Helliconia Summer - Brian W. Aldiss [179]
‘But why do I keep myself alone?’ she asked the darkness.
A bitter savour of smoke reached her while she secured the latch. The building was still smouldering nearby, a reminder of the day’s public madness.
When she returned to the worn room, Dol was sitting up, wiping her face.
‘You’d better get Ma Scantiom, Oyre. The future Lord of Embruddock is waiting to be born.’
Oyre kissed her cheek. Both women were pale and wide-eyed. ‘He’ll be back soon. Men are so – unreliable.’
She ran from the room to call a slave.
The wind that rapped on Oyre’s shutter had travelled a long way, and was destined to blow itself out among the limestone teeth of the Quzints. Its birthplace had been above the fathomless stretches of the sea that future sailors would name Ardent. It moved along the equator westwards, picking up speed and moisture, until encountering the great barrier of the Eastern Shield of Campannlat, the Nktryhk, where it became two winds.
The northern airstream roared up the Gulf of Chalce and exhausted itself melting the spring frosts of Sibornal. The southern airstream curved about the headlands of Vallgos over first the Scimitar Sea and then the northeast region of the Sea of Eagles, to exhale over the lowlands between Keevasien and Ottassol, with fish on its breath. It roared across a wilderness that would one day be the great country of Borlien, sighed over Oldorando, setting Oyre’s shutter banging. It continued on its way, not waiting to hear the first cries of Aoz Roon’s son.
This warm stream of air carried with it birds, insects, spores, pollen, and microorganisms. It was gone in a few hours, and forgotten almost as soon as gone; nevertheless, it played its part in altering the scheme of things that had been.
As it passed, it brought some comfort to a man sitting uncomfortably in the branches of a tree. The tree grew on an island in the middle of a fast-flowing flood mightily becoming a tributary of the river Takissa. The man had injured one leg and perched in his place of safety in some pain.
Below the tree squatted a large male phagor. Perhaps he waited to make some kind of attack. Whatever he waited for, he remained without movement, beyond occasionally flicking an ear. His cowbird sat on a branch of the tree, as far as it could get from the injured man.
Man and phagor had been washed onto the shores of the island, half-drowned. The former had climbed to the one point of safety he, in his injured state, could find. He clung to the trunk of the tree when the wind blew.
The wind was too warm for the phagor. He moved at last, standing swiftly and turning without a backward look, to pick his way among the boulders that filled most of the narrow island. After watching for a while with its head craned forward, the cowbird extended its wings and flapped after its host.
The man thought to himself, If I could catch and kill that bird, it would be a victory of sorts – and it would be worth eating.
But Aoz Roon had more pressing problems than hunger. First, he had to overcome the phagor. Through the sheltering leaves as dawn came, he could see the riverbanks from which he had been brushed. There, on marshy ground, stood four phagors, each with a cowbird perched on his shoulder or wheeling lazily above him; one held the mane of a kaidaw. They had been standing there for hours, almost without movement, staring towards the island.
Keeping a safe distance from them along the water margin was Curd. The hound sat uneasily, he whined, he paced back and forth, scanning the darkly swirling floods.
Biting his bearded lower lip against the pain, Aoz Roon tried to slide farther along his branch, so as to watch his immediate adversary’s retreat. It moved slowly. Since there appeared