Helliconia Summer - Brian W. Aldiss [65]
It was damp in the passage, and warm. He felt the heat on his cheek. To one side was a stone stairway. He could not understand where he was, and his senses were failing.
And a young woman appeared on the stair, holding a taper before her. She was fairer than the skies. Her face swam before his vision.
‘It was my grandmother!’ cried Laintal Ay, shrill with pride. He had been listening excitedly, and was confused when everyone laughed.
At that time, the lady had no thought of bestowing any little Laintal Ays upon the world. She stared at Little Yuli with wild eyes, and said something to him which he could not understand.
He attempted a reply. The words would not come to his throat. His knees buckled. He sank down to the floor. Then he collapsed entirely, and all there believed him to be dead.
At this thrilling juncture, the storyteller made way for an older speaker, a hunter, who took matters less dramatically.
Wutra saw fit to spare Yuli’s life on that occasion. Dresyl took command of the situation while his cousin-brother lay recovering from his wound. I believe that Dresyl was ashamed of his bloodlust and now took care to behave in a more civilised way, finding himself among civilised people like us. He may also have remembered the kindness of his father, Sar Gotth, and the sweetness of his mother, Iyfilka, killed by the hated phagor herd. He took over Prast’s Tower, where we used to store salt, living at the top of it and issuing orders like a true commander, while Yuli lay in bed in a low room beneath.
Many at the time, myself included, disliked Dresyl, and treated him as a mere invader. We hated being ordered about. Yet when we understood what he intended, we cooperated, and appreciated his undoubted good points. We of Embruddock were demoralised at that time. Dresyl gave us our fighting spirit back, and built up the defences.
‘He was a great man, my father, and I’ll fight anyone who criticises him,’ shouted Nahkri, jumping up and shaking his fist. He shook it so energetically that he almost fell over backwards, and his brother had to prop him up.
None speaks against Dresyl. From the top of his tower, he could survey our surrounding country, the higher ground to the north, where he had come from, the lower to the south, and the geysers and hot springs, then strange to him. In particular, he was struck by the Hour-Whistler, our magnificent regular geyser, bursting up and whistling like a devil wind.
I recall he asked me about the giant cylinders, as he called them, spread all over the landscape. He had never seen rajabarals before. To him they looked like the towers of a magician, flat on top, made of strange wood. Though not a fool, he did not know them for trees.
He was mainly for doing, not looking. He ordered where all his tribe from the frozen lake would be quartered, distributed in different towers. There he showed a wisdom we might all follow, Nahkri. Although many grumbled at the time, Dresyl saw to it that his people lived in with ours. No fighting was allowed, and everything fairly shared. That rule as much as anything has caused us to intermingle happily.
While he was billeting families, he had everyone counted. He could not write, but our corpsmen kept a tally for him. The old tribe here numbered forty-one men, forty-five women, and eleven children under the age of seven. That made ninety-seven folk in all. Sixty-one folk from the frozen lake had survived the battle, which made one hundred and fifty-eight people all told. A goodly number. As a boy, I was glad to have some life round the place again. After the deaths, I mean.
I said to Dresyl, ‘You’ll enjoy being in Embruddock.’
‘It’s called Oldorando now, boy,’ he said. I can still remember how he looked at me.
‘Let’s hear more about Yuli,’ someone called out, risking the wrath of Nahkri and Klils. The hunter sat down, puffing, and a younger man took his