Shardik (3 page)

When he saw the leopard, his first movements were no more
than
a quick biting of the lip and a tightening of his grasp on his bow. It was coming straight towards him through the trees, pacing slowly and looking from side to side. Plainly it was not only uneasy, but also hungry and alert - as dangerous a creature as any solitary hunter might pray to avoid. It came nearer, stopped, stared for some moments straight towards his hiding-place and then turned and padded across to where the kedana lay with the feathered arrow in its neck. As it thrust its head forward, sniffing at the blood, the man, without a sound, crept out of concealment and made his way round it in a half-circle, stopping behind each tree to observe whether it had moved. He turned his head away to breathe and carefully placed each footstep clear of twigs and loose pebbles.

He was already half a bowshot away from
the
leopard when suddenly a wild pig trotted out of the scrub, blundered against him and ran squealing back into the shadows. The leopard turned, gazed int
ently
and began to pace towards him.

He turned and walked steadily away, fighting against the panic impulse to go faster. Looking round, he saw that the leopard had broken into a padding trot and was overtaking him. At this he began to run, flinging down his birds and making towards the ridge in the hope of losing his terrible pursuer in the undergrowth on the lower slopes. At the foot of the ridge, on the edge of a grove of quian, he turned and raised his bow. Although he knew well what was likely to come of wounding the leopard, it seemed to him now that his only, desperate chance was to try, among the bushes and creepers, to evade it long enough to succeed in shooting it several times and thus either disable it or drive it away. He aimed and loosed, but his hand was unsteady with fear. The arrow grazed the leopard’s flank, hung there for a moment and fell out. The leopard bared its teeth and charged, snarling, and the hunter fled blindly along the
hillside. A stone turned beneath
his foot and he pitched downwards, rolling over and over. He felt a sharp pain as a branch pierced his left shoulder and then the breath was knocked out of him. His body struck heavily against some great, shaggy mass and he la
y on the ground, gasping and witl
ess with terror, looking back in the direction from which he had fallen. His bow was gone and as he struggled to his knees he saw that his left arm and hand were red with blood.

The leopard appeared at the top of the steep bank from which he had fallen. He tried to keep silent, but a gasp came from his spent lungs and quick as a bird its head turned towards him. Ears flat, tail lashing, it crouched above him, preparing to spring. He could see its eye-teeth curving downward, and for long moments hung over his death as though over some frightful drop, at the foot of which his life would be broken to nothing.

Suddenly he felt himself pushed to one side and found that he was lying on his back, looking upwards. Standing over him like a cypress tree, one haunch so close to his face that he could smell the shaggy pelt, was a creature; a creature so enormous that in his distracted state of mind he could not comprehend it. As a man carried unconscious from a
battle
field might wake bemused and, glimpsing first a heap of refuse, then a cooking-fire, then two women carrying bundles, might tell
that
he was in a village: so the hunter saw a clawed foot bigger than his own head; a wall of coarse hair, burned and half-stripped to the raw flesh, as it seemed;
a great, wedge-shaped muzzle outline
d against the sky; and knew that he must be in the presence of an animal. The leopard was still at the top of the bank, cringing now, looking upwards into a face that must be glaring terribly down upon it. Then the giant animal, with a single blow, struck it bodily from
the
bank, so that it was borne altogether clear, turning over in the air and crashing down among the quian. With a growling roar that sent up a cloud of birds, the animal turned to attack again. It dropped on all fours and as it did so its left side scraped against a tree. At this it snarled and shrank away, wincing with pain. Then, hearing the leopard struggling in
the
undergrowth, it made towards the sound and was gone.

The hunter rose slowly to his feet, clutching his wounded shoulder. However terrible the transport of fear, the return can be swift
, just as one may awaken instantl
y from deep sleep. He found his bow and crept up the bank. Though he knew what he had seen, yet his mind
still
whirled incredulously round the centre of certainty, like a boat in a maelstrom. He had seen a bear. But in God’s name, what kind of bear? Whence had it come? Had it in truth been already on the island when he had come wading through the shallows that morning; or had it sprung into existence out of his own terror, in answer to prayer? Had he himself perhaps, as he crouched almost senseless at the foot of the bank, made some desperate, phantom journey to summon it from
the
world beyond ? Whether or
not, one thing was sure. Whencesoe
ver it had come, this beast, that had knocked a full-grown leopard flying through the air, was now of this world, was flesh and blood. It would no more vanish than the sparrow on
the
branch.

He limped slowly back towards the river. The goose was gone and his arrow with it, but the kedana was still lying where it had fallen and he pulled out the arrow, heaved it under his good arm and made for the reeds. It was here that the delayed shock overtook him. He sank down, trembling and sil
ently
weeping by the water’s edge. For a long time he lay prone, oblivious of his own safety. And slowly there came to him - not all at once, but b
rightening and burning up, littl
by little, like a new-lit fire -
the
realization of what - of who - it must truly be that he had seen.

As a traveller in some far wilderness might by chance pick up a handful of stones from the ground, examine them idly and then, with mounting excitement, first surmise, next think it probable and finally feel certain that they must be diamonds; or as a sea-captain, voyaging in distant waters, might round an unknown cape, busy himself for an hour with the handling of the ship and only then, and gradually, realize that he - he himself - must have sailed into none other than that undiscovered, fabled ocean known to his forbears by nothing but legend and
rumour; so now, little by little
, there stole upon this hunter th
e stupefying, all-but-incredible
knowledge of what it must be that he had seen. He became calm then, got up and fell to pacing back and forth among
the
trees by
the
shore. At last he stood still, faced the sun across
the
strait and, raising his unwounded arm, prayed for a long time: a wordless prayer of silence and trembling awe. Then, still da
zed, he once more took up the ke
tlana and waded through the reeds. Making his way back along the shallows, he found the raft which he had moored that morning, loosed it and drifted away downstream.

4
Th
e High Baron

It was late in the afternoon when
the hunter, Kelde
rek, came at last in sight of the landmark he was seeking, a tall
zoan
tree some distance above the downstream point of the island. The boughs,
with
their silver-backed, fern-like leaves, hung down over
the
river, forming an enclosed, watery arbour inshore. In front of this the reeds had been
cut to afford to one seated with
in a clear view across the strait. Kelderek, with some difficulty, steered his raft to
the
mouth of
the
channel, looked towards the zoan and raised his paddle as though in greeting. There was no response, but he expected none. Guiding the raft up to a stout post in the water, he felt down its leng
th, found the rope running shore
wards below the surface and drew himself towards land.

Reaching the tree, he pulled the raft through the curtain of pendent branches. Inside, a short, wooden pier projected from
the
bank and on this a man was seated, staring out between the leaves at the river beyond. Behind him a second man sat mending a net. Four or five other rafts were moored to the hidden quay. The look-out’s glance, having taken in the single kedana and the few fish lying beside
Kelderek
, came to rest upon the weary, blood-smeared hunter himself.

‘So. Kelderek Play-with-the-Children. You have little to show and less than usual. Where are you hurt?’

‘The shoulder, shendron: and the arm is stiff and painful.’ ‘You look like a man in a stupor. Are you feverish?’ The hunter made no reply. ‘I asked, “Are you feverish?” ‘ He shook his head. ‘What caused the wound?’

Kelderek
hesitated, then shook his head once more and remained silent,

‘You simpleton, do you suppose I am asking you for the sake of gossip? I have to learn everything — you know that. Was it a man or an animal that gave you that wound?’

‘I fell and injured myself.’

The shendron waited.

‘A leopard pursued me,’ added Kelderek.

The shendron burst out impati
ently
. ‘Do you think you are telling tales now to children on the shore? Am I to keep asking “And what came next?” Tell me what happened. Or would you prefer to be sent to the High Baron, to say that you refused to tell?’

Kelderek
sat on the edge of the
wooden pier, looking down and sti
rring a stick in
the
dark-green water below. At last the shendron said, ‘
Kelderek
, I know you are considered a simple fellow, with your “Cat Catch a Fish” and all the rest of it. Whether you
are
indeed so simple I cannot tell. But whether or not, you know well enough that every hunter who goes out has to tell all he knows upon return. Those
are
Bel
-ka-Trazet’s orders. Has the fire driven a leopard to Ortelga? Did you meet with strangers? What is the state of the western end of the island? These are the things I have to learn.’

Kelderek
trembled where he sat but still said
nothing
.

‘Why,’ said the net-mender, speaking for the first time, ‘you know he’s a simpleton — Kelderek Zenzuata - Kelderek Play-with-the-Children. He went hunting - he hurt hi
mself - he’s returned with littl
to show. Can’t we leave it at that? Who wants
the
bother of taking him up to the High Baron?’

The shendron, an older man, frowned. ‘I am not here to be trifled with. The island may be full of all manner of savage beasts; of men, too, perhaps. Why not? And this man you believe to be a simpleton - he may be deceiving us. With whom has he spoken today? And did they pay him to keep silent?’

‘But if he were deceiving us,’ said the net-mender, ‘would he not come with a tale prepared? Depend upon it, he -‘

The hunter stood up, looking tensely from one to the other.

‘I am deceiving no one: but I cannot tell you what I have seen today.’

The shendron and his companion exchanged glances. In the evening quiet, a light breeze set the water clop-clopping under the platform and from somewhere inland sounded a faint call, ‘Yasta! The firewood!’

‘What is this?’ said the shendron. ‘You are making difficulties for me,
Kelderek
, but worse - far worse - for yourself.’

‘I cannot tell you what I have seen,’ repeated the hunter, with a kind of desperation.

The shendron shrugged his shoulders. ‘Well, Taphro, since it seems there’s no curing this foolishness, you’d better take him up to the Sindrad. But you
are
a great fool.
Kelderek
. The High Baron’s anger is a storm that many men have failed to survive before now.’ ‘This I know. God’s will must be done.’

The shendron shook
his head.
Kelderek
, as though in an attempt to be reconciled to him, laid a hand on his shoulder; but the other shook it off impati
ently
and returned in silence to his watch over the
river. Taphro, scowling now, moti
oned the hunter to follow him up the bank.

The town that covered the narrow, eastern end of the island was fortified on the landward side by an intricate defensive system, part natural and part artificial, that ran from shore to shore. West of the zoan tree, on
the
further
side from
the
town, four lines of pointed stakes extended from the water-side into the woods. Inland, the patches of diicker jungle formed obstacles capable of
little
improvement, though even here the living creepers had been pruned and trained into almost impene
trable screens, one behind anoth
er. In
the
more open parts thorn-bushes had been planted —
trazada,
curlspike and
the
terrible
ancottlia,
whose poison burns and irritates until men tear their own flesh with their nails. Steep places had been made steeper and at one point the outfall of a marsh had been damned to form a shallow lake - shrunk at this time of year - in which small alligators, caught on
the
mainland, had been set free to grow and become dangerous. Along the outer edge of the line lay the so-called ‘Dead Belt’, about eighty yards broad, which was never entered except by
those
whose task it was to maintain it. Here were hidden trip-ropes fastened to props holding up great logs; concealed pits filled with pointed stakes - one contained snakes; spikes in the grass; and one or two open, smooth-looking
paths
leading to enclosed places, into which arrows and other missiles-could be poured from platforms constructed among the trees above. The Belt was divided by rough palisades, so that advancing enemies would find lateral movement difficult and discover themselves committed to emerge at points where they could be awaited. The entire line and its features blended so naturally
with
the
surrounding jungle that a stranger,
though
he might, here and there, perceive
that
men had been at work, could form
little
idea of its full extent. This remarkable closure of an open flank, devised and carried out during several years by the High Baron, Bel-ka-Trazet, had never yet been put to
the
proof. But, as
Bel
-ka-Trazet himself had perhaps foreseen, the labour of making it and
the
knowledge that it was there had created among the Ortelgans a sense of confidence and security that was probably worth as much as the works themselves. The line not only protected th
e town but made it a great deal
harder for anyone to leave it without the High Baron’s knowledge.