Shardik

Bel-ka-Trazet turned on him with a cold rage so terrible that the hunter's words froze on his lips.

'You dare to lay your hands on me!' whispered the Baron through his teeth. 'Give me that knife!'

Confronted, for the second time, by the anger and authority of the High Baron of Ortelga, Kelderek actually staggered, as though he had been struck. To himself, a man of no rank or position, obedience to authority was almost second nature. He dropped his eyes, shuffled his feet and began to mutter unintelligibly. 'Give me that knife,' repeated Bel-ka-Trazet quietly.

Suddenly Kelderek turned and fled. Clutching the knife, he stumbled through the pool and clambered to the top of the bank. Looking back, he saw that Bel-ka-Trazet was not pursuing him, but had lifted a heavy rock in both hands and was standing beside the bear, holding it above his head.

With a hysterical feeling like that of a man leaping for his life from a high place, Kelderek picked up a stone and threw it. It struck Bel-ka-Trazet on the back of the neck. As he flung back his head and sank to his knees, the rock slipped from between his hands and fell across the calf of his right leg. For a few moments he knelt quite still, head thrown upwards and mouth gaping wide; then, without haste, he released his leg, stood up and looked at Kelderek with an air of purposeful intent more frightening even than his anger.

The hunter knew that if he were not himself to die, he must now go down and kill Bel-ka-Trazet – and that he could not do it. With a low cry he raised his hands to his face and ran blindly up the course of the brook.

He had gone perhaps fifty yards when someone gripped his arm. 'Kelderek,' said the Tuginda's voice, 'what has happened?'

Unable to answer, bemused as the bear itself, he could only point, with a shaking arm, back towards the fall. At once she hastened away, followed by Sheldra and four or five of the girls carrying their bows.

He listened, but could hear nothing. Still full of fear and irresolution, he wondered whether he might yet escape Bel-ka-Trazet by hiding in the forest and later, somehow, contriving to cross to the mainland. He was about to resume his flight when suddenly it occurred to him that he was no longer alone and defenceless against the Baron, as he had been three days before. He was the messenger of Shardik, the bringer of God's tidings to Quiso. Certainly the Tuginda, if she knew what had been attempted and prevented by the pool that morning, would never stand by and allow Bel-ka-Trazet to kill him.

'We are the Vessels, she and I,' he thought. 'She will save me. Shardik himself will save me; not for love, or because I have done him any service, but simply because he has need of me and dicrefore it is ordained that I am to live. God is to shatter the Vessels to fragments and Himself fashion them again to His purpose. Whatever that may mean, it cannot mean my death at the hands of Bel-ka-Trazet.'

He rose to his feet, splashed through the brook and made his way back to the fall. Below him the High Baron, leaning on his staff, was deep in talk with the Tuginda. Neither looked up as he appeared above them. One of the girls had stripped herself to the waist and, on her knees, was staunching with her own garments the flow of blood from the bear's opened wound. The rest were standing together a little distance away, silent and watchful as cattle round a gate.

'Well, I have done what I could, saiyett,' said the Baron grimly. 'Yes, if I could I would have killed your bear sure enough, but it was not to be.' 'That in itself should make you think again,' she answered.

'What I think of this business will not change,' said he. 'I do not know what you intend, saiyett, but I will tell you what I intend. The fire has brought a large bear to this island. Bears are mischievous, dangerous creatures, and people who think otherwise come to loss and harm through them. As long as it remains in this lonely place, to risk lives is not worthwhile, but if it moves down the island and begins to plague Ortelga, I promise you I will have it killed.'

'And I intend nothing but to wait upon the will of God,' replied the Tuginda.

Bel-ka-Trazet shrugged again. 'I only hope the will of God will not turn out to be your own death, saiyett. But now that you know what I intended, perhaps you have it in mind to tell your women to put me to death? Certainly I am in your power.'

'Since I have no plans and you have been prevented from killing Lord Shardik, you are doing us no harm.' She turned away with an air of indifference, but he strode after her.

'Then two things more, saiyett. First, since I am to live, perhaps you will permit me now to return to Ortelga. If you will give me a canoe, I will see that it returns to you. Then, as for the hunter fellow, I have already told you what he has just done. He is my subject, not yours. I trust you will not hinder me from finding and killing him.'

'I am sending two of the girls to Quiso with a canoe. They will put you off at Ortelga. I cannot spare the hunter. He is necessary to me.'

With this the Tuginda walked away and began speaking to the girls with complete absorption, pointing first up the slope and then down towards the river as she gave her instructions. For a moment, the Baron seemed about to follow her again. Then he shrugged his shoulders, turned and climbed the bank, passed Kelderek without a glance and walked on in the direction of the camp. He was suppressing a limp and his terrible face appeared so grey and haggard that Kelderek, who had been preparing to defend himself as best he could, trembled and averted his eyes as though from some fearful apparition. 'He is afraid!' he thought, 'He knows now that he cannot prevail against Lord Shardik, and he is afraid!'

Suddenly he sprang forward, calling, 'My lord! O my lord, forgive me!' But the Baron, as though he had heard nothing, stalked on and Kelderek stood looking after him – at the livid bruise across the back of his neck and the heavy, black pelt swinging from side to side above the grass. He never saw Bel-ka-Trazet again.

13 The Singing

All that day Shardik lay beside the brook, shaded, as the sun crossed the meridian, by the bank above and the boughs of the melikon. The two girls who had been watching in the pit during the night had acted prudently enough when the bear first struggled to its feet and wandered up the slope. At first they had thought that it was too weak to reach the top, but when it had actually done so and then, though almost exhausted, had begun to make its way downhill towards the brook, the older girl, Muni, had followed it, while her comrade went to wake the Tuginda. In fact, Muni had been only a short distance away when Shardik collapsed beside the pool, but had not seen Kelderek in her haste to return and bring the Tuginda to the place.

The girls sent to Quiso were back before midnight, for without the long detour across the river their upstream journey was much shorter than the first. They brought fresh supplies of the cleansing ointment, together with other medicines and a herbal narcotic. This the Tuginda immediately administered to the bear herself, soaked in thin segments of tendriona. For some hours the drug had little effect, but by morning Shardik was sleeping heavily and did not stir while the burns were cleaned once more.

On the afternoon of the following day, as Kelderek was returning from the forest, where he had been setting snares, he came upon Sheldra standing on the open grass a little way from the camp. Following her gaze he saw, some distance off, the figure of an unusually tall woman, cloaked and cowled, striding up the slope beside the brook. He recognized her as the lantern-bearer whom he had met by night upon the shore of Quiso. Still further away, by the river, six or seven other women were evidently setting out for the camp, each carrying a load. 'Who is that?' asked Kelderek, pointing.

'Rantzay,' replied Sheldra, without turning her eyes towards him.

There was still not one of the girls with whom Kelderek felt at case. Even among themselves they spoke little, using words as they used knives or thread, simply as a means to complete their tasks. There was no contempt for him, however, in their sombre reticence, which in fact he found daunting for precisely the opposite reason – because it suggested respect and seemed to confer upon him a dignity, even an authority, to which he was unused. They saw him, not as the girls in Ortelga saw a young man but, as they saw everything else, in the light of the cult to which their lives were devoted. Their manner showed that they felt him to be a person of importance, the one who had first seen and recognized Lord Shardik and had then come, at the risk of his. life, to bring the news to the Tuginda. Sheldra's present reply was not intended contemptuously. She had answered him as briefly as she would have answered any of her companions and had even, perhaps, forgotten that he, unlike them, did not know the island priestesses by name. She felt it an omission rather than a slight that she should in effect have told him nothing. She had not used as many words as were necessary for informing him, just as she might (though practical and competent) have put too little water in a pail or not enough wood on the fire. Sure of this at