Shardik (56 page)

That night Shardik made for a village and through
this
Kelderek
passed unchallenged and seen of none, as
though
he had been some ghost or cursed spirit of legend, condemned to wander invisible to earthly eyes. On the outskirts Shardik killed two goats, but the poor beasts made little noise and no alarm was raised. When he had eaten and limped away Kelderek ate too, crouching in the dark to tear at the warm, raw flesh with fingers and teeth. Later he slept, too tired to wonder whether Shardik would be gone when he woke.

The singing of birds was in his ears before he opened his eyes, and at first this seemed natural and expected, the familiar sound of daybreak, until he recalled, with an instant sinking of the heart,
that
he was no more a lad in Ortelga, but a wretched man alone and lying on the
Bekla
n plain. Yet on the plain, as well he knew, there were scarcely any
trees and therefore
no birds, save buzzards and larks. At
this
moment he heard men talking near by and,
without
moving, half-opened his eyes.

He was lying near the track down which he had followed
Shardik in the night. Beside him the flies were already crawling on the goat-leg which he had wrenched off and carried away with him. The country was no longer plain-land, but an arboreous wilderness interspersed with small fields and fruit orchards. At a little distance, the wooden rails of a bridge showed where the track crossed a river, and beyond lay a thick, tangled patch of woodland.

Four or five men were standing about twenty paces off, talking together in low voices and scowling in his direction. One was carrying a club and the others rough, hoe-like mattocks, the farming peasant’s only tool. Their angry looks were mixed with a kind of uncertainty, and as it came to Kelderek that these were no doubt the owner of the goats and his neighbours, he realized also that he must indeed have become a figure of fear - armed, gaunt, ragged and filthy, his face and hands smeared with dried blood and a haunch of raw flesh lying beside him.

He leapt up suddenly and at this the men started, backing quickly away. Yet peasants though they were, he had still to reckon with them. After a little hesitation they advanced upon him, halting only when he drew Kavass’s sword, set his back against a tree and threatened them in Ortelgan, caring nothing whether they understood him, but taking heart from the sound of his own voice.

‘You just put that sword down, now, and come with us/ said one of the men gruffly.

‘Ortelgan - Bekla!’ cried Kelderek, pointing to himself.

‘It’s a thief you are,’ said another, older man. ‘And as for Bekla, it’s a long way off and they’ll not help you, for they’ve trouble enough of their own, by all accounts. You’re in the wrong, now, whoever you are. You just come with us.’

Kelderek
remained silent, waiting for them to rush him, but still they hesitated, and after a
little
he began to retreat watchfully down the track. They followed, shouting threats in their patois, which he could barely understand. He shouted angrily back and, feeling with his left hand
the
rails of the bridge close behind him, was about to turn and run when suddenly one of
them
pointed past him with a triumphant laugh. Looking quickly round, he saw two men approaching the bridge from the other side. Evid
ently
there had been a wide hunt for the goat-robber.

The bridge was not high and Kelderek was about to vault the parapet - though this could have done
little
more than prolong the hunt — when all the men, both those in front of him and close behind, suddenly cried out and ran, pelting away in all directions. Unassailable and conclusive as nightfall on a battlefield, Shardik had come from the wood and was standing near the track, peering into the sunlight and miserably fumbling at his wounded neck with one huge paw. Slowly, and as though in pain, he made his way to the edge of the stream and drank, crouching not more than a few paces from the further end of the bridge. Then, dull-eyed, with dry muzzle and staring coat, he limped away into
the
cover of the thicket.

Still
Kelderek
stood on the bridge, oblivious of whether or not the peasants might return. At the commencement of this, the fourth day since he had left Bekla, he felt an almost complete exhaustion, beyond
that
merely of the body, a total doubting of the future and a longing, like that which comes upon the hard-pressed soldiers of an army which is losing, but has not yet lost, a battle, at any cost to desist from further struggle for the moment, to rest, let come what may, although they know that to do so means that the fight can be renewed only at greater disadvantage. The calf muscle of his right leg was strained and painful. Two of Mollo’s stab wounds, those in his shoulder and hip, throbbed continually. But more dispiriting even than these was the knowledge that he had failed in his self-appointed task, inasmuch as Shardik could not now be recaptured before he reached the hills. Looking northward over the trees, he could see clearly the nearer slopes, green, brown and shadowy purple in
the
morning light. They might perhaps be six, eight miles away. Shardik too must have seen
them
. He would reach them by nightfall. Weeks - perhaps months - would now have to be spent in hunting him through that country - an old bear, grown cunning and desperate by reason of earlier capture. There was no remedy but that the
Ortelga
ns would have to undertake the most wearisome of all labour - that which has to be performed in order to put right what should never have gone amiss.

That morning he had escaped certainly injury; possibly death, for it was unlikely that the rough justice of the peasants would have spared an
Ortelga
n: and who now would believe that he was
the
king of
Bekla
? An armed ruffian, forced to beg or rob in order to eat, could pursue his way only at the risk of life and limb. Of what use, indeed, was it for him now to continue to follow Shardik? The paved road could not be more than half a day’s journey to the cast - perhaps much less. The time had come to return, to summon his subjects about him and plan the next step from
Bekla
. Had
Elleroth
been caught? And what news had come from the army in Tonilda?

He set off southward, deciding to follow the stream for a time and turn cast only when he was well away from the village. Soon his pace grew slower and more hesitant. He had gone perhaps half a mile when he stopped, frowning and slashing at the bushes in his perplexity. Now that he had actually left Shardik, he began to sec his situation in a different and daunting light. The consequences of return were incalculable. His own monarchy and power in Bekla were inseparable from Shardik. If it was he who had brought Shardik to
the
battle
of the Foothills, it was Shardik who had brought him to the throne of Bekla and maintained him there. More than that, the fortune and might of the
Ortelga
ns rested upon Shardik and upon the continuance of his own strange power to stand before him unharmed. Could he sa
fely
return to Bekla
with
the news that he had deserted the wounded Shardik and no longer knew where he was or even whether he were dead or alive? With the war in its present state, what effect would this have on the people? And what would they do to him ?

Within an hour of leaving the bridge
Kelderek
had returned to it and made his way upstream to
the
northe
rn end of the wood. There were no tracks and he concealed himself and waited. It was not until afternoon, however, that Shardik appeared once more and continued upon his slow journey - encouraged now, perhaps, by the smell of
the
hills on the north-west wind.

36
Shardik
Gone

By afternoon of
the
next day
Kelderek
was on the point of collapse. Hunger, fatigue and lack of sleep had worked upon his body as
beetles
work upon a roof, rust on a cistern or fear on the soldier’s heart - always taking a
little
more, leaving a little less to oppose
the
forces of gravity, of weather, of danger and fear. How does the end come? Perhaps an engineer, arriving at last to inspect and check, discovers
that
he can pierce with his finger the pitted, paper-thin plates of iron. Perhaps a comrade’s jest or a missile narrowly missing its mark causes him who was once an honest soldier to bury his head in his hands, weeping and babbling; just as rotten purlins and rafters become at last no more than splinters, worm-holes and powder. Sometimes nothing occurs to precipitate the catastr
ophe and the slow decay, unhaste
ned from without - of the water-tank in the windless desert or the commander of the lonely, precarious garrison - continues without interruption, till nothing is left that can be repaired. Already the king of Bekla was no more, but this the Ortelgan hunter had not yet perceived.

Shardik had reached
the
edge of the foothills a
little
after dawn. The place was wild and lonely, the country increasingly difficult.
Kelderek
clambered upward through dense trees or among tumbled rocks, where often he could not see thirty paces ahead. Sometimes, following an intuitive feeling that this must be the way the bear had taken, he would reach a patch of open ground only to conceal himself as Shardik came stumbling from the forest behind him. At almost any time he might have lost his life. But a change had come upon the bear - a change which, as the hours passed, became more plain to
Kelderek
, piercing his own sufferings with pity and at last with actual fear of what would befall.

As, in the splendid house of some great family, where once lights shone in scores of windows at night and carriages bearing relatives, friends and news came and went, the very evidence and means of grandeur and authority over all the surrounding countryside; but where now the lord, widowed, his heir killed in
battle
, has lost heart and begun to fail; as, in such a house, a few candles burn, lit at dusk by an old servant who does what he can and must needs leave the rest; so fragments of Shardik’s strength and ferocity flickered, a shadow suggesting the presence that once had been. He wandered on, safe indeed from attack - for what would dare to attack him? - but almost, or so it seemed, without strength to fend for himself. Once, coming upon the body of a wolf not long dead, he made some sorry shift to eat it. It seemed to
Kelderek
that the bear’s sight was weaker, and of this, after a time, he began to take advantage, following closer than he or the nimblest of the girls would have dared in the old days on
Ortelga
; and thus he was able to prolong his endurance even while his hope diminished of finding, in this wilderness, any to help him or carry his news to Bekla.

In the afternoon they climbed a steep valley, emerging on a ridge running eastward above the forests: and along this they continued their slow and mysterious journey. Once Kelderek, rousing himself from a waking fancy, in which his pains seemed torpid flies hanging upon his body, saw the bear ahead of him on a high rock, clear against the sky and gazing over the Beklan plain far below. It seemed to him that now it could go no further. Its body was hunched unnaturally and when at length it moved, one shoulder drooped in a kind of crippled limping. Yet when he himself reached the rock, it was to sec Shardik already crossing the spur below and as far away as before.

Coming to the foot of the ridge, he found himself at the upper end of a bleak waste, bounded far off by forest like that through which they had climbed the day before. Of Shardik there was no sign.

It was now, as the light began to fail, that
Kelderek
‘s faculties at last disintegrated. Strength and thought alike failed him. He tried to look for the bear’s tracks, but forgot what ground he had already searched and
then
what it was that he was seeking. Coming upon a pool, he drank and then, thrusting his feet for ease into the water, cried out at
the
fierce, stinging pain. He found a narrow path - no more than a coney’s trod - between the tussocks and crept down it on hands and knees, muttering, ‘Accept my life, Lord Shardik,’
though
the meaning of the words he could not recall. He tried to stand, but his sight grew clouded and sounds filled his ears, as of water, which he knew must be unreal.

The path led to a dry ravine and here for a long time he sat with his
back against a tree, gazing unse
eingly at
the
black streak of an old lightning-flash that had marked the rock opposite with the shape of a broken spear.