where's my gang?'
'That is what I would very much like to know – where and how many. But I warn you that my men are alert and we will resist you to the death.' Kelderek sat down again.
'Sir, you must believe me – I am no slave-trader – I am a lord of Bekla. If we-'
The deep twilight outside was suddenly filled with clamour – men shouting, trampling hooves and the bellowing of terrified cattle. Women began to scream, doors banged and feet ran past on the track. The elder stood up as a man burst into the room.
'A beast, my lord! Like nothing ever seen – a gigantic beast that stands erect – three times the height of a man – smashed the bars of the big cattle-pen like sticks – the cattle have gone mad – they've stampeded into the plain! Oh, my lord, the devil – the devil's upon us!'
Without a word and without hesitation the elder walked past him and out through the door. Kelderek could hear him calling his men by name, his voice growing fainter as he made his way towards the cattle-pens on the edge of the village.
34 The Streets of Uriah
From the darkness of the plain beyond the village, Kelderek watched the turmoil as a man in a tree might look down upon a fight below. The example set by the elder had had little effect upon his peasants and no concerted action had been organized against Shardik. Some had barred their doors and plainly did not mean to stir out of them. Others had set out – or at least had shouted in loud voices that they were setting out – in an attempt to recover, by moonlight, as many of the cattle as they could find. A crowd of men with torches were jabbering round the well in the centre of the village, but showed no sign of moving away from it. A few had accompanied the elder to the pens and were doing what they could to repair the bars and prevent the remaining cattle from breaking down the walls. Once or twice, momentarily, Kelderek had seen the enormous outline of Shardik moving against the flickering torchlight as he wandered on the village outskirts. Evidently he had little fear of these flames, so similar to those to which he must have become accustomed during his long captivity. There seemed no likelihood whatever of the villagers attacking him.
When at last the half-moon emerged from behind clouds, not so much enabling him to sec for any distance as restoring his awareness of the great expanse of the misty plain, Kelderek realized that Shardik was gone. Drawing Kavass's short-sword and limping forward to an empty, broken pen, he came first upon the body of the beast which the bear had been devouring and then upon a trembling, abandoned calf, trapped by the hoof in a split post. During the past hour this helpless little creature had been closer to Shardik than any living being, human or animal. Kelderek freed the hoof, carried the calf bodily as far as the next pen and set it down near a man who, with his back turned, was leaning over the rails. No one took any notice of him and he stood for a few moments with one arm round the calf, which licked his hand as he steadied it on its feet. Then it ran from him and he turned away.
A confused shouting broke out in the distance and he made towards it. Where there was fear and clamour, the likelihood was that Shardik would not be far away. Soon three or four men passed him, running back towards the village. One was whimpering in panic and none stopped or spoke to him. They were hardly gone before he made out, in the moonlight, the shaggy blackness of Shardik. Possibly he had been pursuing them – perhaps they had come upon him unexpectedly – but Kelderek, sensing his mood and temper with the familiarity of long years, knew by nothing he could have named that the bear had been disturbed rather than roused to rage by these hinds. Despite the danger, his pride revolted against joining their flight. Was he not lord of Bekla, the Eye of God, the priest-king of Shardik? As the bear loomed closer in the moon-dim solitude he lay down prone, eyes closed, head buried in his arms, and waited.
Shardik came down upon him like a cart and oxen upon a dog asleep in the road. One paw touched him; he felt the claws and heard them rattle. The bear's breath was moist upon his neck and shoulders. Once more he felt the old elation and terror, a giddy transport as of one balanced above a huge drop on a mountain summit. This was the priest-king's mystery. Not Zelda, not Ged-la-Dan nor Elleroth Ban of Sarkid, could have lain thus and put their lives in the power of Lord Shardik. But now there was none to see and none to know. This was an act of devotion more truly between himself and Shardik than any which he had performed either on Ortelga or in the King's House at Bekla. 'Accept my life, Lord Shardik,' he prayed silently. 'Accept my life, for it is yours.' Then, suddenly, the thought occurred to him, 'What if it were to come now, the great disclosure which I sought so long in Bekla, Lord Shardik's revelation of the truth?' Might it not well be now, when he and Shardik were alone as never since that day when he had lain helpless before the leopard?
But how was he to recognize the secret and what was he to expect? How would it be imparted – as an inspiration to his inward mind, or by some outward sign? And would he then die, or be spared to make it known to mankind? If the price were his life, he thought, then so be it.
The huge head was bent low, sniffing at his side, the breeze was shut off, the air was still as under the leeward wall of a house. 'Let me die if it must be so,' he prayed. 'Let me die – the pain will be nothing -I shall step out into all knowledge, all truth.'
Then Shardik was moving away. Desperately, he prayed once more. 'A sign, Lord Shardik – O my lord, at the least vouchsafe some sign, some clue to the nature of your sacred truth!' The sound of the bear's low, growling breath became inaudible before its tread ceased to shake the ground beneath him. Then, as he still lay half-rapt in his trance of worship and supplication, there came to his ear the weeping of a child.
He got to his feet. A boy, perhaps seven or eight years old, was standing a short distance off, evidently lost and beside himself with fear. Perhaps he had been with the men until they ran from Shardik, leaving him alone to save himself as best he could. Kelderek, trembling and confused now with the passing of the ecstatic fit, stumbled across the ground towards him. Bending down, he put an arm round the boy's shoulder and pointed to the distant flames of the torches round the cattle-pens. The boy could hardly speak for his tears, but at last Kelderek made out the words, 'The devil-creature!'
'It's gone – gone,' said Kelderek. 'Go on, don't be frightened, you'll be safe enough! Run home as quick as you can! That's the way, over there!'
Then, like one picking up once more a heavy burden, he set out to follow Shardik by night across the plain.
Still northward the bear went – north and something to the west, as he could see by the stars. They moved across the sky all night, but nothing else moved or changed in that loneliness. There was only the light, steady wind, the thrip, thrip of the dry stalks round his ankles, and here and there a famdy-shining pool, at which he would kneel to drink. By first light, which crept into the sky as gradually and surely as illness steals upon the body, he was tired to exhaustion. When he crossed a slow-moving brook and then found his feet resting upon smooth, level stones, the meaning did not at first pierce his cloud of fatigue. He stopped and looked about him. The flat stones stretched away to right and left He had just waded the conduit that ran from the Kabin reservoir to Bekla, and was now standing on the paved road to the Gelt foothills. Early as it was, he looked into the distance in the faint hope of seeing some traveller – a merchant, perhaps, bound for the Caravan Market and the scales of Fleitil; an army contractor from a province, or an Ortelgan messenger returning from the country beyond Gelt -anyone who could carry word to Bekla. But in each direction there was no one to be seen; nor could he make out even a hut or the distant smoke of a wayfarers' encampment. For much of its length, as he knew, the road ran through frequented country; might he, perhaps, be near one of the camping-stations for drovers and caravans – a few huts, a well and a tumbledown shelter for cattle? No, he could see nothing of the kind. It was bad luck to have reached the road at such an hour and to have struck so lonely a stretch. Bad luck – or was it the cunning of Shardik to have kept away from the road until he sensed that he could cross it unseen? Already he was some distance beyond it and climbing the opposite slope. Soon he would be across the ridge and out of sight. Yet still Kelderek lingered, hobbling and peering one way and the other in his disappointment and frustration. Long after he had realized that, even if someone were now to appear in the distance, he could not hope both to speak with him and to recover the trail of the bear, he still remained upon the road, as though there were some part of his mind that knew well that never again would he set eyes upon this great artifact of the empire which he had conquered and ruled. At last, with a long, sighing groan, like one who, having looked for help in vain, cannot tell what will now befall, he set off for the
