Helliconia Summer - Brian W. Aldiss [72]
This brute wore strange accoutrements. A broad stomacher fashioned from hide was strapped round his girth; spurs at ankle and wrist supported protruding spikes. The elegant razored horns were capped with metal. It fitted his gigantic skull like a harness, coming to a two-pronged point in the centre of the forehead between the eyes, curving behind the ears, and fastening elaborately under the jaw so as to encompass the long boney chops.
Baruin stepped forward and said, ‘See what our concerted action has achieved. We have captured a chief. By his headgear, this beast leads a component. Look at him well, you young men who have never before seen a fuggie close, for they are our traditional enemy, in darkness and light.’
Many young hunters stepped forward and tugged the creature’s matted hair. He stood unmoving and let forth a fart like a small thunderclap. They fell back, alarmed.
‘Fuggies organise their herds into components,’ Dresyl explained. ‘Most can speak Olonets. They take humans as slaves, and are beastly enough to eat their captives. As a chief, this brute understands all we say. Don’t you?’ He clouted its rough shoulder. The monster stared coldly at him.
The old lord, standing beside Dresyl, spoke.
‘The male phagors are called stalluns and the females gillots or fillocks, that I know. Males and females alike go on raids and fight together. They are creatures of ice and darkness. Your great ancestor Yuli warned against them. They are bringers of illness and death.’
Then the phagor spoke, using the Olonets in a hoarse churring voice.
‘You worthless Sons of Freyr will all blow away before the final storm! This world, this town, belong to us, the ancipitals.’
The women in the crowd were frightened. They threw stones at the evil thing that spoke in their midst, and shouted, ‘Kill him, kill him!’
Dresyl raised an arm, pointing.
‘Drag him up to the top of the herb tower, friends! Drag him to the top and throw him off.’
‘Yes, yes,’ they roared, and at once the bolder hunters ran forward, seized the great stubborn bulk and, by sheer force, thrust it towards the nearby building. Great cheering and commotion reigned, children ran screaming round their elders.
Among those urchins were the two sons of Dresyl, Nahkri and Klils, both scarcely out of toddling stage. Because they were so small, they were able to stagger through the legs of the milling adults, and so came up against the right leg of the phagor, rising like a shaggy column before their eyes.
‘You touch it.’
‘No, you.’
‘You daren’t, coward!’
‘You’re a coward too!’
Putting forth chubby fingers, they touched the leg together.
Heavy musculature moved below a rug of hair. The limb lifted, the three-toed foot stamped down in the mud.
Though these monstrous creatures could master the Olonets tongue, they were far from human. The thoughts in the harneys of their heads ran aslant. Old hunters knew that inside their barrel bodies they carried their intestines above their lungs. From their machinelike walk, it could be seen how their limbs were jointed in a different way from a man’s; at what should have been elbow and knee, phagors could bend lower arms and legs in impossible attitudes. That distinction alone was enough to strike terror into small boys’ hearts.
For a moment they were in contact with the unknown. Pulling back their hands as if they had been burnt – in truth, the ancipital body temperature was cooler than man’s – the two urchins looked at each other with wild eyes.
Then they burst into howls of fear. Dly Hoin swept the boys into her arms. By then, Dresyl and others had shifted the monster on.
Although the great animal struggled in its bonds, it was hammered through the entrance and into the tower. The crowd, restless in the square, listened to the noise within, which worked its way up the building. A cheer rose in the thick air as the first hunter emerged on the roof. Behind everybody, the kaidaw carcass roasted, untended; its flavours mingled with wood smoke to fill the bowl of the square, full of upturned faces. A second