Evening came on. Rantzay's pace had become a limping hobble from one tree trunk to the next; yet still she exhorted Nito to keep her eyes open, to make sure of the right way forward and to call from time to time in hope of hearing a reply from ahead. Vaguely, she was aware of twilight, of the fall of darkness and later of moonlight among the trees; of intermittent thunder, far off, and of swift, momentary gusts of wind. Once she saw Anthred standing among the trees and was about to speak to her when her friend smiled, laid a ringed finger to her lips and disappeared.
At last, in clear moonlight, at some mid hour of the night, she looked about her and realized that she had caught up with the girls. They were standing close together, in a whispering group; but as she approached, leaning on Nito's arm, they all turned toward her and fell silent. To her their silence seemed full of dislike and resentment. If she had hoped for comradeship or sympathy at the end of this bitter journey, she was clearly to be disappointed. Handing her staff to Nito she drew herself up, almost crying out as she put her full weight upon the broken-blistered soles of her feet.
"Where is Lord Shardik?"
"Close at hand, madam--not a bowshot away. He has been sleeping since moonrise."
"Who is that?" said Rantzay, peering. "Sheldra? I thought you were with Lord Kelderek. How do you come to be here? Where are we?"
"We are a little higher up the valley that you left this morning, madam, and on the edge of the forest. Zilthe came down to the camp to tell Lord Kelderek that Shardik had returned, but she was exhausted, so he sent me back instead of her. He says that Lord Shardik must be drugged tonight."
"Has any attempt been made to drug him?"
No one replied.
"Well?"
"We have done all we could, madam," said another of the girls. "We prepared two haunches of meat with tessik and placed them as close to him as we dared, but he would not touch them. There is no more tessik. We can only wait until he wakes."
"Before I left Lord Kelderek, madam," said Sheldra, "a messenger arrived from Gelt, from Lord Ta-Kominion. He sent word that he expected to fight the day after tomorrow and that Shardik must come no matter what the cost. His words were, 'The hours now are more precious than stars.'"
From the hills to the south the lightning flickered between the trees. Rantzay limped the few yards to the edge of the forest and looked out across the valley. The sound of the brook below wavered on the air. Away to her left she could see the fires of the camp where the Tuginda and Kelderek must at this moment be waiting for news. She thought of the black shape that had passed her in the noonday night, through the watery shallows of the grass, and of Anthred smiling among the trees, her hands adorned with the plaited rings that she herself had burned by the shore. These signs were clear enough. The situation was, in fact, a simple one. All that was required was a priestess who knew her duty and was capable of carrying it out with resolution.
She returned to the girls. They drew back from her, staring silently in the dimness.
"You say Lord Shardik is close at hand. Where?"
Someone pointed. "Go and make sure that he is still sleeping," said Rantzay. "You should not have left him unwatched. You are all to blame."
"Madam--"
"Be silent!" said Rantzay. "Nito, bring me the box of theltocarna."
She drew her knife and tested it. The sharp edges sliced lightly through a leaf held between her finger and thumb, while the point, with the least pressure upon it, almost pierced the skin of her wrist. Nito was standing before her with the wooden box. Rantzay stared coldly down at the girl's trembling fingers and then at the knife held motionless in her own steady hand.
"Come with me. You too, Sheldra." She took the box.
She remembered the last time that she and Anthred had walked through fire, in the courtyard of the Upper Temple, on the night when they had led Kelderek to the Bridge of the Suppliants. There was an unreality about the memory, as though it were not hers but some other woman's. The night sounds seemed magnified about her. The dry forest echoed through caves of dripping water and her body felt like a mass of hot sand. These were symptoms she recognized. She would need to be quick. Her fear was somewhere behind her, searching for her, overtaking her among the trees.
The bear was stretched on its side in a thicket of cenchulada saplings, two of which he had pushed down and snapped in making a place to sleep. A few feet away lay one of the haunches of meat. Whoever had put it there had not lacked courage. The huge mass of the body was dappled with moonlight and leaf shadows. The shaggy flank, rising and falling in sleep and overlaid with the speckled, moving light, appeared like a dark plain of grass. Before the half-open, breathing mouth the leaves on one of the broken branches stirred and glistened. The claws of one extended forepaw were curved upward. Rantzay stood a few moments, gazing as though at a deep, swift river into which she must now plunge and drown. Then, motioning the girls away, she stepped forward.
She was standing against the ridge of Shardik's back, looking over his body, as though from behind an earthwork, at the restless, wind-moved forest. The thunder muttered in the hills and Shardik stirred, twitched one ear and then once more lay still.
Rantzay thrust her left hand deep into the pelt. She could not lay bare the skin and began cutting away the oily hair, matted and full of parasites as a sheep's fleece. Her own hands were trembling now and she worked faster, lifting each handful carefully, cutting and then drawing it away from under the sharp knife.
Soon she had cut a wide, bristling patch across the shoulder, almost baring the gray, salt-flaked skin. Two or three veins ran across it, one thick enough to reveal the slow beating of the pulse.
Rantzay turned and stooped for the box beside her. Taking out two of the little oiled bladders, she placed them between the fingertips of her left hand. Then she drove the point of the knife into the bear's shoulder and drew the blade back toward her, opening a gash half as long as her own forearm. Smoothly, without a pause, she pushed the bladders into it, drew the edges of the incision over them, pressed downward and felt them crush inside.
With a snarl, Shardik threw back his head and rose upon his hind legs. Rantzay, flung to the ground, got up and stood facing him. For a moment it seemed that he would strike her down. Then, lurching forward, he crushed her against his body. A few steps he carried her, hanging grotesquely in his grip. Then, letting her drop, limp as an old garment fallen from a line, he staggered out to the open slope beyond the trees. He rolled on the ground and froth flew from his mouth as he bit and tore at the grass.
Sheldra was the first to reach the priestess. Her left hand had been gashed by her own knife, her tongue protruded and her head lay grotesquely upon her shoulder, like that of a hanged man. When Sheldra put one arm beneath her and tried to raise her a terrible, crackling sound came from the broken body. The girl laid her back and for a moment she opened her eyes.
"Tell the Tuginda--did what she said--"
Blood gushed from her mouth and when it ceased her gaunt, bony body vibrated very lightly, like the surface of a pool fluttered by the wings of a trapped fly. The movement ceased and Sheldra, perceiving that she was dead, drew off her wooden rings, picked up the box of theltocarna and the fallen knife and made her way out to the slope where Shardik lay insensible.
19 Night Messengers
THE CAGE HAD TAKEN ALL DAY TO COMPLETE--if complete it were. On hearing his orders Baltis, the master smith, had shrugged his shoulders, making light of Kelderek, whom he had heard of as a simple young fellow with neither family, wealth nor craft--for in his eyes hunters were not craftsmen. He and his men, being armed with excellent weapons of their own making, had supposed that they were about to play their part in the sack of Bekla--or at any rate the sack of Gelt--and took it ill to be called out of the march and put back on their accustomed work. Kelderek, having tried in vain to bring home to the great, lumbering fellow the vital importance of what he had to do, went back to Ta-Kominion, catching him just as he was about to set out
with the advance guard. Ta-Kominion, cursing with impatience, summoned Baltis to him under the tree that bore the body of Fassel-Hasta and promised him that if the cage were not complete by nightfall he should hang like the baron. This was talk that Baltis could understand clearly enough, and he immediately asked for double the number of men he expected to get. Ta-Kominion, being in too much haste to argue, allowed him fifty, including two rope makers, three wheelwrights and five carpenters. As the army wound away up the valley in the thickening, sultry morning, Kelderek and Baltis fell to their work.
Messengers were sent back to Ortelga and before midday all the stored fuel on the island, much of its stock of sawn timber and every piece of forged iron had been carried up to the camp by women and boys. The iron was of different lengths and thickness, much of it too short to be of use except as pieces for welding. Baltis set his men to make three axles and as many iron bars as possible, the latter to be of equal length and thickness, pointed and pierced at both ends. Meanwhile the carpenters and wheelwrights, using seasoned wood, some of which had until that morning formed part of the walls, roofs and tables of Ortelga, built a heavy platform of strutted planks, which they raised with levers and mounted upon six spokeless wheels, solid wood to the rims.
By evening Baltis's men had forged, welded or cut sixty bars--disparate, rough-edged things, yet serviceable enough to be driven point-first through the holes drilled round the edges of the platform and then secured with iron pins.
"The roof will have to be wooden too," said Baltis, looking at the poles sticking up out of the planks and pointing this way and that like a bed of reeds. "There's no more iron, young man, and none to be had, so no use to fret over it."
"A wooden roof will shake to pieces," said the master carpenter. "It'll not hold the bear, not if he goes to break it."