Shardik

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 I 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. Round 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. Near by 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 towards 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. 'Where are we?' asked Kelderek. 'Shouter, where are we?*

'How the hell d'you expect me to know?' answered Shouter. 'Deserted village or something, in't it? No one been here for mucking years. What's it matter?' went on the boy, with choking violence, 'We're all good as dead now. Good as any other place to die, isn't it?'

'For me,' said Kelderek. 'It is for me. It's like another place I once knew – there was a pool, and trepsis -'

'He's gone,' said Radu. 'Yes, go and have a drink, Shara dear. I'll come over in a moment.'

'Are we going home soon?' asked the little girl. 'Said we'd go home, didn't you? I'm hungry, Radu. I'm hungry.'

'Going home soon, dear,' said Radu. 'Not tonight, but quite soon. Don't cry. Look, the big boys aren't crying. I'll look after you.'

Shara put her two hands on his forearm and looked up at him, her wan, dirty face grave amongst her matted hair.

'It's dark,' she said. 'Dad used to light a lamp. I think he did. 'When it got dark he used to light a lamp.'

'I remember the lamps,' said Radu 'I'm hungry too. It'll be all right in the end, I promise you.' 'Genshed's bad, isn't he? He hurts us. Will he go to Leg-by-Lee?'

Radu nodded, his finger to his lips. 'The soldiers are coming,' he whispered. 'The soldiers from Sarkid. They'll take us home. But that's a secret between you and me.'

'I feel bad,' she said. 'Feel ill. Want a drink.' She kissed his arm with dry lips and stumbled across to the pool.

'I've got to look after her,' said Radu. He passed his hand across his forehead and closed his eyes. 'Her father's one of our tenants, you know. Oh, I told you. I feel ill too. Is it a pestilence, do you think?*

'Radu,' said Kelderek, 'I'm going to die. I'm sure of that The pool and the trepsis – they're sent as a sign to me. Even if the soldiers come I shall still die, because they'll kill me.'

'Genshed,' said Radu, 'Genshed means to make sure of killing us. Or the devil that's using his body now – he means to kill us.'

'You're light-headed, Radu. Listen to me. There's something I need to ask you.*

'No, it's true about the devil. It's because I'm light-headed that I can see it If a man loves hell and does hell's work, then the devils take over his body before he dies. That's what our old gate-keeper told me once in Sarkid. I didn't know what he meant then, but I do now. Genshed's become a devil. He frightens me almost to death -the mere sight of him -1 believe he could kill me with fear if he set about it* Kelderek groped for his arm like a blind man.

'Radu, listen to me. I want to ask your forgiveness, and your father's, too, before I die.'

'My father's? But you don't know my father. You're as lightheaded as I am.'

'It's for you to forgive me in your father's name, and in Sarkid's name. I've been your father's greatest enemy. You never asked my name. My name is Kelderek of Ortelga, but you knew of me once as Crendrik.' ' Crendrik, the priest-king of Bekla?' 'Yes, I was once the king of Bekla. Never mind how I come to be here. It's God's justice, for it was I that brought the slave-trade back to Bekla and licensed the slave-dealers in return for money to pay for the war against Santil-ke-Erketlis. If it's true that death settles all debts and wrongs, then I beg you to forgive me. I'm no longer the man who committed those deeds.'

'Are we really to die, are you sure? There's no help for it?' It was a frightened, staring child who looked up at Kelderek in the last light.

'A/y time has come to die – I know that now. The Ikat soldiers would have killed me in Kabin, but your father stopped them. When he sent me across the Vrako, he told me that if ever they found me again they'd kill me. So I shall die, either at the soldiers' hands or at Genshed's.'

'If my father could forgive you then, Crendrik, I can forgive you now. Oh, what does it matter? That little girl's going to die! Genshed will kill her -I know it,' cried the boy, weeping.

Before Kelderek could answer, Genshed was standing over them, silent in the darkness. He snapped his fingers and they both climbed slowly to their feet, trembling and shrinking like beasts from a crud master. He was about to speak when Lalloc approached and he turned towards him, leaving them where they stood.

'You wouldn't have gotting moch for them, Gensh,' said Lalloc. 'So don't worry, no, no. Even I couldn't be guvving you moch for those. You'll lose vorry little, vorry little indeed.' 'I'm keeping these two by me, all the same,' answered Genshed.

'No good keep onny of 'em, Gensh, not now. You novcr gotting 'cm out and if we got caught with 'em, thot's it, eh? Hard enough we gotting out at all, but we got nothing to eat, Gensh, we got to try gotting out. We try to go across to Deelguy, other side, thot's all we gotting the chonce now.'

Genshed sat down on the broken wall, staring listlessly before him. Lalloc's rings clicked as he rubbed his hands nervously together.

'Gensh, we can't try tonight. Morning we try it; soon what it's light. You come inside over there, that one got a bit of roof on. We make a fire – won't show outside. Losten, Gensh, I got some drink – good, strong drink. We stay there, by and by it's morning, then we gotting across the river, eh?'

Genshed rose slowly to his feet and stood pressing the point of his knife against the ball of one finger and then another. At length he jerked his head towards Radu and said, 'I'm keeping him by me.'

'Well, jost what you say, Gensh, yoss, yoss, but he's no good to you now, none of them's any good to you now. Jost leave them, eh, we don't want them ony more, they don't got away anywhere in the dark, they're all worn out, fonish. Morning we gotting away.' 'I'm keeping him by me,' repeated Genshed.

Shara came slowly up to Radu, one arm held across her face. As she put her hand in the boy's, Genshed stared down at her, his eyes, like those of a snake, full of a cold, universal malevolence. Radu stooped to pick her up but, too weak to lift her, dropped on one knee and in doing so encountered Genshed's stare. He half-rose, apparently about to run, but as Genshed seized him by the pierced ear he gasped, 'No! No! I won't-'

'See, you're just a silly little boy, aren't you, Radu?' said Genshed, twisting slowly, so that Radu sank to his knees. 'Just a silly little boy, aren't you?' 'Yes.'

Genshed drew the point of his knife along Radu's eyelid but then, as though suddenly weary of what he had begun, thrust it back into the sheath, dragged him to his feet and led him away towards the ruined cottage where Lalloc was already kneeling and blowing his smouldering fire-pot into a flame. Shara tottered beside them, the sound of her weeping becoming inaudible as they entered the doorway. Left alone in the darkness, Kelderek sank down on the open ground; but later – how long afterwards he could not tell – crept on his hands and knees into the nearest hut; and here he fell asleep.