Helliconia Spring

by Brian W Aldiss

  "There, see!" His father's elbow jabbed his biceps.

  A high iron-coloured front of cloud rose rapidly in the sky, dimming Freyr, spilling shade across the landscape. Everything was a blur of white, without definition. Below the bluff on which they lay stretched a great frozen river – the Vark, Yuli had heard it called. So thickly covered in snow was it that nobody could tell it was a river, except by walking across it. Up to their knees in powdery drift, they had heard a faint ringing beneath their heels; Alehaw had pawed, putting the sharp end of his spear to the ice and the blunt end to his ear, and listened to the dark flow of water somewhere beneath their feet. The far bank of the Vark was vaguely marked by mounds, broken here and there by patches of black, where fallen trees lay half-concealed by snow. Beyond that, only the weary plain, on and on, until a line of brown could be made out under the sullen shawls of the far eastern sky.

  Blinking his eyes, Yuli stared at the line and stared again. Of course his father was right. His father knew everything. His heart swelled with pride to think that he was Yuli, son of Alehaw. The yelk were coming.

  In a few minutes, the leading animals could be discerned, travelling solidly on a wide front, advancing with a bow wave preceding them, where their elegant hoofs kicked up snow. They progressed with their heads down, and behind them came more of their kind, and more, without end. It appeared to Yuli that they had seen him and his father and were advancing directly upon them. He glanced anxiously at Alehaw, who gestured caution with one finger.

  "Wait."

  Yuli shivered inside his bearskins. Food was approaching, enough food to feed every single person of every tribe upon whom Freyr and Batalix ever shone, or Wutra smiled.

  As the animals drew nearer, approaching steadily at something like a man's fast walking pace, he tried to comprehend what an enormous herd it was. By now, half of the landscape was filled with moving animals, with the white-and-tan texture of their hides, while more beasts were appearing over from the eastern horizon. Who knew what lay that way, what mysteries, what terrors? Yet nothing could be worse than the Barriers, with its searing cold, and that great red mouth Yuli had once glimpsed through the scudding wrack of cloud, belching out lava down the smoking hillside….

  Now it was possible to see that the living mass of animals did not consist solely of yelk, although they made up the greater part. In the midst of the herd were knots of a larger animal, standing out like clumps of boulders on a moving plain. This larger animal resembled a yelk, with the same long skull about which elegant horns curled protectively on either side, the same shaggy mane overlying a thick matted coat, the same hump on its back, situated towards its rump. But these animals stood half as tall again as the yelk which hemmed them in. They were the giant biyelk, formidable animals capable of carrying two men on their backs at the same time – so one of Yuli's uncles had told him.

  And a third animal associated itself with the herd. It was a gunnadu, and Yuli saw its neck raised everywhere along the sides of the herd. As the mass of yelk moved indifferently forward, the gunnadu ran excitedly to either flank, their small heads bobbing on the end of their long necks. Their most remarkable feature, a pair of gigantic ears, turned hither and thither, listening for unexpected alarms. This was the first two-legged animal Yuli had seen; below its long-haired body, two immense piston-like legs propelled it. The gunnadu moved at twice the speed of the yelk and biyelk, covering twice as much ground, yet each animal remained where it was in relation to the herd.

  A heavy dull continuous thunder marked the approach of the herd. From where Yuli lay against his father, the three species of animal could be distinguished only because he knew what to look for. They all merged with one another in the heavy mottled light. The black cloud-front had advanced more rapidly than the herd, and now covered Batalix entirely: that brave sentinel would not be seen again for days. A rumpled carpet of animals rolled across the land, its individual movements no more distinguishable than currents in a turbulent river.

  Mist hung over the animals, further shrouding them. It comprised sweat, heat, and small winged biting insects able to procreate only in the heat from the burly-hoofed flock.

  Breathing faster, Yuli looked again and – behold! – the creatures in the forefront were already confronting the banks of the snowbound Vark. They were near, they were coming nearer – the world was one inescapable teeming animal. He flicked his head to look in appeal at his father. Although he saw his son's gesture, Alehaw remained rigidly staring ahead, teeth gritted, eyes clenched against the cold under his heavy eye ridges.

  "Still," he commanded.

  The tide of life surged along the riverbanks, flowed over, cascaded over the hidden ice. Some creatures, lumbering adults, skipping fauns, fell against concealed tree trunks, dainty legs kicking furiously before they were trampled under the pressure of the march.

  Individual animals could now be picked out. They carried their heads low. Their eyes were staring, white-rimmed. Thick green trails of saliva hung from many a mouth. The cold froze the steam from their upthrust nostrils, streaking ice across the fur of their skulls. Most beasts laboured, in poor condition, their coats covered with mud, excrement, and blood, or hanging loose in strips, where a neighbour's horns had stabbed and torn them.

  The biyelks in particular, striding surrounded by their lesser brethren, their shoulders enormous with grey-bunched fur, walked with a kind of controlled unease, their eyes rolling as they heard the squeals of those who fell, and understood that some kind of danger, towards which they were inevitably to progress, threatened ahead.

  The mass of animals was crossing the frozen river, churning snow. Their noise came plain to the two watchers, not solely the sound of their hoofs but the rasp of their breath, and a continued chorus of grunts, snorts, and coughs, a click of horn against horn, the sharp rattle of ears being shaken to dislodge ever persistent flies.

  Three biyelks stepped forth together on the frozen river. With sharp resounding cracks, the ice broke. Shards of it almost a metre thick reared up into view as the heavy animals fell forward. Panic seized the yelk. Those on the ice attempted to scatter in all directions. Many stumbled and were lost under more animals. The cracking spread. Water, grey and fierce, jetted into the air – fast and cold, the river was still flowing. It rushed and broke and foamed, as if glad to be free, and the animals went down into it with their months open, bellowing.

  Nothing deterred the oncoming animals. They were as much a natural force as the river. They flowed ever on, obliterating their companions who stumbled, obliterating too the sharp wounds opened in the Vark, bridging it with tumbled bodies, until they surged up the near bank.

  Now Yuli raised himself on to his knees and lifted his ivory spear, his eyes blazing. His father seized his arm and dragged him down.

  "See, phagors, you fool," he said, giving his son a furious, contemptuous glare, and stabbing ahead with his spear to indicate danger.

  Shaken, Yuli sank down again, as much frightened of his father's wrath as by the thought of phagors.

  The yelk herd pressed about their outcrop of rock, lurching by on either side of its crumbling base. The cloud of flies and stinging things that sang about their twitching backs now enveloped Yuli and Alehaw, and it was through this veil that Yuli stared, trying to get a sight of phagors. At first he discerned none.

  Nothing was to be seen ahead but the avalanche of shaggy life, driven by compulsions no man understood. It covered the frozen river, it covered the banks, it covered the grey world back to the far horizon, where it tucked itself under the dun clouds like a rug under a pillow. Hundreds of thousands of animals were involved, and the midges hung above them in a continuous black exhalation.

  Alehaw dragged his son down and indicated a spot to their left with one shaggy eyebrow. Half-hidden beneath the skin that served as their bivouac, Yuli stared at the advance. Two giant biyelks were lumbering towards their coign of vantage. Their massive white-furred shoulders were almost on a level with the l
edge. As Yuli blew the midges away from before his eyes, the white fur resolved itself into phagors. Four of them, two riding on each biyelk, clung tight to the hair of their mounts.

  He wondered how he had missed sighting them before. Though they merged with their giant steeds, they exhibited the presence of all who ride while others travel on foot. They clustered on top of the biyelks' shoulders, directing their moody bull faces ahead towards the higher ground where the herd would stop and graze. Their eyes glared out under upward-curving horns. Every now and again, one would shoot out his white milt, curving it up the slot of his powerful nostrils, to remove plaguing midges.

  Their clumsy heads pivoted above the bulk of their bodies, which were completely covered with long white hair. The creatures were all white, except for their pink-scarlet eyes. They rode the striding biyelks as if they were part of them. Behind them, a crude leather carrier holding clubs and weapons swung to and fro.

  Now that Yuli was alert to the nature of the danger, he discerned other phagors. Only the privileged rode. The rank and file of their nation went on foot, proceeding at a walking pace matching that of the animals. As he watched, so tense he dared not even brush the flies from his eyelids, Yuli saw a group of four phagors pass within a few metres of where he and his father lay. He would have had no difficulty in spearing the leader between the shoulder blades, had Alehaw given the command.

  Yuli looked with particular interest at the horns that passed him, two by two. Smooth though they appeared in the dull light, the inner and outer edges of each horn were sharp from base to tip.

  He coveted one of those horns. Horns of dead phagors were used as weapons in the savage recesses of the Barriers. It was for their horns that learned men in distant towns – couched in dens remote from storm – referred to phagors as the ancipital race: the species with two sharp edges.

  The leading ancipital strode along dauntlessly. Lack of an ordinary knee joint made his an unnatural-looking stride. He marched mechanically as he must have done for miles. Distance was no obstacle.

  His long skull was thrust forward in typical phagor fashion, low between his shoulders. On either arm he wore hide straps, to which were attached outward-pointing horns, their extremities tipped with metal. With these, the creature could prod away any animal that walked too close to him. Otherwise, he was unarmed; but to a nearby yelk, a bundle of possessions had been tied, a bundle including spears and a hunting harpoon. Adjacent animals also involuntarily carried baggage belonging to the other phagors in the group.

  Behind the leader were two more males – so Yuli assumed – followed by a female phagor. She was of slighter build, and carried some kind of bag tied round her middle. Under her long white hair, pinkish dugs swung. On her shoulders rode an infant phagor, clutching uncomfortably at its mother's neck fur, its head clamped down on her head. Its eyes were closed. The female walked automatically, as though in a daze. It was a matter for conjecture for how many days she and the others had been walking, or how far.

  And there were other phagors, spread thinly round the outskirts of the moving concourse. The animals took no notice of them, accepting them as they accepted the flies, because there was no alternative to acceptance.

  The noise of the drumming hoofs was punctuated by laboured breathing and coughing and breaking wind. Another sound rose. The phagor who led the small group was emitting a kind of hum or growl, a rough noise delivered over a vibrating tongue which varied in pitch; perhaps it was intended to cheer the three who followed. The sound terrified Yuli. Then it was gone, and the phagors too. More animals streamed by and eventually more phagors, continuing stanchlessly. Yuli and his father lay where they were, occasionally spitting flies from their mouths, waiting for the time to strike and win the meat they desperately needed.

  Before sunset, the wind got up again, blowing as before off the ice-caps of the Barriers, into the faces of the migratory army. The attendant phagors matched with their heads down, eyes slitted, and long trails of saliva fanned from the corners of their mouths and froze across their chests, as fat freezes when thrown out on the ice.

  The atmosphere was iron. Wutra, god of the skies, had withdrawn his shawls of light and shrouded his domain with overcast. Perhaps another battle had been lost to him.

  From under this dark curtain, Freyr became visible only when it reached the horizon. Blankets of cloud rumpled back to reveal the sentinel smouldering in a perspective of golden ashes. It shone out with spirit over the wastes – small but bright, its disc no more than a third as large as that of its companion star, Batalix, yet Freyr's light was greater, fiercer.

  It sank into the eddre of the ground and was gone.

  Now was the time of dimday, which prevailed in summer and autumn, and which almost alone distinguished those seasons from even less merciful times. Dimday suffused a dazed half-light across the night sky. Only at times of New Year would Batalix and Freyr rise and set together. At present their lives were solitary, hidden frequently behind cloud which was the billowing smoke from Wutra's war.

  In the manner of day's turning to dimday, Yuli read the weather omens. Driving winds would soon be conjured up with snow on their breath. He recalled the rhyme they chanted in Old Olonets, the tongue of magic, of past things, of red ruin, the tongue of catastrophe, fair women, giants, and rich food, the tongue of an inaccessible yesterday. The rhyme had been recalled in the croupy caves of the Barriers:

  Wutra in sorrow

  Will put Freyr to barrow

  And us to the billow

  As if responding to the changing light, a general shudder passed across the mass of yelk, and they stopped. Groaning, they settled where they were upon the trampled ground, tucking their legs beneath their bodies. For the enormous biyelk, this manoeuvre was not possible. They stood where they were and slept, ears across eyes. Some of the phagor groups gathered themselves together for companionship; most simply flung themselves down indifferently and slept where they fell, jamming their backs against the flanks of supine yelk.

  Everything slept. The two figures sprawled on the rock ledge dragged their sheltering skin over their heads and dreamed, empty-bellied, with their faces buried in their folded arms. Everything slept, except for the mist of biting and sucking insects.

  Things that were capable of dreams struggled through the uneasy mirages that dimday brought with it.

  In general, the view, with its lack of shadow and constant level of suffering, might have appeared to anyone scrutinising it for the first time to represent not so much a world as a place awaiting formal creation.

  At this stage of quiescence, there was a motion in the sky hardly more energetic than the unfolding of the aurora which had hung above the scene earlier. From the direction of the sea came a solitary childrim, sailing through the air some metres above the prostrate mass of living things. It looked to be no more than a great wing, glowing red like the embers of a dying fire, beating with a steady lethargy. As it passed over the deer, the animals twitched and heaved. It skimmed over the rock where the two humans lay, and Yuli and his father twitched and heaved, like the yelk seeing strange visions in their sleep. Then the apparition was gone, heading on lonely for the mountains in the south, leaving behind it a trail of red sparks to die in the atmosphere like an echo of itself.

  After a while, the animals woke and rose to their feet. They shook their ears, which bled from the attentions of the gnats, and again started forward. With them went the biyelks and gunnadus, scuttling here and there. With them too went the phagors. The two humans roused, and watched them go.

  Throughout another day the great progress continued, and blizzards raged, plastering the animals with snow. Towards evening, when wind was blowing tattered cloud across the sky and the cold held a whistling edge, Alehaw sighted the rear of the herd.

  The rear was not as tight as the vanguard had been. Stragglers from the herd trailed back several miles, some limping, some coughing pitifully. Behind and beside them scurried long furry things with bellies ne
ar the ground, waiting the chance to nip a fetlock and bring a victim crashing down.

  The last of the phagors marched past the ledge. They did not walk at the rear, either from respect for the low-bellied carnivores or because the going was difficult over such trampled ground, piled with scumble.

  And now Alehaw rose, motioning his son to do likewise. They stood, clutching their weapons, and then slithered down to level ground.

  "Good!" said Alehaw.

  The snow was strewn with dead animals, in particular round the banks of the Vark. The break in the ice was plugged with drowned bodies. Many of those creatures who had been forced to lie down where they stood had frozen to death as they rested, and were now turned to ice. The lumps of which they composed the red core were unrecognizable in shape after the blizzard.

  Delighted to be able to move, young Yuli ran and jumped and cried aloud. Dashing to the frozen river, he skipped dangerously from one unidentifiable lump to another, waving his hands and laughing. His father called him sharply to heel.

  Alehaw pointed down through the ice. Black shapes moved, obscurely seen, partly defined by trails of bubbles. They streaked the turbid medium in which they swam with crimson, boring up beneath the frozen layers to attack the banquet provided for their benefit.

  Other predators were arriving by air, large white fowl coming in from the east and the sullen north, fluttering heavily down, brandishing ornate beaks with which they bored through the ice to the flesh underneath. As they devoured, they fixed on the hunter and his son eyes heavy with avian calculation.

  But Alehaw wasted no time on them. Directing Yuli to follow, he moved to where the herd had stumbled across fallen trees, calling and waving his spear as he went, to frighten off predators. Here dead animals were readily accessible. Although badly trampled, they still preserved one part of their anatomies intact, their skulls. It was to these that Alehaw addressed his attention. He prized open the dead jaws with the blade of a knife, and adroitly cut out their thick tongues. Blood spilled over his wrists onto the snow.