Helliconia: Helliconia Spring, Helliconia Summer, Helliconia Winter (63 page)

He listened to the rajabaral. Something inside it rumbled. The Nondads had set great store by the trees under whose roots they lived; Withram was said to live at the top of the rajabaral drum, and occasionally to burst out in fury upon a world that was so unjust to protognostics. What would Withram do, he wondered, when all the Nondads died? Even Withram would be forced to a new individuality.

‘Wake up,’ he said, realising how his mind wandered. He saw no sign of the ruinous tower by which he might have oriented himself. Instead, putting Batalix at his back, he began to move among the speckled trunks of the forest. Body and limbs felt pleasantly insubstantial.

Days passed. He hid from groups of phagors and other foes. He felt no hunger; the disease had left him without appetite and with an unclouded brain. He found his mind filling with things that Vry had said to him, and Shay Tal and his mother and grandmother; how much was owed to women – and to the snoktruix … things relating to the world as a place to be understood as one world of many, a place in which it was his extraordinary good fortune to be, with the unexpected happening every day, and the breath filling his lungs like a tide. He knew in his bones he was blessed. Worlds inexhaustible lay hived one within the other.

So, lightly stepping, he came to the ford before the Sibornalan settlement known as New Ashkitosh.

New Ashkitosh was in a constant state of excitement. The colonists liked it that way.

The settlement covered a large area. It was circular, as far as the terrain allowed. Huts and fences were built along the perimeter, interspersed with watchtowers, with farm land inside, divided by paths which radiated from the centre like the spokes of a wheel. In the centre was a cluster of buildings and stores, together with the pens in which captives were contained. All of these were arranged round the centremost hub of the settlement,
which consisted of a circular church, the Church of Formidable Peace.

Men and women came and went in a businesslike way. No loitering was allowed. There were enemies – Sibornal always had enemies – enemies within and without.

The outside enemy was anyone or anything not of Sibornal. Not that the Sibornalans were hostile; but their religion taught them to be cautious. And in particular to be cautious of anyone from Pannoval, or of the phagorian kind.

Beyond the settlement, scouts ranged, mounted on yelk. They brought news hourly of the progress towards the settlement of scattered bodies of phagors, followed by a veritable army of the ancipitals, descending from the mountains.

The news caused controlled alarm. Everyone was alert. There was no panic. Although the Sibornalan colonists were hostile to the two-horned invaders, and vice versa, they had developed an uneasy alliance which kept conflict to a minimum. Unlike the people of Embruddock, no Sibornalan ever willingly fought a phagor.

Instead, they traded. The colonists were conscious of their vulnerable position, conscious that no retreat to Sibornal was possible – not that they would be at all welcome if they returned, being rebellious and heretical. What they traded was lives, human or semihuman.

The colonists existed on the edge of starvation, even in good times. This colony was vegetarian; every man was a skilled farmer. Their crops thrived. Yet the bulk of their crop went to feeding the mounts they rode. An enormous number of yelk, hoxney, horses, and kaidaws (the latter goodwill gifts from phagors) had to be kept fed in order for the community to survive at all.

For scouts were always patrolling neighbouring territory, keeping the settlement informed of what was happening elsewhere, and capturing anything that came within their sweep. The central pens were well stocked with a transient population of prisoners.

The prisoners were handed over to phagors as tribute. In exchange, the phagors left the settlement alone. Why not? The
warrior-priest Festibariyatid had cunningly founded the settlement on a false octave; no phagor was motivated to invade it.

But there remained the enemy inside the camp. Two protognostics giving their names as Cathkaarnit-he and Cathkaarnit-she had fallen ill on arrival and soon died. The pen master had called a doctor-priest, who had identified bone fever. The fever was spreading, week by week. This morning, a scout was found in the bunkhouse, limbs locked tight, eyeballs rolling, sweat pouring from his flesh.

Inconveniently, the disaster happened at a time when the colonists were trying to build up stocks of captives to present to the approaching phagor crusade. Already, they had informed themselves of the name of the ancipital warrior-priest, who was none less than Kzahhn Hrr-Brahl Yprt. A large number of deaths would spoil the tribute. By order of the High Festibariyatid, extra prayers were sung at each declension.

Laintal Ay heard the prayers as he walked into the settlement and was pleased by the sound. He looked with interest at all about him, ignoring the two armed sentries who escorted him to a central guardhouse, outside which prisoners were raking dung into piles.

The guard captain was puzzled by a human who was not from Sibornal and yet walked voluntarily into the camp. After talking to Laintal Ay for a while and trying some bullying, he sent a subordinate to fetch a priest-militant.

By this time, Laintal Ay was having to accustom himself to the fact that anyone who had not suffered the plague looked, to his new eyes, uncomfortably fat. The priest-militant looked uncomfortably fat. He confronted Laintal Ay challengingly, and asked what he thought were shrewd questions.

‘I met with some difficulties,’ Laintal Ay said. ‘I came here hoping to find refuge. I need clothes. The woods are too populated for my liking. I want a mount of some kind, preferably a hoxney, and am prepared to work for it. Then I’m off home.’

‘What kind of human are you? Are you from far Hespagorat? Why are you so thin?’

‘I have come through the bone fever.’

The priest-militant fingered his lip. ‘Are you a fighter?’

‘I recently killed off a whole tribe of Others, the Nondads …’

‘So you’re not afraid of protognostics?’

‘Not at all.’

He was given the task of guarding the pens and feeding their miserable inmates. In exchange, he was presented with grey wool clothing. The thinking of the priest-militant was simple. One who had suffered from the fever could look after the prisoners without inconveniently dying or passing on the pandemic.

Yet more of the colonists and the prisoners went down with the scourge. Laintal Ay noticed that the prayers in the Church of Formidable Peace became more fervent. At the same time, people kept more closely to themselves. He went where he would and nobody stopped him. He felt that he somehow lived a charmed life. Each day was a gift.

The scouts kept their mounts in a railed compound. He was in charge of a bunch of prisoners whose job it was to carry in hay and fodder to the animals. Here was where the big fodder problem of the settlement lay. An acre of green grass could feed ten animals for a day. The settlement had fifty mounts, used for scouring an increasingly large area; they consumed an equivalent of 24,000 acres per year, or rather less, since some feeding was done beyond the perimeter. This grave problem meant that the Church of Formidable Peace was generally full of half-starved farmers – a rare phenomenon, even on Helliconia.

Laintal Ay refused to shout at the prisoners; they worked well enough, considering their miserable circumstances. The guards stayed at a distance. A light rain made them keep their heads down. Only Laintal Ay took notice of the mounts as they crowded round, thrusting forward their soft muzzles, breathing gently in expectation of a treat. The time was coming when he would select a mount and escape; in a day or two more, the guard would be disorganised enough for his purposes, judging by the way things were going.

He looked a second time at one of the hoxney mares. Seizing up a handful of cake, he approached her. The animal’s stripes ran orangey-yellow from head to tail, with a dark powdery blue between.

‘Loyalty!’

The mare came over to him, taking the cake and then plunging her nose under his arm. He clung to her ears and petted them.

‘Where’s Shay Tal, then?’ he asked.

But the answer was obvious. The Sibornalans had caught her and traded her to the phagors. She would never get to Sibornal now. By this time, Shay Tal was a gossie. She and her little party, one with time.

The name of the guard captain was Skitosherill. A wary friendship developed between him and Laintal Ay. Laintal Ay could see that Skitosherill was frightened; he touched nobody, and wore a posy of raige and scantiom at his lapel, to which his long nose frequently resorted, hoping to protect its owner from the plague.

‘Do you Oldorandans worship a god?’ he asked.

‘No. We can look after ourselves. We speak well of Wutra, that’s true, but we kicked all his priests out of Embruddock several generations ago. You should do the same in New Ashkitosh – you’d have an easier life.’

‘Barbarian behaviour! That’s why you caught the plague, vexing God.’

‘Nine prisoners died yesterday, and six of your people. You pray too much, and it does no good.’

Skitosherill looked angry. They stood in the open, a breeze rippling their cloaks. The music of prayer drifted over to them from the church.

‘Don’t you admire our church? We’re only a simple farming community, yet we have a fine church. There’s nothing like it in Oldorando, I’ll gamble.’

‘It’s a prison.’

But as he spoke, he heard a solemn melody coming from the church which addressed him with mystery. The instruments were joined by voices, uplifted.

‘Don’t say that – I could have you beaten. Life’s in the Church. The circular Great Wheel of Kharnabhar, the holy centre of our faith. If it was not for the Great Wheel, we’d still be in the grip of snow and ice.’ He made a circle on his forehead with his index finger as he spoke.

‘How’s that?’

‘It’s the Wheel that moves us closer to Freyr all the time. Didn’t you know that? I was taken to visit it on pilgrimage as a child, into the Shivenink Mountains. You are not a true Sibornalan unless you’ve made the pilgrimage.’

The following day brought another seven deaths. Skitosherill was in charge of the burial party, which consisted of Madi prisoners, scarcely competent enough to dig graves.

Laintal Ay said, ‘I had a dear friend who was captured by your people. She wished to make a pilgrimage to Sibornal, to consult the priests of that Great Wheel of yours. She thought they might be the source of all wisdom. Instead, your people made her prisoner and sold her to the stinking phagor. Is that how you treat people?’

Skitosherill shrugged. ‘Don’t blame me. She was probably mistaken for a Pannoval spy.’

‘How could she be mistaken? She rode a hoxney, as did members of her party. Have the people of Pannoval hoxneys? I never heard so. She was a splendid woman, and you brigands handed her over to the fuggies.’

‘We’re not brigands. We just wish to settle here in peace, moving on when the ground’s used up.’

‘You mean, when you’ve used up the local population. Fancy trading women in exchange for your safety.’

Grinning uneasily, the Sibornalan said, ‘You barbarians of Campannlat, you don’t value your women.’

‘We value them highly.’

‘Do they rule?’

‘Women don’t rule.’

‘They do in some countries of Sibornal. In this settlement, see how well we take care of our women. We have women priests.’

‘I haven’t seen one.’

‘That’s because we take care of them.’ He leant forward. ‘Listen, Laintal Ay, I understand you are not a bad fellow, all things considered. I’m going to trust you. I know the state of affairs here. I know how many scouts have gone out and not returned. They’ve died of the plague in some miserable thicket and had no burial, their corpses probably devoured by birds or Others. It’s going to become worse, while we sit here. I am a
religious man, and I believe in prayer; but the bone fever is so strong that even prayer cannot prevail against it. I have a wife I love dearly. I wish to strike a bargain with you.’

As Skitosherill spoke, Laintal Ay stood on a low eminence, looking down a miserable bit of ground which sloped towards a stream; stunted thorn trees grew along the watercourse. Among the stones littering the slope, the prisoners were slinging back earth, while seven cadavers – the Sibornalan corpses wrapped in sheets – lay in the open awaiting burial. He thought to himself, I can understand why this overweight lump wishes to escape, but what is he to me? He’s no more than Shay Tal, Amin Lim, and the others were to him.

‘What’s your bargain?’

‘Four yelk, well fed. Me, my wife, her maidservant, you. We leave together – they’ll let me through the lines without difficulty. We ride back with you to Oldorando. You know the way, I protect you, see to it that you have a good steed. Otherwise you’ll never be allowed to get away from here – you’re too valuable – particularly when matters get worse. Do you agree?’

‘When do you plan to leave?’

Skitosherill buried his nose in the posy and looked up searchingly at Laintal Ay. ‘You say a word of this to anyone and I’ll kill you. Listen, the crusade of the phagor kzahhn, Hrr-Brahl Yprt, is due to start passing here before Freyr-set, according to our scouts. We four will follow on afterwards – the phagors will not attack us if we are in their rear. The crusade can go where it will; we shall progress to Oldorando.’