Helliconia Summer - Brian W. Aldiss [590]
He paused on the way to his mother’s quarters, aware of an uproar outside. Someone was shouting in a thick drunken voice. Shokerandit ran for a side door, hip-bell clattering. A slave hastily flung back the bolts to allow him passage.
In a court overlooked by the upper windows of the mansion, a liegeman and two freemen were brandishing swords. They had cornered six dehorned phagors. One of the phagors, a gillot with thin withered dugs which spoke of years in captivity, was calling out in a hoarse voice, in Sibish, ‘You not to kill, you vile Sons of Freyr! This Hrl-Ichor Yhar come back belong to us, the ancipitals! Stop! Stop!’
‘Stop!’ Shokerandit said.
The men had already killed one of the ahumans. A swordsman had disembowelled a stallun with a downward slash of his sword. Ancipital eddre lodged in their carcasses above their lungs. As Shokerandit bent over the corpse, which was still in spasm, the intestines slithered forth on a tide of yellow blood.
The mass loosened itself and began slowly to evacuate the cavern of the ribs like a concoction of soft-boiled eggs in jelly. Beige shadows ran between little glistening mounds which came creeping out of the wound like a living mass, flowing thickly over the flags and into the cracks between the flags, flowing until all poured forth, separate organs no longer distinguishable in the general exodus, leaving a hollow behind them.
Shokerandit tugged back the dead creature’s ear to expose its blaze mark.
He glared at the men.
‘These are our slave ancipitals. What are you doing?’
The liegeman was scowling. ‘Best mind out the way, master. Orders are to kill off all phagors, whether ours or otherwise.’
The five phagors began shouting hoarsely and scrambling to get past the men, who immediately brought their swords to the ready.
‘Stop. Drikstalgil, who gave you these orders?’ He remembered the liegeman’s name.
Keeping one eye on the ancipitals and his sword ready, the liegeman dipped into his left pocket and brought out a folded paper.
‘Secretary Evanporil issued me this this morning. Now, stand back, if you would not mind, master, or you’ll get crushed.’
He handed Shokerandit a poster, which Shokerandit flapped open with an angry gesture. It was printed in heavy black letters.
The poster announced that a New Act had been passed, in a further attempt to keep down the Plague known as the Fat Death. The Ancipital Race had been identified as the main Carrier of the Plague. All Phagors must therefore be killed. Phagor slaves must be put down. Wild Phagors should be shot on sight. A bounty would be paid of One Sib per ancipital head by the appropriate authority in each District. Henceforth, the possession of Phagors was illegal, under Penalty of Death. By Order of the Oligarch.
‘Put up your swords until I give you further orders,’ Shokerandit said. ‘No more killing till I say so. And get this corpse away from here.’
When the men reluctantly did as he instructed, Shokerandit went back into the house, marching angrily upstairs to see the secretary.
The mansion was full of ancient prints, many of them engraved by a steel process in Rivenjk, when that city had boasted an artistic colony. Most of the prints depicted scenes suitable to wild mountainous areas: hunters coming unexpectedly upon bears in clearings, bears coming unexpectedly upon hunters, stags at bay, men mounted on yelk leaping into chasms, women being stabbed in gloomy forests, lost children dying in pairs upon exposed crags.
Beside the secretary’s door was a print of a soldier-priest on guard before the very portals of the Great Wheel. He stood stiffly upright while spearing to death an immense phagor which had leaped from a hole to attack him. The engraving was entitled – the Sibish lettering executed with many a curlicue – ‘An Old Antagonism’.
‘Very appropriate,’ Shokerandit said aloud, thumped on Evanporil’s door, and entered.
The secretary was standing by his window, looking out,