Shardik

he had never expected to feel gratitude towards Bel-ka-Trazet.

'Chiefly by guaranteeing that the villagers would not be molested 'from Zeray. But he was always very ingenious in finding or making things we could trade. We made arrows, for instance, and needles out of bone. I have certain skills, too. Every postulant on Quiso has to carve her own rings, but I can carve wood still better now, believe me. Do you remember this? I've taken to using it.'

It was Bel-ka-Trazet's knife. Kelderek recognized it instantly, drew it from the sheath and held the point close before his eyes. She watched, puzzled, and he laughed.

'I've reason to remember it almost better than any man on Ortelga, I dare say. I saw both it and Lord Shardik for the first time on one and the same day – that day when I first saw you. I'll tell you the story at supper. Had he a sword?'

'Here it is. And a bow. I still have my bow too. I hid it soon after I reached Zeray, but I recovered it when I joined the Baron. My priestess's knife was stolen, of course, but the Baron gave me another – a dead man's, I dare say, though he never told. It's rough workmanship, but the blade's good. Now over here, let me show you -'

She was like a girl looking over her trousseau. He remembered how once, years before, having built a cage trap for birds, he had found a hawk in it There was no market for hawks – the factor from Bekla had wanted bright feathers and cageable birds – and, having no use for it himself, he had released it, watching as it flashed up and out of sight, full of joy at the recovery of its hard, dangerous life. Having walked through Zeray that afternoon, he now believed all that he had been told of sudden, unpredictable danger, of lust and murder moving below the surface of half-starved torpor like alligators through the water of some foetid creek. Yet Melathys, who had better reason than any to know of these things, plainly felt herself in a state of grace so immune that they had for the moment, at all events, no power to make her afraid. It must be for him to see that she took no foolish risks.

The Tuginda still lay in her arid sleep; a sleep comfortless as a choked and smoking fire, of which she seemed less the beneficiary than the victim. Her face was passive and sunken as Kelderek had never seen it, the flesh of her arms and throat slack and wasted. Ankray boiled a salt meat soup and cooled it, but they could do no more than moisten her lips, for she did not swallow. When Kelderek suggested that he should go out and find some milk, Ankray only shook his head without raising his eyes from the ground.

'There's no milk in Zeray,' said Melathys, 'nor cheese, nor butter. I've seen none in five years. But you're right – it's fresh food she ought to have. Salt meat and dried fruit are no cure for a fever. We can do nothing tonight. You sleep first, Kelderek. I'll wake you later.' But she did not wake him, evidently content to watch – with a little sleep, perhaps, for herself – beside the Tuginda until morning. It was Ankray, returned from some early expedition of his own, who woke him with the news that Farrass and his companions had left Zeray during the night.

'There's no doubt of it?' asked Kelderek, spluttering as he splashed cold water over his face and shoulders. 'I don't reckon so, sir.'

Kelderek had not expected that they would go without some attempt to force Melathys to join them, but when he told her the news she was less surprised.

'I dare say each of them may have thought of trying to make me his property,' she said.' But to have me with them across the kind of country that lies between here and Kabin, slowing them down and causing quarrels – I'm not surprised that Farrass decided against that. He probably expected that as soon as I'd learned from you what they meant to do I'd come back and beg him to take me. When I didn't, he thought he'd show me how little I meant to them. They always felt resentment, you know, because they naturally supposed the Baron was my lover, but they feared him and needed him too much to show it. All the same, I wondered yesterday whether they might not try to force me to go with them. That was why I left it to you to tell them that Santil was at Kabin. I wanted to be well out of the way when they learned that,'

'Why didn't you warn me to conceal it from them? They might have come here for you.'

'If they'd learned it from someone else – and one never knows what news is going to reach Zeray – they'd have had strong suspicions that we had concealed it. They'd probably have turned against us then, and that could have been nasty.'

She paused, kneeling down before the fire. After a time she said, 'Perhaps I wanted them to go.' 'Your danger's greater now they're gone.'

She smiled and went on staring into the fire. At length she answered, 'Possibly – possibly not. You remember what you told me Farrass said – 'Someone's bound to try soon.' Anyway, I know where I'd rather be. Things have changed very much with me, you know.'

Later, he persuaded her to keep to the house so that people, no longer seeing her, might suppose that she had gone with Farrass and Thrild. Ankray, when told, nodded approvingly.

'There's sure to be trouble now, sir,' he said. 'It'll likely take a day or two to come to the boil, but when a wolf moves out, a wolf moves in, as they say.' 'Do you think we may be attacked here?'

'Not necessarily, sir. It might come to that and it might not. We'll just have to see how things turn out. But I dare say we'll still be here all right when General Santil comes.'

Kelderek had not told Ankray what he himself had to expect in this eventuality; nor did he do so now.

Later that afternoon, taking with him a knife and some fishing-tackle – two hand-lines of woven thread and hair, three or four small, fire-hardened, wooden hooks, and a paste of meat-fat and dried fruit kneaded together – he went down to the shore. He could observe no change from the previous day in the lack-lustre movements and aimless loitering of the men whom he saw. Although some had cast lines from a kind of spit running out into deeper water, the place did not look to him a likely one for a catch. After watching them for a time he made his way unobtrusively upstream, coming at length to the graveyard and its creek. Here, too, there were a few fishermen, but none who struck him as either skilled or painstaking. He was surprised, for from what he had heard the town to a large extent depended for food on catching fish and birds.

Retracing his steps of two days before, he went inland, up the shore of the creek, until he found a spot where, with the help of an overhanging tree, he was able to scramble across. Half an hour later he had regained the Telthearna bank and come upon what he had been seeking; a deep pool close inshore, with trees and bushes giving cover.

It was satisfying to find that he had not lost his old skill. As a man tormented by a law-suit, by money troubles or anxiety about a woman, can nevertheless derive pleasure and actual solace from a game skilfully played or a plant which he has nurtured into bloom (so accurate, despite all the mind's attempts to mislead it, is the heart's divination of where true delight is to be found), so Kelderek, despite his conviction that he would the in Zeray, despite his fears for the Tuginda, his grief for the evil he had done and the hopelessness of his longing for Melathys (for what possibility could there now be, in the time left to him in this evil place, of healing the wounds inflicted by all she had undergone at the hands of men?), still found comfort in the windless, cloudy afternoon, in the light on the water, the silence broken only by the faint breeze and river sounds and in his own ability, where a man lacking it would have wasted the time idling at one end of a motionless line. Here at least was something he could do – and a pity, he thought bitterly, that he had ever left it. Would he not, if Shardik had never appeared on Ortelga, have remained a contented hunter and fisher, Kelderek Play-with-the-Children, looking no further than his solitary, hard-acquired skill and evening games on the shore? He put these thoughts aside and set to work in earnest.

After lying prone and hidden for some time, ground-baiting the pool and fishing each part of it with watchful attention, he hooked a fish which he was obliged to play with great care on the light hand-line before at last it broke surface and proved to be a good-sized trout. A few minutes more and he contrived to snatch it with a finger and thumb thrust into the gills. Then, sucking his bleeding scratches, he cast out again.

By the early evening he had taken three more trout and a perch, lost a hook and a length of line and run out of bait. The air was watery and cool, the clearing sky feathered with light cloud, and he could neither hear nor smell Zeray. For a time he sat beside the pool, wondering whether their best course, when the Tuginda had recovered, might not be to leave Zeray altogether and, now that the summer was approaching, live and hunt in the open, as they had lived on Ortelga during the days of Shardik's cure and first wanderings. From murder they would be safer than in Zeray, and with Ankray's help he should be able to forage for them well enough. As for his own life, if Erketlis' troops came his chances of escape, even if they put a price on his head, would be better than if he were to await them in Zeray. Deciding that he would put the idea to Melathys that evening, he wound the lines carefully, threaded his fish on a stick and set out to return.

It was twilight when he crossed the creek but, peering towards Zeray through the mist which already covered the shoreward ground and now seemed to be creeping inland, he could see not one lamp shining. Filled with a sudden and more immediate fear than he had hitherto felt-of this cinder-pit of burnt-out rogues, he cut a