'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 for ever, 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 disfavour towards 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.

Into this bad dream fell the rain, mingling with sweat, trickling salty over puffed lips, stinging open blisters; hissing through the leaves, quenching the dust in the air. Baltis lifted his head to the sky, missed his footing with the effort and stumbled against Kelderek.

'Rain,' he grunted. 'The rain, lad! What's to be done now?'

'What?' mumbled Kelderek, blinking as though the smith had woken him.

'The rain, I says, the rain! What's to become of us now?'

'God knows,' answered Kelderek. 'Go on - just go on.*

'Well - but they can't fight their way to Bekla in the rain. Why not go back while we can - save our lives, eh?'

'No!' cried Kelderek passionately. 'No!' Baltis grunted and said no more.

Many times they ground to a stop and as many times found themselves moving again. Once Kelderek tried to count their lessening numbers, but gave up in confusion. Sencred was nowhere to be seen. Of the girls, Nito was missing, Muni and two or three more. Those who were left still kept beside the cage, daubed from head to foot with rainy mud churned up by the wheels. The light was failing. In less than an hour it would be dark. There was no sign of the army and Kelderek realized with desperation that in all probability his band of fireless stragglers would be forced to spend the night in the wilderness of these foothills. He would not be able to keep them together. Before morning they would be shivering, sick, mutinous, victims of panic fear. And before morning, if Zilthe were right, Shardik would awaken.

Baltis came up beside him again.

'It's a bad look-out, y'know, young fellow,' he said between his teeth. 'We'll have to stop soon: it'll be dark. And what's to be done then? You and I'd better go on alone - find the young baron and ask him to send back help. But if you ask me, he'll have to come back out of it himself if he wants to stay alive. You know what the rains are. After two days a rat can hardly move, let alone men.'

'Hark!' said Kelderek. 'What's that noise?'

They had come to the top of a long slope, where the road curved downhill di rough thick woodland. The men on the ropes stood still, one or two sinking down in the mud to rest. At first there seemed to be no sound except, all about them, the pouring of the rain in the leaves. Then, faintly, there came again to Kelderek's ears the noise he had heard at first - distant shouting, sharp and momentary as flying sparks, voices confusing and overlaying one another like ripples on a pool. He looked from one man to the next. All were staring back at him, waiting for him to confirm their single thought 'The army!' cried Kelderek.

'Ay, but what's the shouting for?' said Baltis. 'Sounds like trouble to me.'

Sheldra ran forward and laid her hand on Kelderek's arm.

'My lord I' she cried, pointing. 'Look! Lord Shardik is waking!'

Kelderek turned towards the cage. The bear, its eyes still closed, was haunched on the rickety floor in an unnatural, crouching position, suggesting not sleep but rather the grotesque posture of some gigantic insect - the back arched, the legs drawn up together under the body. Its breathing was uneven and laboured and froth had gathered at its mouth. As they watched it stirred uneasily and then, with an uncertain, stupefied groping, raised one paw to its muzzle. For a moment its head lifted, the lips curling as though in a snarl, and then sank again to the floor.

'Will he wake now - at once?' asked Kelderek, shrinking involuntarily as the bear moved once more.

'Not at once, my lord,' answered Sheldra, 'but soon - within the hour.'

The bear rolled on its side, the bars clattered like nails on a bench and the near-side wheels lurched, splaying under the massive weight. The sounds of battle were plain now and through the shouting of the Ortelgans they could discern a rhythmic, intermittent cry - a concerted sound, hard and compact like a missile. 4Bek-la Mowt! Bek-la Mowt!'

'Press on!' shouted Kelderek, hardly knowing what he said. 'Press on! Shardik to the battle! Take the strain behind and press on!'

Fumbling and stumbling in the rain, they unfastened the wet ropes, hitched them to the other end of the rickety bars and pushed the cage forward down the slope, checking it as it gathered momentum. They had gone only a short distance when Kelderek realized that they were closer to the battle than he had supposed. The whole army must be engaged, for the din extended a long way to right and left. He ran a short distance ahead, but could see nothing for the thick trees and failing light. Suddenly a little knot of five or six men came running up the hill, looking back over their shoulders. Only two were carrying weapons. One, a red-haired, raw-boned fellow, was ahead of the others. Recognizing him, Kelderek grabbed his arm. The man gave a cry of pain, cursed, and aimed a clumsy blow at him. Kelderek let go and wiped his bloody hand on his thigh.

'Numiss!' he shouted. 'What's happened?'

'It's all up, that's what's happened! The whole damned Beklan army's down there - thousands of 'em. Get out of it while you can!'

Kelderek took him by the throat 'Where's Lord Ta-Kominion, damn you? Where?'

Numiss pointed.

'There - lying in the bloody road. He's a goner!' He wrenched himself free and vanished.

The cage, following down the hill, was now close behind Kelderek. He called to Baltis, 'Wait - hold it there till I come back!'

"Can't be done - it's too steep!' shouted Baltis.

'Wedge it then!' answered Kelderek over his shoulder. 'Ta-Kominion's here -'

'Too steep, I tell you, lad! It's too steep!'

Running down the hill, Kelderek glimpsed beyond the trees a rising slope of open, stony ground, over which Ortelgans were streaming back towards him. From further away, steady as a drumbeat, came the concerted shouts of the enemy. He had not gone half a bow-shot before he saw his man. Ta-Kominion was lying on his back in the road. The downhill flow of rain, with its flotsam of twigs and leaves, was dammed against his body as though beneath a log. Beside him, chafing his hands, crouched a tall, grey-haired man - Kavass the fletcher. Suddenly Ta-Kominion screamed some incoherent words and tore at his own arm. Kelderek ran up and knelt over him, his gorge rising at the smell of gangrene and putrefaction.

'Zelda!' cried Ta-Kominion. His white face was horribly convulsed, its shape that of the skull beneath and only more ghastly for the life that flickered in the eyes. He stared up at Kelderek, but said nothing more.

'My lord,' said Kelderek, 'what you required has been done. Lord Shardik is here.'

Ta-Kominion uttered a sound like that of a mother beside a fretful child, like that of the rain in the trees. For an instant Kelderek thought that he was whispering him to silence.

'Sh!Sh-sh-ardik!'

'Shardik has come, my lord.'

Suddenly a snarling roar, louder even than the surrounding din of battle, filled the tunnel-like roadway under the trees. There followed a clanging and clattering of iron, sharp cracks of snapped wood, panic cries and a noise of dragging and scraping. Baltis' voice shouted, 'Let go, you fools!' Then again broke out the snarling, full of savagery and ferocious rage. Kelderek leapt to his feet. The cage had broken loose and was rushing down the hill, swaying and jumping as the crude wheels ploughed ruts in the mud and struck against protruding stones. The roof had split apart and the bars were hanging outwards, some trailing along the ground, others lashing sideways like a giant's flails. Shardik was standing upright, surrounded by long, white splinters of wood. Blood was running down one shoulder and he foamed at the mouth, beating the iron bars around him as Baltis' hammers had never beaten them. The point of a sharp, splintered stake had pierced his neck and as it swayed up and down, levering itself in the wound, he roared with pain and anger. Red-eyed, frothing and bloody, his head smashing through the flimsy lower branches of the trees overhanging the track, he rode down upon the battle like some beast-god of apocalypse. Just in time Kelderek threw himself against the bank. Spongy and sodden, it gave way beneath his weight and he sank backwards into the mud. The cage thundered past him, grinding over the very spot where he had been kneeling, and the three near-side wheels, each as thick as a man's arm, passed across Ta-Kominion's body, crushing a bloody channel through clothing, flesh and bone. Still further it went, driving through the Ortelgan fugitives like a demon's chariot until, striking head-on against a tree-trunk, it tilted forward and smashed to pieces. For a few moments Shardik, thrown upon his back, thrashed and struggled for a footing. Then he stood up and, with the point of the stake still embedded in his neck, burst through the trees and on to the battlefield.

23 The Battle of the Foothills

Gel-Ethlin looked right and left through the falling dusk and rain. His line remained unbroken. For well over an hour the Beklan troops had simply stood their ground, repulsing the fierce but piecemeal attacks of the Ortelgans. At the first onslaught, delivered unhesitatingly and with fanatical courage by no more than two or three hundred men, he had concluded with relief that he was not opposed by a large force. Then, as more and still more of the Ortelgans emerged from the woods, jostling and pushing their way into a rough-and-ready battle-line that spread to right and left until it was as long as his own, he saw that the youth from Gelt had spoken no more than the truth. This was nothing less than an entire tribe in arms, and altogether too numerous for his liking. Soon one attack after another was breaking upon his line, until the slope was covered with dead and crawling, cursing wounded. After some anxious time, however, it became clear that the enemy, who had come upon him as unexpectedly as he had intended, possessed no effective central command and were merely attacking under individual leaders, group by group as each baron might decide. He realized that although he was probably outnumbered by something like three to two, this would not in itself bring about his defeat as long as the enemy lacked all real co-ordination and discipline. He need do no more than defend and wait. All things considered, these remained the best tactics. His army was at half strength and that the weaker half; the poor condition of the men, after several days' marching in the heat, had been aggravated by their pummelling in the dust and wind that morning; and the slope below was becoming more muddy and slippery at every moment. As long as the Ortelgans continued to make sporadic attacks here and there along the line, it was an easy matter for the Beklan companies not engaged on either side to turn inwards and help to break them up. By nightfall - soon, now - his troops might well have had enough, but what it would be best to do then would depend on the state each side was in. His most prudent course might be to return to the plain. It was unlikely that these irregulars would be able to follow them or that they would even be able, now that the rains had broken, to keep the field. Their food supplies were probably scanty, whereas he had rations - of a sort - for two days and, unlike the enemy, would have the opportunity to commandeer more if he retreated into friendly country.

Stand firm until darkness, thought Gel-Ethlin, that's the style. Why risk breaking ranks to attack? And then come away, leaving the rain to finish the job. As he watched the enemy, among the trees below, re-forming for a fresh attack under the command of a dark, bearded baron with a gold torque on one arm, he thought the idea over and could see nothing wrong with it: and if he could not, presumably his superiors in Bekla would not. He ought not to risk his half-army, cither by attacking unnecessarily or by keeping it out in these hills in the rains. His part should be that of a sound, steady commander; nothing flashy.

And yet - he paused. When they got back to Bekla, Santil-ke-Erketlis, that brilliant opportunist, would probably smile understandingly, sympathize with him for having been obliged to come away without destroying the enemy, and then point out how that destruction could and should have been effected. 'You a commander-in-chief, Gel-Ethlin?' Santil-ke-Erketlis had once said, good-humouredly enough, while they were returning together from a drinking-party. 'Man, you're like an old woman with the housekeeping money. "Oh, I wonder whether I might have beaten him down another meld - or perhaps if I'd gone to that other man round the corner - ?" A fine army strikes Like the great cats, my lad -swiftly and once. It's like the wheelwright's work - there comes a moment when you have to say, "Now, hit it." A general who can't see that moment and seize it doesn't deserve victory.' Santil-ke-Erketlis, victor of a score of engagements, who had virtually dictated his own terms at the conclusion of the Slave Wars, could afford to be generous and warm-hearted. 'And how does one seize the moment?' Gel-Ethlin had asked rather tipsily, as they each seized something else and stood against the wall. 'By never stopping to think of all the things that can go wrong,' Santil-kc-Erketlis had replied.

Another attack came up the slope, this time straight towards his centre. The Tonildan contingent, a second-rate lot if ever there was one, were breaking ranks with a kind of nervous anticipation and advancing uncertainly downhill to meet it. Gel-Ethlin ran forward, shouting, 'Stand fast! Stand fast, the Tonilda!' At least no one could say that he had a thin word of command. His voice cut through the din like a hammer splitting a flint. The Tonilda fell back and re-formed line, the rain pouring off their shoulders. A few moments later the Ortelgan attack came rushing across the last few yards and struck like a ram against a wall. Weapons rang and men swayed back and forth, panting and gasping like swimmers struggling in rough water. There was a scream and a man stumbled out of the line clutching his stomach, pitched forward into the mud and lay jerking; resembling, in his unheeded plight, a broken fish cast up and dying on the shore. 'Stand fast, the Tonilda!' shouted Gel-Ethlin again. A red-headed, raw-boned Ortelgan fellow burst through a gap in the line and ran a few steps uncertainly, looking about him and waving his sword. An officer thrust at him, missed his body as he moved unexpectedly and wounded him in the forearm. The man spun round, yelling, and ran back through the gap.

Behind the line Gel-Ethlin, followed by his pennant-bearer, trumpeter and servant, ran to his left until he was beyond the point of attack. Then, pushing through the front rank of the Deelguy mercenaries, he turned and looked back at the fighting on his right The din obliterated every noise else - the rain, his own movements, the voices of those about him and all sounds from the wood below. The Ortelgans, who had evidently now learned - or found a leader with enough sense - to protect the flanks of their assault, had broken through the Tonildan line in a wedge about sixty yards broad. They were fighting, as they had all the evening, with a kind of besotted ferocity, prodigal of life. The trampled, muddy ground which they had won was littered with bodies. His own losses, too, were mounting fast - that was only too plain to be seen. He could recognize some of the men lying-on the ground, among them the son of one of Kapparah's tenants, a decent lad who last winter had acted as his go-between to the girl in Ikat. The attack had become a dangerous one, which would have to be halted and thrown back quickly before the enemy could reinforce it. He turned and made towards the nearest commander in the line - Kreet-Liss, that cryptic and reticent soldier, captain of the Deelguy mercenaries. Kreet-Liss, though anything but a coward, was always liable to turn awkward, an ally suddenly afflicted with difficulty in understanding plain Beklan whenever orders did not suit him. He listened as Gel-Ethlin, whom the noise obliged to shout almost into his ear, told him to withdraw his men, bring them across into the centre and counter-attack the Ortelgans.

'Yoss, yoss,' he shouted back finally. 'Bad owver ther, better trost oss, thot's it, eh?' The three or four black-ringleted young barons standing about him grinned at each other, slapped some of the rain out of their gaudy, bedraggled finery and went to get their men together. As the Deelguy fell back Gel-Ethlin found himself unable, in the failing light, to attract the attention of Shaltnekan, the commander adjacent to their left, whom he wanted to close up and fill the gap. He sent his servant across with the order and as he did so thought suddenly, 'Santil-ke-Erketlis would have sent the Deelguy out in front of the line, to attack the Ortelgans' rear and cut them off.' Yes, but suppose they had proved not strong enough for the job and the Ortelgans had simply cut them to pieces and got out? No, it would have been too much of a risk.

Young Shaltnekan and his men were approaching now, their heads bent against the rain driving into their faces. Gel-Ethlin went to meet them, flailing his arms across his chest, for he was wet through to the skin.

'Can't we break ranks and attack them, sir?' asked Shaltnekan, before his commander could speak. 'My lads are sick of standing on the defensive against that bunch of flea-bitten savages. One good push and they'll break up.'

'Certainly not,' answered Gel-Ethlin. 'How do you know what reserves they may have down in those woods? Our men were tired when they got here and once we break ranks they could be fan-game for anything. We've nothing to do but stand fast. We're blocking the only way down to the plain and once they realize they can't shift us they'll go to pieces.'

'Just as you say, sir,' answered Shaltnekan, 'but it goes against the grain to stand still, when we might be driving the bastards over the hills like goats.'

'Where's the bear?' shouted one of the men. It was evidently a newly-invented catch-phrase, for fifty voices took it up. "E isn't here!'

"E's in despair!' continued the joker. "E wouldn't dare!' 'We'll comb 'is 'air!'

'They're still in good spirits, sir, you sec,' said Shaltnekan, 'but all the same, there's one or two good men have been cut up today by those river-frogs and the boys are going to take it very hard if they're not allowed to have a cut at them before it gets too dark.'

'And I say stand fast!' snapped Gel-Ethlin. 'Get back into line, that man!' he shouted to the buffoon who was playing the part of the bear. 'Dress the front rank - sword's length between each man and the next!'

'Stand and bloody shiver,' muttered a voice.

Gel-Ethlin strode to the rear, feeling his wet clothes clammy against his body. The twilight was deepening and he was obliged to look about for some moments before he caught sight of Kreet-Liss. He ran towards him and arrived just as the Deelguy went forward into their attack. The concerted, rhythmic cry of 'Bek-la Mowt!'

Bek-la-Mowt!' was taken up along the whole line, but broke off in the centre as the Deelguy closed with the enemy. It was plain that the Ortelgans were ready to pay dearly to hold the gap they had made. Three times they repulsed the mercenaries, yelling as they stood astride the bodies of their fallen comrades. Many were brandishing swords and shields taken from the dead of the decimated Tonilda, and each time an enemy was cut down the Ortelgan opposing him would stoop quickly to snatch the foreign arms which he believed must be better than his own - though both, as like as not, had been forged from iron of Gelt.

Suddenly a fresh Beklan attack fell upon the Ortelgan right and again the steady, bearing cry of 'Bek-la Mowt!' rose above the surrounding clamour. Gel-Ethlin, who had been about to order Kreet-Liss to attack once more, was peering to It's left to make out what had happened, when someone plucked his sleeve. It was Shaltnekan.

'Those are my boys attacking them now, sir,' he said.

'Against orders!' cried Gel-Ethlin. 'What do you mean by it? Get back-'

'They're going to break in a moment, if I know anything about it, sir,' said Shaltnekan. 'Surely you won't stop us pursuing them now?'

'You'll do no such thing!' replied Gel-Ethlin.

'Sir,' said Shaltnekan, 'if we let them off the field in any sort of order, what's going to be said back in Bekla? We'll never live it down. They've got to be routed - cut to bits. And now's the time to do it, or they'll be off in the dark.'

The Ortelgans were running back out of the gap as Shaltnekan's attack drove in their right flank. Kreet-Liss and his men followed them, stabbing the enemy's wounded as they advanced. A few minutes later the original Beklan line was restored and Gel-Ethlin, peering, could make out to his left the gap where Shaltnekan's company had left their place. There could be no denying that it had been a fine stroke of initiative: and no denying, either, that there was a good deal of force in the argument that the enemy's escape, after the mauling they had suffered, would probably be ill-received in Bekla. To destroy them, on the other hand, would establish his reputation and silence any possible criticism on the part of Santil-ke-Erketlis.

The Beklan officers, obedient to orders, had halted their men on the original defensive line and the Ortelgans were streaming down the slope unpursucd, several supporting their wounded or carrying looted Beklan equipment As Gel-Ethlin watched them, a voice spoke from the ground at his feet. He looked down. It was the tenant lad from Kapparah's farm near Ikat He had raised himself on one elbow and was trying to staunch with his cloak a great gash in his neck and shoulder.

'Go on, sir, go on!' gasped the boy. 'Finish them offl I'll take a letter down to Ikat tomorrow, won't I, just like old times? God bless the lady, she'll give me a whole sackful of gold!'

He pitched forward on his face and two of Shaltnekan's men dragged him back behind the line. Gel-Ethlin, his mind made up, turned to the trumpeter.

'Well, Wolf,' he said, addressing the man by his nickname, 'no good you standing there doing nothing! Break ranks - general pursuit. And blow hard, so that everyone can hear it!'

The trumpet had hardly sounded before the various Beklan companies began racing down the slopes, those on the wings scattering widely and trying to turn inwards towards the road. Every man hoped to beat his comrades to the plunder - such as it might be. This was what they had marched through the wind for, withstood the attacks for, shivered obediently for in the rain. True enough, there would be little or nothing to take from these barbarians except their fleas, but a couple of slaves would fetch a good price in Bekla and there was always the sporting chance of a baron with gold ornaments, or even a woman among the baggage behind.

Gel-Ethlin ran too, among the foremost, his pennant-bearer on one side of him and Shaltnekan on the other. As they reached the foot of the slope and came close to the edge of the wood, he could see, among the trees, the Ortelgans once more forming line to meet them. Evidently they meant to go down fighting. For the first time he drew his sword, tie might as well strike a blow or two on his own account before the business was done.

From close at hand, somewhere inside the wood, there came a loud grinding, rumbling sound which grew nearer and changed to a smashing and splintering of wood and a clashing of iron. Immediately after, there sounded above all the tumult a savage roaring, like that of some huge beast in pain. Then the boughs burst apart in front of him and Gel-Ethlin stood rigid with horror, bereft of every feeling but panic fear. The ordinary course of things seen and comprehended; the senses, that five-fold frame of the world; the unthinking, human certainty of what can and cannot reasonably happen, upon which all rational living is based - these dissolved in an instant. If a rag-draped skeleton had come stalking out of the trees on bare, bony feet, invisible to all but himself, and made towards him with wagging head and grinning jaws, he could not have been more stupefied, more deeply plunged into terror and mental chaos. Before him, no more than a few yards away, there stood, more than twice as tall as a man, a beast which could have no place in the mortal world. Most like a bear it looked, but a bear created in hell to torment the damned by its mere presence. The cars were flattened like a cat's in rage, the eyes glimmered redly in the failing light and streaked, ochreous foam came frothing from between teeth like Deelguy knives. Over one shoulder - and this drove him almost mad with fear, for it proved that this was no earthly creature - it carried a great, pointed stake, dripping with blood. Blood, too, covered the claws curving from the one paw raised above its head as though in some horrible greeting of death. Its eyes - the eyes of a mad creature, inhabiting a world of cruelty and pain - looked down upon Gel-Ethlin with a kind of dark intelligence all too sufficient for its single purpose. Meeting that gaze, he let his sword drop from his hand; and as he did so the beast struck him with a blow that crushed his skull and drove his head down through his shoulders.

A moment later Shaltnekan fell across his body, his chest broken in like a smashed drum. Kreet-Liss, stumbling on the wet slope, made one thrust with his sword before his neck was ripped open in a fountain of blood. And this sword-thrust, wounding it, drove the creature to such a frenzy of murderous destruction that every man ran shrieking as it ploughed its way up the crowded slope, seeking whom to tear and destroy. The men on the wings, halted and crying out to learn what had happened, felt their bowels loosen at the news that the bear-god, more dreadful than any imagined creature from the nether wastes of fever and nightmare, had indeed appeared, and had recognized and killed of intent the General and two commanders.

From the wavering Ortelgan line there rose a triumphant shout. Kelderek, limping and staggering with exhaustion, was the first man to emerge from the trees, shouting 'Shardik! Shardik the Power of God!' Then, with yells of 'Shardik! Shardik!', which were the last sound in the ears of Ta-Kominion, the Ortelgans poured up the slope, hacking and thrusting anew through the broken Beklan centre. A few minutes afterwards Kelderek, Baltis and a score of others reached the mouth of the gorge beyond the ridge and, heedless of their isolation, faced about to hold it against any who might try to force an escape. Of Shardik, vanished into the falling darkness, there remained neither sight nor sound.

Within half an hour, when night put an end to the bloodshed, all Beklan resistance had been quenched. The Ortelgans, following the terrible example which had redeemed them from defeat, showed no mercy, killing their enemies and stripping their bodies of weapons, shields and armour, until they were as well-found a force as had ever swept down upon the Beklan plain. A few of Gel-Ethlin's men succeeded in escaping towards Gelt. None found his way past Kelderek, to regain the plain by the road up which they had marched that afternoon.

With the clouded, rainy moon rose the white smoke of fires coaxed into life by the victors to cook the plundered rations of the enemy. But before midnight the army, urged forward by Zelda and Kelderek so fervently that they stayed not even to bury the dead, were limping on towards Bekla, outstripping all news of their victory and of the total destruction of Gel-Ethlin's force.

Two days later, reduced to two-thirds of their strength by fatigue and the privations of their forced march, the Ortelgans, advancing by the paved road across the plain, appeared before the walls of Bekla; smashed in the carved and gilded Tamarrik gate - that unique masterpiece created by the craftsman Fleitil a century before - after storming it for four hours with an improvised ram at a cost of over five hundred men; overcame the garrison and the citizens, despite the courageous leadership of the sick Santil-ke-Erketlis; sacked and occupied the city and began at once to strengthen the fortifications against the risk of counter-attack as soon as the rains should end.

Thus, in what must surely have been one of the most extraordinary and unpredictable campaigns ever fought, fell Bekla, the capital of an empire of subject provinces 20,000 square miles in extent. Of those provinces, the furthest from the city seceded and became enemies to its new rulers. The nearer, rather than face the rapine and bloodshed of resistance, put themselves under the protection of the Ortelgans, of their generals Zelda and Ged-la-Dan and their mysterious priest-king Kelderek, styled Crendrik - the Eye of God.

Book III

Bekla

24 Elleroth

Bekla, city of myth and conjecture, hidden in time as Tiahuanaco in the Andes fastness, as Petra in the hills of Edom, as Atlantis beneath the waves! Bekla of enigma and secrets, more deeply enfolded in its religious mystery than Eleusis of the reaped corn, than the stone giants of the Pacific or the Kerait lands of Prester John. Its grey, broken walls - across whose parapets only the clouds come marching, in whose hollows the wind sounds and ceases like the trumpeter of Cracow or Memnon's statue on the sands - the stars reflected in its waters, the flowers scenting its gardens, are become like words heard in a dream that cannot be recalled. Its very history lies buried, unresolved - coins, beads and gaming-boards, street below street, shards below shards, hearth beneath hearth, ash under ash. The earth has been dug away from Troy and Mycenae, the jungle cut from about Zimbabwe; and caged in maps and clocks are the terrible leagues about Urumchi and Ulan Bator. But who shall disperse the moon-dim darkness that covers Bekla, or draw it up to view from depths more lonely and remote than those where bassogigas and ethusa swim in black silence? Only sometimes through tales may it be guessed at, those tokens riddling as the carved woods from the Americas floating centuries ago to the shores of Portugal and Spain: or in dreams, perhaps, it may be glimpsed - from the decks of that unchanging navy of gods and images that sails by night, carrying its passengers still in no bottoms else than those which bore, in their little time, Pilate's wife, Joseph of Canaan and the wise Penelope of Ithaca with her twenty geese. Bekla the incomparable, the lily of the plain, the garden of sculpted and dancing stone, appears from its mist and dusk, faint as the tracks of Shardik himself in forests long consumed.

Six miles round were the walls, rising on the south to encircle the summit of Mount Crandor, with its citadel crowning the sheer face of the stone quarries below. A breakneck flight of steps led up. that face, disappearing, at a height of eighty feet, into the mouth of a tunnel which ran upwards through the rock to emerge into the twilight of the huge granary cellar. The only other entry to the citadel was the so-called Red Gate in the south wall, a low arch through which a chalybeate brook flowed from its source within to the chain of falls - named the White Girls - that carried it down Crandor's gradual southern slope. Under the Red Gate, men long ago had worked to widen and deepen the bed of the brook, but had left standing, two feet beneath the surface of the water, a narrow, twisting causeway of the living rock. Those who had learned this padi's subaqueous windings could wade safely through the deep pool and then - if permitted - enter the citadel by the stairway known as the Vent It was not Mount Crandor, however, which drew the gaze of the newcomer to Bekla, but the ridge of the Leopard Hill below, with its terraces of vines, flowers and citrous tendriona. On the crest, above these surrounding gardens, stood the Palace of the Barons, the range of its towers reflecting light from their balconies of polished, rose-coloured marble. Twenty round towers there were in all, eight by the long sides of the palace and four by the short; each tapering, circular wall so smooth and regular that in sunlight not one stone's lower edge cast a shadow upon its fellow below, and the only blackness was that within the window-openings, rounded and slitted like key-holes, which lit the spiral stairways. High up, as high as tall trees, the circular balconies projected like the capitals of columns, their ambulatories wide enough for two men to walk side by side. The marble balustrades were identical in height and shape, yet each was decorated differently, carved on each side, in low relief, with leopards, lilies, birds or fish; so that a lord might say to his friend, 'I will drink with you tonight on the Bramba tower,' or a lover to his mistress, 'Let us meet this evening on the Trepsis tower and watch the sun set before we go to supper.' Above these marvellous crow's-nests the towers culminated in slender, painted spires - red, blue and green - latticed and containing gong-toned, copper bells. When these were rung - four bells to each note of the scale - the metallic, wavering sounds mingled with their own echoes from the precipices of Crandor and vibrated over the roofs below until the citizens, thus summoned to rejoice at festival, holiday or royal welcome, laughed to feel their ears confounded in sport as the eye is confounded by mirrors face to face.

The palace itself stood within its towers and separate by several yards from their bases. Yet - wonderful to see - at the height of the roof, that part of the wall that stood behind each tower sloped outwards, supported on massive corbels, to embrace it and project a little beyond, so that the towers themselves, with their pointed spires, looked like great lances set upright at regular intervals to pierce the walls and support the roof as a canopy is supported at the periphery.

The voluted parapets were carved in relief with the round leaves and flame-shaped flower-buds of lilies and lotus; and to these the craftsmen had added, here and there as pleased them, the likenesses of insects, of trailing weeds and drops of water, all many times larger than the life. The hard light of noon stressed little of these fancies, accentuating rather the single, shadowed mass of the north front, grave and severe as a judge presiding above the busy streets. But at evening, when the heat of the day broke and the hard shadows fled away, the red, slanting light would soften the outline of walls and towers and emphasize instead their marvellous decoration, so that at this hour the palace suggested rather some beautiful, pleasure-loving woman, adorned with jewels and flowers, ready for a joyous meeting or homecoming beyond compare. And by the first light of day, before the gongs of the city's two water-clocks clashed one after the other for sunrise, it had changed yet again and become, in the misty stillness, like a pool of water-lilies half-opened among the dragon-flies and sipping, splashing swallows.

Some way from the foot of the Leopard Hill was the newly-excavated Rock Pit, immediately above which stood the House of the King, a gaunt square of rooms and corridors surrounding a hall -once a barracks for soldiers, but now reserved for another use and another occupant. Close by, grouped about the north side of the cypress gardens and the lake called the Barb, were stone buildings, resembling those on Quiso, but larger and more numerous. Some of these were used as dwellings by the Ortelgan leaders, while others were set aside for hostages or for delegations from the various provincial peoples, whose comings and goings, with embassies to the king or petitions to lay before the generals, were incessant in this empire at war on a debatable frontier. Beyond the cypress gardens a walled road led to the Peacock Gate, the only way through the fortified rampart dividing the upper from the lower city.

The lower city - the city itself, its paved streets and dusty alleys, its odours and clamour by day, its moonlight and jasmine by night, its cripples and beggars, its animals, its merchandise, its traces everywhere of war and pillage, doors hacked and walls blackened with fire - does the city too return out of the dark? Here ran the street of the money-changers and beyond, on either side of a narrow avenue of ilex trees, stood the houses of the jewel-merchants - high, barred windows and a couple of strong fellows at the gate to enquire a stranger's business. The torpid flies about the open sweet-stalls, the smells of leather and dung and spices and sweat and herbs, the fruit market's banks of gaudy panniers, the rostra, barracoons and blocks of the slave market with its handsome children, its cozening foreigners and outlandish tongues, the shoe-makers sitting absorbed at their tapping and stitching in the midst of the hubbub, the clinking street-walkers strolling nowhere in particular with their stylized gait and sidelong glances, the coloured flowers in the water, the shouting across a street of the news of a sale or an offer, in cryptic words revealing nothing except to their intended hearer; the quarrels, the lies, the promises, the thieves, the long-drawn crying of wares on notes that the years have turned into songs, the streets of the stonemasons, carpenters, weavers, of the astrologers, doctors and fortunetellers. The scuttling lizards, the rats and dogs, the fowls in coops and the pretty birds in cages. The cattle market had been burned to the ground in the fighting and on one of the sagging, open doors of the temple of Cran someone had daubed the mask of a bear - two eyes and a snarling muzzle, set between round cars. The Tamarrik gate, that wonder second only to the Palace, was gone for ever -gone the concentric filigree spheres, the sundial with its phallic gnomon and nympholeptic spiral of hours, the incredible faces peering through the green leaves of the sycamore, the great ferns and the blue-tongued lichens, the wind-harp and the silver drum that beat of itself when the sacred doves alighted at evening to be fed. The fragments of Fleitil's masterpiece, constructed in an age when none conceived it possible that war could approach Bekla, had been gleaned from the rubble secretly and with bitter tears, during the night before Ged-la-Dan and his men supervised the building, by forced labour, of a new wall to close the gap. The two remaining gates, the Blue Gate and the Gate of Lilies, were very strong and entirely suited to Bekla's present and more dangerous role of a city that scarcely knew friend from foe.

On this cloudy spring morning the surface of the Barb, ruffled by the south wind, had the dull, broken shine of an incised glaze. Along the lonelier, south-eastern shore, from which pasture-land, enclosed within the city walls, stretched away up the slopes of Crandor, a flock of cranes were feeding and squabbling, wading through the shallows and bending their long necks down to the weed. On the opposite side, in the sheltering cypress gardens, men were strolling in twos and threes or sitting out of the wind in the evergreen arbours. Some were attended by servants who walked behind them carrying cloaks, papers and writing materials, while others, harsh-voiced and shaggy as brigands, broke from time to time into loud laughter or slapped each other's shoulders; betraying, even while they tried to hide it, the lack of ease which they felt in these trim and unaccustomed surroundings. Others again clearly wished to be known for soldiers and, though personally unarmed, in deference to the place and the occasion, had instructed their servants to carry their empty scabbards conspicuously. It seemed that a number of these men were strangers to each other, for their greetings, as they passed, were formal - a bow, a grave nod or a few words: yet their very presence together showed that they must have something in common. After a time a certain restlessness - even impatience -began to show among them. Evidently they were waiting for something that was delayed.

At length the figure of a woman, scarlet-cloaked and carrying a silver staff, was seen approaching the garden from the King's House. There was a general move in the direction of the gate leading into the walled road, so that by the time the woman reached it, forty or fifty men were already waiting there. As she entered some thronged about her; others, with an air of detachment, idled, or pretended to idle, within earshot. The woman, dour and stolid in manner, looked round among them, raised in greeting her hand, with its crimson wooden rings, and began to speak. Although she spoke in Beklan, it was plain that this was not her tongue. Her voice had the slow, flat cadence of Telthearna province and she was, as they all knew, a priestess of the conquerors, an Ortelgan.

'My lords, the king greets you and welcomes you to Bekla. He is grateful to each of you, for he knows that you have the strength and safety of the empire at heart. As you all know, it was..'

At this moment she was interrupted by the stammering excitement of a thick-set, lank-haired man, who spoke with the accent of a westerner from Paltesh.