Shardik

Ta-Kominion remained silent for a little, the fingers of his injured arm, in its sling, tapping gently against his left side. At length he said, 'And long ago, saiyett, when Shardik was brought to the Ledges, how, may I ask, was he brought, if not drugged and restrained?'

'Means used for an end appointed by God, that his servants might serve him. You are intending to make him a weapon of bloodshed for your own power.' 'Time is short, saiyett. I have no time for argument.' 'There is nothing over which to argue.' 'Nothing,' replied Ta-Kominion in a low, hard voice.

Stepping forward, he grasped the Tuginda strongly by the wrist. 'Kelderek, you shall have your craftsmen within two hours, though the iron and some of the heavy materials may take longer. Remember, everything depends on resolution. We'll not fail the people, you and I.'

For an instant he looked at Kelderek and his look said, 'Are you a man, as you maintain, or an overgrown child under the thumb of a woman?' Then, still gripping the Tuginda's wrist, he called to the servants, who approached hesitantly from the scrub on the other side of the track. 'Numiss,' said Ta-Kominion, 'the saiyett is returning with us to meet Lord Zelda and the army on the road.' He slipped his arm out of the leather strap. 'Take this and tie her wrists behind her back.' 'My – my lord,' stammered Numiss, 'I am afraid -' Without another word Ta-Kominion, setting his teeth against the 130 pain in his arm, himself drew the Tuginda's hands behind her back and bound them tightly with the strap. Then he put the free end into Numiss's hand. He held his knife in his teeth the while and was clearly ready to use it, but she made no resistance, standing silent with closed eyes and only compressing her lips as the strap cut into her wrists.

'Now we will go,' said Ta-Kominion. 'Believe me, saiyett, I regret this affront to your dignity. I do not wish to be obliged to gag you, so no cries for help, I beg you.'

In the near-darkness of moonset the Tuginda turned and looked at Kelderek. For a moment his eyes met hers; then they fell to the ground, and he did not look up as he heard her footsteps begin to stumble away along the track. When at length he did so, both she and Ta-Kominion were already some distance off. He ran after them and Ta-Kominion turned quickly, knife in hand.

'Ta-Kominion!' He was panting. 'Don't harm her! She must not be hurt or ill-treated! She is not to come to -my harm! Promise me.' 'I promise you, High Priest of Lord Shardik in Bekla.'

Kelderek stood hesitant, half-hoping that she might speak even now. But she said nothing and soon they were gone, sight and sound, into the dawn-mist and gloom of the valley. Once he heard Ta-Kominion's voice. Then he was alone in the solitude.

He turned and walked slowly back, past the dead man shrouded in his bloody cloak, past the rock where Shardik had lain in wait On his left, above the dreary forest, the first light was gathering in the sky. Not a blow had yet been struck in the war, and yet he was filled with a sense of loneliness and danger, of being already committed past recall on a desperate enterprise which, if it did not succeed, could end only in ruin and death. He looked about the empty, twilit valley with a kind of puzzled surprise, such as a malicious child might feel, on holding a burning torch to a rick or thatch, to find that it caught slowly and did not on the instant blaze up to match the idea he had formed in his mind. Was desperation, then, so slow a business?

From the hillside he heard his name called and, turning, saw the tall shape of Rantzay striding down, with six or seven of the girls. At once his apprehension left him and he went to meet them, clear in mind and purposeful.

'Zilthe* has told us, my lord, how Lord Shardik struck down the traitor from Ortelga. Is all well? Where are the Tuginda and the young baron?'

'They – they have returned together down the valley. The army has already set out and they have gone to join it. It is Lord Shardik's will to join the march on Bekla. We have to carry out that will, you and I, and there is no time to be lost.' 'What are we to do, my lord?'

'Have you still got the sleeping-drug in the camp – the drug which was used to heal Lord Shardik?'

'We have that and other drugs, my lord, but none in great quantity.'

'There may well be enough. You are to seek out Lord Shardik and drug him insensible. How can it best be done?'

'He may take it in food, my lord. If not, we shall have to wait until he sleeps and then pierce him. That would be very dangerous, though it could be attempted.'

'You have until sunset. If by some means or other he can be brought near this place, so much the better. Indeed, he must not fall asleep in thick forest, or all may fail.'

Rantzay frowned and shook her head at the difficulty of the task. She was about to speak again, but Kelderek forestalled her.

'It must be attempted, Rantzay. If it is God's will – and I know that it is – you will succeed. At all costs, Lord Shardik must be drugged insensible by sunset.'

At that moment they became aware of a confused noise, far off and still so faint as to be audible only between the gusts of the dawn breeze. As they listened it grew louder, until they could discern metallic sounds and human voices, a shouted order, a snatch of song. At length in the growing light they saw, far below them, a slowly-moving, dusty line, creeping on like a thread of spilt water across a paved floor. The vanguard of Ta-Kominion's army was coming up the valley.

Kelderek spoke quickly. 'Only put aside doubt, Rantzay, and act out of a true belief that this can be achieved, and all will be well. I am going down to meet Lord Ta-Kominion. I shall return later and you will find me here. Sheldra and Neelith, come with me.'

As he strode downhill between the two silent girls, with the sound of the marching tumult coming up to meet him, he felt his inward prayers turned back upon himself. Whether or not he had been right could be revealed only by the outcome. Yet Ta-Kominion was certain that it was Shardik's divine purpose to lead the army to victory. 'We'll rule in Bekla, you and I.' 'And when that day comes,' he thought, 'no doubt the Tuginda will understand that all was for the best.'

18 Rantzay

On the edge of the forest, Rantzay knelt over the tracks showing faintly in the hard ground. They led westward, into thick undergrowth, and where they disappeared the bark of a kalmet tree had been slashed white, high up, by the bear's claws. She knew that it was not two hours since Shardik had deliberately lain in wait for and killed a man. In this mood he might well kill again – might lie in wait for those who tracked him or steal, elusive and silent, through the woods until he was behind them and the pursuers became the pursued.

The strain of the past month had told increasingly upon the priestess. She was the oldest of the women who had followed Shardik down Ortelga and across the Telthearna strait, and though her belief in his divine power was untouched by the least doubt, she had felt also – more and more as the days went by – the hardship of the life and the continual fear of death. The young risk their lives heedlessly – often actually for sport – but their ciders, even while they may grow in humility and selflessness, grow also in prudence and in regard for their own lives, those little portions of time in which they hope to create something fit to be offered at last to God. Rantzay, novice mistress and Warden of the Ledges, had not, like Melathys, been caught unawares by the sudden coming of Shardik like a thief in the night. From the moment when the Tuginda's message had reached Quiso, she had known what would be required of her. Since then, day after day, she had been driving her gaunt and ageing body over the rocky hillsides and through the thickets of the island, struggling with her own fear even while she calmed some near-hysterical girl and persuaded her to take part once more in the Singing: or herself took the girl's place and felt yet again the slow response of her muscles to the bear's lithe, unpredictable movements. On Quiso Anthred, the woman struck down and killed among the trees by the shore, had been first her servant, then her pupil and finally her closest friend. Once, in a dream, she had embraced her as her own child and together they had dug up and burned that day in the rains, long ago, when Rantzay's disappointed father, frightened at last by her waking fits, her swoons and the voices that spoke and babbled from her at these rimes, had gone to the High Baron to offer to the Ledges his ugly, unmarriageablc tent-pole of a daughter. She had recalled the dream as she performed the traditional rite of burning Anthred's quiver, bow and wooden rings upon her grave by the Telthearna strait