Who can describe the course of suffering to the end where no more can be endured? Who can express the unendurable vision of a world created solely for horror and torment – the struggling of the half-crushed beetle glued to the ground by its own entrails; the flapping, broken fish pecked to death by gulls upon the sand; the dying ape full of maggots, the young soldier, eviscerated, screaming in the arms of his comrades; the child who weeps alone, wounded for life by the desertion of those who have gone their selfish ways? Save us, O God, only place us where we may see the sun and eat a little bread until it is time to die, and we will ask nothing more. And when the snake devours the fallen fledgling before our eyes, then our indifference is Thy mercy.
In the first grey light, Kelderek stood up a man new-born of grief – lost of memory, devoid of purpose, unable to tell night from morning or friend from foe. Before him, along the crest, translucent as a rainbow, stood the Beklan battle-line, sword, shield and axe, the falcon banner, the long spears of Yelda, the gaudy finery of Deelguy: and he smiled at them, as a baby might laugh and crow, waking to see about her cot rebels and mutineers come to add her murder to those of the rest. But as he gazed, they faded like pictures in the fire, their armour transformed to the first glitter of morning on the rocks and bushes. So he wandered away in search of them, the soldiers, picking as he went the coloured flowers that caught his eye, eating leaves and grass and staunching, with a strip torn from his ragged garments, a long gash in his forearm. He followed the road down to the plain, not knowing his whereabouts and resting often, for though pain and fatigue now seemed to him the natural condition of man, yet still it was one that he sought to ease as best he could. A band of wayfarers who overtook him threw him an old loaf, relieved to perceive that he was harmless, and this, when he had tried it, he remembered to be good to cat. He cut himself a staff which, as he went, tapped and rattled on the stones, for the cold of extreme shock was upon him all day. Such sleep as he had was broken, for he dreamed continually of things he could not entirely recall – of fire and a great river, of enslaved children crying and a shaggy, clawed beast as tall as a roof-tree.
How long did he wander, and who were they who gave him shelter and helped him? Again, they tell tales – of birds that brought him food, of bats that guided him at dusk and beasts of prey that did him no harm when he shared their lairs. These are legends, but perhaps they scarcely distort the truth that he, capable of nothing, was kept alive by what was given him unsought. Pity for distress is felt most easily when it is plain that the sufferer is not to be feared, and even while he remained armed, none could fear a man who limped his way upon a stick, gazing about him and smiling at the sun. Some, by his clothes, thought him to be a deserting soldier, but others said No, he must be some three-quarter-witted vagabond who had stolen a soldier's gear or perhaps, in his necessity, stripped the dead. Yet none harmed him or drove him away – no doubt because his frailty was so evident and few care to feel that denial on their part may hasten a man to his death. One or two, indeed, of those who suffered him to sleep in sheds or out-houses – like the gate-keeper's wife at the stronghold of S'marr Torruin, warden of the Foothills – tried to persuade him to rest longer and then perhaps find work; for the war had taken many. But though he smiled, or played a while with the children in the dust, he seemed to understand but little, and his well-wishers would shake their heads as at length he took his staff and went haltingly on his way. Eastward he went, as before, but each day only a few miles, for he sat much in the sun in lonely places and for the most part kept to less-frequented country along the edge of the hills; feeling that here, if at all, he might happen once more upon that mighty, half-remembered creature which, as it seemed to him, he had lost and with whose life his own was in some shadowy but all-important respect bound up. Of the sound of distant voices he was greatly afraid and seldom approached a village, though once he allowed a tipsy herdsman to lead him home, feed him and take from him, either in robbery or payment, his sword.
Perhaps he wandered for five days, or six. Longer it can hardly have been when one evening, coming slowly over a shoulder of the lower hills, he saw below him the roofs of Kabin – Kabin of the Waters – that pleasant, walled town with its fruit groves on the south-west and, nearer at hand on the north, the sinuous length of the reservoir running between two green spurs; the surface, wrinkling and sliding under the wind, suggesting some lithe animal caged behind the outfall dam with its complex of gates and sluices. The place was busy – he could see a deal of movement both within and outside the walls; and as he sat on the hillside, gazing down at a cluster of huts and smoke that filled the meadows outside the town, he became aware of a party of soldiers – some eight or nine -approaching through the trees.
At once he jumped to his feet and ran towards them, raising one hand in greeting and calling 'Wait! Wait!' They stopped, staring in surprise at the confidence of this tattered vagrant, and turning uncertainly towards their tryzatt, a fatherly veteran with a stupid, good-natured face, who looked as though, having risen as high as he was likely to get in the service, he was all for an easy life.
'What's this, then, tryze?' asked one, as Kelderek stopped before them and stood with folded arms, looking them up and down.
The tryzatt pushed back his leadier helmet and rubbed his forehead with one hand.
'Dunno,' he replied at length. 'Some beggar's trick, I suppose. Come on, now,' he said, laying one hand on Kelderek's shoulder, 'you'll get nothing here, so just muck off, there's a good lad.' Kelderek put the hand aside and faced him squarely.
'Soldiers,' he said firmly. 'A message – Bekla -' He paused, frowning as they gathered about him, and then spoke again.
'Soldiers – Senandril, Lord Shardik – Belda, message -' He stopped again. 'Havin' us on, ain't her' said another of the men.
'Don't seem that way, not just,' said the tryzatt. "Seems to know what he wants all right. 'More like he knows we don't know his language.' 'What language is it, then?' asked the man.
'That's Ortelgan,' said the first soldier, spitting in the dust, 'Something about his life and a message.'