Helliconia Summer

XVII Death-Flight

General Hanra TolramKetinet wore a wide-brimmed hat and an old pair of trousers, the bottoms of which were stuffed into the tops of a pair of knee-length army boots. Across his naked chest he had slung a fine new matchlock firearm on a strap. Above his head he waved a Borlienese flag. He waded out to sea towards the approaching ships.

Behind him, his small force cheered encouragement. There were twelve men, led by an able young lieutenant, GortorLanstatet. They stood on a spit of sand; behind them, jungle and the dark mouth of the River Kacol. Their voyage down from Ordelay—from defeat—was over; they had navigated in the Lordryardry Lubber, both rapids and sections of the river where the current was so slight that out from the depths came tuberous growths, fighting like knots of reproducing eels to gain the surface and release a scent of carrion and julip. That scent was the jungle’s malediction.

On either bank of the Kacol, the forest twisted itself into knots, snakes, and streamers no less forbidding than the tentacles which rose from the river depths. Here the forest indeed looked impenetrable; there were visible none of the wide aisles down which the general, half a tenner ago, had walked in perfect safety, for the river had tempted to the jungle’s edge a host of sun-greedy creepers. The jungle too, had become more dwarfish in formation, turning from rain forest proper to monsoon forest, with the heavy heads of its canopy pressing low above the heads of the Borlienese troops.

Where river at last delivered its brown waters into sea, foetid morning mists rose from the forest, rolling in ridge beyond ridge up the unruly slopes that culminated in the Randonanese massif.

The mist had been something of a motif of their journey, preluded from the moment when—in undisputed possession of the Lubber at Ordelay—they had prised open the hatches, to be greeted by thick vapours pouring from the boat’s cargo of melting ice. Once the ice was cast overboard, the new owners, investigating, had discovered secret lockers full of Sibornalese matchlocks, wrapped in rags against the damp: the Lubber captain’s secret personal trade, to recompense himself for the dangerous voyages he undertook on behalf of the Lordryardry Ice Trading Company. Freshly armed, the Borlienese had set sail on the oily waters, to disappear into the curtains of humidity which were such a feature of the Kacol.

Now they stood, watching their general wade towards the ships, on a sandbar that stood out like a spur from a small rocky and afforested island, Keevasien Island, which lay between river and sea. The dark green tunnel, the stench, the insect-tormented silences, the mists, were behind them. The sea beckoned. They looked forward to rescue, shading their eyes to gaze seawards against a brilliance accentuated by the hazy morning overcast.

Rescue could hardly have been more timely. On the previous day, when Freyr had set and the jungle was a maze of uncertain outlines as Batalix descended, they had been seeking a mooring between gigantic roots red like intestines; without warning, a tangle of six snakes, none less than seven feet long, had dropped down from branches overhead. They were pack snakes which, with rudimentary intelligence, always hunted together. Nothing could have terrified the crew more. The man who stood at the wheel, seeing the horrible things land close to him and rapidly disentangle themselves, hissing in fury, jumped overboard without a moment’s thought, to be seized by a greeb which a moment before had resembled a decaying log.

The pack snakes were eventually killed. By that time, the boat had swung side on into the current, and was grinding against the Randonanese bank. As they attempted to regain control, their rudder hit an underwater obstruction and broke. Poles were brought forth, but the river was becoming both wider and deeper, so the poles did not serve. When Keevasien Island loomed through the dusk they had no power to choose either the port, the Borlienese, stream, or the starboard, the Randonanese, stream. The Lubber was carried helplessly against the rocks on the northern point of the island; with its side stove in, it was beached in the shallows. The current tugged at it, threatening to wash it away. They grabbed some equipment and jumped ashore.

Darkness was coming in. They stood listening to the repetitive boom of the surf like distant cannon fire. Because of the great fear of the men, TolramKetinet decided to camp where they were for the brief night, rather than attempt to reach Keevasien, which he knew was close.

A watch was set. The night around them was given to subterfuge and sudden death. Small insects went shopping with large headlights, moths’ wings gleamed with terrifying sightless eyes, the pupils of predators glowed like hot stones; and all the while the two streams of the river surged close by, eddying phosporescence, the heavy drag of water moaning its way into their dreams.

Freyr rose behind cloud. The men woke and stood about scratching mosquito bites which covered their bodies. TolramKetinet and GortorLanstatet drove them into action. Climbing the rocky spine of the island, they could look across the eastern arm of the river to the open sea and the Borlienese coast ahead. There, protected from the sea by afforested cliff, lay the harbour of Keevasien, the westernmost town of their native land of Borlien, once home of the legendary savant YarapRombry.

A purplish cast to the light obscured the truth from them for a while; they looked on broken roofs and blackened walls for some moments before saying—almost in one voice—“It’s been destroyed!”

Phagor herds, denizens of the monsoon forest, had bartered their vulumunwun with the Randonanese tribes. The great spirit had spoken to the tribes. The tribes caught Others in the trees, bound them to bamboo chairs, and progressed through the jungle to burn down the port. Nothing had escaped the flames. There was no sign of life, except for a few melancholy birds. The war was still being waged; the men could not avoid being at once its agents and its victims.

In silence, they made their way to the south side of the island, climbing down on a sandy spit to get free of the spikey undergrowth that choked the interior.

Open sea was before them, ribbed with brown where the Kacol joined it, ultimately blue. Long breakers uncurled against the steep slope of the beach, flashing white. To the west they could see Poorich Island, a large island which served as a marker between the Sea of Eagles and the Narmosset Sea. Round the angle of Poorich were sailing four ships, two carracks and two caravels.

Seizing up the Borlienese flag which had been stored among a selection of flags in the Lubber’s lockers, TolramKetinet Walked forward into the foam to meet them.

Dienu Pasharatid was on watch on the Golden Friendship as it made for a safe anchorage with its fleet in the mouth of the Kacol. Her hands tightened on the rail; otherwise she gave no sign of the elation she felt on beholding, as Poorich Island slid behind, the coast of Borlien emerge from the morning mists.

Six thousand sea miles had fallen astern since they repaired the ships and sailed on from the pleasant anchorage near Cape Findowel. In that time, Dienu had communed much with God the Azoiaxic; the limitless expanses of ocean had brought her closer than ever before to his presence. She told herself that her involvement with her husband Io was over. She had had him transferred to the Union, so that she no longer had to look at him. All this she had done in a cool Sibornalese way, without showing resentment. She was free to rejoice again in life and in God.

There was the beautiful breeze, the sky, the sea—why, as she strove to rejoice, did misery invade her? It could not be because she was jealous of the relationship which had grown—like a weed, she said to herself, like a weed—between her Priest-Militant Admiral and the Borlienese ex-chancellor. Nor could it be because she felt the slightest spark of affection for Io. “Think of winter,” she told herself—using an Uskuti expression meaning, “Freeze your hopes.”

Even the communion with the Azoiaxic, which she was unable to break off, had proved disconcerting. It seemed that the Azoiaxic had no place for Dienu Pasharatid in his bosom. Despite her virtue, he was indifferent. He was indifferent despite her seemly behaviour, her circumspection.

In this respect at least, the Dweller, the Lord of the Church of the Formidable Peace, had proved dismayingly to resemble Io Pasharatid himself. And it was this reflection, rather than consolation, which pursued her over the empty leagues of sea. Anything was welcome by way of distraction. So, when the coast of Borlien appeared, she turned briskly from the wheel and summoned the bugler to sound ‘Good Tidings’.

Soon the rails of the four ships were crowded with soldiers, eager for a first glimpse of the land they were planning to invade and subjugate.

One of the last passengers to arrive on deck was SartoriIrvrash. He stood for a while in the open air, clapping his clothes and breathing deep to disperse a smell of phagor. The phagor was gone; only her bitter scent remained—that, and a fragment of knowledge.

After the Golden Friendship had left Findowel, it sailed southeastwards across the Gulf of Ponipot, past ancient lands, and through the Cadmer Straits, the narrowest stretch of water between Campannlat and Hespagorat. These were lands that legends told of; some said that humans had come into being here, some that language was first spoken here. Here was Ponipot, the Ponpt that little Tatro read about in her fairy tales, Ponipot almost uninhabited, gazing towards the setting of the suns, with its old smouldering cities whose names were still capable of stirring men’s hearts—Powachet, Prowash, Gal-Dundar on the frigid Aza River.

Past Ponipot, to be becalmed off the rocky spines of Radado, the land of high desert, the southern tail of the Barriers, where it was said that under one million humans lived—in contrast to the three and a quarter million in neighbouring Randonan—and certainly fewer humans than phagors; for Radado formed the western end of a great ancipital migratory route which stretched across the whole of Campannlat, the ultima Thule to which the creatures came in the summer of every Great Year, to go about their unfathomable rituals, or simply to squat motionless, staring across the Cadmer Straits towards Hespagorat, towards a destination unknown to other life forms.

Becalmed or otherwise, in those long hot days on the stationary ship, SartoriIrvrash had been content. He had escaped from his study into the wide world. During dimdays, there were long intellectual conversations to be enjoyed with the lady Priest-Militant Admiral, Odi Jeseratabhar. The two of them had become closer. Odi Jeseratabhar’s first intricacy of language had dissolved into something less formal. The involuntary proximities enforced by their narrow quarters had become wished for, treasured. They turned into circumspect lovers. And the circumnavigation of the Savage Continent had become a circumnavigation also of souls.

Sitting together on deck during that enchanted becalmment, the aging lovers, Borlienese and Uskuti, surveyed the almost unmoving sea. The Radado mainland hung mistily in the background. Nearer at hand, Gleeat Island lay to port. Away to starboard, three other islands, submerged mountain peaks, seemed to float on the bosom of the water.

Odi Jeseratabhar pointed to starboard. “I can almost imagine I can make out the coast of Hespagorat—the land called Throssa, to be precise. All round us is the evidence that Hespagorat and Campannlat were once joined by a land bridge, which was destroyed in some upheaval. What do you think, Sartori?”

He studied the hump of Gleeat Island. “If we can believe the legends, phagors originated in a distant part of Hespagorat, Pegovin, where the black phagors live. Perhaps the phagors of Campannlat migrate to Radado because they still hope to discover the ancient bridge back to their homeland.”

“Have you ever seen a black phagor in Borlien?”

“Once in captivity.” He drew on his veronikane. “The continents keep their separate kinds of animals. If there was once a land bridge, then we might expect to find the iguanas of Hespagorat on the coast of Radado. Are they there, Odi?”

With a sudden inspiration, she said, “I think they are not, because the humans might have killed them off—Radado is a barren place; anything serves as food. But what about Gleeat? While we are becalmed, we have time to spare, time in which we might add to the fund of human knowledge. You and I will go on an expedition in the longboat and see what we find.”

“Can we do that?”

“If I say so.”

“Remember our near disaster on the Persecution Bay expedition?”

“You thought I was crazy then.”

“I think you’re crazy now.”

They both laughed, and he clutched her hand.

The Admiral summoned the bo’sun. Slaves were set to work. The longboat was launched. Odi Jeseratabhar and SartoriIrvrash climbed aboard. They were rowed two miles across to the island, over a sea of glass. With them went a dozen armed soldiers, delighted at this chance to leave the hated confines of the ship.

Gleeat Island measured five miles across. The ship’s boat beached on a steep sandy shelf at the southeast corner. A guard was set on it, while the rest of the expedition moved forward.

Iguanas basked on the rocks. They showed no fear of humans, and several were speared to be taken back to the ship as welcome addition to the diet. They were puny beside the giant black iguanas of Hespagorat. These rarely attained more than five feet in length. Their colour was a mottled brown. Even the crabs that lived commensally with them were small and had only eight legs.

As SartoriIrvrash and Odi Jeseratabhar were searching the rocks for iguana eggs, the party came under attack.

Four phagors rushed from cover, spears in hand, and fell on them. They were ragged beasts, their coats in tatters, their ribs showing.

With surprise on their side, the phagors managed to kill two of the soldiers, bearing the men down into the water with the force of their charge. But the other soldiers fought back. Iguanas scattered, gulls rose screaming, there was a brief pursuit over the rocks, and the scrimmage was finished. The phagors were dead—except for a gillot whose life Odi Jeseratabhar spared.

The gillot was larger than her companions and covered in a dense black coat. With her arms bound firmly behind her, she was made captive and taken back in the boat to the Golden Friendship.

Odi and Sartori embraced each other in private, congratulating themselves on confirming the truth of the old legend of the land bridge. And on surviving.

A day later, the monsoon winds blew, and the fleet was on its way eastwards again. The coast of Randonan was now passing in all its wild splendour on the port side; but SartoriIrvrash spent most of his time below decks, studying their captive, whom he called Gleeat.

Gleeat spoke only Native Ancipital, and that in a dialect. Knowing no Native, or even Hurdhu, SartoriIrvrash had to work through an interpreter. Odi came down into the cramped dark hold to see what he was doing, and laughed.

“How can you bother with this smelly creature? We have proved our point, that Radado and Throssa were once connected. God the Azoiaxic was on our side. The small colony of iguanas isolated on Gleeat Island are an inferior strain, isolated from the main body of iguanas on the southern continent. This creature, living among white phagors, probably represents some kind of survival of the Hespagorat-Pegovin black strain. Doubtless they’re dying out on such a small island.”

He shook his head. While admiring her quick brain, he perceived that she reached conclusions too hastily.

“She claims that her party were on a ship which was wrecked on Gleeat in an earlier monsoon.”

“That’s clearly a lie. Phagors do not sail. They hate water.”

“They were slaves on a Throssan galley, she says.”

Odi patted his-shoulder. “Listen, Sartori, it’s my belief that we could have proved that the two continents were once linked just by looking at the old charts in the chartroom. There’s Purporian on the Radado shore and a port called Popevin on the Throssa shore. ‘Poop’ means ‘bridge’ in Pure Olonets, and ‘Pup’ or ‘Pu’ the same in Local Olonets. The past is locked up in language, if one knows how to look.”

Although she laughed, he was vexed by her superior Sibornalese style. “If the smell is overcoming you, dear, you had better go back on deck.”

“We shall soon be approaching Keevasien. A coastal town. As you know, ‘ass’ or ‘as’ is Pure Olonets for ‘sea’—the equivalent of ‘ash’ in Pontpian.” With that burst of knowledge, smiling, she retired, climbing the ladder to the quarterdeck in practical fashion.

He was surprised next day to find that Gleeat was wounded. There was a golden pool of blood on the deck where she lay. He questioned her through the interpreter. Although he watched her closely, he could detect nothing resembling emotion when she answered.

“No, she is not wounded. She says she is coming on oestrus. She has just undergone her menstrual period.” The interpreter looked his distaste but made no personal comment, being of inferior rank.

Such was his hatred for phagors—but it was gone now, like much else from his past life, he realized—that SartoriIrvrash had always neglected their history, just as he had refused to learn their language. Such matters he had left to JandolAnganol—JandolAnganol with his perverse trust in the creatures. However, the sexual habits of phagors had been a target for prurient jest to the very urchins in the Matrassyl streets; he recalled that the female ancipital, neither human nor beast, delivered something like a one-day menstrual flow from the uterus as prelude to the oestral cycle when she came on heat. It might be memories of those old whispers which caused him to imagine that his captive emitted a more pungent odour on this occasion.

SartoriIrvrash scratched his cheek. “What was that word used for catamenia? Her word in Native?”

“She calls oestrus ‘tennhrr’ in her language. Shall I have her hosed down?”

“Ask her how frequently she comes into oestrus.”

The gillot, who remained tied, had to be prodded before she gave answer. Her long pink milt flicked up one of her nostrils. She finally admitted to having ten periods in a small year. SartoriIrvrash nodded and went on deck for some fresh air. Poor creature, he thought; a pity we can’t all live in peace. The human-ancipital dilemma would have to be resolved one day, one way or another. When he was dead and gone.

They drove before the monsoon all that night, the next day, and the night following. The rains were frequently so thick that those aboard the Golden Friendship could not make out their sister ships. The Straits of Cadmer were left behind. All about them was the grey Narmosset, its waves streaked with long spittles of white. The world was a liquid one.

During the fifth night, they encountered a storm, and the carrack almost stood on its beam ends. The hollies and orange trees growing along the waist were all lost overboard, and many feared that the ship would founder. The seamen, always superstitious, approached their captain and begged that the captive phagor be cast overboard, since it was well known that ancipitals aboard ship brought bad luck. The captain agreed. He had tried almost everything else.

SartoriIrvrash was awake, despite the late hour. It was impossible to sleep in the storm. He protested against the captain’s decision. No one was in any mood to listen to his arguments; he was a foreigner, and in danger of being thrown overboard himself. He went and hid while Gleeat was dragged from her foul hold and thrown into the raging waters.

Within an hour, the worst of the wind died. By the time of false light, when Poorich was just visible ahead, nothing more than a fresh breeze prevailed. By dawn, the other three vessels were disclosed, miraculously unharmed and not too far distant—God the Azoiaxic was good. Soon, the mouth of the Kacol, where Keevasien lay, could be discerned through purplish coastal mists.

An unnatural gloom hovered about the hinges of the horizon. The sea all round the Sibornalese fleet was alive with dolphins, darting just below the surface. Flocks of sea and land birds numbering many hundreds circled overhead. They uttered no cry, but the beat of their myriad wings sounded like a downpour in which no rain fell. The flocks did not swerve as the call ‘Good Tidings’ rolled out from ship to coast.

As the wind died, the cordage slackened and slapped against the masts. The four ships closed as they approached the shore.

Dienu set a spyglass to her eye and stared at where a strip of island lay among the breaking waves. She saw men standing on the strip, and counted a dozen. One was coming forward. During the days of the monsoon, they had skirted the coasts of Randonan; here Borlien commenced—enemy territory. It was important that news of the fleet’s coming was not flashed ahead to Ottassol; surprise counted for much, in this as in most warlike enterprises.

The light improved, minute by minute. The Golden Friendship exchanged signals with the Union, the Good Hope, and the white caravel, the Vajabhar Prayer, alerting them to danger.

A man in a wide-brimmed hat was wading out into the foam. Behind him, at the mouth of the river, a boat could be seen, hull half-hidden. There was always the possibility that they were moving into an ambush and, getting too far in, would lose the wind and be trapped. Dienu stood tense at the rail of the quarterdeck; for a moment, she wished that her faithless Io were with her; he was always quick to make up his mind.

The man in the surf unfurled a flag. The stripes of Borlien were revealed.

Dienu summoned artillerymen to line the landward rail.

The distance between ship and shore diminished. The man in the surf had halted, up to his thighs in water. He was waving the flag in an assured manner. The mad Borlienese…

Dienu instructed the artillery captain. He saluted, went down the companion ladder to give orders to his men. The men worked in pairs, one operating the wheel lock, the other supporting the muzzle.

“Fire!” shouted the artillery captain. A pause, and then a volley of shots.

So began the battle of Keevasien sandbar.

The Golden Friendship was close enough for Hanra TolramKetinet to make out the faces of the soldiery along its rail. He saw the artillerymen taking aim at him. By now, the insignia on the sails had revealed that these were Sibornalese vessels, surprisingly far from home. He wondered if his opportunist king had concluded a treaty to bring Sibornal into the Western Wars on Borlien’s side. He had no reason to believe them hostile—until the weapons were raised.

The Friendship swung almost side on to him, to present the artillerymen with the best line of fire. He estimated that its draught would allow it to come no farther in. The Union was ahead of its flagship, curving round to TolramKetinet’s left, getting uncomfortably close to the east end of Keevasien Island. He heard shouted orders coming across the water, as the Union’s main and mizzen sails were taken in.

The two smaller ships, which had sailed closer to the Randonanese shore, were cutting in to his right. The Good Hope was still battling against the broad brown flood from the western arm of the Kacol, the white Vajabhar Prayer was past—could indeed be said to be almost behind him, though still some distance away. On all these ships except the Good Hope, he could see the glint of gun barrels, pointing towards him.

He heard the artillery captain’s order to fire. TolramKetinet dropped his flag, turned about, plunged into the water, and commenced swimming strongly back to the sand pit.

GortorLanstatet was already providing him with covering fire. He got his men down behind a shale ridge and directed half of his fire power at the flagship, half at the white caravel, the Vajabhar Prayer. The latter was still coming in fast, heading towards their position. The lieutenant had with him a good crossbowman; he directed him, and another man to prepare a pitch fire-thrower.

Lead balls smacked in the water round the general. He swam underwater, coming up for air as infrequently as he could. He was aware of dolphins milling about close by, but they made no attempt to interfere with him.

Suddenly the firing stopped. He surfaced and looked back. The white caravel which bore the hierogram of the Great Wheel upon its sails had unwisely cut between him and the Golden Friendship. The Shiveninki soldiery, crowding on the topmost deck, were preparing to fire on the defenders of the spit.

Waves burst over him. The shore was unexpectedly steep. TolramKetinet grasped hold of a root and hauled himself among bushes, working forward a few feet into cover and then collapsing. He lay breathing heavily, his face against the brown sand. He was unhurt.

Before his inward view rose a memory of the lovely face of Queen MyrdemInggala. She was speaking seriously. He remembered how her lips moved. He was a survivor. He would win for her sake.

Yes, he was not clever. He should not have been made general. He did not possess the natural ability to command men which Lanstatet had. But.

Since he had received the queen of queen’s message in Ordelay—the first time she had ever addressed him on a personal level, even at secondhand—he had thought of the king’s intention to divorce her. TolramKetinet feared the king. His allegiance to the crown was divided. Although he understood the dynastic necessity for JandolAnganol’s action, that royal decision had altered TolramKetinet’s feelings. He told himself that the attraction he felt for the queen was treasonable. But the queen in exile was a different matter; treason no longer entered the question. Nor did loyalty to a king who had sent him off out of jealousy to die in a Randonanese jungle. He got to his feet again, and ran for GortorLanstatet’s besieged strip.

His Borlienese troops gave him a cheer as TolramKetinet threw himself down among them. He embraced them as he peered out to seaward over the shingle ridge.

In a minute, the scene had changed in certain dramatic respects. The Golden Friendship had taken in its sails and lowered fore and aft anchors. It lay about two hundred yards offshore. A lucky fire bolt from the crossbow had set part of its bow and the artemon mast alight. As sailors fought the blaze, two longboats full of soldiers were pulling away from the ship; one of the boats—though the information would have been lost on TolramKetinet—was led by Admiral Odi Jeseratabhar, who stood rigid in the stern; SartoriIrvrash had insisted on accompanying her and sat rather ignominiously at her feet.

The Union had almost beached itself away to the left of the small island, and was embarking troops into the shallows; they waded doggedly ashore. Rather nearer was the Vajabhar Prayer, stuck in the shallows with sails hanging limp, and a boat full of soldiery making inexpertly for the shore. This boat was the nearest target, and matchlock fire was causing some damage to it.

Only the Good Hope had not changed position. Caught in the flow of the outpouring Kacol, it remained with all sail hoist, bowsprit pointing towards Keevasien Island, contributing nothing to the struggle.

“They must believe they are facing the entire Keevasien garrison,” GortorLanstatet said.

“We certainly need that garrison, poor devils. If we stay here we’ll be slaughtered.”

There was no way in which thirteen men, poorly armed, could defend themselves against four boatloads of troops armed with wheel locks.

It was then that the sea rose, opened, and rained assatassi.

From one end of the Sea of Eagles to the other, assatassi flew like darts from sea to shore. Fisherfolk who understood the sea kept this day and the following one for celebration and feasting. It was a festivity which occurred only once early every summer during the Great Summer, at the time of high tide. In Lordryardry, nets were ready. In Ottassol, tarpaulins were spread. In Gravabagalinien, the queen’s familiars had warned her to stay away from the deadly shore. What was a feast of plenty for the knowledgeable became a rain of death for the ignorant.

Swimming in from far mid-ocean, shoals of assatassi headed for land. Their migrations during the Great Summer spanned the globe. Their feeding grounds were in the distant reaches of the Ardent Sea, where no man had visited. On reaching maturity, the shoals started their long swim eastwards, against the flow of ocean currents. Through the Climent Sea they went, and on through the narrow gates of the Straits of Cadmer.

This narrowing brought the shoals into greater proximity. The enforced closeness, together with the onset of monsoon weather in the Narmosset Sea, brought a changed behaviour pattern. What had been a long leisurely swim, without apparent aim, became a race—a race which was destined to end in the death-flight.

But for that actual flight, that desired death along thousands of miles of coast, another factor was necessary. The tide had to be right.

Throughout the centuries of winter, Helliconia’s seas were all but tideless. After apastron and the darkest years, Freyr again began to make its influence felt. As its gigantic mass beckoned the chill planet back towards the light, so too it stirred the seas. Its pull on the ocean mass was now, only 118 Earth years from periastron, considerable. The time in the small year had arrived when the combined mass of Batalix and Freyr worked together. The result was a sixty percent increase in tidal strength over the winter situation.

The narrow seas between Hespagorat and Campannlat, the strong flow of the current to the west, conspired to make the higher tides mount and break suddenly with dramatic force. On that phenomenal flow of water shoreward, the shoals of assatassi launched themselves.

The ships of the Sibornalese fleet found themselves first with no water under their draught, and then battered by a tidal wave rising precipitously and without warning from the sea. Before the crews could realize what had hit them, the assatassi were there. The death-flight was on.

The assatassi is a necrogenetic fish, or more properly fish-lizard. It reaches a length of eighteen inches at maturity; it has two large multifaceted eyes; but what chiefly distinguishes it is its straight bill of bone, supported by a boney cranium. On its death-flight the assatassi reaches speeds high enough for this bill to penetrate a man to the heart.

Off Keevasien, the assatassi broke from the surface a hundred yards further out than the Golden Friendship. So full did the air become with them that those which flew low enough to skim the water and those who gained heights of fifty feet alike formed part of a solid body of fast-moving fish-lizard. They gleamed like a myriad of sword blades. The air became a sword blade.

The flagship was raked by assatassi from stem to stem. Anyone standing on deck was struck. The seaward side of the ship was covered with creatures, hanging skewered by their bills. So with the three other ships. But it was the boats, already waterlogged by the tide, which suffered most. All their company was wounded, and many were killed outright. The boards were stove in. All four boats began to sink.

Cries of pain and terror sounded—lost beneath the shriek of birds who plunged down to snatch a meal from the air.

The first wave of assatassi lasted for two minutes.

Only TolramKetinet’s men survived without injury. The tidal wave had washed right over them, so that they were still prostrate and half-conscious when the assatassi came over.

When the bombardment ceased, they looked up to see chaos all round. Sibornalese troops were struggling in the water, where large predatory fish were closing in. The Good Hope appeared to be drifting helplessly out to sea, its main mast shattered. The fire in the masts of the Golden Friendship was raging unchecked. All round, rocks and trees were covered with smashed bodies of fish. Many assatassi had impaled themselves by their bills high up in branches or trunks of trees, or were lodged in inaccessible crannies in the rocks. The death-flight had taken many fish a long way inland. The sombre jungles overhanging the mouth of the Kacol were now interpenetrated by fish-lizards which would be rotten before Batalix-set.

Far from being some morbid fancy, assatassi behaviour was proof of the versatility by which species were perpetuated. Like the otherwise dissimilar biyelk, yelk, and gunnadu, which covered the icy plains of Campannlat in winter, the assatassi were necrogenes and gave birth only through death.

Assatassi were hermaphrodite. Formed in too rudimentary a way to carry within them the normal apparatus of reproduction, assatassi propagation involved destruction. Germination budded within their gut, taking the form of threadlike maggots. Embedded safely within the parental intestine, the maggots survived the impact of the death-flight and lived to feed on the carrion thus provided.

They ate their way to the outside world. There the maggots metamorphosed into a legged larval stage, closely resembling miniature iguana. In the autumn of the small year, the miniature iguanas, hitherto land-bound, made their way back to the great parent sea, fading down into it, sinking into it as tracelessly as grains of sand, to replenish the cycle of assatassi life.

So startling was the sudden turn in events that TolramKetinet and Lanstatet stood up on their spit to look about them. The huge wave which had drenched all the foreshore was the prelude to an onrushing flood which set the Sibornalese struggling ashore into difficulties.

The first wave had rushed up the Kacol. Its spent waters were now returning, bringing black muds which stained the sea with their eddies. More ominously, to TolramKetinet’s left, a stream of bodies was making sodden progress out from the river mouth, accompanied by screaming seabirds. The general’s guess was that these were the slaughtered dead of Keevasien, about to find burial.

The incoming wave had overturned the Golden Friendship’s longboat. Those who did not stay submerged long enough rose to meet the clouds of fish-lizard.

SartoriIrvrash found himself struggling in the water with the wounded, among whom he soon saw Odi Jeseratabhar. One of her cheeks was torn, and a fish-lizard was embedded in the flesh of the back of her neck. Many of the wounded were being attacked by predatory gulls. SartoriIrvrash himself was uninjured. Fighting his way over to Odi, he lifted her in his arms and began to wade ashore. The water kept getting deeper.

His face came close to the assatassi embedded in her neck, his eye close to its great boney eye, from which all life had not yet faded.

“How can mankind ever build up bulwarks against nature, when it keeps flooding in like a deluge, indifferent to what it carries away?” he said to himself. “So much for you, Akhanaba, you hrattock!”

It was all he could do to keep the unconscious Odi’s head above water. There was a spit of land only a few yards distant, yet still the water rose about him. He cried in fear—and then on the spit he saw a man who resembled JandolAnganol’s hated general, TolramKetinet.

TolramKetinet and GortorLanstatet were studying the Sibornalese ship, the Vajabhar Prayer, which lay only a short distance to their right. The tidal wave had flung it ashore, but a swirling rebate of waters from the Kacol floated it again. Apart from the assatassi peppering its starboard side, it was in good order. The crew, thoroughly demoralised, were throwing themselves ashore and making off into the bushes to safety.

“The ship’s ours for the taking, Gortor. What do you say?”

“I’m no sailor, but there’s a breeze rising from the shore.”

The general turned to the twelve men with him.

“You are my brave comrades. None of you lacks courage. If one of you had lacked courage for a moment, we all would have perished. Now we have one last exploit before we are safe. There is no help for us at Keevasien, so we must sail along the coast. We are going to borrow this white caravel. It’s a gift—though a gift we may have to fight for. Swords ready. Follow me!”

As he ran down the strand, his force following, he almost bumped into a bedraggled man struggling for the shore with a woman in his arms. The man called his name.

“Hanra! Help!”

He saw in astonishment that it was the Borlienese chancellor, and then the thought came, Here must be another that JandolAnganol has cheated…

He halted his party. Lanstatet dragged SartoriIrvrash from the flood, two of the men took hold of the woman between them. She was moaning and returning to consciousness. They dashed on to the Vajabhar Prayer.

The crew and soldiery of the Shiveninki vessel had suffered casualties. Some were killed; any wounded by the assatassi were mostly ashore. Birds darted over the ship, eating fish-lizards caught on the rigging. There remained a handful of soldiers with their officers to put up a fight. But TolramKetinet’s party swarmed up the seaward side of the vessel and took them on. The opposition was already demoralised. After a halfhearted engagement, they surrendered and were made to jump ashore. GortorLanstatet took a party of three below, to round up any hiding and get them off the ship. Within seven minutes of boarding, they were ready to sail.

Eight of the men pushed the caravel. Slowly, the ship swung about and the sails filled, torn though they were by the fish-lizards.

“Move! Move!” shouted TolramKetinet from the bridge.

“I hate ships,” GortorLanstatet said. He fell on his knees and prayed, hands above his head. There was an explosion, and water sprayed all over them.

Their piracy had been seen from the Golden Friendship. A gunner was firing one of the cannon at them from a range of two hundred yards.

As the Prayer, at no more than walking pace, glided out of the shelter of the overhanging jungle, a stronger breeze caught it. Without needing to be told, two gunners among the Borlienese manned one of the cannon on the gundeck. They fired it once at the Golden Friendship; then the angle between the ships became so acute that the muzzle of the cannon could not be turned sufficiently in the square gunport to aim at the flagship.

The gun crew in the flagship were faced with the same problem. One more ball flew over, landing in the undergrowth of the island, then silence. The eight men in the water swarmed up boarding nets and climbed on deck cheering as the Prayer gathered way.

The island foliage slid away to port. Trees were being attacked by the scavenging birds, devouring impaled assatassi, while the hornets and bees they disturbed buzzed savagely round them. The Prayer was about to pass the Uskuti ship, Union, still beached with its bows into the land.

“Can you blow it up as we pass?” GortonLanstatet shouted down to the gundeck.

The gunners ran to port, opened the gunport, primed the clumsy cannon. But now they were moving too fast, and the gun could not be made ready in time.

The disgraced Io Pasharatid was among the crew and soldiery on the Union who had deserted ship to flee from the death-flight into the island jungle. He went first. His desertion owed more to calculation than panic.

Alone among the Sibornalese in the fleet, he had once visited Keevasien. That had been during his tour of duty as ambassador to the Borlienese court. While he had no love of the place, it was in his mind that he might purchase supplies there to eke out the boredom of ship’s rations. His calculation was that he might take off two hours during the general panic without being missed.

Seeing the burnt-out ruins of the town had changed his mind. He returned to the scene of action in time to witness the Vajabhar Prayer gliding by his own ship, with Hanra TolramKetinet, favourite of the queen of queens, standing on its quarterdeck.

Io Pasharatid was not entirely sunk in self-interest, though in this instant jealousy played some part in his actions. He ran forward, rallying the men who crouched among the bushes; driving them back aboard the Union. The tidal wave had set it on a strip of beach, unharmed.

After some manoeuvring with oars, assisted by the flood tide, they floated the carrack free of the beach. The sails were trimmed and, slowly, her bows drifted round towards the open sea.

Signal flags were run up, reporting that the Union was in pursuit of the pirate. The signal was intended for the eyes of Dienu Pasharatid on the Golden Friendship; but she would never read another signal. Hers was one of the first human deaths occasioned by the death-flight of the assatassi.

Only when they were out of the bay and a fresh west wind was carrying them slowly against the prevailing ocean stream, did TolramKetinet and SartoriIrvrash take the chance to embrace each other.

When they had given each other some report of their adventures, TolramKetinet said, “I have little to be proud of. Since I am a soldier, I cannot complain where I am sent. My generalship has been such that my forces dissolved without my being able to fight a single battle. It is a disgrace I shall always live with. Randonan swallows men whole.”

The ex-chancellor said, after a moment, “I am grateful for my travels, which were no more planned than yours. The Sibornalese used me, but from the experience has come something valuable. More than valuable.”

He made a gesture indicating Odi Jeseratabhar, whose wound was now dressed, and who sat on the deck listening to the men talking, her eyes closed.

“I’m getting old and the loves of the old are always funny to mere youths like you, Hanra. No, don’t deny it.” He laughed. “And something more. I realize for the first time how fortunate our generations are to live at this period of the Great Year, when heat prevails. How did our ancestors survive the winter? And the wheel will turn, and again it will be winter. What a malign fate, to grow up as Freyr is dying and know nothing else. In parts of Sibornal, people don’t see Freyr at all during the centuries of winter.”

TolramKetinet shrugged. “It’s chance.”

“But the enormous scale of growth and destruction… Perhaps our mistake is to think ourselves apart from nature. Well, I know of old that you are less than enthralled by such speculations. One thing I must say. I believe I have resolved one question of such revolutionary nature…”

He hesitated, stroking his damp whiskers. Smiling, TolramKetinet urged him to go on.

“I believe I have thought what no man has ever thought. This lady has inspired me. I need to get to Oldorando or Pannoval to lay my thought before the powers of the Holy Pannovalan Empire. My deduction, I should call it. There I shall certainly be rewarded, and Odi and I can then live comfortably.”

Scrutinizing his whiskery face, TolramKetinet said, “Deductions that are paid for! They must be valuable.”

The man’s a fool and I always knew it, thought the ex-chancellor, but he could not resist the chance to explain.

“You see,” SartoriIrvrash said, lowering his voice so that it could hardly be heard for the slap of the canvas above them. “I could never abide the ancipital race, unlike my master. There lay much of our difference. My thought, my deduction, weighs very much against the ancipitals. Hence it will be rewarded, according to the terms of the Pannovalan Pronouncement.”

Rising from her chair, Odi Jeseratabhar took SartoriIrvrash’s arm and said to TolramKetinet and Lanstatet, who had joined them, “You may not know that King JandolAnganol destroyed all the chancellor’s life’s work, his ‘Alphabet of History and Nature’. It’s a crime not to be forgotten. The chancellor’s deduction, as he modestly names it, will revenge him on JandolAnganol, and perhaps allow us both to work together on reassembling the ‘Alphabet’.”

Lanstatet said sharply, “Lady, you’re our enemy, sworn to destroy our native land. You should be below decks in irons.”

“That’s past,” said SartoriIrvrash, with dignity. “We’re simply wandering scholars now—and homeless ones at that.”

“Wandering scholars…” It was too much for the general, so he asked a practical question. “How are you to get to Pannoval?”

“Oldorando would suit me—it is nearer, and I hope to arrive before the king, if he is not already there, to cause him maximum botheration before he weds the Madi princess. You have no love of him either, Hanra. You’ll be the ideal person to take me there.”

“I’m going to Gravabagalinien,” said TolramKetinet grimly, “if only this tub will sail us there, and we are not overtaken by our enemies.”

All looked back. The Vajabhar Prayer was now in open sea, making laboured progress eastwards along the coast. The Union had emerged from Keevasien Bay, but lay far astern. There was no immediate danger of its catching them.

“You will see your sister Mai in Gravabagalinien,” SartoriIrvrash told the general. The general smiled without replying.

Later in the day, distantly, they saw the Good Hope also in pursuit, with a jury-rigged main mast. The two pursuing vessels were lost in haze as thunderheads towered from the western sea, their edges cast in copper. Lightning darted silently in the belly of the cloud.

A second wave of assatassi rose from the sea, like a wing unfurling, to cast itself upon the land. The Prayer was too far from the coast to suffer ill effect. Only a few of the flying fish-lizard darted past the vessel. The men looked on complacently at what that morning had struck them dumb. As they crawled towards Gravabagalinien, thunderous darkness fell and tiny splinters of light showed ashore, where natives were feasting on the dead invaders.

And something without identity made its way towards the place where the queen of queens resided in her wooden palace: a human body.

RobaydayAnganol had stolen a ride downriver from Matrassyl to Ottassol, keeping ahead of his father. Wherever he went now, he went with a special haste in his gait, half-looking back; did he but know it, this aspect of a man pursued made him resemble his father. He thought of himself as pursuing. Vengeance against his father filled his mind.

In Ottassol, instead of going to the underground palace which his father was due to visit, he went to an old friend of SartoriIrvrash’s, the deuteroscopist and anatomist, Bardol CaraBansity. CaraBansity was feeling no great goodwill for the king or his strange son.

He and his wife had staying with them a society of deuteroscopists from Vallgos. He offered Robayday a bed in a house he maintained near the harbour, where, he said, a girl would look after his needs.

Robayday’s interest in women was sporadic. However, he immediately found the woman in CaraBansity’s harbour house attractive, with her long brown hair and a mysterious air of authority, as if she knew a secret shared by nobody else.

She gave her name as Metty, and he remembered her. She was a girl he had once enjoyed in Matrassyl. Her mother had assisted his father when the latter was wounded after the Battle of the Cosgatt. Her real name was Abathy.

She did not recognize him. No doubt she was a lady with many lovers. At first, Robayday did not enlighten her. He remained inert and let her come to him. To impress, she spoke of a scandalous connection with Sibornalese officials in Matrassyl; he watched her expression as she spoke, and thought of how different her view of the world was, with its clandestine comings and goings.

“You do not recognize me, for I am hard to recognize, yet there was a day when you wore less kohl on your eyes when we were close as tongue to teeth…”

Then she spoke his name and embraced him, exhibiting delight.

Later, she said she had cause to be grateful to her mother, to whom she sent back money regularly, for teaching her how to behave with men. She was cultivating a taste for the highborn and powerful; she had been shamefully seduced, she said, by CaraBansity, but now she hoped for better things. She kissed him.

She allowed her charfrul to slip and reveal her pale legs. Seeing cruelty everywhere, Robayday saw only the spider’s trap. Eagerly, he entered it. Later, they lay together and kissed, and she laughed prettily. He loved her and hated her.

All his impulses screamed to him to hurry on to Oldorando, yet he remained with her for another day. He hated her and he loved her.

The second evening in her house. He thought that history would cease if he remained for ever. She again let down her beautiful hair and hitched up her skirt, climbing onto the couch with him again.

They embraced. They made love. She was a well of delight. Abathy was starting to undress him for more prolonged enjoyment when there was a thumping at her door. They both sat up, startled.

A more violent thump. The door burst open, and in blundered a burly young fellow dressed in the uncouth Dimariamian fashion. It was Div Muntras, in bull-like quest of love.

“Abathy!” he cried. She yelled by way of reply.

After sailing alone to Ottassol, Div had traced his way to her by diligent enquiry. He had sold everything he possessed, except for the talismanic watch stolen from Billish, which reposed safe in his body belt. And here, at the end of his trail, he found the girl who had dominated his thoughts ever since she idled voluptuously with his father on the deck of the Lordryardry Lady trittoming with another man.

His face altered into the image of rage. He raised his fists. He bellowed and charged forward.

Robayday jumped up and stood on the couch, his back to the wall. His face was dark with anger at the intrusion. That the king’s son should be shouted at—and at such a moment! He had no thought but to kill the intruder. In his belt was a dagger shaped from a phagor horn, a sharp two-sided instrument. He drew it.

Div was further enraged by the sight of the weapon. He could soon dispose of this slight lad, this meddler.

Abathy screamed at him, but he paid no heed. She stood with both hands to her pretty mouth, eyes wide in horror. That pleased Div. She would be next.

He rushed to the attack, landing on the couch with a leap. He received the point of the horn just below his lowest rib. The tip grated against the rib as it slid in. His charge ensured that it went into his flesh to the hilt, penetrating the spleen and the stomach, at which point the handle broke off in his opponent’s hand.

A long baffled groan escaped Div. Liquids gushed over the wall as he fell against it and slipped to the floor.

Raging, Robayday left the girl to weep. He fetched two men who disposed of the corpse by tossing it into the Takissa.

Robayday ran from the city, as if pursued by mad dogs. He never returned to the girl or to the room. He had an appointment which he had been in danger of forgetting, an appointment in Oldorando. Over and again, he wept and cursed along the road.

Carried by the current, turning as it went, the body of Div Muntras drifted among the shipping to the mouth of the Takissa. No one saw it go, for most folk, even slaves, were indulging in a grand assatassi fry. Fish moved in to give the corpse their attention as the sodden mass was taken into the maw of the sea, to become part of the progression of waters westwards, towards Gravabagalinien.

That evening when the sun sank, simple people came down to the beaches and headlands of the Borlien coast. They were moved by an impulse to celebrate and give thanks. In all the countries lapped by the narrow seas, Randonan, Thribriat, Iskahandi, Dimariam, Throssa, other crowds would gather.

Here the great assatassi feast was ending. Here was a time to pause and offer praise for such blessings to the spirit who dwelt in the waters.

While women sang and danced on the sand, their menfolk waded into the sea bearing little boats. The boats were leaves, on which short candles burned, giving off a sweet scent.

On every beach, as dusk drew in, whole navies of leaves were launched. Some still floated, burning dim, long after darkness had fallen, forming panoramas reminiscent to the superstitious of gossies and fessups suspended in their more permanent darkness. Some were carried far out to sea before their feeble flames were quenched.