Helliconia Spring

VII • A COLD WELCOME FOR PHAGORS

“Lord or not, he’ll have to come to me,” Shay Tal said to Vry proudly, when in a still dimday they could not sleep.

But the new Lord of Embruddock also had his pride, and did not come.

His rule proved neither better nor worse than the previous one. He remained at odds with his council for one reason and with his young lieutenants for another.

Council and lord agreed where they could for the sake of a peaceful life; and one matter on which they could agree without inconvenience to themselves was on the subject of the troublesome academy. Discontent must not be allowed to breed. Needing the women to work communally, they could not forbid them to gather together, and so the prohibition was useless. Yet they did not revoke it—and that vexed the women.

Shay Tal and Vry met privately with Laintal Ay and Dathka.

“You understand what we’re trying to do,” Shay Tal said. “You persuade that stubborn man to change his mind. You are closer to him than I can manage.”

All that came of this meeting was that Dathka started making eyes at the reticent Vry. And Shay Tal became slightly more haughty.

Laintal Ay returned later from one of his solitary expeditions and sought Shay Tal out. Covered with mud, he squatted outside the women’s house until she emerged from the boilery.

When she appeared, she had with her two slaves bearing trays of fresh loaves. Vry walked in a docile way behind the slaves. Once more, Oldorando’s bread was ready, and Vry set off to supervise its distribution—though not before Shay Tal had snatched a spare loaf for Laintal Ay. She gave it to him, smiling and throwing back her unruly hair.

He munched gratefully, stamping his feet to warm them.

Milder weather, like the new lord, had proved more a convulsion than an actual progression. Now it was cold again, and the moisture beading Shay Tal’s dark eyelashes froze. All about, white stillness prevailed. The river still flowed, broad and dark, but its banks were fanged by icicles.

“How’s my young lieutenant? I see less of you these days.”

He swallowed down the last of the loaf, his first food in three days.

“Hunting has been difficult. We’ve had to travel far afield. Now that it’s colder again, the deer may move nearer home.”

He stood alertly, surveying her as she stood before him in her ill-fitting furs. In her coiled quietness was the quality that made people admire and stand back from her. He perceived before she spoke that she saw through his excuse.

“I think much of you, Laintal Ay, as I did of your mother. Remember your mother’s wisdom. Remember her example, and don’t turn against the academy, like some of your friends.”

“You know how Aoz Roon admires you,” he blurted out.

“I know the way he has of showing it.”

Seeing that he was disconcerted, she was more kind, and took his arm, walking with him, asking him where he had been. He glanced now and again at her sharp profile as he told her of a ruined village he had visited in the wilds. It lay half buried among boulders, its deserted streets like dried streambeds, fringed with roofless houses. All its wooden parts had been taken or had rotted away. Stone staircases ascended to floors that had long since disappeared, windows opened on prospects of tumbled rock. Toadstools grew in the doorsteps, driven snow accumulated in the fireplaces, birds made their nests in flaking alcoves.

“It’s part of the disaster,” said Shay Tal.

“It’s what happens,” he said innocently, and went on to tell of a small party of phagors he had stumbled across—not military ones, but humble fungusmongers, who had been as scared of him as he of them.

“You risk your life so needlessly.”

“I need to … I need to get away.”

“I have never left Oldorando. I must, I must—I want to get away as you do. I’m imprisoned. But I tell myself we are all prisoners.”

“I don’t see that, Shay Tal.”

“You will see. First, fate moulds our character; then character moulds our fate. Enough of that—you’re too young.”

“I’m not too young to help you. You know why the academy is feared. It may upset the smooth running of life. But you tell us that knowledge will contribute to a general good, isn’t that right?”

He regarded her half-smilingly, half-mockingly, and she thought, gazing back into his eyes, Yes, I understand how Oyre feels about you. She assented with an inclination of her head, smiling in return.

“Then you need to prove your case.”

She raised a fine eyebrow and said nothing. He lifted his hand and uncurled his dirty fingers before her eyes. In his palm lay the ears of two grasses, one with seeds arranged in delicate bells, the other shaped like a miniature teazle.

“Well, ma’am, can the academy pronounce upon these, and name them?”

After a moment’s hesitation, she said, “They are oats and rye, aren’t they?” She searched in her mental store of folk wisdom. “They were once a part of—farming.”

“I picked them beside the broken village, growing wild. There may have been fields of them once—before your catastrophe… There are other strange plants, too, climbing against the ruins in sheltered spots. You can make good bread with these grains. Deer like them—when the grazing’s good, the does will choose the oats and leave the rye.”

As he transferred the green things to her hands, she felt the rasp of the rye’s beard against her skin. “So why did you bring them to me?”

“Make us better bread. You have a way with loaves. Improve the bread. Prove to everyone that knowledge contributes to the general good. Then the ban on the academy will be lifted.”

“You are very thoughtful,” she said. “A special person.”

The praise embarrassed him. “Oh, many plants are springing up in the wilderness which can be used to benefit us.”

As he made to go, she said, “Oyre is very moody nowadays. What is troubling her?”

“You are wise—I thought you would know.”

Clutching the green seeds, she hitched her skins about her body and said warmly, “Come and talk to me more often. Don’t disregard my love for you.”

He smiled awkwardly and turned away. He was unable to express to Shay Tal or anyone else how witnessing the murder of Nahkri had clouded his life. Fools though they were, Nahkri and Klils were his uncles and had enjoyed life. The horror would not go away, though two years had passed. He also guessed that the difficulties he experienced with Oyre were part of the same involvement. Towards Aoz Roon, his feelings were now intensely ambivalent. The murder estranged his powerful protector even from his own daughter.

His silence since the deaths implicated him in Aoz Roon’s guilt. He had become almost as speechless as Dathka. Once he had fared forth on his solitary expeditions out of high spirits and a sense of adventure, now sorrow and unease drove him forth.

“Laintal Ay!” He turned at Shay Tal’s call.

“Come along and sit with me until Vry returns.”

The summons pleased and shamed him. He went quickly with her into her old rough refuge above the pigs, hoping none of his hunter friends saw him go. After the cold outside, its fug made him sleepy. Shay Tal’s furfuraceous old mother sat in a corner against the garderobe, droppings from which fell immediately to the animals below. The Hour-Whistler sounded the hour; darkness was already gathering in the room.

Laintal Ay greeted the old woman and sat himself down on skins beside Shay Tal.

“We’ll collect more seed and plant little fields of rye and oats,” she said. He knew by her tone she was pleased.

After a while, Vry returned with another woman, Amin Lim, a plump, motherly young woman who had appointed herself Shay Tal’s chief follower. Amin Lim went straight to the rear wall of the room, sitting cross-legged with her back to the stonework; she wished only to listen, and to be within sight of Shay Tal.

Vry was also self-effacing. She was of comparatively slight build. Her breasts scarcely made more show under her silver-grey furs than two onions would have done. Her face was narrow, but not without its good looks, because her eyes were deep-set and brilliant against the pale skin. Not for the first time, Laintal Ay thought that Vry bore a resemblance to Dathka; perhaps that accounted for Dathka’s attraction to her.

The one feature that marked Vry out was her hair. It was rich and dark. When seen in sunshine, it disclosed itself as dark brown, rather than the bluey black of Oldorandan hair. Her hair was the only indication that Vry was of mixed extraction; her mother had been a slave woman from the south of Borlien, light of hair and complexion, who had died when she entered into captivity.

Too young to feel resentment against her captors, Vry had been fascinated by everything in Oldorando. The stone towers and the hot water pipes had particularly excited her childish admiration. She poured out questions and gave her heart to Shay Tal, who answered them. Shay Tal appreciated the child’s lively mind, and took care of her as she grew up.

Under Shay Tal’s tuition, Vry learned to read and write. She was one of the most ardent members of the academy. Of recent years, more children were born; in her turn, Vry was now teaching some of them the letters of the Olonets alphabet.

Vry and Shay Tal began to give Laintal Ay an account of how they had discovered a system of passageways under the town. With a grid of passages running north-south and east-west, the system connected all the towers, or had once done so; earthquakes, floods, and other natural disasters had blocked some passages. Shay Tal had hoped to reach the pyramid that stood half-buried by the sacrifice grounds, since she believed that structure to contain treasures of all kinds, but sludge had buried the necessary passages up to the roof.

“Many things connect of which we have no understanding, Laintal Ay,” she said. “We live on the surface of the earth, yet I have heard that in Pannoval people live comfortably beneath it, and in Ottassol to the south, according to some traders. Perhaps the passages connect with the world below, where live the gossies and fessups. If we could find a way to them, in the flesh and not just in the spirit, then we should possess much buried knowledge. That would please Aoz Roon.”

Overcome by the warmth, Laintal Ay merely nodded in drowsy fashion.

“Knowledge is not just a buried thing like a brassimip,” Vry said. “Knowledge can be generated by observation. I believe there are passages through the air similar to the passages beneath us. When it is night, I watch the stars as they rise and set in progression across the sky. Some go by different passages—”

“They’re too far away to influence us,” said Shay Tal.

“Not so. All are Wutra’s. What he does there will influence us.”

“You were afraid underground,” said Shay Tal.

“And I believe the stars scare you, ma’am,” retorted Vry promptly.

Laintal Ay was amazed to hear this shy young woman, no older than he, drop her usual deferential manner and speak out to Shay Tal in this way; she had changed as much as the weather of late. Shay Tal appeared not to mind.

“Of what use are the underground passages?” he asked. “What do they signify?”

“They’re just a relic of some old forgotten past,” Vry said. “The future lies in the heavens.”

But Shay Tal said firmly, “They demonstrate what Aoz Roon denies, that this farmyard in which we live was once a grand place, filled with arts and sciences, and people that were better than we. There were more people, there must have been—all now transformed to fessups—dressed grandly, as Loil Bry used to dress. And they had many thoughts like brilliant birds in their heads. We are all that remains, us, with mud in our heads.”

Throughout the conversation, Shay Tal referred ever and again to Aoz Roon, gazing intensely into the dark corner of the room as she spoke.

The cold went, and rains came, then cold again, as if the weather at this period was specially designed to plague the people of Embruddock. The women did their work and dreamed of other places.

The plain was striped by folds which ran roughly in an east-west direction. Remains of snowdrifts still lay cupped in the synclines on northern sides of crests—tattered reminders of the snow desert that had once swathed the whole land. Now green stalks poked through the stippled snow, each stalk creating its own miniature rounded valley over which it was sole ruler.

Against the snow lay gigantic puddles, the most remarkable feature of the new landscape. They barred the entire landscape with parallel fish-shaped lakes, each reflecting fragments of the cloudy sky overhead.

This area had once formed rich hunting grounds. The game had gone with the snows, heading for drier grazing in the hills. In their place were flocks of black birds, wading phlegmatically on the margin of the transient lakes.

Dathka and Laintal Ay sprawled on a ridge, watching some moving figures. Both young hunters were soaked to the skin and in a bad humour. Dathka’s long hard face was creased into a scowl which hid his eyes. Where their fingers pressed into the mud, half-moons of water appeared. All about them were the sipping sounds of hydropic earth. Some way behind, six disappointed hunters squatted on their haunches, concealed behind a ridge; as they waited indifferently for a command from their leaders, their eyes followed birds winging overhead, and they blew softly on their damp thumbs.

The figures being observed were walking eastwards in single file along the top of a ridge, heads low before a fine drizzle. Behind the file lay a broad curve of the Voral. Moored against the Voral’s banks were three boats which had brought the hunters to invade traditional Oldorandan hunting grounds.

The invaders wore heavy leather boots and scoop-shaped hats which betrayed their origins.

“They’re from Borlien,” Laintal Ay said. “They’ve driven off what game there was. We’ll have to drive them off.”

“How? They’re too many.” Dathka spoke without taking his gaze from the moving figures in the distance. “This is our land, not theirs. But there are more than four handsful of them…”

“There’s one thing we can do: burn their boats. The fools have left only two men behind to guard them. We can deal with them.”

With no game to hunt, they might as well hunt Borlienians.

From one of the southerners they had recently captured, they knew the state of unrest that prevailed in Borlien. The people there lived in mud buildings, generally two stories high, with the animals below and their owners above. Recent unprecedented rains had washed the huts out of existence; whole populations were homeless.

As Laintal Ay’s party made its way towards the Voral, keeping from view of the boats, the rain increased. It came from the south. This was the beginning of the winter period. The rain fell capriciously in gusts, sprinkling the moving figures, then settling in more sullenly, until it beat a tattoo on their backs and moisture ran down their faces. They blew it from the ends of their blunt noses. Rain was something none of them had experienced until a few years ago; not a man in the party but wished for the crisp days of his childhood, with snow underfoot and deer stretching to the horizon. Now the horizon was hidden by dirty grey curtains, and the ground leaked.

The murk worked in their favour when they reached the riverbank. Here thick succulent grasses had sprang up as high as a man’s knee, despite recent frosts, grasses that bowed and shimmered under the pressure of the downpour. There was nothing to be seen as they ran forward except wavering grass, the overburdened clouds, and muddy water the colour of cloud. A fish plopped heavily in the river, sensing an extension of its universe.

The two Borlienian guards, crouching for shelter in their boats, were killed without a struggle; perhaps they thought it better to die than get any wetter. Their bodies were cast into the water. They floated against the boats, and blood spread from their corpses, while the firemaker of the party tried vainly to make fire; the river was shallow at this point, and the bodies would not go away even when struck at by oars. With air trapped under their skins, they drifted just below the rain- pocked surface of the water.

“All right, all right,” Dathka said impatiently. “Leave the firemaking. Break up the boats instead, men.”

“We can use the boats ourselves,” Laintal Ay suggested. “Let’s row them to Oldorando.”

The others stood and watched impassively as the two youths argued.

“What will Aoz Roon say when we return home without meat?”

“We’ll have the boats to show him.”

“Even Aoz Roon doesn’t eat boats.” Laughter greeted the remark.

They climbed into the boats and juggled with the oars. The dead men were left behind. They managed to row themselves slowly back to Oldorando, the rain beating continually in their faces.

Aoz Roon’s reception of his subjects was morose. He glared at Laintal Ay and the other hunters with a silence they found more daunting than words, since he offered them nothing to refute. At last, he turned from them and stood staring out of his open window at the rain.

“We can go hungry. We have gone hungry before. But we have other troubles. Faralin Ferd’s party have returned from foraging in the north. They sighted a party of fuggies in the distance, riding kaidaws and heading this way. They say it looks like a war party.”

The hunters looked at each other.

“How many fuggies?” one asked.

Aoz Roon shrugged his shoulders.

“Were they coming from Dorzin Lake?” Laintal Ay asked.

Aoz Roon merely shrugged his shoulders again, as if he found the question irrelevant.

He swung round on his audience, fixing them with his heavy gaze. “What do you think is the best strategy in the circumstances?”

When there was no reply, he answered his own question. “We’re not cowards. We go out and attack them before they arrive here and try to burn Oldorando down, or whatever is in their thick harneys to do.”

“They won’t attack in this weather,” an older hunter said. “The fuggies hate water. Only extreme madness can drive them into water. It ruins their coats.”

“The times are extreme,” Aoz Roon said, striding restlessly about. “The world will drown under this rain. When’s the eddring snow coming back?”

He dismissed them, and paddled through the mud to see Shay Tal. Vry and her other close friend, Amin Lim, were sitting with her, copying out a design. He sent them packing.

He and Shay Tal looked warily at each other, she at his wet face and his air of having more to say that he could express, he at the wrinkles under her eyes, the first white hairs glinting in her dark locks.

“When will this rain stop?”

“The weather’s getting worse again. I want to plant rye and oats.”

“You’re suppose to be so wise, you and your women—you tell me what will happen.”

“I don’t know. Winter’s setting in. Perhaps it will get colder.”

“Snow? How I’d love the damned snow back, and the rain gone.” He made an angry gesture, raising his fists, then dropping them again.

“If it gets colder, the rain will turn into snow.”

“Wutra’s scumble, what a female answer! Have you no certainty for me, Shay Tal? No certainty in this damned uncertain world?”

“No more than you have for me.”

He turned on his heel, to pause at her door. “If your women don’t work, they won’t eat. We can’t have people idle—you understand that.”

He left her without a word more. She followed him to the door and stood there, frowning. She was vexed that he had not given her a chance to say no to him again; it would have renewed her sense of purpose. But his mind, she realised, had not really been on her at all, but on more important questions.

She hunched her rough garments about her and went to sit on her bed. When Vry returned, she was still in that attitude, but jumped up guiltily at the sight of her young friend.

“We must always be positive,” she said. “If I were a sorceress, I would bring back the snows, for Aoz Roon’s sake.”

“You are a sorceress,” Vry said loyally.

News of the approaching phagors travelled fast. Those who remembered the last raid on the town spoke of nothing else. They talked of it at night as they tumbled, rathel-rich, into their beds; they talked of it at dawn, grinding grain by goose light.

“We can contribute more than talk,” Shay Tal told them. “You have brave hearts, women, as well as quick tongues. We’ll show Aoz Roon what we can do. I want you to listen to my idea.”

They decided that the academy, which must always justify its existence in the eyes of the men, should propose a plan of attack that would spare Oldorando. Choosing suitable ground, the women would reveal themselves at a safe place where the phagors would see them. When the phagors approached, they would be ambushed by the hunters, waiting concealed on either flank to cut them down. The women screamed and cried for blood as they discussed the idea.

When the plan had been discussed to their satisfaction, they chose one of their prettiest girls to act as emissary to Aoz Roon. The girl was almost of an age with Vry; she was Dol Sakil, daughter of the old midwife, Rol Sakil. Oyre escorted Dol to her father’s tower, where the girl was to present Shay Tal’s compliments and to request him to come to the women’s house: there a defensive proposal would be presented to him.

“He won’t take much notice of me, will he?” Dol said. Oyre smiled and pushed her ahead.

The women waited while the rain poured down outside.

It was midmorning when Oyre returned. She was alone, and looking furious. Finally she burst out with the truth. Her father had rejected the invitation—and kept Dol Sakil. He regarded her as a present from the academy. Dol would live with him from now on.

At this news, a high anger overcame Shay Tal. She fell to the floor. She danced with rage. She screamed and tore her hair. She gestured and swore vengeance on all imbecile men. She prophesied that they would all be eaten alive by phagors, while their supposed leader lay in bed copulating with an imbecile child. Many other terrible things she said. Her companions could not calm her and went in fear of her. Vry and Oyre were driven away.

“It is a vexation,” said Rol Sakil, “but it will be nice for Dol.”

Then Shay Tal gathered her clothes about her body and stormed down into the lane, to stand before the big tower where Aoz Roon lived. The rain poured on her face as she cried aloud the scandal of his conduct, daring him to show himself.

Her noise was so great that men of the makers corps and some hunters ran out to listen. They stood against the ruinous buildings for shelter, grinning, with folded arms, while the downpour beat the steam from the geysers close to the ground, and mud bubbled between their boots.

Aoz Roon came to the window of his tower. He looked down and shouted to Shay Tal to go away. She shook her fist at him. She screamed that he was abominable, and his behaviour such that all Embruddock would meet with disaster.

At this juncture, Laintal Ay arrived and took Shay Tal by the arm. He spoke lovingly. She stopped screaming a moment to listen. He said that she must not despair. The hunters knew how to handle phagors. Aoz Roon knew. They would go out and fight when the weather improved.

“When! If! Who are you to make conditions, Laintal Ay? You men are so weak!” She raised her fists to the clouds. “You will follow my plan or else disaster will strike you down—and you, Aoz Roon, you hear? I see it all clearly with an inner eye.”

“Yes, yes.” Laintal Ay tried to hush her.

“Don’t touch me! Just follow the plan. The plan or death! And if that fool leader, so called, hopes to remain leader, he must give up Dol Sakil from his couch. Raper of children! Doom! Doom!”

These prophecies were uttered with wild assurance. Shay Tal continued her harangue with variations, damning all ignorant and brutal men. Everyone was impressed. The downpour increased. The towers dripped. The hunters grinned mirthlessly at each other. More onlookers arrived in the lane, eager for drama.

Laintal Ay called up to Aoz Roon that he was convinced of the truth of what Shay Tal said. He advised Aoz Roon to fall in with the prophecies. The women’s plan sounded a good one.

Again Aoz Roon appeared at his window. His face was as black as his furs. Despite his anger, he was subdued. He agreed to follow the women’s plan when the weather improved. Not before. Certainly not before. Also, he was going to keep Dol Sakil. She was in love with him and needed his protection.

“Barbarian! Ignorant barbarian! You’re all barbarians, fit only for this stinking farmyard. Wickedness and ignorance have brought us low!”

Shay Tal marched up and down the lane in the mud, screaming. The prize barbarian was the uncouth rapist whose name she refused to speak. They lived only in a farmyard, a pool of mud, and they had forgotten the grandeur that once was Embruddock. All the ruins lying outside their miserable barricades had once been fine towers, clad in gold, all that was now mud and filth had once been paved with fine marble. The town had been four times its present size, and everything had been beautiful—clean and beautiful. The sanctity of women had been respected. She clutched her wet furs to herself and sobbed.

She would no longer live in such a filthy place. She was going to live at a distance, beyond the barricades. If the phagors came by night, or the wily Borlienians, and caught her, why should she care? What had she to live for? They were disaster’s children, all of them.

“Peace, peace, woman,” said Laintal Ay, splashing along beside her.

She rejected him contemptuously. She was only an ageing woman whom nobody loved. She alone saw truth. They would regret it when she was gone.

Thereupon, Shay Tal suited deeds to words, and commenced moving her few goods to one of the ruinous towers standing among the rajabarals, outside the fortifications to the northeast. Vry and others assisted her, splashing back and forth through the rain with her poor possessions.

The rain stopped next day. Two remarkable events occurred. A flock of small birds of a kind unknown flew over Oldorando and wheeled about its towers. The air was full of their twittering. The flock would not settle in the village proper. It alighted on the isolated towers beyond, especially on the ruin to which Shay Tal had exiled herself. Here the birds set up a remarkable noise. They had small beaks and red heads, with feathers of red and white on their wings, and a darting flight. Some hunters ran forth with nets and tried to catch the birds, without success.

The event was considered an omen.

The second event was even more alarming.

The Voral flooded.

Rain had caused the river to rise. As the Hour-Whistler sounded noon, a great swell approached from upstream and the direction of distant Dorzin Lake. An old woman, Molas Ferd, was down by the riverbank collecting geese scumble when she sighted the swell. She straightened as much as she was able and stared in amazement as a wall of water bore down on her. Geese and ducks took fright, clattering up to perch on the barricades. But old Molas Ferd stood where she was, shovel in hand, staring openmouthed at the waters. They rushed upon her and hurled her against the side of the women’s house.

The flood filled the village before subsiding, washing away grain, invading people’s homes, drowning sows. Molas Ferd was battered to death.

The hamlet was turned into a swamp. Only the tower where Shay Tal had taken up residence was spared the onslaught of muddy waters.

This period marked the true beginning of Shay Tal’s reputation as a sorceress. All who had heard her cry out against Aoz Roon sit inside and muttered.

That evening, as first Batalix, then Freyr set in the west, turning the flood waters to blood, the temperature dropped dramatically. The village was filled with thin crackling ice.

Next Freyr-dawn, the town was aroused by Aoz Roon’s angry shouting. The women, scuffling into their boots to go to work, listened in dismay, and woke their menfolk. Aoz Roon was taking a leaf from Shay Tal’s book.

“Out you come, damn you all! You’re going to fight the phagors today, every one of you! I set my resolve against your idleness. Rise, rise, all of you, get up and fight. If phagors are to be found, then phagors you will fight. I fought them single- handed, you scum can fight them together. This will be a great day in history, you hear me, a great day, even if you all die!”

As the dawn clouds scudded bleakly overhead, his great figure in its black furs stood on top of the tower, fist waving. With his other hand, Aoz Roon clutched a struggling Dol Sakil, who fought and yelled to get out of the cold. Eline Tal loomed behind them, grinning feebly.

“Yes, we’ll slay the milk-struck phagors according to the women’s plan—you hear that, you idle quemes of the academy?—we’ll fight according to the women’s plan, for good or ill—carry it out to the letter. By the original boulder, we’ll see what happens today, we’ll see whether or not Shay Tal talks sense, we’ll see what her prophecies are worth!”

A few figures were emerging in the lane, clattering through the thin ice, staring up at their lord. Many clutched each other timidly, but old Rol Sakil, mother of Dol, cackled and said, “He must be well developed, yelling like that—that’s what our Dol said he was. Bawls like a bull!”

He came to the edge of the parapet and glared down at them, dragging Dol with him, still shouting.

“Yes, we’ll see what her words are worth, we’ll test her. We’ll test Shay Tal in battle, since you all seem to think so much of her. Do you hear me, Shay Tal? We’ll make or break today, and blood shall flow, red or yellow.”

He spat down at them, then withdrew. The trapdoor slammed after him as he climbed back into his tower.

When they had eaten some black bread, everyone set forth, urged on by the hunters. All were subdued, even Aoz Roon. His storm of words had blown itself out. They proceeded in a southeasterly direction. The weather remained below freezing. The day was still, the suns were lost in cloud. The ground was hard and ice crackled underfoot.

Shay Tal went with them, keeping in with the women, her mouth pursed, her skins swinging about her thin body.

Progress was slow, for the women were unaccustomed to walking distances that meant nothing to the men. They came at length to the broken plain from which Laintal Ay’s hunting party had sighted the Borlienians only two days before the Voral flooded. Here lay the series of ridges with shallow flood lakes between, glinting like stranded fish. Here the ambush could be set up. The cold would bring out phagors, if there were any. Batalix had set, unseen.

They went down into the plain, men first, the women following, in confined groups. All were apprehensive under the hard sky.

By the edge of the first flood lake, the women halted, looking at Shay Tal in none too friendly a fashion. They realised the danger of their position, should any phagors arrive—particularly if they came mounted. No amount of anxious glancing about could reassure them on that score, for the ridges restricted their view.

They were exposed to danger and the elements. The temperature remained two or three degrees below freezing. Quiet reigned; the air was hard. The shallow lake lay silent before them. It was some forty metres wide by one hundred metres long, occupying the hollow between two ridges with its unwelcoming expanse. Its waters were motionless but still unfrozen, reflecting the sky without a ripple. Its sullen appearance increased a certain supernatural fear which fell upon the women as they watched the hunters disappear over the ridge. Even the grass at their feet, crisped by frost, seemed under a curse, and no birds cried.

The men were unhappy about having their womenfolk nearby. They stood in a neighbouring depression, by another lake, and complained about their leader.

“We’ve seen no sign of phagors,” Tanth Ein said, blowing on his nails. “Let’s turn back. Supposing they destroyed Oldorando while we were away? A fine thing that would be.”

The cloud of breath about their heads united them as they leaned on their spears and looked accusingly at Aoz Roon. The latter paced about, keeping himself separate from them, his expression black.

“Turn back? You talk like women. We came to fight, and fight we will, even if we throw our lives to Wutra while we do so. If there are phagors near, I’ll summon them. Stand where you are.”

He went at a run to the top of the ridge behind him, so that the women were again within his view, intending to shout at the top of his voice and awaken all the echoes in the wilderness.

But the enemy was already in view. Now, too late, he understood why they had seen no more wandering Borlienians; they had been driven off. Like old Molas Ferd before the flood, he stood paralysed before the sight of humanity’s ancient enemy.

The women straggled at one end of the fish-shaped lake, the ancipitals grouped at the other. The women made frightened and uncertain movements; the ancipitals were motionless. Even in their surprise, the women responded individually; the phagors could be seen only as a group.

It was impossible to make out the number of the enemy. They merged together with the late afternoon mists filling the hollow, and with the scarred greys and blues of the scene. One of them gave a thick protracted cough; otherwise they might have been lifeless.

Their white birds had settled on a ridge behind them, at first with some jostling, now spaced out regularly, with heads submissively on one side, like the souls of those departed.

From their frosty outline, it could be determined that three of the phagors—presumably the leaders—were mounted on kaidaws. They sat, as was their habit, leaning forward with their heads close to their mounts’ heads, as if communion was in progress. The foot phagors clustered against the flanks of the kaidaws, shoulders hunched. Nearby boulders were not more still.

The cougher coughed again. Aoz Roon threw off his spell and called to his men.

They climbed along the crest of the ridge, to stare at the enemy in dismay.

In response, the phagors made a sudden move. Their strangely jointed limbs geared themselves from immobility to action with no intermediate stage. The shallow lake had checked their advance. They had a well-known aversion to water, but times were changing; their harneys said “Forward.” The sight of thirty human gillots at their mercy decided them. They charged.

One of the three mounted brutes swung a sword above his head. With a churring cry, he kicked his kaidaw, and mount and rider burst forward. The other brutes followed as one, whether mounted or running. Forward they dashed—into the waters of the shallow lake.

Panic scattered the women. Now that their adversary was almost on them, they ran hither and thither between the ridges. Some climbed one side, some the other, making small sharp noises of despair, like birds in distress.

Only Shay Tal remained where she was, facing the charge, and Vry and Amin lim clung to her in terror, hiding their faces.

“Run, you fool woman!” bellowed Aoz Roon, coming down the ridge at a run.

Shay Tal did not hear his voice above the shrieks and the furious splashing. She stood firm at the end of the fish lake and flung out her arms, as if gesturing to the phagor horde to halt.

Then the transformation. Then the moment that ever after in the annals of Oldorando would be referred to as the miracle of Fish lake.

Some claimed later that a shrilling note rang through the frosty air, some said a high voice spoke, some vowed Wutra struck.

The whole group of marauders, sixteen in number, had entered the lake, led by the three mounted stalluns. Their rage drove them into the alien element, they were thigh deep in it, churning it up with the fury of their charge, when the entire lake froze.

One moment it was an absolutely still liquid, lying, because undisturbed, unfrozen at three degrees below freezing point. The next moment disturbed, it became solid. Kaidaws and phagors all were locked in its embrace. One kaidaw fell, never to rise again, The others froze where they were, and their riders froze with them, hemmed in ice. The stalluns behind, brandishing their arms—all were trapped, held in the grip of the element they had invaded. None took as much as one further step. None could fight free to gain the safety of the shore. Soon, their veins froze within their bodies, despite the ancient biochemistries that coloured their bloodstream and protected it from the cold. Their coarse white coats became further sheathed in rime, their glaring eyes frosted over.

What was organic became one with the great inorganic world that ruled.

The tableau of furious death was absolute, carved from ice.

Above it white birds wheeled and dipped, crying with gaping beaks, finally making off to the east in desolate flight.

Next morning, three people rose up early from a skin bivouac. Powdery snow had fallen during the night, giving the wilderness a peppery appearance. Freyr ascended from the horizon, casting watery purple shadows over the plain. Several minutes later, the second faithful sentinel also struggled free into Wutra’s realm.

By then, Aoz Roon, Laintal Ay, and Oyre were on their feet, beating and stamping circulation into their limbs. They coughed, but were otherwise silent. After looking at each other without speaking they moved forward. Aoz Roon stepped out onto the lake of ice, which rang beneath his tread.

The three of them walked across to the frozen tableau.

They stared at it almost in disbelief. Before them was a monumental piece of statuary, fine in detail, wild in imagining. One kaidaw lay almost under the hoofs of the other two, the greater part of its bulk submerged by brittle waves, its head rearing up in fear, its nostrils distended. Its rider struggled for control half fallen from its back, terrible in immobility.

All the figures were caught in mid-action, many with weapons raised, eyes staring ahead to the shore they would never reach. All were encased in rime. They formed a monument to brutality.

Finally, Aoz Roon nodded and spoke. His voice was subdued.

“It did happen. Now I believe. Let’s got back.”

The miracle of Year 24 was confirmed.

He had sent the rest of the party back to Oldorando the previous evening, under Dathka’s leadership. Only after he had slept could he believe he did not dream the incident.

Nobody else said anything. They had been saved by a miracle; the thought dazed their minds, silenced their tongues. They trudged away from the alarming sculpture without another word.

Once they were back in Oldorando, Aoz Roon ordered one of his slaves to be taken by two hunters to Fish Lake, to the site of the miracle. When the slave had seen the tableau with his own eyes, his hands were lashed behind his back, he was faced towards the south, and booted on his way. Back in Borlien, he would tell his fellows that a powerful sorceress watched over Oldorando.