Helliconia Summer - Brian W. Aldiss [92]
The victim had already shed its individuality. Although its eyes rolled, it made no sound, stilled as if awed by the presence of Wutra.
As the four slaves stepped back, Nahkri and Klils appeared. Over their furs they had assumed cloaks of stammel, dyed red. Their women accompanied them to the edge of the crowd, then left them to proceed alone. Their straggling rat beards for once lent solemnity to their visages; indeed their pallor matched that of the victim on whom Nahkri bent his regard as he picked up the axe. He hefted this formidable instrument. A gong was struck.
Nahkri stood there, balancing the axe in both hands, the slighter figure of his brother just behind him. As the pause lengthened, a murmur came from the crowd. There was a time for the sundering stroke: miss that time, and who knew what might befall the sentinels. The murmur expressed an almost unspoken mistrust of the two ruling brothers.
‘Strike!’ cried a voice from the massed ranks. The Hour-Whistler sounded.
‘I can’t do it,’ Nahkri said, lowering the axe. ‘I won’t do it. A fuggie, yes. Not a human, not even a Borlienian. I can’t.’
His younger brother lurched forward and grasped the instrument. ‘You coward – making us look fools before everyone. I’ll do it myself and shame you. I’ll show you who’s the better man, you queme!’
With teeth bared, he swung the axe up on his shoulder. He glared down into the stark face of the victim, which stared up from its depression as from a grave.
Klils’ muscles twitched, appearing to disobey him. The blade of the instrument signalled back the rays of sunset. Then it was lowered, and rested against the stone, while Klils leaned over the shaft, groaning.
‘I should have drunk more rathel …’
An answering groan came from the crowd. The sentinels now had their discs entangled with the unkempt horizon.
Individual voices made themselves heard.
‘They’re a couple of clowns …’
‘They listened too much to Loil Bry, I say.’
‘It was their father stuffing them full of head learning – the muscles are weakened.’
‘Have you been on the nest too much, Klils?’ That coarse shouted question drew laughter, and the sullen mood was broken. The mob closed in as Klils let the axe slip into the trampled mud.
Aoz Roon ran forward, breaking away from his fellows, and seized up the instrument. He growled like a hound, and the two brothers fell away from him, protesting feebly. They stumbled back farther, arms raised protectively, as Aoz Roon swung the axe above his head.
The suns were going down, half sunk with glory in a sea of dark. Their light was spilled like yolk from two goose eggs, drab gold, as if phagor and human blood were mingled over the stagnant waste. Bats flittered. The hunters raised their fists and cheered Aoz Roon.
Sun rays converged on the pyramid, and were split into bars of shadow by its peak. The divided lights ran precisely along the flanks of the worn stone on which the victim lay, defining its shape. The victim himself was in shadow.
The blade of the instrument of execution swung in sunlight, bit in shade.
After the clean clop of the stroke came a united sound from the crowd, a kind of echoing stroke from lungs exhaling in unison, as though all present also gave up the ghost.
The victim’s head fell severed to one side, as if kissing the confining stone. It began to drown in blood, which gushed up from the wound and spread, trickling down into the earth. It was running still as the last segment of the sentinels drowned below the horizon.
Ceremonial blood was the thing, the magic fluid that fought non-life, precious human blood. It would continue to drip throughout the night, lighting the two sentinels among the vents and passages of the original boulder, seeing them safe to another morning.
The crowd was satisfied. Bearing their torches aloft, they made their way back through