Shardik (83 page)

‘You walked over him,’ said Radu. ‘You walked over his body. Didn’t you feel it?’

‘Yes - no. I didn’t know what I was doing,’ answered
Kelderek
dully.

Shara touched the boy’s forehead and tried to pull the rags together across his chest.

‘Tumbled down, didn’t he?’ she said to Radu. ‘He hasn’t got a chain,’ she went on, in a kind of song, ‘He hasn’t
got a chain, To go to Leg-By-Le
e -‘ Then, breaking off as she saw Genshed coming to
wards them, ‘Radu, he’s coming!
’

Genshed stopped beside the boy, stirred him with his foot, dropped
on
one knee, rolled back one eyelid and felt the heart. Then he stood up, looked round at the other boys and jerked his head. They
moved away and Genshed faced
Kelderek
and Radu across the body.

As fire is stopped by the bank of a river, as
the
growth of the vine’s tendrils is halted by the onset of winter, so their compassion faltered and died before Genshed. He said nothing, his presence sufficient to focus, like a lens, in a single point, their sense of helplessness to aid or comfort the boy. How futile was their pity, for what could it effect? Genshed lay all about them: in their own exhaustion, in this forest wilderness lacking food or shelter, in the glittering river hemming them in, the empty sky. He said nothing, allowing his presence to lead them to their own conclusion - that they were merely wasting their tiny remaining store of energy. When he snapped his fingers their eyes fell and, with Shara beside them,
they
followed the boys: nor did they trouble to look back. They and Genshed were now entirely of one mind.

A short distance along the shore, Shouter had called a halt. They lay down among the children, but none questioned them. Genshed returned, washed his knife in the water and then, ordering Bled to remain in charge, took Shouter with him and disappeared upstream. Returning half an hour later, he at once led the way inland among the woods.

As evening began to fall they stumbled their way up a long, gradual slope, the forest round them growing more open as they went. Between the trees
Kelderek
could see a red, westering sun and this, he found, awoke in him a dull surprise. Pondering, he realized that since leaving Lak he had not once seen the sun after midday. They must now be upon the forest’s northern edge.

At the top of the slope, Genshed waited until the last of the children had come up before beginning to push through the undergrowth on the forest outskirts. Suddenly he stopped, peering forward and shading his eyes against the sun. Kelderek and Radu, halting behind him, found themselves looking out across the northern extremity of the evil land which they had now traversed from end to end, from the Vrako’s banks to the Gap of Linsho.

The air was full of a dazzling, golden light, slow-moving and honey-thick. Myriads of motes and specks floated here and there, their minute glitterings seeming to draw the light down from the sky to the ground, there to fragment and multiply. The evening beams glanced off leaves, off the wings of darting flies and the surface of the Telthearna flowing a mile away at the foot of the slope. Dire
ctly
before them, to the north, the distant prospect was closed by the mountains - jagged, iron-blue heights, streaked with steep wedges of forest rising out of the virid foothills. Looking at this tremendous barrier,
Kelderek
called to mind that once - how long
ago? - he had possessed the strength to follow Shardik into such mountains as these. Now, he could not have limped over
the
intervening ground to their foot.

Clouds half-hid
the
easternmost peak, wh
ich rose above the Tel
thearna like a tower, its precipitous face falling almost sheer to the river. Between the water and the wooded crags at the mountain’s foot there extended a narrow strip of flat land
little
more than a bowshot across -
the
Gap of Linsho. Huts he could make out, and wisps of evening smoke
drifting towards the wilds of De
elguy on the further shore. A track led out of the Gap, ran a short way beside the water, then turned inland to climb the slope, crossed their front less than half a mile away and disappeared south-westward beyond the extremity of
the
fores
t on their left. Goats were tcth
ercd on the open sward and a herd of cows were grazin
g - one had a flat-toned, cloppe
ring bell at her neck - watched by a little boy, who sat fluting on a wooden pipe; and an old ox, at the full extent of his rope, pulled the greenest grass he could get.

But it was not at
the
golden light, at the cattle or the child playing his pipe
that
Genshed stood staring, his hanging face like a devil’s sick with the pain of loss. Beside the track, a patch of ground had been enclosed with a wooden palisade and a fire was burning in a shallow trench. A soldier in a leather helmet was crouching, scouring pots, while another was chopping wood with a bill-hook. Beside the stockade a tall staff had been erected
and from it hung a flag - three
corn-sheaves on a blue ground. Near by, two more soldiers could be seen facing towards the forest, one sitting on
the
turf as he ate his supper, the
other
standing, leaning on a long spear. The situation was plain. The Gap had been occupied by a Sarkid det
achment of the army of Santil-ke-Erketl
is.

‘Bloody God!’ whispered
Genshed
, staring over the pastoral, flame-bright quiet of the hillside. Shouter, coming up from behind, drew in his breath and stood stock-still, gazing as a man might at the burning ruins of his own home. The children were silent, some uncomprehending in their sickness and exhaustion, others sensing with fear the rage and desperation of Genshed, who stood clenching and unclenching his hands without another word.

Sud
denly Radu plunged forward. His
rags fluttered about him and he flung both arms above his head, jerking like an idiot child in a fit,

‘Ah! Ah!’ croaked Radu. ‘Sark -‘ He staggered, fell and got up knee by knee, like a cow. ‘Sarkid!’ he whispered, stretching out his hands; and
then
, barely louder, ‘Sarkid! Sarkid!’

With deliberation, Genshed took his bow from the side of his pack, and laid an arrow on the string. Then, leaning against a tree, he waited as Radu again drew breath. The boy’s cry, when it came, was like that of a sick infant, distorted and feeble. Once more he cried, bird-like, and then sank to his knees, sobbing and wringing his hands among the undergrowth. Genshed, pulling Shouter back by the shoulder, waited as a man might wait for a friend to finish speaking with a passer-by in the street.

‘O God!’ wept Radu. ‘God, only help us! O God, please help usl’

On Kelderek’s back Shara h
alf-awoke, murmured ‘Lcg-by-Lee! Gone to Leg-by-Lee
!’ and fell asleep again.

As a man led to judgment might halt to listen to the sound of a girl singing; as the eye of one just told of his own mortal illness might stray out of the window to dwell for an instant upon the flash of some bright-plumagcd bird among the trees; as some devil-may-care fellow might drain a glass and dance a spring on the scaffold - so, it seemed, not only Genshed’s inclination but also his self-respect now impelled him in this, his own utter disaster, to pause a few moments to enjoy the rare and singular misery of Radu. He looked round among the children, as though inviting anyone else who might wish to try his luck to sec what voice he might have left for calling out to the soldiers. Watching him,
Kelderek
was seized by a deadly horror, like that of a child facing the twitching, glazed excitement of the rapist. His teeth chattered in his head and he felt his empty bowels loosen. He sank down, barely in sufficient command of himself to slide the
little
girl from his back and lay her beside him on the ground.

At this moment a hoarse voice was heard from among the bushes nearby.

‘Gensh! Ge
nsh,
I
say!
Gensh!’

Genshed
turned sharply, peering with sun-dazzled eyes into the dusky forest behind him. There was nothing to be seen, but a moment later the voice spoke again. .

‘Ge
n
sh! Don’t be going out there, Ge
nsh! For God’s sake give us a
hand!
’

A faint wisp of smoke curled up from a patch of undergrowth, but otherwise all was stiller than
the
grassy slope outside.
Genshed
jerked his head to Shouter and the
boy went slowly and reluctantl
y forward
with
the best courage he could summon. He disappeared among the bushes and a moment later they hea
rd him exclaim, ‘Mucking hell!’

Still
Genshed
said nothing, merely nodding to Bled to join Shouter. He himself continued to keep half his attention upon Radu and
Kelderek
. After some delay the two boys emerged from the bushes supporting a fleshy, thick-lipped man with small eyes, who
grimaced with pain as he staggered between them, trailing
a
pack behind him along the ground. The left leg of his once-white breeches was soaked in blood and the hand which he held out to Genshed was red and sticky.

‘Gensh!’ he said. ‘Ge
nsh, you know me, don’t you, you won’t leave me here, you’ll be gotting me away? Don’t go out there, Gensh, they’ll got you same as they did me; we can’t stay here
, either - they’ll be coming, Ge
nsh, coming!’

Kelderek
, staring from where he lay, suddenly called the man to mind. This blood-drenched craven was
none other than the wealthy Dee
lguy slave-dealer Lalloc; fat, insinuating, dandified, with the manners, at once familiar and obsequious, of a presuming servant on the make. Over-dressed and smiling among his miserable, carefully-groomed wares, he had once been accustomed to publicize himself in
Bekla
as ‘The high-class slave-dealer, purveyor to the aristocracy. Special needs discre
e
tly
catered for.’
Kelderek
remembered, too, how he had taken to calling himself
‘U-Lalloc’, until ordered by Ge
d-la-Dan to curb his impertinence and mind his place. There was little enough of the demi-mondain dandy about him now, crouching at Genshed’s feet, dribbling with fear and exhaustion, his yellow robe smeared with dirt and his own blood clotted across his fat buttocks. The strap of his pack was twisted round his wrist and in one hand he was clutching the plaited thong of
a
clay thurible, or fire-pot, such as some travellers carry on lonely journeys and keep smouldering with moss and twigs. It was from this that the thin smoke was rising.

Kelderek
remembered how in Bekla
,
Lalloc, coming once to the Barons’ Palace to apply for the renewal of his licence, had fallen to deploring
the
wicked deeds of unauthorized
slave-dealers. ‘Your gracious Maje
sty will need no ashorrance that my colleagues and I, acting in the bost interests of the trade, would never have to do with soch men. To oss, profit is a secondary mottcr. We regard ourselves as your Mojcsty’s servants, employed to move your own fixed quotas about the Empire as may suit your convenience. Now may I soggest -‘ and his rings had clicked as he placed his hands together and
bowed, in the manner of the Dee
lguy. And whence,
Kelderek
had wondered, whence in truth had he obtained the pretty children who had stood on his rostrum in the market, tense and dry-eyed, knowing what was good for them? He had never enquired, for the taxes on Lalloc’s turn-over had produced very large sums, all duly rendered - enough to pay and equip several companies of spearmen.

For
a
moment, as Lalloc’s eye travelled over the children, it rested on
Kelderek
: but his momentary surprise,
Kelderek
could perceive, was due to no more than observing a grown man among the slaves. He did not recognize - how should he? - the former priest-king of Bekla.

Still
Genshed
stood silent, looking broodingly at the bleeding Lalloc as though wondering - as no doubt he was - in what way he could turn this unexpected meeting to his advantage. At length he said, ‘Bit of trouble, Lalloc; been in it, have you?’

The other spread his bloody hands, shoulders shrugging, eyebrows lifting, head wagging from side to side.