Part 10 (2/2)

”Oh, Negore, o, but she said it so softly that even Old Kinoos did not hear, and his ears were over keen, what of his blindness

Three days later, having with craft ill-concealed his hiding-place, Negore was dragged forth like a rat and brought before Ivan - ”Ivan the Terrible” he was known by the ore was armed with a miserable bone-barbed spear, and he kept his rabbit-skin robe wrapped closely about hiue He shook his head that he did not understand the speech Ivan put at him, and made that he was very weary and sick, and wished only to sit down and rest, pointing the while to his sto fiercely But Ivan had with hiore, andhis tribe, till the man from Pastolik, as called Karduk, said: ”It is the word of Ivan that thou shalt be lashed till thou diest if thou dost not speak And know, strange brother, when I tell thee the word of Ivan is the law, that I aly froreatly to live; wherefore I obey the will of e brother, if thou art wise, and wouldst live”

”Nay, strange brother,” Negore answered, ”I know not the way one, for I was sick, and they fled so fast ore waited while Karduk talked with Ivan Then Negore saw the Russian's face go dark, and he saw thethe lashes of their whips Whereupon he betrayed a great fright, and cried aloud that he was a sick , but would tell what he knew And to such purpose did he tell, that Ivan gave the word to his ore ht not run away And when he made that he eak of his sickness, and stumbled and walked not so fast as they walked, they laid their lashes upon hith And when Karduk told him all would he ith him when they had overtaken his tribe, he asked, ”And then may I rest and move not?”

Continually he asked, ”And then may I rest and move not?”

And while he appeared very sick and looked about hith of Ivan's nize hiates of the fort It was a strange following his dull eyes saw There were Slavonian hunters, fair-skinned and hty-muscled; short, squat Finns, with flat noses and round faces; Siberian half-breeds, whose noses were le- beaks; and lean, slant-eyed ol and Tartar blood as well as the blood of the Slav Wild adventurers they were, forayers and destroyers fro, who blasted the new and unknoorld with fire and sword and clutched greedily for its wealth of fur and hide Negore looked upon them with satisfaction, and in his e up the rocks And ever he saaiting for hie up the rocks, the face and the form of Oona, and ever he heard her voice in his ears and felt the soft, waret to shi+ver, nor to stuh, nor to cry aloud at the bite of the lash Also, he was afraid of Karduk, for he knew hiue - a tongue too easy, he judged, for the aardness of honest speech

All that day they marched And on the next, when Karduk asked him at command of Ivan, he said he doubted they would meet with his tribe till the morrow But Ivan, who had once been shown the way by Old Kinoos, and had found that way to lead through the white water and a deadly fight, believed no e up the rocks, he halted his forty h Karduk deore looked at it shortly and carelessly It was a vast slide that broke the straight wall of a cliff, and was overrun with brush and creeping plants, where a score of tribes could have lain well hidden

He shook his head ”Nay, there be nothing there,” he said ”The way is clear”

Again Ivan spoke to Karduk, and Karduk said: ”Know, strange brother, if thy talk be not straight, and if thy people block the way and fall upon Ivan and his men, that thou shalt die, and at once”

”My talk is straight,” Negore said ”The way is clear”

Still Ivan doubted, and ordered two of his Slavonian hunters to go up alone Two other uns against his breast and waited All waited And Negore knew, should one arrow fly, or one spear be flung, that his death would come upon hirew small and smaller, and when they reached the top and waved their hats that all ell, they were like black specks against the sky

The guns were lowered froo forward Ivan was silent, lost in thought For an hour he h Karduk's ore: ”How didst thou know the as clear when thou didst look so briefly upon it?”

Negore thought of the little birds he had seen perched a the rocks and upon the bushes, and sed his shoulders and , likewise, of another passage up the rocks, to which they would soon colad that Karduk ca Sea, where there were no trees or bushes, and where men learned water-craft instead of land- craft and wood-craft

Three hours later, when the sun rode overhead, they cae up the rocks, and Karduk said: ”Look with all thine eyes, strange brother, and see if the way be clear, for Ivan is not ore looked, and he looked with two ainst his breast He saw that the little birds were all gone, and once he saw the glint of sunlight on a rifle-barrel And he thought of Oona, and of her words: ”And when the fighting begins, it is for thee, Negore, to crawl secretly away so that thou be not slain”

He felt the two guns pressing on his breast This was not the way she had planned There would be no crawling secretly away He would be the first to die when the fighting began But he said, and his voice was steady, and he still feigned to see with dull eyes and to shi+ver from his sickness: ”The way is clear”

And they started up, Ivan and his fortyAnd there was Karduk, the uns always upon hio fast; but very fast to Negore they seemed to approach the un cracked aore heard the war-yell of all his tribe, and for an instant saw the rocks and bushes bristle alive with his kinfolk Then he felt torn asunder by a burst of fla, and as he fell he knew the sharp pangs of life as it wrenches at the flesh to be free

But he gripped his life with a o He still breathed the air, which bit his lungs with a painful sweetness; and di spells of blindness and deafness, the flashes of sight and sound again wherein he saw the hunters of Ivan falling to their deaths, and his own brothers fringing the carnage and filling the air with the tumult of their cries and weapons, and, far above, the woreat rocks that leaped like things alive and thundered down

The sun danced above hi, and still he heard and saw dis, hurled there lifeless and crushed by a down- rushi+ng rock, he relad

Then the sounds died down, and the rocks no longer thundered past, and he saw his tribespeople creeping close and closer, spearing the wounded as they cahty Slavonian hunter, loath to die, and, half uprisen, borne back and down by the thirsty spears

Then he saw above him the face of Oona, and felt about him the arms of Oona; and for a reat walls were upright and ore,” he heard her say in his ear; ”thou art ore”

And in that ladness of which she had told hi, and as the sun went out of the sky above hie, he knew the memory of her eet And as even the memories dimmed and died in the darkness that fell upon him, he knew in her arms the fulfilment of all the ease and rest she had proht wrapped around hireat peace steal about hihts and the mystery of silence