Helliconia Summer - Brian W. Aldiss [511]
The rider, having dropped his gun, stood confronting Fashnalgid. Fashnalgid, still pointing his revolver, reached inside his captive’s coat with his left hand, and had a feel of her breasts.
‘Who the sherb are you?’ He burst out laughing, even as the woman began to weep. ‘You’re evidently a man who likes to ride with his creature comforts … and a well-developed creature it is.’
‘My name is Luterin Shokerandit, Lieutenant. I am on an urgent mission for the Supreme Oligarch, so you’d better let me through.’
‘Then you’re in trouble.’ He ordered one of his men to collect Shokerandit’s pistol, turned the woman about, and removed her hat so that he could get a better look at her. Toress Lahl stood before him, her eyes heavy with anger. He patted her cheek, saying to Shokerandit, ‘We have no quarrel. Far from it. I have a warning for you. I’ll put my gun away and we will shake hands like proper men.’
They shook hands warily, looking each other over. Shokerandit took Toress Lahl’s arm and drew her beside him, saying nothing. As for Fashnalgid, the feel of breasts had heartened him; he was beginning to congratulate himself on his handling of a difficult situation when one of his men, keeping lookout, called that riders were approaching from the north, from the direction of Koriantura.
A line of mounted men was nearing the Ivory Cliffs, a banner flying in its midst. Fashnalgid whipped a spyglass from his coat pocket and surveyed the advance.
He uttered a curse. Leading the advance was none other than his superior, Major Gardeterark. Fashnalgid’s first thought was that Besi had betrayed him. But it was more likely that one of the citizens of Koriantura had seen him leaving the city and reported the fact.
The figures were still some distance away.
He had no doubt what his fate would be if he was caught, but there was still time to act. His manner as much as his words persuaded Shokerandit and the woman that they would be safer joining him than trying to escape – particularly when Fashnalgid offered them two of his fresh yelk to ride. Shouting to his men to stand their ground and tell the major that there was a large body of armed men at the other end of the Cliffs, Fashnalgid flung himself onto his yelk and galloped off at full speed, Shokerandit and Toress Lahl following. He kicked one of the unmounted yelk before him.
Some way along the narrow defile of the Cliffs was a side passage. Fashnalgid drove the unmounted yelk straight forward, but led the other down the defile. He calculated that the sound of the escaping yelk would lead the enemy force to ride straight on.
The defile dwindled to a mere fissure. By setting their mounts determinedly forward, they could scramble up the crumbling slope onto higher ground. They emerged in a confusion of broken rock where small trees and bushes, arched over by the prevailing wind, pointed southwards. From somewhere below them came the thunder of the major’s troop galloping past.
Fashnalgid wiped the cold sweat from his brow and picked a course westward among the rocks. Both the suns lay close in the sky, Freyr low as ever in the southwest, Batalix sinking to the west.
The three riders urged their mounts through a series of eroded buttes and round a shattered boulder the size of a house, where there were signs of past human habitation. In the distance, beyond where the land fell away, was the glint of the sea. Fashnalgid halted and took a drink from his flask. He offered it to Shokerandit, but the latter shook his head.
‘I’ve taken you on trust,’ he said. ‘But now that we have eluded your friends, you had better tell me what is on your mind. My job is to get word to the Oligarch as soon as possible.’
‘My job is to evade the Oligarch. Let me tell you that if you present yourself before him, you will probably be shot.’ He told Shokerandit of the reception being arranged for Asperamanka. Shokerandit shook his head.
‘The Oligarchy ordered us into Campannlat. If you believe that they would massacre us on our return, then you are plainly crazed.