Helliconia Summer - Brian W. Aldiss [219]
‘He’s mad,’ a boy shouted on the edge of the crowd. ‘Dathka’s mad!’ People were leaving at a run, or running up. General confusion was breaking out, and a struggle developing in one corner of the mob.
Raynil Layan tried to rally the crowd, bringing up his powerful pale presence to shout in a large voice, ‘Support us and we will support you. We will guard Oldorando.’
All this while, Faralin Ferd had been standing silent at the rear of the platform, arms bound, in the grip of a guard. He saw his moment.
‘Throw Dathka out!’ he shouted. ‘He never had Aoz Roon’s approval and he shall not have ours!’
Dathka turned about with a hunter’s rapid movement, drawing his curved dagger as he did so. He flung himself on the lieutenant. A high scream came from Farayl Musk, somewhere in the crowd, at the same time as several voices took up the cry, ‘Throw Dathka out!’
They fell silent almost immediately, stilled by Dathka’s sudden action. In the hush, smoke drifted across the scene. Nobody moved. Dathka stood rigid, back to his audience. For a moment, Faralin Ferd was also still. Then he threw up his head and gave a choking groan. Blood gushed from his mouth. He sagged, and the guard let him fall at Dathka’s feet.
Then there was uproar. Blood gave the whole crowd voice.
‘You fool, they’ll slaughter us,’ Raynil Layan shouted. He ran to the back of the platform and jumped down. Before anyone could stop him, he was disappearing down a side street.
The guard ran about, ignoring Dathka’s commands, as the mob closed on the platform. Farayl Musk was screaming for Dathka’s arrest. Seeing that it was all over, he also jumped from the platform and ran.
At the rear of the crowd, by the stalls, the small boys jumped up and down, clapping their hands in excitement. The crowd began to riot, finding rioting more lively than death.
For Dathka, there was nothing but to make an ignominious escape. He ran panting, gasping, muttering incoherently, through the deserted streets, his three shadows – penumbral, umbral, penumbral – changing their topology at his feet. His scuttling thoughts similarly dilated and shrank, as he tried to evade the knowledge of his failure, to retch up his disaster from inside him.
Strangers passed him, their belongings loaded on an archaic sledge. An old man, helping a child along, called to him, ‘The fuggies are coming.’
He heard the sound of people running behind him – the mob, avenging. There was one place he could go to for refuge, one person, one hope. Cursing her, he ran to Vry.
She was back in her old tower. She sat in a kind of dream, aware – and frightened of her awareness – that Embruddock was moving to a crisis. When he hammered on her door, she let him in almost with relief. She stood there with neither sympathy nor derision as Dathka collapsed weeping on her bed.
‘It’s a mess,’ she said. ‘Where’s Raynil Layan?’ He went on weeping, striking the bedding with his fist.
‘Stop it,’ she said mildly. She walked about the room, gazing up at the stained ceiling. ‘We live in such a mess. I wish I were free of emotion. Human beings are such messes. We were better when the snow contained us, frozen, when we had no … hope! I wish there were only knowledge, pure knowledge, no emotion.’
He sat up. ‘Vry—’
‘Don’t speak to me. You have nothing for me, and never had, you must accept that. I don’t want to hear what you have to say. I don’t want to know what you’ve done.’
Geese set up a great honking outside.
He sat on the bed, yawned. ‘You’re only half a woman. You’re cold. I’ve always known it, yet I couldn’t stop feeling as I did about you …’
‘Cold? … You fool, I steam like a rajabaral.’
The noise in the street was louder, loud enough for them to catch the note of individual voices. Dathka ran to the window.
Where were his men now? The people who poured out of nearby alleys were all strangers to him. He could not see one familiar face – none of his men, no Raynil Layan – not that that surprised him – not even one citizen he could identify. Once on a time, every face had been known to him. Strangers