Shardik

by Richard Adams

  "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, evidently 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 Santil 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 rather 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 handlines 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 lackluster 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 lawsuit, by money troubles or anxiety about a woman, can nevertheless derive pleasure and actual solace from a game skillfully 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 die 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 and 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 handline 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 neither 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's 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 toward 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 hitherto 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 battlefield 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 faintly against the sky was that of the Baron's house. Making quickly toward it, he tripped o
ver something pliant and fell his length in the mud. At once a door opened nearby 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.

  "Home?" 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 said. "I know you. You're the Ortelgan 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 Ortelgan bastard that mucking well deserved it. I reckon its 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 Ortelgan 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, sufficiently 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 around her shoulder, bent and kissed her cheek. "Don't be angry," he said. "I've learned 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?"

  "Better. I think she's begun to recover."

  Now she smiled, and at once he perceived that her natural anxiety, her alarm at the sound of the scuffle outside, her impulse to anger with him, had been no more than clouds across the sun. "So have you," he thought, looking at her. Her presence was instinct with a new quality at once natural, complementary and enhancing, like that imparted by snow to a mountain peak or a dove to a myrtle tree. Where another might have noticed nothing, to him the change was as plain and entire as that of spring branches misted green with the first appearing leaves. Her face no longer looked drawn. Her bearing and movements, the very cadence of her voice, were smoother, gentler and more assured. Looking at her now, he had no need to call upon his memories of the beautiful priestess of Quiso.

  "She woke this afternoon and we talked together for a time. The fever was lower and she was able to eat a little. She's sleeping again now, more peacefully."

  "It's good news," replied Kelderek. "I was afraid she must have taken some infection--some pestilence. Now I believe it was no more than shock and exhaustion."

  "She's still weak. She'll need rest and quiet for some time; and fresh food she must have--but that, I hope, we can get. Are you a sorcerer, Kelderek, to catch trout in Zeray? They're almost the first I've ever seen. How was it done?"

  "By knowing where to look and how to go about it."

  "It's a foretaste of good luck. Believe that, won't you, for I do. But stay here tomorrow--don't go out again--for Ankray's off to Lak. If he's to get back before nightfall he'll need all day."

  "Lak? Where is Lak?"

  "Lak's the village I told you of, about eight or nine miles to the north. The Baron used to call it his secret cupboard. Glabron once robbed Lak and murdered a man there, so when the Baron had killed him I took care that they should learn of it. He promised them they should never again be troubled from Zeray and later, when he'd got control--or as much control as we ever had--he used to send them a few men at harvest and in the hut-building season--any he felt he could trust. In the end, one or two were actually allowed to settle in Lak. It was part of another scheme of the Baron's for settling men from Zeray throughout the province. Like so many of our schemes, it never got far for lack of material; but at least it achieved something--it gave us a private larder. Bel-ka-Trazet never asked for anything from Lak, but we traded, as I told you, and the elder thought it prudent to send him gifts from time to time. Since he died, though, they must have been waiting on events, for we've had no message, and while I was alone I was afraid to send Ankray so far. Now you're here, he can go and try our luck. I've got a little money I can give him. He's known in Lak, of course, and they might let us have some fresh food for the sake of old times."

  "Wouldn't we be safer there than in Zeray--all four of us?"

  "Why, yes--if they would suffer us. If Ankray gets the chance tomorrow, he's going to tell the chief about the flight of Farrass and Thrild and about the Tuginda and yourself. But Kelderek, you know the minds of village elders--half ox, half fox, as they say. Their old fear of Zeray will have returned; and if we show them that we are in haste to leave it, they will wonder why and fear the more. If we could take refuge in Lak, we might yet find a way out of this trap; but everything depends on showing no haste. Besides, we can't go until the Tuginda has recovered. The most that Ankray will be able to do tomorrow is to see how the land lies. Are your fish ready? Good. I'll cook three of them and put the other two by. We'll feast tonight, for to tell you the truth--" she dropped her voice in a pretense of secrecy and leaned toward him, smiling and speaking behind her hand--"neither Ankray nor the Baron ever had the knack of catching fish!"

  When they had eaten and Ankray, after drinking to the fisherman's skill in the sharp wine, had gone to watch by the Tuginda while he wove a fresh length of line out of thread from an old cloak and a strand of Melathys' hair, Kelderek, sitting close to the girl so that he could keep his voice low, recounted all that had happened since the day in Bekla when Zelda had first told him of his belief that Erketlis could not be defeated. Those things which had all but destroyed him, those things of which he was most ashamed--the elder who had thought him a slave trader, the Streels of Urtah, the breaking of his mind upon the battlefield, Elleroth's mercy, the reason for it and the manner of his leaving Kabin--these he told without concealment, looking into the fire as though alone, but never for a moment losing his sense of the sympathy of this listener, to whom defilement, regret and shame had long been as familiar as they had become to himself. As he spoke of the Tuginda's explanation of what had happened at the Streels and
of the ordained and now inevitable death of Shardik, he felt Melathys' hand laid gently upon his arm. He covered it with his own, and it was as though his longing for her broke in upon and quenched the flow of his story. He fell silent, and at length she said, "And Lord Shardik--where is he now?"

  "No one knows. He crossed the Vrako, but I believe he may be already dead. I have wished myself dead many times, but now--"

  "Why then did you come to Zeray?"

  "Why indeed? For the same reason as any other criminal. To the Yeldashay I'm an outlawed slave trader. I was driven across the Vrako; and once across it, where else can a man go but Zeray? Besides, as you know, I fell in with the Tuginda. Yet there is another reason, or so I believe. I have disgraced and perverted the divine power of Shardik, so that all that now remains to God is his death. That disgrace and death will be required of me, and where should I wait but in Zeray?"

  "Yet you have been speaking of saving our lives by going to Lak?"

  "Yes, and if I can I will. A man on the earth is but an animal and what animal will not try to save its life while there remains a chance?"

  Gently she withdrew her hand. "Now listen to the wisdom of a coward, a murderer's woman, a defiled priestess of Quiso. If you try to save your life you will lose it. Either you can accept the truth of what you have told me and wait humbly and patiently upon the outcome--or else you can run up and down this land, this rats' cage, like any other fugitive, never admitting to what is past and using a little more fraud to gain a little more time, until both run out."

  "The outcome?"

  "An outcome there will surely be. Since I turned and saw the Tuginda standing at the Baron's grave, I have come to understand a great deal--more than I can put into words. But that is why I am here with you and not with Farrass and Thrild. In the sight of God there is only one time and only one story, of which all days on earth and all human events are parts. But that can only be discovered--it cannot be taught."