Helliconia Summer

XIII A Way to Better Weaponry

The little year advanced, though seasonal effects were virtually obliterated under the great flood of Freyr’s summer. The Church celebrated its special days. Volcanoes erupted. The suns swung over the bent backs of the peasants.

King JandolAnganol grew thin from waiting for his bill of divorcement to arrive. He planned another campaign in the Cosgatt, to defeat Darvlish and regain a measure of popularity. He camouflaged his inner anguish with constant nervous activity. Wherever he went, the phagor runt Yuli followed—together with other shades which vanished as the king turned his eagle gaze towards them.

JandolAnganol prayed, suffered a flagellation at the hands of his vicar, bathed, dressed, and strode out to the courtyard of the palace where the hoxneys were stabled. He wore a rich keedrant with forms of animals embroidered on it, silk trousers, and high leather boots. Over the keedrant he buckled leather armour trimmed with silver embellishments.

His favourite steed, Lapwing, was saddled. He mounted her. Yuli ran up, yipping and calling him Father; JandolAnganol pulled the creature up behind him. They set off at a trot into the hilly parkland behind the palace. Accompanying the king at a respectful distance went a detachment of the First Phagorian Guard—in whom, during these dangerous times, JandolAnganol reposed more trust than ever before.

The warm wind was on his cheek. He breathed deep.

Everything about was dusted with grey in honour of distant Rustyjonnik.

“It’s zzhoodin’ today,” called Yuli.

“Yes, shooting.”

In a dell where brassims sent up their leathery branches, a target had been established. Several men in dark clothes were busy making arrangements. They became immobile as the king arrived, testifying to his power to freeze blood by his very majesty. The Phagorian arrived silently and formed a line, blocking the mouth of the dell.

Yuli jumped from Lapwing and scampered about, insensitive to occasion. The king remained in his saddle, brow ominous, as if he had power to freeze himself.

One of the frozen figures moved forward and saluted the king. He was a small thin man of unusual physiognomy, who wore the harsh sacklike garb of his trade.

His name was SlanjivalIptrekira. The name was regarded as rude and funny. Possibly it was this life’s handicap which caused SlanjivalIptrekira in middle age to sport a great amount of gingerish, side-whisker, reinforced by a phagor-ear moustache. This lent his otherwise mild aspect a ferocity, as well as creating a countenance with more sideways than vertical dimension.

He licked his lips nervously as he endured the hawkish gaze of the sovereign. His unease was occasioned, not by the innuendo of his name, but by the fact that he was Royal Armourer and Chief Ironmaster of the Ironmakers Corps. And by the fact that six matchlocks built under his direction in imitation of a Sibornalese artillery piece were about to be tested.

This was his second testing. An earlier six prototypes, tested half a tenner previously, had all failed to work. Hence the licking of the lips. Hence a tendency of SlanjivalIptrekira’s knees to concatenate.

The king remained upright in the saddle. He raised a hand in signal. Figures came to life.

Six phagor sergeants were delegated to test the guns one by one. They marched forward, bovine faces expressionless, heavy shoulders set, their great shaggy bulks contrasting with the scraggy anatomies of the armourers.

SlanjivalIptrekira’s new weapon bore the outward appearance of the original. The metal barrel was four feet long. It was bedded into a wooden stock which curved down to a foot a further two feet long. The barrel was bound to the stock with copper bands. The striking mechanism was forged of the best quality iron that the foundries of the Ironmakers Corps could produce. Silver chasing, decorated with religious symbols, had been added to the stock. As in the original, the weapon was loaded from the muzzle end by means of a ramrod.

The first phagor sergeant came up with the first weapon. He held it while an armourer primed it. The sergeant knelt, his lower leg turning forward instead of back, in a posture no human could achieve. At the muzzle end of the piece, a tripod supported part of the weight. The sergeant took aim.

“Ready, sire,” said SlanjivalIptrekira, looking anxiously from weapon to majesty. The king gave an almost imperceptible nod.

The striker came down. The powder fizzled. With a mighty explosion, the gun blew to pieces.

The sergeant fell backwards, giving a guttural cry. Yuli ran squealing into the bushes. Lapwing shied. Birds flew screaming from the trees.

JandolAnganol steadied his mare.

“Try Number Two.”

The sergeant was helped away, his face and chest leaking ichor. He made a small bleating noise. A second sergeant took his place.

The second gun exploded more violently than the first. Splinters of wood struck the king’s chest armour. The sergeant had part of his jaw blown away.

The third gun would not fire. After repeated attempts, the ball rolled from its muzzle to the ground. The Royal Armourer laughed nervously, face ashen. “Better luck next time,” he said.

There was better luck with the fourth gun. It went off as intended, and the ball buried itself near the edge of the target. It was a large target designed for archery and stood only two dozen paces away, but the firing was accounted a success.

The fifth gun cracked dismally along its barrel. The sixth gun fired its ball, although the target was missed.

The armourers stood close together, studying the ground at their feet.

SlanjivalIptrekira came to the king’s horse. He saluted again. His moustache trembled.

“We make some progress. Our charges are perhaps too strong, sire.”

“On the contrary, your metals are too weak. Be back here again in a week’s time with six perfect weapons, or I’ll flay every member of your corps, from you downwards, and drive you skinless into the Cosgatt.”

He took one of the ruined guns, whistled up Yuli, and galloped away towards the palace, across the grey sward.

The innermost part of the palace-fortress—its heart, if palace-fortresses have hearts—was stifling. The sky above was overcast, and an echo of it was to be found on the ground, in every corner, on every ledge, cornice, moulding, nook and cranny, where the exhalations of distant Rustyjonnik refused to be swept away. Only when the king had passed through a thick wooden door, and then a second as thick as the first, did he escape the ash.

As the steps wound downwards, dark and cold thickened about him to embrace him like a soaked rug as he entered the subterranean set of chambers reserved for royal guests.

JandolAnganol strode through three interconnecting rooms. The first was the most fearful; it had served as a guard room, a kitchen, a mortuary, and a torture chamber, and still contained equipment relating to those earlier roles. The second was a bedroom, containing merely a bunk, though it too had served as a mortuary, and looked better suited to that purpose. In the end room sat VarpalAnganol.

The old king remained wrapped in a blanket, his feet against a grate in which smouldered a log fire. A high grille in the wall behind him allowed light to filter in and define him as a darkish lump on top of which a wispy skull was perched.

These things JandolAnganol had seen many times. The shape, the blanket, the chair, the grille, the floor, even the log that never burned properly in the dank atmosphere—all these did not alter through the years. It seemed as if only here, throughout his whole kingdom, could he look on enduring things.

Making a noise suggesting that he might need to clear his throat, the old king half-turned in his chair. His expression was half vacant, half crazy.

“It’s I—Jan.”

“I thought it was that same path again… where the fish jumped… You…’He struggled to disentangle himself from his thoughts. That’s you, Jan? Where’s Father? What time is it?”

“Nearly fourteen, if that’s of any interest to you.”

“Time’s always of interest.” VarpalAnganol gave a ghostly chuckle. “Isn’t it time that Borlien bumped into Freyr?”

“That’s an old wives’ tale. I’ve something to show you.”

“What old wife? Your mother’s dead, lad. I haven’t seen her for… or was she here? I forget. It may warm this palace up a bit… I thought I smelt burning.”

“It’s a volcano.”

“I see. A volcano. I thought it might be Freyr. Sometimes my thoughts wander… Do you want to sit down, lad?” He began struggling to his feet, but JandolAnganol pushed him back into the chair.

“Have you found Roba yet? He’s born now, isn’t he?”

“I don’t know where he is—he’s out of his wits, certainly.”

The old king gave a cackle. “Very shrewd. Sanity can drive you mad, you know… You remember how the fish used to jump in that pool? Well, there always was something wild about Roba. Almost a man now, I suppose. If he’s not here, he can’t shut you up, can he? Nor can you marry him off. What’s her name? Cune. She’s gone, too.”

“She’s in Gravabagalinien.”

“Good. I hope he doesn’t kill her. Her mother was a fine woman. What about my old friend Rushven? Is Rushven dead? I don’t know what you do up there half the time. If you can halve time.”

“Rushven’s gone. I told you. My agents report that he has fled to Sibornal, much good that will do him.”

Silence fell between them. JandolAnganol stood with matchlock in hand, reluctant to break into his father’s rambling thoughts. He was getting worse than ever.

“Perhaps he’ll see the Great Wheel of Kharnabhar. It’s their sacred symbol, you know.” With a struggle, and only by letting his blanket slip, he managed to screw his stiff old neck round to look at his son. “It’s their sacred symbol, I said.”

“I know it.”

Then try and answer when I speak to you… What about that other fellow, the Uskuti, yes, Pasharatid? Did they catch him?”

“No. His wife left too, a tenner ago.”

The old man sank back into the chair, sighing. His hands twitched nervously at the blanket. “Sounds to me as if Matrassyl’s almost empty.”

JandolAnganol turned his face away, towards the grey square of light. “Just me and the phagors.”

“Did I tell you what Io Pasharatid used to do, Jan? When he was allowed to come and see me? Curious behaviour for a man of the northern continent. They are very self-controlled—not passionate, like the Borlienese.”

“Did you scheme with him to overthrow me?”

“I just sat here while he dragged a table through, a heavy table. He used to put it under that little window. Did you ever hear such a thing?”

JandolAnganol began to pace about the cell, darting his gaze into the corners as if seeking a way of escape.

“He wanted to admire the view from your luxurious apartment.”

The figure in the chair gave a bleat of laughter. “Precisely so. Admiring the view. Well put. A good phrase. And the view was of… well, if you get the table yourself, lad, you will see. You will see the windows of MyrdemInggala’s apartments, and her verandah…” He broke off for a dry cough which rattled in his throat. The king paced faster. “You get a view of the reservoir where Cune used to swim naked with her ladies-in-waiting. Before you sent her away this was, of course…”

“What happened, Father?”

“Well, that’s what happened. I told you but you didn’t listen. The ambassador used to climb on to that table and watch your queen with nothing on, or wearing only a piece of muslin… Very… very unorthodox behaviour for a Sibornalese. A Uskuti. Or for anyone really.”

“Why didn’t you tell me this at the time?” He stood confronting the ancient shape of his father.

“Heh. You would have killed him.”

“I should have killed him. Yes. No one would have blamed me.”

“The Sibornalese would have blamed you. Borlien would have been in worse trouble than it is already. You will not learn diplomatic sense. That’s why I didn’t tell you.”

JandolAnganol began to pace, “What a calculating old slanje you are! Surely you must have hated what Pasharatid was doing?”

“No… what are women for? I have no objection to hate. It keeps you alive, keeps you warm of nights. Hate is what brings you down here. You came down here once, I forget what year it was, to talk about love, but I only know about—”

“Enough!” cried JandolAnganol, stamping his boot on the flags. “I shall never speak of love again, to you or anyone. Why do you never help me? Why didn’t you tell me what Pasharatid was up to? Did he ever meet secretly with Cune?”

“Why don’t you grow up?” Spite entered his voice. “I expect he crept in to her warm nest every night…”

He cringed away, expecting a blow from his son’s raised hand. But JandolAnganol squatted by the chair instead.

“I want you to look at something. Tell me what you would do.”

He lifted the homemade matchlock which had cracked along the barrel and placed it on his father’s knee.

“It’s heavy. I don’t want it. Her garden’s all neglected now…” The ex-king pushed it so that it fell on the floor. JandolAnganol let it lie there.

“That gun was made by SlanjivalIptrekira’s corps. The barrel split on firing. Out of six guns, I had him make, only one worked properly. Of the previous batch, none has worked. What has gone wrong? How is it that our weapon-makers’ corps, which claims to trace its foundation back for centuries, cannot make a simple gun?”

The old heap in the chair remained silent for a while, pulling ineffectually at its blanket. Then it spoke.

Things don’t get better for being old. Look at me. Look at the figure behind you… It may be that too many institutions are too old… What was I going to say? Rushven told me that the various trades corps were founded to exist through the Great Winter, to hand on their knowledge in secret from generation to generation, so that their arts survived the black centuries until spring.”

“I have heard him say as much… What follows?”

VarpalAnganol’s wheezy voice strengthened. “Why, what follows spring is summer. What follows seasons is that the corps perpetuate themselves, maybe losing a little knowledge from one generation to another but not gaining new knowledge. They become hidebound… Try to imagine what those centuries of darkness and frost were like—much like being stuck down in this hole for eternity, I imagine. Trees died. No wood. No charcoal. No fires for smelting properly… Probably it’s the smelting process at fault, by the look of that barrel. The furnaces… they may need renewing. Better methods, as the Sibornalese have…”

“I’ll flog them all for their idleness. Then perhaps we’ll see some results.”

“Not idleness, tradition. Try chopping Slanji’s head off and then offering rewards. That will encourage innovation.”

“Yes. Yes, possibly.” He picked up the gun and made for the door.

The old man called feebly to him. “What do you want the guns for?”

“The Cosgatt. The Western Wars. What else?”

“Shoot the enemies nearest your doorstep first. Teach Unndreid a lesson. Darvlish. Then you’ll be safer to fight farther away.”

“I don’t need your advice on how to wage war.”

“You’re afraid of Darvlish.”

“I’m afraid of no one. Of myself, sometimes.”

“Jan.”

“Yes?”

“Ask them to send me logs which burn, will you?” He began to cough rackingly.

JandolAnganol knew he was only shamming.

To show himself properly humble, the king went to the great dome in the main square of Matrassyl. Archpriest BranzaBaginut greeted him at the North Door.

JandolAnganol prayed publicly among his people. Without thought, he took with him his pet runt, who stood patiently by his master while the latter prostrated himself for an hour. Instead of pleasing his people, JandolAnganol displeased them by taking a phagor into the presence of Akhanaba.

His prayer, however, was heard by the All-Powerful, who confirmed that he should take VarpalAnganol’s advice regarding the Ironmakers Corps.

Yet JandolAnganol vacillated. He had enough enemies without taking on one of the corps, whose power in the land was traditional, and whose chiefs were represented on the scritina. After private prayer and scourging, he went lengthily into pauk, to be counselled by the fessup of his grandfather. The battered grey cage floating in obsidian comforted him. Again, he was encouraged to act.

“To be holy is to be hard,” he said to himself. He had promised the scritina that he would devote himself wholeheartedly to his country. So it should be. Matchlocks were necessary. They would compensate for lack of manpower. Matchlocks would bring back the golden age.

Accompanied by a mounted troop of the Royal First Phagorian Guard, JandolAnganol went to the quarters of the Ancient Corps of Ironmakers and Swordsmen and demanded admittance. The great shadowy place opened up to him. He entered their quarters, which led into the rock. Everything here spoke of long-dead generations. Smoke had come like age to blacken everything.

He was greeted by officers with ancient halbards in some kind of uniform, who tried to bar his way. Chief Ironmaster SlanjivalIptrekira came running with ginger whiskers bristling—apologising, yes, bowing, yes, but stating firmly that no nonmember of the corps (barring possibly the odd woman) had ever entered these premises, and that they had centuries-old charters showing their rights.

“Fall back! I am king. I will inspect!” shouted JandolAnganol. Giving a command to the phagorian guard, he moved forward. Still mounted on their armoured hoxneys, they surged into an inner courtyard, where the air stank of sulphur and tombs. The king climbed from his mount, going forward surrounded by a strong guard while other soldiers waited with the hoxneys. Corpsmen came running, paused, scurried this way and that, dismayed at the invasion.

Red in the face, SlanjivalIptrekira still fell back before the king, protesting. JandolAnganol, showing his teeth in a holy snarl, drew his sword.

“Run me through if you will,” shouted the armourer. “You are for ever cursed for breaking in here!”

“Rhhh! You lurk underground like miserable fessups! Out of my way, slanje!”

He pressed forward. The invading party went in under grey rock, thrusting into the entrails of the establishment.

They came to the furnaces, six of them, pot-bellied, made of brick and stone, patched and repatched, towering up to a murky roof, where ventholes in the rock showed as blackened cavities. One of the furnaces was working. Boys were shovelling and kicking fuel into a gleaming eye of heat, as fire roared and raged. Men in leather aprons drew a tray of red-hot rods from the furnace door, set them on a mutilated table, and stepped back, tight-lipped to see what the excitement was.

Further into the chamber, men were kneeling by anvils. They had been hammering away at iron rods. Their din stopped as they stood to see what was happening. At the sight of JandolAnganol, blank amazement covered their faces.

For a moment, the king too was stopped. The terrible cavern astonished him. A captive stream gushed along a trough to work the enormous bellows placed by the furnace. Elsewhere were piled timbers and instruments as fearful as any used in torture. From a separate side cavern came wooden tubs bearing iron ore. Everywhere, blacksmiths, iron smelters, craftsmen—half naked—peered at him with pink-rimmed eyes.

SlanjivalIptrekira ran before the king, his arms raised, waving, fists clenched.

“Your Majesty, the ores are being reduced by charcoal. It is a sacred process. Outsiders—even royal personages—are not allowed to view these rites.”

“Nothing in my kingdom is secret from me.”

“Attack him, kill him!” cried the Royal Armourer.

The men carrying glowing iron bars lifted them with thick leather gloves. They looked at each other, then set them down again. The king’s person was sacred. Nobody else moved.

With perfect calm, JandolAnganol said, “Slanji, you have uttered a treasonable command against your sovereign, as all those here bear witness. I will have every member of the corps executed without exception if anybody dares make a move against my royal person.”

Brushing past the armourer, he faced two men at a table.

“You men, how old are these furnaces? For how many generations has metalcraft continued in this manner?”

They could not answer for fear. They wiped their blackened faces with their blackened gloves, which effected no improvement in their appearance.

It was SlanjivalIptrekira who answered, in a subdued voice. The corps was founded to perpetuate these sacred processes, Your Majesty. We but do as we are bid by our ancestors.”

“You are answerable to me, not to your ancestors. I bid you make good guns and you failed.” He turned to the corpsmen who had gathered silently in the fumous chamber.

“You men, all, and apprentices. You carry out old methods. Those old methods are obsolete. Haven’t you the wits to understand? There are new weapons available, better than we can make in Borlien. We need new methods, better metals, better systems.”

They looked at him with dark faces and red-rimmed eyes, unable to understand that their world was ending.

“These rotten furnaces will be demolished. More efficient ones will be built. They must have such furnaces in Sibornal, in the land of the Uskuti. We need furnaces like the Sibornalese. Then we shall make weapons like the Sibornalese.”

He summoned up a dozen of his brute soldiery and commanded them to destroy the furnaces. The phagors seized crowbars and commenced without question to carry out their orders. From the live furnace, when its wall was broached, molten metal burst forth. It flashed across the floor. A young apprentice fell screaming under its flood. The metal set fire to wood shavings and timber. The corpsmen shrank away aghast.

All the furnaces were broken. The phagors stood by for further orders.

“Have them built anew, according to directions I shall send you. I will have no more useless guns!” With these words, he marched from the building. The corpsmen came to themselves and threw buckets of water over their blazing premises. SlanjivalIptrekira was arrested and jostled off into captivity.

The following day, the Royal Armourer and Ironmaster was tried before the scritina and convicted of treason. Even the other corpsmasters could not save SlanjivalIptrekira. He had ordered his men to attack the person of his king. He was executed in the public view, and his head exhibited to the crowd.

Enemies of the king in the scritina, and not his enemies only, nor only in the scritina, were nevertheless angered that he had ventured into premises by long tradition sacrosanct. This was another mad act which would never have been committed had Queen MyrdemInggala been near to keep his madness under control.

JandolAnganol, however, sent a messenger to Sayren Stund, King of Oldorando, his future father-in-law. He knew that the destruction of the city of Oldorando, when it had been overcome by phagor invasion, had resulted in the craft corps’ being reformed, and their equipment renewed. Their foundries should therefore be more advanced than Borlien’s. He remembered at the last moment to send his neighbour a gift for Simoda Tal.

King Sayren Stund sent JandolAnganol a dark hunchbacked man called Fard Fantil. Fard Fantil came with credentials showing him to be an expert in iron furnaces who understood new methods. JandolAnganol sent him to work immediately.

Immediately, a delegation from the Ironmakers Corps, ashen of face, came before the king to complain of Fard Fantil’s ruthlessness and sullen ways.

“I like sullen men,” roared JandolAnganol.

Fard Fantil had the premises of the guild moved to a hillside outside Matrassyl. Here the timber was available for charcoal and the supply of running water was constant. The water was necessary to power stamping mills.

No one in Borlien had ever heard of stamping mills. Fard Fantil explained in supercilious fashion that this was the only way to crush ore effectively. The corpsmen scratched their heads and grumbled. Fard Fantil cursed them. Furious at being turned out of their town quarters, the men did all they could to sabotage the new establishment and bring the foreigner into disgrace. The king still received no guns.

When Dienu Pasharatid disappeared from the court so unexpectedly, following her husband to Uskutoshk, she had left behind some Sibornalese staff. These JandolAnganol had imprisoned. He ordered an Uskut brought before him and offered him his freedom if he would design an effective iron smelter.

The cool young man had perfect manners, so perfect that he made a flourish whenever he addressed the king.

“As your majesty knows, the best smelters come from Sibornal, where the art is advanced. There we use lignite instead of charcoal for fuel, and forge the best steel.”

“Then I wish you to design a smelter for use here, and I shall reward you.”

“Your majesty knows that the wheel, that great basic invention, came from Sibornal, and was not known in Campannlat until a few centuries ago. Also many of your new crops are from the north. Those furnaces which you destroyed—even that design came from Sibornal during a previous Great Year.”

“Now we wish for something more up-to-date.” JandolAnganol restrained his temper.

“Even when the wheel was brought to Borlien, Your Majesty, full use was never made of it, not only for transport, but in milling, pottery, and irrigation. You have no windmills in Borlien as we have in Sibornal. It has seemed to us, Your Majesty, that the nations of Campannlat have been slow to adopt the arts of civilization.”

It was noticeable that about the king’s jaw a roseate flush mounted as the sun of his anger was dawning.

“I’m not demanding windmills. I want a furnace capable of producing steel for my guns.”

“Your majesty possibly intends to say guns imitated from the Sibornalese model.”

“No matter what I intend to say, what I do say is that I require you to build me a good furnace. Is that understood, or do you only speak Sibish?”

“Forgive me, Your Majesty, I had thought you understood the position. Permit me to explain that I am not an artisan but an ambassadorial clerk, nimble with figures but not with brick and suchlike. I am if anything less able to build a furnace than your majesty.”

Still the king received no guns.

The king spent an increasing amount of time with his phagor soldiery. Knowing the necessity for repeating everything to them, he impressed upon them every day that they would accompany him in strength to Oldorando, in order to make a grand display in the foreign capital on the occasion of his marriage. Places were delegated in the palace grounds where king and phagor guard met on equal terms. No human entered the phagorian barracks. To this rule the king subscribed, as VarpalAnganol had before him. There was no question of his venturing beyond a certain point in the way he had invaded the traditional quarters of the Ironmakers Corps.

His chief phagor major was a gillot by name Ghht-Mlark Chzarn, addressed by JandolAnganol as Chzarn. They conversed in Hurdhu.

Knowing the ancipital aversion to Oldorando, the king explained once more why he required the presence of the First Phagorian at his forthcoming marriage.

Chzarn responded.

“Speech has been made with our ancestors in tether. Much speech has formed in our harneys. It is delivered that we make a goance with your sovereign body to Hrl-Drra Nhdo in the land Hrrm-Bhhrd Ydohk. That goance we make at command.”

“Good. It is good we make goance together. I rejoice that those in tether are in agreement. Have you further to say?”

Ghht-Mlark Chzarn stood impassive before him, her deep pink eyes almost level with his. He was aware of her smell and of the barely audible sound of her breathing. His long acquaintance with phagors told him that more speech was to come. The members of the guard behind her were equally impassive, pressing together, coat against coat. An occasional fart broke from their ranks.

Impatient man though JandolAnganol was, something in the deliberation of phagors—in that intense impression that what they said came not from them only but rather from a great distance, relayed from some ancestral store of understanding to which he could never have access—soothed him. He stood before his major almost as still as she before him.

“Further sayance.” Ghht-Mlark Chzarn went through a formula with which the king was familiar. Before a new subject could be broached, linkages with those in tether must be sustained. Thus was aneotic thought endured.

They confronted each other, as tradition demanded, in a military room called the Clarigate; humans entered at one end, phagors at the other. The walls were painted by phagors in swirling greens and greys. The ceiling was so low that its beams were scarred by tracks of ancipital horn points—possibly a deliberate device to emphasize the fact that the Phagorian Guard were never dehorned.

One god only protected the king, Akhanaba, the All-Powerful; many demons tormented him. Phagors were not among those demons; he was accustomed to the steady calculation of their speech, never regarding them—as did his fellow men—as either slow-witted or convoluted in thought.

And in these days of his inner torment, he found a new factor to admire about his guard. They were not sexually preoccupied. He considered that the streams of lubricious thought which occupied the minds of men and women at court—and his own mind, despite applications of god and rod—were absent from ancipital harneys.

There was a periodicity to phagor sexuality. Gillots came into oestrus every forty-eight days, while the stalluns performed the sexual act every three weeks. Coitus was joined without ceremony and not always privately. Because of this lack of shame in what to humans was an act more secret than prayer, the ancipital race was a symbol of lust. The goat foot, the erect horns, were emblems of rut to humanity. Tales of stalluns raping women—and on occasion men—were common and could lead to drumbles and purges in which many phagors were killed.

When the phagor major arrived at her thought, it was brief. “In our goance to Hrl-Drra Nhdo in the land Hrrm-Bhhrd Ydohk, it is delivered your ancipital host must make great presence. So your power burn bright before Hrl-Drra Nhdo people. Commendation comes that that host on parade must have carriance of…” A long pause while the concept struggled through into speech. “…Of new weapons.”

With considerable pain, JandolAnganol said, “We need the new hand artillery from Sibornal. As yet, we cannot produce them in Borlien.”

Beads of condensation stood on the walls of the Clarigate. The heat was overpowering. Chzarn made a gesture the king knew well, signifying ‘Stand.’

He repeated his statement. She repeated the ‘Stand’ gesture.

After consultation both with those living and with those in tether, the phagor major declared that the needed weapons would be obtained. Although the king understood the struggle phagors underwent to verbalize the aneotic, he was compelled to ask them how the weapons would be obtained.

“Much speech has form in our harneys,” said Chzarn, after another pause.

There was an answer. She switched to Eotemporal to be clear in her tenses. An answer would be delivered, was even now about to be delivered, but must nevertheless wait upon another time, another tenner. His power would be made great in Hrl-Drra Nhdo. Hold horns high. He had to be content with that. For farewell, JandolAnganol leant forward, hands to side, neck extended. The gillot also leaned forward, her head protruding over dugs and great barrel of body. Unhorned head met horned head, foreheads touched, harneys were together. Then both parties turned smartly away.

The king left by the Humans Only door of the Clarigate.

Excitement moved in his eddre. His Phagorian would provide their own arms. What faithfulness was theirs! What devotion, deeper than that of human beings! He did not reflect on other possible interpretations of Chzarn’s speech.

Briefly, he thought of the happy days when his flesh invaded Cune’s delectable queme flesh; but those times of ease and venery were dead. His concern must now be with these creatures, who would help him rid Borlien of its enemies.

Chzarn and the phagor soldiery departed from the Clarigate in a spirit different from the king’s. They could scarcely be said to have an alteration of mood. Blood flow hastened or slowed in response to breathing; so much was true.

What was spoken in the Clarigate was reported by Ghht-Mlark Chzarn to the Matrassyl Kzahhn, Ghht-Yronz Tharl himself. The kzahhn reigned under his mountain, unknown even to the king. At this time of evil, when Freyr flew nearer down the air-octaves with his scorching breath, the ancipitals generally despaired. The ichor became sluggish in their veins. Lowland components allowed themselves to fall wholly under human subjugation. But a sign had been given them and hope stirred in their eddre.

To Kzahhn Ghht-Yronz Tharl had been brought a remarkable Son of Freyr, a captive of the disgraced chancellor, by name Bhrl-Hzzh Rowpin. Bhrl-Hzzh Rowpin came from another world and knew almost as much about the Catastrophe as the ancipitals did. To them under the mountain, Bhrl-Hzzh Rowpin had delivered ancient truths which other Sons of Freyr rejected. The things he spoke had gone unheeded by the chancellor and by the king; but the component of Ghht-Yronz Tharl heeded them and determination took form in their harneys.

For the speech of the strange Son of Freyr reinforced voices from tether which sometimes seemed to grow faint.

The Sons of Freyr were badly made, with poor componentalism. So it was with the king, as the faithful spy Yuli reported. For the weak king now offered them a chance to strike back against their traditional enemy. By seeming to obey him, they could stamp their hurt and harm against Hrl-Drra Nhdo, ancient Hrrm-Bhrrd Ydohk. It was a hate-place cursed long ago by one of the Great Ones now only a keratinous image, the Crusading Kzahhn, Hrr-Brahl Yprt. Red ichor would flow there again.

Courage was needed. Be valiant. Hold horns high.

For the required hand artillery, they had only to follow favourable air-octaves. The phagors were on occasion allies of the Nondads and aided them against the Sons of Freyr. The Nondads struggled against the Sons of Freyr called Uskuts. Uskuts—shame to speak it—devoured dead bodies of Nondads, denying them the comfort of the Eighty Darknesses… The Nondads would with their light fingers take hand artillery from the Uskut race. And the hand artillery would bring dismay to the Sons of Freyr.

So it came about. Before another tenner passed, King JandolAnganol was armed with Sibornalese matchlocks—weapons supplied not by his allies in Pannoval or Oldorando, not forged by his own armourers, but brought by devious routes as a gift from those who were his enemies.

In such a fashion, a better way of killing spread slowly across Helliconia.

Belatedly, after many disputes, Fard Fantil the hunchback established his weapon factory outside Matrassyl. The newly acquired weapons served as models. After much cursing of his work force, the hunchback produced native matchlocks which did not blow up and fired with some accuracy.

By then, Sibornalese manufacturers had improved their designs and perfected a wheel-lock piece, which fired the powder pan by means of a revolving flint wheel rather than the old untrustworthy fusee.

Made confident by his new armoury, the king buckled on his breastplate, saddled Lapwing, and rode forth to war. Once more he led an ahuman army against his enemies, the rag and bobtail of Driat tribes who terrorized the Cosgatt under Darvlish the Skull.

The two forces met only a few miles from where JandolAnganol had sustained his wound. This time, the Eagle of Borlien was more experienced. After a day-long conflict, victory was his. The First Phagorian followed him blindly. The Driats were killed, routed, thrown into ravines. The survivors scattered among the tawny hills from which they had emerged.

For the last time, the vultures had reason to praise the name of Darvlish.

The king returned in triumph to his capital, with the head of Darvlish mounted high on a pole.

The head was placed above the gate of Matrassyl palace, there to fester until Darvlish was in reality nothing but a skull.

Billy Xiao Pin was by no means the only male among the inhabitants of Avernus to dream of Queen MyrdemInggala. Such private things were seldom admitted even to friends. They emerged only indirectly in that evasive society—for instance, in a general execration of King JandolAnganol’s latest behaviour.

The sight of the Thribriatan warlord’s head on JandolAnganol’s gatepost was enough to provoke a howl of protest from this faction.

One of its spokesmen said, “This monster tasted blood with the death of the Myrdolators. Now he is accumulating the weapons for which he traded the queen of queens. Where will he stop? Plainly, we should check him now, before he plunges all Campannlat into war.”

Just as JandolAnganol was enjoying some of the popularity he hoped for in Borlien, he roused unusual opprobrium on the Avernus.

The complaints brought against him had been heard before of other tyrants. It was more convenient to blame the leader than the led; the illogic of that position was seldom remarked. Shifting conditions, shortages of foodstuffs and materials, guaranteed that Helliconian history was a constant series of bids for power, of dictators gaining wide support.

The suggestion that Avernus should move in to put an end to one particular oppression or another was also far from new. Nor was intervention an entirely idle threat.

When Earth’s colonizing starship entered the Freyr-Batalix system in 3600 a.d., it established a base on Aganip, the inner planet closest to Helliconia. On Aganip, 512 colonists were landed. They had been hatched aboard the starship during the final years of its voyage. The information encoded in the DNA of fertilized human egg cells had been stored in computers during the voyage. It was transferred into 512 artificial wombs. The resultant babies—the first human beings to walk the ship during its one-and-a-half millennium flight—were reared by surrogate mothers in several large families.

The young humans ranged in age from fifteen to twenty-one Earth years old when they landed on Aganip. The construction of the Avernus was already in process. Automation and local materials were used.

Owing to more than one near disaster, the ambitious construction programme had taken eight years. During that hazardous period, Aganip was used as a base. When the job was complete, the young colonists were ferried aboard their new home.

The starship then left the system. The inhabitants of the Avernus were alone—more alone than any humans had ever been before.

Now, 3269 Earth years later, the old base was a shrine, occasionally visited by the enlightened. It had become part of Avernian mythology.

There were minerals on Aganip. It would not be impossible to shuttle to the planet and there construct a number of ships with which to invade Helliconia. Not impossible. But unlikely, for there were no technicians trained for such a project.

The hotheads who whispered of such things had to work against the whole ethos of the Earth Observation Station, which was strictly non-interventionist.

Also, the hotheads were male. They had to contend with the female half of the population, who admired the troubled king. The women watched JandolAnganol defeat Darvlish. It was a great victory. JandolAnganol was a hero who suffered much for his country, shortsighted though that aim might be. He was a tragic figure.

The sort of intervention this female faction dreamed of was to descend to Borlien and be by JandolAnganol’s side, day and night.

And when these events at last reached Earth?

There would be much nodding of approval at JandolAnganol’s choice of which piece of Darvlish’s anatomy to exhibit. Not the Skull’s feet, which had carried the man into skirmish after skirmish. Not his genitals, which had fathered so many bastards to create future trouble. Not his hands, which had silenced many a foe. But his head, where all the other mischief had been co-ordinated.