by Brian Aldiss
The whole group roared with laughter.
Shokerandit staggered to his feet and bid them good night. With an effort, he made for his own pitch, close by a cart. Despite the stars overhead, it seemed very dark. There was no aurora in these latitudes as there so often was in Kharnabhar.
Clutching his canteen, he half fell against the bulk of his yelk, which was staked to the ground by the tether burnt through its left ear. He went down on his knees and crawled to where the woman was.
Toress Lahl lay curled up small, hands grasping her knees. She stared up at him without speaking. Her face was pale in the obscurity. Her eyes reflected minutely the litter of stars in the sky above them.
He caught hold of her upper arm and thrust the canteen at her.
‘Drink some yadahl.’
Mutely she shook her head, a small decisive movement.
He clouted her over the side of the head and thrust the leather bottle in her face. ‘Drink this, you bitch, I said. It’ll put heart in you.’
Again the shake of head, but he took her arm and twisted it till she cried out. Then she grasped the canteen and took a swallow of the fiery liquor.
‘It’s good for you. Drink more.’
She coughed and spluttered over it, so that her spittle lighted on his cheek. Shokerandit kissed her forcibly on the lips.
‘Have mercy, I beg you. You are not a barbarian.’ She spoke Sibish well enough, but with a heavy accent, not unpleasant to his ear.
‘You are my prisoner, woman. No fine airs from you. Whoever you were, you are mine now, part of my victory. Even the Archpriest would do with you as I intend, were he in my boots …’ He gulped at the liquid himself, heaved a sigh, slumped heavily beside her.
She lay tense; then, sensing his inertia, spoke. When not crying out, Toress Lahl had a voice with a low liquid quality, as if there were a small brook at the back of her throat. She said, ‘That elder who came to you this afternoon. He saw himself going into slavery, as I see myself. What did you mean when you said to him that your Archpriest gave the only judgement possible?’
Shokerandit lay silent, struggling with his drunken self, struggling with the question, struggling with his impulse to strike the girl for so blatantly trying to turn the channel of his desires. In that silence, up from his consciousness rose an awareness darker than his wish to violate her, the awareness of an immutable fate. He threw down more liquor and the awareness rose closer.
He rolled over, the better to force his words on her.
‘Judgement, you say, woman? Judgement is delivered by the Azoiaxic, or else by the Oligarch – not by some biwacking holy man who would see his own troops bleed to serve his ends.’ He pointed to his friends carousing by the camp fire. ‘See those buffoons there? Like me, they come from Shivenink, a good part of the round globe away. It’s two hundred miles just to the frontiers of Uskutoshk. Lumbered with all our equipment, with the necessity for foraging for food, we cannot cover more than ten miles a day. How do you think we feed our stomachs in this season, madam?’
He shook her till her teeth rattled and she clung to him, saying in terror, ‘You feed, don’t you? I see your wagons carry supplies and your animals can graze, can’t they?’
He laughed. ‘Oh, we just feed, do we? On what, exactly? How many people do you think we have spread across the face of this land? The answer is something like ten thousand humans and ahumans, together with seven thousand yelk and whatever, including cavalry mounts. Each of those men needs two pounds of bread a day, with an extra one pound of other provisions, including a ration of yadahl. That adds up to thirteen and a half tons every day.
‘You can starve men. Our stomachs are hollow. But you must feed animals or they sicken. A yelk needs twenty pounds of fodder every day; which for seven thousand head comes to sixty-two odd tons a day. That makes some seventy-five tons to be carried or procured, but we can only transport nine tons …’
He lay silent, as if trying to convert the whole prospect in his mind into figures.
‘How do we make up the shortfall? We have to make it up on the move. We can requisition it from villages on our route – only there aren’t any villages in Chalce. We have to live off the land. The bread problem alone … You need twenty-four ounces of flour to bake a two-pound loaf. That means six and a half tons of flour to be found every day.
‘But that’s nothing to what the animals eat. You need an acre of green fodder to feed fifty yelk and hoxneys—’
Toress Lahl began to weep. Shokerandit propped himself on an elbow and gazed across the encampment as he spoke. Little sparks glowed in the dark here and there over a wide area, constantly obscured as bodies moved unseen between him and them. Some men sang; others abased themselves and communicated with the dead.
‘Suppose we take twenty days to reach Koriantura at the frontier, then our mounts will need to consume two thousand eight hundred acres of fodder. Your dead husband must have had to do similar sums, didn’t he?
‘Every day an army marches, it spends more time in quest of food than it does in moving forward. We have to mill our own grain – and there’s precious little of anything but wild grasses and shoatapraxi in these regions. We have to make expeditions to fell trees and gather wood for the bakeries. We have to set up field bakeries. We have to graze and water the yelk … Perhaps you begin to see why Isturiacha had to be left? History is against it.’
‘Well, I just don’t care,’ she said. ‘Am I an animal that you tell me how much these animals eat? You can all starve, the lot of you, for all I care. You got drunk on killing and now you’re drunk on yadahl.’
In a low voice, he said, ‘They didn’t think I would be any good in battle, so at Koriantura I was put in charge of animal fodder. There’s an insult for a man whose father is Keeper of the Wheel! I had to learn those figures, woman, but I saw the sense in them. I grasped their meaning. Year by year, the growing season is getting shorter – just a day at either end. This summer is a disappointment to farmers. The Isthmus of Chalce is famine-stricken. You’ll see. All this Asperamanka knows. Whatever you think of him, he’s no fool. An expedition such as this, which set out with over eleven thousand men, cannot be launched ever again.’
‘So my unfortunate continent is safe at last from your hateful Sibish interference.’
He laughed. ‘Peace at a price. An army marching through the land is like a plague of locusts – and the locusts die when there’s no food in their path. That settlement will soon be entirely cut off. It’s doomed.
‘The world is becoming more hostile, woman. And we waste what resources we have …’
Luterin lay against her rigid body, burying his face in his arms. But before sleep and drink overpowered him, he heaved himself up again to ask how old she was. She refused to say. He struck her hard across the face. She sobbed and admitted to thirteen plus one tenner. She was his junior by two tenners.
‘Young to be a widow,’ he said with relish. ‘And – don’t think you’ll get off lightly tomorrow night. I’m not the animal fodder officer anymore. No talk tomorrow night, woman.’
Toress Lahl made no reply. She remained awake, unstirring, gazing miserably up at the stars overhead. Clouds veiled the sky as Batalix-dawn drew near. Groans of the dying reached her ears. There were twelve more deaths from the plague during the night.
But in the morning those who survived rose as usual, stretched their limbs, and were blithe, joking with friends of this and that as they queued for their rations at the bread wagons. A two-pound loaf each, she remembered bitterly.
There was no soldier on that long trail homeward who would admit to enjoying himself. Yet it was probable that everyone took some pleasure in the routine of making and breaking camp, in the camaraderie, in the feeling that progress was being made, and in the chance of being in a different place each day. There was simple pleasure in leaving behind the ashes of an old fire and pleasure in building a new one, in watching the young flames take hold of twigs and grass.
Suc
h activities, with the enjoyments they generated, were as old as mankind itself. Indeed, some activities were older, for human consciousness had flickered upward – like young flames taking hold – amid the challenges of mankind’s first long peregrination eastwards from Hespagorat, when forsaking the protection of the ancipital race and the status of domesticated animal.
The wind might blow chill from the north, from the Circumpolar Regions of Sibornal, yet to the soldiers returning home the air tasted good in their lungs, the ground felt good beneath their feet.
The officers were less lighthearted than their men. For the general soldiery, it was enough to have survived the battle and to be returning home to whatever welcome awaited them. For those who thought more deeply, the matter was more complex. There was the question of the increasingly severe regime within the frontiers of Sibornal. There was also the question of their success.
Although the officers, from Asperamanka downwards, talked repeatedly of victory, nevertheless, under that terrible enantiodromia which gripped the world, under that inevitable and incessant turning of all things into their opposites, the victory came to feel more and more like a defeat – a defeat from which they were retreating with little to show but scars, a list of the dead, and extra mouths to feed.
And always, to heighten this oppressive sense of failure, the Fat Death was among them, keeping pace easily with the fastest troops.
In the spring of the Great Year was the bone fever, cutting down human populations, pruning the survivors to mere skeletons. In the autumn of the Year was the Fat Death, again cutting down human populations, this time melding them into new, more compact shape. So much and more was well enough understood, and accepted with fatalism. But fear still sprang up at the very word ‘plague’. And at such times, everyone mistrusted his neighbour.
On the fourth day, the forward units came across one of the two messengers whom Shokerandit had sent ahead. His body lay face down in a gully. The torso had been gnawed as if by a wild animal.
The soldiers preserved a wide circle about the corpse, but seemed unable to stop looking at it. When Asperamanka was summoned, he too looked long at the dreadful sight. Then he said to Shokerandit, ‘That silent presence travels with us. There is no doubt that the terrible scourge is carried by the phagors, and is the Azoiaxic’s punishment upon us for associating with them. The only way to make restitution is to slay all ancipitals who are on the march with us.’
‘Haven’t we had slaughter enough, Archpriest? Could we not just drive the ancipitals away into the wilds?’
‘And let them breed and grow strong against us? My young hero, leave me to deal with what is my business.’ His narrow face wrinkled into severe lines, and he said, ‘It is more necessary than ever to get word swiftly to the Oligarch. We must be met and given assistance as soon as possible. I charge you now, personally, to go with a trusted companion and bear my message to Koriantura for onward transmission to the Oligarch. You will do this?’
Luterin cast his gaze on the ground, as he had often done in his father’s presence. He was accustomed to obeying orders.
‘I can be in the saddle within an hour, sir.’
The wrath that seemed always to lurk under Asperamanka’s brow, lending heat to his eyes, came into play as he regarded his subordinate.
‘Reflect that I may be saving your life by charging you with this commission, Lieutenant Ensign Shokerandit. On the other hand, you may ride and ride, only to discover that the silent presence awaits in Koriantura.’
With a gloved finger, he made the Sign of the Wheel on his forehead and turned away.
III
The Restrictions of Persons in Abodes Act
Koriantura was a city of wealth and magnificence. The floors of its palaces were paved with gold, the domes of its pleasure houses lined with porcelain.
Its main church of the Formidable Peace, which stood centrally along the quaysides from which much of the city’s wealth came, was furnished with an exuberant luxury quite foreign to the spirit of an austere god. ‘They’d never allow such beauty in Askitosh,’ the Korianturan congregation was fond of saying.
Even in the shabbier quarters of the city, which stretched back into the foothills, there were architectural details to catch the eye. A love of ornamentation defied poverty and broke out in an unexpected archway, an unpremeditated fountain in a narrow court, a flight of wrought-iron balconies, capable of lifting the spirits even of the humdrum.
Undeniably, Koriantura suffered from the same divisions of wealth and outlook to be found elsewhere. This might be observed, if in no other way, from the welcome given to a rash of posters from the presses of the Oligarchy at present flooding the cities of Uskutoshk. In the richer quarters, the latest proclamation might draw forth an ‘Oh, how wise, what a good idea!’; while, at the other end of town, the same pronouncement would elicit merely an ‘Eh, look what the biwackers are up to now!’
Most frontier towns are dispiriting places, where the lees of one culture wait upon the dregs of the next. Koriantura was an exception in that respect. Although known at an earlier date in its history as Utoshki, it was never, as the old name implied, a purely Uskutoshk city. Exotic peoples from the east, in particular from Upper Hazziz and from Kuj-Juvec beyond the Gulf of Chalce, had infiltrated it and given it an exuberance which most cities of Sibornal did not possess, stamping that energy into its very architecture and its arts.
‘Bread’s so expensive in Koriantura,’ went a saying, ‘because the opera tickets are so cheap.’
Then, too, Koriantura was on an important crossroads. It pointed the way southwards, south to the Savage Continent and – war or no war – its traders sailed easily to such ports as Dorrdal in Pannoval. It also stood at one end of the frequented sea route which led to distant Shivenink and the grainlands of Carcampan and Bribahr.
Then again, Koriantura was ancient and its connections with earlier ages had not been broken. It was still possible to find, in the antiquarian stalls of its back streets, documents and books written in antique languages, detailing lost ways of life. Every lane seemed to lead backwards into time. Koriantura had been spared many of the disasters which afflict frontier towns. Behind it stood, range on range, the foothills of the greater hills which in turn formed a footstool to the Circumpolar Mountains, where the ice cap ground its many teeth in cold fury. Before it lay the sea on one side and, on the other, a steep escarpment up which those must climb who would leave the barren steppes of Chalce and enter the city. No invading Campannlatian armies, having survived the march across the steppes, had ever stormed that escarpment.
Koriantura was easy to defend against everything but the impending winter.
Although many military personnel were stationed in Koriantura, they had not succeeded in downgrading it into a garrison town. Peaceful trade could prosper, and the arts to which trade paid somewhat grudging homage. Which was why the Odim family lived there.
The Odim business ranged along one of the wharfs on Climent Quay. The family house stood not far away, in an area that was neither the smartest nor the shabbiest in town. The day’s business done, Eedap Mun Odim, chief support of his large family, saw his employees off the premises, checked that the kilns were safe and the windows bolted, and emerged from a side door with his first mistress.
The first mistress was a vivacious lady by name Besi Besamitikahl. She held various packages for Odim as he fussed over locking the door to his premises. When the task was done to his satisfaction, he turned and gave her his gentle smile.
‘Now we go our separate ways, and I will see you at home soon.’
‘Yes, master.’
‘Walk fast. Watch out for soldiers on the way.’
She had only a short walk, round the corner and into Hill Road. He turned in the other direction, towards the local church.
Eedap Mun Odim kept a straight back against middle age. He tucked his beard inside his suede coat. He had a rather grand walk: more of a strut, which he emphasised despite
the wind. He turned in at the church in time for service, as he did every evening after business was done. There, like the good Uskuti round him, he humbled himself before God the Azoiaxic. It was only a short service.
Besi Besamitikahl, meanwhile, had reached the Odim house and knocked to be let in by the watchman.
The Odim mansion was the last in the street leading down to Climent Quay. From its upper windows, good views were obtained of the harbour, with the Pannoval Sea beyond. The house had been built two centuries earlier by prosperous merchants of Kuj-Juveci descent. To avoid high Korianturan ground rents, each floor of the five-storey house was larger than the one below. There was ample room under the roof, where the best views were, and little room on the ground floor for anything but the entrance hall and a lair for a surly watchman with his hound. A narrow staircase twisted up through the building. In the many stuffy rooms of the second, third, and fourth floors, many stuffy Odim relations were housed. The top floor belonged to Odim and his wife and children alone. Eedap Mun Odim was a Kuj-Juveci, despite the fact that he had been born in this very house. About Besi it was more difficult to say.
Besi was an orphan who remembered neither of her parents, although rumour had it that she was the daughter of a slave woman from far Dimariam. Some claimed that this slave woman had been accompanying her master on a pilgrimage to Holy Kharnabhar; he had kicked her out on the streets on discovering that she was about to give birth. Whether true or not (Besi would say cheerfully), the story had a ring of truth. Such things happened.
Besi had survived her childhood by dancing in those same streets into which her mother had been kicked. By that dancing, she had come to the notice of a dignitary on his way to the Oligarch’s court in Askitosh. After undergoing a variety of abuses at the hands of this man, Besi managed to escape from the house in which she was imprisoned with other women by hiding in an empty walrus-oil vat.