Helliconia: Helliconia Spring, Helliconia Summer, Helliconia Winter (177 page)

‘How did you come so providentially?’ Toress Lahl asked.

He scowled. ‘I imagine the same way these dummies did. By following that unmistakable red-and-yellow striped blanket. Otherwise I had no idea where you were. As you see, I’m going in for disguise.’

They had noticed. Fashnalgid had had his immense moustache shaved off and his hair cut short. He kept his revolver levelled at the police in a professional manner as he spoke.

‘Rifle get much money,’ Uuundaamp suggested. ‘Cut these man throat first, ishto?’

‘Never mind that, you little scab-devourer. If your shaggie was here, I’d drop him. Luckily he is not, because this place is swarming with police and soldiers.’

‘We’d better leave fast,’ Shokerandit said. ‘Excellent timing, Harbin. You’ll make an officer yet. Uuundaamp, if we keep these three police quiet, can you and Moub get the dogs harnessed up really quickly?’

The Ondod became very active. He got the two women to drag the sledge into the barn and grease the runners, which he insisted was necessary. The police were made to stand with their trousers round their ankles and their hands up the wall. Everyone stood back as lead dog Uuundaamp was unleashed and he and the other seven asokins were secured to the traces, each in its appropriate place. As he worked, Uuundaamp cursed each of them in different tones of affection.

‘Please hurry,’ said Toress Lahl once, betraying her nervousness.

The Ondod went and sat down on the plank where his wife had recently given birth.

Jus’ take small rest, ishto?’

They waited it out, no one moving, until his honour was satisfied. Snow came in through the rear door as he methodically checked over the harness.

From the direction of the street they could hear shouts and whistles. The three police had already been missed.

Uuundaamp picked up his whip.

‘Gumtaa. Get on.’

The rifles were tucked hastily under the sledge straps as they jumped aboard. Uuundaamp called encouragingly to Uuundaamp, and the sledge started to move. The police at once began to shout at the top of their voices. Answering shouts came. The sledge bumped out of the rear door.

Outside, ravening asokins leaped furiously against the mesh of their cage. Uuundaamp raised himself, twirled his whip, sent its tip flying towards the cage door. The hasp of the cage was secured in position by a thick wooden wedge. The whip end flicked the wedge free as the sledge went by.

Under the weight of the dogs, the cage door crashed open, and the brutes hurled themselves to freedom in a torrent of fur and fangs. Into and through the barn they rushed. Ghastly cries came up from the police.

The sledge gathered speed, bumping across rough ground, swinging round. Uuundaamp shouted commands, plying his whip expertly, licking each dog with it in turn, arms tireless. The passengers hung on. The barking and sounds of pain from behind died as they went over the hillside and jarred down onto the northward road.

Shokerandit looked back. No one was following. Faintly through the snow, sounds of growling still reached his ears. Then the road turned. Toress Lahl clutched him. Under one arm, wrapped in a bundle of dirty rag, she sheltered the newborn babe. It looked up at her and grinned, showing sharp baby teeth.

A mile along the trail, Uuundaamp slowed and turned.

He pointed the handle of the whip at Fashnalgid.

‘You, kakool man. You jump off. No want.’

Fashnalgid said nothing. He looked at Shokerandit, grimaced. Then he jumped.

Within a few yards, his figure was concealed in a whirl of snow. His last words reached them faintly – the terrible oath: ‘Abro Hakmo Astab!’

Uuundaamp turned to scan the trail ahead.

‘Kharber!’ he cried.

Avoiding Noonat, Fashnalgid met up with a group of Bribahrese pilgrims, returning from Kharnabhar and Noonat and making their way home, down the winding trails to the western valleys. He had shaved off his moustache in order to avoid identification and had every intention of disappearing from human ken.

Hardly had he been with the pilgrims for twenty-five hours when the group met another party climbing up from Bribahr. The latter had such a tale of disaster to tell that Fashnalgid became convinced that he was heading in the wrong direction. Perhaps right directions did not exist anymore.

According to the refugees, the Oligarch’s Tenth Guard had descended on the Great Rift Valley of Bribahr, with orders to take possession of or destroy the two great cities of Braijth and Rattagon.

Most of the rift valley was filled by the cobalt blue waters of Lake Braijth. In the lake was an island on which stood an immense old fortress. This was the city of Rattagon. There was no way of attacking the fortress except by boat. Whenever an enemy attempted to cross, it was sunk by the batteries of the frowning castle walls.

Bribahr was the great grain-producing land of Sibornal. Its fertile plains reached down into the tropical zones. In the north, before the ice sheets began, there stretched the tundra barrier, skirted by mile upon mile of caspiarn trees, which could withstand even the onslaught of Weyr-Winter.

The inhabitants of Bribahr were mainly peasant farmers. But a warrior elite, based in the two cities of Braijth and Rattagon, had recklessly threatened Kharnabhar, the Holy City. Braijth would
have liked a greater share of Sibornal’s prosperity. Bribahr farmers sent grain to Uskutoshk for little return; to put pressure on the Oligarchy, they had made a tentative move against Holy Kharnabhar, capable of being approached from their plains.

In return for their threats, Askitosh had sent an army. Braijth had already fallen.

Now the Tenth sat on the shores of Lake Braijth, looked towards Rattagon, and waited. And starved. And shivered.

The frosts of the brief autumn had come. The lake also began to freeze.

There would be a time, and the Rattagonese knew it, when the ice would be firm enough to permit an enemy force to cross, walking. But that time was not yet. So far, nothing heavier than a wolf could get across. It might take a tenner before the ice would bear a platoon of soldiers. By then, the enemy on the banks would have starved and crawled away home. The Rattagonese knew the habits of their lake.

They did not entirely starve behind their battlements. The ancient rift valley had numerous faults. There was a tunnel below the lake to the northwestern shore. It was a wet way to travel, the water in it always knee-deep. But food could pass by that route; the defenders of Rattagon could afford to wait, as they had done before in times of crisis.

One night, when Freyr was lost behind dense gales of snow blowing from the north, the Tenth put a desperate plan into action.

The ice was strong enough to bear wolves. It would also bear men with kites flying above them, supporting much of their weight, making them no heavier than wolves, and as ferocious.

The officers encouraged their men by telling them tales of the voluptuous women of Rattagon who stayed by their men in the fortress, keeping their beds warm.

The wind blew, strong and steady. The kites tugged and lifted the shoulders of the men. Bravely they ran onto the thin ice. Bravely they permitted themselves to be carried across the ice, right up to the grey walls of the fortress.

Inside the fortress walls, even the sentries slept, huddled in any
warm nook to shelter from the storm. They died with hardly a cry.

The volunteers of the Tenth cut away their kite cords and ran to the central keep. They slew the commander of the garrison in mid-snore.

Next day, the flag of the Oligarchy flew over fallen Rattagon.

This dreadful story, related with great drama over camp fires, persuaded Harbin Fashnalgid that there was wisdom in returning to Noonat and seeking a way southwards.

It’s always painful to become involved in history, he told himself, and accepted a bottle that was making the rounds of the pilgrims.

The night was alive. So thickly was the snow falling that, brushing against a human face in its descent, it resembled the fur of a great beast. The fur was less cold than suffocating: it occupied space normally taken up by air and sound. But when the sledge stopped, the staid brazen tongue of a bell could be distantly heard.

Luterin Shokerandit helped Toress Lahl down from the sledge. The churn of snowflakes had confused her. She stood with bowed shoulder, sheltering her eyes.

‘Where are we?’

‘Home.’

She saw nothing, only the animal dark, rolling, rolling towards her. Dimly, she made out Shokerandit, a bear walking, as he staggered towards the front of the sledge. There he embraced both Uuundaamp and the Ondod mother, clutching her infant into the coloured blanket.

Uuundaamp lifed his whip in farewell and flashed his unreliable smile. Came the jar-jar of his warning bell, the slice of his whip over the team, and the outfit was swallowed immediately by the whirling murk.

Bent almost double, Shokerandit and Toress Lahl made their way to a gate beyond which a dim light burned. He pulled a metal bell handle. They leaned exhaustedly against the stone pillar of the gate until a muffled military figure appeared from a shelter somewhere beyond the bars. The gate swung open.

They sheltered, panting, saying nothing to each other, until the guard returned after securing the gate and scrutinised them under his lantern.

The guard’s lineaments were those of an old soldier. His mouth
was tight, his gaze evaded other eyes, his expression gave nothing away. He stood his ground and asked, ‘What do you want?’

‘You’re speaking to a Shokerandit, man. Where are your wits?’

The challenging tone made the guard look more closely. With no change of expression, he said finally, ‘You wouldn’t be Luterin Shokerandit?’

‘Have I been away that long, you fool? Will you stand there and have me freeze?’

The man allowed his glance to take in Luterin’s metamorphosed bulk in one mute, insulting glare. ‘A cab to take you up the drive, sir.’

As he turned away, Luterin, still nettled at not being recognised, said, ‘Is my father in residence?’

‘At present not, sir.’

The guard put his free hand to the side of his mouth and bawled to a slave lurking at the rear of the guardhouse. In a short while, the cabriolet appeared through the blizzard, drawn by two yelk already encrusted in snow.

It was a mile from the gate to the ancient house, through land still known as the Vineyard. Now it was rough pasturage, where a local strain of yelk was bred.

Shokerandit alighted. The snow whirled round the corner of the house as if personally interested in turning them to ice. The woman closed her eyes and clutched Shokerandit’s skins. Following ghostly materialisations of the structure, they climbed steps to the iron-banded front door. Above them sounded the dismal tolling bell, long drawn out, like a sound heard underwater. Other bells, drowning farther off, added their tongues.

The door opened. Dim guardian figures showed, helping the two new arrivals inside. The snow ceased, the roaring and clanging ceased, as bolts were shot home behind them.

In an echoing darkened hall, Shokerandit exchanged words with a servant unseen. A lamp glittered high on a marble wall, not yielding its illumination beyond the frosty surface which reflected it. They padded upstairs, each step with its own protesting noise. A heavy curtain was drawn back as if to abet the powers of darkness and stealth. They entered. While the woman stood, the servant lit a light and quit the room, bowing.

The room smelt dead. Shokerandit turned up the wick of his lamp. An impression of space, a low ceiling, shutters ineffectively barring out the night, a bed … They struggled out of their filthy garments.

They had been travelling for thirty-one days and, since Sharagatt, had been allowed only six and a half hours of sleep a day, rarely more, sometimes less, according to whether Uuundaamp considered the police were closing on them. Their faces were blackened by frost and lined by exhaustion.

Toress Lahl took a blanket from a couch and prepared to lie beside the bed. He climbed into the bed and beckoned her to join him.

‘You sleep with me now,’ he said.

She stood before him, her expression still dazed from the journey. ‘Tell me what place we are in now.’

He smiled. ‘You know where we are. This is my father’s house in Kharnabhar. Our troubles are over. We are safe here. Get in.’

She attempted a smile in return. ‘I am your slave and so I obey, master.’

She got in beside him. Her answer did not satisfy him, but he put his arms about her and made love to her. After which, he fell asleep immediately.

When she awoke, Shokerandit had gone. She lay gazing at the ceiling, wondering what he was trying to demonstrate by leaving her on her own. She felt herself unable to move from the comfortable bed, to face the challenges that would have to be met. Luterin was well disposed to her, and more than that; she had no doubts on that score. For him, she could feel only hatred. His casual handing over of her to the animal who drove the sledge, a humiliation still fresh in her mind, was merely the latest of his coarse treatments. Of course, she reflected, he did not do these things to
her
personally; he was merely conforming to fashion and treating her as slaves were treated.