"I am afraid you are not well," she said, reaching out her fingers to take his wrist. "What has happened?"
"It is nothing, saiyett. I have been telling Kelderek that time is very short. Lord Shardik must come--"
At that instant, from somewhere in the middle distance, an appalling scream pierced the forest--a cry of fear and agony, confounding the minds of its hearers as lightning dazzles and confounds the eyes. There was a moment's silence. Then followed another scream, which broke off as suddenly as though a man falling in terror from a height had struck the ground.
Kelderek's eye met Ta-Kominion's and without a word the thought passed between them, "That was a man's death-cry."
Numiss and his companion came running toward them through the trees, their swords drawn in their hands.
"Thank God, my lord! We thought--"
"Never mind," said Ta-Kominion. "Follow me, come on!"
He set off at a run, threading his way in and out of the ferns and tall rocks. The two servants followed. Kelderek, however, remained with the Tuginda, suiting his pace to hers as he tried to persuade her to remain out of danger.
"Be advised, saiyett! Wait here and let me send you word of what we find. You must not risk your life."
"There's no risk now," she answered. "Whatever has happened, it's past mending."
"But there may--"
"Give me your arm over these rocks. Which way did the young baron take? The undergrowth is thick on the edge of the forest, but with luck they will break a way through for us."
Soon they came upon Ta-Kominion and the servants hacking with their knives at a belt of creepers.
"Is there no easier way, my lord?" panted Numiss, picking the trazada thorns from his forearm and stifling his curses as he caught sight of the Tuginda.
"Very likely there is," replied Ta-Kominion, "but we must make straight toward where the cry came from, or we shall lose direction and never find the fellow until daylight."
Suddenly Kelderek's ear caught a sound somewhere between weeping and the whimpering of fear. It was a woman's voice, a little distance away.
"Zilthe!" he called.
"My lord!" replied the girl. "Oh, come quickly!"
As Numiss cut his way out through the farther side of the creepers, Kelderek followed Ta-Kominion through the gap. He found himself clear of the trees and looking across an open valley. Opposite, perhaps half a mile away, the edge of the forest in the moonlight showed black and dry as a hide hung to cure on a line. Down in the bottom he could just make out the dark cleft of a brook, while far to his right the Gelt Mountains showed dimly against the night sky.
Below the place where they were standing ran the road from Ortelga to Gelt--a track trodden along the hillside between scrub and bushes, with here and there the stump of a long-felled tree and here and there, to mend some muddy or broken place, a patch of stones carried up from the bed of the brook and laid haphazard, to settle to a level with use and time.
Down at the edge of the road Zilthe, her bow lying beside her, was bending on one knee over the dark shape of a body. As Kelderek watched she rose, turned her head and looked up toward him, but evidently could not perceive him among the trees and shadows.
The Tuginda came through the creepers. He pointed without speaking and together they began to make their way down. Ta-Kominion, motioning his servants to remain a little behind, muttered, "A dead man--but where's the killer?"
The others made no reply. As they approached, Zilthe stepped back from the body. It was lying in blood which glistened viscous, smooth and black in the moonlight. One side of the head had been smashed into a great wound and from below the left shoulder blood was still oozing through lacerated rents in the cloak. The eyes were staring wide, but the open mouth and bared teeth were partly hidden by one arm which the man must have flung up to try to defend himself. He was wearing heeled boots, the boots of a messenger, and beneath the heels were dents in the ground, which he must have kicked as he died.
The Tuginda put her arm around Zilthe's shoulders, led her a little distance away and sat down beside her. Kelderek followed. The girl was weeping and terrified but able to speak.
"Lord Shardik, saiyett--he was sleeping. Then he woke suddenly and began to return toward the road, the same way that he went this afternoon. One would have thought that he had some purpose of his own. I tried to follow him but after a little he went fast, as though he were hunting--pursuing. When I reached the edge of the trees"--she pointed up the slope--"he was already down here. He was waiting--crouching behind the rocks. And then, after only a little, I heard the man--I saw him coming up the road and I ran out of the trees to call out and warn him. But I caught my foot--I stumbled and fell and as I got up, Lord Shardik came out from behind the rocks. The man saw him and screamed. He turned and ran, but Lord Shardik followed him and struck him down. He--he--" In the vividness of her recollection the girl beat at the air with one arm held out stiffly, open-handed, the fingers apart, rigid and curved.
"I might have saved him, saiyett--" She began to weep once more.
Ta-Kominion came over to them, his tongue protruding between his bared teeth as he shifted the position of his wounded arm in its sling.
"Do you recognize that man, Kelderek?" he asked.
"No. Is he from Ortelga?"
"He is from Ortelga. His name was Naron and he was a servant."
"Whose?"
"He served Fassel-Hasta."
"Served Fassel-Hasta? Then what could he have been doing here?"
Ta-Kominion hesitated, looking back at Numiss and his fellow, who had lifted the body to the other side of the track and were doing what they could to make it decent. Then he held out a blood-spattered leather scrip, opened it and showed to the Tuginda two strips of bark inked with brush-written letters.
"Can you read this message, saiyett?" he asked.
The Tuginda took the stiff, curved sheets and held first one and then the other at arm's length in the moonlight. Kelderek and Ta-Kominion could learn nothing from her face. At last she stood up, returned the sheets to the scrip and without speaking gave it back to the baron.
"You have read it, saiyett?"
She nodded once, reluctantly it seemed, as though she would have preferred, if she could, to disown knowledge of the message.
"Does it tell us what this man was doing here?" persisted Ta-Kominion.
"He was carrying new
s to Bekla of what happened in Ortelga today." She turned aside and looked down into the valley.
Ta-Kominion cried out and the servants across the road looked up, staring.
"God! It tells that we have crossed the causeway and what we mean to do?"
She nodded again.
"I might have guessed it! Why didn't I post my own men to watch the road? That treacherous--"
"But the road was watched for us nevertheless," said Kelderek. "Surely it was no accident that Zilthe stumbled before she could warn the man. Lord Shardik--he knew what had to be done!"
They stared at each other as the long, moonset shadow of the forest crept lower down the hillside.
"But Fassel-Hasta--why did he do it?" asked Kelderek at last.
"Why? For wealth and power, of course. I should have guessed! It was always he who dealt with Bekla. 'Yes, my lord.' 'I'll write it for you, my lord.' By the Bear! I'll write on his face with a hot knife this morning. That for a start. Numiss, you can leave that body for the buzzards--if they'll touch it."
His loud words, echoing, startled three or four pigeons out of the cleft of the brook below. As they rose with a clatter of wings and flew across the road and up into the forest Ta-Kominion, watching their flight, suddenly pointed.
From the edge of the trees, Shardik was looking down into the valley. For a moment they saw him plainly, his shape, black against the line of the woods, like an opened gate in a city wall. Then, as Kelderek raised his arms in salutation and prayer, he turned and vanished into the darkness.
"God be thanked!" cried Ta-Kominion. "Lord Shardik saved us from that devil! There--there is your sign, Kelderek! Our will is Shardik's will--our plan will succeed! No more children's games on the shore for you, my lad! We'll rule in Bekla; you and I! What is it you need? Tell me, and you shall have it within an hour of daybreak."
"Hark!" said the Tuginda, laying a hand on his arm.
From the forest above came faint calls. "Saiyett!" "Lord Kelderek!"
"Neelith will have woken Rantzay when she heard the man scream," said Kelderek. "They're looking for us. Zilthe, go up and bring them down. You are not afraid?"