Hrr-Brahl Yprt waited, motionless. He too heard the heat message across his air-octave.
The precursor of major climatic change activated other forms of life in the region, forms on which the phagors were in part dependent for protein. Protognostic tribes called Madis also occupied the boulder-strewn land of the glaciers. Gaunt, perpetually undernourished, they too began to resume a nomadic habit. They drove before them goat and arang, the quadruped that lived on lichens or rocklice. The Madis sought lower pastures. But they would not travel before the phagor crusade left the way clear.
The young Hrr-Brahl Yprt growled an order to mount. Only the highest among his officers had kaidaws to ride. These rusty red steeds were mounted as soon as the order came, the officers seating themselves behind their animals’ humps.
That order came late in the Year 13, according to Loil Bry’s modest calendar. According to the ancipital calendar, it was the Air-Turn or Year 553 After Small Apotheosis of Great Year 5,634,000 Since Catastrophe. By a more modem reckoning, it was late in the year 433.
Laintal Ay was then an infant, dandled on the knee of his widowed mother.
The time would come when he would have to confront the whole might of Hrr-Brahl Yprt’s crusade.
Beside the kzahhn’s kaidaw stood a creaght, or young male phagor, bearing a towering standard.
Hrr-Brahl Yprt was as tall as a well-built man and weighed almost half as much again. His keratinous three-toed feet formed a base for thick flanks, massive thews, and a chest broader than any man’s.
His head, wedged between sturdy shoulders, was remarkable. It was long, narrow, boney, with prominent ridges above the eyes, giving those eyes, sheltered by long sweeping lashes on which frost glittered, a marked stare. His horns, set back behind his ears, curved forward before turning upwards, in the manner of his line. They were veined grey, as if made of marble, and their edges were deadly sharp. These weapons were used only in combat with other phagors, never against other species; their tips could never be sullied by the red blood of a Son of Freyr.
Hrr-Brahl Yprt’s prominent muzzle was black behind the arches of his nostrils, just as his grandstallun’s had been. It accentuated the command of his gaze. An air of ferocious authority was reinforced by his every movement.
An elaborate face crown had been wrought by his weapon makers for this crusade. The crown formed almost a fleur-de-lys pattern down the young kzahhn’s long nose. It curved about the base of his horns and sprouted two sharp iron horns of its own, which protruded laterally.
When threatening a subordinate, the kzahhn wrinkled up his lip to show two lines of blunt longitudinally ridged teeth, flanked by long incisors.
His body was accoutred with armour: chiefly, a sleeveless jacket of stiff kaidaw skin with three capes and a belt, which latter broadened over his girth into a sort of sporran serving to conceal his genitals swinging under the coarse matted hair of his pelvis.
The name of his kaidaw was Rukk-Ggrl. After mounting Rukk-Ggrl, the young kzahhn raised his hand. An immense curled musical instrument, reamed from a stungebag horn, was sounded by a human slave. Its diaphony echoed across the grey wastes.
Following this mournful call, other slaves appeared from a cave in the plutonian massif, carrying between them the figures of Hrr-Brahl Yprt’s father and great-grandstallun.
These illustrious forebears were in a state of tether, slowly sinking towards the final vortices of nonbeing. This marked diminution of the life process had caused them to shrink in size. The great-grandstallun was now almost entirely transformed into keratin.
At the appearance of the totem objects, a stir went through the hosts of the component assembled, male and female. They stretched over the frozen ground, many standing out against the sky on nearby ridges or banks of shattered stone, where their outlines were confused by the brilliant cloud piling up. Some leaned on spears, their huge birds above them. All, when stationary, assumed the daunting immobility of their kind. Only an occasional flicking ear indicated that they were alive. They shifted their positions so as to direct their regard on their young leader and the leaders of the past.
The totem figures were presented to the kzahhn. The human slaves knelt in abasement before him.
Hrr-Brahl Yprt dismounted, to stand between his ancestors and his kaidaw. After making a bow, he humbly buried his face in the rufous hair of the flank of Rukk-Ggrl. His comprehension left his harneys. In a kind of trance, he summoned the spirits of his father and great-grandstallun back to the living present.
The spirits came before him. They were little whiskery figures, no higher than snow rabbits. They uttered squeaks of greeting. As they had never done in real life, they ran on all fours.
‘O my sacred forebears, now integrating with earth,’ cried the young kzahhn, in the thick tongue of his kind, ‘at last I go to avenge him who should be standing now between you, my valorous grand-stallun, Great Kzahhn Hrr-Tryhk Hrast, who was killed by the peltless Sons of Freyr. Years of trial lie ahead. Strengthen my arm, warn us of danger, hold horns high.’
His great-grandstallun appeared to be standing deep inside Rukk-Ggrl. The keratinous image said, ‘Go, hold horns high, remember enmities. Beware friendship with the Sons of Freyr.’
This remark was useless to Hrr-Brahl Yprt. He scarcely thought himself likely to feel other than hatred for the traditional enemy. Those in tether were not always wiser than those in air.
The keratinous image of his father was larger than that of the great-grandstallun since he had entered tether more recently. The image bowed to his son and spoke, sketching a series of pictures in his son’s harneys.
Hrr-Anggl Hhrot showed his son an image which the young kzahhn understood only in part. To a human, it would have been incomprehensible. Yet it was a view of the known universe, as pictured by the ancipital race, a view that largely conditioned their approach to life.
A busy organ pumped lustily, expanding and contracting. It consisted of three parts, each somewhat resembling a human fist clenched tight. The parts were interdependent, and of different colours. The grey third was the known world, the dazzling white third Batalix, the mottled black third Freyr. When Freyr puffed itself large, the other parts shrank; when Batalix grew, so did the known world.
This busy organ was surrounded by steam. Through the steam ran yellow threads, the air-octaves. The air-octaves wavered as if in flight from Freyr, yet nevertheless curled about it in some instances. The Freyr-third put forth black exopodites which tugged at the air-octaves, drawing it closer to the known world. It frothed. It grew.
These images were familiar to the young kzahhn and intended to reassure him before he set forth. He understood also the warning that the pictures conveyed: that the air-octaves the crusade would have to follow were becoming more chaotic, and that the perfect sense of direction he and all his kind possessed would be disturbed. The crusade would make slow progress, taking many air-turns, or years.
He thanked the keratinous image with deep churring in his throat.
Hrr-Anggl Hhrot revealed more pictures. These had the scent of ancient things. They were drawn from a well of remembered wisdom, from the heroic ages when Freyr was negligible. An angellike army of keratinous predecessors could be seen, confirming the images.
Hrr-Anggl Hhrot showed what would happen when air-turns to near a stallun’s number of toes and fingers had lapsed across the triple organ. Slowly, mottled black Freyr would drag itself into concealment behind Batalix. Twenty times in successive air-turns would it behave so. This was the terrifying paradox: that though the Freyr-part grew larger, it would hide itself behind the shrinking Batalix-part.