Helliconia Spring
Page 47
Laintal Ay walked along the curved street formed between the church and the surrounding offices, guardrooms, and stores, carrying a suit of Sibornalan clothing for Aoz Roon. As he went, he caught glimpses of the scene between buildings.
All the inhabitants of New Ashkitosh had gathered to watch the crusade pass. He wondered if they waited there from fear, to test whether the human tribute they had paid the ancipital force had indeed secured their safety.
The silent white brutes went by on either side of the settlement. They moved with precision, looking incuriously ahead. Many were thin, their coats moulting; their naked heads by contrast looked enormous. Above them flew the cowbirds, setting up a great racket. Many cow-birds broke ranks, to dive on manure piles lying about the settlement, fighting for them with screams and beating wings.
The people of the settlement sent up their own sound, as if in opposition. As Laintal Ay emerged from the church, the massed ranks broke into song. The words were not Olonets. They carried a harsh yet lyrical texture matched by a powerful melody. The song breathed some grand elusive quality between defiance and submission. Women's voices floated clear above the bass, which developed into a slow chant much like a march.
Now among the ragged army of brutes streaming by could be discerned some on kaidaw-back – not so many kaidaws now as there had been at the start, but enough to make a showing. In the centre of a more orderly phalanx stepped Rukk-Ggrl, red head held low, bearing the young kzahhn himself. Behind the kzahhn came his generals, then his private fillocks – of whom only two survived, and they now haughty gillots. Human prisoners plodded along amid the throng, bearing loads. Hrr-Brahl Yprt held his head high, his face crown glinting in the sickly light. Zzhrrk fluttered above him like a banner. The kzahhn did not deign to cast his regard upon the human settlement that paid him tribute. Yet the throaty song that rolled out across the land to greet him roused a feeling of some kind in his eddre for, when he came to a point that might be regarded as level with the Church of Formidable Peace, he raised his sword above his head in his right hand – whether as greeting or threat could never be determined. Without pause, he continued on his way.
Seeing that Aoz Roon kept by his side, Laintal Ay led him to the guardhouse. There they waited until Skitosherill arrived, bringing along his wife and a maidservant loaded with baggage.
"Who's this?" Skitosherill demanded, pointing to Aoz Roon. "Are you breaking your side of our bargain already, barbarian?"
"He's a friend of mine, let that suffice. Where are your phagor friends going?" The Sibornalan shrugged one shoulder, as if denial was hardly worth two.
"Why should I know? Stop them and ask, if you're curious."
"They are heading for Oldorando. Don't you know that? – you brigands, so friendly with the brutes, singing a song to their leader."
"If I knew where every little barbarous town in the wilderness stood, I should hardly rely on you to show me the way to one of them."
They were confronting each other angrily when Skitosherill's wife pushed forward and said, "Why are you arguing, Barboe? Let's get on with the plan. If this man says he can lead us to Oldorando, then encourage him to do so."
"Of course, dear," Skitosherill said, sketching a rictus of a smile in her direction. Scowling at Laintal Ay, he made off, returning very soon with a scout who led several head of yelk. His wife contented herself with surveying Laintal Ay and Aoz Roon in silent contempt.
She was a sturdy woman, almost as tall as her husband, shapeless under her grey garments. What made her remarkable in Laintal Ay's eyes was her fair straight hair and her light blue eyes; despite her harsh expression, they had a pleasant effect. He said to her cordially, "I will take you to Oldorando in safety. Our town is beautiful and exciting, and boasts geysers and stone towers. The Hour-Whistler will amaze you. You are bound to admire all you see."
"I'm not bound to admire anything," she said severely. As if regretting this response, she asked his name in more cordial terms.
"Let's move, sunset's upon us," said Skitosherill briskly. "You two barbarians will ride yelk – no hoxneys available. And this scout will accompany us. He has orders to be firm with any trouble."
"With any trouble at all, really," said the scout, from under his cowl.
As Freyr sank to the horizon, they moved out, six of them with seven yelk, one used for baggage. They passed the sentries at the western entrance of the settlement without incident. The guards stood there dejectedly, shadowy in the declining light, staring into the gathering gloom.
The party entered the wilderness, following the last of the kzahhn's shaggy army. The ground was trampled and fouled from the passage of many feet.
Laintal Ay led the others. He ignored the discomforts of the yelk saddle. A suffocating weight lay on his heart and eddre as he thought of the savage phagor army somewhere ahead of him; with growing certainty, he believed that they would encompass Oldorando on their route, whatever their ultimate destination. It was up to him to spur on as fast as possible, outflank the crusade, and warn the city. He kicked the yelk in the ribs, heaving it on by mental force.
Oyre and her smiling eyes represented all that was dear in the city. His long absence was nothing he regretted, since it had brought him new understanding of himself, and new respect for her insight; she had seen his lack of maturity, his dependence on others, and had wished better for him, perhaps without being able to articulate that wish. His return would bring her at least something of those necessary qualities. Provided he arrived in time.
They entered into a murky forest, through which a faint trail glimmered, as Batalix set in golden sheen. The trees were young as yet, growing like weeds, their crowns scarcely higher than the heads of the riders. Phantoms moved close by. A thin trail of protognostics wended its way eastwards; by holding to its own mysterious octave, it had somehow managed to evade the kzahhn and thread its course through his ranks. Haggard faces moved palely among the eclipsing saplings.
He hunched his thin frame in the saddle and looked back. The scout and Aoz Roon brought up the rear, hardly distinguishable in the twilight. Aoz Roon's head was down; he looked lifeless and broken. Then came the maidservant with the baggage yelk. Directly behind Laintal Ay rode Skitosherill and his wife, their faces shaded by grey cowls. His gaze sought her pale face. Her blue eyes glinted, but something frozen in her expression frightened him. Was death already creeping up on them?
Again he kicked the slow-moving yelk, forcing it towards the dangers ahead.
XV - The Stench of Burning
* * *
Silence reigned over Oldorando. Few people walked in the streets. Of those who did, most carried some nostrum or other to their face, sometimes keeping it in place with a mask over nose and mouth. Herbs were most highly regarded for this purpose. They fended off plague, flies, and the stink of bonfires.
High over the houses, the two sentinels, only a hairsbreadth apart, glared down like eyes. Beneath the tiles and slates, the population waited. Everything that organisation could do had been done. Now only waiting remained.
The virus moved from one quarter of the city to another. One week, most deaths would be confined to the southern quarter, the so-called Pauk, and the rest of the city would breathe more freely. Then the district across the Voral would be chastised – to the relief of the other districts. But in another few days, the plague might make lightning visitation to its previous haunts, and lamentations would burst out from streets, even households, where similar cries had only recently been heard.
Tanth Ein and Faralin Ferd, lieutenants of Embruddock, together with Raynil Layan, master of the mint, and Dathka, Lord of the Western Veldt, had formed a Fever Committee, on which they themselves sat, together with useful citizens such as Ma Scantiom of the hospice. Aided by an auxiliary body formed by the pilgrimage from Pannoval, the Takers, who had stayed in Oldorando to preach against its immorality, laws had been passed to deal with the ravages of the fever. Those laws were enforced by a special police cont
ingent.
Notices were posted in every street and alley, warning that the penalties for concealing dead bodies and for looting were the same: execution by phagor bite – a primitive punishment that sent refined shudders through the rich merchants. Notices posted outside the city warned all those who approached that the plague ruled. Few of those fugitives who came from the east were rash enough to ignore the warning: they ringed their foreheads and skirted the city. It was doubtful whether the notices would provide such effective protection against those with evil intentions towards the place.
The first carts ever to be seen in Oldorando, clumsy things with two wheels, pulled by hoxneys, rumbled through the streets regularly. On them went the day's crop of corpses, some left shrouded in the street, some thrown unceremoniously out of doorways or dropped naked from upper windows. No mother or husband or child, however beloved in life, but caused sickening revulsion when dying, and worse when dead. Though the cause of the fever was not understood, many theories existed. Everyone believed that the disease was contagious. Some went so far as to believe that the mere sight of a corpse was sufficient to turn one into the same state. Others who had listened to the word of Naba's Akha – suddenly of persuasive power – believed that venery brought the fever on.
Whatever their beliefs, all agreed that fire was the only answer for corpses. The corpses were taken in carts to a point beyond the city, and there thrown into the flames. The pyre was constantly being rekindled. Its smoke, the smell of its black fats, drifting across the shuttered streets, reminded the inhabitants of their vulnerability. In consequence, those still surviving threw themselves into one or other – and sometimes both – of the extremes of mortification and lechery.
No one as yet believed that the fever was at its height, or that there was not worse to come. This dread was counterbalanced by hope. For there was an increasing number of people, mainly young, who survived the worst that the helico virus could do, and who, in slimmed down shapes, moved confidently through the city. Among them was Oyre.
She had fallen in the street. By the time Dol Sakil had taken her into her care, Oyre was locked rigid in pain. Dol looked after her without fear for herself, with that listless indifference which was an established part of Dol's manner. Despite the prognostications of friends, she did not fall ill herself, and lived to see Oyre come through the eye of the needle, looking slender, even skeletal. The only precaution Dol had taken was to send her child, Rastil Roon, to stay with Amin Lim's man and his child. Now the boy was back.
The two women and the child spent their time indoors. The sense of waiting, the sense of an ending, was not unpleasant. Boredom had many mansions. They played with the boy, simple games that took them back to their own childhood. Once or twice Vry joined them, but Vry had an abstracted air these days. When she spoke, she told them of her work, and of all that she aspired to do. On one occasion, she broke out into passionate speech, confessing her involvement with Raynil Layan, of whom they had previously nothing good to say. The affair vexed her; she often felt disgust; she hated the man when he was absent; yet she flung herself on him when he appeared.
"We've all done it, Vry," Dol commented. "It's just that you're a bit late, so it hurts you worse."
"We haven't all done it enough," Oyre said quietly. "I have no desires now. They've gone from me…. What I desire is desire. It may return if only Laintal Ay returns." She gazed out of the window at the blue sky.
"But I'm so torn," Vry said, unwilling to be distracted from her own troubles. "I'm never calm, as once I was. I don't know myself any longer."
In her outburst, Vry said nothing of Dathka, and the other women evaded that issue. Her love might have brought her more ease if she did not worry about Dathka; not only was he on her conscience, but he had taken to following her obsessively. She feared for what might happen, and had easily persuaded the nervous Raynil Layan that they meet in a secret room, rather than in their own places. In this secret room, she and her fork-bearded lover had daily tryst, while the city waited on the disease and the sound of saddle animals drifted through their open window.
Raynil Layan wished the window closed, but she would not have it.
"The animals may convey the illness," he protested. "Let's leave here, my doe, leave the city – away from the pest and everything else that worries us."
"How would we survive? This is our place. Here in this city, and in each other's arms."
He gave her an uneasy grin. "And suppose we infect each other with the pest?"
She flung herself back on the bed, her breasts bouncing in his sight. "Then we die close, we die in the act, knotted! Maintain your spirit, Raynil Layan, feed on mine. Spill yourself over – over and over!" She rubbed her hand along his hairy loin and hooked a leg about the small of his back.
"You greedy sow," he said admiringly, and he rolled beside her, pressing his body to hers.
•••
Dathka sat on the edge of his bed, resting his head in his hands. As he said nothing, so the girl on the bed did not speak; she turned her face from him and brought her knees up to her chest.
Only when he rose and began to dress, with the abruptness of one who has suddenly made up his mind, did she say in a stifled voice, "I'm not carrying the plague, you know."
He cast her back a bitter look, but said nothing, continuing hastily to dress.
She turned her head round, brushing long hair from her face. "What's the matter with you, then, Dathka?"
"Nothing."
"You're not much of a man."
He pulled on his boots, seemingly more concerned with them than with her.
"Rot you, woman, I don't want you – you're not the one I want. Get that into your skull and shift yourself out of here."
From a cupboard fitted into the wall he took a curved dagger of fine workmanship. Its brightness contrasted with the worm-scored panels of the cupboard door. He stuck it in his belt. She called to ask where he was going. He paid her no further attention, slamming the door behind him and clattering down the stairs.
•••
He had not wasted the last few bitter weeks since Laintal Ay left and since he had discovered what he regarded as Vry's betrayal of him. Much of his time had been spent building up support among the youth of Oldorando, securing his position, making alliances with foreign elements who chafed at the restrictions Oldorando imposed on them, sympathising with those – and there were many – whose way of life had been disrupted by arduous work patterns imposed by the introduction of a native coinage. The master of the mint, Raynil Layan, was a frequent butt of his criticism.
As he strode into the alley, all was quiet and the side street deserted except for a man he paid to guard his door. In the market, people were about of necessity, attending to their day's requirements. The little apothecary's stall, with its pots ranked imposingly, was doing good business. There were still merchants with bright stalls and bright robes on their backs. Equally, there were also people moving by with loads on their backs, leaving the threatened city before things got worse.
Dathka saw nothing of it. He moved like an automaton, eyes fixed ahead. The tension in the city was one with his personal tension. He had reached a point where he could tolerate it no longer. He would kill Raynil Layan, and Vry too if need be, and have done with it. His lips curled back from his teeth as he rehearsed the fatal blow over and over in his mind. Men started away from him, fearing his fixed look presaged the onset of fever.
He knew where Vry had her secret room; his spies kept him informed. He thought to himself, if I ruled here, I would close down the academy for good. Nobody ever had the courage to make that decision final. I would. Now's the time to strike, using the excuse that classes at the academy spread the pest. That would really hurt her.
"Take thought, brother, take thought! Pray with the Takers to be spared, hear the word of great Naba's Akha…."
He brushed by the street preacher. He would have those fools off the street, too, if he ruled.
hoxney stables, he was approached by a man he knew, a mercenary and animal trader.
"Well?"
"He's up there how, sir." The man signalled with his eyebrows towards the garret window of one of the wooden buildings facing the stables. These were mainly hostels, rooming houses or drink shops, which acted as a quasi-respectable front to the music rooms and bawdy houses ranged behind them.
Dathka nodded curtly.
He pushed through a bead curtain, to which fresh orling and scantiom had been tied, and entered one of the drink shops. The cramped dark room was empty of customers. On the walls, animal skulls gave dry, serrated smiles. The owner stood against his counter, arms folded, gazing into space. Already primed, he merely lowered his head so that his double chins spread on his chest, a signal to Dathka to do whatever he wished to do. Dathka passed him by and climbed the stairs.
Stale smells greeted him, of cabbage and worse things. He walked by the wall, but the boards still creaked. He listened at the end door, heard voices. Being of nervous disposition, Raynil Layan would be sure to have barred his door. Dathka knocked on the cracked panels.
"Message for you, sir," he said in a muffled voice "Urgent, from the mint."
Smiling a ghastly smile, he stood close, listening as the bolts were drawn inside the room. As soon as the door opened a crack, he burst in, flinging the door wide. Raynil Layan fell back, crying in terror. At the sight of the dagger, he ran to the window and called once for help. Dathka grasped him by the neck and flung him against the bed.
"Dathka!" Vry sat in the bed, pulling a sheet over her nudity. "Get out of here, you rat's eddre!"
For answer, he kicked the door shut without looking round. He went over to Raynil Layan, who was picking himself up and groaning.