that servant is capable of sincerity, even, perhaps, of courage and self-denial; so Elleroth, hating Shardik, had known that Kelderek, whatever gleams of hope fortune might tempt him with, would be unable to separate his own fate from that of the bear. And this was why, since he also knew – or supposed that he knew, thought Kelderek with a sudden spurt of forlorn defiance – that Shardik was dying, he had seen no harm in sparing the priest-king's life. But why had he actually gone about to impose his will in this matter upon those surrounding him? Could it be, Kelderek wondered, that he himself had become visibly marked with some sign, perceptible to such as Elleroth, of being accursed, of having passed through merited sufferings to a final inviolability in which he was now to remain, to await the retribution of God? At this thought, shuffling slowly on through the solitude, he sighed and muttered under the burden of his misery, for all the world like some demented old woman in a desolated town, bearing in her arms the weight of a dead child.
Even in this notorious no-man's land he had not expected so complete an emptiness. All day he met never a soul, heard no voice, saw no smoke. As afternoon turned to evening he realized that he would be forced to pass the night without shelter. In the old days, as a hunter, he had sometimes spent nights in the forest, but seldom alone and never without fire or weapons. To send him across the Vrako without even a knife and with no means of making a fire – had this perhaps been intended, after all, as nothing but a cruel way of putting him to death? And Shardik – whom he would never find – was Shardik already dead? Sitting with his head in his hands, he passed into a kind of waking oblivion that was not sleep, but rather the exhaustion of a mind unable any longer to grip thought, slipping and sliding like wheels in the mud of the rains.
When at last he lifted his head he at once caught sight, among the bushes close by, of an object so familiar that, although it had been carefully concealed, he felt surprise not to have noticed it earlier. It was a trap – a wooden block-fall such as he himself had often set in days gone by- It was baited with carrion and dried fruit, but these had not been touched and the trip-peg was still supporting the block.
The evening wanted no more than two hours to nightfall and, as well he knew, those who leave traps unvisited overnight are apt to find the next day that scavenging beasts have reached them first. He scratched out his footprints with a broken branch, climbed a tree and waited.
In less than an hour he heard the sounds of someone approaching. The man who appeared was dark, thick- set and shaggy-haired, dressed partly in skins and partly in old, ragged garments. A knife and two or three arrows were stuck in his belt and he was carrying a bow. He bent down, peered at the trap under the bushes and was already turning away when Kelderek called to him. At this he started, drew his knife in a flash and vanished into the undergrowth. Kelderek realized that if he were not to lose him altogether he must take a risk. He scrambled to the ground, calling, 'I beg you, don't go! I need help.'
'What you want, then?' answered the man, invisible among the trees.
'Shelter – advice too. I'm a fugitive, exile – whatever you like. I'm in trouble.' 'Who isn't? You're this side the Vrako, aren't you?'
'I'm unarmed. Look for yourself.' He threw down the pack, raised his arms and turned one way and the other.
'Unarmed? Then you're mad.' The man stepped out from the bushes and came up to him. He was indeed a ruflian of frightening appearance, swarthy and scowling, with a yellow, mucous discharge of the eyes and a scar from mouth to neck which reminded Kelderek of Bel-ka-Trazet.
'I'm in no state to play tricks or drive a bargain,' said Kelderek. 'This pack's full of food and nothing else. Take it and give me shelter for tonight.'
The man picked up the pack, opened and looked into it, tossed it back to Kelderek and nodded. Then, turning, he set off in the direction from which he had come. After a time he said, 'No one after you?' 'Not since the Vrako.'
They walked on in silence. Kelderek was struck by the complete absence of that friendly curiosity which usually finds a place in strangers' meetings. If the man wondered who he was, whence he had come and why, he evidently did not intend to ask; and there was that about him which made Kelderek think better of putting any questions on his own account. This, he realized, must be the nature of acquaintance in this country of shame for the past and hopelessness for the future – the courtesy of the prison and the madhouse. However, some kinds of question were apparently permissible, for after a time the man jerked out, 'Thought what you're going to do?' 'Not yet – die, I dare say.'
The man looked sharply at him and Kelderek realized that he had spoken amiss. Here men were like beasts at bay – defiant until they were torn to pieces. The whole country, like a brigands' cave, was divided into bullies and victims – the last place in which to speak of death, whether in jest or acceptance. Confused, and too weary to dissimulate, he said,
'I was joking. I've got a purpose, though I dare say that to you it may seem a strange one. I'm looking for a bear that's believed to be in these parts. If I could find it-'
He stopped, for the man, his mouth and jaw thrust forward, was staring at him from his oozing eyes with a mixture of fear and rage – the rage of one who attacks whatever he does not understand. He said nothing, however, and after a moment Kelderek stammered, 'It – it's the truth. I'm not trying to make a fool of you-' 'Better not,' answered the man. 'So you're not alone, then?' 'I've never been more alone in my life.'
The man drew his knife, seized him by the wrist and forced him to his knees. Kelderek looked up into the snarling, violent face.
'What's this about the bear, then? What you up to – what you know about the other one – the woman, eh?' 'What other one? For God's sake, I don't know what you mean!' 'Don't know what I mean?'
Panting, Kelderek shook his head and after a moment the man released him.
'Better come and see, then: better come and see. You mind now, I don't take to tricks.'
They went on again, the man still clutching his knife and Kelderek half minded to run from him into the woods. Only his exhaustion held him back, for the man would probably pursue, overtake and perhaps kill him. They crossed a ridge and descended steeply towards a dreary, stagnant creek. Smoke hung in the trees. A patch of ground along the shore, cleared after a fashion, was littered with bones, feathers and other rubbish. At one side, too near the water, stood a lop-sided, chimneyless hovel of poles, branches and mud. There were clouds of flies. Three or four skins were pegged out to dry, and some black birds – crows or rooks – were huddled in a wooden pen on the marshy ground. The place, like a song out of tune, seemed an offence against the world, for which the only possible remedy was obliteration.
The man again grasped Kelderek's wrist and half-led, half-dragged him towards the hut. A curtain of dusty skins hung across the entrance. The man jerked his head and gestured with his knife but Kelderek, stupid with fatigue, fear and disgust, did not understand that he was to enter first. The man, seizing his shoulder, pushed him so that he stumbled against the curtain. He pulled it aside, ducked his head and went in.
The walls surrounded a single, evil-smelling space, at the further end of which a fire was smouldering. There was little light, for apart from the curtained door and a hole in the roof, through which some of the smoke escaped, there was no opening; at the further end, however, he made out a human shape, wrapped in a cloak and sitting, back towards him, on a rough bench beside the fire. As he peered, bending forward and flinching from the knife at his back, the figure rose and turned to face him. It was the Tuginda.
40 Ruvit
Suddenly to be confronted with a shameful deed from the past, a deed accomplished yet uneffaced, like the ruins of a poor man's house destroyed by some selfish lord to suit his own convenience, or the body of an unwanted child cast up by the river on the shore: to stumble unexpectedly upon an accusadon that no bravado can defy or glib tongue turn aside; an accusation made not aloud, to the cars of the world, but quietly, face to face, without anger, perhaps even without speech, to one unprepared for the surge of his own confusion, guilt and regret. The harp of Binnorie named its murderess, and the two pretty babes in the ballad answered the cruel mother under her father's castle wall. Stones have been known to move and trees to speak. Yet never a word said Banquo's ghost Though few can have touched a murdered corpse and seen the wounds burst open and bleed, yet many, coming alone upon old letters thrust into a drawer, have re-read them weeping for pardon; or again, burning with self-contempt, have learned from chance remarks how unforgotten has been the misery, how crushing the disappointment brought by
