By afternoon of the next day Kelderek was on the point of collapse. Hunger, fatigue and lack of sleep had worked upon his body as beetles work upon a roof, rust on a cistern or fear on the soldier's heart - always taking a little more, leaving a little less to oppose the forces of gravity, of weather, of danger and fear. How does the end come? Perhaps an engineer, arriving at last to inspect and check, discovers that he can pierce with his finger the pitted, paper-thin plates of iron. Perhaps a comrade's jest or a missile narrowly missing its mark causes him who was once an honest soldier to bury his head in his hands, weeping and babbling; just as rotten purlins and rafters become at last no more than splinters, worm-holes and powder. Sometimes nothing occurs to precipitate the catastrophe and the slow decay, unhastened from without - of the water-tank in the windless desert or the commander of the lonely, precarious garrison - continues without interruption, till nothing is left that can be repaired. Already the king of Bekla was no more, but this the Ortelgan hunter had not yet perceived.

Shardik had reached the edge of the foothills a little after dawn. The place was wild and lonely, the country increasingly difficult. Kelderek clambered upward through dense trees or among tumbled rocks, where often he could not see thirty paces ahead. Sometimes, following an intuitive feeling that this must be the way the bear had taken, he would reach a patch of open ground only to conceal himself as Shardik came stumbling from the forest behind him. At almost any time he might have lost his life. But a change had come upon the bear - a change which, as the hours passed, became more plain to Kelderek, piercing his own sufferings with pity and at last with actual fear of what would befall.

As, in the splendid house of some great family, where once lights shone in scores of windows at night and carriages bearing relatives, friends and news came and went, the very evidence and means of grandeur and authority over all the surrounding countryside; but where now the lord, widowed, his heir killed in battle, has lost heart and begun to fail; as, in such a house, a few candles burn, lit at dusk by an old servant who does what he can and must needs leave the rest; so fragments of Shardik's strength and ferocity flickered, a shadow suggesting the presence that once had been. He wandered on, safe indeed from attack - for what would dare to attack him? - but almost, or so it seemed, without strength to fend for himself. Once, coming upon the body of a wolf not long dead, he made some sorry shift to eat it. It seemed to Kelderek that the bear's sight was weaker, and of this, after a time, he began to take advantage, following closer than he or the nimblest of the girls would have dared in the old days on Ortelga; and thus he was able to prolong his endurance even while his hope diminished of finding, in this wilderness, any to help him or carry his news to Bekla.

In the afternoon they climbed a steep valley, emerging on a ridge running eastward above the forests: and along this they continued their slow and mysterious journey. Once Kelderek, rousing himself from a waking fancy, in which his pains seemed torpid flies hanging upon his body, saw the bear ahead of him on a high rock, clear against the sky and gazing over the Beklan plain far below. It seemed to him that now it could go no further. Its body was hunched unnaturally and when at length it moved, one shoulder drooped in a kind of crippled limping. Yet when he himself reached the rock, it was to sec Shardik already crossing the spur below and as far away as before.

Coming to the foot of the ridge, he found himself at the upper end of a bleak waste, bounded far off by forest like that through which they had climbed the day before. Of Shardik there was no sign.

It was now, as the light began to fail, that Kelderek's faculties at last disintegrated. Strength and thought alike failed him. He tried to look for the bear's tracks, but forgot what ground he had already searched and then what it was that he was seeking. Coming upon a pool, he drank and then, thrusting his feet for ease into the water, cried out at the fierce, stinging pain. He found a narrow path - no more than a coney's trod - between the tussocks and crept down it on hands and knees, muttering, 'Accept my life, Lord Shardik,' though the meaning of the words he could not recall. He tried to stand, but his sight grew clouded and sounds filled his ears, as of water, which he knew must be unreal.

The path led to a dry ravine and here for a long time he sat with his back against a tree, gazing unseeingly at the black streak of an old lightning-flash that had marked the rock opposite with the shape of a broken spear.

Dusk had fallen when at last he crawled up the further side. His physical collapse - for he could not walk - brought with it a sense of having become a creature lacking volition, passive as a tree in the wind or a weed in the stream. His last sensation was of lying prostrate, shivering and trying to drag himself forward by clutching the fibrous grasses between his fingers.

When he woke it was night, the moon clouded and the solitude stretching wide and indistinct about him. He sat up, coughing, and at once suppressed the sound with an arm across his mouth. He was afraid; partly of attracting some beast of prey, but more of the empty night and of his new and dreadful loneliness. Following Shardik, he had feared Shardik and nothing else. Now Shardik was gone; and as, when some severe and demanding leader, whom his men both respected and feared, is reported lost, they loiter silently, addressing themselves with assumed diligence to trivial or futile duties, in attempts to evade the thought that none will utter - that they are now without him whom they trusted to stand between them and the enemy - so Kelderek rubbed his cold limbs and coughed into the crook of his elbow, as though by concentrating on the ills of his body he could make himself immune to the silence, the desolate gloom and the sense of something hovering, glimpsed in the tail of his eye.

Suddenly he started, held his breath and turned his head, listening incredulously. Had he indeed heard, or only imagined, the sound of voices, far off? No, there was nothing. He stood up; and found that he could now walk, though slowly and with pain. But which way should he go, and with what purpose? Southward, for Bekla? Or should he try to find some refuge and remain until daylight, in the hope of coming once more upon Shardik?

And then beyond all doubt he heard, for no more than an instant, a distant clamour of voices in the night. It was come and gone; but that was no wonder, for it had been far off, and what had reached his car might well have been some momentary, louder outcry. If the distance or his own weakness had not deceived him, there had been many voices. Could the noise have come from a village where some gathering was being held? There was no light to be seen. He was not even sure from which direction the sound had come. Yet at the thought of shelter and food, of resting in safety among fellow men and of an end to his loneliness and danger, he began to hasten - or rather, to stagger - in any direction and in none until, realizing his foolishness, he sat down once more to listen.

At length - after how long he could not tell - the sound reached him again, perceived and then dying on the ear, like a wave, spent among tall reeds, that never breaks upon the shore. Released and at once quenched it seemed, as though a door far off had opened for a moment and as suddenly closed upon some concourse within. Yet it was a sound neither of invocation nor of festival, but rather of tumultuous disorder, of riot or confusion. To him, this in itself mattered little - a town in uproar would be nevertheless a town -but what town, in this place? Where was he, and could he be sure of help once it was known who he was?

He realized that he was once more groping his way in what now seemed to him the direction of the sound. The moon, still obscured among clouds, gave little light, but he could both see and feel that he was going gently downhill, among crags and bushes, and approaching what seemed a darker mass in the near-darkness - woodland it might be, or a confronting hillside.

His cloak caught on a thorn-bush and he turned to disentangle it. At this moment, from somewhere not a stone's throw away in the dark, there came an agonized cry, like that of a man dealt some terrible wound. The shock, like lightning striking dose at hand, momentarily bereft him of reason. As he stood trembling and staring into the dark, he heard a quick, loud gasp, followed by a few choking words of Beklan, uttered in a voice that ceased like a snapped thread.

'She'll give me a whole sackful of gold!'

At once the silence returned, unbroken by the least noise either of struggle or of flight. 'Who's there?' called Kelderek.

There was no answer, no sound. The man, whoever he might be, was either dead or unconscious. Who - what - had struck him down? Kelderek dropped on one knee, drew his sword and waited. Trying to control his breathing and the loosening of his bowels, he crouched still lower as the moon gleamed out a moment and vanished again. His fear was incapacitating and he knew himself too weak to strike a blow.

Was it Shardik who had killed the man ? Why was there no noise? He looked up at the dimly luminous cloud-bank and saw beyond it a stretch of open sky. Next time the moon sailed clear he must be ready on the instant to look about him and act.

Below, at the foot of the slope, the trees were moving. The wind among them would reach him in a few moments. He waited. No wind came, yet the sound among the trees increased. It was not the rustling of leaves, it was not the boughs that were moving. Men Men were moving among the trees. Yes, their voices - surely - but they were gone - no, there they were once more - the voices he had heard - beyond all doubt now, human voices! They were the voices of Ortelgans - he could even catch a word here and there - Ortelgans, and approaching. were moving among the trees. Yes, their voices - surely - but they were gone - no, there they were once more - the voices he had heard - beyond all doubt now, human voices! They were the voices of Ortelgans - he could even catch a word here and there - Ortelgans, and approaching.

After all his dangers and sufferings, what an unbelievable stroke of good fortune! What had happened, and where was this place that he had reached? Either in some inexplicable way he had come upon soldiers of the army of Zelda and Ged-la-Dan - which might, after all, have marched almost anywhere during the past seven days - or else, more probably, these were men of his own guard from Bekla, searching for him and for Shardik as they had been ordered. Tears of relief came to his eyes and his blood surged as though at a lovers' meeting. As he stood up, he saw that the light was increasing. The moon was nearing the edge of the clouds. The voices were closer now, descending the hill through the trees. With a shout he stumbled down the slope towards them, calling 'I am Crendrik! I am Crendrik!'

He was on a road, a trodden way leading down towards the woods. Plainly, the night-marching soldiers were also on this road. He would see their lights in a moment, for lights they must surely be carrying. He tripped and fell, but struggled up at once and hastened on, still shouting. He came to the foot of the slope and stopped, looking up, this way and that, among the trees; There was silence: no voices, no lights. He held his breath and listened, but no sound came from the road above. He called at the top of his voice, 'Don't go! Wait! Wait!' The echoes faded and died.

From the open slope behind him came a surge of voices shouting in anger and fear. Strangely unimmediate they were, fluctuating, dying and returning, like the voices of sick men trying to tell of things long gone by. At the same moment the last veil of cloud left the moon, the ground before him started up into misty light and he recognized the place where he was.

In nightmare a man may feel a touch upon his shoulder, look round and meet the glazed but hate-filled eyes of his mortal enemy, whom he knows to be dead; may open the door of his own familiar room and find himself stepping through it into a pit of grave-worms; may watch the smiling face of his beloved wither, crumble and putrefy before his eyes until her laughing teeth are surrounded by the bare, yellow skull. What if such as these - so impossible of occurrence, so ghastly as to seem descried through a window opening upon hell - were found no dreams but, destroying at a stroke every fragment of life's proved certainty, were to carry the mind, as the crocodile its living prey, down to some lower, unspeakable plane of reality, where sanity and reason, clutching in frenzy, feel all holds give way in the dark? There, in the moonlight, ran the road from Gelt; up the bare, sloping plateau, among scattered crags and bushes, to the crest over which showed faintly the rocks of the gorge beyond. To the right, in shadow, was the line of the ravine that had protected Gel-Ethlin's flank, and behind him lay those woods from which, more than five years before, Shardik had burst like a demon upon the Beklan leaders.

Dotted about the slope were low mounds, while some way off appeared the dark mass of a larger tumulus, on which grew two or three newly-sprung trees. Beside the road stood a flat, squared stone, roughly carved with a falcon emblem and a few symbols of script One of these, common in inscriptions about the streets and squares of Bekla, carried the meaning. At this place - 'All about, with never a man to be seen, faint sounds of battle swelled and receded like waves, resembling the noises of day and life as a foggy dawn resembles clear noon. Shouts of anger and death, desperate orders, sobbing, prayers for mercy, the ring of weapons, the trampling of feet - all light and half-sensed as the filamentary legs of a swarm of loathsome insects upon the face of a wounded man lying helpless in his blood. Kelderek, his arms clutched about his head, swayed, uttering cries like the blarings of an idiot - speech enough for converse with the malignant dead, and words enough in which to articulate madness and despair. As a leaf that, having lived all summer upon the bough, in autumn is plucked off and swept through the turbulent, roaring air towards the sodden darkness below; so severed, so flung down, so spent and discarded was he.

He fell to the ground, babbling, and felt a rib-cage of unburied bones snap beneath his weight. He lurched, in the white light, over graves, over rusty, broken weapons, over a wheel covering the remains of some wretch who once, years before, had crept beneath it for vain protection. The bracken that filled his mouth was turned to worms, the sand in his eyes to the stinking dust of corruption. His capacity to suffer became infinite as, rotting with the fallen, he dissolved into innumerable grains suspended among the wave-voices, sucked back and rolled forward to break again and again upon the shore of the desolate battlefield where, upon him more dreadfully than upon any who had ever strayed there, unwarned to shun it, the butchered dead discharged their unhouselled misery and malice.

Who can describe the course of suffering to the end where no more can be endured? Who can express the unendurable vision of a world created solely for horror and torment - the struggling of the half-crushed beetle glued to the ground by its own entrails; the flapping, broken fish pecked to death by gulls upon the sand; the dying ape full of maggots, the young soldier, eviscerated, screaming in the arms of his comrades; the child who weeps alone, wounded for life by the desertion of those who have gone their selfish ways? Save us, O God, only place us where we may see the sun and eat a little bread until it is time to die, and we will ask nothing more. And when the snake devours the fallen fledgling before our eyes, then our indifference is Thy mercy.

In the first grey light, Kelderek stood up a man new-born of grief - lost of memory, devoid of purpose, unable to tell night from morning or friend from foe. Before him, along the crest, translucent as a rainbow, stood the Beklan battle-line, sword, shield and axe, the falcon banner, the long spears of Yelda, the gaudy finery of Deelguy: and he smiled at them, as a baby might laugh and crow, waking to see about her cot rebels and mutineers come to add her murder to those of the rest. But as he gazed, they faded like pictures in the fire, their armour transformed to the first glitter of morning on the rocks and bushes. So he wandered away in search of them, the soldiers, picking as he went the coloured flowers that caught his eye, eating leaves and grass and staunching, with a strip torn from his ragged garments, a long gash in his forearm. He followed the road down to the plain, not knowing his whereabouts and resting often, for though pain and fatigue now seemed to him the natural condition of man, yet still it was one that he sought to ease as best he could. A band of wayfarers who overtook him threw him an old loaf, relieved to perceive that he was harmless, and this, when he had tried it, he remembered to be good to cat. He cut himself a staff which, as he went, tapped and rattled on the stones, for the cold of extreme shock was upon him all day. Such sleep as he had was broken, for he dreamed continually of things he could not entirely recall - of fire and a great river, of enslaved children crying and a shaggy, clawed beast as tall as a roof-tree.

How long did he wander, and who were they who gave him shelter and helped him? Again, they tell tales - of birds that brought him food, of bats that guided him at dusk and beasts of prey that did him no harm when he shared their lairs. These are legends, but perhaps they scarcely distort the truth that he, capable of nothing, was kept alive by what was given him unsought. Pity for distress is felt most easily when it is plain that the sufferer is not to be feared, and even while he remained armed, none could fear a man who limped his way upon a stick, gazing about him and smiling at the sun. Some, by his clothes, thought him to be a deserting soldier, but others said No, he must be some three-quarter-witted vagabond who had stolen a soldier's gear or perhaps, in his necessity, stripped the dead. Yet none harmed him or drove him away - no doubt because his frailty was so evident and few care to feel that denial on their part may hasten a man to his death. One or two, indeed, of those who suffered him to sleep in sheds or out-houses - like the gate-keeper's wife at the stronghold of S'marr Torruin, warden of the Foothills - tried to persuade him to rest longer and then perhaps find work; for the war had taken many. But though he smiled, or played a while with the children in the dust, he seemed to understand but little, and his well-wishers would shake their heads as at length he took his staff and went haltingly on his way. Eastward he went, as before, but each day only a few miles, for he sat much in the sun in lonely places and for the most part kept to less-frequented country along the edge of the hills; feeling that here, if at all, he might happen once more upon that mighty, half-remembered creature which, as it seemed to him, he had lost and with whose life his own was in some shadowy but all-important respect bound up. Of the sound of distant voices he was greatly afraid and seldom approached a village, though once he allowed a tipsy herdsman to lead him home, feed him and take from him, either in robbery or payment, his sword.

Perhaps he wandered for five days, or six. Longer it can hardly have been when one evening, coming slowly over a shoulder of the lower hills, he saw below him the roofs of Kabin - Kabin of the Waters - that pleasant, walled town with its fruit groves on the south-west and, nearer at hand on the north, the sinuous length of the reservoir running between two green spurs; the surface, wrinkling and sliding under the wind, suggesting some lithe animal caged behind the outfall dam with its complex of gates and sluices. The place was busy - he could see a deal of movement both within and outside the walls; and as he sat on the hillside, gazing down at a cluster of huts and smoke that filled the meadows outside the town, he became aware of a party of soldiers - some eight or nine -approaching through the trees.

At once he jumped to his feet and ran towards them, raising one hand in greeting and calling 'Wait! Wait!' They stopped, staring in surprise at the confidence of this tattered vagrant, and turning uncertainly towards their tryzatt, tryzatt, a fatherly veteran with a stupid, good-natured face, who looked as though, having risen as high as he was likely to get in the service, he was all for an easy life. a fatherly veteran with a stupid, good-natured face, who looked as though, having risen as high as he was likely to get in the service, he was all for an easy life.

'What's this, then, tryze?' asked one, as Kelderek stopped before them and stood with folded arms, looking them up and down.

The tryzatt pushed back his leadier helmet and rubbed his forehead with one hand.

'Dunno,' he replied at length. 'Some beggar's trick, I suppose. Come on, now,' he said, laying one hand on Kelderek's shoulder, 'you'll get nothing here, so just muck off, there's a good lad.'

Kelderek put the hand aside and faced him squarely.

'Soldiers,' he said firmly. 'A message - Bekla -' He paused, frowning as they gathered about him, and then spoke again.

'Soldiers - Senandril, Senandril, Lord Shardik - Belda, message -' He stopped again. Lord Shardik - Belda, message -' He stopped again.

'Havin' us on, ain't her' said another of the men.

'Don't seem that way, not just,' said the tryzatt. "Seems to know what he wants all right. 'More like he knows we don't know his language.'

'What language is it, then?' asked the man.

'That's Ortelgan,' said the first soldier, spitting in the dust, 'Something about his life and a message.'

' 'Could be important, then,' said the tryzatt. ' 'Could be, if he's Ortelgan, and come to us with a message from Bekla. Can you tell us who you are?' he asked Kelderek, who met his eye but answered nothing.

'I reckon he's come from Bekla, but something's put things out of his mind, like - shock and that,' said the first soldier.

'That'll be it,' said the tryzatt. 'He's an Ortelgan - been working secretly for Lord Elleroth One-Hand maybe: and either those swine in Bekla tortured him - look what they did to the Ban, burned his bloody hand off, the bastards - or else his wits are turned with wandering all this way north to find us.'

'Poor devil, he looks all in,' said a dark man with a broad belt of Sarkid leatherwork bearing the Corn-Sheaves emblem. 'He must have walked till he dropped. After all, we couldn't be much further north if we tried, could we?'

'Well,' said the tryzatt, 'whatever it is, we'd better take him along. I've got to make a report by sunset, so the captain can sort him out then. Listen,' he said, raising his voice and speaking very slowly, in order to make sure that the foreigner standing two feet away from him could understand a language he did not know, 'you - come -with us. You - give - message - Captain, see?'

'Message,' replied Kelderek at once, repeating the Yeldashay. 'Message - Shardik.' He stopped and broke into a fit of coughing, leaning over his staff.

'All right, now don't you worry,' said the tryzatt reassuringly, buckling his belt, which he had slackened for the purpose of talking. 'We' - he pointed, miming with his hands - 'take - you - town -Captain - right? You'd better lend him a hand,' he added to the two men nearest him. 'We'll be 'alf the mucking night else.'

Kelderek, his arms drawn over the soldiers' shoulders for support, went with them down the hill. He was glad of their help, which was given respectfully enough - for they were uncertain what rank of man he might be. He for his part understood hardly a word of their talk and was in any case preoccupied in trying to remember what message it was that he had to send, now that he had at last found the soldiers who had vanished so mysteriously in the dawn. Perhaps, he thought, they might have some food to spare.

The main part of the army was encamped in the meadows outside the walls of Kabin, for the town and its inhabitants were being treated with clemency and in such dwellings as had been commandeered there was room for no more than the senior officers, their aides and servants and the specialist troops, such as scouts and pioneers, who were under the direct control of the commander-in-chief. The tryzatt and his men, who belonged to these, entered the town gates just as they were about to be shut for the night and, ignoring questions from comrades and bystanders, conducted Kelderek to a house under the south wall. Here a young officer wearing the stars of Ikat questioned him, first in Yeldashay and then, seeing that he understood very little, in Beklan. To this Kelderek replied that he had a message. Pressed, he repeated ' Bekla' but could say no more; and the young officer, unwilling to browbeat him and pitying his starved and filthy condition, gave orders to let him wash, eat and sleep.

Next morning, as one of the cooks, a kindly fellow, was again washing his gashed arm, a second, older officer came into the room, accompanied by two soldiers, and greeted him with straightforward civility.

'My name is Tan-Rion,' he said in Beklan. 'You must excuse our haste and curiosity, but to an army in the field time is always precious. We need to know who you are. The tryzatt who found you says that you came to him of your own accord and told him that you had a message from Bekla. If you have a message, perhaps you can tell me what it is.'

Two full meals, a long and comfortable night's sleep and the attentions of the cook had calmed and to some extent restored Kelderek.

'The message - should have gone to Bekla,' he answered haltingly, 'but the best chance - is lost now.'

The officer looked puzzled. To Bekla? You are not bringing a message to us, then?'

'I - have to send a message.'

'Is your message to do with the fighting in Bekla ?'

'Fighting?' asked Kelderek.

'You know that there has been a rising in Bekla? It began about nine days ago. As far as we know, fighting is still going on. Have you come from Deelguy, or whence?'

Confusion descended again upon Kelderek's mind. He was silent and the officer shrugged his shoulders.

'I am sorry - I can see that you are not yourself - but time may well be very short. We shall have to search you - that for a start'

Kelderek, who had become no stranger to humiliation, stood unresisting as the soldiers, not ungently and with a kind of rough courtesy, set about their task. They placed their findings on the window ledge - a stale crust, a strip of cobbler's leather, a reaper's whetstone which he had found lying in a ditch two days before, a handful of dried, aromatic herbs which the gate-keeper's wife had given him against lice and infection, and a talisman of red-veined stone which must once have belonged to Kavass.

'All right, mate,' said one of the soldiers, handing him back his jerkin. 'Steady, now. Nearly done, don't worry.'

Suddenly the other soldier whistled, swore under his breath and then, without another word, held out to the officer on the palm of his hand a small, bright object which glittered in the sunlight. It was the stag emblem of Santil-ke-Erketlis.

37 Lord One-Hand

The officer, startled, took the emblem and examined it, drawing the chain through the ring and fastening the clasp carefully, as though to allow himself time to think. At length, with an uncertainty that he had not shown before, he said, 'Will you be good enough to - to tell me - I am sure you will understand why I have to know -whether this is your own?'

Kelderek held out his hand in silence but the officer, after a moment's hesitadon, shook his head.

'Have you come here in search of the Commander-in-Chief himself? Perhaps you are a member of his household? If you can tell me it will make my task easier.'

Kelderek, to whom the memory was now beginning to return of much that had befallen him since leaving Bekla, sat down upon the bed and put his head in his hands. The officer waited patiently for him to speak. At last Kelderek said, 'Where is General Zelda? If he is here, I must sec him immediately.'

'General Zelda?' replied the officer in bewilderment.

One of the soldiers spoke to him in a low voice and together they went to the further end of the room.

'This man's an Ortelgan, sir,' said the soldier, 'or else I'm one myself.'

'I know that,' replied Tan-Rion. 'What of it? He's some agent of Lord Elleroth who's lost his wits.'

'I doubt he is, sir. If he's an Ortelgan, then clearly he's not a household officer of the Commander-in-Chief. You heard him ask for General Zelda. I agree it's plain that some shock's confused his mind, but my guess is that he's made his way into the middle of the wrong army without realizing it. If you come to think of it, he'd hardly be expecting to find us here in Kabin.'

Tan-Rion considered.

'He could still have come by that emblem honestly. In his case it might be no more than a token to prove who he was working for. Nobody knows what strange people may have been reporting direct to General Erketlis or carrying his messages these last few months. Suppose, for instance, that Lord Elleroth made use of this man while he was in Bekla? When is General Erketlis expected to return, have you heard?'

'Not until the day after tomorrow, sir. He got wind of a big slave-column on the move west of Thettit-Tonilda and heading for Bekla; to reach it in time meant some very hard going, so the General took a hundred men from the Falaron regiment and said he'd do the job himself.'

'Very like him. I'm only afraid he may try that sort of thing once too often. Well, at that rate I suppose we'll have to keep this man until he gets back.'

'I suggest we might ask Lord One-Hand - Lord Elleroth - to see him, sir. If he recognizes him, as I gather you yourself think may be possible, then at least we shall know where we are, even if the man doesn't come round enough to tell us anything.'

After a few more fruitless questions to Kelderek, Tan-Rion, together with his two soldiers, conducted him out of the house and up on the town walls. Here, walking in the spring sunshine, they looked down upon the town on one side and on the other upon the huts and bivouacs of the camp in the fields outside. The smoke of fires was drifting on the breeze and in the market place a crowd was gathering in response to the long-drawn, stylized summons of a red-cloaked crier.

"Must have made his fortune since we came here, eh?' said a sentry on the wall to one of Tan-Rion's soldiers, jerking his thumb to where the crier below was already climbing on his rostrum.

'I dare say,' answered the soldier. 'I know I've I've done well enough out of done well enough out of him. him. He hangs about our place and offers to pay for anything we can tell him.' He hangs about our place and offers to pay for anything we can tell him.'

'Well, just be careful how much you do tell him,' snapped Tan-Rion, turning his head. 'You bet, sir. We all want to stay alive.'

They descended from the wall by a flight of steps near the gate at which Kelderek had entered the town the night before and, passing through a square, came to a large, stone house where a sentry stood before the door. Kelderek and his escort were taken to a room which had formerly been that of the household steward, while Tan-Rion, after a few words with the captain of the guard, accompanied that officer through the house and into the garden.

The garden, green and formal, was shady with ornamental trees and shrubs - lexis, lexis, purple purple cresset cresset and sharp-scented and sharp-scented planella planella already opening its tiny, mauve-speckled flowers to the early sun. Through the midst, murmuring along its gravel bed, ran a brook channelled down from the reservoir. Along the verge, Elleroth was walking in conversation with a Yeldashay officer, a Deelguy baron and the governor of the town. He was gaunt and pale, his face haggard with pain and recent privation. His left hand, carried in a sling, was encased to the wrist in a great, padded glove of birch bark that covered and protected the dressings beneath. His sky-blue robe, a gift from the wardrobe of Santil-ke-Erketlis (for he had reached the army in rags), had been embroidered across the breast with the corn-sheaves of Sarkid, while the silver clasp of his belt was fashioned in the stag emblem. He walked leaning on a staff and those beside him carefully suited their pace to his. He nodded courteously to Tan-Rion and the guard commander, who stood deferentially aside, waiting until he should be ready to hear them. already opening its tiny, mauve-speckled flowers to the early sun. Through the midst, murmuring along its gravel bed, ran a brook channelled down from the reservoir. Along the verge, Elleroth was walking in conversation with a Yeldashay officer, a Deelguy baron and the governor of the town. He was gaunt and pale, his face haggard with pain and recent privation. His left hand, carried in a sling, was encased to the wrist in a great, padded glove of birch bark that covered and protected the dressings beneath. His sky-blue robe, a gift from the wardrobe of Santil-ke-Erketlis (for he had reached the army in rags), had been embroidered across the breast with the corn-sheaves of Sarkid, while the silver clasp of his belt was fashioned in the stag emblem. He walked leaning on a staff and those beside him carefully suited their pace to his. He nodded courteously to Tan-Rion and the guard commander, who stood deferentially aside, waiting until he should be ready to hear them.

'Of course,' Elleroth was saying to the governor, 'I cannot tell you what the Commander-in-Chief will decide. But clearly, whether the army remains here and for how long will depend not only on the movements of the enemy but also on the state of our own supplies. We're quite a long way from Ikat' - he smiled - 'and we shan't be loved up here much longer if we eat everybody out of house and home. The Ortelgan army are in the middle of their own country -or what they call their own country. I dare say we may decide to seek them out and fight them soon, before the balance begins to tip against us. I can assure you that General Erketlis has all this very much in mind. At the same time, there are two excellent reasons why we should like to stay here a little longer, provided you can bear with us - and I assure you that you would not, in the long run, be losers. In the first place, we are doing what we intended - what the enemy supposed we could never do and what we could not have done without help from Deelguy.' He bowed slightly to the baron, a heavy, swarthy man, showy as a macaw. 'We think that if we continue to hold the reservoir, the enemy may feel driven to attack us at a disadvantage. He for his part is probably waiting to see whether we shall stay here. So we want to look as though we shall.'

'You are not going to destroy the reservoir, my lord?' asked the governor anxiously.

'Only in the very last resort,' answered Elleroth cheerfully. 'But I'm sure that with your help we shall never come to that, shall we?' The governor replied with a wry smile and after a few moments Elleroth continued.

'The second reason is that we are anxious, while we are here, to hunt down as many slave-traders as we can. We have already caught not only several who hold warrants from the so-called king of Bekla, but also one or two of those who do not. But as you know, the country beyond the Vrako, right across to Zeray and up as far as the gap of Linsho, is wild and remote. Here, we are on its doorstep: Kabin is the ideal base from which to search it. If only we can gain the time, our patrols will be able to comb out the whole of that area. And believe it or not, we have received a reliable offer of help from Zeray itself.'

'From Zeray, Zeray, my lord?' said the governor incredulously. my lord?' said the governor incredulously.

'From Zeray,' answered Elleroth. 'And you told me, didn't you,' he went on, turning with a smile to Tan-Rion, who was still waiting near by, 'that you had information about at least one unlicensed slave-trader who is believed to be either beyond the Vrako at this moment or else making towards it from Tonilda ?'

'Yes, my lord,' replied Tan-Rion. 'The child-dealer, Genshed -a most cruel, evil man, from Terekenalt. But Trans-Vrako will be difficult country to search and he might very well give us the slip, even now.'

'Well, we shall have to do the best we can. So you see -'

'Any news of your own trouble, my lord?' broke in the Yeldashay officer impulsively.

Elleroth bit his lip and paused a moment before answering.

'I'm afraid not - for the time being. So you see,' he resumed quickly to the governor, 'we are going to need all the help you can give us; and what I would like to learn from you is how we can best feed and supply the army while we stay here a little longer. Perhaps you will be so good as to think about it and we will have a talk with the Commander-in-Chief when he returns. We sincerely want to avoid making your people suffer and as I said, we will pay honestly for your help.'

The governor was about to withdraw when Elleroth suddenly added, 'By the way, the priestess from the Telthearna island - the wise woman - you gave her a safe-conduct, as I asked you?'

'Yes, my lord,' replied the governor, 'yesterday at noon. She has been gone these twenty hours.'