Shardik

She felt Anthred clutch at her arm, but pushed her aside. The windless, moonless darkness was thick about them: only the sky retained a faint trace of light. Something was approaching, splashing slowly and heavily towards the shore. A huge, black shape loomed above her, its lowered head turning from side to side, the mouth open, the breath foetid and rank. She faced it imperiously. Once she and it had gone their several ways, then – ah! then she would return with Anthred to find her girlhood, to turn its course away from Quiso for ever. She raised her arm and was about to speak again, but the presence, with a soft, shaggy slapping of wet feet on the shore, passed by her and was gone into the wooded island.

There was a blinding light and a noise of scolding birds. Rantzay looked about her in bewilderment. She was standing knee-deep in the dry, tawny grass. The sun was thinly covered with a fleece of cloud and suddenly a long, distant roll of thunder ran round the edge of the sky. Some insect had stung her on the neck and her fingers, as she drew them across the place, came away smeared with blood. She was alone. Anthred was dead and she herself was standing in the dried-up, bitter forest south of the Telthearna. The tears flowed silently down her haggard, dusty face as she bent forward, supporting herself upon her staff.

After a few moments she bit hard upon her hand, drew herself up and gazed about her. Some distance away, Nito looked out from among the trees and then approached, staring at her incredulously.

'Madam – what – the bear – what have you done? Are you unharmed? Wait – lean on me. I – oh, I was afraid – I am so much afraid -' 'The bear?' said Rantzay. 'Where is the bear?'

As she spoke, she noticed for the first time a broad path flattened through the grass beside her and on it, here and there, the tracks of Shardik, broader than roof-tiles. She bent down. The smell of the bear was plain. It could have passed only since she had last seen it among the hemlocks. Dazed, she raised her hands to her face and was about to ask Nito what had happened, when she became conscious of yet one more bodily affliction. Her tears fell again – tears of shame and degradation.

'Nito, I – I am going down to the stream. Go and tell the girls to follow Lord Shardik at once. Then wait for me here. You and I will overtake them.'

In the water she stripped and washed her body and fouled clothes as well as she could. On Quiso it had been easier; often Anthred had been able to perceive when one of her fits was coming on and had contrived to help her to save her dignity and authority. Now there was not one of the girls whom she could think of as her friend. Looking back, she caught a glimpse of Nito loitering discreetly among the trees. She would know what had happened, of course, and tell others.

They must not be too long in catching up. Left to themselves the girls would not be steady, and if by some incredible stroke of fortune Shardik were indeed to return whence he had come, nevertheless without herself they could not be relied upon to do their utmost -to death if necessary – to carry out the Tuginda's instructions.

She and Nito had not gone far when she realized that the fit had left her dulled and stupefied. She longed to rest Perhaps, she thought Shardik would stop or turn aside before the evening, and Lord Kelderek would be forced to allow them another day. But each time they came up with one or other of the girls waiting to show them the direction, the news was that the bear was still wandering slowly south-eastward, as though making for the hill- country below Gelt

Evening came on. Rantzay's pace had become a limping hobble from one tree-trunk to the next; yet still she exhorted Nito to keep her eyes open, to make sure of the right way forward and to call from time to time in hope of hearing a reply from ahead. Vaguely, she was aware of twilight, of the fall of darkness and later of moonlight among the trees; of intermittent thunder, far off, and of swift momentary gusts of wind. Once she saw Anthred standing among the trees and was about to speak to her when her friend smiled, laid a ringed finger to her lips and disappeared.

At last in clear moonlight at some mid hour of the night she looked about her and realized that she had caught up with the girls. They were standing close together, in a whispering group; but as she approached, leaning on Nito's arm, they all turned towards her and fell silent To her their silence seemed full of dislike and resentment. If she had hoped for comradeship or sympathy at the end of this bitter journey, she was clearly to be disappointed. Handing her staff to Nito she drew herself up, almost crying out as she put her full weight upon the broken-blistered soles of her feet 'Where is Lord Shardik?*

'Close at hand, madam – not a bowshot away. He has been sleeping since moonrise.'

'Who is that?' said Rantzay, peering. 'Sheldra? I thought you were with Lord Kelderek. How do you come to be here? Where are we?'

'We are a little higher up the valley that you left this morning, madam, and on the edge of the forest. Zilthe came down to the camp to tell Lord Kelderek that Shardik had returned, but she was exhausted, so he sent me back instead of her. He says that Lord Shardik must be drugged tonight.' 'Has any attempt been made to drug him?' No one replied. 'Well?'

'We have done all we could, madam,' said another of the girls. 'We prepared two haunches of meat with tessik and placed them as close to him as we dared, but he would not touch them. There is no more tessik. We can only wait until he wakes.'

'Before I left Lord Kelderek, madam,' said Sheldra, 'a messenger arrived from Gelt, from Lord Ta-Kominion. He sent word that he expected to fight the day after tomorrow and that Shardik must come no matter what the cost. His words were, 'The hours now are more precious than stars.' '

From the hills to southward the lightning flickered between the trees. Rantzay limped the few yards to the edge of the forest and looked out across the valley. The sound of the brook below wavered on the air. Away to her left she could see the fires of the camp where the Tuginda and Kelderek must at this moment be waiting for news. She thought of the black shape that had passed her in the noon-day night, through the watery shallows of the grass; and of Anthred smiling among the trees, her hands adorned with the plaited rings that she herself had burned by the shore. These signs were clear enough. The situation was, in fact, a simple one. All that was required was a priestess who knew her duty and was capable of carrying it out with resolution.

She returned to the girls. They drew back from her, staring silently in the dimness. 'You say Lord Shardik is close at hand. Where?'

Someone pointed. 'Go and make sure that he is still sleeping,* said Rantzay. 'You should not have left him unwatched. You are all to blame.' 'Madam -'

'Be silent!' said Rantzay. 'Nito, bring me the box of theltocarna.'

She drew her knife and tested it. The sharp edge sliced lightly through a leaf held between her finger and thumb, while the point, with the least pressure upon it, almost pierced the skin of her wrist. Nito was standing before her with the wooden box. Rantzay stared coldly down at the girl's trembling fingers and then at the knife held motionless in her own steady hand. 'Come with me. You too, Sheldra.' She took the box.

She remembered the last time that she and Anthred had walked through fire, in the courtyard of the Upper Temple, on the night when they had led Kelderek to the Bridge of the Suppliants. There was an unreality about the memory, as though it were not hers but some other woman's. The night-sounds seemed magnified about her. The dry forest echoed through caves of dripping water and her body felt like a mass of hot sand. These were symptoms she recognized. She would need to be quick. Her fear was somewhere behind her, searching for her, overtaking her among the trees.

The bear was stretched on its side in a thicket of cenchulada saplings, two of which he had pushed down and snapped in making a place to sleep. A few feet away lay one of the haunches of meat. Whoever had put it there had not lacked courage. The huge mass of the body was dappled with moonlight and leaf-shadows. The shaggy flank, rising and falling in sleep and overlaid with the speckled, moving light, appeared like a dark plain of grass. Before the half-open, breathing mouth the leaves on one of the broken branches sdrred and glistened. The claws of one extended fore-paw were curved upward. Rantzay stood a few moments, gazing as though at a deep, swift river into which she must now plunge and drown. Then, motioning the girls away, she stepped forward.

She was standing against the ridge of Shardik's back, looking over his body, as though from behind an earthwork, at the restless, wind-moved forest. The thunder muttered in the hills and Shardik stirred, twitched one ear and then once more lay still.

Rantzay thrust her left hand deep into the pelt. She could not lay bare the skin and began cutting away the oily hair, matted and full of parasites as a sheep's fleece. Her own hands were trembling now and she worked faster, lifting each handful carefully, cutdng and then drawing it away from under the sharp knife.

Soon she had cut a wide, bristling patch across the shoulder, almost baring the grey, salt-flaked skin. Two or three veins ran across it, one thick enough to reveal the slow beating of the pulse.