Helliconia Summer - Brian W. Aldiss [206]
Inconveniently, the disaster happened at a time when the colonists were trying to build up stocks of captives to present to the approaching phagor crusade. Already, they had informed themselves of the name of the ancipital warrior-priest, who was none less than Kzahhn Hrr-Brahl Yprt. A large number of deaths would spoil the tribute. By order of the High Festibariyatid, extra prayers were sung at each declension.
Laintal Ay heard the prayers as he walked into the settlement and was pleased by the sound. He looked with interest at all about him, ignoring the two armed sentries who escorted him to a central guardhouse, outside which prisoners were raking dung into piles.
The guard captain was puzzled by a human who was not from Sibornal and yet walked voluntarily into the camp. After talking to Laintal Ay for a while and trying some bullying, he sent a subordinate to fetch a priest-militant.
By this time, Laintal Ay was having to accustom himself to the fact that anyone who had not suffered the plague looked, to his new eyes, uncomfortably fat. The priest-militant looked uncomfortably fat. He confronted Laintal Ay challengingly, and asked what he thought were shrewd questions.
‘I met with some difficulties,’ Laintal Ay said. ‘I came here hoping to find refuge. I need clothes. The woods are too populated for my liking. I want a mount of some kind, preferably a hoxney, and am prepared to work for it. Then I’m off home.’
‘What kind of human are you? Are you from far Hespagorat? Why are you so thin?’
‘I have come through the bone fever.’
The priest-militant fingered his lip. ‘Are you a fighter?’
‘I recently killed off a whole tribe of Others, the Nondads …’
‘So you’re not afraid of protognostics?’
‘Not at all.’
He was given the task of guarding the pens and feeding their miserable inmates. In exchange, he was presented with grey wool clothing. The thinking of the priest-militant was simple. One who had suffered from the fever could look after the prisoners without inconveniently dying or passing on the pandemic.
Yet more of the colonists and the prisoners went down with the scourge. Laintal Ay noticed that the prayers in the Church of Formidable Peace became more fervent. At the same time, people kept more closely to themselves. He went where he would and nobody stopped him. He felt that he somehow lived a charmed life. Each day was a gift.
The scouts kept their mounts in a railed compound. He was in charge of a bunch of prisoners whose job it was to carry in hay and fodder to the animals. Here was where the big fodder problem of the settlement lay. An acre of green grass could feed ten animals for a day. The settlement had fifty mounts, used for scouring an increasingly large area; they consumed an equivalent of 24,000 acres per year, or rather less, since some feeding was done beyond the perimeter. This grave problem meant that the Church of Formidable Peace was generally full of half-starved farmers – a rare phenomenon, even on Helliconia.
Laintal Ay refused to shout at the prisoners; they worked well enough, considering their miserable circumstances. The guards stayed at a distance. A light rain made them keep their heads down. Only Laintal Ay took notice of the mounts as they crowded round, thrusting forward their soft muzzles, breathing gently in expectation of a treat. The time was coming when he would select a mount and escape; in a day or two more, the guard would be disorganised enough for his purposes, judging by the way things were going.
He looked a second time at one of the hoxney mares. Seizing up a handful of cake, he approached her. The animal’s stripes ran orangey-yellow from head to tail, with a dark powdery blue between.
‘Loyalty!’
The mare came over to him, taking the cake and then plunging her nose under his arm. He clung to her ears and petted them.
‘Where’s Shay Tal, then?’ he