to mark the slow time from the wheeling stars.
When at last Zilthe started and laid a hand on his arm, he had heard nothing. He turned to meet her eyes and she stared back at him, holding her breath, her face half fire-lit, half in shadow. He too listened, but could hear only the flames, the fitful wind and a man coughing somewhere in the camp behind them. He shook his head but she nodded sharply, stood up and motioned him to follow her along the road. Watched by Neelith and Numiss they set off into the darkness, but had gone only a little way when she stopped, cupped her hands and called, 'Who's there?'
The reply, 'Nito!', was faint but clear enough. A few moments later Kelderek caught at last the girl's light tread and went forward to meet her. It was plain that in her haste and agitation she had fallen – perhaps more than once. She was begrimed, dishevelled and grazed across the knees and one forearm. Her breath came in sobs and they could see the tears on her cheeks. He called to Numiss and together they supported her as far as the fire.
The camp was astir. Somehow the men had guessed that news was at hand. Several were already waiting beside the cage and one spread his cloak for the girl across a pile of left-over planks, brought a pitcher and knelt down to wash her bleeding grazes. At the touch of the cold water she winced and, as though recalled to herself, began speaking to Kelderek.
'Shardik is lying insensible, my lord, not a bowshot from the road. He has been drugged with theltocarna – enough to kill a strong man. God knows when he will wake.' 'With theltocarna?' said Neelith, incredulously. 'But-'
Nito began to weep again. 'And Rantzay is dead – dead! Have you told Lord Kelderek how she spoke to Shardik beside the stream?' Zilthe nodded, staring aghast.
'When Shardik had passed her and gone, she stood for a time stricken, it seemed, as though, like a tree, she had called lightning down to her. Then we were alone, she and I, following the others as best we might. I could tell -I could tell that she meant to the, that she was determined to die. I tried to make her rest but she refused. It is not two hours since we returned at last to the edge of the forest All the girls could see her death upon her. It was drawn about her like a cloak. None could speak to her for pity and fear. After what we had seen by the stream at noon, any one of us would have died in her place; but it was as though she were already drifting away, as though she were on the water and we on the shore. We stood near her and she spoke to us, yet we were separated from her. She spoke and we were silent. Then, as she ordered, I gave her the box of theltocarna, and she walked up to Lord Shardik as though he were a sleeping ox. She cut him with a knife and mingled the theltocarna with his blood: and then, as he woke in anger, she stood before him yet again, with no more fear than she had shown at noon. And he clutched her, and so she died.' The girl looked about her. 'Where is the Tuginda?'
'Get the long ropes on the cage,' said Kelderek to Baltis, 'and set every man to draw it. Yes, and every woman too, except for those who carry torches. There is no time to be lost. Even now we may be too late to reach Lord Ta-Kominion.'
Less than three hours later the enormous bulk of Shardik, the head protected by a hood made from cloaks roughly stitched together, had been dragged with ropes down the slope and up a hastily-piled ramp of earth, stones and planks into the cage. The last bars had been hammered into place and the cage, hauled in front and pushed behind, was jolting and rocking slowly up the valley towards Gelt.
20 Gel-Ethlin
It could surely be no more than a day – two days at the most -thought Gel-Ethlin, to the breaking of the rains. For hours the thundery weather had been growing more and more oppressive, while rising gusts of warm wind set the dust swirling over the Beklan plain. Santil-ke-Erketlis, commander of the northern army of patrol, being taken sick with the heat, had left the column two days previously, returning to the capital by the direct road south and entrusting Gel-Ethlin, his second-in-command, with the task of completing the army's march to Kabin of the Waters, down through Tonilda and dience westward to Bekla itself. This would be a straightforward business – a fortification to be repaired here, a few taxes to be collected there, perhaps a dispute or two to be settled and, of course, the reports to be heard of local spies and agents. None of these matters was likely to be urgent and, since the army was already a day or two behind time for its return to Bekla, Santil-ke-Erketlis had told Gel-Ethlin to break off as soon as the rains began in earnest and take the most direct route back from wherever he happened to find himself.
'And high time too,' thought Gel-Ethlin, standing beside his command banner with the falcon emblem, to watch the column go past. 'They've marched enough. Half of them are in no sort of condition. The sooner they get back to rain-season quarters the better. If the stagnant water fever hit them now they'd go down in cursing rows.'
He looked northward, where the plain met the foothills rising to the steep, precipitous ridges above Gelt. The sky-line, dark and threatening, with cloud hiding the summits, appeared to Gel-Ethlin full of promise – the promise of early relief. With luck their business could be decently cut short in Kabin and one forced march, with the rains and the prospect of home-coming to spur them on, would see them safely in Bekla within a couple of days.
The two Beklan armies of patrol – the northern and the southern -customarily remained in the field throughout the summer, when the risk was greatest of rebellion or, conceivably, of attack from a neighbouring country. Each army completed, twice, a roughly semicircular march of about two hundred miles along the frontiers. Sometimes detachments saw action against bandits or raiders, and occasionally the force might be ordered to make a punitive raid across a border, to demonstrate that Bekla had teeth and could bite. But for the most part it was routine stuff – training and manoeuvres, intelligence work, tax collection, escorting envoys or trade caravans, road and bridge mending; and most important of all, simply letting themselves be seen by those who feared them only less than they feared invasion and anarchy. Upon the onset of the rains, the northern army returned to winter in Bekla, while the southern took up its quarters in Ikat Yeldashay, sixty miles to the south. The following summer the roles of the armies were reversed.
No doubt the southern army was already back in Ikat, thought Gel-Ethlin enviously. The southern army had the easier task of the two; their route of march was less exhausting and the dry season was less trying a hundred miles to the south. Nor was it only a question of work and conditions. Although Bekla was, of course, a city beyond compare, he himself had found, last winter, an excellent reason – in fact, for a soldier, a most time-honoured and attractive (if somewhat expensive) reason – for preferring Ikat Yeldashay.
The Tonildan contingent, a particularly sorry-looking lot, were marching past now, and Gel-Ethlin called their captain out to explain why the men looked dirty and their weapons ill-cared for. The captain began his explanation – something about having had the command wished on him two days ago in place of an officer ordered to return with Santil-ke-Erketlis – and while he continued Gel-Ethlin, as was often his way, looked him sternly in the eye while thinking about something completely different.
At least this summer they had not had to go trapesing over the hills of Gelt and into the backwoods. Once, several years ago, when he was still a junior commander, he had served on an expedition to the south bank of the Telthearna; and a dismal, uncomfortable business it had been, camping among the gloomy forests, or commandeering flea-ridden quarters from some half-savage tribe of islanders living like frogs in the river mists. Fortunately the practice of sending Beklan troops as far as the Telthearna had almost ceased since their intelligence reports from the island – what the devil was it called? Itilga? Catalga? – had become so regular and reliable. One of the less ape-like barons was secretly in the pay of Bekla and apparently the High Baron himself was not averse to a little diplomatic bribery, provided a show was made of respecting his dignity and position, such as they were. During the recent summer marches Santil-ke-Erketlis had received two reports from this place. The first, duly passed on to headquarters at Bekla, had resulted in instructions being returned to the army that once again there was no need to send troops into inhospitable country so far afield. It had, in fact, contained nothing worse than news of an exceptionally widespread forest fire that had laid waste the further bank of the Telthearna. The second report had included some tale of a new tribal cult which it was feared might boil over into fanaticism, though the High Baron seemed confident of keeping it under control. Bekla's reactions to the second report had not yet found their way back to the northern army, but anyway, thank God, it was now too late in the season to think of sending even a patrol over the hills of Gelt. The rains were coming any day – any hour.
The officer had finished speaking and was now looking at him in silence. Gel-Ethlin frowned, gave a
