by Brian Aldiss
As he watched in disgust, Bull saw a puff of smoke issue from the weapon the two men were aiming at him. Something like a hornet whistled by his ear.
Groping among the pots and stained rags the women had left behind, Bull found the other javelins. He selected one and again stood poised.
The two men on the mesa had also been busy, ramming something in one end of their weapon. They took up their positions as formerly, and again Bull, as he launched his javelin, saw a puff of smoke and heard a bang. Next moment, something struck him a blow in the left shoulder, sending him spinning as if he had been brutally punched. He fell back, sprawling on the path.
The wounded woman hauled herself to her feet, grabbed one of the javelins, and braced herself to thrust it into his undefended stomach. He kicked her legs away, locked his right arm about her neck, and together they rolled down the hillside.
Meanwhile, the musketmen on the mesa rose to full view and commenced to discharge their novel weapons at KolobEktofer’s men. Darvlish screamed with delight and flung his biyelk into the fray. He saw that success could be his.
Dismayed by what had happened to the King’s force, KolobEktofer fought on, but the matchlock fire was having a devastating effect on his men. Some were hit. None liked the cowardly nature of this innovation which could kill at a distance. KolobEktofer knew immediately that the Driats had purchased these hand-artillery weapons from the Sibornalese, or from other tribes who traded with the Sibornalese. The Fifth were wavering. The only way to win the battle was to silence the fort immediately.
Summoning six hardened old campaigners to his side, he allowed them no time to pause; the struggle was going against the remnants of the king’s party. Sword drawn, the colour-major led a scramble up the one accessible path to the top of the mesa, where rubble formed a slope.
As KolobEktofer’s party reached the fort, an explosion greeted it. One of the Sibornalese matchlocks had blown up, killing a gunner. At the same time, other guns—there were eleven all told—jammed, or their powder ran out. The Driats were not expert at weapon maintenance. Demoralized, the company allowed themselves to be butchered. They expected no mercy and received none from KolobEktofer. This massacre was observed by the Driats, who surrounded the mesa.
The king’s force, or what was left of it, finding its best leaders gone, decided to retire while it was reasonably intact. Some of KolobEktofer’s younger lieutenants made attempts to slash their way to the king’s side but, their support failing them, they were themselves cut down. The rest of the force turned and ran for safety, pursued by Driats uttering blood-chilling threats. Although KolobEktofer and his companions put up a brave fight, they were overwhelmed. Their bodies were hacked to pieces and the pieces kicked into the ravine. Mad with victory despite a high casualty list, Darvlish and his cohorts split into groups to hunt down survivors. By nightfall, only vultures and skulking things were still moving on the field of battle. This was the first time that firearms were used against Borlien.
In a notorious house on the outskirts of Matrassyl, a certain ice trader was waking. The whore whose bed he had shared overnight was already padding about, yawning. The ice trader raised himself on one elbow, scratched his chest, and coughed. The time was just before Freyr-break.
“Any pellamountain, Metty?” he asked.
“It’s on the boil,” she said in a whisper. Since he had known her, Metty always drank pellamountain tea in the early morning.
He sat on the edge of her bed, peering through the thick twilight at her. He covered himself. Now that desire had gone, he was not proud of his thickening body.
He followed her into the little kitchen-cum-washroom which adjoined her cabin. A basin of charcoal had been blown into life with bellows; a kettle sang on it. The glowing charcoal gave the only light in the room, apart from the tatters of dawn filtering through a broken shutter. By this bad light, he observed Metty as she went about the business of making tea as if she were his wife. Yes, she was getting old, he thought, observing her thin, lined face—probably twenty-nine, maybe even thirty. Only five years his junior. No longer pretty, but good in bed. Not a whore any longer. A retired whore. He sighed. She only took old friends, nowadays, and then as a favour.
Metty was dressed, neat and conservative, intending to go to church.
“What did you say?”
“I didn’t want to wake you, Krillio.”
“It’s all right.” Affection rising in him, he said reluctantly, “I wouldn’t want to leave without saying my thanks and farewells.”
“You’ll be making back to your wife and family now.”
She nodded without looking at him, concentrating on arranging a few leaves of the herb in two cups. Her mouth pursed. Her movements were businesslike—like all her movements, he thought.
The ice trader’s boat had docked late the previous day. He had come from Lordryardry with his usual cargo, all the way across the Sea of Eagles, to Ottassol, and then up the stubborn Takissa to Matrassyl. On this trip, besides ice, he had brought his son, Div, to acquaint him with the traders on the route. And to introduce Div to Metty’s house, to which he had been coming for as long as he had been trading with the royal palace. His lad was backward in all things.
Old Metty had a girl waiting for Div, an orphan of the Western Wars, slender and fair, with an attractive mouth and clean hair. Almost as inexperienced as Div, you’d say, at first glance. He had looked her over, trying with a coin in her kooni to see if she was free of disease. The copper coin had not turned green, and he had been satisfied. Or almost. He wanted the best for his son, fool though the boy was.
“Metty, I thought you had a daughter about Div’s age?”
She was not a communicative woman. “Doesn’t this girl suit?”
She flashed him a look as if to say, You mind your business and I’ll mind mine. Then perhaps relenting because he was always generous with his money and would never come again, she said, “My daughter Abathy, she wants to better herself, wants to move down to Ottassol. I tell her, there’s nothing in Ottassol you won’t find here, I said. But she wants to see the sea. All you’ll see is sailors, I told her.”
“So where is Abathy now?”
“Oh, she’s doing well for herself. Got a room, curtains, clothes… Earns a little money, she’ll be off south. She soon found herself a rich patron, her being so young and pretty.”
The ice trader saw the suppressed jealousy in Metty’s eyes and nodded to himself. Ever curious, he couldn’t resist asking who the patron was.
She shot one of her sharp glances at gawky young Div and the girl, both standing by the bunk impatient for their elders to go. Pulling a face—mistrusting what she was doing—she whispered a name into the trader’s mottled ear.
The trader sighed dramatically. “Well!”
But both he and Metty were too old and wicked to be shocked at anything.
“You going, Da?” Div asked his father.
So then he had left, to let Div get on with it as best he could. What fools men were when young, what clapped-out wrecks when old!
Now, as morning crept in, Div would be sleeping, his head against the girl’s, in some lower cabin. But all the pleasure the trader had experienced the night before, performing a fatherly duty, had gone. He felt hungry, but knew better than to ask Metty for food. His legs were stiff—whores’ beds were never meant for sleeping.
In a reflective mood, the ice trader realized that he had unwittingly performed a ceremony the previous evening. In handing his son over to the young whore, he was in effect relinquishing his old lusts. And what when lust died? Women had reduced him to beggary once; he had built up a prosperous trade—and never had he stopped lusting after women. But if that central interest withered… something had to enter the vacuum.
He thought of his own godless continent of Hespagorat. Yes, Hespagorat needed a god, though certainly not the god of this religion-infested Campannlat. He sighed, wondering why what lay between Metty’s narrow thighs should seem
so much more powerful than god.
“Off to church, then? Waste of time.”
She nodded. Never argue with a client.
Taking the cup she offered, he cradled its warmth in his paw and went to the threshold of the doorless room. There he paused, looking back.
Metty had not lingered over her pellamountain, but diluted it with cold water and gulped it down. Now she pulled on black gloves which came up to her elbow, adjusting the lace round her wrinkling skin.
Catching his glance, she said, “You can go back to bed. No one stirs in this house yet awhile.”
“We’ve always got on well together, you and I, Metty.” Determined to win a word of affection from her, he added, “I get on better with you than with my own wife and daughter.”
She heard such confessions every day.
“Well, I hope to see Div next trip, then, Krillio. Goodbye.” She spoke briskly, moving forward so that he had to get out of her way. He stepped back into her cabin and she swept past, still fiddling with the top of one glove. She made it clear that the notion of there being any affection between them was just his fantasy. Her mind was on something excluding him.
Carrying his cup back to the bed, he sipped the hot tea. He pushed open the shutter for the pleasure or pain or whatever it was of seeing her walk down the silent street. The crowded houses were pale and closed; something in their aspect diquieted him. Darkness still hung in side alleys. Only one person was to be seen—a man who progressed like a sleepwalker, supporting himself with a hand against the walls. Behind him came a small phagor, a runt, whimpering. Metty emerged from a door beneath the ice trader’swindow, took a step into the street. She paused when she saw the man approaching. She knew all about drunks, he thought. Booze and loose women went together, on every continent. But this man was no drunk. Blood ran from his leg to the cobbles.
“I’m coming down, Metty,” he called. In another minute, still shirtless, he joined her in the ghostly street. She had not moved.
“Leave him, he’s injured. I don’t want him in my place. He’ll cause trouble.”
The injured man groaned, stumbling against the wall. He paused, lifted his head and stared at the ice trader.
The latter gasped in astonishment. “Metty, by the beholder! It’s the king, no less… King JandolAnganol!”
They ran to him and supported him to the shelter of the whorehouse.
Few of the king’s force returned to Matrassyl. The Battle of the Cosgatt, as it came to be called, inflicted a terrible defeat. The vultures praised Darvlish’s name that day.
On his recovery—when he had been nursed at the palace by his devoted queen, MyrdemInggala—the king claimed in the scritina that a great force of enemy had been routed. But the ballads the peddlers sold declared otherwise. The death of KolobEktofer was particularly mourned. Bull was remembered with admiration in the lower quarters of Matrassyl. Neither returned home.
In those days when JandolAnganol lay in his chamber, faint from his wounds, he came to the conclusion that if Borlien was to survive he must form a closer alliance with the neighbouring members of the Holy Pannovalan Empire, in particular Oldorando and Pannoval. And he must at all costs acquire that hand artillery which the bandits of the borderland had used so devastatingly.
All this he discussed with his advisors. In their concurrence was laid the seeds of that plan for a divorce and a dynastic marriage which was to bring JandolAnganol to Gravabagalinien half a year later. Which was to estrange him from his beautiful queen. Which was to estrange him from his son. And which, by an even odder fatality, was to confront him with another death, this one attributed to the protognostic race known as the Madis.
V
The Way of the Madis
The Madis of the continent of Campannlat were a race apart. Their customs were separate from those of either mankind or the ancipital kind. And their tribes were separate from each other.
One tribe was progressing slowly westwards, through a region of Hazziz which had become desert, several days’ journey north of Matrassyl.
The tribe had been on its travels for longer than anyone could tell. Neither the protognostics themselves nor any of the nations which saw them pass could say when or where the Madis began their journeyings. They were nomads. They gave birth while on the move, they grew up and married on the move, they were finally lost to life on the move.
Their word for Life was Ahd, meaning the Journey.
Some humans who took an interest in the Madis—and they were few—believed that it was Ahd which kept the Madis apart. Others believed that it was their language. That language was a song, a song where melody seemed to dominate words. There was about the Madi tongue a complexity and yet an incompleteness which seemed to bind the tribe to its way, and which certainly entangled any human who tried to learn it.
A young human was trying to learn it now.
He had made attempts to speak hr’Madi’h when a child. Now in adolescence, his situation was more serious, and his lessons correspondingly more earnest.
He waited beside a stone pillar on which was inscribed a god symbol. It marked one boundary of a land-octave or health-line, although for that ancient superstition he cared little.
The Madis approached in irregular groups or in file. Their low melody preceded them. They passed him by without looking at him, though many of the adults stroked in passing the stone by which he stood. They wore, men and women, alike, sacklike garments loosely tied at the waist. The garments had high stiff hoods which could be raised against bad weather, giving their wearers a grotesque appearance. Their wooden shoes were primitively cut, as if the feet which had to bear them through Ahd were of no consideration.
The youth could see the trail winding back like a thread through the semidesert. There was no end to it. Dust hung over it, veiling it slightly. The Madis moved with a murmur of protognostic language. At any time, someone was singing to some others, the notes passing along the line like blood through an artery. The youth had once assumed this discourse to be a commentary on the way. Now he inclined to the idea that it was some kind of narrative; but what the narrative might concern he had no idea, since for the Madis there was neither past nor future.
He awaited his moment.
He searched the faces coming towards him as if looking for someone loved and lost, anticipating a sign. Although the Madis were human in physical appearance, their countenances held a tantalizing quality, their protognostic innocence, which reminded those who looked on them of animal faces or the faces of flowers. There was one common Madi face. Its eyeballs protruded, with soft brown irises nestled in thick eyelashes. Its nose was pronouncedly aquiline, reminiscent of a parrot’s beak. The forehead receded, the lower jaw was somewhat undershot. The whole effect was startlingly beautiful in the youth’s eyes. He was reminded of a lovely mongrel dog he had worshipped as a child, and also of the white-and-brown flowers of the dogthrush bush.
By one distinguishing mark could the male face be told from the female. The male had two bosses high on their temples and two on their jaws. Sometimes these bosses were dappled with hair. Once, the youth had seen a male with short stubs of horn emerging from the bosses.
The youth looked with fondness on the array of faces as it passed. He responded to the Madi simplicity. Yet hatred burned in his harneys. He wished to kill his father, King JandolAnganol of Borlien.
Motion and murmur flowed past him. Suddenly, there was his sign!
“Oh, I thank you!” he exclaimed, and moved forward.
One of the Madis, a female driving arang, had turned her gaze away from the trail, to look directly at him, giving him the Look of Acceptance. It was an anonymous look, gone as soon as it came, a gleam of intelligence not to be sustained. He fell in beside the female, but she paid him no further attention; the Look had been passed.
He had become a part of the Ahd.
With the migrants went their animals, pack animals such as yelk, trapped in the animals’ great summer grazing grounds
, as well as the semi-domesticated animals: several kinds of arang, sheep, and fhlebiht—all hoofed animals—together with dogs and asokins, which seemed as dedicated to the migratory life as their masters.
The youth, who called himself only Roba and detested the title of prince, remembered with scorn how the bored ladies of his father’s court would yawn and wish they were ‘as free as the wandering Madi.’ The Madi, with no more consciousness than a clever dog, were enslaved by the pattern of their lives.
Every day, camp was struck before dawn. At sunrise, the tribe would be off, moving to an untidy pattern. Throughout the day, rest periods occurred along the column, but the rests were brief and took no account of whether two suns or one ruled in the sky. Roba became convinced that such matters did not enter their minds; they were eternally bound to the trail.
Some days, there were obstacles on the route, a river to be crossed, a mountainside. Whatever it was, the tribe would accomplish it in their undemonstrative way. Often a child was drowned, an old person killed, a sheep lost. But the Ahd went on, and the harmony of their discourse did not cease.
At Batalix-set, the tribe came to a slow halt.
Then were chanted over and over the two words that meant ‘water’ and ‘wool’. If there was a Madi god, he was composed of water and wool.
The men saw to it that all the animals of their herd had water before they prepared the main meal of the day. The women and girls took down crude looms from their pack animals and on them wove rugs and garments of dyed wool.
Water was their necessity, wool their commodity.
“Water is Ahd, wool is Ahd.” The song had no precision, but it recognized truth.
The men sheared the wool from their animals and dyed it, the women from the age of four walked along the trail teasing the wool onto their distaffs. All the articles they made were made from wool. The wool of the long-legged fhlebiht was finest and went to make satara gowns fit for queens.
