Shardik Read online

  Kelderek raised his head and looked at him in silence.

  "Yesterday, at dawn," went on Zelda, "a messenger reached Bekla from the army in Lapan. His news was that Santil-ke-Erketlis, after sending a force to distract our attention with a pretended attack west of Ikat, had himself passed us on the east flank and was marching north through Tonilda."

  "What does he intend?"

  "That we don't know--he may not have any preconceived aim, apart from seeking support in the eastern provinces. But he will probably form an aim in the light of whatever support he gets. We've got to follow and try to contain him, that's certain. A general like Erketlis wouldn't begin a march unless he felt sure he could make something of it. Ged-la-Dan left yesterday morning. I've stayed to see to the raising of three more companies and some extra supplies--the city governor will tell you the details. I'm off now, with every man I've been able to impress: they're waiting for me in the Caravan Market, and a cheap lot they are, I'm afraid."

  "Where are you making for?"

  "Thettit-Tonilda. Our army's coming north after Erketlis, so somewhere between here and Thettit I'm bound to strike their line of march. The trouble is that Erketlis achieved so much surprise--he must be nearly two days ahead of them."

  "I wish I could come with you."

  "I wish it too. Would to God Lord Shardik could join us for a new battle! I can see it all--darkness falling and Erketlis struck down with one blow of his paw. Heal him, Kelderek; restore him, for all our sakes! I'll see you get news--every day, if possible."

  "But one thing more I must learn at once. What happened two nights ago? It was Mollo of Kabin, wasn't it, who wounded Lord Shardik? But who fired the roof of the hall, and why?"

  "I'll tell you," answered Zelda, "and fools we were not to foresee it. It was Elleroth, Ban of Sarkid--he who passed us when we were walking that day above the Barb. If you'd not acted as you did in leaping from the pool, Lord Shardik would have died at the hands of that precious pair. The roof would have fallen in on him and on Zilthe, and both the traitors would have escaped."

  "But Elleroth--is he dead too?"

  "No. He was taken alive as he came down from the roof. It will be your task to see him executed."

  "To see him executed? I?"

  "Who else? You are the king, and the priest of Shardik."

  "I have little relish for it, even when I think what he tried to do. To kill in battle is one thing; an execution is another."

  "Come, Kelderek Play-with-the-Children, we can't afford to have you turn squeamish. The man's murdered an Ortelgan sentry and attempted a sacrilegious crime, wicked beyond belief. Obviously he must be executed before you and in the presence of every baron and provincial delegate in Bekla. Indeed, you will have to require the attendance of all Ortelgans of any rank or standing whatever--there are so few left in the city and the Ortelgans ought to outnumber the provincial delegates by at least three to one."

  Kelderek was silent, looking down and picking at the blanket. At length, ashamed of his weakness, he asked hesitantly, "Must--must he be tortured? Burned?"

  Zelda turned toward the window overlooking the Barb and stood gazing out across the water. After a little he said, "This is not a question either of indulging mercy or of gratifying revenge, but simply of achieving an effect for political reasons. People have got to see the man die and to be convinced, by what is done, that we are right and he is wrong. Now if a man--a bandit, say--is to be executed to impress the poor and ignorant and deter them from lawbreaking, it is best if he dies a cruel death, for such people have no imagination and lead hard, rough lives themselves. A quick death seems little hardship to them. It is necessary that the man should be humiliated and deprived of his dignity before their mean minds can take in the lesson. But with men of the better sort, it's another matter. If we torture a man like Elleroth of Sarkid, his courage is likely to excite admiration and pity and many of the delegates, who are men of rank, may even end by feeling contempt for us. We would do better to aim at arousing respect for our mercy. Although it is only just that he should die, it is with regret that we kill such a man--that is what we must give out. It is your affair, Kelderek, but since you ask me, I would advise you to have him beheaded with a sword. It will be enough, with a man of Elleroth's standing, that we put him to death at all."

  "Very well. He shall be executed in the hall, in the presence of Lord Shardik."

  "I should have told you. The fire did much harm before we could quench it. Baltis says the roof is in a bad state and will take some time to repair."

  "Is he the best judge? Has no one else been up to see it?"

  "I cannot tell, Kelderek. You forget the news I told you of the war. All is at sixes and sevens, and you must see to this yourself. Lord Shardik is your mystery, and one which you have shown that you understand. Of the roof, I can tell you only what the man told me. Order the matter as you think best, so long as Elleroth is executed before all the delegates. And now, goodbye. Only keep the city as well as you have kept Lord Shardik, and all may yet be well. Pray for the defeat of Erketlis, and wait for news."

  He was gone and Kelderek, full of pain and tired to exhaustion, could remain awake hardly long enough for his wounds to be dressed before lying down to sleep again.

  The next day, however, already troubled by the delay in commencing his task and anxious to have it done and finished, he sent for the city governor and the garrison commander and set about the arrangements. He was determined that the execution should take place in the hall and in the presence of Shardik, since he felt it to be just and right that Elleroth should die upon the scene of his crime. Also, he thought, there, more than anywhere else, he himself would be seen as the agent of Shardik, invested with the implacable and divine authority proper to one putting to death an aristocrat and the hereditary lord of a province twice as large as Ortelga.

  The roof of the hall, he was informed, though in a precarious state and unable to be repaired until some heavy lengths of timber could be brought in to replace the two central tie beams, was nevertheless safe enough for an assembly.

  "The way we see it, my lord," said Baltis, half-turning for corroboration to the Beklan master builder standing at his elbow, "it's sound enough unless there was to be any real violence--rioting or fighting or anything the like of that. The roof's supported by the walls, d'ye see, but the tie beams--that's to say, the crossbeams--they've been that much burned that there's some might not stand up to a heavy shaking."

  "Would shouting be dangerous?" asked Kelderek, "or a man struggling, perhaps?"

  "Oh, no, my lord, it'd need a lot more than that to make it go--like the old woman's ox. Even if the beams wasn't to be repaired, they'd still stand up for months very like, although the rain'd be in through the holes, of course."

  "Very well," replied Kelderek. "You have leave to go." Then, turning to the governor, he said, "The execution will take place tomorrow morning, in the hall of the King's House. You will see to it that not less than a hundred and fifty Ortelgan and Beklan lords and citizens are present--more if possible. No one is to carry arms, and the provincial delegates are to be separated and dispersed about the hall--no more than two delegates to be seated together. The rest I leave in your hands. The lady Sheldra, however, will be caring for Lord Shardik and you are to meet her early tomorrow and take account of her wishes. When all is ready to your satisfaction, she will come here to summon me."

  31 The Live Coal

  THE NIGHT TURNED COLD, near to frost, and soon after midnight a white fog began to fill all the lower city, creeping slowly higher to cover at last the still waters of the Barb and thicken about the Palace and the upper city until there was no seeing from one building to the next. It muffled the coughing of the sentries and the stamping of their feet for warmth--or was it, thought Kelderek, standing cloaked in the bitter draft at the window of his room, that they slapped themselves and stamped rather to break the close, lonely silence? The fog drifted into the room and thickened his breathing;
his sleeves, his beard felt chill and damp to the touch. Once he heard swans' wings overhead, flying above the fog, the rhythmic, unhindered sound recalling to him the far-off Telthearna. It faded into the distance, poignant as the whistling of a drover's boy to the ears of a man in a prison cell. He thought of Elleroth, without doubt awake like himself, and wondered whether he too had heard the swans. Who were his guards? Had they allowed him to send any message to Sarkid, to settle his affairs, to appoint any friend to act for him? Ought he not himself to have inquired about these things--to have spoken with Elleroth? He went to the door and called "Sheldra!" There was no reply and he went into the corridor and called again.

  "My lord!" answered the girl drowsily, and after a little came toward him carrying a light, her sleep-bleared face peering from the hood of her cloak.

  "Listen!" he said. "I am going to see Elleroth. You are to--"

  He saw her startled look as the sleep was jolted from her brain. She fell back a step, raising the lamp higher. In her face he saw the impossibility of what he had said, the head-shakings behind his back, the soldiers' speculations, the later questions of Zelda and Ged-la-Dan; the icy indifference of Elleroth himself to the ill-timed solicitude of the Ortelgan medicine man; and the growth and spread among the common people of some misconceived tale.

  "No," he said. "It's no matter. I spoke what I did not intend--it was some remnant of a dream. I came to ask whether you have seen Lord Shardik since sunset."

  "Not I, my lord, but two of the girls are with him. Shall I go down?"

  "No," he said again. "No, go back to bed. It's nothing. Only the fog troubles me--I have been imagining some harm to Lord Shardik."

  Still she paused, her heavy face expressing her bewilderment. He turned, left her and went back to his room. The flame of the lamp shed a cheerless nimbus on the fog hanging in the air. He lay prone upon the bed and rested his head on his bent forearm.

  He thought of all the blood that had been shed--of the battle of the Foothills and the crying of the wounded as the victorious Ortelgans mustered in the falling darkness; of the smashing of the Tamarrik Gate and the cacophonous, smoking hours that followed; of the gallows on Mount Crandor and the skulls in the hall below. Elleroth, a nobleman of unquestioned courage and honor, bending all his endeavors to the task, had almost succeeded in burning to death the wounded Shardik. And soon, when he was laid across a bench like a pig and the blood came spurting from his neck, few of those about him would feel the horror and sorrow natural to the heart of any peasant's child.

  He was unaccountably seized with misgiving, by a premonition so vague and undefined that he could make nothing of it. No, he thought, this could be no divination on his part. The plain truth was that, despite his horror of Elleroth's deed, he had little stomach for this cold-blooded business. "They should have killed him as he came down from the roof," he said aloud, shivered in the cold, and huddled himself under the rugs.

  He drowsed fitfully, woke, drowsed and woke again. Thought dissolved into fantasy and, not dreaming yet not awake, he imagined himself stepping through his embrasured window as from the fissured opening of a cave and, emerging, saw again under starlight the Ledges descending between the trees of Quiso. He was about to bound away down their steep pitch but, pausing at a sound from behind him, turned and found himself face to face with the old, muttering hag of Gelt, who stooped and laid at his feet--

  He cried out and started up. The fog still filled the room, but it was murky daylight and in the corridor he could hear the voices of the servants. His bound wounds throbbed and ached. He called for water and then, robing himself without help and laying his crown and staff ready on the bed, sat down to wait for Sheldra.

  Soon there came from the terrace below sounds of footsteps and low voices. Those who were to attend the execution must be converging on the hall. He did not look out, but remained on the edge of the bed, staring before him, the dark robe covering him from his shoulders to the ground. Elleroth, he thought, must also be waiting; he did not know where: perhaps not far away--perhaps near enough to hear the footsteps and voices diminish and silence return--a waiting, expectant silence.

  When he heard Sheldra's step in the corridor, he rose at once and went to the door before she could reach it. He realized that he wished to prevent the need for him to hear her voice, that voice which would sound no different had she come to tell him that Lord Shardik had raised the dead to life and established peace from Ikat to the Telthearna. As he stepped across the threshold she was waiting and looked at him impassively, her face expressing neither dread nor excitement. He nodded gravely and she, unspeaking, turned about to precede him. Beyond her, the other women were waiting, their stiff robes filling the narrow corridor from wall to wall. He raised his hand to silence their whispering and asked,

  "Lord Shardik--what is his mood? Is he disturbed by the crowd?"

  "He is restless, my lord, and looks fiercely about him," answered one of the girls.

  "He is impatient to see his enemy brought before him," said another. She gave a quick laugh and at once fell silent, biting her lip as Kelderek turned his head and stared coldly at her.

  At his word they began to file slowly along the corridor, preceded by the beat of the gong. Looking down as he reached the head of the stairway, he saw the fog trailing through the open doorway and the young soldier at the entrance shifting his feet and gazing up at them. One of the girls stumbled, recovering herself with a hand that slapped against the wall. An officer appeared, looked up at Sheldra, nodded and went out through the door. She turned her head and whispered, "He has gone to fetch the prisoner, my lord."

  Now they were entering the hall. He would scarcely have recognized it, so much closer and smaller did it seem to have grown. This was no longer the echoing space of flame-shot dusk where he had kept watch so many nights in solitude and where he had leapt empty-handed upon the Kabin envoy at his evil task. Except along the line of a narrow path extending before him between two ropes, men stood pressed together from wall to wall. There was a confusion of heads, robes, cloaks, armor, and of faces turned toward him, swaying and bobbing as each sought to catch a glimpse of him over and around his neighbor. Above them the fog hung like the smoke of bonfires in the cold air. The charred, irregular gaps in the roof showed only as lighter patches of fog. Though the clothes of the spectators were of every hue--some gaudy and barbaric as nomads' or brigands' garb--yet in this dank gloom their brightness and variety seemed soaked away, like the colors of sodden leaves in autumn.

  The floor had been covered with a mixture of sand and sawdust, so that no sound came from his footsteps or from those of the women pacing before him. At the center of the hall an open space had been left in front of the bars and here, in an attempt to clear and warm the air, a brazier of charcoal had been set. The light smoke and fume drifted one way and another. Men coughed, and patches of the heaped fuel glowed as the draft blew them brighter. Close to the brazier stood a heavy bench, on which the three soldiers who were to carry out the execution had laid their gear--a long sword with a two-handed hilt, a sack of bran to soak up the blood and three cloaks, neatly folded, with which to cover the head and body as soon as the blow had been struck.

  In the center of the space a bronze disc had been placed on the floor, and upon this Kelderek, with the women flanking him on either side, took up his position, facing the bench and the waiting soldiers. For an instant his teeth chattered. He clenched them, raised his head--and found himself looking into the eyes of Shardik.

  Insubstantial, the bear appeared--monstrous, shadowy in the smoky, foggy gloom, like some djinn emergent from the fire and brooding darkly above it in the half-light. He had come close to the bars and, rising on his hind legs, stood peering down, his forepaws resting on one of the iron ties. Seen through the heat and fume from the brazier his outline wavered, spectral and indistinct. Looking up at him, Kelderek was momentarily bemused, overcome by that dreamlike state, experienced sometimes in fever, in which the mind i
s deceived as to the size and distance of objects, so that the shape against the light of a fly on a windowsill is supposed that of a house on the skyline, or the falling of a distant torrent is mistaken for the rustle of wall hangings or curtains. Across a great distance Shardik, both bear and mountain summit, inclined his divine head to perceive his priest, minute upon the plain below. In those far-off, gigantic eyes Kelderek--and he alone, it seemed, for none else moved or spoke--could discern unease, danger, impending disaster grim and foreboding as the rumbling of a long-silent volcano. Pity, too, he saw, for himself, as though it were he and not Elleroth who was the victim condemned to kneel at the bench, and Shardik his grave judge and executioner.

  "Accept my life, Lord Shardik," he said aloud, and as he uttered the familiar words, awoke from the trance. The heads of the women on either side turned toward him, the illusion dissolved, the distance diminished to a few yards and the bear, more than twice his own height, dropped on all fours and resumed its uneasy rambling up and down the length of the bars. He saw the oozing scab of the half-healed spear wound in its back and heard its feet stumbling through the thick, dry straw.

  "He is not well," he thought and, oblivious of all else, would have stepped forward even then had not Sheldra laid a hand on his arm, motioning with her eyes toward the opening from the ambulatory on his right.

  To the low, steady beat of a drum, two files of Ortelgan soldiers were entering the hall, their feet on the sand as soundless as his own had been. Between them walked Elleroth, Ban of Sarkid. He was very pale, his forehead sweating in the cold, his face drawn and streaked with sleeplessness, but his step was firm, and as he turned his eyes here and there he contrived to appear to be observing the scene in the hall with a detached and condescending air. Beyond him, Shardik had begun to prowl more violently, with a restless, dominating ferocity of which none in the hall could remain unaware; but Elleroth ignored him, affecting interest only in the packed mass of spectators to his left. Kelderek thought, "He has already considered how best to keep his dignity and determined upon this part to act." He remembered how once he himself, sure of immediate death, had lain waiting for the leopard to spring from the bank above and thought, "He is so much afraid that his sight and hearing are misted over. But he knew it would be so, and he has rehearsed these moments." He called to mind the plot of which Elleroth was guilty and tried to recover the anger and hatred which had filled him on the night of the fire festival, but could feel only a mounting sense of dread and apprehension, as though some precarious tower of wrong piled upon wrong were about to topple and fall. He closed his eyes, but at once felt himself swaying and opened them again as the drum ceased, the soldiers drew apart and Elleroth stepped forward from among them.