Evening came on. Rantzay's pace had become a limping hobble from one tree trunk to the next; yet still she exhorted Nito to keep her eyes open, to make sure of the right way forward and to call from time to time in hope of hearing a reply from ahead. Vaguely, she was aware of twilight, of the fall of darkness and later of moonlight among the trees; of intermittent thunder, far off, and of swift, momentary gusts of wind. Once she saw Anthred standing among the trees and was about to speak to her when her friend smiled, laid a ringed finger to her lips and disappeared.
At last, in clear moonlight, at some mid hour of the night, she looked about her and realized that she had caught up with the girls. They were standing close together, in a whispering group; but as she approached, leaning on Nito's arm, they all turned toward her and fell silent. To her their silence seemed full of dislike and resentment. If she had hoped for comradeship or sympathy at the end of this bitter journey, she was clearly to be disappointed. Handing her staff to Nito she drew herself up, almost crying out as she put her full weight upon the broken-blistered soles of her feet.
"Where is Lord Shardik?"
"Close at hand, madam--not a bowshot away. He has been sleeping since moonrise."
"Who is that?" said Rantzay, peering. "Sheldra? I thought you were with Lord Kelderek. How do you come to be here? Where are we?"
"We are a little higher up the valley that you left this morning, madam, and on the edge of the forest. Zilthe came down to the camp to tell Lord Kelderek that Shardik had returned, but she was exhausted, so he sent me back instead of her. He says that Lord Shardik must be drugged tonight."
"Has any attempt been made to drug him?"
No one replied.
"Well?"
"We have done all we could, madam," said another of the girls. "We prepared two haunches of meat with tessik and placed them as close to him as we dared, but he would not touch them. There is no more tessik. We can only wait until he wakes."
"Before I left Lord Kelderek, madam," said Sheldra, "a messenger arrived from Gelt, from Lord Ta-Kominion. He sent word that he expected to fight the day after tomorrow and that Shardik must come no matter what the cost. His words were, 'The hours now are more precious than stars.'"
From the hills to the south the lightning flickered between the trees. Rantzay limped the few yards to the edge of the forest and looked out across the valley. The sound of the brook below wavered on the air. Away to her left she could see the fires of the camp where the Tuginda and Kelderek must at this moment be waiting for news. She thought of the black shape that had passed her in the noonday night, through the watery shallows of the grass, and of Anthred smiling among the trees, her hands adorned with the plaited rings that she herself had burned by the shore. These signs were clear enough. The situation was, in fact, a simple one. All that was required was a priestess who knew her duty and was capable of carrying it out with resolution.
She returned to the girls. They drew back from her, staring silently in the dimness.
"You say Lord Shardik is close at hand. Where?"
Someone pointed. "Go and make sure that he is still sleeping," said Rantzay. "You should not have left him unwatched. You are all to blame."
"Madam--"
"Be silent!" said Rantzay. "Nito, bring me the box of theltocarna."
She drew her knife and tested it. The sharp edges sliced lightly through a leaf held between her finger and thumb, while the point, with the least pressure upon it, almost pierced the skin of her wrist. Nito was standing before her with the wooden box. Rantzay stared coldly down at the girl's trembling fingers and then at the knife held motionless in her own steady hand.
"Come with me. You too, Sheldra." She took the box.
She remembered the last time that she and Anthred had walked through fire, in the courtyard of the Upper Temple, on the night when they had led Kelderek to the Bridge of the Suppliants. There was an unreality about the memory, as though it were not hers but some other woman's. The night sounds seemed magnified about her. The dry forest echoed through caves of dripping water and her body felt like a mass of hot sand. These were symptoms she recognized. She would need to be quick. Her fear was somewhere behind her, searching for her, overtaking her among the trees.
The bear was stretched on its side in a thicket of cenchulada saplings, two of which he had pushed down and snapped in making a place to sleep. A few feet away lay one of the haunches of meat. Whoever had put it there had not lacked courage. The huge mass of the body was dappled with moonlight and leaf shadows. The shaggy flank, rising and falling in sleep and overlaid with the speckled, moving light, appeared like a dark plain of grass. Before the half-open, breathing mouth the leaves on one of the broken branches stirred and glistened. The claws of one extended forepaw were curved upward. Rantzay stood a few moments, gazing as though at a deep, swift river into which she must now plunge and drown. Then, motioning the girls away, she stepped forward.
She was standing against the ridge of Shardik's back, looking over his body, as though from behind an earthwork, at the restless, wind-moved forest. The thunder muttered in the hills and Shardik stirred, twitched one ear and then once more lay still.
Rantzay thrust her left hand deep into the pelt. She could not lay bare the skin and began cutting away the oily hair, matted and full of parasites as a sheep's fleece. Her own hands were trembling now and she worked faster, lifting each handful carefully, cutting and then drawing it away from under the sharp knife.
Soon she had cut a wide, bristling patch across the shoulder, almost baring the gray, salt-flaked skin. Two or three veins ran across it, one thick enough to reveal the slow beating of the pulse.
Rantzay turned and stooped for the box beside her. Taking out two of the little oiled bladders, she placed them between the fingertips of her left hand. Then she drove the point of the knife into the bear's shoulder and drew the blade back toward her, opening a gash half as long as her own forearm. Smoothly, without a pause, she pushed the bladders into it, drew the edges of the incision over them, pressed downward and felt them crush inside.
With a snarl, Shardik threw back his head and rose upon his hind legs. Rantzay, flung to the ground, got up and stood facing him. For a moment it seemed that he would strike her down. Then, lurching forward, he crushed her against his body. A few steps he carried her, hanging grotesquely in his grip. Then, letting her drop, limp as an old garment fallen from a line, he staggered out to the open slope beyond the trees. He rolled on the ground and froth flew from his mouth as he bit and tore at the grass.
Sheldra was the first to reach the priestess. Her left hand had been gashed by her own knife, her tongue protruded and her head lay grotesquely upon her shoulder, like that of a hanged man. When Sheldra put one arm beneath her and tried to raise her a terrible, crackling sound came from the broken body. The girl laid her back and for a moment she opened her eyes.
"Tell the Tuginda--did what she said--"
Blood gushed from her mouth and when it ceased her gaunt, bony body vibrated very lightly, like the surface of a pool fluttered by the wings of a trapped fly. The movement ceased and Sheldra, perceiving that she was dead, drew off her wooden rings, picked up the box of theltocarna and the fallen knife and made her way out to the slope where Shardik lay insensible.
19 Night Messengers
THE CAGE HAD TAKEN ALL DAY TO COMPLETE--if complete it were. On hearing his orders Baltis, the master smith, had shrugged his shoulders, making light of Kelderek, whom he had heard of as a simple young fellow with neither family, wealth nor craft--for in his eyes hunters were not craftsmen. He and his men, being armed with excellent weapons of their own making, had supposed that they were about to play their part in the sack of Bekla--or at any rate the sack of Gelt--and took it ill to be called out of the march and put back on their accustomed work. Kelderek, having tried in vain to bring home to the great, lumbering fellow the vital importance of what he had to do, went back to Ta-Kominion, catching him just as he was about to set out
with the advance guard. Ta-Kominion, cursing with impatience, summoned Baltis to him under the tree that bore the body of Fassel-Hasta and promised him that if the cage were not complete by nightfall he should hang like the baron. This was talk that Baltis could understand clearly enough, and he immediately asked for double the number of men he expected to get. Ta-Kominion, being in too much haste to argue, allowed him fifty, including two rope makers, three wheelwrights and five carpenters. As the army wound away up the valley in the thickening, sultry morning, Kelderek and Baltis fell to their work.
Messengers were sent back to Ortelga and before midday all the stored fuel on the island, much of its stock of sawn timber and every piece of forged iron had been carried up to the camp by women and boys. The iron was of different lengths and thickness, much of it too short to be of use except as pieces for welding. Baltis set his men to make three axles and as many iron bars as possible, the latter to be of equal length and thickness, pointed and pierced at both ends. Meanwhile the carpenters and wheelwrights, using seasoned wood, some of which had until that morning formed part of the walls, roofs and tables of Ortelga, built a heavy platform of strutted planks, which they raised with levers and mounted upon six spokeless wheels, solid wood to the rims.
By evening Baltis's men had forged, welded or cut sixty bars--disparate, rough-edged things, yet serviceable enough to be driven point-first through the holes drilled round the edges of the platform and then secured with iron pins.
"The roof will have to be wooden too," said Baltis, looking at the poles sticking up out of the planks and pointing this way and that like a bed of reeds. "There's no more iron, young man, and none to be had, so no use to fret over it."
"A wooden roof will shake to pieces," said the master carpenter. "It'll not hold the bear, not if he goes to break it."
"It's not work to be done in a day," growled Baltis. "No, not in three days. A cage to hold a bear? I was the first to see Lord Shardik come ashore yesterday morning, barring that poor devil Lukon and his mate--"
"How's the bear to be brought to the cage?" interrupted the carpenter.
"Ah, that's more than we know--"
"You are here to obey Lord Ta-Kominion," said Kelderek. "It is the will of God that Lord Shardik is to conquer Bekla, and that you will see with your own eyes. Make the roof of wood if it must be so, and bind the whole cage round with rope, twisted tight."
The work was finished at last by torchlight and Kelderek, when he had dismissed the men to eat, remained alone with Sheldra and Neelith, peering and probing, kicking at the wheels, fingering the axle pins and finally testing each of the six bars set aside to close the still-open end.
"How is he to be released, my lord?" asked Neelith. "Is there to be no door?"
"The time is too short to make a door," answered Kelderek. "When the hour comes to release him, we shall be shown the way."
"He must be kept drugged, my lord, as long as possible," said Sheldra, "for neither that nor any other cage will hold Lord Shardik if he is minded otherwise."
"I know it," said Kelderek. "We might as well have made a cart to put him in. If only we knew where he is--"
He broke off as Zilthe came limping into the torchlight, raised her palm to her forehead and at once sank to the ground.
"Forgive me, lord," she said, drawing her bow from her shoulder and laying it beside her. "We have been following Lord Shardik all day and I am exhausted--with fear even more than with fatigue. He went far--"
"Where is he?" interrupted Kelderek.
"My lord, he is sleeping on the edge of the forest, not an hour from here."
"God be praised!" cried Kelderek, clapping his hands together. "I knew it was His will!"
"It was Rantzay, my lord, who brought him back," said the girl, staring up at Kelderek as though even now afraid. "We came upon him at noon, fishing in a stream. He lay down near the bank and we dared not approach him. But after a long time, when it seemed that there was nothing to be done, Rantzay, without telling us what she intended, suddenly stood up and went out into the open where Lord Shardik could see her. She called him. My lord, as I live, she called him and he came to her! We all fled in terror, but she spoke to him in a strange and dreadful voice, rebuking him and telling him to return, for he should never have come so far, she said. And Shardik obeyed her, my lord! He passed by her, where she stood. He made his way back at her command."
"God's will indeed," said Kelderek with awe, "and all that we have done is right. Where is Rantzay now?"
"I do not know, my lord," said Zilthe, almost weeping. "Nito told us we were to follow Lord Shardik and that Rantzay would overtake us. But she did not, and it is many hours now since we last saw her."
Kelderek was about to send Sheldra up the valley when a challenge and answer sounded from farther along the road. After a pause they heard footsteps and Numiss appeared. He, too, was exhausted and did not ask Kelderek for leave to sit before flinging himself to the ground.
"I've come from beyond Gelt," he said. "We took Gelt easy--set it on fire--not much fighting but we killed the chief and after that the rest of 'em were willing enough to do what Lord Ta-Kominion told 'em. He talked to some of 'em alone and I dare say he asked them what they knew about Bekla--how to get there and all the rest of it. Anyway, whatever it was--"
"If he gave you a message, tell me that," said Kelderek sharply. "Never mind what you heard or suppose."
"This is the message, sir. 'I expect to fight the day after tomorrow. The rains can be no later and now the hours are more precious than stars. Bring Lord Shardik no matter what the cost.'"
Kelderek jumped up and began pacing to and fro beside the cage, biting his lip and smiting his clenched fist into his palm. At length, recovering himself, he told Sheldra to go and find Rantzay and, if Shardik had been drugged, to bring back word at once. Then, fetching some brands to start a fire, he sat down by the cage with Numiss and the two girls to wait for news. None spoke, but every now and again Kelderek would look up, frowning, to mark the slow time from the wheeling stars.
When at last Zilthe started and laid a hand on his arm, he had heard nothing. He turned to meet her eyes and she stared back at him, holding her breath, her face half firelit, half in shadow. He too listened, but could hear only the flames, the fitful wind and a man coughing somewhere in the camp behind them. He shook his head but she nodded sharply, stood up and motioned him to follow her along the road. Watched by Neelith and Numiss they set off into the darkness, but had gone only a little way when she stopped, cupped her hands and called, "Who's there?"
The reply "Nito!" was faint but clear enough. A few moments later Kelderek caught at last the girl's light tread and went forward to meet her. It was plain that in her haste and agitation she had fallen--perhaps more than once. She was begrimed, disheveled and scratched across the knees and one forearm. Her breath came in sobs and they could see the tears on her cheeks. He called to Numiss and together they supported her as far as the fire.
The camp was astir. Somehow the men had guessed that news was at hand. Several were already waiting beside the cage and one spread his cloak for the girl across a pile of leftover planks, brought a pitcher and knelt down to wash her bleeding scratches. At the touch of the cold water she winced and, as though recalled to herself, began speaking to Kelderek.
"Shardik is lying insensible, my lord, not a bowshot from the road. He has been drugged with theltocarna--enough to kill a strong man. God knows when he will wake."
"With theltocarna?" said Neelith, incredulously. "But--"
Nito began to weep again. "And Rantzay is dead--dead! Have you told Lord Kelderek how she spoke to Shardik beside the stream?
Zilthe nodded, staring aghast.
"When Shardik had passed her and gone, she stood for a time stricken, it seemed, as though, like a tree, she had called lightning down to her. Then we were alone, she and I, following the others as best we might. I could tell--I could tell that she meant to die, that she was determined to die.
I tried to make her rest but she refused. It is not two hours since we returned at last to the edge of the forest. All the girls could see her death upon her. It was drawn about her like a cloak. None could speak to her for pity and fear. After what we had seen by the stream at noon, any one of us would have died in her place; but it was as though she were already drifting away, as though she were on the water and we on the shore. We stood near her and she spoke to us, yet we were separated from her. She spoke and we were silent. Then, as she ordered, I gave her the box of theltocarna, and she walked up to Lord Shardik as though he were a sleeping ox. She cut him with a knife and mingled the theltocarna with his blood; and then, as he woke in anger, she stood before him yet again, with no more fear than she had shown at noon. And he clutched her, and so she died." The girl looked about her. "Where is the Tuginda?"
"Get the long ropes on the cage," said Kelderek to Baltis, "and set every man to draw it. Yes, and every woman too, except for those who carry torches. There is no time to be lost. Even now we may be too late to reach Lord Ta-Kominion."
Less than three hours later the enormous bulk of Shardik, the head protected by a hood made from cloaks roughly stitched together, had been dragged with ropes down the slope and up a hastily piled ramp of earth, stones and planks into the cage. The last bars had been hammered into place and the cage, hauled in front and pushed behind, was jolting and rocking slowly up the valley toward Gelt.
20 Gel-Ethlin
IT COULD SURELY BE NO MORE THAN A DAY--two days at the most--thought Gel-Ethlin, to the breaking of the rains. For hours the thundery weather had been growing more and more oppressive, while rising gusts of warm wind set the dust swirling over the Beklan plain. Santil-ke-Erketlis, commander of the northern army of patrol, being taken sick with the heat, had left the column two days previously, returning to the capital by the direct road south and entrusting Gel-Ethlin, his second in command, with the task of completing the army's march to Kabin of the Waters, down through Tonilda and thence westward to Bekla itself. This would be a straightforward business--a fortification to be repaired here, a few taxes to be collected there, perhaps a dispute or two to be settled and, of course, the reports to be heard of local spies and agents. None of these matters was likely to be urgent and, since the army was already a day or two behind time for its return to Bekla, Santil-ke-Erketlis had told Gel-Ethlin to break off as soon as the rains began in earnest and take the most direct route back from wherever he happened to find himself.