‘Overturn the kingdom, as both you and she would do, and you overturn the telescopes.’
He gazed through the trees towards the sea with a bitter expression, shrugging his shoulders.
‘You have witnessed how Keevasien, once a place of some culture, home of the great YarapRombry, has been carelessly erased. Culture may flourish better under old injustice than under new. That’s all I say.’
‘It’s a plea for your own way of life.’
‘I shall always fight for my own way of life. I believe in it. Even when it means fighting myself. Go, take that woman with you — and remember there’s always more than an arm up a Sibornalese sleeve.’
‘Why speak to me like this? I’m a victim. A wanderer — an exile. My life’s work’s ruined. I could have been the YarapRombry of my epoch… I’m innocent.’
CaraBansity shook his large head. ‘You’re of an age when innocence is a crime. Leave with your lady. Go and spread your poison.’
They regarded each other challengingly. SartoriIrvrash sighed, CaraBansity climbed back into his trench.
SartoriIrvrash walked back to where Odi Jeseratabhar waited with the animals. He mounted his hoxney without a word, tears in his eyes.
They took the trail leading northwards to Oldorando. JandolAnganol and his party had travelled that way only a few days earlier, on their way to the home of the king’s murdered bride-to-be.
XIX. Oldorando
The suns blazed down out of a cloudless sky, flattening the veldt with their combined light.
King JandolAnganol, Eagle of Borlien, enjoyed being in the wilderness again. His way of enjoyment was not every man’s. It consisted mainly of hard marches interspersed with short rests. This was not to the taste of the C’Sarr’s pleasure-loving envoy, Alan Esomberr.
The king and his force, with attendant ecclesiastics, approached Oldorando from the south along one of the old Pilgrim’s Ways, which led on through Oldorando to Holy Pannoval.
Oldorando stood at the crossroads of Campannlat. The migratory route of the phagors and the various ucts of the Madis ran east and west close by the city. The old salt road meandered north into the Quzints and Lake Dorzin. To the west lay Kace — slatternly Kace, home of cutthroats, craftsmen, vagabonds, and villains; to the south lay Borlien — friendly Borlien, home of more villains.
JandolAnganol was approaching a country at war, like his own, with barbarians. That war between Oldorando and Kace had broken out because of the ineffectiveness of King Sayren Stund as much as the nastiness of the Kaci.
Faced with the collapse of the Second Army, JandolAnganol had made what was widely regarded as a cowardly peace with the hill clans of Kace, sending them valuable tributes of grain and veronikane in order to seal the armistice.
To the Kaci, peace was relative; they were long accustomed to internecine struggles. They simply hung their crossbows on the back of the hut door and resumed their traditional occupations. These included hunting, blood feuds, potting — they made excellent pottery which they traded with the Madi for rugs — stealing, mining precious stones, and goading their scrawny womenfolk into working harder. But the war with Borlien, sporadic though it had been, instilled in the clans a new sense of unity.
Failing by some chance to quarrel during their extensive victory celebrations — when JandolAnganol’s grain tribute was converted into something more potable — the leading clans of Kace accepted as their universal suzerain a powerful brute called Skrumppabowr. As a kind of goodwill gesture on his election, Skrumppabowr had all the Oldorandans living on Kaci land slaughtered, or ‘staked’ as the local term was.
Skrumppabowr’s next move was to repair the damage done by war to irrigation terraces and to villages in the southeast. To this end, he encouraged ancipitals to come in to Kace from Randonan, Quain, and Oldorando. In exchange for their labour, he guaranteed the phagors freedom from the drumbles racking Oldorando. Being heathen, the Kaci clans saw no reason to persecute the phagors as long as they behaved themselves and never looked at Kaci women.
JandolAnganol heard of these events with pleasure. They confirmed his sense of himself as a diplomat. The Takers were less pleased. The Takers were the militants of the Holy Pannovalan Empire, with highly placed connections within the See of Pannoval itself. Kilandar IX, so it was rumoured, had been a Taker himself in his young days.
A mounted arm of Takers, striking out from Oldorando City, made a daring raid on Akace, the squalid mountain settlement which served as a capital, and slaughtered over a thousand newly arrived phagors overnight, together with a few Kaci.
This success proved less than a victory. On their way home, the Takers, rendered careless by the outcome of their raid, were ambushed by Lord Skrumppabowr’s clans and slaughtered in their turn, many in sadistic ways. Only one Taker returned to Oldorando, more dead than alive, to tell the tale. A thin bamboo rod had been driven through his body from his anus; the sharp end protruded from behind the clavicle of his right shoulder. He had been staked.
Reports of this outrage reached King Sayren Stund. He declared a holy war on the barbarians and set a price on Skrumppabowr’s head. Blood had since been spilt on both sides, but mainly on the Oldorandan side. At the present time, half the Oldorandan army — in which no phagors were allowed to serve — was away making forced marches among the wilderness of shoatapraxi which abounded on Kace hillsides.
The king soon lost interest in the struggle. After the murder of his elder daughter, Simoda Tal, he retreated into the confines of his palace and was rarely seen. He bestirred himself when he heard of JandolAnganol’s approach, but then only at the concerted prompting of his advisors, his Madi queen, and his surviving daughter, Milua Tal.
‘How are we to amuse this great king, Sayren, sweetest?’ asked Queen Bathkaarnet-she, in her singing voice. ‘I am such a poor thing, a flower, and I am lame. A limp flower. Will you wish me to sing my songs of the Journey to him?’
‘I don’t care for the man, personally. He’s without culture,’ said her husband. ‘Jandol will bring his phagor guard, since he can’t afford to pay real soldiers. If we must endure the pestilential things in our capital, perhaps they’ll amuse us with their animal antics.’
Oldorando’s climate was hot and enervating. The eruption of Mount Rustyjonnik had opened up a chain of volcanic activity. A sulphurous pall often hung over the land. The flags which the king ordered to be put out to greet his Borlienese cousin hung limp in the airless atmosphere.
As for the King of Borlien, impatient energy possessed him. The march from Gravabagalinien had taken the best part of a tenner, first over the loess farmlands, then across wilder country. No pace was rapid enough for JandolAnganol. Only the First Phagorian made no complaint.
Bad news continued to reach the column. Crop failure and famine were everywhere in his kingdom; evidence of that lay all round. The Second Army was not merely defeated: it was never going to reemerge from the jungles of Randonan. Such few men as came back slunk to their own homes, swearing they would never soldier again. The phagor battalions which had survived disappeared into the wilds.
From the capital, the news was no more encouraging. JandolAnganol’s ally, Archpriest BranzaBaginut, wrote that Matrassyl was in a state of ferment, with the barons threatening to take over and rule in the name of the scritina. It behoved the king to act positively, and as soon as possible.
He enjoyed being on the move, delighted in living off what game there was, rejoiced in the evening bivouac, and even tolerated days of brilliant sunshine, away from the coastal monsoons. It was as if he took pleasure from the ferment of emotions that filled him. His face became leaner, tenser, his waywardness more marked.