Helliconia Summer - Brian W. Aldiss [18]
As soon as he heard their snores, Yuli crept near.
Both men had to be disposed of almost at the same time. He would be no match for either in a fight, so they must have no warning. He contemplated stabbing them with his dagger or bashing their brains in with a rock; either alternative had its dangers.
He looked about to see that he was not watched. Removing a strap from the sledge, he crept close to the gentlemen, and managed to tie a strap round the right ankle of one and the left ankle of the other, so that whoever jumped up first would be impeded by his companion. The gentlemen snored on.
While undoing the strap from the sledge, he noticed a number of spears. Perhaps they had been for trade and had not sold. He did not wonder at it. Removing one from its confining strap, he balanced it and judged that it would throw badly. For all that, the head was commendably sharp.
Returning to the corrie, he nudged one of the gentlemen with his foot until the gentleman rolled with a groan onto his back. Bringing the spear up as if he were about to transfix a fish, Yuli transfixed the gentleman through his parka, his rib cage, and his heart. The gentleman gave a terrible convulsive movement. Expression horrible, eyes wide, he sat up, grasped at the shaft of the spear, sagged over it, and then slowly rolled back with a long sigh that ended in a cough. Vomit and blood seeped from his lips. His companion did no more than stir and mutter.
Yuli found that he had sunk the spear so fiercely it had driven through the gentleman and into the ground. He returned to the sledge for a second spear and dealt with the second gentleman as he had with the first – with equal success. The sledge was his. And the team.
A vein throbbed at his temple. He regretted the gentlemen were not phagors.
He harnessed up the snarling and yelping asokins and drove them away from the spot.
Dim shawls of light rippled in the skies overhead, to be eclipsed by a tall shoulder of mountain. There was now a distinct path, a track that broadened mile by mile. It wound upwards until it negotiated a towering outcrop of rock. Round the base of the rock, a sheltered high valley was revealed, guarded by a formidable castle.
The castle was partly built of stone and partly hacked out of the rock. Its eaves were wide, to allow snow to avalanche from its roofs to the road below. Before the castle stood an armed guard of four men, drawn up before a wooden barrier which barred the road.
Yuli halted as a guard, his furs decorated with shining brasses, marched up.
‘Who’re you, lad?’
‘I’m with my two friends. We’ve been out trading, as you see. They’re away behind with a second sledge.’
‘I don’t see them.’ His accent was strange: not the Olonete to which Yuli was accustomed in the Barriers region.
‘They’ll be along. Don’t you recognise Gripsy’s team?’ He flicked the whip at the animals.
‘So I do. Of course. Know them well. That bitch is not called Gripsy for nothing.’ He stepped to one side, raising his sturdy right arm.
‘Let her up, there,’ he shouted. The barrier rose, the whip bit, Yuli hollered, and they were through.
He breathed deep as he got his first sight of Pannoval.
Ahead was a great cliff, so steep that no snow clung to it. In the cliff face was carved an enormous representation of Akha the Great One. Akha squatted in a traditional attitude, knees near his shoulders, arms wrapped round his knees, hands locked palms upward, with the sacred flame of life in his palms. His head was large, topped with a knot of hair. His half-human face struck terror into a beholder. There was awe even in his cheeks. Yet his great almond eyes were bland, and there was serenity as well as ferocity to be read in that upturned mouth and those majestic eyebrows.
Beside his left foot, and dwarfed by it, was an opening in the rock. As the sledge drew near, Yuli saw that this