Such phagor components as there were in Sibornal manifested a less warlike spirit. They were largely composed of ancipital slaves who had escaped their masters, or lowland phagors accustomed to generations of hard work and servility. These creatures roamed the countryside in small bands, doing their best to avoid human settlements.
Of course anything vulnerable belonging to the Sons of Freyr became their target; their deep-seated antagonism never died. When one such group sighted the brig New Season close to the coast, it became the object of scrutiny. The group followed it as the ship drifted along the bleak Loraj coast to the west of Persecution Bay, where Uskuti territory ended.
Eight gillots, a fillock, three ageing stalluns, and a runt comprised the band. All but the runt were dehorned. They had with them as baggage animal a yelk which was loaded with their chief items of diet, pemmican and a thick porridge. They were armed.
Although a stiff offshore wind blew the brig from the land, the coastal current, running westwards, was slowly bringing it closer. The phagors paced it, mile by unweary mile, as the distance between them lessened. They knew in their eddre that the time would come when they could seize and destroy the vessel.
Visible activity on board was intermittent. Several shots were fired one night. At another time, a man was seen to run to the starboard rail, pursued by two screaming women. Knives flashed in the hands of the women. The man threw himself overboard, made some attempt to swim ashore, and drowned without a cry in the cold sea.
Small icebergs, sailing like swans, moved in a westward direction after spilling out of Persecution Bay. They occasionally banged against the sides of the New Season. Luterin Shokerandit heard them as he sat in the wretched closet where Toress Lahl lay.
He had locked the door, but sat clutching a small chopper. The bulimia engendered by the Fat Death made everyone on ship a potential enemy. He used the chopper occasionally to hack into the beams of the ship. The wood was needed to fuel the small fire on which he roasted joints cut from the last fhlebiht. Shokerandit and Toress Lahl between them had all but devoured the four long-legged goats in what he estimated was eight or nine days at sea.
The Fat Death generally ran its course in about a week. By that time, the sufferer was dead or on his way to recovery, faculties unimpaired but physiologically altered. He watched as the woman struggled and thickened. In her fight to get free, Toress Lahl had torn the clothes from herself, often using her teeth. She had gnawed the upright to which she was secured. Her mouth was bruised and bleeding. He looked at her with love.
The time came when she was able to return his gaze. She smiled.
She slept for some hours and then was better, with that feeling of well-being which accompanies those who survive the Fat Death.
Shokerandit untied her limbs and bathed her with a cloth and salt water in a bowl. She kissed him as he tried to help her to her feet. She surveyed her naked form and wept.
‘I’m like a barrel. I was so slim.’
‘It’s natural. Look at me.’
She stared at him through her tears and then laughed.
They laughed together. He took in the marvellous architecture of her new body, still gleaming from its wash, the beauty of her shoulders, breasts, stomach, thighs.
‘These are the proportions of a new world, Luterin,’ Toress Lahl said; he heard her using his first name for the first time.
He threw up his arms, scraping his knuckles on the bulkhead. ‘I’m relieved that you survived.’
‘Because you looked after your captive.’
It was natural to wrap his arms about her, natural to kiss her bruised mouth, and natural to sink with her to the deck on which they had recently wrestled with agony. There they wrestled with sexual rejoicing.
Later, he said to her, ‘You are no longer my captive, Toress Lahl. We are now captives of each other. You are the first woman I have loved. I will take you to Shivenink, and we will go into the mountains where my father lives. You shall see the wonders of the Great Wheel of Kharnabhar.’
She was already beginning to forget what had happened, and answered indifferently.
‘Even in Oldorando we have heard of the Great Wheel. I will come with you if you say so. The ship is very silent. Shall we see how the others fare? They may all be sick with the plague — Odim and his vast brood, and the crew.’
‘Wait here with me a little longer.’ Lying with his arms about her, looking down into her dark eyes, he was reluctant to break the spell. At that time he was incapable of distinguishing between love and restored health.
She said briskly, ‘Back in Oldorando I was a doctor. It’s my duty to tend the sick.’ She turned her face from Luterin.
‘Where does the plague come from? From phagors?’
‘From phagors, we believe.’
‘So our brave captain spoke the truth. Our army was going to be prevented by force from returning to Sibornal, just in case we spread the plague; it was among us. So what the Oligarch decreed was wise rather than evil.’
Toress Lahl shook her head. She began to comb her hair with slow strokes, luxuriously, looking into a small mirror rather than at him as she spoke. ‘That’s too easy. What the Oligarch decreed is entirely wicked. To destroy life is always wicked. What he did may not only be evil; it may prove ineffective too. I do know something about the contagious nature of the Fat Death — although since the Fat Death is latent for most of the Great Year it is difficult to study. Knowledge hard-learnt one year is forgotten by the next.’
He expected her to continue but she fell silent, continuing to regard her face even when she had set down her comb, licking a finger to smooth her eyebrows.
‘Be careful what you say about the Oligarch. He knows more than we.’
Then she turned to look at him. Their regards met as she said with some emphasis, ‘I don’t have to respect your Oligarch. Unlike the Oligarchy, the Fat Death has elements of mercy in its functioning. It’s mainly the old and very young who die of it: a majority of fit adults survive — over half. They successfully metamorphose, as we do.’ She prodded him with a still moist finger, not without humour. ‘We in our compact shapes represent the future, Luterin.’
‘Yet half the population will die… whole communities destroyed… The Oligarch wouldn’t allow that to happen in Sibornal. He’d take strong measures—’
She gestured dismissively. ‘Such die-back has its merciful side at a time when crops are failing and famine threatens. The healthy survivors benefit. Life goes on.’
He laughed. ‘In fits and starts…’
She shook her head as if suddenly impatient. ‘We must see who has survived on the ship. I don’t like the silence.’
‘I hope to thank Eedap Mun Odim for his kindness.’
‘I trust you will be able to.’
They stood close in the small stale room, gazing at each other through the stramineous light. Shokerandit kissed her, although at the last moment she moved her lips away. Then they ventured into the corridor.
The scene was to come back to him much later. He would see then, as not at the time, how much of herself Toress Lahl withheld from him. Physically, she was very desirable to him; but her attitude of independence was more attractive to him than he could then realise. Only when that independence was eroded by time could they come to any true understanding.
But Shokerandit’s proper appreciation of that fact could scarcely be arrived at while his whole outlook was based upon certain misunderstandings which left him, whichever way he turned, insecure, unable to develop emotionally. His innocence stood between him and maturity.