Helliconia Summer - Brian W. Aldiss [305]
‘I don’t understand,’ he said, in Hurdhu, and felt a strange sensation when she understood, as if he had stepped from the real world into some strange fairy story.
‘Understanding is to me of you being from a far place,’ she said, translating her own language, noun-choked, into Hurdhu. ‘What situation is that far place?’
Perhaps they had seen the space-craft land.
He gestured vaguely, and recited a prepared speech. ‘I come from a distant town in Morstrual, where I am the kzahhn.’ Morstrual was even more remote that Mordriat, and safe to name. ‘Your people will be rewarded if they escort me to King JandolAnganol in Matrassyl.’
‘King JandolAnganol.’
‘Yes.’
She became immobile, gazing ahead. A stallun squatting nearby passed her a leather bottle from which she drank in slobbering fashion, letting the liquid spill. It smelt pungent and spiritous. Ah, he thought, raffle: a deleterious drink distilled by ancipitals. He had fallen in with a poor tribe of phagors. Here he was, dealing capably with these enigmatic beasts, and on the Avernus everyone would be watching him through the optical system. Even his old Advisor. Even Rose.
The heat and the short walk over rough ground had taxed him. But a more self-conscious motive made him sit down on a flat stone and spread his legs, resting his elbows on his knees, to stare nonchalantly at the creature confronting him. The most incredible occurrences became everyday when there was no alternative.
‘Ancipital race carry much spears for his crusade for King JandolAnganol.’ She paused. Behind her was a cave. In its shade, dim cerise eyes gleamed. Billy guessed that tribal ancestors would be stored there, sinking through tether to pure keratin. At once ancestor and idol, every undead phagor helped direct its successors through the painful centuries when Freyr dominated.
‘Sons of Freyr fight other Sons of Freyr each season, and we lend spears.’
He recognised the traditional phagorian term for humankind. The ancipitals, unable to invent new terms, merely adapted old ones.
‘Order two of your tribe to escort me to King JandolAnganol.’
Again her stillness – and all the others, as Billy looked round, conspiring to that same immobility. Only the pigs and curs trundled about, forever searching for titbits in the dirt.
The old gillot then began a long speech which defied Billy’s understanding. He had to halt her in the middle of her ramblings, asking her to start again. Hurdhu tasted as pungent as goat’s cheese on his tongue. Other phagors came up, closing round him, choking him with their dense smell – but not as unpleasant as anticipated, he thought – all aiding their leader with her explanation. As a result, nothing was explained.
They showed him old wounds, backs bereft of skin and fur, broken legs, shattered arms, all exhibited with calm insistence. He was revolted and fascinated. They produced pennants and a sword from the cave.
Gradually he took their meaning. Most of them had served with King JandolAnganol in his Fifth Army. Some weeks ago, they had marched against Driat tribes. They had suffered a defeat here in the Cosgatt. The tribes had used a new weapon which barked like a giant hound.
These poor folk had survived. But they dared not go back to the king’s service in case that giant hound barked again. They lived as they could. They dreamed of returning to the cool regions of the Nktryhk.
It was a long tale. Billy became vexed by it, and by the flies. He took some of their raffel. It was deleterious, just as the textbooks said. Feeling sleepy, he ceased to listen when they tried to describe the Cosgatt battle to him. For them, it might have happened yesterday.
‘Will two of you escort me to the king or will you not?’
They fell silent, then grunted to each other in Native Ancipital.
At length, the gillot spoke in Hurdhu to him.
‘What gift is from your hand for such escort?’
On his wrist he wore a flat grey watch, its triple set of flicking figures telling the time on Earth, on Central Campannlat, and on the Avernus. It was standard