encumbered him, halted below the ridge, listening and watching the thicket where he had seen Shardik disappear among the trees. A little way to his left ran the wall, twenty feet high, the cloudy sky showing white here and there through the narrow loop-holes that overlooked the slope outside. On his right, a stream pattered down a rocky gully out of the thicket. It was the last place into which any man in his senses would follow a wounded bear.
He could hear nothing beyond the natural sounds of the mountainside. A buzzard, sailing sideways above him, gave its harsh, mewing cry and disappeared. A breeze rustled through the trees and died away. The unceasing water close by became at last the sound of the silence – that, and the noise still audible from the city below. Where was Shardik? He could not be far off, bounded as he was by the curve of the wall. Either he was already on the other side of the ridge and moving westwards towards the Red Gate, or else, which seemed more likely, he had taken refuge among the trees. If he were there now, he could hardly move away without being heard. There was nothing to be done but wait. Sooner or later one of the soldiers, searching, would come within earshot and could be sent back with a message.
Suddenly, from among the trees above, came sounds of splintering wood and the grinding and knocking of falling stones. Kelderek started. As he listened, there followed the same cry that he had heard across the cypress gardens by night – a loud growling of pain, utterable by none but Shardik. At this, trembling with fear and moving as in a trance, he stumbled his way up the track which the bear had already broken through the bushes and creepers, and peered into the half-light among the trees.
The grove was empty. At its eastern end, where the trees and bushes grew closely up to the sheer wall, was a ragged, irregular opening, bright with daylight. Approaching cautiously, he saw with astonishment that it was a broken doorway. Several lining-stones on both sides had been forced out of the jambs and lay tumbled about. The heavy wooden door, which opened outwards, must have been left open by one who had passed through, for there seemed to be no latch and the bolts were drawn. The upper hinge had been dragged from its setting in the jamb and the splintered door sagged, its lower corner embedded in the ground outside. The stone arch, though damaged, was still in place, but the downward-pointing, central cusp was covered with blood, like a weapon withdrawn from a wound. On the inner side of the doorway, just where a man might have stood to draw the bolts, Kelderek caught sight of something bright half-trodden into the ground. He stooped and picked it up. It was the golden stag emblem of Santil-ke-Erketlis, the pendant still threaded on the fine, snapped chain.
He stepped through the doorway. Below him, the mist was lifting from the great expanse of the Beklan plain – a shaggy, half-wild country, from which rose here and there the smoke of villages -stretching southward towards Lapan, east to Tonilda, northward to Kabin and the mountains of Gelt. A mile away, at the foot of the slope, plainly visible through the clearing air, ran the caravan road from Bekla to Ikat. Shardik, his back and shoulders covered with blood from the wound gored yet again by the cusp of the door, was descending the mountainside some two hundred feet below.
As he followed once more, picking his way and steadying himself with his hands against the crags, Kelderek began to realize how unfit he was for any long or arduous undertaking. Mollo, before he died, had stabbed or gashed him in half a dozen places and these half-healed wounds, which had been bearable enough as long as he kept his room, were now beginning to throb and to send sharp twinges of pain through his muscles. Once or twice he stumbled and almost lost his balance. Yet even when his uncertain feet sent dislodged stones rattling down the slope Shardik, below him, never once looked back or paid him any attention, but having reached the eastern foot of Crandor continued in the same direction. For fear of robbers, the scrub on either side of the caravan road had been roughly cut back to the length of almost a bowshot. This open place the bear crossed without hesitation and so entered upon the wilderness of the plain itself.
Kelderek, approaching the road, stopped and looked back at the eastern face he had descended. It puzzled him that, although so many travelled this road, he had never heard tell of the postern on the east ridge. The wall, he now perceived, ran by no means straight in its course and in the view from below was masked here and there by crags. The postern must lie – and had no doubt been deliberately sited – in some oblique angle of the wall, for he could not see it even now, when he knew whereabouts to look. As he turned to go on, wondering for what devious purpose it had been made and cursing the ill turn of fortune of which it had been the means, he caught sight of a man approaching up the road from the south. He waited: the man drew nearer and Kelderek saw that he was armed and carrying the red staff of an army courier. Here at last was the opportunity to send his news back to the city.
He now recognized the man as an Ortelgan a good deal older than himself, a certain master-fletcher formerly in the service of Ta-Kominion's family. That he should be on active service at his age was somewhat surprising, though in all probability it was at his own wish. In the old days on Ortelga the boys had altered his name, Kavass, to 'Old Kiss-me-arse', on account of the marked deference and respect with which he always treated his superiors. An excellent craftsman and an irritatingly child-like, simple and honest man, he had appeared to take a positive delight in asserting that those above him (whatever their origins) must know better than he and that faith and loyalty were a man's first duties. Now, recognizing the king, dishevelled and alone by the roadside, he at once raised his palm to his forehead and fell on one knee without the least show of surprise. He would no doubt have done so if he had come upon him festooned with trepsis and standing on his head.
Kelderek took his hand and raised him to his feet. 'You're old for a courier, Kavass,' he said. 'Wasn't there a younger man they could send?'
'Oh, I volunteered, my lord,' replied Kavass. 'These young fellows nowadays aren't so reliable as an older man, and when I set out there was no telling whether a courier would be able to get through to Bekla at all.' 'Where have you come from, then?'
'From Lapan, my lord. Our lot were detached on the right of General Ged-la-Dan's army, but it seems he had to march in a hurry and didn't stop to tell us where. So the captain, he says to me, 'Well, Kavass,' he says, 'since we've lost touch with General Ged-la-Dan, and seem to have an open flank on the left as far as I can tell, you'd better go and get us some orders from Bekla. Ask whether we're to stay here, or fall back, or what.' '
'Tell him from me to start marching towards Thettit-Tonilda. He should send another courier there at once to learn where General Ged-la-Dan is and get fresh orders. General Ged-la-Dan may have great need of him.' 'To Thettit-Tonilda? Very good, my lord.'
'Now listen, Kavass.' As simply as he could, Kelderek explained that both Shardik and an escaped enemy of Bekla were at large on the plain, and that searchers must be summoned at once, both to look for the fugitive and to take over from himself the task of following the bear.
'Very good, my lord,' said Kavass again. 'Where are they to come?' 'I shall follow Lord Shardik as best I can until they find me. I don't think he'll go either fast or far. No doubt I shall be able to send another message from some village.' 'Very good, my lord.'
'One other thing, Kavass. I'm afraid I must borrow your sword and whatever money you have. I may very well need them. I shall have to exchange clothes with you, too, like an old tale, and put on that jerkin and those breeches of yours. These robes are no good for hunting.'
'I'll take them back to the city, my lord. My goodness, they're going to wonder what I've been up to until I tell 'em I But don't you worry – you'll follow Lord Shardik all right. If only there were more that would simply trust him, my lord, as you and I do, and ask no questions, then the world would go right enough.'
'Yes, of course. Well – tell them to make haste,' said Kelderek, and at once set off into the plain. Already, he thought, he had delayed too long and might not easily recover sight of Shardik. Yet, thinking unconsciously in terms of the forest where he had learned his craft, he had forgotten that this was different country. Almost immediately he caught sight of the bear, a good half-mile to the north-east, moving as steadily as a traveller on a road. Except for the huts of a distant village, away to the right, the plain stretched empty as far as the eye could see.
Kelderek was in no doubt that he must continue to follow. In Shardik lay the whole power of Ortelga. If he were left to wander alone and unattended, it would be plain to the eyes of peasants -many no doubt still secretly hostile to their Ortelgan rulers – that something was wrong. News of his whereabouts might be falsified or concealed. Someone might wound him again or even, perhaps, succeed in killing him as he slept. It had been hard enough to trace him five years before, after the fall of Bekla and the retreat of Santil-ke-Erketlis. Despite his own pain and fatigue and the danger involved, it would in the long run be easier not to lose track of him now. Besides, Kavass was reliable and the searchers could hardly fail to find them both before nightfall. Weak though he was, he should be equal to that much.
