He paused, but Kelderek said nothing and after a few moments Elleroth went on, 'If you still feel any anxiety on your own account, I hope you will set it aside. When I told you in Kabin that we should kill you if we came upon you again, we were not to know that you would share the misery of slavery with the heir of Sarkid and play a part in saving his life.'
Kelderek rose abrupdy, walked a few steps away and stood with his back turned, looking out at the river. Tan-Rion raised his eyebrows and half-rose, but Elleroth shook his head and waited, taking Radu's hand and speaking quietly to him, aside, until Kelderek should have recovered his composure.
Turning at length, Kelderek said roughly, 'And do you bear in mind also that it is I who brought about your son's sufferings and the little girl's death?' 'My father has heard nothing yet of Shara,' said Radu.
'Crendrik,' said Elleroth, 'if you feel contrition, I can only be glad for it. I know that you have suffered – probably more than you can ever recount, for true suffering is of the mind and regret is the worst of it. I, too, have suffered grief and fear – for long weeks I suffered the loss of my son and believed him lost to me. Now we are all three released – he, you and I – and whether or not it was indeed a miracle, I am not so mean-spirited as to withhold gratitude from the poor bear, who came alive from the Streel, like the Lord Deparioth's own mother; or to retain any grudge against a man who has befriended my son. I say all debts are cleared by Shardik's death – his sacred death, for this we must believe it to have been. But I have another reason also for friendship between us – a political reason, if you like. There is now peace between Ikat and Bekla and even while we speak all prisoners and hostages are returning home.' He smiled. 'So it really wouldn't be at all appropriate, would it, for me to feel vindictive towards you.'
Kelderek sat down on the bench. From the shore outside came the cries of three or four young fishermen who were launching their canoes.
'At the time when you were in Kabin,' went on Elleroth, trying rather unsuccessfully to stifle a yawn of sheer exhaustion, 'General Santil-ke-Erketlis was personally leading some of our troops to overtake and release a slave-column travelling westwards from Thettit. He succeeded, but it brought him very close to the Beklan army, which, as I dare say you know, had followed us north from the Yeldashay frontier. It was while General Erketlis was returning with the slaves he had freed that he came upon a party of Beklan officers, who were also making for Kabin – to negotiate with us. They were headed by General Zelda and their purpose was to propose an immediate truce and the discussion of terms of peace.
'Three days ago I was taking part with Erketlis in that discussion with the Ortelgans, when news arrived from Zeray of what had happened here. I left for Tissarn at once, but nevertheless I'm sure that the terms will have been agreed by now. I needn't weary you with all the details – not until later – but the main is that Yelda, Lapan and Belishba will become independent of Bekla. The Ortelgans are to retain Bekla and the remaining provinces in return for an undertaking to abolish the slave trade and to help in returning all slaves to their homes.'
Kelderek nodded slowly, staring down into his wine-cup and tilting it this way and that. At length he looked up at Elleroth and said,
'I'm glad the war's over and more than glad that they'll abolish the slave trade.' He put a hand over his eyes. 'It's good of you to have come here to tell us so promptly. If I can't make you any better answer, it's because I'm still weak and my mind's confused. I hope we can talk again – tomorrow, perhaps.'
'I shall be here for some days yet,' answered Elleroth, 'and we'll certainly meet again, for I've one or two other notions in my head – just notions at the moment, but they might come to something. Dear me -' he craned his neck – 'those piscatorial boys out there are certainly slicing up the Telthearna – I suppose it keeps them warm, poor fellows, in these bitter northern climes. And who knows? They might even catch a fish in a minute.' Soon after, he took his leave and Kelderek, finding that the meeting had left him tired, uncertain and disturbed, slept for several hours, not waking until the late afternoon.
After a few days he felt stronger and his wounded arm became somewhat less painful. He took to walking on the shore and about the village, once going almost a mile north, as far as the open country round the Gap. He had not realized what a poor village it was – thirty or forty hovels and twenty canoes clustered about a shady, unhealthy patch of shore below a wooded ridge – that same ridge down which he had tottered on the morning of Shardik's death. There was little cultivated land, the villagers living for the most part on fish, half-wild pigs, water fowl and any forest beasts that they could kill. There was almost no trade, the place was largely isolated and the effects of years of in-breeding were all too plain. The villagers were friendly enough, however, and he took to dropping in to their homes and talking to them about their skills and needs and the troubles of their hard, rough lives.
One afternoon, as he and Melathys were walking together outside the village, they came upon five or six of the former slave children, who were idling about among the trees. They looked warily at Kelderek, but none approached or spoke. He called out to them, went closer and did his best to talk to them as comrades – for so indeed he felt them to be – but it was not that day nor for several days after that he had the least success. In their silence and curt, unsmiling answers they differed much from the children he remembered on Ortelga. Little by little he began to understand that for nearly all, their sufferings with Genshed had been only the most recent in miserable lives of desertion, neglect and abuse. Parentless, friendless and helpless, they had been enslaved before ever they met Genshed.
From Shouter, after one or two visits, he judged it best to keep away for the time being. The boy had been injured when Shardik charged upon Genshed and neglect of his hurts had brought on a delirious fever of which, until a few days ago, he had been expected to die. He was consumed with fear and convinced that the Yeldashay intended him some cruel death; and the sight of any of those whom he had himself ill-treated intensified his guilt and panic. Kelderek left him to Melathys and her village woman, but nevertheless found himself wondering more than once what would become of him. Would he, perhaps, succeed in wandering back to Terekenalt, there to shift for himself and find a new criminal master? Or would he, before that, as he himself so clearly expected, be killed in Tissarn by those who had cause enough to hate him?
The Sarkid contingent also remained, some quartered in Tissarn and some where he had first seen them, guarding the approaches to the Linsho Gap. Tan-Rion, asked the reason, explained that the Yeldashay were still patrolling the province for fugitive slave-traders, from the confluence of the Vrako and Telthearna to the Gap itself, the Sarkid troops forming the heel of the net. The following evening two more slave-traders were brought in, each alone and in the last stages of want and exhaustion, having fled north for days before the advancing curtain of soldiers. Next morning the patrolling troops themselves reached Linsho and the hunt was over.
A few days later Kelderek was returning with Melathys from an hour's fishing – he could manage no more – when they met Elleroth and Tan-Rion not far from the place where Shardik's funeral raft had lain. Despite what Elleroth had said at their last meeting, he and Kelderek had not talked together since. It had not occurred to Kelderek, however, to regard this as a lapse on Elleroth's part The Ban of Sarkid had been absent for several days among his various outposts and bivouacs, but in any case Kelderek was well aware that he himself was in no position to expect warmth from Elleroth or any repetition of the punctilious courtesy shown on the morning of his arrival. By chance it had so happened that the ex-king of Bekla had suffered in company with Elleroth's son and helped to save his life. This had saved his own; but nevertheless he was now of no use or value whatever to the Ban of Sarkid, who had already done fully as much as anyone would consider incumbent upon him.