Helliconia, page 82
The young humans ranged in age from fifteen to twenty-one Earth years old when they landed on Aganip. The construction of the Avernus was already in process. Automation and local materials were used.
Owing to more than one near-disaster, the ambitious construction programme had taken eight years. During that hazardous period, Aganip was used as a base. When the job was complete, the young colonists were ferried aboard their new home.
The starship then left the system. The inhabitants of the Avernus were alone – more alone than any humans had ever been before.
Now, 3269 Earth years later, the old base was a shrine, occasionally visited by the enlightened. It had become part of Avernian mythology.
There were minerals on Aganip. It would not be impossible to shuttle to the planet and there construct a number of ships with which to invade Helliconia. Not impossible. But unlikely, for there were no technicians trained for such a project.
The hotheads who whispered of such things had to work against the whole ethos of the Earth Observation Station, which was strictly non-interventionist.
Also, the hotheads were male. They had to contend with the female half of the population, who admired the troubled king. The women watched JandolAnganol defeat Darvlish. It was a great victory. JandolAnganol was a hero who suffered much for his country, shortsighted though that aim might be. He was a tragic figure.
The sort of intervention this female faction dreamed of was to descend to Borlien and be by JandolAnganol’s side, day and night.
And when these events at last reached Earth?
There would be much nodding of approval at JandolAnganol’s choice of which piece of Darvlish’s anatomy to exhibit. Not the Skull’s feet, which had carried the man into skirmish after skirmish. Not his genitals, which had fathered so many bastards to create future trouble. Not his hands, which had silenced many a foe. But his head, where all the other mischief had been co-ordinated.
XIV
Where Flambreg Live
White shadows filled the city of Askitosh. They lay entangled among grey buildings. When a man walked along the pale roads, he took on their pallor. This was the famous Uskuti ‘silt-mist’, a thin but blinding curtain of cold dry air which descended from the plateaux standing behind the city.
Overhead, Freyr burned like a gigantic spark in the void. Sibornalese dimday reigned. Batalix would rise again in an hour or two. At present only the greater star remained. Batalix would rise and sink before Freyr-set and – in this early spring season – would never attain zenith.
Wrapped up in a waterproof coat, SartoriIrvrash looked upon this phantasmal city as it slipped from view. It sank away into the silt-mist, became bare bones, and then was gone entirely. But the Golden Friendship was not entirely alone in the mist. From forwards, a well-muffled observer could make out the jolly boat ahead with the ancipital rowers straining as they pulled the warship out of harbour. At hand, too, were glimpses of other spectral ships, their sails hanging limp or flapping like dead skin, as the Uskuti fleet started on its mission of conquest.
They were out in the sullen channel when a blur on the eastern horizon marked Batalix-rise. A wind got up. The striped sails above them began to stir and tighten. Not a sailor on board but felt a lightening in spirit; the omens were right for a long voyage.
Sibornalese omens meant little to SartoriIrvrash. He shrugged his thin shoulders under his padded keedrant and went below. On the companionway, he was overtaken by Io Pasharatid, the ex-ambassador to Borlien.
‘We shall do well,’ he said, nodding his head wisely. ‘We set sail at the right time and the omens are fulfilled as decreed.’
‘Excellent,’ said SartoriIrvrash, yawning. The seagoing priests-militant of Askitosh had mustered every deuteroscopist, astromancer, uranometrist, hieromancer, meteorologician, metempiricist, and priest they could lay hands on to determine the tenner, week, day, hour, and minute on which the Golden Friendship should most auspiciously sail. The birth signs of the crew and the wood of which the keel was made had been taken into account. But the most persuasive sign lay in the heavens, where YarapRombry’s Comet, flying high in the northern night sky, was timed to enter the zodiacal constellation of the Golden Ship at six-eleven and ninety seconds that very morning. And that was the precise time when the hawsers were cast off and the rowers began to row.
It was too early for SartoriIrvrash. He did not contemplate the long and hazardous voyage with cheer. His stomach felt queasy. He disliked the role that had been thrust upon him. And, to crown his discomfort, here was Io Pasharatid, marching about the ship and being suspiciously friendly, as if no disgrace had ever befallen him. How did one behave to a man like that?
It seemed that Dienu Pasharatid could arrange anything. Perhaps because of her cunning appropriation of JandolAnganol’s ex-chancellor into her plans, and the designs of her war commission, she had saved her husband from prison. He had been allowed to sail with the soldiery of the Golden Friendship as a hand-artillery captain – perhaps in an understanding by the powers-that-be that a long sea voyage in a 910-ton carrack was as bad as a prison sentence, even a sentence in the Great Wheel of Kharnabhar.
Despite this narrow escape from justice, Pasharatid was more arrogant than ever. He boasted to SartoriIrvrash that, by the time they reached Ottassol, he would command the soldiery; so he stood every chance of commanding the Ottassol garrison.
SartoriIrvrash lay on his bunk and lit a veronikane. He was immediately hit by seasickness. It had not troubled him on the way to Askitosh. Now it made up for lost time.
For three days, the ex-chancellor declined all rations. He woke on the fourth day feeling superlatively well and made his way on deck.
Visibility was good. Freyr was eyeing them across the waters, low to the north of northeast, somewhere in the direction from which the Golden Friendship had come. The shadow of the ship danced across the smalts of the fresh sea. The air was steeped in light and tasted wonderful. SartoriIrvrash stretched up his arms and breathed deep.
No land was to be seen. Batalix was set. Of the ships which had escorted them from harbour as guard of honour, only one remained, sailing two leagues to leeward with its flags streaming in the wind. Almost lost in blue distance was a cluster of herring-coaches.
So delighted was he at being able to stand without feeling wretched, so loud was the song of canvas and shrouds, that he scarcely heard the greeting addressed to him. When it was repeated, he turned and looked up into the faces of Dienu and Io Pasharatid.
‘You’ve been ill,’ said Dienu. ‘My sympathies. Unfortunately, Borlienese are not good sailors, isn’t that so?’
Io said quickly, ‘At least you feel better now. There’s nothing like a good long voyage for the health. The journey is approximately thirteen thousand miles, so with favouring winds we should be there in two tenners and three weeks – off Ottassol, that is.’
He devoted himself over the next few days to taking SartoriIrvrash on a tour of the ship, explaining its working in the last detail. SartoriIrvrash made notes of what little interested him, wishing in his Borlienese heart that his own country had such expertise in nautical matters. The Uskuti and other nations of Sibornal had guilds and corps which were in general principle similar to those of the civilised Campannlatian nations; but their maritime and military guilds excelled all others in numbers and efficiency, and had / would (for the tense was conditional-eternal-subjunctive) triumphantly survived the Weyr-winter. Winter, Pasharatid explained, was especially severe in the north. Over the coldest centuries, Freyr remained always below the horizon. The winter was always in their hearts.
‘I believe that,’ said SartoriIrvrash solemnly.
In Weyr-winter, even more than in the Great Summer, the peoples of the ice-bound north depended on the seas for survival. Sibornal therefore had few private ships. All ships belonged to the Priest-Sailors Guild. Emblems of the guild decorated the sails of the ship, making of its functionalism a thing of some beauty.
On the main sail rode the device of Sibornal, the two concentric rings joined by two undulant spokes.
The Golden Friendship had a fore-, main-, and mizzen-mast. An artemon projecting over the bowsprit was raised only in favouring winds, to speed progress. Io Pasharatid explained exactly how many square feet of sail could be hoisted at any time.
SartoriIrvrash was not entirely averse to being bored by a stream of facts. He had devoted much of his life trying to ascertain what was speculation, what fact, and to have a constant flow of the latter was not without attraction. Nevertheless, he speculated as to why Pasharatid should go to such lengths to show friendship; it was hardly a predominant Sibornalese characteristic. Nor had it been in evidence in Matrassyl.
‘You stand in danger of tiring SartoriIrvrash with your facts, dear,’ said Dienu, on the sixth day of their voyage.
She left them where they were standing, tucked back at the highest point of the poop, behind a pen containing female arang. Not a foot of deck but was used for something – rope, stores, livestock, cannon. And the two companies of soldiers they had aboard were forced to spend most of the day, wet or fine, standing about on deck, impeding the movements of the sailors’ guildsmen.
‘You must miss Matrassyl,’ said Pasharatid, speaking firmly into the wind.
‘I miss the peace of my studies, yes.’
‘And other things as well, I imagine. Unlike many of my fellow Uskuts, I enjoyed my time in Matrassyl. It was very exotic. Too hot, of course, but I did not mind that. There were fine people with whom I came in contact.’
SartoriIrvrash watched the arang fighting to turn round in their pen. They provided milk for the officers. He knew that Pasharatid was coming to his point at last.
‘Queen MyrdemInggala is a fine lady. It is a shame that the king has exiled her, do you not think?’
So that was it. He waited before replying.
‘The king saw that his duty lay in serving his country …’
‘You must feel bitter at his treatment of you. You must hate him.’
When SartoriIrvrash did not reply to that, Pasharatid said, or rather, shouted quietly in his ear, ‘How could he bear to give up a lady as lovely as the queen?’
No response.
‘Your countrymen call her “the queen of queens”, is that not correct?’
‘That is correct.’
‘I never saw anyone so beautiful in my life.’
‘Her brother, YeferalOboral, was a close friend of mine.’
This remark silenced Pasharatid. He appeared almost about to terminate the conversation when, with a burst of feeling, he said, ‘Just to be in Queen MyrdemInggala’s presence – just to see her – made a man – affected a man like …’
He did not finish his sentence.
Weather conditions were changeable. A complex system of high-and low-pressure areas brought fogs, hot brownish rains, such as they had encountered on the voyage across to Sibornal – ‘regular Uskuti up-and-downers’ – and periods of clarity where the featureless coastlines of Loraj could sometimes be glimpsed to starboard. Still they made good time, with pursuing winds either warm from the southwest or chilly from west of northwest.
Boredom drove SartoriIrvrash to become familiar with every part of the ship. He saw how the men were so cramped that they slept on deck on coils of rope, or on bins below deck, their heels propped high on the bulkheads. There was not an inch of spare space.
Day by day, the smell of the ship grew stronger. To perform their solid excretions, the men pulled off their trousers and worked their way along a spar set over the side of the ship, on which they had to balance, with a rope coming down from the yardarm to hold onto. Urination was performed to leeward, over the rail – and in dozens of other places, judging by olfactory evidence. The officers fared almost as badly. The women enjoyed better privacy.
After almost three weeks at sea the course was changed from due west to west by northwest, and the Golden Friendship and its companion sailed into Persecution Bay.
Persecution Bay was a great and melancholy indentation over one thousand miles long and five hundred miles deep on the coast of Loraj. Even at its mouth, the sea slackened, while day by day the wind dropped and the temperature fell. Soon they moved through a pearly haze, broken only by the shouts of the duty man calling the depth. They travelled now by dead reckoning.
Impatience seized SartoriIrvrash. He retired to his kennel of a cabin to smoke and read. Even those occupations were unsatisfactory, for his stomach howled like a lost dog. Already, ship’s rations were causing him, a thin man at the best of times, to tighten his belt. Men’s rations were salted fish, onions, olive or fish oil with bread every morning, soup at midday, and a repetition of breakfast for the evening meal, with hard cheese substituted for fish. A mug of fig wine or yoodhl was served to each man twice a week.
The men supplemented this diet with fresh-caught fish, hooked over the side. Officers fared little better, apart from an issue of pungent arang milk occasionally, to which was added brandy for those on watch. The Sibornalese complained at this diet in no more than a routine way, as if inured to it.
Moving forward at five knots, they crossed the line of 35°N, thus leaving the tropics for the narrow northern temperate zone. On that same day, they heard fearsome crashings through the mist, and a series of huge waves set the ship rocking. Then silence again. SartoriIrvrash poked his head out of his cabin and enquired of the first seaman who passed what it was.
‘Coast,’ said the man. And in a fit of communicativeness added a further word, ‘Glaciers.’
SartoriIrvrash nodded in satisfaction. He turned back to his notebook, which was, for want of better occupation, becoming a diary.
‘Even if the Uskuti are not civilised, they are enlarging my knowledge of the world. As is well known among scholars, our globe is set between great bands of ice. To the extreme north and the extreme south are lands consisting only of ice and snow. The miserable continent of Sibornal is especially loaded with this bothersome stuff, which may account for the dead hearts of its people. Now it seems they steer towards it, as if drawn by a magnet, instead of sailing on towards the warmer seas.
‘What the purpose of this deviation might be, I shall not enquire – not wishing to risk further lectures from my personal demon, Pasharatid. But it may at least permit me to glimpse that horrid expanse which makes up the alpha and omega of the world.’
In the night came a ferocious storm which was on them without warning. The Golden Friendship could only heave to and weather it out. Immense waves burst against the hull, sending spray high into the spars. There were also ominious knockings which resounded through the ship, as if some giant of the deep was asking to be admitted aboard – so thought the ex-chancellor of Borlien, as he clung terrified to his bunk.
He doused the single whale-oil light in the cabin, as orders demanded. In the noisy dark he lay, by turns cursing JandolAnganol and praying to the All-Powerful. The giant of the deep by now had firm hold of the ship in both hands and was rocking it as some maniac might rock a cradle, in an attempt to pitch the baby out upon its nose. To his later astonishment, SartoriIrvrash fell asleep while this decanting process was at its height.
When he roused, the ship was silent again, its movement barely discernible. Beyond the porthole lay more mist, lit by meagre sunshine.
Moving to the companionway, past sleeping soldiers, he stared up at the sky. Tangled among the rigging was a pallid silver coin. He looked upon the face of Freyr. Back to memory came the fairy story he had enjoyed reading in the queen of queens’ company to TatromanAdala, about the silver eye in the sky that had sailed away at last.
The duty man called soundings. On the sea floated floes of ice, many carved into absurd forms. Some resembled stunted trees or monstrous fungi, as if the god of ice had taken it into his head to devise grotesque counterparts to living nature. These were the things that had come knocking at the heights of the storm, and it was a cause for gratitude that few bergs were half as big as the ship. These mysterious forms emerged from the mist, only to recede again into abstraction.
After a while, something made SartoriIrvrash shift his attention and look up. Across a narrow stretch of water were two phagor heads. The eyes in those heads stared not at the passing ship but at each other … There were the long face with its misanthropic jaw, the eyes protected by boney ridges, the two horns curving upwards.
And yet. No sooner had he recognised the beasts than SartoriIrvrash knew he was mistaken. These were no phagors. He was seeing two wild animals which confronted each other.
The movement of the ship caused the mist to swirl apart, revealing a small island, no more than a tussock in the sea, yet with a steep little cliff on the near side. Perched on the island’s barren crown stood two four-legged animals. Their coats were brown. Apart from their colour and their stance, they markedly resembled ancipitals.
Nearer view diminished the resemblance. These two animals, for all that they were challenging each other, had none of the stubbornness, the independent look which characterised phagors. It was, in the main, the two horns which had caused SartoriIrvrash to jump to the wrong conclusion.
One of the animals turned its head to look at the ship. Seizing the instant, the other animal lowered its forehead and rammed forward with a powerful shoulder movement. The sound of the blow reached the ship. Though the animal had moved no more than three feet the whole weight of its body from its rear legs on was behind the butt.
The other animal staggered. It tried to recover. Before its head could go down, a second butt came. Its rear feet slipped. It fell backwards, struggling. It struck the water with a great splash. The Golden Friendship drifted onward. The scene was hidden in the mist.
