"That would certainly kill him, my lord," put in Sheldra. "Theltocarna is a poison. It cannot be used twice--no, not twice in ten days."
There was a murmur of agreement from the other girls.
"Where is the Tuginda?" asked Nito. "Is she with Lord Ta-Kominion? She would know what to do."
Kelderek made no answer but, walking back up the track, began getting the men to their feet again.
An hour later the going became easier as the ascent flattened off and the road grew less steep. As near as he could judge from the confused, murky sky, it was about noon when at last they came into Gelt. The square was littered as though after a riot. There was scarcely a living creature to be seen, but a smoldering reek hung in the air and a smell of garbage and ordure. A solitary ragged urchin loitered, watching them from a safe distance.
"Smells like a herd of bloody apes," muttered Baltis.
"Tell your men to eat and rest," said Kelderek. "I'll try to find out how long the army's been gone."
He crossed the square and stood looking about him in perplexity at the shut doors and empty alleys beyond. Suddenly he felt a sharp, momentary pain, like the sting of an insect, in the lobe of his left ear. He put his hand to the place and drew it away with blood between finger and thumb and in the same instant realized that the arrow that had grazed him was sticking in the door post across the way. He spun around quickly but saw only another deserted lane running between closed doors and shuttered windows. Without turning his head, he stepped slowly backward into the square and remained watching the blank, silent hovels for any sign of movement.
"What's up?" asked Baltis, coming up behind him. Kelderek touched his ear again and held out his fingers. Baltis whistled.
"That's nasty," he said. "Throwing stones, eh?"
"An arrow," said Kelderek, nodding at the door post. Baltis whistled again.
At that moment, with a grating sound upon the threshold, a nearby door opened and a bleary, dirty old woman appeared. She was hobbling and staggering beneath the weight of a child in her arms. As she came nearer Kelderek saw with a start that it was dead. The old woman tottered up to him and laid the child on the ground at his feet. It was a girl, about eight years old, blood matted in her hair and a conjunctive yellow discharge around the open eyes. The old woman, bent and muttering, remained standing before him.
"What do you want, grandmother?" asked Kelderek. "What's happened?"
The old woman looked up at him from eyes bloodshot with years of crouching over wood fires.
"Think no one sees. They think no one sees," she whispered. "But God sees. God sees everything."
"What happened?" asked Kelderek again, stepping over the child's body and grasping the stick-thin wrist beneath the rags.
"Ay, that's right, better ask them--ask them what happened," said the old woman. "You'll catch 'em if you're quick. They're not gone far--they're not gone long."
At this moment two men came striding side by side around the corner. They kept their eyes fixed before them and their faces bore the tense, resolute expression of those who knowingly run a risk. Without speaking to Kelderek they grasped the old woman's arms and began leading her away between them. For a moment she struggled, protesting shrilly.
"It's the governor-man from Bekla! The governor-man! I'm telling him--"
"Now just you come along, mother," said one of the men. "Just come along with us now. You don't want to be standing about here. Come along now--"
They shut the door behind them and a moment later came the sound of a heavy bar falling into place.
Kelderek and Baltis left the child's body on the ground and returned across the square. The men had formed a ring around the girls and were looking nervously about.
"I don't think we ought to stop here," said Sencred, pointing. "There's not enough of us to make it safe."
A crowd of men had gathered at the far end of a lane leading off the square, talking and gesticulating among themselves. A few were carrying weapons.
Kelderek took off his belt, laid his bow and quiver on the ground and walked toward them.
"Careful," called Baltis after him. Kelderek ignored him and walked on until he was thirty paces from the men. Holding his hands open on either side of him, he called,
"We don't want to hurt you. We're your friends."
There was a burst of jeering laughter and then a big man with gray hair and a broken nose stepped forward and answered,
"You've done enough. Let us alone or we'll kill you."
Kelderek felt less afraid than exasperated.
"Try and kill us, then, you fools!" he shouted. "Try it!"
"Ah, and have his friends come back," said another man. "Why don't you go and catch your friends up? They've not been gone an hour."
"I'd say take his advice," said Baltis, who had approached and was standing at Kelderek's shoulder. "No point in waiting till they work themselves up to rush us."
"But our people are tired," answered Kelderek angrily.
"They'll be worse than that, my boy, if we don't get out of here," said Baltis. "Come now--I'm no coward and neither are those lads of mine, but there's nothing to be gained by staying." Then, as Kelderek still hesitated, he called out to the men, "Show us the way, then, and we'll go."
At this, like a pack of pie-dogs, they all took a few wary steps forward, and then began shouting and pointing southward. As soon as he was sure of the way, Kelderek drew a line in the dust with his foot and warned them not to cross it until the Ortelgans were gone.
"Ay, we can leave Gelt without any help from you," shouted Baltis, laying hold of the ropes once more to encourage his weary men.
They plodded slowly away, the townspeople staring after them, chattering together and pointing at the huge brown body stretched behind the bars.
Outside the town the road fell away downhill. Soon it became so steep that their task was no longer to drag the cage after them but rather to control its downward course. Coming to a broad, level place above a long slope, they turned it about and took the strain on the ropes from behind. At least the ground, dry and gritty, gave good foothold and for a time they made better speed than during the morning. A mile or two below, however, the road narrowed and began to wind along the rocky side of a ravine, and here they were forced to let the cage down foot by foot, straining backward while Sencred and two or three of his men used poles to lever the front wheels this way and that. At one place, where the bend was too sharp, they had to set to wo
rk to broaden the track, prising out the rocks with hammers, iron bars and whatever came to hand, until at last they were able to shift an entire boulder and send it plummeting over the edge into long seconds of silence. Farther on, two of the men slipped and the rest, cursing and terrified, were jerked forward and nearly pulled off their feet.
Not long after this, Kelderek saw that play had increased in the wheels and that the whole structure had shifted and was no longer true on the frame. He consulted Baltis.
"It's not worth trying to right it," answered the smith. "The truth is, another hour or two of this is going to shake the whole damned thing to pieces. The frame's being ground like corn, d'ye see, between the road below and the weight of the bear above. Even careful work couldn't stand up to that forever, and this lot had to be done quick--like the loose girl's wedding. So what d'ye want, young fellow--are we going on?"
"What else?" replied Kelderek. And indeed for all their hardship and near exhaustion, not one of the men had complained or tried to argue against their going on to overtake the army. But when at last they had done with the precipices and the steep pitches and were resting at a place where the road broadened and entered an open wood, he allowed himself for the first time to wonder how the business would end. Apart from the girls, who were initiates of a mystery and in any case would never question anything he told them to do, no one with him had any experience of the strength and savagery that Shardik could put forth. If he were to waken in the midst of the Ortelgan army and burst, raging, out of the flimsy cage, how many would be slaughtered? And how many more, through this, would become convinced of his anger and disfavor toward Ortelga? Yet if Baltis and the rest, for their own safety, were told to abandon Shardik now, what could he himself say to Ta-Kominion, who had sent word that Shardik must be brought at all costs?
He decided to press on until they were close behind the army. Then, if Shardik were still unconscious, he would go forward, report to Ta-Kominion and obtain further orders.
But now it became a matter of finding men with enough strength left to pull on the ropes. After the past twelve hours some were scarcely able to put one foot before the other. Yet even in this extremity, their passionate belief in the destiny of Shardik drove them to stumble, to stagger, to hobble on. Others, in the very act of pulling, fell down, rolling out of the track of the wheels and gasping to their companions to give them a hand. Some set themselves to push behind the cage but as soon as it gathered a little speed, fell forward and measured their length on the road. Sencred cut himself a forked crutch and limped on beside his splayed wheels. Their pace was that of an old man creeping the street, yet still they moved--as a thaw moves up a valley, or flood water mounts in minute jerks to burst its banks at last and pour over the land. Many, like Zilthe, put their arms through the bars to touch Lord Shardik, believing and feeling themselves strengthened by his incarnate power.