Shara came running towards them along the bank. She took Radu's hand, chattering faster than Kelderek could understand and pointing in the direction she had come from. A little way off, a thick tangle of creepers, covered with gaudy, trumpet-like flowers, hung like a curtain between the foreshore and the forest. Looking where Shara pointed, they saw that the whole mass was tremulous, shaking slightly but rapidly, vibrant with some strange, unexplained energy of its own. There was no bird or beast to be seen, yet along an expanse as broad as a hut-wall the leaves and blooms quivered spasmodically and the long tendrils undulated with a kind of light, quick violence. The little girl, frightened yet fascinated, stared from behind Radu's shoulder. One or two of the other children gathered about them, also gazing curiously. Radu himself was plainly uncertain whether some strange creature might not be about to appear.

Kelderek picked the little girl up in his arms.

'There's nothing to be afraid of,' he said. 'I'll show you, if you like. It's only a hunting mantis - several, probably.'

Radu followed them along the bank. At close quarters the flowers of the creeper gave off a heavy fragrance and great moths, their dark-blue wings broad as the palm of a man's hand, were coming and going in the dusky air. High up, beneath an open bloom, one of these was struggling in the grip of a mantis crouched for prey among the flowers. They could see the long, crural shape of the insect half-hidden in the leaves, its front legs clutching the moth, which it had evidently seized as it hovered at the bloom. Its head turned this way and that with an eerie suggestion of intelligence as it followed the frenzied tugging of its victim, so violent that both the mantis and the surrounding creeper to which it was clinging were shaken in a rhythm light and rapid as the beating of the wings themselves. As often as the moth weakened, the mantis would pull it towards its jaws and again the struggle would break out. As Kelderek and Shara watched, a second moth was caught beneath a bloom some yards away, but after a few seconds tore itself clear, the mantis, as its hold was broken, being jerked forward among the leaves below its perch. Meanwhile the first moth faltered, its beautiful wings ceased at last to beat and in an instant the mantis had pulled it in and begun to devour it. The severed wings, first one and then the other, fluttered to the ground.

'Come back out of there, damn you!' cried Shouter, striding towards them along the bank. 'What the hell d'you think you're doing?'

'Don't worry,' answered Radu, as they returned and joined the other children already crowding round Shouter for their handfuls of food. 'We'd hardly get far, you know.'

Darkness fell and the children, lying down for the night, were once more chained through the ears. Kelderek, separated from Radu as before, found himself at the inner end of a chain, on one side of him Shouter himself and on the other the child who had been savaged by Bled during the afternoon. In the dark the latter resumed his steady, monotonous sobbing, but Shouter, if he heard, presumably thought that no entertainment could be derived from trying to stop him. After a time Kelderek stretched out his hand to the boy, but he only shrank away and, after a few moments' silence, began to sob more loudly. Still Shouter said nothing and Kelderek, afraid of what he might do and too much exhausted and dispirited to persevere with his clumsy attempts at comfort, let his pity and the other fragments of his thoughts dissolve into sleep while the mosquitoes, unhindered, fastened on his limbs.

The old woman of Gelt came hobbling slowly up the shore, her rags speckled in the half-moon's light, her feet noiseless on the stones. Kelderek watched her approach, puzzled at first but then, recognizing her, acquiescent in the knowledge that she was the creature of a dream. Gently, she drew the chain from his car and he even seemed to feel the pain as the links passed one by one through the enflamed, tender lobe. Then she remained kneeling above him, looking down and mumbling with her sunken mouth.

' 'Think no one sees, sees, they think no one sees,' she whispered. 'But God sees.' they think no one sees,' she whispered. 'But God sees.'

'What is it, grandmother?' asked Kelderek. 'What's happened?'

She was carrying the dead child in her arms, as she had carried it years before, but now it was closely wrapped, muffled from head to foot. It was nothing but a shape under her cloak.

'I'm looking for the governor-man from Bekla,' she said, 'I'm going to tell him - only it's a long time now -'

'You can tell me,' he said. 'I'm the governor-man from Bekla: and all this misery is my doing, all of it.'

'Ah,' she said. 'Ah. Bless you, sir, bless you. Look here, sir, yes, at that rate you'll want to.'

She laid her burden on the ground. The wrappings were fastened at the head with the chain from his ear, but this she unwound, coiling it away and drawing apart the covering round the face.

The eyes were dosed, the checks lustreless and waxen; but the dead child lying on the stones was Melathys. Her lips were a little apart, but nothing stirred the leaf which the old woman held to them. Weeping, he looked up, and saw under her ragged hood that she was Rantzay.

'She's not dead, Rantzay!' he cried. 'Wake her, Rantzay, you must wake her!'

Rantzay made no reply, and as her lean fingers grasped and shook his shoulder he understood that she too was dead. He writhed away from her, filled with a dreadful sense of loss and desolation.

'Wake! Come on, wake !'

It was Shouter's face above his own, whispering urgently, foetid breath stinking, itching of insect bites, stones sharp under the spine and the faint light of day stealing into the sky beyond the Telthearna. Whimpering of the children in sleep and clicking of chains against the stones.

'It's me, you mucking idiot. Don't make a noise. I've pulled the chain out your car. If you don't want to go to Terekenalt, then come on, for God's sake!'

Kelderek got up. His skin felt a single sheet of irritant bites and the river swam before his eyes. Still half in his dream, he looked round for the dead body in the shallows, but it was gone. He took a step forward, slipped and fell on the stones. Someone else, neither Rantzay nor Shouter, was speaking.

'What were you doing, Shouter, eh?''Nothing,' answered Shouter.

'Took his chain out, have you? Where were you going?1 'He wanted to shit, didn't he? 'Think I'm going to let him shit up against me?'

Genshed made no reply, but drew his knife and began pressing the point against the ball first of one finger and then of another. After a few moments he opened his clothes and urinated over Shouter, the boy standing still as a post while he did so.

'Remember Kevenant, do you?' murmured Genshed.

'Kevenant?' said Shouter, his voice cracking with incipient hysteria. 'What's Kevenant got to do with it? Who's talking about Kevenant ?'

'Remember what he looked like, do you, when we were finished with him?'

Shouter made no answer, but as Genshed took the lobe of his ear between one finger and thumb he was seized with an uncontrollable trembling.

'Sec, you're just a silly little boy, Shouter, aren't you?' said Genshed, twisting slowly, so that Shouter sank to his knees on the stones. 'Just a silly little boy, aren't you?'

'Yes,' whispered Shouter.

The point of the knife brushed along his closed eyelid and he tried to draw back his head, but was stopped by the twisting of his ear. 'See all right, Shouter, can you?' 'Yes.'

'Sure you can see all right?' 'Yes! Yes!'

'Sec what I mean, can you?' 'Yes!'

'Only I get everywhere, don't I, Shouter? If you were over there, I'd be there too, wouldn't I?' 'Yes.'

'Do your work all right, Shouter, can you?' 'Yes, I can! Yes, I can!'

'Funny, I thought perhaps you couldn't. Like Kevenant.'

'No, I can! I can! I treat 'em worse than Bled does. They're all afraid of me!'

'Keep still, Shouter. I'm going to do you a favour. I'm just going to clean under your nails with the point of my knife. Only I wouldn't want my hand to slip.'

The sweat ran down Shouter's face, over his upper lip, over his lower lip bitten between his teeth, over his slobbered chin. When at last Genshed released him and walked away, sheathing the knife at his belt, he pitched forward into the shallows, but was up again in a moment. In silence he washed himself, threaded the chain back through Kelderek's ear, fastened it to his belt and lay down.

Half an hour later Genshed himself distributed the last of the food; crumbs and fragments shaken from the bottom of the pack.

'The next lot's in Linsho, understand?' said Shouter to Radu. 'You see to it that they all understand that. Either we get to mucking Linsho today or we start eating each other.'

Kelderek was combing Shara's hair between his fingers and searching her head for lice. Although he had eaten what he had been given, he now felt so faint and tortured with hunger that he could no longer collect his wits. The figure of Melathys lying dead seemed to hover continually in the tail of his eye, and as often as it appeared he turned his head quickly, fumbling and clutching with his hands, until Shara grew impatient and wandered away up the shore.

'Someone stole her coloured stones after we were unchained this morning,' said Radu.

Kelderek did not answer, having suddenly made the important discovery of the futility of wasting energy in speech. Speech, he now realized, involved so much unprofitable effort - thinking of words, moving lips to utter them, listening to a reply and grasping what it meant - that it was an altogether foolish thing on which to squander one's strength. To stand upright, to walk, to disentangle the chain, to remember to avoid catching Bled's eye - these were the things for which energy needed to be stored.

They were moving again, to be sure, for that was his chain clicking on the stones. But this walking was not the same. How was it different? In what way had they all changed? In his mind's eye he seemed to look down on them from above as they wound their way along the shore. Hither and thither they went, like ants over a stone, but much slower; like torpid beetles in autumn, on their clambering journeys up and down the long miles of grass-stems. And now indeed he perceived plainly, though without concern, what had befallen. They had become part of the insect world, where all was simple; and from henceforth would simply be lived, untroubled by conscious volition. They needed no speech, no feelings, no hearing, no awareness one of another. For days at a time they would even require no food. They would not know whether they were ugly or beautiful, happy or unhappy, good or bad, for these terms had no meaning. Appetite and satiety, scuttling energy and motionless torpor, ferocity and helplessness - these were their poles. Their short lives would soon end, prey to winter, prey to larger creatures, prey to one another; but this too was a matter of no regard.

Still fascinated and preoccupied by this new insight, he found himself climbing over some obstacle that had almost tripped him. Something fairly heavy and smooth, though yielding. Something with sticks in it - a bundle of rags with sticks in it, no, his chain had caught, bend down, now it was free, yes, of course, the obstacle was a human body - that was the head, there - now he had climbed over it, it was gone and the stones had returned as before. He closed his eyes against the glitter of the river and set himself doggedly to the task of keeping upright and taking steps; one step, another step, another.

Suddenly a cry sounded from behind him. ' Stop! Stop!'

Like a bubble out of dark ooze, his mind rose slowly into the former world of hearing, of seeing, of comprehension. He turned, to perceive Radu, with Shara beside him, kneeling over a body on the stones. Several of the boys, startled as he had been by the cry, had stopped and were moving uncertainly towards them. From somewhere in front Shouter was yelling, 'What the muck's happened?'

He limped back. Radu was supporting the boy's head on one arm and splashing water over his face. It was the boy whom Bled had savaged the day before. His eyes were closed and Kelderek could not make out whether he was breathing or not.

'You walked over him,' said Radu. 'You walked over his body. Didn't you feel it?'

'Yes - no. I didn't know what I was doing,' answered Kelderek dully.

Shara touched the boy's forehead and tried to pull the rags together across his chest.

'Tumbled down, didn't he?' she said to Radu. 'He hasn't got a chain,' she went on, in a kind of song, 'He hasn't got a chain, To go to Leg-By-Lee -' Then, breaking off as she saw Genshed coming towards them, 'Radu, he's coming!'

Genshed stopped beside the boy, stirred him with his foot, dropped on one knee, rolled back one eyelid and felt the heart. Then he stood up, looked round at the other boys and jerked his head. They moved away and Genshed faced Kelderek and Radu across the body.

As fire is stopped by the bank of a river, as the growth of the vine's tendrils is halted by the onset of winter, so their compassion faltered and died before Genshed. He said nothing, his presence sufficient to focus, like a lens, in a single point, their sense of helplessness to aid or comfort the boy. How futile was their pity, for what could it effect? Genshed lay all about them: in their own exhaustion, in this forest wilderness lacking food or shelter, in the glittering river hemming them in, the empty sky. He said nothing, allowing his presence to lead them to their own conclusion - that they were merely wasting their tiny remaining store of energy. When he snapped his fingers their eyes fell and, with Shara beside them, they followed the boys: nor did they trouble to look back. They and Genshed were now entirely of one mind.

A short distance along the shore, Shouter had called a halt. They lay down among the children, but none questioned them. Genshed returned, washed his knife in the water and then, ordering Bled to remain in charge, took Shouter with him and disappeared upstream. Returning half an hour later, he at once led the way inland among the woods.

As evening began to fall they stumbled their way up a long, gradual slope, the forest round them growing more open as they went. Between the trees Kelderek could see a red, westering sun and this, he found, awoke in him a dull surprise. Pondering, he realized that since leaving Lak he had not once seen the sun after midday. They must now be upon the forest's northern edge.

At the top of the slope, Genshed waited until the last of the children had come up before beginning to push through the undergrowth on the forest outskirts. Suddenly he stopped, peering forward and shading his eyes against the sun. Kelderek and Radu, halting behind him, found themselves looking out across the northern extremity of the evil land which they had now traversed from end to end, from the Vrako's banks to the Gap of Linsho.

The air was full of a dazzling, golden light, slow-moving and honey-thick. Myriads of motes and specks floated here and there, their minute glitterings seeming to draw the light down from the sky to the ground, there to fragment and multiply. The evening beams glanced off leaves, off the wings of darting flies and the surface of the Telthearna flowing a mile away at the foot of the slope. Directly before them, to the north, the distant prospect was closed by the mountains - jagged, iron-blue heights, streaked with steep wedges of forest rising out of the virid foothills. Looking at this tremendous barrier, Kelderek called to mind that once - how long ago? - he had possessed the strength to follow Shardik into such mountains as these. Now, he could not have limped over the intervening ground to their foot.

Clouds half-hid the easternmost peak, which rose above the Telthearna like a tower, its precipitous face falling almost sheer to the river. Between the water and the wooded crags at the mountain's foot there extended a narrow strip of flat land little more than a bowshot across - the Gap of Linsho. Huts he could make out, and wisps of evening smoke drifting towards the wilds of Deelguy on the further shore. A track led out of the Gap, ran a short way beside the water, then turned inland to climb the slope, crossed their front less than half a mile away and disappeared south-westward beyond the extremity of the forest on their left. Goats were tcthercd on the open sward and a herd of cows were grazing - one had a flat-toned, cloppering bell at her neck - watched by a little boy, who sat fluting on a wooden pipe; and an old ox, at the full extent of his rope, pulled the greenest grass he could get.

But it was not at the golden light, at the cattle or the child playing his pipe that Genshed stood staring, his hanging face like a devil's sick with the pain of loss. Beside the track, a patch of ground had been enclosed with a wooden palisade and a fire was burning in a shallow trench. A soldier in a leather helmet was crouching, scouring pots, while another was chopping wood with a bill-hook. Beside the stockade a tall staff had been erected and from it hung a flag - three corn-sheaves on a blue ground. Near by, two more soldiers could be seen facing towards the forest, one sitting on the turf as he ate his supper, the other standing, leaning on a long spear. The situation was plain. The Gap had been occupied by a Sarkid detachment of the army of Santil-ke-Erketlis.

'Bloody God!' whispered Genshed, staring over the pastoral, flame-bright quiet of the hillside. Shouter, coming up from behind, drew in his breath and stood stock-still, gazing as a man might at the burning ruins of his own home. The children were silent, some uncomprehending in their sickness and exhaustion, others sensing with fear the rage and desperation of Genshed, who stood clenching and unclenching his hands without another word.

Suddenly Radu plunged forward. His rags fluttered about him and he flung both arms above his head, jerking like an idiot child in a fit, 'Ah! Ah!' croaked Radu. 'Sark -' He staggered, fell and got up knee by knee, like a cow. 'Sarkid!' he whispered, stretching out his hands; and then, barely louder, 'Sarkid! Sarkid!'

With deliberation, Genshed took his bow from the side of his pack, and laid an arrow on the string. Then, leaning against a tree, he waited as Radu again drew breath. The boy's cry, when it came, was like that of a sick infant, distorted and feeble. Once more he cried, bird-like, and then sank to his knees, sobbing and wringing his hands among the undergrowth. Genshed, pulling Shouter back by the shoulder, waited as a man might wait for a friend to finish speaking with a passer-by in the street.

'O God!' wept Radu. 'God, only help us! O God, please help usl'

On Kelderek's back Shara half-awoke, murmured 'Lcg-by-Lee! Gone to Leg-by-Lee!' and fell asleep again.

As a man led to judgment might halt to listen to the sound of a girl singing; as the eye of one just told of his own mortal illness might stray out of the window to dwell for an instant upon the flash of some bright-plumagcd bird among the trees; as some devil-may-care fellow might drain a glass and dance a spring on the scaffold - so, it seemed, not only Genshed's inclination but also his self-respect now impelled him in this, his own utter disaster, to pause a few moments to enjoy the rare and singular misery of Radu. He looked round among the children, as though inviting anyone else who might wish to try his luck to sec what voice he might have left for calling out to the soldiers. Watching him, Kelderek was seized by a deadly horror, like that of a child facing the twitching, glazed excitement of the rapist. His teeth chattered in his head and he felt his empty bowels loosen. He sank down, barely in sufficient command of himself to slide the little girl from his back and lay her beside him on the ground.

At this moment a hoarse voice was heard from among the bushes nearby.

'Gensh! Gensh, I say! Gensh!'

Genshed turned sharply, peering with sun-dazzled eyes into the dusky forest behind him. There was nothing to be seen, but a moment later the voice spoke again. .

'Gensh! Don't be going out there, Gensh! For God's sake give us a hand!'

A faint wisp of smoke curled up from a patch of undergrowth, but otherwise all was stiller than the grassy slope outside. Genshed jerked his head to Shouter and the boy went slowly and reluctantly forward with the best courage he could summon. He disappeared among the bushes and a moment later they heard him exclaim, 'Mucking hell!'

Still Genshed said nothing, merely nodding to Bled to join Shouter. He himself continued to keep half his attention upon Radu and Kelderek. After some delay the two boys emerged from the bushes supporting a fleshy, thick-lipped man with small eyes, who grimaced with pain as he staggered between them, trailing a pack behind him along the ground. The left leg of his once-white breeches was soaked in blood and the hand which he held out to Genshed was red and sticky.

'Gensh!' he said. 'Gensh, you know me, don't you, you won't leave me here, you'll be gotting me away? Don't go out there, Gensh, they'll got you same as they did me; we can't stay here, either - they'll be coming, Gensh, coming!'

Kelderek, staring from where he lay, suddenly called the man to mind. This blood-drenched craven was none other than the wealthy Deelguy slave-dealer Lalloc; fat, insinuating, dandified, with the manners, at once familiar and obsequious, of a presuming servant on the make. Over-dressed and smiling among his miserable, carefully-groomed wares, he had once been accustomed to publicize himself in Bekla as 'The high-class slave-dealer, purveyor to the aristocracy. Special needs discreetly catered for.' Kelderek remembered, too, how he had taken to calling himself 'U-Lalloc', until ordered by Ged-la-Dan to curb his impertinence and mind his place. There was little enough of the demi-mondain dandy about him now, crouching at Genshed's feet, dribbling with fear and exhaustion, his yellow robe smeared with dirt and his own blood clotted across his fat buttocks. The strap of his pack was twisted round his wrist and in one hand he was clutching the plaited thong of a clay thurible, or fire-pot, such as some travellers carry on lonely journeys and keep smouldering with moss and twigs. It was from this that the thin smoke was rising.

Kelderek remembered how in Bekla, Lalloc, coming once to the Barons' Palace to apply for the renewal of his licence, had fallen to deploring the wicked deeds of unauthorized slave-dealers. 'Your gracious Majesty will need no ashorrance that my colleagues and I, acting in the bost interests of the trade, would never have to do with soch men. To oss, profit is a secondary mottcr. We regard ourselves as your Mojcsty's servants, employed to move your own fixed quotas about the Empire as may suit your convenience. Now may I soggest -' and his rings had clicked as he placed his hands together and bowed, in the manner of the Deelguy. And whence, Kelderek had wondered, whence in truth had he obtained the pretty children who had stood on his rostrum in the market, tense and dry-eyed, knowing what was good for them? He had never enquired, for the taxes on Lalloc's turn-over had produced very large sums, all duly rendered - enough to pay and equip several companies of spearmen.

For a moment, as Lalloc's eye travelled over the children, it rested on Kelderek: but his momentary surprise, Kelderek could perceive, was due to no more than observing a grown man among the slaves. He did not recognize - how should he? - the former priest-king of Bekla.

Still Genshed stood silent, looking broodingly at the bleeding Lalloc as though wondering - as no doubt he was - in what way he could turn this unexpected meeting to his advantage. At length he said, 'Bit of trouble, Lalloc; been in it, have you?'

The other spread his bloody hands, shoulders shrugging, eyebrows lifting, head wagging from side to side.

'I was in Kabin, Gensh, when the Ikats come north. 'Thought I had plonty of time to gotting back to Bekla, but left it too late -you ever know soldiers go so fost, Gensh, you ever know? Cot off, couldn't gotting to Bekla' (one hand chopped downwards in a gesture of severance), 'no governor in Kabin - new governor, man called Mollo, been killed in Bekla, they were saying - the king kill him with his own honds - no one would take money to protect me. So I cross the Vrako. I think, "I'll stay here till it's over, me and my nice lotde boys what I bought." So we stay in some torrible village. I have to pay and pay, just not to be murdered. One day I hear the Ikat soldiers come over the Vrako, honting everywhere for the slave-dealers. I go north - ow, what 'orrible journey - rockon buy my way through Linsho. But I don't go through the forest, I come straight up the trock, walk right in among the soldiers. 'Ow I'm to know the Ikats gotting there first? Dirty thieves - take my lottle boys, all what I pay for. I drop everything, run into the forest. Then arrow cotch me in the thigh, ow my God the pain! They honting for me, not long. No, no, they don't need hont, clever bastards.' He spat. 'They know there's no food here, no shelter, no way to go onnywherc.

O my God, Gensh, what we do now, ch ? You go out through those trees they'll have you - they're waiting for oss - someone tell me Nigon they kill, Mindulla they kill -' my God, Gensh, what we do now, ch ? You go out through those trees they'll have you - they're waiting for oss - someone tell me Nigon they kill, Mindulla they kill -'

'Nigon's dead,' said Genshed.

'Yoss, yoss. You help me away, Gensh? We gotting across the Telthearna, gotting to Deelguy? You remomber how many lotde boys and girls I buy off you, Gensh, always buying off you, and I don't tell where-'

Suddenly Shouter whistled and plucked Genshed by the sleeve.

'Look at the bastards!' he said, jerking his thumb.

Half a mile away, across the sunlight slope where the guard-house stood, twenty or thirty soldiers were coming towards the forest, trailing their long spears behind them over the grass. At a signal from their officer they extended their line, opening out to right and left as they approached the outskirts.

Not to one child, and to neither Radu nor Kelderek, did it occur mat they might, even now, call out or try to reach the soldiers. Had not Genshed just permitted them to prove to themselves that they could not?

His domination - that evil force of which Radu had spoken - lay all about them like a frost, unassailable, visible only in its effects, permeating their spirits with its silent power to numb and subdue. It lay within them - in their starved bodies, in their hearts, in their frozen minds. Not God Himself could melt this cold or undo the least part of Genshed's will. Kelderek, waiting until Bled was looking elsewhere and would not see his slow, fumbling struggle, lifted Shara once more in his arms, took the unresisting Radu by the hand and followed the slave-dealer back into the forest Along the higher ground they went along the crest of the low ridge they had ascended earlier that afternoon, Lalloc hobbling beside Genshed and continually entreating not to be left behind. While he babbled, albeit in whispers and in phrases disjointed by shortness of breath, Genshed made no reply. Yet though he might seem inattentive, both to the children and to the fat purveyor of nice little boys, it appeared to Kelderek that nevertheless he remained most alert within himself; like a great fish that skulks below a ledge, at one and the same time watching for the least chance to dash between the legs of the wading netsmen and waiting motionless in the hope that its stillness may deceive them into believing it already gone.

52 The Ruined Village

And now began among the children that final disintegration which only the fear of Genshed had delayed so long. Despite the fog of ignorance and dread that covered them, one thing was clear to them all. Genshed's plans had failed. Both he and his overseers were afraid and did not know what to do next Bled walked by himself, hunched and muttering, his eyes on the ground. Shouter gnawed continually at his hand, while ever and again his head, with open mouth and closed eyes, dropped forward like that of an ox unable to pull its load. From all three, despair emanated as bats come fluttering from a cave, thicker as the light fails. The children began to straggle.

Several, having fallen or Iain down on the ground, remained where they were, for Genshed and his whippers-in, now sharing the same evil trance as their victims, had neither purpose nor spirit to beat them to their feet.

It was plain that Genshed no longer cared whether the children lived or died. He paid them no heed, but pressed on at his own pace, concerned only to out-distance the soldiers: and when some of those who had fallen, seeing him disappearing ahead of them, struggled to their feet and somehow contrived to catch up with him again, still he spared them not a glance. Only of Kelderek and Radu did he remain steadily watchful, ordering them, knife in hand, to walk in front of him and stop for nothing.

As, when two animals have fought, the one that is beaten seems actually to grow smaller as it slinks away, so, since turning back from the edge of the forest, Radu had regressed from a youth to a child. The pride of bearing with which he had carried his rags and sores, as though they were honourable insignia of the House of Sarkid, had given place to an exhausted misery like that of a survivor from some disaster. He moved uncertainly here and there, as though unable to pick his way for himself, and once, with hands covering his face, gave way to a fit of sobbing which ceased only when breath failed him. As he lifted his head his eyes met Kelderek's with a look of panic-stricken despair, like that of an animal staring from a trap.

'I'm afraid to die,' he whispered.

Kelderek could find no answer.

'I don't want to die,' repeated Radu desperately.