I’m different now. Severed from my loneliness. I will be different if we escape. I like this woman Odi. I’ll show it.
And somewhere in this ghastly wilderness of life I will find the means to bring JandolAnganol low. For years, I swallowed insults, ate bitterness. Now — I’m not too old — I’ll see to it for everyone’s sake that he is brought low. He brought me low. I’ll bring him low. It’s not noble, but my nobility has gone. Nobility’s for scum.
He laughed and the cold froze his front teeth.
He discovered that Odi Jeseratabhar was weeping, and possibly had been for some while. Boldly, he clutched her to him, inching his way across their perch until his rough cheek was against hers. Every inch was accompanied by the limitless drumming of hoofs across a dark void.
He whispered almost random words of consolation.
She turned so that their mouths were almost touching. ‘To me falls blame for this. I should have foreseen it might happen…’
Something else she said, snatched away by the storm. He kissed her. It was almost the last voluntary gesture left him. Warmth lit inside him.
The journey away from JandolAnganol had changed him. He kissed her again. She responded. They tasted a mutual rain on their lips.
Despite their discomfort, the humans slipped into a sort of coma. When they woke, the rain had faded to no more than a drizzle. The herd was still passing the rock. Still it stretched to the far horizon on either side. They were forced to relieve their bladders by crouching at one edge of the boulder. The phagors and the sledge had been swept away while they were asleep. Nothing remained.
What caused them to rouse was an invasion of flies which arrived with the herd. As there was more than one kind of animal in the great stampede, so there was more than one kind of animal among the flying invasion; all kinds were capable of drawing blood. They settled in their thousands on the humans, who were forced to fold themselves into a small huddle and cover themselves with cloaks and keedrants. Any skin exposed was instantly settled on and sucked till it bled.
They lay in stifling misery, while beneath them the great boulder shook as if still traveling on the glacier which had deposited it on the plain. Another day went by. Another dimday, another night.
Batalix rose again to a scene of rain and mist. At last the force of the herd slackened. The main body had gone by. Stragglers still passed, often mother flambreg with yearlings. The torment of flies lessened. Towards the northeast, the thunder of the disappearing herd still sounded. Many flambreg still milled about along the coastline.
Trembling and stiff, the humans climbed and slid to the ground. There was nothing for it but to make their way back to the shore on foot. With the stench of animal in their nostrils, they staggered forward, assailed by flies every inch of the way. Not a word passed between them.
The ship sailed on. They left Persecution Bay. The four who had been stranded in the midst of the stampede lay below decks in a fever induced by exposure and the bites of the flies.
Through SartoriIrvrash’s delirious brain travelled the herd, ever on, covering the world. The reality of that mass presence would not go away, struggle against it as he would. It remained even when he recovered.
As soon as he was strong enough, he went without ceremony to talk to Odi Jeseratabhar. The Priest-Militant Admiral was pleased to see him. She greeted him in a friendly fashion and even extended a hand, which he took.
She sat in her bunk covered only by a red sheet, her fair hair wild about her shoulders. Out of uniform, she looked gaunter than ever, but more approachable.
‘All ships sailing long distances call in at Persecution Bay,’ she said. ‘They pick up new victuals, meat chiefly. The Priest-Sailors Guild contains few vegetarians. Fish. Seal. Crabs. I have seen the flambreg stampedes before. I should have been more alert. They draw me. What do you think of them?’
He had noticed this habit in her before. While weaving a spell of Sibish tenses about herself, she would suddenly break out with a question to disconcert the listener.
‘I never knew there were so many animals in the world…’
‘There are more than you can imagine. More than anyone can / should imagine. They live all around the skirts of the great ice cap, in the bleak Circumpolar lands. Millions of them. Millions and millions.’
She smiled in her excitement. He liked that. He realised how lonely he was when she smiled.
‘I assume they were migrating.’
‘Not that, to the best of my knowledge. They come down to the water, but do not stay. They travel at all times of the year, not just in spring. They may simply be driven by desperation. They have only one enemy.’
‘Wolves?’
‘Not wolves.’ She gave a wolflike grin, glad to have caught him out. ‘Flies. One fly in particular. That fly is as big as the top joint of my thumb. It has yellow stripes — you can’t mistake it. It lays its eggs in the skin of the wretched bovidae. When the larvae hatch, they burrow through the hide, enter the bloodstream, and eventually lie in pockets under the skin on the back. There the grubs grow big, in a sore the size of a large fruit, until eventually they burst out of their crater and fall to the ground to begin the life cycle again. Almost every flambreg we kill has such a parasite — often several.
‘I have seen individual animals run in torment till they dropped, or cast themselves off tall cliffs, to escape that yellow-striped fly.’
She regarded him benevolently, as if this account gave her some inward satisfaction.
‘Madame, I was shocked when your men shot a few cows on the shore. Yet it was nothing, I see now. Nothing.’
She nodded.
‘The flambreg are a force of nature. Endless. Endless. They make humanity appear as nothing. The estimated population of Sibornal is twenty-five million at present. There are many times — perhaps a thousand times — that number of flambreg on the continent. As many flambreg as there are trees. It is my belief that once all Helliconia consisted only of those cattle and those flies, ceaselessly coming and going throughout the continents, the bovidae perpetually suffering a torment they perpetually tried to escape.’
Before this vision, both parties fell silent. SartoriIrvrash returned to his cabin. But a few hours later, Odi Jeseratabhar sought him out. He was embarrassed to receive her in his stinking cubbyhole.
‘Did my talk of unlimited flambreg make you gloomy?’ There was coquetry in her question, surely.
‘On the contrary. I am delighted to meet with someone like you, so interested in the processes of this world. I wish they were more clearly understood.’
‘They are better understood in Sibornal than elsewhere.’ Then she decided to soften the boast by adding, ‘Perhaps because we experience more seasonal change than you do in Campannlat. You Borlienese can forget the Great Winter in Summer. One sometimes fears / fearing when alone that, if next Weyr-Winter becomes just a few degrees colder, then there will be no humans left. Only phagors, and the myriad mindless flambreg. Perhaps mankind is — a temporary accident.’
SartoriIrvrash contemplated her. She had brushed her hair free to her shoulders. ‘I have thought the same myself. I hate phagors, but they are more stable than we. Well, at least the fate of mankind is better than that of the ceaselessly driven flambreg. Though we certainly have our equivalents of the yellow-striped fly…’ He hesitated, wanted to hear more from her, to test her intelligence and sensibilities. ‘When I first saw the flambreg, I thought how closely they resembled ancipitals.’
‘Closely, in many respects. Well, my friend, you pass for learned. What do you make of that resemblance?’ She was testing him, as her pleasantly teasing manner indicated. By common consent, they sat down side by side on his bunk.