Helliconia Summer - Brian W. Aldiss [377]
A bugle sounded All Hands. The three ships clustered. Prayers were said, music played, all stood to pray with finger to forehead.
Out of the apricot haze came a sail. By a trick of the light, it appeared and disappeared like a vision. Birds screamed about its masts, newly away from land.
It was an all-white ship, sails white, hull fresh with whitewash. As it drew nearer, firing a gun in salute, those aboard the other ships saw that it was a caravel, no bigger than the Good Hope; but on its mainsail stood the great hierogram representing the Wheel itself, inner and outer circles connected by wavy lines. This was the Vajabhar Prayer, named after Shivenink’s chief port.
The four ships tacked close, like four pigeons nestling together on a branch. A bark of orders from the Priest-Militant Admiral herself. Bowsprits turned, cordage creaked, artemons filled. The little fleet began to sail southwards.
Colours in the water changed to a deeper blue. The ships were leaving the Pannoval Sea astern and entering the northern margins of the vast Climent Ocean. Immediately, they struck rough weather. They had a hard time of it, combatting mountainous seas and hazardous storms, in which they were bombarded by gigantic hailstones. For days, they saw neither sun.
When at last they reached calmer waters, Freyr’s zenith was lower than before, and Batalix’s somewhat higher. To port lay the cliffs of Campannlat’s westernmost redoubt, Cape Findowel. Once they had rounded Findowel they sailed into the nearest anchorage along the coast of the tropical continent, there to rest for two days. The carpenters repaired the storm damage, the members of the Priest-Sailors Guild stitched sails or else swam in a warm lagoon. So welcome was the sight of men and women disporting themselves naked in the water – the puritanical Sibornalese were curiously unprudish on this occasion – that even SartoriIrvrash ventured into the water in a pair of silken underpants.
When he rested afterwards on the beach, sheltering from the power of both suns, he watched the swimmers climb out one by one. Many of the Good Hope’s crew were women, and sturdily built. He sighed for his youth. Io Pasharatid climbed out beside him and said to him quietly, ‘If only that beautiful queen of queens were here, eh?’
‘What then?’ He kept watching the water, hoping that Odi would emerge naked.
Pasharatid dug him in the ribs in an un-Sibornalese way.
‘What then, you say? Why, then this seeming paradise would be paradise indeed.’
‘Do you suppose that this expedition can possibly conquer Borlien?’
‘Given the fortune of war, I’m sure of it. We are organised and armed, in a way JandolAnganol’s forces will never be.’
‘Why, then the queen will come under your supervision.’
‘That reflection had not escaped me. Why else do you think I have this sudden enthusiasm for war? I don’t want Ottassol, you old goat. I want Queen MyrdemInggala. And I intend to have her.’
XV
The Captives of the Quarry
A man was walking with a pack slung over one shoulder. He wore the tattered remains of a uniform. Both suns beat down on him. Streams of sweat ran down into his tunic. He walked blindly, rarely looking up.
He was traversing a destroyed area of jungle in the Chwart Heights in eastern Randonan. All round were blackened and broken stumps of trees, many still smouldering. On the few occasions when the man looked about him, he could see nothing but the trail and blackened landscape all round. Palls of grey smoke rose in the distance. It was possible that tropical heat had started the blaze. Or perhaps a spark from a matchlock had been the cause of the death of a million trees. For many tenners battles had been fought over the area. Now soldiers and cannon