Shardik (62 page)

‘What you want, then?’ answered the man, invisible among the trees.

‘Shelter - advice too. I’m a fugitive, exile - whatever you like. I’m in trouble.’

‘Who isn’t? You’re this side the Vrako, aren’t you ?’

‘I’m unarmed. Look for yourself.’ He threw down the pack, raised his arms and turned one way and the other.

‘Unarmed? Then you’re mad.’ The man stepped out from the bushes and came up to him. He was indeed a ruflian of frightening appearance, swarthy and scowling,
with
a yellow, mucous discharge of the eyes and a scar from mouth to neck which reminded Kelderek of Bel-ka-Trazet.

‘I’m in no state to play tricks or drive a bargain,’ said
Kelderek
. ‘This pack’s full of food and nothing else. Take it and give me shelter for tonight.’

The man picked up the pack, opened and looked into it, tossed it back to Kelderek and nodded. Then, turning, he set off in the direction from which he had come. After a time he said,

‘No one after you?’

‘Not since
the
Vrako.’

They walked on in silence. Kelderek was struck by the complete absence of that friendly curiosity which usually finds a place in strangers’ meetings. If the man wondered who he was, whence he had come and why, he evid
ently
did not intend to ask; and there was that about him which made Kelderek think better of putting any questions on his own account. This
, he realized, must be the natu
re of acquaintance in this country of shame for the past and hopelessness for the future - the courtesy of the prison and the madhouse. However, some kinds of question were appar
ently
permissible, for after a time the man jerked out, ‘Thought what you’re going to do?’

‘Not yet - die, I dare say.’

The man looked sharply at him and
Kelderek
realized that he had spoken amiss. Here men were like beasts at bay - defiant until they were torn to pieces. The whole country, like a brigands’ cave, was divided into bullies and victims - the last place in which to speak of death, whether in jest or acceptance. Confused, and too weary to dissimulate, he said,

‘I was joking. I’ve got a purpose, though I dare say that to you it may seem a strange one. I’m looking for a bear that’s believed to be in these parts. If I could find it-‘

He stopped, for the man, his mouth and jaw thrust forward, was staring at him from his oozing eyes with a mixture of fear and rage - the rage of one who attacks whatever he does not understand. He said nothing, however, and after a moment
Kelderek
stammered, ‘It - it’s the truth. I’m not trying to make a fool of you-‘

‘Better not,’ answered the man. ‘So you’re not alone, then?’

‘I’ve never been more alone in my life.’

The man drew his knife, seized him by
the
wrist and forced him to his knees.
Kelderek
looked up into the snarling, violent face.

‘What’s this about the bear, then? What you up to - what you know about the other one -
the
woman, eh ?’

‘What other one? For God’s sake, I don’t know what you mean!’

‘Don’t know what I mean?’

Panting,
Kelderek
shook his head and after a moment
the
man released him.

‘Better come and see, then: better come and see. You mind now, I don’t take to tricks.’

They went on again, the man still clutching his knife and
Kelderek
half minded to run from him into the woods. Only his exhaustion held him back, for the man would probably pursue, overtake and perhaps kill him. They crossed a ridge and descended steeply towards a dreary, stagnant creek. Smoke hung in the trees. A patch of ground along the shore, cleared after a fashion, was littered with bones, feathers and other rubbish. At one side, too near the wate
r, stood a lop-sided, chimneyle
ss hovel of poles, branches and mud. There were clouds of flies. Three or four skins were pegged out to dry, and some black birds - crows or rooks - were huddled in a wooden pen on
the
marshy ground. The place, like a song out of tune, seemed an offence against the world, for which
the
only possible remedy was obliteration.

The man again grasped Kelderek’s wrist and half-led, half-dragged him towards the hut. A curtain of dusty skins hung across the entrance. The man jerked his head and gestured
with
his knife but Kelderek, stupid with fatigue, fear and disgust, did not understand that he was to enter first. The man, seizing his shoulder, pushed him so that he stumbled against the curtain. He pulled it aside, ducked his head and went in.

The walls surrounded a single, evil-smelling space, at the further end of which a fire was smouldering. There was little light, for apart from the curtained door and a hole in
the
roof, through which some of the smoke escaped, there was no opening; at the further end, however, he made out a human sh
ape, wrapped in a cloak and sitti
ng, back towards him, on a rough bench beside the fire. As he peered, bending forward and flinching from
the
knife at his back, the figure rose and turned to face him. It was the Tuginda.

40
Ruv
it

Suddenly to be confronted with a shameful deed from the past, a deed accomplished yet uneffaced, like
the
ruins of a poor man’s house destroyed by some selfish lord to suit his own convenience, or
the
body of an unwanted child cast up by the river on
the
shore: to stumble unexpectedly upon an accusadon
that
no bravado can defy or glib tongue turn aside; an accusation made not aloud, to the cars of the world, but
quietly
, face to face, without anger, perhaps even without speech, to one unprepared for
the
surge of his own confusion, guilt and regret. The harp of Binnorie named its murderess, and the two pretty babes in the ballad answered the crue
l mother under her father’s castl
e wall. Stones have been known to move and trees to speak. Yet never a word said Banquo’s ghost Though few can have touched a murdered corpse and seen the wounds burst open and bleed, yet many, coming alone upon old letters thrust into a drawer, have re-read them weeping for pardon; or again, burning with self-contempt, have learned from chance remarks how unforgotten has been the misery, how crushing the disappointment brought by themselves upon those who never spoke of it. The deeply-wronged, like ghosts, have no need to speak to their oppressors or accuse them before crowds. More terrible by far is
their
unexpected and silent reappearance in some secluded place, at some unguarded hour.

The Tuginda stood beside the bench, her eyes half-closed against the smoke. For some moments she did not recognize him. Then she started, jerking up her head. At
the
same instant
Kelderek
, with a sudden, sharp sob, thrust his hand between his teeth, turned and was already half-way through the entrance when he was pushed viol
ently
backwards and fell to the ground. The man, knife in hand, was staring down at him, gnawing his lip and panting with a kind of feral excitement. This,
Kelderek
realized on the ghastl
y instant, was one to whom murder must once have been both trade and sport. In his clouded mind violence hung always, precarious as a sword by a hair; by another’s fear or flight it was excited as uncontrollably as a cat by
the
scuttling of a mouse. This was some bandit survivor with a price on his head,
some hired assassin who had outl
ived his usefulness to his employers and run for the Vrako before the informer could turn him in. How many solitary wanderers had he killed in this place?

The man, bending over him, was breathing in low, rhythmic gasps.
Kelderek
, supporting himself on one elbow, tried in vain to return the maniac glare with a look of authority. As his eyes fell, the Tuginda spoke from behind him.

‘Calm yourself, Ruvit! I know this man - he is harmless. You are not to hurt him.’

‘Hiding in the woods, talked about the bear. “Up to tricks,” I thought, “up to tricks. Make him go in, don’t tell him anything, ah, that’s it. Find out what he’s up to, find out what he’s up to -” ‘

‘He won’t hurt you, Ruvit. Come and make up the fire, and after supper I’ll bathe your eyes again. Put your knife away.’

She led
the
man g
ently
to the fire, talking as though to a child, and
Kelderek
followed, not knowing what else to do. At
the
sound of her voice the tears had sprung to his eyes, but he brushed them away without a word. The man took no further notice of him and he sat down on a rickety stool, watching the Tuginda as she knelt to blow the fire, put on a pot and stirred it with a broken spit. Once she looked across at him, but he dropped his eyes; and when he looked up again she was busy over a clay lamp, which she trimmed and then lit with a kindled twig. The wan, single flame threw shadows along the floor and as darkness fell seemed less to brighten the squalid hut than to serve, with its guttering and wavering in the draughts that came through the ill-made walls, as a reminder
of the defencele
ssness of all who might have the misfortune to be, like itself, solitary and conspicuous in
this
sad country.

She had aged, he thought, and had the look of one who had endured both loss and disappointment. Yet she was unextinguished - a fire burned low, a tree stripped by a winter gale. In this horrible place, beyond help or safety, alone with one man who had betrayed her and another who was half-crazy and probably a murderer, her authority asserted itself quietly and surely; in part as mundane as that of some shrewd, honest farmer talking with those whom he makes feel that it will be better not to try to cheat him. But beyond this open foreground of the spirit he could perceive, as he had perceived long ago - as he knew that even poor, murderous Ruvit could sense, in
the
same way
that
a dog is aware of
the
presence of joy or grief in a house - the deeper, more mysterious country of her strength. She was possessed of the immunity not only of priestess, pilgrim and doctor, but also of that conferred by
the
mystery whose servant she was - by
the
power which he had felt before ever he met her, when he had sat slumped in the canoe drifting down to Quiso in
the
dark. No wonder, he thought,
that
Ta-Kominion had died. No wonder that the headlong, fiery ambition which had blinded him to the strength in her had also poisoned him beyond recovery.

He began to consider the manner of his own death. Some, or so he had heard, had dragged out their lives beyond
the
Vrako until
the
prices on their heads and even the nature of their crimes had been forgotten and nothing but their own despair and addled wits prevented their return to towns where none was left who could recall what they had done. Such survival was not for him. Shardik, if only he could find him, would at last take the life which had been so often offered to him; would take his life before
the
contemptible desire to survive on any terms could transform him into a creature like Ruvit.

Lost in these thoughts, he heard little or nothing of whatever passed between Ruvit and the Tuginda as she finished preparing the meal.
Vaguely, he was aware that alth
ough Ruvit had become quiet he was nevertheless afraid of the fall of darkness, and
that
the
Tuginda was reassuring him. He wondered how long the man had lived here, facing nightfall alone, and what it was that had made
this
life - a hard one, surely, even for a fugitive beyond the Vrako - the only one he dared to live.

After a time the Tuginda brought him food, and as she gave it to him laid her hand for a moment on his shoulder. Still he said
nothing
, only nodding wretchedly, unable to meet her eyes. Yet when he had eaten, as is the way, some shreds of spirit involuntarily returned to him. He sat closer to the fire, watching as the Tuginda swabbed the discharge from Ruvit’s eyes and bathed them
with
some herbal infusion. With her he was quiet and amenable, and at moments almost resembled what he might have been if evil had not consumed him - a decent, stupid drover, perhaps, or hard-handed tapster of an inn.

They slept clothed, on the ground, as needs they must, the Tuginda making no complaint of the dirt and discomfort, or even of the vermin that gave them no peace.
Kelderek
slept
little
, mistrusting Ruvit both on his own account and the Tuginda’s; but it se
emed rath
er that the poor wretch welcomed the chance of a
night’s sleep free from his superstiti
ous fears, for he never moved dll morning.

Soon after first light
Kelderek
blew up the fire, found a wooden pail and, glad to get into the fresh air, made his way to
the
shore, washed and then returned with water for the Tuginda. He could not bring himself to rouse her, but went outside again into the first sunlight. His resolve was unchanged. Indeed, he now saw in himself a gulf like that into which he had gazed from the plain of Urtah. The blasphemous wrong, in which he had participated, inflicted by Ta-Kominion upon the Tuginda, was but a part of that wider, far-reaching evil of his own committing - the sacrilege against Shardik himself and all
that
had followed from it. Rantzay, Mollo,
Elleroth
,
the
children sold into slavery in Bekla, the dead soldiers whose voices had flickered about him in the dark - they came thrusting, jagged and sharp, into his mind as he stood beside
the
creek. When the Tamarrik Gate had finally collapsed, he remembered, there had been a great central breach, from which had radiated splintered fissures and rifts, fragments of exquisitely carved wood, shards of silver sagging inwards, shattered likenesses no longer recognizable in
the
ruin. The
Ortelga
ns had cheered and shouted, smashing their way forward through the wreckage with cries of ‘Shardik! Shardik!’

His tears fell sil
ently
. ‘Accept my life, Lord Shardik! O God, only take my life!’