by Brian Aldiss
Turning on the impassive Dathka, he said, ‘Look, go down and speak to Oyre. She’ll do what I say. Get her to lead Nahkri up here. He’d wear a pig’s nose if she suggested it – I’ve been watching the way that scumb’s eyes go to her.’
Shrugging his shoulders, saying nothing, Dathka left. Oyre was currently working in Nahkri’s household, much to Laintal Ay’s disgust; being well-favoured, she had an easier time of it than other women.
After Aoz Roon had hugged himself and shivered and paced the roof and projected oaths into the darkness, Dathka returned.
‘She’s bringing him,’ he said shortly. ‘But it’s ill-advised, whatever you have in mind. I’ll have no part in it.’
‘Keep quiet.’ It was the first time anyone had ever given Dathka that order. He slouched back in deepest shadow when figures started climbing through the trapdoor – three figures, the first of them being Oyre. After her came Nahkri, mug of drink in hand, then Laintal Ay, who had decided to stay close to Oyre. He looked angry, and his expression did not soften when he looked at Aoz Roon. The latter scowled back.
‘You stay downstairs, Laintal Ay. You need not be involved in this,’ said Aoz Roon harshly.
‘Oyre’s here,’ replied Laintal Ay, as if that was sufficient, not budging.
‘He’s looking after me, Father,’ said Oyre. Aoz Roon brushed her aside and confronted Nahkri, saying, ‘Now, you and I have always had a quarrel, Nahkri. Prepare to fight it out with me directly, man to man.’
‘Get off my roof,’ ordered Nahkri. ‘I will not have you here. Below’s where you belong.’
‘Prepare to fight.’
‘You were ever insolent, Aoz Roon, and you dare to speak up again after your failure in the hunt. You’ve drunk too much pig’s counsel.’ Nahkri’s voice was thick from wine and rathel.
‘I dare and I dare and I do,’ cried Aoz Roon, and he flung himself at Nahkri.
Nahkri threw the mug in his face. Both Oyre and Laintal Ay took Aoz Roon by the arms, but he shook himself free, and hit Nahkri across the face.
Nahkri fell, rolled over, and brought a dagger from his belt. The only light to be had was a glow coming up from a fat wick burning on the floor below. It glinted on the blade. The green folds in the sky lent nothing more than a tincture to human affairs. Aoz Roon kicked at the knife, missed, and fell heavily on Nahkri, winding him. Groaning, Nahkri began to vomit, making Aoz Roon roll away from him. Both men picked themselves up, panting.
‘Give it up, both of you!’ cried Oyre, clinging to her father again.
‘What’s the quarrel?’ Laintal Ay asked. ‘You provoked him over nothing, Aoz Roon. The right’s on his side, fool though he is.’
‘You keep quiet if you want my daughter,’ roared Aoz Roon, and charged. Nahkri, still gasping for breath, had no defence. He had lost the dagger. Under a rain of blows, he was carried to the edge of the parapet. Oyre screamed. He tottered there for a moment, then his knees buckled. Then he was gone.
They all heard him strike the ground at the foot of the tower. They stood frozen, guiltily regarding one another. Drunken singing came up to them from inside the building.
‘When I were all befuddock
A-going to Embruddock,
I saw a pig a-doing a jig,
And fell down on me buddock …’
Aoz Roon hung over the edge of the parapet. ‘That’s done for you, I imagine, Lord Nahkri,’ he said in a sober voice. He clutched his ribs and panted. He turned to survey them, marking each with his wild eye.
Laintal Ay and Oyre clung silently together. Oyre sobbed.
Dathka came forward and said to them in a hollow voice, ‘You’ll keep silent about this, Laintal Ay, and you, Oyre, if you care for your lives – you’ve seen how easily life’s lost. I shall give out that I witnessed Nahkri and Klils arguing. They fought, and went over the edge together. We could not stop them. Remember my words, see the scene. Keep silent. Aoz Roon will be Lord of Embruddock and Oldorando.’
‘I will, and I’ll rule better than those fools did,’ said Aoz Roon, staggering.
‘You see you do,’ said Dathka quietly, ‘for we three here know the truth about this double murder. Remember we had no part in it: this was your doing, all of it. Treat us accordingly.’
The years in Oldorando under the lordship of Aoz Roon were to pass much as they had under previous leaders; life has a quality rulers cannot touch. Only the weather became more freakish. But that, like many other things, was beyond the control of any lord.
The temperature gradients in the stratosphere altered, the troposphere warmed, ground temperatures began to climb. Lashing rains fell for weeks at a time. Snow disappeared from lowlands in tropical zones. Glaciers withdrew to higher ground. The earth turned green. Tall plants sprang up. Birds and animals never seen before came bounding over or past the stockades of the ancient hamlet. All patterns of life were reforming themselves. Nothing was as it had been.
To many older people, these changes were unwelcome. They recalled untrammelled vistas of snow from their youth. The middle-aged welcomed the changes, but shook their heads and said that it was too good to last. The young had never known anything different. Life burned in them as in the air. They had a greater variety of things to eat; they produced more children, and fewer of those children died.
As for the two sentinels, Batalix appeared the same as ever. But every week, every day, every hour, Freyr was growing brighter, hotter.
Set amid this drama of climate was the human drama, which every living soul must play out, to his own satisfaction or disappointment. To most people, this weaving of minute circumstance was of the utmost importance, each seeing himself the centre of the stage. All over the great globe Helliconia, wherever small groups of men and women struggled to live, this was so.
And the Earth Observation Station recorded everything.
When he became Lord of Oldorando, Aoz Roon lost his lighthearted manner. He grew morose, for a while shunning even the witnesses and accomplices to his crime. Even those who maintained some access to him did not perceive how much his self-imposed isolation owed to ceaseless fermentation of guilt; people do not trouble to understand one another. Tabus against murder were strong; in a small community where all were related, even if distantly, and where the loss of even one able-bodied person was felt, consciousness was so precious that the dead themselves were not allowed to depart utterly from their fellows.
It happened that neither Klils nor Nahkri had children by their women, so that only their women were left to communicate with their men’s gossies. Both reported from the spirit world only raging anger. The anger of gossies is painful to endure, for it can never be relieved. The anger was attributed to a fury the brothers would naturally feel at an outburst of drunken fratricidal madness; the women were excused further communication. The brothers and their hideous end ceased to be a common topic of conversation. The secret of the murder was kept for the present.
But Aoz Roon never forgot. On the dawn of the day after the killing, he had risen wearily and rinsed his face in icy water. The chill merely reinforced a fever he had been suppressing. His whole body raged with a pain that seemed to lumber from organ to organ.
Shivering with an anguish he dared not communicate to his companions, he hurried from his tower, his hound Curd by his side. He got himself into the lane where, in the phantasmal mists of first light, only swathed bodies of women were to be seen, moving slowly to work. Avoiding them, Aoz Roon stumbled towards the north gate. He had to pass by the big tower. Before he knew it, he was confronting the broken body of Nahkri, sprawled at his feet, its eyes still open in terror. He found the ugly corpse of Klils, lying on the opposite side of the tower base. The bodies had not yet been discovered or the alarm given. Curd whimpered and jumped back and forth over Klils’ sodden body.
A thought pierced his daze. Nobody would believe that the brothers had killed each other if they were found lying on different sides of the tower. He grasped Klils’ arm and tried
to move the body. The corpse was stiff, and immobile as if it had rooted itself in the ground. He was forced to bend down, thrusting his face almost in the wet rotted hair, to pick up the body under its arms. He heaved again. Something had happened to his great careless strength. Klils would not move. Gasping, whimpering, he went to the other end and tugged at the legs. Geese honked distantly, mocking his efforts.
At last he shifted the corpse. Klils had fallen face downwards, and his hands and one side of his face had frozen to the mud. Now they broke away, and the body bumped over the dead ground. He dumped it by its brother, an unmoving, meaningless thing which he tried to wipe from his mental vision. Then he ran for the north gate.
A number of ruinous towers stood beyond the barricades, often surrounded by – or indeed ruined by – the rajabarals that loomed above their remains. In one of these monuments to time, overlooking an icy stretch of the Voral, he found refuge. A littered room on the second floor was intact. Although the wooden stairs had disappeared long ago, he was able to scramble up a pile of rubble and pull himself through into the stone chamber. He stood panting, resting one hand against the wall for support. Then he took his dagger and commenced frantically to cut himself free from his skins.
A bear had died in the mountains to clothe Aoz Roon. No one else wore a similar black fur. He ripped it off heedlessly.
At last he stood naked. Even to himself, the sight was shaming. Nudity had no part in the culture. The hound sat and panted, and watched, and whimpered.
His body, with its hollow belly and marked muscle, was consumed with the flamelike pattern of a rash. The tongues lapped him all over. From his knees to his throat, he burned.
Clutching his penis in misery, he ran about the room, crying in many kinds of pain.
To Aoz Roon, the fire on his body was an imprimatur of guilt. Murder! Here was the effect; his dark mind leaped to the cause. Never for one moment did he cast his memory back to the incidents of the hunt, when he had been in close contact with the great white phagor. Never could he reflect that the lice which afflicted that shaggy species had transferred themselves to his body. He was without the knowledge to make such connections.
The Earth Observation Station rode overhead, observing.
Aboard it were instruments that enabled the observers to learn things about the planet beneath them that the inhabitants did not know. They comprehended the life cycle of the tick that had adapted itself to parasitism on both phagor and humanity. They had analysed the composition of the andesitic crust of Helliconia. From the smallest to the greatest, all facts were there to be collected, analysed, and signalled back to Earth. It was as if Helliconia could be dismantled, atom by atom, and despatched to an alien destination across the galaxy. Certainly, it was in a sense being recreated on Earth, in encyclopaedias and Eductainment media.
When, from the Avernus, the two suns were seen to rise in the east above the shoulders of the Nktryhk Range, some of whose peaks towered into the stratosphere, and glory and shadow burst from them, penetrating the depths of the atmosphere with mystery, there were romantics aboard the station who forgot their facts and longed to be part of the rude activities taking place down on the bed of the ocean of air.
Grumbling and cursing, wrapped figures made their way through the murk to the big tower. A chill wind raged from the east, whistling between the ancient towers, slamming into their faces and conjuring rime on their bearded lips. Seven o’clock of a spring evening, and blackest night.
Once they got inside the tower, they jammed the rickety wooden door behind them, straightened up, and exclaimed. Then they mounted the stone steps that led to Aoz Roon’s room. This room was warmed by the hot water flowing through the stone pipes in the basement. Upper rooms towards the top of the tower, where Aoz Roon’s slaves and some of his hunters slept, were farther from the heat source, and consequently colder. But tonight the wind, squirrelling in through a thousand cracks, made everything icy.
Aoz Roon was holding his first council as Lord of Oldorando.
Last to arrive was old Master Datnil Skar, head of the tawyers and tanners corps. He was also the oldest person present. He came slowly up into the light, looking cautiously, half wary of a trap. The old are always suspicious of changes in government. Two candles burned in pots in the centre of a floor luxuriously covered with skins. Their ragged flames slanted towards the west, in which direction two pennants of smoke trailed.
By the uncertain light of the candles, Master Datnil saw Aoz Roon, seated on a wooden chair, and nine other people, squatting on the skins. Six of them were the masters of the other six makers corps, and to them he bowed individually after a courtesy towards Aoz Roon. The other two men were the hunters Dathka and Laintal Ay, sitting together rather defensively. Datnil Skar disliked Dathka for the simple reason that the lad had quit his corps for the feckless life of a hunter; such was Datnil Skar’s opinion; and he also disliked Dathka’s habit of silence.
The only female present was Oyre, who kept her dark gaze fixed uneasily on the floor. She sat partly behind her father’s chair, so as to remain in the shadows that danced against the wall.
All these faces were familiar to the old master, as were the more spectral ones ranged on the walls below the beams – the skulls of phagors and other enemies of the hamlet.
Master Datnil seated himself on a rug on the floor next to his fellow corpsmen. Aoz Roon clapped his hands, and a slave woman came down from the floor above, carrying a tray on which were a jug and eleven carved wooden cups; Master Datnil realised when a measure of rathel was handed to him that the cups had once belonged to Wall Ein.
‘You are welcome,’ Aoz Roon said loudly, lifting his cup. All drank the sweet cloudy liquid.
Aoz Roon spoke. He said that he intended to rule with more firmness than his predecessors. He would tolerate no lawlessness. He would consult the council as before, the council to consist as before of the masters of the seven makers corps. He would defend Oldorando against all enemies. He would not let women or slaves interfere with decent life. He would guarantee that nobody would starve. He would permit people to consult their gossies when they wished. He thought the academy a waste of time when the women had work to do.
Most of what he said was meaningless, or meant only that he intended to rule. He spoke, it could not but be noted, in a peculiar way, as if he wrestled with demons. His eyes often stared, he clutched the arms of his chair as if he was struggling with an inward torment. So that although his remarks were themselves inconsequential, the manner of delivery was horrifyingly original. The wind whistled and his voice rose and fell.
‘Laintal Ay and Dathka will be my chief officers, and see my orders are carried out. They’re young and sensible. All right, damn it, that’s enough talk.’
But the master of the brewers’ corps interrupted in a firm voice, saying, ‘My Lord, you move too fast for those of us with slow wits. Some of us might like to ponder on why you appoint as your lieutenants two saplings, when we have men of oak about us who would serve better.’
‘I’ve made my choice,’ said Aoz Roon, rubbing his trunk to and fro against the back of his chair.
‘But perhaps you have made it too fast, sire. Consider how many good men we have … what of your own generation, such as Eline Tal and Tanth Ein?’
Aoz Roon brought his fist down on the chair arm. ‘We need youth, action. That’s my choice. Now you may go, all of you.’
Datnil Skar rose slowly, and said, ‘My Lord, forgive me, but such hasty dismissal damages your merit, not ours. Are you ill, are you in pain?’
‘Eddre, man, go, can’t you, when asked? Oyre—’
‘The custom is for your council of masters to drink to you, to toast your reign, sire.’
The gaze of the Lord of Embruddock rolled up to the beams and down again.
‘Master Datnil, I know you old men are short of breath and long on words. Spare me. Go, will you, before I have you replaced too. Away, all of you, my thanks, but go, away into this beas
tly weather.’
‘But—’
‘Go!’ He groaned and clutched himself.
A surly dismissal, and the old men of the council departed muttering, blowing out their toothless cheeks in indignation. Not a good omen … Laintal Ay and Dathka left, shaking their heads.
As soon as he was alone with his daughter, Aoz Roon fell on the floor and rolled about, groaning, kicking, and scratching himself.
‘Did you bring that medicated goose fat from Mistress Datnil, girl?’ he asked his daughter.
‘Yes, Father.’ Oyre produced a leather box containing a soft hunk of grease.
‘You’re going to have to rub it on my body.’
‘I can’t do that, Father.’
‘Of course you can, and you will.’
Her eyes flashed. ‘I will not do it. You heard what I said. Get your slave woman to do it. That’s what she’s for, isn’t it? Or else I’ll get Rol Sakil.’
He jumped up, snarling, and took hold of her. ‘You’ll do it. I can’t afford to let anyone else see my state, or word will spread. They’ll find out, don’t you see? You’ll do it, damn you, or I’ll break your eddring neck. You’re as difficult as Shay Tal.’
When she whimpered, he said, with fresh anger, ‘Close your eyes if you’re so squeamish, do it with your eyes shut. You don’t have to look. But do it fast, before I go out of my harneys.’
As he began to strip himself of his skins, still with madness in his look, he said, ‘And you will be spliced to Laintal Ay, to keep you both quiet. I want no argument. I’ve seen the looks he gives you. It’ll be your turn one day to rule Oldorando.’
Off came his trousers, and he stood there naked in front of her. She closed her eyes tightly, turning away her face, sick with disgust at this humiliation. Yet she could not shut out the sight of that hard, spare hairless body, which seemed to writhe under its skin. Her father was covered to his throat with scarlet flames.