,
the
amount they’re genuinely able to give depends on
the
reason. If it’s defending their homes, for instance, or fighting for what they believe is theirs by right, they’ll find themselves able to do almost anything. In fact, if it’s a matter of any sort of fighting, they’re nearly always able to give a good deal. They can understand that, you see, and no one wants his mates to think he’s a coward, or
that
he dropped out while they went on. Those kinds of thoughts are like keys to a secret armoury. A man doesn’t know what he’s got inside until the key opens it. But to repair the reservoir at Kabin - no, they can’t grasp the importance of that, so it’s a key that doesn’t fit
the
lock. It’s not
wont,
sir, it’s
can’t,
you know.’

The camp had been struck, the columns were drawn up ready to march and
the
pickets, who had
been fed and inspected at their posts, were being called in last of all, when the guard commander brought in a limping, blood-stained hill-man. He was little more than a boy, open-mouthed and wide-eyed, staring about him and continually raising one hand to his mouth as he licked the bleeding gash across his knuckles. Two soldiers had him under the armpits or he might well have turned tail.

‘Refugee, sir,’ said the guard commander, saluting Bekla-fashion, with his right forearm across his chest, ‘from the hills. Talking about some sort of trouble at Gelt, sir, as near as I can make him out.’

‘Can’t stop for that sort of thing now, guard commander,’ said Gel-Ethlin. ‘Turn the fellow loose and get your men fallen in.’

Released by the soldiers,
the
hill-man at once fell on his knees in front of Kapparah, whom he probably took for the senior officer present. He had babbled a f
ew words in broken Beklan - some
-
thing
about ‘bad men’ and ‘fire’ - when Kapparah stopped him by speaking to him in his own language. There followed a swift dialogue of question and answer so incisive and urgent that
Gel-Ethlin
thought it better not to interrupt. Finally Kapparah turned to him.

‘I think we’d better get the whole story out of this man before we set off for Kabin, si
r,’ he said. ‘He keeps saying Ge
lt’s been taken and burned by an invading army and he will have it that they’re on their way down here.’

Gel-Ethlin th
rew out his hands with a questioning look of mock forbearance and the
other
officers, who did not particularly like Kapparah, smiled sycophantically.

‘You know what we’re up against at Kabin, Kapparah. This is hardly the time -‘ He broke off and began again. ‘Some terrified peasant lad from the hills who’ll say anything

‘Well, that’s just it, sir; he’s not a peasant lad. He’s the chief’s son, run for his life, it seems. ‘Says the chief’s been murdered by fanatics in some religious war they’ve started.’

‘How do we know he’s the chief’s son?’

‘By the tattooing on his arms, sir. He’d never dare to have that done just to deceive people.’ ‘Where are these invaders supposed to have come from? ‘From Ortelga, sir, he says.’

‘From
Ortelga
?
‘ said Gel-Ethlin. ‘But at that rate we should have heard-‘

Kapparah said nothing and Gel-Ethlin thought the problem over quickly. It was an awkward one. In spite of there having been no recent report from Ortelga, it was just possible that some sort of tribal raid really was going to be made on the
Bekla
n plain. If it took place after he had marched away to Kabin, ignoring a tribesman’s warning uttered in the hearing of his senior officers - and if lives were lost - He broke off this train of
thought
and started
another. If the great reservoir were breached and ruined in the rains for lack of an adequate labour force, after he had marched away towards Gelt on the strength of a
hysterical report made by a nati
ve youth in the hearing of his senior officers - He stopped again. They were all looking at him and waiting.

‘Bring the boy t
o that shed over there,’ said Ge
l-
Ethlin
. ‘Let
the
men fall out, but see that they stay in their companies.’

Half an hour later he had concluded that the story was one that he could not ignore. Washed and fed, the youth had recovered himself and spoken with restraint and dignity of his own loss, and with consistency of the danger that was threatening. It was a curious and yet convincing talc. An enormous bear, he said, had appeared on Ortelga, probably fugi
tive from the fire beyond the Telthe
arna. Its appearance was believed by the islanders to herald
the
fulfilment of a prophecy that
Bekla
would one day fall to an invincible army from the island and had started a rising, led by a young baron, in which the previous ruler and certain others had been cither killed or driven out. Gel-Ethlin perceived that this, if true, would account for the failure of the
Bekla
n army’s normal flow of intelligence. Yesterday afternoo
n, the youth continued, the Orte
lgans had suddenly appeared in Gelt, set it on fire and murdered the chief before he could organize any defence of the town. Fanatical and undisciplined, they had swept through the place and appar
ently
subdued the townspeople altogether. Several of the latter, their homes and means of livelihood destroyed, had actually
joined the Orte
lgans for what they could get. Surely, said the young man, there could never have been men more eager than the Ortelgans to go upon their ruin. They believed that the bear was the incarnation of the power of God, that it was marching with them, invisibly, night and day, that it could appear and disappear at will and that it would in due course destroy their enemies as fire burns stubble. On
the
orders of their young leader - who was evid
ently
both brave and able, but appeared to be ill - they had thrown a ring of sentries round Gelt to prevent any news getting out. The youth, however, had climbed down a sheer precipice by night, escaping with no more
than
a badly-gashed hand, and then, knowing the passes well, had come over twenty miles during six hours of darkness and daybreak.

‘What a damned nuisance!’ said Gel-Ethlin. ‘Which way does he think they’re likely to come, and when?’

The young man appar
ently
thought it certain that they would come by the most direct route and as quickly as they could. Indeed, it was probable that
they
had already s
tarted. Setting aside their
eagerness to fight, they had
little
food with them, for there was virtually none to be commandeered in Gelt. They would have to fight soon or be forced to disperse for supplies.

Ge
l-
Ethlin
nodded. This agreed with all his own experience of rebels and peasant irregulars. Either they fought at once or else they fell to pieces.

‘They don’t sound likely to get far, sir,’ said Balaklesh, who commanded the Lapan contingent. ‘Why not simply go on to Kabin and leave them to fall apart in the rains ?’

As is often the way, the wro
ng advice immediately cleared Ge
l-
Ethlin
‘s mind and showed him what had to be done.

‘No,
that
wouldn’t do. They’d wander about for months, parties of brigands, murdering and looting. No village would be safe and in the end another army would have to be sent to hunt them down. Do you all believe the boy’s telling no more than the truth?’

They nodded.

.‘Then we must destroy them at once, or the villages will be saying that a
Bekla
n army fell down on its job. And
we
must reach them before they get down the hill-road from Gelt and out on the plain -
partly
to stop them looting and
partly
because once th
ey’re on the plain they may go anywhere. We might lose track of them altogether and the men
are
in no state to go marching about in pursuit. There’s even less time to be lost now than if
we
were going to Kabin. Kapparah, hang on to the lad; we’ll need him as a guide. You’d all better go and tell your men that we’ve got to get to the hills by the afternoon. Balaklesh, you take a hundred reliable spearmen and start at once. Find us a good defensive position in the foothills, send back a guide and then push on a
nd try to find out what the Orte
lgans
are
doing.’

Within an hour the sky had clouded over from one horizon to the other and the west wind was blowing steadily. The red dust filled the soldiers’ eyes, ears and nostrils and mingled grittily, beneath
their
clothes,
with
the sweat of their bodies. They marched with cloths or leather bound over mouths and noses, continually screwing up their eyes, unable to see the hills ahead, each company following that in front through the thick helter-skelter of dust which piled itself like snow along the windward sides of rocks, of banks, of the few sparse trees and huts along the way - and of men. It got into the rations and even into the wine-skins. Gel-Ethlin marched behind the column on the leeward flank, whence he could check
the
stragglers and
keep
them in some sort of order. After two hours he called a halt and re-formed the column in echelon, so that when they set out again
each company was marching down
wind of that immediately behind it. This, however, did little to relieve their discomfort, which was due less to the dust they raised themselves than to the storm blowing over the whole plain. Their pace diminished and it was not until a good three hours after noon that the leading company reached the edge of
the
plain and, having reconnoitred half a mile in either direction, found the road to Gelt where it wound up through the myrtle and cypress groves on the lower slopes.