Helliconia Summer - Brian W. Aldiss [108]
The murk worked in their favour when they reached the riverbank. Here thick succulent grasses had sprung up as high as a man’s knee, despite recent frosts, grasses that bowed and shimmered under the pressure of the downpour. There was nothing to be seen as they ran forward except wavering grass, the overburdened clouds, and muddy water the colour of cloud. A fish plopped heavily in the river, sensing an extension of its universe.
The two Borlienian guards, crouching for shelter in their boats, were killed without a struggle; perhaps they thought it better to die than get any wetter. Their bodies were cast into the water. They floated against the boats, and blood spread from their corpses, while the firemaker of the party tried vainly to make fire; the river was shallow at this point, and the bodies would not go away even when struck at by oars. With air trapped under their skins, they drifted just below the rain-pocked surface of the water.
‘All right, all right,’ Dathka said impatiently. ‘Leave the firemaking. Break up the boats instead, men.’
‘We can use the boats ourselves,’ Laintal Ay suggested. ‘Let’s row them to Oldorando.’
The others stood and watched impassively as the two youths argued.
‘What will Aoz Roon say when we return home without meat?’
‘We’ll have the boats to show him.’
‘Even Aoz Roon doesn’t eat boats.’ Laughter greeted the remark.
They climbed into the boats and juggled with the oars. The dead men were left behind. They managed to row themselves slowly back to Oldorando, the rain beating continually in their faces.
Aoz Roon’s reception of his subjects was morose. He glared at Laintal Ay and the other hunters with a silence they found more daunting than words, since he offered them nothing to refute. At last, he turned from them and stood staring out of his open window at the rain.
‘We can go hungry. We have gone hungry before. But we have other troubles. Faralin Ferd’s party have returned from foraging in the north. They sighted a party of fuggies in the distance, riding kaidaws and heading this way. They say it looks like a war party.’
The hunters looked at each other.
‘How many fuggies?’ one asked.
Aoz Roon shrugged his shoulders.
‘Were they coming from Dorzin Lake?’ Laintal Ay asked.
Aoz Roon merely shrugged his shoulders again, as if he found the question irrelevant.
He swung round on his audience, fixing them with his heavy gaze. ‘What do you think is the best strategy in the circumstances?’
When there was no reply, he answered his own question. ‘We’re not cowards. We go out and attack them before they arrive here and try to burn Oldorando down, or whatever is in their thick harneys to do.’
‘They won’t attack in this weather,’ an older hunter said. ‘The fuggies hate water. Only extreme madness can drive them into water. It ruins their coats.’
‘The times are extreme,’ Aoz Roon said, striding restlessly about. ‘The world will drown under this rain. When’s the eddring snow coming back?’
He dismissed them, and paddled through the mud to see Shay Tal. Vry and her other close friend, Amin Lim, were sitting with her, copying out a design. He sent them packing.
He and Shay Tal looked warily at each other, she at his wet face and his air of having more to say than he could express, he at the wrinkles under her eyes, the first white hairs glinting in her dark locks.
‘When will this rain stop?’
‘The weather’s getting worse again. I want to plant rye and oats.’
‘You’re