Shardik

by Richard Adams

  Turning aside, he tore a handful of leaves from a bush and began to eat them. After a moment Kelderek copied him. The leaves were sour and fibrous and he chewed them voraciously.

  "Come on! Come on!" bawled Shouter, slapping at the surface of the shallows with his stick. "Get on your mucking feet! Linsho--that's where the grub is, not here!"

  Radu stood up, swayed a moment and stumbled against Kelderek.

  "It's the hunger," he said. "It'll pass off in a moment." He called to Shara, who came running, with a long strip of colored weed wound like a torque around one thin arm. "If there's one thing I've learned, it's that hunger's a form of torture. If there's more food for overseers than slaves when we get to Linsho, I might become an overseer yet. Cruelty and evil--they're not very far down in anyone. It's only a matter of digging them up, you know."

  51 The Gap of Linsho

  LATER, IN THE AFTERNOON, they came to a wide bend in the river and Genshed once more struck inland to cut across the peninsula. The humid heat of the forest became a torment. The children, some of whom lacked energy even to brush the flies from their faces, were ordered to come close together and each to grasp his neighbor's shoulder, so that they inched onward like some ghastly pack of purblind cripples, many keeping closed their insect-blackened eyes. The boy in front of Kelderek kept up a low, rhythmic sobbing--" Ah-hoo! Ah-hoo!"--until at length Bled flew at him, uttering a stream of curses and jabbing at his legs with the point of his stick. The boy fell, bleeding, and Genshed was forced to call a halt while he stanched his wounds. This done, he sat down with his back against a tree, whistling through his teeth and rummaging in the depths of his pack.

  On an impulse, Kelderek went up to him.

  "Can you tell me why you've taken me prisoner and how much you hope to get out of it? I can promise you a large sum to release me--more than you'd get for selling me as a slave."

  Genshed did not look up and made no reply. Kelderek bent down, stooping over the slave trader's sandy hair and speaking more urgently.

  "You can believe what I say. I'm offering you more than you could get for me in any other way. I'm not what I seem. Tell me how much you want, to let me go."

  Genshed closed his pack and rose slowly to his feet, wiping his sweating hands along his thighs. Some of the children nearby looked up, waiting apprehensively for the snap of his fingers. He did not look at Kelderek, who had the odd impression that he heard and did not hear him, as a man might ignore a dog's barking while deep in thoughts of his own affairs.

  "You can believe me," persisted Kelderek. "At Ortelga, which I suppose you mean to pass, I--"

  Suddenly, with the speed of a fish taking its prey, Genshed's hand shot upward and gripped the pierced lobe of Kelderek's ear between finger and thumb. As his thumbnail dug into the wound Kelderek shrieked and tried to clutch his wrist. Before he could do so, the slave dealer drove his knee into his groin, at the same time releasing his ear to allow him to double up and fall to the ground. Then, stooping, he picked up his pack, put his arms through the straps and hoisted it behind his shoulders.

  Two or three of the children tittered uncertainly. One threw a stick at Kelderek. Genshed, still with an air of abstraction, snapped his fingers and, as the children began pulling one another up and Shouter set up his usual bawling, walked away to the head of the line and nodded for the first boy to lay hold of his belt.

  Kelderek opened his eyes to find Shara looking down at him.

  "He hurt you, didn't he?" she said, speaking in a kind of Yeldashay patois.

  He nodded and climbed heavily to his feet.

  "He hurts us all," she said. "One day he's going away. Radu told me."

  Pain and hunger swirled in him as stirred mud clouds a pool.

  "Radu told me," she repeated. "Here's a red stone, look, and I've got a blue one, kind of a blue one. Are you hungry? You find caterpillars, can you? Radu finds caterpillars."

  Shouter came up, took hold of Kelderek's hand and put it on Radu's shoulder in front of him.

  An hour later they regained the shore and halted for the night. Kelderek found that he could form little idea of how far they might have gone during the day. Ten miles at the most, he supposed. Tomorrow Genshed meant to pass the Gap of Linsho. Would there be food, and would they rest? Surely Genshed could see that they must rest. Hunger closed down upon his mind as rain blots out the view across a plain. His thoughts, sliding like wet fingers, could compass nothing. Would there be food at Linsho? Would there, for a time, be no more shuffling, no more stooping to free the chain? Genshed might refrain from hurting him at Linsho, the pain in his finger would grow less. These were things to hope for--but he must try to look beyond these--consider--must consider what was best to be done--

  "What are you thinking?" asked Radu.

  Kelderek tried to laugh, and tapped his head.

  "Where I was born, they used to say, 'You can tap on the wood, but will the insects run out?'"

  "Where was that?"

  He hesitated. "Ortelga. But it doesn't matter now."

  After a pause, Radu said, "If ever you get back there--"

  "All the way, underground," said Kelderek.

  "You know what we mean when we say that?"

  Shara came running toward them along the bank. She took Radu's hand, chattering faster than Kelderek could understand and pointing in the direction she had come from. A little way off, a thick tangle of creepers, covered with gaudy, trumpetlike flowers, hung like a curtain between the shore and the forest. Looking where Shara pointed, they saw that the whole mass was tremulous, shaking slightly but rapidly, vibrant with some strange, unexplained energy of its own. There was no bird or beast to be seen, yet along an expanse as broad as a hut wall the leaves and blooms quivered spasmodically and the long tendrils undulated with a kind of light, quick violence. The little girl, frightened yet fascinated, stared from behind Radu's shoulder. One or two of the other children gathered about them, also gazing curiously. Radu himself was plainly uncertain whether some strange creature might not be about to appear.

  Kelderek picked the little girl up in his arms.

  "There's nothing to be afraid of," he said. "I'll show you, if you like. It's only a hunting mantis--several, probably."

  Radu followed them along the bank. At close quarters the flowers of the creeper gave off a heavy fragrance and great moths, their dark blue wings broad as the palm of a man's hand, were coming and going in the dusky air. High up, beneath an open bloom, one of these was struggling in the grip of a mantis crouched for prey among the flowers. They could see the long, crural shape of the insect half-hidden in the leaves, its front legs clutching the moth, which it had evidently seized as it hovered at the bloom. Its head turned this way and that with an eerie suggestion of intelligence as it followed the frenzied tugging of its victim, so violent that both the mantis and the surrounding creeper to which it was clinging were shaken in a rhythm light and rapid as the beating of the wings themselves. As often as the moth weakened, the mantis would pull it toward its jaws and again the struggle would break out. As Kelderek and Shara watched, a second moth was caught beneath a bloom some yards away, but after a few seconds tore itself clear, the mantis, as its hold was broken, being jerked forward among the leaves below its perch. Meanwhile the first moth faltered, its beautiful wings ceased at last to beat and in an instant the mantis had pulled it in and begun to devour it. The severed wings, first one and then the other, fluttered to the ground.

  "Come back out of there, damn you!" cried Shouter, striding toward them along the bank. "What the hell d'you think you're doing?"

  "Don't worry," answered Radu, as they returned and joined the other children already crowding around Shouter for their handfuls of food. "We'd hardly get far, you know."

  Darkness fell and the children, lying down for the night, were once more chained through the ears. Kelderek, separated from Radu as before, found himself at the inner end of a chain, on one side of him Shouter himself and on the other the child
who had been savaged by Bled during the afternoon. In the dark the latter resumed his steady, monotonous sobbing, but Shouter, if he heard, presumably thought that no entertainment could be derived from trying to stop him. After a time Kelderek stretched out his hand to the boy, but he only shrank away and, after a few moments' silence, began to sob more loudly. Still Shouter said nothing and Kelderek, afraid of what he might do and too much exhausted and dispirited to persevere with his clumsy attempts at comfort, let his pity and the other fragments of his thoughts dissolve into sleep while the mosquitoes, unhindered, fastened on his limbs.

  The old woman of Gelt came hobbling slowly up the shore, her rags speckled in the half-moon's light, her feet noiseless on the stones. Kelderek watched her approach, puzzled at first but then, recognizing her, acquiescent in the knowledge that she was the creature of a dream. Gently, she drew the chain from his ear and he even seemed to feel the pain as the links passed one by one through the inflamed, tender lobe. Then she remained kneeling above him, looking down and mumbling with her sunken mouth.

  "Think no one sees, they think no one sees," she whispered. "But God sees."

  "What is it, grandmother?" asked Kelderek. "What happened?"

  She was carrying the dead child in her arms, as she had carried it years before, but now it was closely wrapped, muffled from head to foot. It was nothing but a shape under her cloak.

  "I'm looking for the governor-man from Bekla," she said. "I'm going to tell him--only it's a long time now--"

  "You can tell me," he said. "I'm the governor-man from Bekla and all this misery is my doing, all of it."

  "Ah," she said. "Ah. Bless you, sir, bless you. Look here, sir, yes, at that rate you'll want to."

  She laid her burden on the ground. The wrappings were fastened at the head with the chain from his ear, but this she unwound, coiling it away and drawing apart the covering round the face.

  The eyes were closed, the cheeks lusterless and waxen; but the dead child lying on the stones was Melathys. Her lips were a little apart, but nothing stirred the leaf which the old woman held to them. Weeping, he looked up, and saw under her ragged hood that she was Rantzay.

  "She's not dead, Rantzay!" he cried. "Wake her, Rantzay, you must wake her!"

  Rantzay made no reply, and as her lean fingers grasped and shook his shoulder he understood that she too was dead. He writhed away from her, filled with a dreadful sense of loss and desolation.

  "Wake! Come on, wake!"

  It was Shouter's face above his own, whispering urgently, fetid breath stinking, itching of insect bites, stones sharp under the spine and the faint light of day stealing into the sky beyond the Telthearna. Whimpering of the children in sleep and clicking of chains against the stones.

  "It's me, you mucking idiot. Don't make a noise. I've pulled the chain out your ear. If you don't want to go to Terekenalt, then come on, for God's sake!"

  Kelderek got up. His skin felt a single sheet of irritant bites and the river swam before his eyes. Still half in his dream, he looked around for the dead body in the shallows, but it was gone. He took a step forward, slipped and fell on the stones. Someone else, neither Rantzay nor Shouter, was speaking.

  "What were you doing, Shouter, eh?"

  "Nothing," answered Shouter.

  "Took his chain out, have you? Where were you going?"

  "He wanted to shit, didn't he? Think I'm going to let him shit up against me?"

  Genshed made no reply, but drew his knife and began pressing the point against the ball first of one finger and then of another. After a few moments he opened his clothes and urinated over Shouter, the boy standing still as a post while he did so.

  "Remember Kevenant, do you?" murmured Genshed.

  "Kevenant?" said Shouter, his voice cracking with incipient hysteria. "What's Kevenant got to do with it? Who's talking about Kevenant?"

  "Remember what he looked like, do you, when we were finished with him?"

  Shouter made no answer, but as Genshed took the lobe of his ear between one finger and thumb he was seized with an uncontrollable trembling.

  "See, you're just a silly little boy, Shouter, aren't you?" said Genshed, twisting slowly, so that Shouter sank to his knees on the stones. "Just a silly little boy, aren't you?"

  "Yes," whispered Shouter.

  The point of the knife brushed along his closed eyelid and he tried to draw back his head, but was stopped by the twisting of his ear.

  "See all right, Shouter, can you?"

  "Yes."

  "Sure you can see all right?"

  "Yes! Yes!"

  "See what I mean, can you?"

  "Yes!"

  "Only I get everywhere, don't I, Shouter? If you were over there, I'd be there too, wouldn't I?"

  "Yes."

  "Do your work all right, Shouter, can you?"

  "Yes, I can! Yes, I can!"

  "Funny, I thought perhaps you couldn't. Like Kevenant."

  "No, I can! I can! I treat 'em worse than Bled does. They're all afraid of me!"

  "Keep still, Shouter. I'm going to do you a favor. I'm just going to clean under your nails with the point of my knife. Only I wouldn't want my hand to slip."

  The sweat ran down Shouter's face, over his upper lip, over his lower lip bitten between his teeth, over his slobbered chin. When at last Genshed released him and walked away, sheathing the knife at his belt, he pitched forward into the shallows, but he was up again in a moment. In silence he washed himself, threaded the chain back through Kelderek's ear, fastened it to his belt and lay down.

  Half an hour later Genshed himself distributed the last of the food, crumbs and fragments shaken from the bottom of the pack.

  "The next lot's in Linsho, understand?" said Shouter to Radu. "You see to it that they all understand that. Either we get to mucking Linsho today or we start eating each other."

  Kelderek was combing Shara's hair between his fingers and searching her head for lice. Although he had eaten what he had been given, he now felt so faint and tortured with hunger that he could no longer collect his wits. The figure of Melathys lying dead seemed to hover continually in the tail of his eye, and as often as it appeared he turned his head quickly, fumbling and clutching with his hands, until Shara grew impatient and wandered away up the shore.

  "Someone stole her colored stones after we were unchained this morning," said Radu.

  Kelderek did not answer, having suddenly made the important discovery of the futility of wasting energy in speech. Speech, he now realized, involved so much unprofitable effort--thinking of words, moving lips to utter them, listening to a reply and grasping what it meant--that it was an altogether foolish thing on which to squander one's strength. To stand upright, to walk, to disentangle the chain, to remember to avoid catching Bled's eye--these were the things for which energy needed to be stored.

  They were moving again, to be sure, for that was his chain clicking on the stones. But this walking was not the same. How was it different? In what way had they all changed? In his mind's eye he seemed to look down on them from above as they wound their way along the shore. Hither and thither they went, like ants over a stone, but much slower, like torpid beetles in autumn, on their clambering journeys up and down the long miles of grass stems. And now indeed he perceived plainly, though without concern, what had befallen. They had become part of the insect world, where all was simple and from henceforth would simply be lived, untroubled by conscious volition. They needed no speech, no feelings, no hearing, no awareness one of another. For days at a time they would even require no food. They would not know whether they were ugly or beautiful, happy or unhappy, good or bad, for these terms had no meaning. Appetite and satiety, scuttling energy and motionless torpor, ferocity and helplessness--these were their poles. Their short lives would soon end, prey to winter, prey to larger creatures, prey to one another; but this too was a matter of no regard.

  Still fascinated and preoccupied by this new insight, he found himself climbing over some obstacle
that had almost tripped him. Something fairly heavy and smooth, though yielding. Something with sticks in it--a bundle of rags with sticks in it, no, his chain had caught; bend down, now it was free, yes, of course, the obstacle was a human body--that was the head, there--now he had climbed over it, it was gone and the stones had returned as before. He closed his eyes against the glitter of the river and set himself doggedly to the task of keeping upright and taking steps; one step, another step, another.

  Suddenly a cry sounded from behind him.

  "Stop! Stop!"

  Like a bubble out of dark ooze, his mind rose slowly into the former world of hearing, of seeing, of comprehension. He turned, to perceive Radu, with Shara beside him, kneeling over a body on the stones. Several of the boys, startled as he had been by the cry, had stopped and were moving uncertainly toward them. From somewhere in front Shouter was yelling, "What the muck's happened?"

  He limped back. Radu was supporting the boy's head on one arm and splashing water over his face. It was the boy whom Bled had savaged the day before. His eyes were closed and Kelderek could not make out whether he was breathing or not.

  "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-Lee--" Then, breaking off as she saw Genshed coming toward 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 around 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.