Helliconia, page 83
‘I expect you recognise them,’ said a voice at SartoriIrvrash’s elbow. ‘They’re flambreg, of the bovidae family.’
Priest-Militant Admiral Odi Jeseratabhar had scarcely spoken to SartoriIrvrash during the voyage. He had, however, lost no chance in observing her about her duties. She had a good head and carried herself well. Despite the severe lines of her face, her manner was animated, and the men responded willingly to her orders. The inflections of her voice and her uniform proclaimed her to be a grand person; yet her approach was informal, conveying even a hint of eagerness. He liked her.
‘This is a desolate shore, ma’am.’
‘There are worse. In primitive times, Uskotoshk used to land its convicts here and leave them to fend for themselves.’ She smiled and shrugged, as if dismissing past follies. Her blond plaits escaped from under the flat nautical cap she wore.
‘Did the convicts survive?’
‘Indeed. Some intermarried with the local population, the Loraji. In an hour, some of us will be going ashore. To compensate for my discourtesy in ignoring you so far, I invite you to come along as my guest. You can see what Persecution looks like.’
‘I would be glad to do so.’ He realised as he spoke how excellent it would be to escape the ship for a while.
The Golden Friendship, with the Union close behind, was inching through the silent waters. As the mist cleared, a solemn shoreline of cliff was revealed, without colour. At a place where the cliffs were eroded, the land fell to meet the ocean. Towards this point the ships slowly headed, tracing a course through a number of small islands, little more than congregations of stones. Gravel spits also barred the way. From one spit, the ribs of an ancient wreck protruded. But eventually the Friendship’s anchor was lowered, and the jolly boat after it. The shouts of the sailors sounded hollow against the desolation.
Odi Jeseratabhar chivalrously helped SartoriIrvrash down the side of the ship. The Pasharatids followed, then six men armed with heavy wheel locks. The phagor rowers bent over their oars, and the boat moved between confining spits towards a ruined jetty.
The phagorlike flambreg were the possessors of the scene. Two large males were fighting with locked horns on a stoney beach, their hoofs clashing on broken shells. Males had small manes; otherwise the sexes could scarcely be distinguished. As with other Helliconian species, there was little sexual dimorphism, owing to the more marked seasonal dimorphism. Both male and female flambreg varied in colour from black to shades of russet, with white underparts. They stood four feet or more high at the shoulder. All wore smooth horns sweeping upwards. Face markings varied.
‘This is their mating season,’ said the Priest-Militant Admiral. ‘Only the fury of rut drives the beasts to venture into the icy water.’
The boat slid against the jetty and the party climbed out. There were sharp stones underfoot. In the distance, detonations could be heard, as ice fell from a glacier into the sea. The cloud overhead was iron grey. The phagor rowers stayed huddled in the boat, clutching their oars, unmoving.
An army of crabs rushed out to surround the landing party, raising their asymmetrical arms in menace. They did not attack. The musketeers killed some with gun butts, whereupon their fellows set on them and wrenched them apart. No sooner was this feast begun, and the crabs off guard, than toothed fish jumped from the shallow water, seized one of the Crustacea apiece, and sank away from view.
Lining up smartly in this idyllic spot, the marksmen worked in pairs with their weapons, one aiming, one supporting the muzzle. Their targets were some female flambreg who milled about on the shore a few yards away, oblivious to the party from the Golden Friendship. The guns went off. Two females fell, kicking.
The marksmen changed positions and guns. A further three shots. This time, three cows fell kicking. The rest of the herd fled.
Men and phagors now splashed through shallow water and over spits, shouting, cheered on by cries from the ships, where the rails were lined with men watching the sport.
Two of the flambreg were not dead. One marksman carried a short-bladed knife. With this, he slit their spinal cords as they tried to stagger to their feet and run.
Great white birds came winging in upon the scene, to hover above the men on an updraught, their heads flicking this way and that as they scented death. They swooped, fanning the men with their wings and raking one with long talons.
The sailors fought off both crabs and birds as the knifeman went about his work. With one long stroke, he opened up the bellies of the dead animals. Reaching inside, he pulled forth their bowels and livers, casting them aside to steam on the shore. With quick chopping movements, he severed the hind legs from the trunks. Golden blood oozed up his arm. The birds screamed overhead.
Phagors carried the legs and carcasses back to the jolly boat.
Another round of killing took place. Meanwhile, the Pasharatids had brought a sledge from the boat. Four sturdy phagors seized up the traces and pulled it to the shore. SartoriIrvrash was invited to follow.
‘We will give you a short trip to view the country,’ Jeseratabhar said, with a tight smile. He thought that this was their excuse to seize a respite from the ship. He fell in beside her, matching her pace.
A strong smell of farmyard met them. The flambreg were cantering about as if nothing had happened, while the white birds fought for offal. Following the sledge, the humans laboured up the slope. They saw other animals resembling flambreg, but with shaggier, greyer coats and ringed horns. These were yelk. Dienu Pasharatid said disdainfully that yelk should have been shot instead of flambreg. Red meat was better than yellow.
No one responded to this comment. SartoriIrvrash glanced at Io. The man’s face was closed. He seemed entirely remote. Was he possibly thinking about the queen?
They made their way up between immense boulders deposited by a vanished glacier. On some boulders were scratched ancient names and dates, where convicts had sought to memorialise themselves.
The party reached more level ground. Breathing deeply, they surveyed the panorama. The two ships lay on the fringes of a black sheet of water to which the shelves of a black sky came down. Small icebergs stood here and there; some, caught in a current, moved rapidly towards the sombre distance and could be mistaken for sails. But there was no other human life.
On their other hand lay the land of Loraj, which stretched into the Circumpolar Regions. The mists were still dispersing, to reveal a plain almost without feature. In its very blankness was a grandeur of a kind. Beneath their feet, the ground was grassless, stamped with the imprints of thousands upon thousands of hoofprints.
‘These plains belong to the flambreg, the yelk, and the giant yelk,’ Dienu Pasharatid said. ‘And not just the plains, but the whole land.’
‘It’s not a place for men and women,’ said Io Pasharatid.
‘Flambreg and yelk look similar, yet differ anatomically,’ said Odi Jeseratabhar. ‘The yelk are necrogenes. Their young are born from their corpses and feed on their carrion instead of milk. Flambreg are viviparous.’
SartoriIrvrash said nothing. He was still shaken from the slaughter on the shore. The guns were still firing. The object of the ships’ putting in to Persecution was precisely to obtain fresh meat.
The four phagors now pulled the four humans along in the sledge. The plain proved to be sodden, pitted with ponds and muskegs. Progress was slow. To the north stretched low mustard-coloured hills, their flanks patched with dwarf spruce and other hardy trees. The trees had less success on the plain, where their branches were weighed down with the clumsy nests of birds, built from sticks and driftwood. The leaves of the trees were fouled with white droppings.
The ships and the sea sank from view. The air was chill, less loaded with sea taint. A stink of rutting animals lay over the ground. The sound of firing died in the distance. They travelled for almost an hour without speaking, relishing the great space about them.
The Priest-Militant Admiral called a halt beside a striated ochre boulder. They climbed from the sledge, marching about separately, swinging their arms. The boulder loomed over them. The only sounds were bird cries and the sough of the wind, until they detected a distant rumbling.
To SartoriIrvrash, the rumble suggested only a distant glacier breaking. He dismissed it in his pleasure at having ground beneath his feet again. The women, however, looked gravely at each other and climbed without speaking to stand on top of the boulder. They scanned the landscape and gave cries of alarm.
‘You, brutes, draw the sledge close under the rock,’ Odi Jeseratabhar called in Hurdhu to the phagors.
The rumble became a thunder. The thunder rose from the earth, from everywhere. Something was happening to the low slopes to the west. They were in motion. With the terror of someone faced with a natural event beyond the scope of his imagination, SartoriIrvrash ran to the rock and began to climb. Io Pasharatid helped him scramble to a shoulder where there was room for all four of them. The phagors stood against the boulder, milts flicking up their nose slots.
‘We’ll be safe here till they pass,’ said Odi Jeseratabhar. Her voice shook.
‘What is it?’ SartoriIrvrash asked.
Through a thin haze, the distance was rolling itself up like a rug and tumbling towards them. They could only watch in silence. The rug resolved itself into an avalanche of flambreg, advancing on a wide front.
SartoriIrvrash tried to count them. Ten, twenty, fifty, a hundred – it was impossible. The front of the advance was a mile wide – two, five miles wide, and comprised herd after herd of animals. Endless ranks of yelk and flambreg were converging on the plain where the boulder stood.
The ground, the rock, the very air, vibrated.
Necks extended, eyes glaring, saliva flowing free from open mouths, the herds came on. They wove their living streams about the boulder, joined them at its far side, and passed on. White cowbirds sailed above them, keeping pace with no more than an occasional dip of a wing.
In their excitement the four humans stretched out their arms, screamed, waved, cheered with exhilaration.
Beneath them was a sea of hoofed life stretching back to and beyond the horizon. Not a single beast looked up at the gesticulating humans; each knew that to miss its footing meant death.
The human exhilaration soon faded. The four sat down, huddling close. They looked about with increasing listlessness. Still the herd passed. Batalix rose, Batalix set in concentric aurioles of light. Still there was no sign of the end of the herd. The animals continued to flow by in their thousands.
Some flambreg detached themselves from the stampede to mill about by the bay. Others plunged straight into the sea. Still others galloped in a trance over the cliffs to their death. The main body of animals thundered down into the dip and up the other side, heading towards the northeast. Hours passed. The animals continued with their monotonous drumbeats of noise.
Overhead, magnificent curtains of light unfolded and flashed, rising to the zenith. But the humans became despondent: the life which had exhilarated them earlier now depressed them. They huddled together on their ledge. The four phagors stood pressed against the wall of rock, the sledge before them for protection.
Freyr sloped shallowly towards the horizon. Rain began to fall, at first uncertainly. The lights overhead were extinguished as the fall became heavier, soaking the ground and changing the sound of the hoof-beats.
Icy rain fell for hours. Once it had established itself, it prevailed like the herd, with no variation to its monotony.
The darkness and noise isolated SartoriIrvrash and Odi Jeseratabhar slightly from the others. They clung together for protection.
The hammer of animals and elements penetrated him. He crouched with his brow against the rib cage of the admiral, expecting death, reviewing his life.
It was the loneliness that did it, he thought. A deliberate loneliness, lifelong. I allowed myself to drift away from my brothers. I neglected my wife. Because I was so lonely. My learning sprang from that awful sense of loneliness: by my learning I set myself further apart from my fellows. Why? What possessed me?
And why did I tolerate JandolAnganol for so long? Did I recognise a torment in him similar to mine? I admire JandolAnganol – he lets the pain come to the surface. But when he took hold of me, it was like a rape. I can’t forgive that, or the deliberate wanton accursed burning of my books. He burnt my defences. He’d burn the world down if he could …
I’m different now. Severed from my loneliness. I will be different if we escape. I like this woman Odi. I’ll show it.
And somewhere in this ghastly wilderness of life I will find the means to bring JandolAnganol low. For years, I swallowed insults, ate bitterness. Now – I’m not too old – I’ll see to it for everyone’s sake that he is brought low. He brought me low. I’ll bring him low. It’s not noble, but my nobility has gone. Nobility’s for scum.
He laughed and the cold froze his front teeth.
He discovered that Odi Jeseratabhar was weeping, and possibly had been for some while. Boldly, he clutched her to him, inching his way across their perch until his rough cheek was against hers. Every inch was accompanied by the limitless drumming of hoofs across a dark void.
He whispered almost random words of consolation.
She turned so that their mouths were almost touching. ‘To me falls blame for this. I should have foreseen it might happen …’
Something else she said, snatched away by the storm. He kissed her. It was almost the last voluntary gesture left him. Warmth lit inside him.
The journey away from JandolAnganol had changed him. He kissed her again. She responded. They tasted a mutual rain on their lips.
Despite their discomfort, the humans slipped into a sort of coma. When they woke, the rain had faded to no more than a drizzle. The herd was still passing the rock. Still it stretched to the far horizon on either side. They were forced to relieve their bladders by crouching at one edge of the boulder. The phagors and the sledge had been swept away while they were asleep. Nothing remained.
What caused them to rouse was an invasion of flies which arrived with the herd. As there was more than one kind of animal in the great stampede, so there was more than one kind of animal among the flying invasion; all kinds were capable of drawing blood. They settled in their thousands on the humans, who were forced to fold themselves into a small huddle and cover themselves with cloaks and keedrants. Any skin exposed was instantly settled on and sucked till it bled.
They lay in stifling misery, while beneath them the great boulder shook as if still traveling on the glacier which had deposited it on the plain. Another day went by. Another dimday, another night.
Batalix rose again to a scene of rain and mist. At last the force of the herd slackened. The main body had gone by. Stragglers still passed, often mother flambreg with yearlings. The torment of flies lessened. Towards the northeast, the thunder of the disappearing herd still sounded. Many flambreg still milled about along the coastline.
Trembling and stiff, the humans climbed and slid to the ground. There was nothing for it but to make their way back to the shore on foot. With the stench of animal in their nostrils, they staggered forward, assailed by flies every inch of the way. Not a word passed between them.
The ship sailed on. They left Persecution Bay. The four who had been stranded in the midst of the stampede lay below decks in a fever induced by exposure and the bites of the flies.
Through SartoriIrvrash’s delirious brain travelled the herd, ever on, covering the world. The reality of that mass presence would not go away, struggle against it as he would. It remained even when he recovered.
As soon as he was strong enough, he went without ceremony to talk to Odi Jeseratabhar. The Priest-Militant Admiral was pleased to see him. She greeted him in a friendly fashion and even extended a hand, which he took.
She sat in her bunk covered only by a red sheet, her fair hair wild about her shoulders. Out of uniform, she looked gaunter than ever, but more approachable.
‘All ships sailing long distances call in at Persecution Bay,’ she said. ‘They pick up new victuals, meat chiefly. The Priest-Sailors Guild contains few vegetarians. Fish. Seal. Crabs. I have seen the flambreg stampedes before. I should have been more alert. They draw me. What do you think of them?’
He had noticed this habit in her before. While weaving a spell of Sibish tenses about herself, she would suddenly break out with a question to disconcert the listener.
‘I never knew there were so many animals in the world …’
‘There are more than you can imagine. More than anyone can / should imagine. They live all around the skirts of the great ice cap, in the bleak Circumpolar lands. Millions of them. Millions and millions.’
She smiled in her excitement. He liked that. He realised how lonely he was when she smiled.
‘I assume they were migrating.’
‘Not that, to the best of my knowledge. They come down to the water, but do not stay. They travel at all times of the year, not just in spring. They may simply be driven by desperation. They have only one enemy.’
‘Wolves?’
‘Not wolves.’ She gave a wolflike grin, glad to have caught him out. ‘Flies. One fly in particular. That fly is as big as the top joint of my thumb. It has yellow stripes – you can’t mistake it. It lays its eggs in the skin of the wretched bovidae. When the larvae hatch, they burrow through the hide, enter the bloodstream, and eventually lie in pockets under the skin on the back. There the grubs grow big, in a sore the size of a large fruit, until eventually they burst out of their crater and fall to the ground to begin the life cycle again. Almost every flambreg we kill has such a parasite – often several.
‘I have seen individual animals run in torment till they dropped, or cast themselves off tall cliffs, to escape that yellow-striped fly.’
She regarded him benevolently, as if this account gave her some inward satisfaction.
‘Madame, I was shocked when your men shot a few cows on the shore. Yet it was nothing, I see now. Nothing.’
