A short distance along the shore, Shouter had called a halt. They lay down among the children, but none questioned them. Genshed returned, washed his knife in the water and then, ordering Bled to remain in charge, took Shouter with him and disappeared upstream. Returning half an hour later, he at once led the way inland among the woods.
As evening began to fall they stumbled their way up a long, gradual slope, the forest around them growing more open as they went. Between the trees Kelderek could see a red, westering sun and this, he found, awoke in him a dull surprise. Pondering, he realized that since leaving Lak he had not once seen the sun after midday. They must now be upon the forest's northern edge.
At the top of the slope, Genshed waited until the last of the children had come up before beginning to push through the undergrowth on the forest outskirts. Suddenly he stopped, peering forward and shading his eye against the sun. Kelderek and Radu, halting behind him, found themselves looking out across the northern extremity of the evil land which they had now traversed from end to end, from the Vrako's banks to the Gap of Linsho.
The air was full of a dazzling, golden light, slow-moving and honey-thick. Myriads of motes and specks floated here and there, their minute glitterings seeming to draw the light down from the sky to the ground, there to fragment and multiply. The evening beams glanced off leaves, off the wings of darting flies and the surface of the Telthearna flowing a mile away at the foot of the slope. Directly before them, to the north, the distant prospect was closed by the mountains--jagged, iron-blue heights, streaked with steep wedges of forest rising out of the virid foothills. Looking at this tremendous barrier, Kelderek called to mind that once--how long ago?--he had possessed the strength to follow Shardik into such mountains as these. Now, he could not have limped over the intervening ground to their foot.
Clouds half-hid the easternmost peak, which rose above the Telthearna like a tower, its precipitous face falling almost sheer to the river. Between the water and the wooded crags at the mountain's foot there extended a narrow strip of flat land little more than a bowshot across--the Gap of Linsho. Huts he could make out, and wisps of evening smoke drifting toward the wilds of Deelguy on the farther shore. A track led out of the Gap, ran a short way beside the water, then turned inland to climb the slope, crossed their front less than half a mile away and disappeared southwestward beyond the extremity of the forest on their left. Goats were tethered on the open sward and a herd of cows was grazing--one had a flat-toned, cloppering bell at her neck--watched by a little boy, who sat fluting on a wooden pipe; and an old ox, at the full extent of his rope, pulled the greenest grass he could get.
But it was not at the golden light, at the cattle or the child playing his pipe that Genshed stood staring, his hanging face like a devil's, sick with the pain of loss. Beside the track, a patch of ground had been enclosed with a wooden palisade and a fire was burning in a shallow trench. A soldier in a leather helmet was crouching, scouring pots, while another was chopping wood with a billhook. Beside the stockade a tall staff had been erected and from it hung a flag--three corn sheaves on a blue ground. Nearby, two more soldiers could be seen facing toward the forest, one sitting on the turf as he ate his supper, the other standing, leaning on a long spear. The situation was plain. The Gap had been occupied by a Sarkid detachment of the army of Santil-ke-Erketlis.
"Bloody God!" whispered Genshed, staring over the pastoral, flame-bright quiet of the hillside. Shouter, coming up from behind, drew in his breath and stood stock-still, gazing as a man might at the burning ruins of his own home. The children were silent, some uncomprehending in their sickness and exhaustion, others sensing with fear the rage and desperation of Genshed, who stood clenching and unclenching his hands without another word.
Suddenly Radu plunged forward. His rags fluttered about him and he flung both arms above his head, jerking like an idiot child in a fit.
"Ah! Ah!" croaked Radu. "Sark--" He staggered, fell and got up knee by knee, like a cow. "Sarkid!" he whispered, stretching out his hands; and then, barely louder, "Sarkid! Sarkid!"
With deliberation, Genshed took his bow from the side of his pack and laid an arrow on the string. Then, leaning against a tree, he waited as Radu again drew breath. The boy's cry, when it came, was like that of a sick infant, distorted and feeble. Once more he cried, bird-like, and then sank to his knees, sobbing and wringing his hands among the undergrowth. Genshed, pulling Shouter back by the shoulder, waited as a man might wait for a friend to finish speaking with a passer-by in the street.
"O God!" wept Radu. "God, only help us! O God, please help us!"
On Kelderek's back Shara half-awoke, murmured, "Leg-By-Lee! Gone to Leg-By-Lee!" and fell asleep again.
As a man led to judgment might halt to listen to the sound of a girl singing; as the eye of one just told of his own mortal illness might stray out of the window to dwell for an instant upon the flash of some bright-plumaged bird among the trees; as some devil-may-care fellow might drain a glass and dance a spring on the scaffold--so, it seemed, not only Genshed's inclination but also his self-respect now impelled him in this, his own utter disaster, to pause a few moments to enjoy the rare and singular misery of Radu. He looked around among the children, as though inviting anyone else who might wish to try his luck to see what voice he might have left for calling out to the soldiers. Watching him, Kelderek was seized by a deadly horror, like that of a child facing the twitching, glazed excitement of the rapist. His teeth chattered in his head and he felt his empty bowels loosen. He sank down, barely in sufficient command of himself to slide the little girl from his back and lay her beside him on the ground.
At this moment a hoarse voice was heard from among the bushes nearby.
"Gensh! Gensh, I say! Gensh!"
Genshed turned sharply, peering with sun-dazzled eyes into the dusky forest behind him. There was nothing to be seen, but a moment later the voice spoke again.
"Gensh! Don't be going out there, Gensh! For God's sake give us a hond!"
A faint wisp of smoke curled up from a patch of undergrowth, but otherwise all was stiller than the grassy slope outside. Genshed jerked his head to Shouter and the boy went slowly and reluctantly forward with the best courage he could summon. He disappeared among the bushes and a moment later they heard him exclaim, "Mucking hell!"
Still Genshed said nothing, merely nodding to Bled to join Shouter. He himself continued to keep half his attention upon Radu and Kelderek. After some delay the two boys emerged from the bushes, supporting a fleshy, thick-lipped man with small eyes, who grimaced with pain as he staggered between them, trailing a pack behind him along the ground. The left leg of his once-white breeches was soaked in blood and the hand which he held out to Genshed was red and sticky.
"Gensh!" he said. "Gensh, you know me, don't you, you won't leave me here, you'll be gotting me away? Don't go out there, Gensh, they'll got you same as they did me; we can't stay here, either--they'll be coming, Gensh, coming!"
Kelderek, staring from where he lay, suddenly called the man to mind. This blood-drenched craven was none other than the wealthy Deelguy slave dealer Lalloc--fat, insinuating, dandified, with the manners, at once familiar and obsequious, of a presuming servant on the make. Overdressed and smiling among his miserable, carefully groomed wares, he had once been accustomed to publicize himself in Bekla as "The high-class slave dealer, purveyor to the aristocracy. Special needs discreetly catered for." Kelderek remembered, too, how he had taken to calling himself "U-Lalloc," until ordered by Ged-la-Dan to curb his impertinence and mind his place. There was little enough of the demimondain dandy about him now, crouching at Genshed's feet, dribbling with fear and exhaustion, his yellow robe smeared with dirt and his own blood clotted across his fat buttocks. The strap of his pack was twisted round his wrist and in one hand he was clutching the plaited thong of a clay thurible, or fire pot, such as some travelers carry on lonely journeys and keep smoldering with moss and twigs. It was from this that the thin smoke was risin
g.
Kelderek remembered how in Bekla Lalloc, coming once to the Barons' Palace to apply for the renewal of his license, had fallen to deploring the wicked deeds of unauthorized slave dealers. "Your gracious Mojesty will need no ashorrance that my colleagues and I, acting in the bost interosts of the trade, would never have to do with soch men. To oss, profit is a secondary motter. We regard ourselves as your Mojesty's servants, employed to move your own fixed quotas about the empire as may suit your convenience. Now may I soggest--" and his rings had clicked as he placed his hands together and bowed, in the manner of the Deelguy. And whence, Kelderek had wondered, whence in truth had he obtained the pretty children who had stood on his rostrum in the market, tense and dry-eyed, knowing what was good for them? He had never inquired, for the taxes on Lalloc's turnover had produced very large sums, all duly rendered--enough to pay and equip several companies of spearmen.
For a moment, as Lalloc's eye traveled over the children, it rested on Kelderek: but his momentary surprise, Kelderek could perceive, was due to no more than observing a grown man among the slaves. He did not recognize--how should he?--the former priest-king of Bekla.
Still Genshed stood silent, looking broodingly at the bleeding Lalloc as though wondering--as no doubt he was--in what way he could turn this unexpected meeting to his advantage. At length he said, "Bit of trouble, Lalloc; been in it, have you?"
The other spread his bloody hands, shoulders shrugging, eyebrows lifting, head wagging from side to side.
"I was in Kabin, Gensh, when the Ikats come north. Thought I had plonty of time to gotting back to Bekla, but left it too late--you ever know soldiers go so fost, Gensh, you ever know? Cot off, couldn't gotting to Bekla" (one hand chopped downward in a gesture of severance) "no governor in Kabin--new governor, man called Mollo, been killed in Bekla, they were saying--the king kill him with his own honds--no one would take money to protect me. So I cross the Vrako. I think, 'I'll stay here till it's over, me and my nice lottle boys what I bought.' So we stay in some torrible village. I have to pay and pay, just not to be murdered. One day I hear the Ikat soldiers come over the Vrako, honting everywhere for the slave dealers. I go north--ow, what 'orrible journey--rockon buy my way through Linsho. But I don't go through the forest, I come straight up the trock, walk right in among the soldiers. 'Ow I'm to know the Ikats gotting there first? Dirty thieves--take my lottle boys, all what I pay for. I drop everything, run into the forest. Then arrow cotch me in the thigh, ow, my God, the pain! They honting for me, not long. No, no, they don't need hont, clever bastards." He spat. "They know there's no food here, no shelter, no way to go onnywhere. O my God, Gensh, what we do now, eh? You go out through those trees they'll have you--they're waiting for oss--someone tell me Nigon they kill, Mindulla they kill--"
"Nigon's dead," said Genshed.
"Yoss, yoss. You help me away, Gensh? We gotting across the Telthearna, gotting to Deelguy? You remomber how many lottle boys and girls I buy off you, Gensh, always buying off you, and I don't tell where--"
Suddenly Shouter whistled and plucked Genshed by the sleeve.
"Look at the bastards!" he said, jerking his thumb.
Half a mile away, across the sunlit slope where the guardhouse stood, twenty or thirty soldiers were coming toward the forest, trailing their long spears behind them over the grass. At a signal from their officer they extended their line, opening out to right and left as they approached the outskirts.
Not to one child, and to neither Radu nor Kelderek, did it occur that they might, even now, call out or try to reach the soldiers. Had not Genshed just permitted them to prove to themselves that they could not?
His domination--that evil force of which Radu had spoken--lay all about them like a frost, unassailable, visible only in its effects, permeating their spirits with its silent power to numb and subdue. It lay within them--in their starved bodies, in their hearts, in their frozen minds. Not God Himself could melt this cold or undo the least part of Genshed's will. Kelderek, waiting until Bled was looking elsewhere and would not see his slow, fumbling struggle, lifted Shara once more in his arms, took the unresisting Radu by the hand and followed the slave dealer back into the forest.
Along the higher ground they went, along the crest of the low ridge they had ascended earlier that afternoon, Lalloc hobbling beside Genshed and continually entreating not to be left behind. While he babbled, albeit in whispers and in phrases disjointed by shortness of breath, Genshed made no reply. Yet though he might seem inattentive, both to the children and to the fat purveyor of nice little boys, it appeared to Kelderek that nevertheless he remained most alert within himself, like a great fish that skulks below a ledge, at one and the same time watching for the least chance to dash between the legs of the wading netsmen and waiting motionless in the hope that its stillness may deceive them into believing it already gone.
52 The Ruined Village
AND NOW BEGAN among the children that final disintegration which only the fear of Genshed had delayed so long. Despite the fog of ignorance and dread that covered them, one thing was clear to them all. Genshed's plans had failed. Both he and his overseers were afraid and did not know what to do next. Bled walked by himself, hunched and muttering, his eyes on the ground. Shouter gnawed continually at his hand, while ever and again his head, with open mouth and closed eyes, dropped forward like that of an ox unable to pull its load. From all three, despair emanated as bats come fluttering from a cave, thicker as the light fails. The children began to straggle. Several, having fallen or lain down on the ground, remained where they were, for Genshed and his whippers-in, now sharing the same evil trance as their victims, had neither purpose nor spirit to beat them to their feet.
It was plain that Genshed no longer cared whether the children lived or died. He paid them no heed, but pressed on at his own pace, concerned only to outdistance the soldiers; and when some of those who had fallen, seeing him disappearing ahead of them, struggled to their feet and somehow contrived to catch up with him again, still he spared them not a glance. Only of Kelderek and Radu did he remain steadily watchful, ordering them, knife in hand, to walk in front of him and stop for nothing.
As when two animals have fought, the one that is beaten seems actually to grow smaller as it slinks away, so, since turning back from the edge of the forest, Radu had regressed from a youth to a child. The pride of bearing with which he had carried his rags and sores, as though they were honorable insignia of the House of Sarkid, had given place to an exhausted misery like that of a survivor from some disaster. He moved uncertainly here and there, as though unable to pick his way for himself, and once, with hands covering his face, gave way to a fit of sobbing which ceased only when breath failed him. As he lifted his head his eyes met Kelderek's with a look of panic-stricken despair, like that of an animal staring from a trap.
"I'm afraid to die," he whispered.
Kelderek could find no answer.
"I don't want to die," repeated Radu desperately.
"Get on," said Genshed sharply, from behind.
"Those were my father's soldiers!"
"I know," answered Kelderek dully. "They may find us yet."
"They won't. Genshed will kill us first. O God, he frightens me so much! I can't hide it any more."
"If the soldiers find us, they'll certainly kill me," said Kelderek. "I was your father's enemy, you see. It seems strange now."
Startled, Radu looked quickly at him; but at the same moment Shara, awake at last, began to struggle on Kelderek's shoulders and to set up a thin wail of misery and hunger.
"Keep her quiet," said Genshed instantly.
Radu, with some difficulty, took her from Kelderek, but as he did so slipped, so that the little girl gave a sharp cry of fear. Genshed covered the ground between them in four strides, gripped Radu by the shoulder with one hand and silenced the child with the other over her mouth.
"Once more and I'll kill her," he said.
Radu cringed from him, whispering to Shara u
rgently. She became silent, and again they limped on among the trees.
"I won't die," said Radu presently, with more composure. "Not as long as she needs me. Her father's one of our tenants, you know."
"You told me."
It was almost dark and there had been no sounds of pursuit. Of how many children now remained with them Kelderek had no idea. He tried to look about him, but first could not focus his sight and then could not remember for what it was that he was supposed to be looking. The faintness of hunger seemed to have destroyed both sight and sound. His brain swam and a feverish pain stabbed through his head. When first he glimpsed stone walls about him, he could not tell whether they might be real or figments of his splintered mind.
Shouter was shaking him by the arm.
"Stop! Stop, damn you! You gone mucking deaf or something? He says stop! Here," said the boy, with something faintly resembling human sympathy, "you'd better sit down, mate, you need a rest, you do. Sit down here."
He found himself sitting on a ledge of stone. Around him was what had once been a clearing, stumps of trees overgrown with creeper and weeds. There were walls of piled boulders and stones without mortar, some tumbled, some still standing: steadings and pens, all doorless, the roofs fallen in, holes exposing the smoke-blackened flues of chimneys. Nearby rose a low cliff of rock, once, no doubt, quarried to build these same dwellings; and at its foot a spring trickled into a shallow pool, from which the water, flowing through an outfall in the enclosing stones, ran away downhill toward the distant Telthearna. On the opposite side of the pool, the stone surround was half-covered by the long tendrils of a trepsis vine, on which a few scarlet flowers were already blooming.