Billy Xiao Pin was a typical representative of Avernian society. Outwardly, he subscribed to all the norms; he worked without industry; he was engaged to an attractive girl; he took regular prescribed exercise; he had an Advisor who preached to him the higher virtues of acceptance. Yet inwardly Billy craved only one thing. He longed to be down on the Helliconian surface, 1500 kilometres below, to see Queen MyrdemInggala, to touch her, speak with her, and make love to her. In his dreams, the queen invited him into her arms.
The distant observers on Earth had other concerns. They followed continuities of which Billy and his kind were unaware. As they watched, suffering, the divorce at Gravabagalinien, they were able to trace the genesis of that division back to a battle which had taken place to the east of Matrassyl, in a region known as the Cosgatt. JandolAnganol’s experiences in the Cosgatt influenced his later actions and led — so it appeared by hindsight — inexorably to divorce.
What became known as the Battle of the Cosgatt took place five tenners — 240 days, or half a small year — before the day that the king and MyrdemInggala severed their marriage bonds by the sea.
In the region of the Cosgatt, the king received a physical wound which was to lead to the spiritual severance.
Both the king’s life and his reputation suffered in the battle. And they were threatened, ironically, by nothing more than a rabble, the raggle-taggle tribes of Driats.
Or, as the more historically minded of terrestrial observers said, by an innovation. An innovation which changed not only the life of the king and queen but of all their people. A gun.
What was most humiliating for the king was that he held the Driats in contempt; as did every follower of Akhanaba in Borlien and Oldorando. For the Driats, it was conceded, were human — but only just.
The threshold between non-human and human is shadowy. On one side of it lies a world full of illusory freedoms, on the other a world of illusory captivity. The Others remained animal, and stayed in the jungles. The Madis — tied to a migratory way of life — had reached the threshold of sapience, but remained protognostic. The Driats had just crossed the threshold, and there abided throughout recorded time, like a bird frozen on the wing.
The adverse conditions of the planet, the aridity of their share of it, contributed to the Driats’ permanent backwardness. For the Driat tribes occupied the dry grasslands of Thribriat, a country to the east of Borlien, across the wide Takissa. The Driats lived among herds of yelk and biyelk which pastured in those high regions during the summer of the great year.
Customs regarded as offensive by the outside world furthered the survival of the Driats. They practised a form of ritual murder, by which the useless members of a family were killed after failing certain tests. In times of near-famine, the slaughter of the ancients was often the salvation of the innocents. This custom had given the Driats a bad name among those whose existence was cast in easier pastures. But they were in reality a peaceful people — or too stupid to be warlike in an effective way.
The eruption of various nations southwards along the ranges of the Nktryhk — particularly those warrior nations temporarily banded together behind Unndreid the Hammer — had changed that. Under pressure, the Driats bestirred their bivouacs and went marauding into the lower valleys of Thribriat, which lie in the rain shadow of the massive Lower Nktryhk.
A cunning warlord, known as Darvlish the Skull, had brought order to their ragged ranks. Finding that the simple Driat mind responded to discipline, he formed them into three regiments and led them into the region known as the Cosgatt. His intention was to attack JandolAnganol’s capital, Matrassyl.
Borlien already had the unpopular Western Wars on its hands. No ruler of Borlien, not even the Eagle, could hope really to win against either Randonan or Kace, since those mountainous countries could not be occupied or governed even if conquered.
Now the Fifth Army was recalled from Kace and sent into the Cosgatt. The campaign against Darvlish was not dignified with the title of war. Yet it ate up as much manpower as a war, cost as much, was fought as passionately. Thribriat and the wilderness of the Cosgatt were nearer to Matrassyl than the Western Wars.
Darvlish had a personal animus against JandolAnganol and his line. His father had been a baron in Borlien. He had fought by his father’s side when JandolAnganol’s father, VarpalAnganol, had appropriated his land. Darvlish had seen his father cut down by a youthful JandolAnganol.
When a leader died in battle, that was the end of fighting. No man would continue. Darvlish’s father’s army turned and ran. Darvlish retreated to the east with a handful of men. VarpalAnganol and his son pursued them, hunting them like lizards among the stoney mazes of the Cosgatt — until the Borlienese forces refused to go further because no more loot was forthcoming.
After almost eleven years in the wilderness, Darvlish had another chance, and took it: ‘The vultures shall praise my name!’ became his war cry.
Half a small year before the king divorced his queen — before the idea even invaded his mind — JandolAnganol was forced to muster new troops and march at the head of them. Men were in short supply and required pay or the loot the Cosgatt would not yield. He used phagors. The phagor auxiliaries were promised freedom and land in return for service. They were formed into the First and Second Regiments of the Royal Phagorian Guard of the Fifth Army. Phagors were ideal in one respect: both the male and female fought, and their young went into battle with them.
JandolAnganol’s father before him had also rewarded ancipital troops with land. It was as a result of this policy — forced on the kings by manpower shortage — that phagors lived more comfortably in Borlien than in Oldorando, and were less subject to persecution.
The Fifth Army marched eastwards, through jungles of stone. The invaders melted away before it. Most skirmishes were confined to dimday — neither side would fight either during darkness or when both suns were high. But the Fifth Army, under KolobEktofer, was forced to travel during full day.
It travelled through earthquake country, where ravines ran obliquely across its path. Habitation was scanty. The ravines were a tangle of vegetation, but there, if anywhere, water was to be found — as well as snakes, lions, and other creatures. The rest of the land was pocked with umbrella cactus and scrub. Progress across it was slow.
Living off the land was hard. Two kinds of creature dominated the plain, numberless ants and the ground-sloths which lived off the ants. The Fifth caught the sloths and roasted them, but the flesh was bitter in flavour.
Still the cunning Darvlish withdrew his forces, luring the king away from his base. Sometimes he left behind smouldering campfires or dummy forts on elevated sites. Then a day would be wasted as the army investigated them.
Colour-Major KolobEktofer had been a great explorer in his youth and knew the wilds of Thribriat, and the mountains above Thribriat, where the air finished.
‘They will stand, they will stand soon,’ he told the king one evening when a frustrated Eagle was cursing their difficulties. ‘The Skull must soon fight, or the tribes will turn against him. He understands that well. Once he knows we’re far enough from Matrassyl to be without our supply trains, he’ll make his stand. And we must be ready for his tricks.’