Rantzay turned and stooped for the box beside her. Taking out two of the little, oiled bladders, she placed them between the fingertips of her left hand. Then she drove the point of the knife into the bear's shoulder and drew the blade back towards her, opening a gash half as long as her own forearm. Smoothly, without a pause, she pushed the bladders into it, drew the edges of the incision over them, pressed downwards and felt them crush inside.
With a snarl, Shardik threw back his head and rose upon his hind legs. Rantzay, flung to the ground, got up and stood facing him. For a moment it seemed that he would strike her down. Then, lurching forward, he crushed her against his body. A few steps he carried her, hanging grotesquely in his grip. Then, letting her drop, limp as an old garment fallen from a line, he staggered out to the open slope beyond the trees. He rolled on the ground and froth flew from his mouth as he bit and tore at the grass.
Sheldra was the first to reach the priestess. Her left hand had been gashed by her own knife, her tongue protruded and her head lay grotesquely upon her shoulder, like that of a hanged man. When Sheldra put one arm beneath her and tried to raise her a terrible, crackling sound came from the broken body. The girl laid her back and for a moment she opened her eyes. 'Tell the Tuginda – did what she said -'
Blood gushed from her mouth and when it ceased her gaunt, bony body vibrated very lightly, like the surface of a pool fluttered by the wings of a trapped fly. The movement ceased and Sheldra, perceiving that she was dead, drew off her wooden rings, picked up the box of theltocarna and the fallen knife and made her way out to the slope where Shardik lay insensible.
19 Night Messengers
The cage had taken all day to complete – if complete it were. On hearing his orders Baltis, the master smith, had shrugged his shoulders, making light of Kelderek, whom he had heard of as a simple young fellow with neither family, wealth nor craft – for in his eyes hunters were not craftsmen. He and his men, being armed with excellent weapons of their own making, had supposed that they were about to play their part in the sack of Bekla – or at any rate the sack of Gelt – and took it ill to be called out of the march and put back on their accustomed work. Kelderek, having tried in vain to bring home to the great, lumbering fellow the vital importance of what he had to do, went back to Ta-Kominion, catching him just as he was about to set out with the advance guard. Ta-Kominion, cursing with impatience, summoned Baltis to him under the tree which bore the body of Fassel-Hasta and promised him that if the cage were not complete by nightfall he should hang like the baron. This was talk that Baltis could understand clearly enough, and he immediately asked for double the number of men he expected to get Ta- Kominion, being in too much haste to argue, allowed him fifty, including two rope-makers, three wheelwrights and five carpenters. As the army wound away up the valley in the thickening, sultry morning, Kelderek and Baltis fell to their work.
Messengers were sent back to Ortelga and before midday all the stored fuel on the island, much of its stock of sawn timber and every piece of forged iron had been carried up to the camp by women and boys. The iron was of different lengths and thicknesses, much of it too short to be of use except as pieces for welding. Baltis set his men to make three axles and as many iron bars as possible, the latter to be of equal length and thickness, pointed and pierced at both ends. Meanwhile the carpenters and wheelwrights, using seasoned wood, some of which had until that morning formed part of the walls, roofs and tables of Ortelga, built a heavy platform of strutted planks, which they raised with levers and mounted upon six spokeless wheels, solid wood to the rims.
By evening Baltis' men had forged, welded or cut sixty bars -disparate, rough-edged things, yet serviceable enough to be driven point-first through the holes drilled round the edges of the platform and then secured with iron pins.
'The roof will have to be wooden too,' said Baltis, looking at the poles sticking up out of the planks and pointing this way and that like a bed of reeds. 'There's no more iron, young man, and none to be had, so no use to fret over it.'
'A wooden roof will shake to pieces,' said the master-carpenter. 'It'll not hold the bear, not if he goes to break it'
'It's not work to be done in a day,' growled Baltis. 'No, not in three days. A cage to hold a bear? I was the first to see Lord Shardik come ashore yesterday morning, barring that poor devil Lukon and his mate -'
'How's the bear to be brought to the cage?' interrupted the carpenter. 'Ah, that's more than we know
'You are here to obey Lord Ta-Kominion,' said Kelderek. 'It is the will of God that Lord Shardik is to conquer Bekla; and that you will see with your own eyes. Make the roof of wood if it must be so, and bind the whole cage round with rope, twisted tight'
The work was finished at last by torchlight and Kelderek, when he had dismissed the men to cat, remained alone with Sheldra and Neelith, peering and probing, kicking at the wheels, fingering the axle-pins and finally testing each of the six bars set aside to close the still open end.
'How is he to be released, my lord?' asked Neelith. 'Is there to be no door?'
'The time is too short to make a door,' answered Kelderek. 'When the hour comes to release him, we shall be shown the way.'
'He must be kept drugged, my lord, as long as possible,' said Sheldra, 'for neither that nor any other cage will hold Lord Shardik if he is minded otherwise.'
'I know it,' said Kelderek. 'We might as well have made a cart to put him in. If only we knew where he is -'
He broke off as Zilthe came limping into the torchlight, raised her palm to her forehead and at once sank to the ground.
'Forgive me, lord,' she said, drawing her bow from her shoulder and laying it beside her. 'We have been following Lord Shardik all day and I am exhausted – with fear even more than with fatigue. He went far -' 'Where is he?' interrupted Kelderek.
'My lord, he is sleeping on the edge of the forest, not an hour from here.'
'God be praised!' cried Kelderek, clapping his hands together. 'I knew it was His will!'
'It was Rantzay, my lord, who brought him back,' said the girl, staring up at Kelderek as though even now afraid. 'We came upon him at noon, fishing in a stream. He lay down near the bank and we dared not approach him. But after a long time, when it seemed that there was nothing to be done, Rantzay, without telling us what she intended, suddenly stood up and went out into the open where Lord Shardik could sec her. She called him. My lord, as I live, she called him and he came to her! We all fled in terror, but she spoke to him in a strange and dreadful voice, rebuking him and telling him to return, for he should never have come so far, she said. And Shardik obeyed her, my lord! He passed by her, where she stood. He made his way back at her command.'
'God's will indeed,' said Kelderek with awe, 'and all that we have done is right. Where is Rantzay now?'
'I do not know, my lord,' said Zilthd, almost weeping. 'Nito told us we were to follow Lord Shardik and that Rantzay would overtake us. But she did not, and it is many hours now since we last saw her.'
Kelderek was about to send Sheldra up the valley when a challenge and answer sounded from further along the road. After a pause they heard footsteps and Numiss appeared. He, too, was exhausted; and did not ask Kelderek for leave to sit before flinging himself to the ground.
'I've come from beyond Gelt,' he said. 'We took Gelt easy – set it on fire – not much fighting but we killed the chief and after that the rest of 'em were willing enough to do what Lord Ta-Kominion told 'em. He talked to some of 'cm alone and I dare say he asked them what they knew about Bekla – how to get there and all the rest of it. Anyway, whatever it was -'
'If he gave you a message, tell me that,' said Kelderek sharply. 'Never mind what you heard or suppose.'
'This is the message, sir. 'I expect to fight the day after tomorrow. The rains can be no later and now the hours are more precious than stars. Bring Lord Shardik no matter what the cost.' '
Kelderek jumped up and began pacing to and fro beside the cage, biting his lip and smidng his clenched fist into his palm. At length, recovering himself, he told Sheldra to go and find Rantzay and, if Shardik had been drugged, to bring back word at once. Then, fetching some brands to start a fire, he sat down by the cage, with Numiss and the two girls, to wait for news. None spoke, but every now and again Kelderek would look up, frowning,
