Helliconia Summer - Brian W. Aldiss [153]
After this rapid fire of orders, he shouted them into action, himself pacing about furiously. Then he turned to Vry, ‘All right, woman, I want to see the lie of the land for myself. Yours is the northernmost tower – I’ll look from there. Move, everyone, and let’s hope this is a false alarm.’
He set off rapidly down to the door, his great hound bursting past him. With a last glance at the stuffed geese, Vry followed. Soon, shouts resounded among the leprous old buildings. The rain was tapering off. Yellow flowers, abloom in the lanes, unbent their heads and stood erect again.
Oyie ran after Aoz Roon and fell in by his side, smiling despite his growled dismissal. She sprang along in her dark blue and light blue hoxney with something like glee.
‘It’s not often I see you unprepared, Father.’
He shot her one of his black looks. She thought merely, he has grown older of late.
At Vry’s tower, he gestured to his daughter to stay, and entered the pile at a run. As he climbed the crumbling steps, Shay Tal emerged on her landing. He spared her only a nod and continued upwards. She followed him to the top, catching his scent.
He stood by the parapet, scrutinising the darkening land. He set his hands in a platform across his eyebrows, elbows out, legs apart. Freyr was low, its light spilling through rifts of western cloud. The cowbird was still circling, and not far distant. No movement could be observed in the bushes beneath its wings.
Shay Tal said from behind his broad back, ‘There’s only the one bird.’
He gave no answer.
‘And so perhaps no phagors.’
Without turning or changing his attitude, he said, ‘How the place is altered since we were children.’
‘Yes. Sometimes I miss all the whiteness.’
When he did turn, it was with an expression of bitterness on his face, which he seemed to remove with an effort.
‘Well, there’s evidently little danger. Come and see, if you wish.’
He then went down without hesitation, as if regretting his invitation. Curd stayed close as ever. She followed to where the others waited.
Laintal Ay came up, spear in hand, summoned by the shouting.
He and Aoz Roon glared at each other. Neither spoke. Then Aoz Roon drew out his sword and marched down the path in the direction of the cowbird.
The vegetation was thick. It scattered water over them. The women got the worst of it as the men pressed back boughs which showered in the faces of those who followed.
They turned a bend where young damson trees were growing, trunks thinner than a man’s arm. There was a ruined tower, reduced to two floors and swamped by vegetation. Beside it, under the leprous stone, in a tunnel of sullen green gloom, a phagor sat astride a kaidaw.
The cowbird could be seen through branches overhead, croaking a warning.
The humans halted, the women instinctively drawing together. Curd crouched, snarling.
Horny hands resting together on the pommel of its saddle, the phagor sat its tall mount. Its spears trailed behind it in an unprepared way. It widened its cerise eyes and twitched an ear. Otherwise, it made no move.
The rain had soaked the phagor’s fur, which clung about it in heavy grey clumps. A bead of water hung and twinkled at the tip of one forward-curving horn. The kaidaw was also immobile, its head outstretched, its furled horns twisting below its jaws and then up. Its ribs showed, and it was spattered with mud and gashes on which its yellow blood had caked.
The unreal tableau was broken, unexpectedly, by Shay Tal. She pushed past Aoz Roon and Laintal Ay, to stand alone on the path in front of them. She raised her right hand above her head in a commanding gesture. No response came from the phagor;