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 hand-line 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' 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 towards 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 battlfield 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 towards it, he tripped over something pliant and fell his length in the mud. At once a door opened near by 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 it's 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 round her shoulder, bent and kissed her cheek. 'Don't be angry,' he said. 'I've learnt 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.'