Shardik (38 page)

him
away. ‘Be off, get away from me!
Filthy beggars -‘ He turned on his heel and walked away,
with
Mollo beside him.

‘Now what
the
devil - ?’ began Mollo. He broke o
ff. ‘Whatever’s the matter, Elleroth
? You’re surely not - not
weeping,
are you?’

‘My dear Mollo, if you can’t observe a
knife vanishing from its sheath
on your own hip, how can you possibly expect to observe accurately the expression on a face as foolish as mine? Let us turn in and have a drink - I feel I could do with one, and
the
sun’s become rather warmer now. It will be pleasant to sit down.’

25
The
Green
Grove

The nearest tavern in the colonnade, whose sign proclaimed it to be ‘The Green Grove’, was out of the wind but warmed nevertheless, at this early time of
the
year, by a charcoal brazier, low enough to keep floor draughts from chilling the feet. The tables were still damp from
their
morning scrubbing and the settl
e, facing towards the square, was spread with bri
ghtly
-coloured rugs which, though somewhat worn, were clean and well-brushed. The place appeared to be frequented chiefly by the better kind of men having work or business in
the
market - buyers, household stewards, caravan officers, merchants and one or two market officials, with
their
uniform green cloaks and round leather hats; There were pumpkins and dried tendrionas hanging in nets against
the
walls and pickled aubergines, cheeses, nuts and raisins set out in dishes. Through a door at
the
back could be caught a glimpse of the courtyard,
with
white doves and a fountain. Elleroth and Mollo sat down at one end of
the
settle, and waited
without
impatience.

‘Well, Death
, don’t come along just yet,’ cried a long-haired young caravaneer, flinging back his cloak to free his arm as he drank and looking over the top of his
leathe
r can as
though
half-expecting that unwelcome personage to make a sudden appearance round the corner. ‘I’ve got a bit more profit to make down south and a few more jars to empty here - haven’t I, Tarys?’ he added to a pretty girl with a long black plait and a necklace of silver coins, who set down before him a plate of hard-boiled eggs in sour cream.

‘Ay, likely,’ she answered, ‘with
out you get yourself killed int’
south one trip. Profit, profit - happen you’d go to Zeray for profit.’

‘Ay - happen!’ he mimicked, teasing her and spreading out a row of foreign coins, one under each finger, for her to take whatever was due in payment. ‘Help yourself. Why don’t you take
me
now, instead of
the
money?’

‘I’m not that hard up yet,’ retorted the girl, taking
three
of the coins and coming across to the settle. Her eyelids were stained with indigo and she had pinned a bunch of red-flowering
tectron
in her bodice. She smiled at Mollo and Elleroth, a
little
unsure how to address them, since on the one hand they were strangers and clearly
gentle
men, while on the other they had been an audience for her little flirtation with the caravaneer.

‘Good morning, my dear lass,’ said Elleroth, speaking as though he were her grandfather and at
the
same
time
looking her up and
down with an air of open admirati
on which left her more confused than ever. ‘I wonder whether you have any
real
wine, from the south - Yeldashay, perhaps, or even just Lapan? What we need to drink on a morning like this is sunshine.’

‘There’s none come in a long while, sir, more’s t’ pity,’ answered the girl. ‘T’is the war, y’see. We can’t get it.’

‘Now Pm sure you’re underrating the resources of this splendid establishment,’ replied
Elleroth
, putting two twenty-meld pieces
quietly
into her hand. ‘And you can always pour it into a jug, so that no one else knows what it is. Ask your father. Just bring the best you’ve got, as long as it’s - er -
well, pre-bear, you know, preb
ear. We shall recognize it all right, if it’s from the south.’

Two men came through the chain-curtained entrance and called to the girl in Chistol, smiling across at her.

‘I suppose you have to learn a lot of languages, with so many admirers?’ asked Mollo.

‘Nay, they’ve to learn mine or I’
m doon with them,’ she smiled, nodding, as she left, to Elleroth, to show that she would do as he had asked.

‘Ah, well, I suppose the world still takes a lot of stopping,’ said El
leroth, leaning back on the settl
e, snapping a pickled aubergine and throwing half into his mouth. ‘What a pity so many furious boys persist in trying! Will it suit you if we go on talking Yeldashay, by the way? Pm tired of speaking Beklan, and Deelguy is beyond me, I fear. One advantage of
this
place is that no one would think it unduly odd, I believe, if we were to converse by coughing down each other’s necks or tapping the table with very large tooth-picks. A little Yeldashay will be all in the day’s work to them.’

‘That boy,’ said Mollo, ‘you gave him money, after he’d stolen my knife. And what was that hole in his ear? You seemed to know what you were looking for all right’

‘You have no inkling, provincial governor?’

‘None.’

‘Long may you continue to have none. You met this
man Lalloc, you told me, in Dee
lguy. I wonder, did you ever hear tell of one Genshed?’

‘No.’

‘Well, curse the war, then!’ shouted a man who had just come in, evid
ently
in reply to some remark of the landlord standing before him with compressed lips, shrugged shoulders and hands held out on cither side. ‘Bring us any damn’ thing, only be quick. I’m off south again in half an hour.’

‘What’s the news of the war?’ called Elleroth across the room.

‘Ah, it’s going to get rough again now
the
spring’s here, sir,’ answered the man. ‘There’ll be
nothing
coming up from the south now - no, not for some months, I dare say. General
Erketlis
is on the’move - likely to drive up east of Lapan, so I’ve heard.’

Elleroth nodded. The girl returned with a plain earthenware jug, leather beakers and a plate of fresh radishes and watercress.
Elleroth
filled both cans, drank deeply and then looked up at her open-mouthed, with an exaggerated expression of astonishment and delight. The girl giggled and went away.

‘Better than we might have expected,’ said Elleroth. ‘Well, never mind about the poor boy, Mollo. Put it down to eccentricity on my part. I’ll tell you one day. Anyway, it’s got nothing to do with what we were talking about on the lake.’

‘How did they get their bear back?’ asked Mollo, crunching a radish and spreading out his legs towards the brazier. ‘What I heard - if it’s true it frightens me, and no one’s ever told me it’s not - was that the bear smashed through the Beklan line and killed Gel-Ethlin as if it knew who he was. That’s one th
ing they can all tell you in Dee
lguy, because
there
was a Dee
lguy contingent in the Beklan army and the bear killed
their
commander at the same time - tore his throat out You must admit it’s all very strange’

‘Well?’

‘Well, then the bear disappeared as night was falling. But you know where it is now - there, up the hill.’ He jerked his thumb over his shoulder.

‘This man Crendrik — the king - he spent
the
whole of the following summer tracking it down,’ replied Elleroth. ‘As soon as
the
rains ended he went out with his priestesses or whatever they call them and worked over the whole country from Kabin to Terekenalt and from Gelt to the Telthearna. He used to be
a hunter, I believe. Well, wheth
er he was or not, he found the bear at last, in some very inaccessible part of the hills: and he fired the whole hillside, including two wretched villages, to force it down to the plain. Then he made it insensible with some kind of drug, hobbled it with chains

‘Hobbled
it?’ interrupted Mollo. ‘How on earth do you hobble a bear?’

‘They’d learned that no cage could hold it, so I was told, so while it was drugged they fastened its legs to a choke-chain round its neck, so that the m
ore it kicked the more it throttl
ed itself. Then it was dragged to Bekla on an open, wheeled platform in less than two days - something like sixty miles. They had relays of men to take over from one another and never stopped at all. Even so it nearly died -didn’t terribly care for the chains, you see. But it only goes to show, my dear Mollo, how much importance the Ortelgans attach to the bear and to what lengths they’re prepared to go in anything that concerns it. Telthearna diving-bo
ys they may be, but they’re evi
d
ently
inspired to great heights by that animal.’

‘They call it the
Power of God,’ said Mollo. ‘Are
you sure it isn’t?’

‘My dear Mollo, what
can
you mean? (Let me fill up that leather thing you have there. I wonder whet
her they have any more of this?
’

‘Well, I can’t account for all that’s happened in any other way. Old S’marr feels the same - he said they were meant to win. First the Beklans fail to get any sort of news of what’s happened, then they go and split their army in two, then the rains break,
then
the bear kills Gel-Ethlin just when he’s got them beaten and no one in Bekla has the least warning until the Ortelgans
are
down on them -are you really saying that all that’s mere coincidence?’

‘Yes, I am,’ replied
Elleroth
, dropping his whimsical manner and leaning over to look straight into Mollo’s face. ‘An over-civilized people grow complacent and careless and leave the door open for a tribe of fanatical savages, through a mixture of luck, treachery and the foulest inhumanity, to usurp their place for a few years.’

‘A few years? It’s five years already.’

‘Five years
are
a few years. Are they secure? You know
they
‘re not. They’re opposed by a brilliant general, with a base as near as Ikat. The Beklan empire is reduced to half of what it was. The southern provinces have seceded - Yelda, Belishba, arguably Lapan. Paltesh would like to secede
and daren’t. Deelguy and Tereke
nalt are both enemies, so far as they can spare time from their own troubles. The Ortelgans could be overthrown this summer. That Crendrik — he’ll end in Zeray, you mark my words.’

‘They’re reasonably prosperous - there’s plenty of trade still in
Bekla
.’

‘Trade? Yes, what sort of trade, I wonder? And you’ve only to look round you to see how badly even a place like this is affected. What used to bring more prosperity to Bekla than anything else? Building, masonry, carving - all that sort of craftsmanship. That trade is ruined. There’s no labour, the big craftsmen have
quietly
gone elsewhere and th
ese barbarians know nothing of such work. As for the outer provinces and
the
neighbouring kingdoms, it’s only a very occasional patron who sends to Bekla now. Plenty of trade? What sort of trade, Mollo?’

‘Well,
the
iron comes in from Gelt, and
the
cattl
e -‘

‘What sort of trade, Mollo?*

‘The slave trade, is that what you’re getting at? Well, but there’s slave-trading everywhere. People who lose wars get taken prisoner -‘

‘You and I fought togethe
r once to keep it at
that
. These men are desperate for trade to pay for their war and feed the subject people they’re holding down - desperate for any sort of trade. So it’s no longer kept at that. What sort of trade, Mollo?’

‘The children, is that what you’re getting at? Well, if you want my opinion —’

‘Excuse me,
gentle
me
n. I don’t know whether you’re interested, but I’m told the king is approaching. He’ll be crossing the market in a few moments. I thought as you
gentle
me
n seem to be visitors to the city -‘