Shardik (70 page)

‘There’s no milk in Zeray,’ said Melathys, ‘nor cheese, nor butter. I’ve seen none in five years. But you’re right - it’s fresh food she ought to have. Salt meat and dried fruit
are
no cure for a fever. We can do nothing tonight. You sleep first,
Kelderek
. I’ll wake you later.’

But she did not wake him, evid
ently
content to watch - with a

little sleep, perhaps, for herself - beside the Tuginda until morning. It was Ankray, returned from some early expedition of his own, who woke him with the news
that
Farrass and his companions had left
Zeray
during
the
night.

‘There’s no doubt of it?’ asked
Kelderek
, spluttering as he splashed cold water over his face and shoulders.

‘I don’t reckon so, sir.’

Kelderek
had not expected that they would go without some attempt to force Melathys to join them, but when he told her the news she was less surprised.

‘I dare say each of them may have thought of trying to make me his property,’ she said.’ But to have me with
them
across the kind of country that lies between here and Kabin, slowing them down and causing quarrels - I’m not surprised that Farrass decided against
that
. He probably expected that as soon as I’d learned from you what they meant to do I’d come back and beg him to take
me
. When I didn’t, he thought he’d show me how little I meant to them. They always felt resentment, you know, because they naturally supposed
the
Baron was my lover, but they feared him and needed him too much to show it. All the same, I wondered yesterday whether they might not try to force
me
to go with them. That was why I left it to you to tell
them
that
Santi
l was at Kabin. I wanted to be well out of the way when
they
learned
that
,’

‘Why didn’t you warn me to conceal it from them? They might have come here for you.’

‘If they’d learned it from someone else - and one never knows what news is going to reach Zeray - they’d have had strong suspicions that we had concealed it. They’d probably have turned against us
then
, and that could have been nasty.’

She paused, kneeling down before the fire. After a time she said, ‘Perhaps I wanted them to go.’

‘Your danger’s greater now they’re gone.’

She smiled and went on staring into the fire. At length she answered, ‘Possibly - possibly not. You remember what you told me Farrass said - “Someone’s bound to try soon.
” Anyway, I know where I’d rathe
r be. Things have changed very much with
me
, you know.’

Later, he persuaded her to keep to the house so that people, no longer seeing her, might suppose that she had gone with Farrass and Thrild. Ankray, when told, nodded approvingly.

‘There’s sure to be trouble now, sir,’ he said. ‘It’ll likely take a day or two to come to the boil, but when a wolf moves out, a wolf moves in, as they say.’

‘Do you think we may be attacked here?’

‘Not necessarily, sir. It might come to that and it might not. We’ll just have to see how things turn out. But I dare say we’ll
still
be here all right when General
Santil
comes.’

Kelderek
had not told Ankray what he himself had to expect in this eventuality; nor did he do so now.

Later that afternoon, taking with him a knife and some fishing-tackle - two hand-lines of woven thread and hair, three or four small, fire-hardened, wooden hooks, and a paste of meat-fat and dried fruit kneaded together - he went down to the shore. He could observe no change from the previous day in the lack-lustre movements and aimless loitering of the men whom he saw. Although some had cast lines from a kind of spit running out into deeper water, the place did not look to him a likely one for a catch. After watching them for a
time
he made his way unobtrusively upstream, coming at
length
to the graveyard and its creek. Here, too, there were a few fishermen, but none who struck him as either skilled or painstaking. He was surprised, for from what he had heard
the
town to a large extent depended for food on catching fish and birds.

Retracing his steps of two days before, he went inland, up the shore of the creek,
until
he found a spot where, with the help of an overhanging tree, he was able to scramble across. Half an hour later he had regained the Telthearna bank and come upon what he had been seeking; a deep pool close inshore, with trees and bushes giving cover.

It was satisfying to find that he had not lost his old skill. As a man tormented by a law-suit, by money troubles or anxiety about a woman, can nevertheless derive pleasure and actual solace from a game skilfully played or a plant which he has nurtured into bloom (so accurate, despite all the mind’s attempts to mislead it, is the heart’s divination of where true delight is to be found), so
Kelderek
, despite his conviction that he would
the
in
Zeray
, despite his fears for
the
Tuginda, his grief for the evil he had done and the hopelessness of his longing for Melathys (for what possibility could there now be, in the time left to him in this evil place, of healing the wounds inflicted by all she had undergone at the hands of men?), still found comfort in
the
windless, cloudy afternoon, in
the
light on the water, the silence broken only by the faint breeze and river sounds and in his own ability, where a man lacking it would have wasted the time idling at one end of a motionless line. Here at least was something he could do - and a pity, he thought bitterly, that he had ever left it. Would he not, if Shardik had never appeared on Ortelga, have remained a contented hunter an
d fisher, Kelderek Play-with-the
-Children, looking no further than his solitary, hard-acquired skill and evening games on the shore?
He
put these thoughts aside and set to work in earnest.

After lying prone and hidden for some time, ground-baiting the pool and fishing each part of it with watchful attention,
he
hooked a fish which he was obliged to play with great care on the light hand-line before at last it broke surface and proved to be a good-sized trout. A few minutes more and
he
contrived to snatch it with a finger and thumb thrust into the gills. Then, sucking his bleeding scratches, he cast out again.

By the early evening he had taken three more trout and a perch, lost a hook and a length of line and run out of bait. The air was watery and cool, the clearing sky feathered with light cloud, and
he
could neith
er hear nor smell Zeray. For a time he sat beside the pool, wondering whether their best course, when
the
Tuginda had recovered, might not be to leave Zeray altogether and, now that the summer was approaching, live and hunt in the open, as they had lived on
Ortelga
during the days of Shardik’s cure and first wanderings. From murder they would
be
safer than in
Zeray
, and with Ankray’s help he should be able to forage for them well enough. As for his own life, if
Erketlis
‘ troops came his chances of escape, even if
they
put a price on his head, would be better than if
he
were to await them in Zeray. Deciding that he would put the idea to Melathys that evening, he wound the lines carefully, threaded his fish on a stick and set out to return.

It was twilight when he crossed the creek but, peering towards Zeray through the mist which already covered the shoreward ground and now seemed to be creeping inland, he could see not one lamp shining. Filled with a sudden and more
immediate fear than he had hithe
rto felt-of this cinder-pit of burnt-out rogues, he cut a cudgel from a tree before continuing on his way. He had not been alone outdoors and after dark since
the
night on the battlfie
ld and now, as the twilight deepened, he became more and more nervous and uneasy. Unable to face the graveyard, he turned short to his right and was soon stumbling among muddy pools and tussocks of coarse grass as big as his head. When at last he came to the outskirts of Zeray he could not tell in which direction the Baron’s house might lie. Houses and hovels stood haphazard as anthills in a field. There were no definable streets or alleys, as in a true town: neither loiterers nor passers-by; and although
he could now see, here and there
, faint streaks of light showing
through
the chinks of doors and shutters, he knew better than to knock. For an hour - or less than an hour, perhaps, or more - he wandered gropingly in the dark, starting at every noise and hastening to set his back against the nearest wall; and, as he crept on, expecting each moment a blow on the back of the head. Suddenly, as he stood looking up at the few stars visible through the mist and trying to make out which way he was facing, he realized that
the
roof outlined faintl
y against the sky was that of the Baron’s house. Making quickly toward
s it, he tripped over someth
ing pliant and fell his length in the mud. At once a door opened near by and two men appeared, one carrying a light He had just time to scramble to his feet before they reached him.

‘Fell over the cord, eh?’ said the man without the light, who had an axe in one hand. He spoke in Beklan and, seeing
that
Kelderek
understood him, continued, ‘That’s what the cord’s for, to be sure. Why you hanging round here, eh?’

‘I’m not - I’m going home,’ said Kelderek, watching them closely.

‘H
ome?’ The man gave a short laugh. ‘First time I heard it called that in Zeray.’

‘Good night’ said Kelderek. ‘I’m sorry I disturbed you.’

‘Not so fast,’ said
the
other man, taking a step to one side. ‘Fisherman,
are
you?’ Suddenly he started, held up his light and looked more searchingly at Kelderek. ‘God!’ he sa
id. ‘I know you. You’re the Ortelg
an king of Bekla!’

The first man peered in his turn. ‘He mucking is, too,’ he said. ‘Aren’t you? The Ortelgan king of Bekla, him as used to talk to the bear?’

‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ said
Kelderek
. ‘I don’t even know what you mean.’

‘We was Beklans once,’ said the second man, ‘until we had to run for knifing an
Ortelga
n bastard
that
mucking well deserved it I reckon it’s your turn now. Lost your bear, have you?’

‘I was never in
Bekla
in my life and as for the bear, I’ve never even seen it.’

‘You’re an
Ortelga
n all right though,’ said the second man. ‘D’you think we can’t tell that? You talk the same as the mucking lot of them -‘

‘And I tell you I never left Ortelga until I had to come here, and I wouldn’t know
the
bear if I saw it. To hell with the bear!’

‘You bloody liar!’ The first man swung up his axe. Kelderek hit him quickly with his cudgel, turned and ran. The light went out as they followed and
they
stopped uncertainly. He found himself before the courtyard door and hammered on it shouting ‘Ankray! Ankray!’ At once they were after him. He shouted again, dropped the fish, gripped his cudgel and faced about. He heard the bolts being drawn. Then
the
door opened and Ankray was beside him, jabbing with a spear into the dark and cursing like a peasant with a bull on the pole. The oncoming footsteps faltered and
Kelderek
, suffici
ently
self-possessed to pick up his fish, pulled Ankray through the door into the courtyard and bolted it behind
them
.

‘Thank God it was no worse, sir,’ said Ankray. ‘I’ve been out here waiting for you since nightfall. I
thought
like enough you might run into some kind of trouble. The priestess has been very anxious. It’s always dangerous after dark.’

‘It’s lucky for me you did wait,’ answered
Kelderek
, ‘Thanks for your help. Those fellows don’t seem to like Ortelgans.’

‘It’s not a matter of Ortelgans, sir,’ said Ankray reproachfully. ‘No one’s safe in
Zeray
after dark. Now the Baron, he always-‘

Melathys appeared at the inner door, holding a lamp above her head and staring out in silence. Coming close, he saw that she was trembling. He smiled, but she looked up at him unsmilingly, forlorn and pallid as the moon in daylight. On an impulse, and feeling it to be the most natural thing in the world, he put one arm round her shoulder, bent and kissed her cheek. ‘Don’t be angry,’ he said. ‘I’ve learnt my lesson, I promise you: and at least I’ve got something to show for it,’ He sat down by the fire and threw on a log. ‘Bring me a pail, Ankray, and I’ll gut these fish. Hot water too, if you’ve got it. I’m filthy.’ Then, realizing that the girl had still said not a word, he asked her, ‘The Tuginda - how is she?’