Shardik (87 page)

Again the dark bulk moved against the sky, and now a low growl showed that it was close - closer than it had seemed - only a few strides away. Kelderek, starting back against the wall of the slave-traders’ shelter, covered his face with his hands, whimpering with dread.

As he did so a terrible shriek came from within. Another followed, and another; curses, blows, the thudding of some heavy object knocked over, convulsive struggling and finally a long, choking moan. The cloak fastened across the opening was ripped aside and
the firelight gleamed out, showing for a moment two red, glowing eyes in the darkness and a great, black shape that turned and shambled away, disappearing between the ruined walls. Then silence returned, broken only by a dragging, jerking sound that finally ceased, and the laboured breathing of one who finished his work by fastening once more the cloak across the doorway. The firelight was shut in and Kelderek, conscious of nothing save that Shardik was gone and he himself alive, crept into the first crevice he found and lay there, not knowing whether he slept or woke.

54
The
Cloven
Rock

Beneath the first light creeping into the sky, the river shone a dull, turbid grey, the surface smooth, its flow imperceptible from that height at which the migrant geese flew on their northward journey. South of Linsho Gap the forest lay motionless, clothing like a shaggy pelt the body of the earth from which it grew. As yet no darting of birds disturbed the stillness. No breeze moved, no reflection of light glittered from the trees. The wings of the great butterflies were folded close.

Here and there the forest pelt was matted brown with clusters of old, dead creeper that had twined and climbed, before dying, through even the topmost tiers; here and there, as though eaten away and mangy, it lay open, showing the dirty skin beneath, calloused with rocks, suppurating with bog, scurfy with thorn and scrub, in its illness supporting, like a dying ape full of maggots, an ugly, wriggling life, futile in its involuntary course towards death. In one such open place the grey light revealed a scabby crust, the remains of older, deeper wounds: tumbled stones, broken walls, boulders encircling a pool at the foot of a rock bare as a protruding bone. This crust, too, was crawling: with stumbling, filthy creatures - human children -creeping out of the scabs like bugs from wood, moving aimlessly here and there, disgusting in their torpor and misery: inviting cruelty, so plainly were they created helpless in order that they might be the more easily destroyed. Soon the huge creature upon whose body they crawled and fed would feel them as an irritation, scratch itself and crush out their meaningless fives.

The body of Lalloc lay prone outside the doorway from which he had staggered
with
Genshed’s knife in his b
ack. The feet had tripped upon the step and the knees, buckling, had been pressed into the soft earth by the force of the corpulent body’s fall. The arms were stretched forward, one along the ground, palm down and fingers digging into the soil; the other sticking up like a swimmer’s, but stiffened in death. The head was twisted sideways and the mouth open. Two stabs had almost cut away the left cheek, which hung down below
the
chin in a ragged flap, exposing the clenched and splintered teeth. The clothes were so much drenched in blood, old and new, that they retained scarcely any other colour.

Genshed was kneeling beside the pool, rinsing his arms in the water and cleaning under his nails with the point of his knife. His pack lay open on the ground behind him and from it he h
ad taken two or three
ankle-chains. These he retained, but various
other
pieces of gear he threw to one side, evid
ently
meaning to abandon them. Having closed the lightened pack and slung it on his back, he strung his bow, stuck five or six arrows into his belt and then picked up the still-smouldering fire-pot, which he replenished by poking in moss and green twigs.

His movements were silent and from time to time he paused uneasily, listening, in the half-light, to the sounds of the awakening forest. When at length he heard a faint noise of footsteps in
the
undergrowth beyond the pool he at once moved quickly aside and, with an arrow on the string, was already waiting in concealment when
Shouter
stepped out from among the trees.

Genshed lowered his bow and walked across to where the boy stood staring at the dead body on the ground.
Shouter
turned, started and backed away, one hand raised to his mouth.

‘Tried to have a walk in the night,
Shouter
, did your’ said Genshed, almost whispering. ‘See any soldiers, d
id you? See
any soldiers,
Shouter
?’

It was plain that
Shouter
was half stupefied, either with fear, hunger, lack of sleep, or all three. Though trying to reply, for some moments he uttered nothing intelligible. At length he said, ‘All right, then; but I come back, didn’t I? I want to mucking live, don’t I?’

‘So that’s why you came back?’ said Genshed, looking at him with a kind of pausing curiosity.

“Course I come back,’ cried
Shouter
. ‘In the forest - out there —’ He stopped, pointing. ‘That’s no living creature,’ he burst out. ‘It’s come for you - it’s been sent for you -‘ He pitched forward to his knees. ‘I
t wasn’t me that killed Kevenant.
You
did that.’ He broke off, looking quickly back over his shoulder. ‘That thing - that creature - if it is a creature and not a devil - it was bigger than
that
rock, I tell you. It shook the mucking ground walking. I nearly come against it in the dark. God, I ran!’

‘So that’s why you came back?’ repeated Genshed, after a pause.

Shouter nodded. Then, getting slowly to his feet, he looked ro
und at the body and said indiffe
r
ently
, ‘You killed
him,
then?’

‘No good to us, was he?’ said Genshed. ‘Get caught in
his
company, that’d finish everything, that would. I got his money, though. Come on, get them up, get them moving.’

‘You’re taking
them?
‘ asked Shouter, surprised. ‘For God’s sake, why don’t we just run, wherever it is ?’

‘Get them up,’ repeated Genshed. ‘Get a chain on the lot of them, wrist to wrist, and keep them quiet while you’re doing it.’

His domination filled the place like flood-water, uprooting or drowning all other wills. Those children who, dizzy with hunger and privation, had spent
the
night in the ruins and now, unable to conceive of flight or hiding, obeyed Shouter as they had obeyed him for so long, felt pouring from Genshed, as
they
tottered into the open, a yet more evil power than he had yet displayed. Now, in the collapse of his fortunes, his cruelty released from the restraints formerly imposed by the hope of gain, he walked among them with an eager, bright-eyed excitement from which they shrank horrified.
Kelderek
, crawling from the crevice where he had lain, felt this same power draw him first to his feet and then,
with
faltering steps, to the edge of the pool, where Genshed stood awaiting him. Knowing
Genshed
‘s will, he stood silent while Shouter chained him, shackling him by the wrist to a lank-haired boy whose eyes went continually to and fro. This boy, in turn, was chained to another, and so on until all had been fastened together.
Kelderek
wondered neither why
Shouter
had returned nor how Lalloc had come to his end. Such things, he realized now, had no need of explanation. They and all else in the world - hunger, illness, misery and pain - came to pass by the will of Genshed.

Shouter
looked up from fastening the last shackle, nodded and stepped back. Genshed, fingering the point of his knife, stood smiling in the broadening daylight.

‘Well,’ said
Shouter
at length, ‘aren’t we getting out now?*

‘Fetch Radu,’ answered Genshed, pointing.

About them the sounds of the forest were increasing, cries of birds and humming of insects. One of the children swayed on his feet, clutched at the next and then fell, dragging two others with him. Genshed ignored them and the children remained on the ground.

Radu was standing beside Kelderek. Glancing sideways, Kelderek could sec expressed in his whole posture the dread of which he had spoken on the previous day. His shoulders were bowed, his hands clenched at his sides and his lips pressed ti
ghtly
together.

‘ Good morning, Radu,’ said Genshed courteously.

The common hangman, to w
hom has been delivered some once-fine
gentle
man, now pallid with fear, broken and condemned, cannot reasonably be expected to exclude from his work all pers
onal relish and natural inclinati
on for sport. Into his hands has fallen a rarity, a helpless but still-sentient specimen of those whom he serves, envies, fears, flatters and cheats when he can. The occasion is an exhilarating one, and to do it justice calls for both deliberation and mockery, including, of course, a
little
sardonic mimicry of the affected manners of
the
gentry.

‘Please go
with
Shouter, Radu,’ said Genshed. ‘Oblige me by putting that body out of sight.’

‘Mucking hell, how much longer -‘ cried Shouter,- met Genshed’s eye and broke off.
Kelderek
, turning his head by Genshed’s unspoken permission, watched the two boys struggling to lift the gross, blood-soaked corpse and half-carry, half-drag it back across the threshold over which Lalloc had fallen before he died. As they returned, Genshed stepped forward and took Radu g
ently
by the shoulders. ‘Now, Radu,’ he said, with a kind of serene joy, ‘go and bring Shara here. Be quick, now!’

Radu stared back from between his hands.

‘She can’t be moved! She’s ill! She may be dying!’ He paused a moment, and then cried, ‘You know that!’

‘Quiet, now,’ said Genshed, ‘quiet. Go and get her, Radu.’

In the clouded stupor of Kelderek’s mind there were no sounds of morning, no stone hovels, no surrounding forest A ruined, desolate country lay under deluge. The last light was failing, the rain falling into the brown, all-obliterating water; and as he gazed across that hopeless landscape the
little
island that was Radu crumbled and vanished under lapping, yellow foam.

‘Go and fetch her, Radu,’ repeated Genshed, very
quietly
.

Kelderek heard the sound of Shara’s weeping before he caught sight of Radu bringing her in his arms. She was struggling and the boy could scarcely carry her. His voice, as he tried to soothe and comfort her, was barely audible above her half-delirious, frightened crying.

‘Radu, Radu, don’t let me alone, Radu,
I don’t want to go to Leg-by-Le
e!’

‘Hush, dear, hush,’ said Radu, clutching at her clumsily as he tried to hold her still.’ We’re going home. I promised you, remember?’ ‘Hurts,’ wept the child. ‘Go away, Radu, it hurts.’

She stared at Genshed without recognition, her own filth covering her as debris covers the streets of a fallen town. Dirty saliva ran down her chin and she picked weakly at the flaking crust round her nostrils. Suddenly she cried out again, evid
ently
in pain, and passed a thin stream of urine, cloudy and white as milk, over the boy’s arms.

‘Come along; give her to me, Radu,’ said Genshed, holding out his hands.

Looking up, Kelderek saw his eyes, bright and voracious as a giant eel’s, staring on either side of his open mouth.

‘She makes too much noise,’ whispered Genshed, licking his lips. ‘Give her to me, Radu.’

In the moment that Kelderek tried to step forward, he realized that Radu had refused to obey Genshed. He felt the sharp jerk of the chain at his wrist and heard the cursing of the boy to whom he was fastened. Simultaneously Radu turned and, with Shara’s head rolling limply on his shoulder, began to stumble away.

‘No, no, Radu,’ said Genshed, in the same quiet tone. ‘Come back here.’

Radu ignored him, moving slowly on, his head bowed over his burden.

With a sudden snarl, Genshed drew his knife and threw it at the boy. It missed, and he rushed upon him, snatched the child out of his arms and struck him to the ground. For a moment he stood motionless, holding Shara before him in his two hands. Then he sank his teeth in her arm and, before she could shriek, flung her into the pool. Shouter, running forward, was pushed aside as Genshed leapt after her into the water.