Helliconia Summer - Brian W. Aldiss [556]
‘They’ll set sail tomorrow,’ his friend said. ‘They’ll be confined aboard ship tonight, you’ll see, and good riddance.’ He lowered his voice. ‘They’re off under Oligarch’s orders to fight against the good people of Bribahr. What harm Bribahr have done the rest of us, I don’t know.’
‘They may have captured Braijth, but Rattagon is impregnable. The Oligarch is wasting his time.’
‘Set in the middle of a lake, I hear.’
‘That’s Rattagon.’
‘Well, I’m glad I’m not a soldier.’
‘You’re too much of a fool to be anything but a sailor.’
As the two men laughed together, Shokerandit fixed his gaze on a poster on a wall by the door. It announced that henceforth Anyone Entering the State of Pauk committed an Offence. To Enter into Pauk, whether alone or in company, was to Encourage the Spreading of the Plague known as the Fat Death. The Penalty for defying this law was One Hundred Sibs and, for a Second Offence, Life Imprisonment. By Order of the Oligarch.
Although Shokerandit never practised pauk, he disliked the stream of new orders the State was issuing.
Shokerandit thought to himself as he drained his glass that he probably hated the Oligarch. When the Archpriest-Militant Asperamanka had sent him to report to the Oligarchy, he had felt honoured. Then Fashnalgid had stopped him almost at the Sibornalese frontier; and it had taken him some while to believe what the man claimed, that he would have been cold-bloodedly killed with the rest of the returning army. It was even more difficult to realise that all of Asperamanka’s force had been wiped out on the Oligarch’s orders.
It made sense to take rational measures to keep the plague from spreading. But to suppress pauk was a sign that authoritarianism was spreading. He wiped his mouth with his hand.
As a result of circumstance, Shokerandit was no hero but a fugitive. He could not imagine what his fate would be if he was arrested for desertion.
‘What did Harbin mean, I’m a man of the system?’ he muttered. ‘I’m a rebel, an outcast – like him.’
It behoved him to get home to Kharnabhar and remain under his father’s powerful protection. At least in distant Kharnabhar the forces of the Oligarch would not reach him. Thought of Insil could be left for later.
With this reflection came another. He owed Fashnalgid something. He must take him on the arduous journey north if Fashnalgid could be persuaded to come. Fashnalgid would be useful in Kharnabhar: there he could help bear witness to the massacre of thousands of young Shiveninki by their own side.
He said to himself, I had courage in battle. I must have courage to fight against the Oligarchy if necessary. There will be others at home who feel as I do when they hear the truth.
He paid his coin and left the inn.
Along the waterfront stood a grand avenue of rajabarals. As temperatures dropped, the trees prepared for the long winter. Instead of shedding their leaves, they drew in their branches, pulling them into the tops of their vast trunks. Shokerandit had seen pictures in natural history books of how branches and leaves would dissolve to form a solid resin plug, protecting the featureless and undecaying tree until it released its seed in the following Great Spring.
Under the rajabarals, soldiers from a ship which flew the flags of Sibornal and the Oligarchy were parading. Shokerandit had a momentary fear that someone might recognise him; but his metamorphosed shape was protection. He turned inland, towards the marketplace, where there were agents who handled the affairs of travellers intending to visit Kharnabhar.
The cold winds from the mountains made him turn up his collar and lower his head. But at the agent’s door, pilgrims eager to visit the shrines of the Great Wheel were gathered, many poor and scantily clad.
It took him a while to arrange matters to his liking. He could travel to Kharnabhar with the pilgrims. Or he could travel independently, hiring a sledge, a team, a driver, and a jack-of-all-trades. The former way was safer, slower, and less expensive. Shokerandit