Shardik

by Richard Adams

  "And I say stand fast!" snapped Gel-Ethlin. "Get back into line, that man!" he shouted to the buffoon who was playing the part of the bear. "Dress the front rank--sword's length between each man and the next!"

  "Stand and bloody shiver," muttered a voice.

  Gel-Ethlin strode to the rear, feeling his wet clothes clammy against his body. The twilight was deepening and he was obliged to look about for some moments before he caught sight of Kreet-Liss. He ran toward him and arrived just as the Deelguy went forward into their attack. The concerted, rhythmic cry of "Bekla Mowt! Bek-la-Mowt!" was taken up along the whole line, but broke off in the center as the Deelguy closed with the enemy. It was plain that the Ortelgans were ready to pay dearly to hold the gap they had made. Three times they repulsed the mercenaries, yelling as they stood astride the bodies of their fallen comrades. Many were brandishing swords and shields taken from the dead of the decimated Tonilda, and each time an enemy was cut down the Ortelgans opposing him would stoop quickly to snatch the foreign arms which he believed must be better than his own--though both, as like as not, had been forged from iron of Gelt.

  Suddenly a fresh Beklan attack fell upon the Ortelgan right, and again the steady, beating cry of "Bek-la Mowt!" rose above the surrounding clamor. Gel-Ethlin, who had been about to order Kreet-Liss to attack once more, was peering to his left to make out what had happened when someone plucked his sleeve. It was Shaltnekan.

  "Those are my boys attacking them now, sir," he said.

  "Against orders!" cried Gel-Ethlin. "What do you mean by it? Get back--"

  "They're going to break in a moment, if I know anything about it, sir," said Shaltnekan. "Surely you won't stop us pursuing them now?"

  "You'll do no such thing!" replied Gel-Ethlin.

  "Sir," said Shaltnekan, "if we let them off the field in any sort of order, what's going to be said back in Bekla? We'll never live it down. They've got to be routed--cut to bits. And now's the time to do it, or they'll be off in the dark."

  The Ortelgans were running back out of the gap as Shaltnekan's attack drove in their right flank. Kreet-Liss and his men followed them, stabbing the enemy's wounded as they advanced. A few minutes later the original Beklan line was restored and Gel-Ethlin, peering, could make out to his left the gap where Shaltnekan's company had left their place. There could be no denying that it had been a fine stroke of initiative: and no denying, either, that there was a good deal of force in the argument that the enemy's escape, after the mauling they had suffered, would probably be ill received in Bekla. To destroy them, on the other hand, would establish his reputation and silence any possible criticism on the part of Santil-ke-Erketlis.

  The Beklan officers, obedient to orders, had halted their men on the original defensive line and the Ortelgans were streaming down the slope unpursued, several supporting their wounded or carrying looted Beklan equipment. As Gel-Ethlin watched them, a voice spoke from the ground at his feet. He looked down. It was the tenant lad from Kapparah's farm near Ikat. He had raised himself on one elbow and was trying to stanch with his cloak a great gash in his neck and shoulder.

  "Go on, sir, go on!" gasped the boy. "Finish them off! I'll take a letter down to Ikat tomorrow, won't I, just like old times? God bless the lady, she'll give me a whole sackful of gold!"

  He pitched forward on his face and two of Shaltnekan's men dragged him back behind the line. Gel-Ethlin, his mind made up, turned to the trumpeter.

  "Well, Wolf," he said, addressing the man by his nickname, "no good you standing there doing nothing! Break ranks--general pursuit. And blow hard, so that everyone can hear it!"

  The trumpet had hardly sounded before the various Beklan companies began racing down the slopes, those on the wings scattering widely and trying to turn inward toward the road. Every man hoped to beat his comrades to the plunder--such as it might be. This was what they had marched through the wind for, withstood the attacks for, shivered obediently for in the rain. True enough, there would be little or nothing to take from these barbarians except their fleas, but a couple of slaves would fetch a good price in Bekla and there was always the sporting chance of a baron with gold ornaments, or even a woman among the baggage behind.

  Gel-Ethlin ran too, among the foremost, his pennant bearer on one side of him and Shaltnekan on the other. As they reached the foot of the slope and came close to the edge of the woods, he could see, among the trees, the Ortelgans once more forming a line to meet them. Evidently they meant to go down fighting. For the first time he drew his sword. He might as well strike a blow or two on his own account before the business was done.

  From close at hand, somewhere inside the woods, there came a loud grinding, rumbling sound which grew nearer and changed to a smashing and splintering of wood and a clashing of iron. Immediately after, there sounded above all the tumult a savage roaring, like that of some huge beast in pain. Then the boughs burst apart in front of him and Gel-Ethlin stood rigid with horror, bereft of every feeling but panic fear. The ordinary course of things seen and comprehended; the senses, that fivefold frame of the world; the unthinking human certainty of what can and cannot reasonably happen, upon which all rational living is based--these dissolved in an instant. If a rag-draped skeleton had come stalking out of the trees on bare, bony feet, invisible to all but himself, and made toward him with wagging head and grinning jaws, he could not have been more stupefied, more deeply plunged into terror and mental chaos. Before him, no more than a few yards away, there stood, more than twice as tall as a man, a beast which could have no place in the mortal world. Most like a bear it looked, but a bear created in hell to torment the damned by its mere presence. The ears were flattened like a cat's in rage, the eyes glimmered redly in the failing light and streaked, ochreous foam came frothing from between teeth like Deelguy knives. Over one shoulder--and this drove him almost mad with fear, for it proved that this was no earthly creature--it carried a great, pointed stake, dripping with blood. Blood, too, covered the claws curving from the one paw raised above its head as though in some horrible greeting of death. Its eyes--the eyes of a mad creature, inhabiting a world of cruelty and pain--looked down upon Gel-Ethlin with a kind of dark intelligence all too sufficient for its single purpose. Meeting that gaze, he let his sword drop from his hand; and as he did so the beast struck him with a blow that crushed his skull and drove his head down through his shoulders.

  A moment later Shaltnekan fell across his body, his chest broken in like a smashed drum. Kreet-Liss, stumbling on the wet slope, made one thrust with his sword before his neck was ripped open in a fountain of blood. And this sword thrust, wounding it, drove the creature to such a frenzy of murderous destruction that every man ran shrieking as it ploughed its way up the crowded slope, seeking whom to tear and destroy. The men on the wings, halted and crying out to learn what had happened, felt their bowels loosen at the news that the bear-god, more dreadful than any imagined creature from the nether wastes of fever and nightmare, had indeed appeared and had recognized and killed of intent the general and two commanders.

  From the wavering Ortelgan line there rose a triumphant shout. Kelderek, limping and staggering with exhaustion, was the first man to emerge from the trees, shouting "Shardik! Shardik the Power of God!" Then, with yells of "Shardik! Shardik!" which were the last sound in the ears of Ta-Kominion, the Ortelgans poured up the slope, hacking and thrusting anew through the broken Beklan center. A few minutes afterward, Kelderek, Baltis and a score of others reached the mouth of the gorge beyond the ridge and, heedless of their isolation, faced about to hold it against any who might try to force an escape. Of Shardik, vanished into the falling darkness, there remained neither sight nor sound.

  Within half an hour, when night put an end to the bloodshed, all Beklan resistance had been quenched. The Ortelgans, following the terrible example which had redeemed them from defeat, showed no mercy, killing their enemies and stripping their bodies of weapons, shields and armor, until they were as well-found a force as had ever swept
down upon the Beklan plain. A few of Gel-Ethlin's men succeeded in escaping toward Gelt. None found his way past Kelderek to regain the plain by the road up which they had marched that afternoon.

  With the clouded, rainy moon rose the white smoke of fires coaxed into life by the victors to cook the plundered rations of the enemy. But before midnight the army, urged forward by Zelda and Kelderek so fervently that they stayed not even to bury the dead, were limping on toward Bekla, outstripping all news of their victory and of the total destruction of Gel-Ethlin's force.

  Two days later, reduced to two-thirds of their strength by fatigue and the privations of their forced march, the Ortelgans, advancing by the paved road across the plain, appeared before the walls of Bekla; smashed in the carved and gilded Tamarrik Gate--that unique masterpiece created by the craftsman Fleitil a century before--after storming it for four hours with an improvised ram at a cost of over five hundred men; overcame the garrison and the citizens, despite the courageous leadership of the sick Santil-ke-Erketlis; sacked and occupied the city and began at once to strengthen the fortifications against the risk of counterattack as soon as the rains should end.

  Thus, in what must surely have been one of the most extraordinary and unpredictable campaigns ever fought, fell Bekla, the capital of an empire of subject provinces 20,000 square miles in extent. Of those provinces, the farthest from the city seceded and became enemies to its new rulers. The nearer, rather than face the rapine and bloodshed of resistance, put themselves under the protection of the Ortelgans, of their generals Zelda and Ged-la-Dan and their mysterious priest-king Kelderek, styled Crendrik--the Eye of God.

  BOOK III

  Bekla

  24 Elleroth

  BEKLA, CITY OF MYTH AND CONJECTURE, hidden in time as Tiahuanaco in the Andes fastness, as Petra in the hills of Edom, as Atlantis beneath the waves! Bekla of enigma and secrets, more deeply enfolded in its religious mystery than Eleusis of the reaped corn, than the stone giants of the Pacific or the Kerait lands of Prester John. Its gray, broken walls--across whose parapets only the clouds come marching, in whose hollows the wind sounds and ceases like the trumpeter of Krakow or Memnon's statue on the sands--the stars reflected in its waters, the flowers scenting its gardens, are become like words heard in a dream that cannot be recalled. Its very history lies buried, unresolved--coins, beads and gaming boards, street below street, shards below shards, hearth beneath hearth, ash under ash. The earth has been dug away from Troy and Mycenae, the jungle cut from about Zimbabwe; and caged in maps and clocks are the terrible leagues about Urumchi and Ulan Bator. But who shall disperse the moon-dim darkness that covers Bekla, or draw it up to view from depths more lonely and remote than those where bassogigas and ethusa swim in black silence? Only sometimes through tales may it be guessed at, those tokens riddling as the carved woods from the Americas floating centuries ago to the shores of Portugal and Spain; or in dreams, perhaps, it may be glimpsed--from the decks of that unchanging navy of gods and images that sails by night, carrying its passengers still in no bottoms else than those which bore, in their little time, Pilate's wife, Joseph of Canaan and the wise Penelope of Ithaca with her twenty geese. Bekla the incomparable, the lily of the plain, the garden of sculptured and dancing stone, appears from its mist and dusk, faint as the tracks of Shardik himself in forests long consumed.

  Six miles around were the walls, rising on the south to encircle the summit of Mount Crandor, with its citadel crowning the sheer face of the stone quarries below. A breakneck flight of steps led up that face, disappearing, at a height of eighty feet, into the mouth of a tunnel which ran upward through the rock to emerge into the twilight of the huge granary cellar. The only other entry to the citadel was the so-called Red Gate in the south wall, a low arch through which a chalybeate brook flowed from its source within to the chain of falls--named the White Girls--that carried it down Crandor's gradual southern slope. Under the Red Gate, men long ago had worked to widen and deepen the bed of the brook, but had left standing, two feet beneath the surface of the water, a narrow, twisting causeway of the living rock. Those who had learned this path's subaqueous windings could wade safely through the deep pool and then--if permitted--enter the citadel by the stairway known as the Vent.

  It was not Mount Crandor, however, which drew the gaze of the newcomer to Bekla, but the ridge of the Leopard Hill below, with its terraces of vines, flowers and citrous tendriona. On the crest, above these surrounding gardens, stood the Palace of the Barons, the range of its towers reflecting light from their balconies of polished, rose-colored marble. Twenty round towers there were in all, eight by the long sides of the palace and four by the short, each tapering, circular wall so smooth and regular that in sunlight not one stone's lower edge cast a shadow upon its fellow below, and the only blackness was that within the window openings, rounded and slitted like keyholes, which lit the spiral stairways. High up, as high as tall trees, the circular balconies projected like the capitals of columns, their ambulatories wide enough for two men to walk side by side. The marble balustrades were identical in height and shape, yet each was decorated differently, carved on each side in low relief with leopards, lilies, birds or fish, so that a lord might say to his friend, "I will drink with you tonight on the Bramba tower," or a lover to his mistress, "Let us meet this evening on the Trepsis tower and watch the sun set before we go to supper." Above these marvelous crow's nests the towers culminated in slender, painted spires--red, blue and green--latticed and containing gong-toned copper bells. When these were rung--four bells to each note of the scale--the wavering metallic sounds mingled with their own echoes from the precipices of Crandor and vibrated over the roofs below until the citizens, thus summoned to rejoice at festival, holiday or royal welcome, laughed to feel their ears confounded in sport as the eye is confounded by mirrors face to face.

  The palace itself stood within its towers and separate by several yards from their bases. Yet--wonderful to see--at the height of the roof, that part of the wall that stood behind each tower sloped outward, supported on massive corbels, to embrace it and project a little beyond, so that the towers themselves, with their pointed spires, looked like great lances set upright at regular intervals to pierce the walls and support the roof as a canopy is supported at the periphery. The voluted parapets were carved in relief with the round leaves and flame-shaped flower buds of lilies and lotus; and to these the craftsmen had added, here and there as pleased them, the likenesses of insects, of trailing weeds and drops of water, all many times larger than the life. The hard light of noon stressed little of these fancies, accentuating rather the single, shadowed mass of the north front, grave and severe as a judge presiding above the busy streets. But at evening, when the heat of the day broke and the hard shadows fled away, the red, slanting light would soften the outline of walls and towers and emphasize instead their marvelous decoration, so that at this hour the palace suggested rather some beautiful, pleasure-loving woman, adorned with jewels and flowers, ready for a joyous meeting or homecoming beyond compare. And by the first light of day, before the gongs of the city's two water clocks clashed one after the other for sunrise, it had changed yet again and become, in the misty stillness, like a pool of water lilies half-opened among the dragonflies and sipping, splashing swallows.

  Some way from the foot of the Leopard Hill was the newly excavated Rock Pit, immediately above which stood the House of the King, a gaunt square of rooms and corridors surrounding a hall--once a barracks for soldiers, but now reserved for another use and another occupant. Close by, grouped about the north side of the cypress gardens and the lake called the Barb, were stone buildings resembling those in Quiso, but larger and more numerous. Some of these were used as dwellings by the Ortelgan leaders, while others were set aside for hostages or for delegations from the various provincial peoples, whose comings and goings, with embassies to the king or petitions to lay before the generals, were incessant in this empire at war on a debatable frontier. Beyond the cypress gardens a walle
d road led to the Peacock Gate, the only way through the fortified rampart dividing the upper from the lower city.

  BEKLA

  at the time of the Ortelgan conquest

  The lower city--the city itself, its paved streets and dusty alleys, its odors and clamor by day, its moonlight and jasmine by night, its cripples and beggars, its animals, its merchandise, its traces everywhere of war and pillage, doors hacked and walls blackened with fire--does the city too return out of the dark? Here ran the street of the money changers and beyond, on either side of a narrow avenue of ilex trees, stood the houses of the jewel merchants--high, barred windows and a couple of strong fellows at the gate to inquire a stranger's business. The torpid flies about the open sweet-stalls, the smells of leather and dung and spices and sweat and herbs, the fruit market's banks of gaudy panniers, the rostra, barracoons and blocks of the slave market with its handsome children, its cozening foreigners and outlandish tongues, the shoemakers sitting absorbed at their tapping and stitching in the midst of the hubbub, the clinking streetwalkers strolling nowhere in particular with their stylized gait and sidelong glances, the colored flowers in the water, the shouting across a street of the news of a sale or an offer, in cryptic words revealing nothing except to their intended hearer; the quarrels, the lies, the promises, the thieves, the long-drawn crying of wares on notes that the years have turned into songs, the streets of the stonemasons, carpenters, weavers, of the astrologers, doctors and fortunetellers. The scuttling lizards, the rats and dogs, the fowls in coops and the pretty birds in cages. The cattle market had been burned to the ground in the fighting and on one of the sagging, open doors of the temple of Cran someone had daubed the mask of a bear--two eyes and a snarling muzzle, set between round ears. The Tamarrik Gate, that wonder second only to the Palace, was gone forever--gone the concentric filigree spheres, the sundial with its phallic gnomon and nympholeptic spiral of hours, the incredible faces peering through the green leaves of the sycamore, the great ferns and the blue-tongued lichens, the wind harp and the silver drum that beat of itself when the sacred doves alighted at evening to be fed. The fragments of Fleitil's masterpiece, constructed in an age when none conceived it possible that war could approach Bekla, had been gleaned from the rubble secretly and with bitter tears, during the night before Ged-la-Dan and his men supervised the building, by forced labor, of a new wall to close the gap. The two remaining gates, the Blue Gate and the Gate of Lilies, were very strong and entirely suited to Bekla's present and more dangerous role of a city that scarcely knew friend from foe.