Shardik (52 page)

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 smo
ke of villages -stretching south
ward 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 rattl
ing 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 he
ard tell of the postern on the e
ast 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 tre
psis 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 secretl
y hostile to their
Ortelga
n 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.

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
. Someti
mes 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 la
y for a while in a grove of myrtl
e 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
impati
ent of further delay, and set off once more across the plain.

Two or three time
s 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 wheth
er 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
-inhabite
d 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 hum
an voices and the lowing of cattl
e. 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, inconspic
uous dwellings, irregular in outl
ine 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 cattl
e 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.