Another, older boy, who had joined them, burst out laughing. "And I have to see the Lord of Bekla before dawn--a matter of life and death. Kelderek, don't tease us. Don't you want to play tonight?"
"Come on, can't you?" said Taphro impatiently, shuffling his feet in the dust.
"No, it's the truth," said Kelderek, ignoring him. "I'm on my way to see the High Baron. But I'll be back: either tonight or--well, another night, I suppose."
He turned away, but the boys trotted beside him as he walked on.
"We were playing this afternoon," said the little boy. We were playing 'Cat Catch a Fish.' I got the fish home twice."
"Well done!" said the hunter, smiling down at him.
"Be off with you!" cried Taphro, making as though to strike at them. "Come on--get out! You great dunderheaded fool," he added to Kelderek, as the boys ran off. "Playing games with children at your age!"
"Good night!" called Kelderek after them. "The good night you pray for--who knows?"
They waved to him and were gone among the smoky huts. A man passing by spoke to Kelderek but he made no reply, only walking on abstractedly, his eyes on the ground.
At length, after crossing a wide area of ropewalks, the two approached a group of larger huts standing in a rough semicircle not far from the eastern point and its broken causeway. Between these, trees had been planted, and the sound of the river mingled with the evening breeze and the movement of the leaves to give a sense of refreshing coolness after the hot, dry day. Here, not only women were at work. A number of men, who seemed by their appearance and occupations to be both servants and craftsmen, were trimming arrows, sharpening stakes and repairing bows, spears and axes. A burly smith, who had just finished for the day, was climbing out of his forge in a shallow, open pit, while his two boys quenched the fire and tidied up after him.
Kelderek stopped and turned once more to Taphro.
"Badly aimed arrows can wound innocent men. There's no need for you to be hinting and gossiping about me to these fellows."
"Why should you care?"
"I don't want them to know I'm keeping a secret," said Kelderek.
Taphro nodded curtly and went up to a man who was cleaning a grindstone, the water flying off in a spiral as he spun the wheel.
"Sheldron's messenger. Where is Bel-ka Trazet?"
"He? Eating." The man jerked his thumb toward the largest of the huts.
"I have to speak to him."
"If it'll wait," replied the man, "you'd do better to wait. Ask Numiss--the red-haired fellow--when he comes out. He'll let you know when Bel-ka-Trazet's ready."
Neolithic man, the bearded Assyrian, the wise Greeks, the howling Vikings, the Tartars, the Aztecs, the samurai, the cavaliers, the anthropophagi and men whose heads do grow beneath their shoulders: there is one thing at least that all have in common--waiting until someone of importance has been ready to see them. Numiss, chewing a piece of fat as he listened to Taphro, cut him short, pointing him and Kelderek to a bench against the wall. There they sat. The sun sank until its rim touched the horizon upstream. The flies buzzed. Most of the craftsmen went away. Taphro dozed. The place became almost deserted, until the only sound above that of the water was the murmur of voices from inside the big hut. At last Numiss came out and shook Taphro by the shoulder. The two rose and followed the servant through the door, on which was painted Bel-ka-Trazet's emblem, a golden snake.
The hut was divided into two parts. At the back were Bel-ka-Trazet's private quarters. The larger part, known as the Sindrad, served as both council chamber and mess hall for the barons. Except when a full council was summoned, it was seldom that all the barons were assembled at once. There were continual journeys to the mainland for hunting expeditions and trade, for the island had no iron or other metal except what could be imported from the Gelt Mountains in exchange for skins, feathers, semiprecious stones and such artifacts as arrows and rope--whatever, in fact, had any exchange value. Apart from the barons and those who attended upon them, all hunters and traders had to obtain leave to come and go. The barons, as often as they returned, were required to report their news like anyone else and while living on the island usually ate the evening meal with Bel-ka-Trazet in the Sindrad.
Some five or six faces turned toward Taphro and Kelderek as they entered. The meal was over and a debris of bones, rinds and skins littered the floor. A boy was collecting this refuse into a basket, while another sprinkled fresh sand. Four of the barons were still sitting on the benches, holding their drinking horns and leaning their elbows on the table. Two, however, stood apart near the doorway--evidently to get the last of the daylight, for they were talking in low tones over an abacus of beads and a piece of smooth bark covered with writing. This seemed to be some kind of list or inventory, for as Kelderek passed, one of the two barons, looking at it, said, "No, twenty-five ropes, no more," whereupon the other moved back a bead with his forefinger and replied, "And you have twenty-five ropes fit to go, have you?"
Kelderek and Taphro came to a stop before a young, very tall man with a silver torque on his left arm. When they entered he had had his back to the door, but now he turned to look at them, holding his horn in one hand and sitting somewhat unsteadily on the table with his feet on the bench below. He looked Kelderek up and down with a bland smile but said nothing. Confused, Kelderek lowered his eyes. The young baron's silence continued, and the hunter, by way of keeping himself in countenance, tried to fix his attention on the great table, which he had heard described but never before seen. It was old, carved with a craftsmanship beyond the skill of any carpenter or woodworker now alive on Ortelga. Each of the eight legs was pyramidal in shape, its steeply tapering sides forming a series of steps or ledges, one above another to the apex. The two corners of the board that he could see had the likeness of bears' heads, snarling, with open jaws and muzzles thrust forward. They were most lifelike. Kelderek trembled and looked quickly up again.
"And what ekshtra work you come give us?" asked the young baron cheerfully. "Want fellows repair causeway, zattit?"
"No, my lord," said Numiss in a low voice. "This is the man who refused to tell his news to the shendron."
"Eh?" asked the young baron, emptying his horn and beckoning to a boy to refill it. "Man with shensh, then. No ushe talking shendrons. Shtupid fellowsh. All shendrons shtupid fellowsh, eh?" he said to Kelderek.
"My lord," replied Kelderek, "believe me, I have nothing against the shendron, but--but the matter--"
"Can you read?" interrupted the young baron.
"Read? No, my lord."
"Neither c'n I. Look at old Fassel-Hasta there. What's he reading? Who knows? You watch out, he'll bewitch you."
The baron with the piece of bark turned with a frown and stared at the young man, as much as to say that he at any rate was not one to act the fool in his cups.
"I'll tell you," said the young baron, sliding forward from the table and landing with a jolt on the bench, "all 'bout writing--one word--"
"Ta-Kominion," called a harsh voice from the further room, "I want to speak with those men. Zelda, bring them."
Another baron rose from the bench opposite, beckoning to Kelderek an
d Taphro. They followed him out of the Sindrad and into the room beyond, where the High Baron was sitting alone. Both, in token of submission and respect, bent their heads, raised the palms of their hands to their brows, lowered their eyes and waited.
Kelderek, who had never previously come before Bel-ka-Trazet, had been trying to prepare himself for the moment when he would have to do so. To confront him was in itself an ordeal, for the High Baron was sickeningly disfigured. His face--if face it could still be called--looked as though it had once been melted and left to set again. Below the white-seamed forehead the left eye, askew and fallen horribly down the cheek, was half-buried under a great, humped ridge of flesh running from the bridge of the nose to the neck. The jaw was twisted to the right, so that the lips closed crookedly, while across the chin stretched a livid scar, in shape roughly resembling a hammer. Such expression as there was upon this terrible mask was sardonic, penetrating, proud and detached--that of a man indestructible, a man to survive treachery, siege, desert and flood.
The High Baron, seated on a round stool like a drum, stared up at the hunter. In spite of the heat he was wearing a heavy fur cloak, fastened at the neck with a brass chain, so that his ghastly head resembled that of an enemy severed and fixed on top of a black tent. For some moments there was silence--a silence like a drawn bowstring. Then Bel-ka-Trazet said, "What is your name?"
His voice, too, was distorted--harsh and low, with an odd ring, like the sound of a stone bounding over a sheet of ice.
"Kelderek, my lord."
"Why are you here?"
"The shendron at the zoan sent me."
"That I know. Why did he send you?"
"Because I did not think it right to tell him what befell me today."
"Why does your shendron waste my time?" said Bel-ka-Trazet to Taphro. "Could he not make this man speak? Are you telling me he defied you both?"
"He--the hunter--this man, my lord," stammered Taphro. "He told us--that is, he would not tell us. The shendron--he asked him about--about his injury. He replied that a leopard pursued him, but he would tell us no more. When we demanded to know, he said he could tell us nothing."