Helliconia Summer - Brian W. Aldiss [150]
But Laintal Ay could not be stopped. Full of anger, he cried mockingly, ‘Is this another of your cruel blows against knowledge – against Shay Tal?’
The others murmured, restless in the confined space. Aoz Roon said, ‘This is justice. I have information that Datnil Skar allowed outsiders to read the secret book of his corps. It’s a forbidden act. Its just penalty is now, as it always was, death.’
‘Justice! Does this look like justice? This blow has all the stealth of murder. You’ve all seen – it’s carried out like the murder of—’
Aoz Roon’s attack was hardly unexpected, but its ferocity knocked his guard away. He struck back at Aoz Roon’s face, dancing black with rage before him. He heard Oyre shriek. Then a fist caught him squarely on the side of the jaw.
Detachedly, he saw himself stagger backwards, trip over the sodden corpse, and sprawl powerless on the stable floor.
He was aware of screams, shouting, boots trampling round him. He felt the kicks in his ribs. There was confusion as they took him up like the body they had dropped – he attempting to protect his skull from knocking against a wall – and carried him outside into the downpour. He heard thunder like a giant pulse.
From the steps, they flung him bodily into the mud. The rain came flying down into his face. As he sprawled there, he realised that he was no longer Aoz Roon’s lieutenant From now on, their enmity was out in the open, apparent to all.
Rain continued to fall. Belts of dense cloud rolled across the central continent. An atmosphere of stalemate prevailed over the affairs of Oldorando.
The distant army of the young kzahhn, Hrr-Brahl Yprt, was forced to halt its advance, to shelter among the shattered hills of the east. Its components went into a sort of tether rather than face the downpour.
The phagors also experienced earth tremors, which originated from the same source as those afflicting Oldorando. Far to the north, old rift zones in the Chalce region were undergoing violent seismic upheaval. As the burden of ice disappeared, the earth shook and rose up.
By this period, the ocean that girdled Helliconia became free of ice even beyond the wide tropical zones, which stretched from the equator to latitudes thirty-five degrees north and south. The westward circulation of oceanic waters built up in a series of tsunami, which devastated coastal regions all round the globe. The floodings often combined with vulcanism to alter the land area.
All such geological events were monitored by the instruments of the Earth Observation Station, which Vry called Kaidaw. The readings were signalled back to distant Earth. No planet in the galaxy was watched more intensely than Helliconia.
Account was taken of the dwindling herds of yelk and biyelk which inhabited the northern Campannlat plain; their pasturage was threatened. Kaidaws, on the other hand, were multiplying as marginal lands, hitherto barren, provided grazing.
There were two sorts of ancipital community on the tropical continent: static components without kaidaws, which lived close to the land, and mobile or nomadic groups with kaidaws. Not only was the kaidaw a highly mobile animal in its own right; its fodder consumption forced those who domesticated it to move continuously in search of new foraging grounds. The army of the young kzahhn, for example, consisted of numerous small components committed to a nomadic and often warlike existence. Their crusade was only one aspect of a migration, which would take decades to complete, from east to west of the entire continent.
A tremor which brought down avalanches about the kzahhn’s army marked the tail end of an upheaval in the planet’s crust which deflected a river of meltwater flowing from the Hhryggt Glacier. A new valley opened. The new river coursed through it, and henceforth flowed westwards instead of north, as previously.
This river burst its way