Helliconia Winter

by neetha Napew

  The time came when she was able to return his gaze. She smiled.

  She slept for some hours and then was better, with that feeling of well-being which accompanies those who survive the Fat Death.

  Shokerandit untied her limbs and bathed her with a cloth and salt water in a bowl. She kissed him as he tried to help her to her feet. She surveyed her naked form and wept.

  "I'm like a barrel. I was so slim."

  "It's natural. Look at me."

  She stared at him through her tears and then laughed.

  They laughed together. He took in the marvellous architecture of her new body, still gleaming from its wash, the beauty of her shoulders, breasts, stomach, thighs.

  "These are the proportions of a new world, Luterin," Toress Lahl said; he heard her using his first name for the first time.

  He threw up his arms, scraping his knuckles on the bulkhead. "I'm relieved that you survived."

  "Because you looked after your captive."

  It was natural to wrap his arms about her, natural to kiss her bruised mouth, and natural to sink with her to the deck on which they had recently wrestled with agony. There they wrestled with sexual rejoicing.

  Later, he said to her, "You are no longer my captive, Toress Lahl. We are now captives of each other. You are the first woman I have loved. I will take you to Shivenink, and we will go into the mountains where my father lives. You shall see the wonders of the Great Wheel of Kharnabhar."

  She was already beginning to forget what had happened, and answered indifferently.

  "Even in Oldorando we have heard of the Great Wheel. I will come with you if you say so. The ship is very silent. Shall we see how the others fare? They may all be sick with the plague - Odim and his vast brood, and the crew."

  "Wait here with me a little longer." Lying with his arms about her, looking down into her dark eyes, he was reluctant to break the spell. At that time he was incapable of distinguishing between love and restored health.

  She said briskly, "Back in Oldorando I was a doctor. It's my duty to tend the sick." She turned her face from Luterin.

  "Where does the plague come from? From phagors?"

  "From phagors, we believe."

  "So our brave captain spoke the truth. Our army was going to be prevented by force from returning to Sibornal, just in case we spread the plague; it was among us. So what the Oligarch decreed was wise rather than evil."

  Toress Lahl shook her head. She began to comb her hair with slow strokes, luxuriously, looking into a small mirror rather than at him as she spoke. "That's too easy. What the Oligarch decreed is entirely wicked. To destroy life is always wicked. What he did may not only be evil; it may prove ineffective too. I do know something about the contagious nature of the Fat Death - although since the Fat Death is latent for most of the Great Year it is difficult to study. Knowledge hard-learnt one year is forgotten by the next."

  He expected her to continue but she fell silent, continuing to regard her face even when she had set down her comb, licking a finger to smooth her eyebrows.

  "Be careful what you say about the Oligarch. He knows more than we."

  Then she turned to look at him. Their regards met as she said with some emphasis, "I don't have to respect your Oligarch. Unlike the Oligarchy, the Fat Death has elements of mercy in its functioning. It's mainly the old and very young who die of it: a majority of fit adults survive - over half. They successfully metamorphose, as we do." She prodded him with a still moist finger, not without humour. "We in our compact shapes represent the future, Luterin."

  "Yet half the population will die... whole communities destroyed... The Oligarch wouldn't allow that to happen in Sibornal. He'd take strong measures-"

  She gestured dismissively. "Such die-back has its merciful side at a time when crops are failing and famine threatens. The healthy survivors benefit. Life goes on."

  He laughed. "In fits and starts..."

  She shook her head as if suddenly impatient. "We must see who has survived on the ship. I don't like the silence."

  "I hope to thank Eedap Mun Odim for his kindness."

  "I trust you will be able to."

  They stood close in the small stale room, gazing at each other through the stramineous light. Shokerandit kissed her, although at the last moment she moved her lips away. Then they ventured into the corridor.

  The scene was to come back to him much later. He would see then, as not at the time, how much of herself Toress Lahl withheld from him. Physically, she was very desirable to him; but her attitude of independence was more attractive to him than he could then realise. Only when that independence was eroded by time could they come to any true understanding.

  But Shokerandit's proper appreciation of that fact could scarcely be arrived at while his whole outlook was based upon certain misunderstandings which left him, whichever way he turned, insecure, unable to develop emotionally. His innocence stood between him and maturity.

  Shokerandit went first. Beyond the companionway, the corridor led to the main hold, where the relations of Odim had been settled. He went to listen at the door and heard stealthy movement within. From the cabins on either side of the corridor came silence. He tried the door of one, and knocked; it was locked, and no answer came.

  As he emerged on deck, with Toress Lahl behind him, three naked men ran swiftly into hiding. They left a female corpse spread-eagled beneath the mizzenmast. It had been partially dismembered. Toress Lahl went over and looked at it.

  "We'll throw it overboard," Shokerandit said.

  "No. This woman is already dead. Leave her. Let the living be fed."

  They turned their attention to the situation of the New Season itself. The ship, as their senses had told them, was no longer in motion. The ocean currents had brought it slowly to fetch up against the shore. The New Season was trapped against a tongue of sand which curled out from the land.

  Towards the stern, a small cluster of icebergs had accumulated. At the bows, it would be an easy matter to jump over the side and walk ashore without getting a foot wet. The guardians of this spit of sand were two large rocks, one taller than the masts of the ship, which stood on the shore, deflecting ocean tides. They had probably been thrown to their present position by some long-gone volcanic explosion, though nothing so dramatic as a volcano could be seen inland. The coast offered a vista only of low cliffs, so tumbled that they might have been an old wall part-demolished by cannon fire, and, beyond the cliffs, mustard-coloured moorland, off which a chill wind blew, bringing tears to the viewer's eyes.

  Blinking the water away, Shokerandit looked again at the larger rock. He was sure he had seen movement there. In a moment, two phagors appeared, walking with their curious glide away from the shore. It became apparent that they were going to meet a group of four of their kind who materialised over a rise, dragging with them the carcass of an animal of some kind. More phagors appeared from behind the rock to greet the hunters.

  The original party of thirteen ancipitals had that morning met up with a second and larger party, a party also comprising escaped slaves, as well as four phagors who had served as transport animals in the Oligarch's soldiery. There were now thirty-six phagors in all. They had a fire burning in a cavity in the landward side of the rock, on which they intended to roast whole flambreg their hunting party had speared.

  Toress Lahl looked at Shokerandit in dismay.

  "Will they attack us?"

  "They have a marked aversion to water, but they could easily get along that spit of sand and board us. We'd better see if we can find any fit members of the crew - and quickly."

  "We were the first to go down with the Fat Death, so we may be the first to recover."

  "We must see if there are any weapons to defend the ship with."

  Their search of the ship horrified them. It had become a slaughterhouse. There had been no escape from the plague. Those who had locked themselves into cabins alone had succumbed and, in some cases, died alone. Where two or three had shut t
hemselves away, the first to show symptoms had perhaps been killed. Any animals aboard had been killed and devoured, their remains fought over. Cannibalism had prevailed in the large hold, where the Odim family was. Of twenty-three members of the family, eighteen were already dead, killed mainly by their relations. Of the five remaining alive, three were still suffering from the madness of the disease and fled when shouted at. Two young women were able to speak; they had undergone the full metamorphosis. Toress Lahl took them to the safety of the closet where she and Shokerandit had sheltered.

  The hatches to the crew's quarters were locked in place. From below came animal noises and a peculiar singsong, intoning endlessly

  "He saw his fair maid's incision

  O, that terminal vision...

  O, that terminal vision..."

  In a forward storage cupboard, they discovered the bodies of Besi Besamitikahl and the old grannie. Besi lay staring upwards, a puzzled expression frozen on her face. Both were dead.

  In the forward hold, they came on some sturdy square boxes which had remained untouched throughout the disaster which had overwhelmed the ship.

  "Praise be, cases of rifles," Shokerandit exclaimed. He opened the nearest box and pulled away some sacking. There, each item wrapped in tissue paper, lay a complete dinner set in purest porcelain, decorated with pleasant domestic scenes. Other boxes contained more porcelain, the finest that Odim exported. These were Odim's presents for his brother in Shivenink.

  "This will not keep the phagors off," Toress Lahl said, half laughing.

  "Something has to."

  Time seemed to be suspended as they wandered the bloodied ship. Because it was small summer, the hours of Batalix's daylight were long. Freyr was rarely far above the horizon, rarely far below. The cold wind blew continually. Once a sound like thunder came with its breath.

  After the thunder, silence. Only the dull pound of the sea, the occasional knock of a small ice floe against the wooden hull. Then the thunder again, this time clear and continuous. Shokerandit and Toress Lahl looked at each other in puzzlement, unable to imagine what the noise was. The phagors understood it without thought. For them, the noise of a flambreg herd on the move was unmistakable.

  The flambreg lived in their millions below the skirts of the polar ice cap. Their progeny filled the Circumpolar Regions. Loraj, of all the countries of Sibornal, offered a variety of territories most suited to flambreg, with extensive forests of the hardy eldawon tree, and a landscape of low rolling hills and lakes. The flambreg, unlike yelk, were mildly carnivorous, with a fondness for any rodents and birds they could catch. Their main diet was of lichen, fungi, and grass, supplemented with bark. The flambreg also ate the indigestible moss called flambreg moss by the primitive tribes of Loraj which hunted them. The moss contained a fatty acid which protected the animals' cell membranes from the effects of cold, enabling the cells to continue efficient functioning at low temperatures.

  A herd of over two million individuals was nearing the coast. Many of the Loraj packs were several times larger. This herd had emerged from an eldawon forest and was running almost parallel with the sea. The ground shook under its multitudinous hoofs.

  On the shore, the phagors showed signs of unease. Their crude cooking operations were suspended. They marched back and forth, scanning the horizon, manifesting a humanlike uncertainty.

  Two escape routes lay open to them. They could climb to the top of the house-sized boulder, or they could attack and take possession of the ship. Either alternative would save them from the approaching stampede.

  There was a living forerunner of the herd. Above the heaving shoulders of the animals flew a cloud of midges, intent on drawing blood from the furry noses of the flambreg. The midges were the enemies also of a fly the size of a queen wasp. This fly now darted ahead into freer air. It appeared from nowhere and landed smartly between the eyes of one of the phagors. It was a yellow-striped fly.

  The ancipital group broke into an uncharacteristic panic, rushing back and forth. The individual whose face the fly had alighted on turned and ran straight into the rock. He squashed the fly and laid himself out senseless.

  The rest of the group gathered together to confer on a plan of action. Some of the newly arrived group carried with them a small and wizened emblem, an ancestor in tether. This shrunken symbol of themselves, this illustrious and moth-eaten great-grandstallun, though almost entirely transformed into keratin, was still a degree or two from nonbeing. In it, some faint spark still served to focus their attempts at ratiocination. Comprehension left their barneys. They communed. The currents of their pale barneys entered into tether.

  From an area of total whiteness, a spirit emerged. It was no bigger than a rabbit. The phagor whose ancestor it was said inwardly, "O sacred forebear, now integrating with earth, here you see us in grave danger by the edge of the drowning world. The Beasts-we-were run upon us and will trample us down. Strengthen our arms, direct us from danger."

  Through their barneys the keratinous figure transmitted pictures the ancipitals knew well, pictures flowing fast, one to another. Pictures of the Circumpolar Regions with their ice, their bogs, their sombre enduring forests, and of the teeming life that ran there, even there, on the edge of the ice cap. The ice cap then much greater in extent, for Batalix ruled alone in the heavens. Pictures of hunted creatures hiding in caves, making an alliance with that mindless spirit called fire. Pictures of the humble Others taken as pets. Terrifying pictures of Freyr roaming, coming mottled black down the air-octaves, a giant spider-form, eddre-chilling. The retreat of beautiful T'Sehn-Hrr, once silver in the tranquil skies. The Others proving themselves Sons of Freyr, running off earning the mindless spirit fire on their shoulders. Many, many ancipitals dying, in flood, in heat, in battle with the monkey-browed Sons of Freyr.

  "Go fast, remember enmities. Retreat to safety of the wooden thing afloat on the drowning world, kill all Sons of Freyr. Stay safe there against the running of the Beasts-we-were. Be valiant. Be large. Hold horns high!"

  The tiny voice fled to lands beyond knowing. They thanked the great-grandstallun with a deep churring in their throats.

  They would obey its word. For the voice was his and the voice was theirs and there was no difference. Time and opinion had no place in their pale barneys.

  They advanced slowly on the beached ship.

  It was an alien thing to them. The sea was their dread. Water swallowed and extinguished them. The ship was outlined against the smouldering orange of Freyr, snoring just below the horizon, ready to leap from its hiding place in that same hungry sea.

  They clutched their spears and moved with reluctant step towards the New Season.

  The sand crunched beneath their tread. All the while, their twitching ears picked up the thunder of the approaching flambreg.

  To one side lay the icebergs, no taller than the runt which walked close to its gillot. Some icebergs clung to the sides of the vessel; some, as if possessed by a mysterious will, described slow intricate figures over the still sea, ghostly in the dim light, their reflections caught as if in tether in the water.

  As the sand spit narrowed, so the ancipital group had to narrow its front. Finally, two stalluns led the rest. The ship loomed above them without movement.

  Things clattered and broke beneath the feet of the stalluns. They tried to halt, but those behind pushed them forward. More breaking, more clattering. Looking down, they saw the thin white shards beneath their feet, and the whiteness stretching cracked all the way to the ship's hull.

  "There is ice and it breaks," they said to each other, using the continuous present tense of Native Ancipital. "Go back or we fall into the drowning world."

  "We must kill all Sons of Freyr, as it is said. Go forward."

  "That we cannot do with the drowning world protecting them."

  "Go back. Hold horns high."

  Crouching by the rail of the New Season, Luterin Shokerandit and Toress Lahl watched their enemies shuffle back to the shore and
seek for shelter by the rock.

  "They may return. We have to get the ship afloat as soon as possible," Shokerandit said. "Let's see how many of the crew have survived."

  Toress Lahl said, "Before we leave the coast, we should kill some flambreg if they get within range. Otherwise everyone is going to starve."

  They looked uneasily at each other. The thought crossed their minds that they sailed with a cargo of the dead and the mad.

  Standing with their backs to the mainmast, they set up a great shout, which rolled away across the wastes of water and land. After a pause, an answering cry came. They called again.

  A man appeared from the forecastle, staggering. He had undergone the metamorphosis, and presented the typical barrel-figure of a survivor. His clothes were ill-fitting, his once boney face now broad and presenting a curiously stretched appearance. They hardly recognised him as Harbin Fashnalgid.

  "I'm glad you're alive," Shokerandit said, going towards him.

  The transformed Fashnalgid put out a warning hand and sat down heavily on the deck.

  "Don't come near me," he said. He covered his face with his hands.

  "If you are fit enough, we need help in getting the ship on course again," Shokerandit said.

  The other gave a laugh without looking up. Shokerandit saw that there was blood caked on his hands and clothes.

  "Leave him to recover," Toress Lahl said. At this Fashnalgid uttered a harsh cackle and started to shout at them, " 'Leave him to recover!' How can a man recover? Why should he recover... I've been through the last few days eating raw arang - yes, and killing a man for the privilege of doing so ... Entrails-everything... And now I find Besi's dead. Besi, the dearest, truest girl there ever was... Why do I want to recover? I want to be dead."

  "You'll feel better soon," said Toress Lahl. "You scarcely knew her."

  "I'm sorry about Besi," Shokerandit said. "But we have to get the ship on course."

  Fashnalgid glared up at him. "That's typical of you, you skerming conformist! No matter what happens, do what you're supposed to do. Let the ship rot, for all I care."