When she whimpered, he said, with fresh anger, ‘Close your eyes if you’re so squeamish, do it with your eyes shut. You don’t have to look. But do it fast, before I go out of my harneys.’
As he began to strip himself of his skins, still with madness in his look, he said, ‘And you will be spliced to Laintal Ay, to keep you both quiet. I want no argument. I’ve seen the looks he gives you. It’ll be your turn one day to rule Oldorando.’
Off came his trousers, and he stood there naked in front of her. She closed her eyes tightly, turning away her face, sick with disgust at this humiliation. Yet she could not shut out the sight of that hard, spare hairless body, which seemed to writhe under its skin. Her father was covered to his throat with scarlet flames.
‘Get on with it, you great silly fillock! I’m in agony, damn you, I’m dying.’
She reached out a hand and began to plaster the sticky lard across his chest and stomach.
Afterwards, Oyre fled from him, spitting curses, and ran from the building, to stand with her face turned to the chill wind, retching with disgust.
Such were the early days of her father’s reign.
A group of Madis lay in their shapeless clothes, sleeping uneasily. They rested in a broken valley trackless miles from Oldorando. Their sentry dozed.
Walls of schist surrounded them. Under the onslaughts of frost, the rock broke into thin layers which crunched underfoot. There was no vegetation, except for an occasional stunted holly bush, the leaves of which were too bitter even for the omnivorous arang to eat.
The Madis had been caught in a thick mist which frequently descended on these uplands. Night had come and they had remained dispiritedly where they were. Batalix-rise had already visited the world, but dark and mist still reigned in the cold cleft of the canyon, and the protognostics still slumbered uneasily.
The young kzahhn’s crusade commander, Yohl-Gharr Wyrrijk, stood on an eminence some feet above them, watching as a mixed party of warrior gillots and creaghts under his orders crept up on the defenceless group.
Ten adult Madis made up the company crouched in the obscurity. They had with them a baby and three children. Beside them were seventeen arangs, sturdy goatlike animals with thick coats which provided most of the humble needs of the nomads.
This family of Madis was institutionally promiscuous. The exigencies of their existence were such that mating took place indiscriminately; nor were there any tabus against incest. Their bodies lay pressed together to conserve heat, while their horned animals crawled in close against them, forming a kind of outer ring of defence against the bone-numbing cold. Only the sentry was outside this circle, and he lay innocently with his head resting on the pelage of one of the arangs. The protognostics had no weapons. Their one defence was flight.
They had relied on the mist for protection. But the sharp eyes of the phagors had found them out. The extreme difficulty of the terrain had cut Yohl-Gharr Wyrrijk off temporarily from the main body of Hrr-Brahl Yprt’s command. His warriors were almost as starved as the pre-humans upon whom they were descending.
They bore clubs or spears. The crunch of their approach over the beds of schist was covered by the snores and snuffles of the Madis. A few more steps. The sentry woke from a dream and sat up, full of terror. Through the dank mist, ugly figures emerged like ghosts. He gave a cry. His companions stirred. Too late. With savage cries, the phagors attacked, striking without mercy.
In almost no time, all the protognostics were dead, and their little flock with them. They had become protein for the crusade of the young kzahhn. Yohl-Gharr Wyrrijk climbed down from his rock to give orders for its distribution.
Through the mist, Batalix arose, a dull red ball, and peered into the desolate canyon.
It was the Year 361 After Small Apotheosis of Great Year 5,634,000 Since Catastrophe. The crusade had now been eight years on its way. In five more years, it would arrive at the city of the Sons of Freyr which was its destination. But as yet no human eye could see the connection between the fate of Oldorando and what happened in a remote and leafless canyon.
VII. A Cold Welcome for Phagors
‘Lord or not, he’ll have to come to me,’ Shay Tal said to Vry proudly, when in a still dimday they could not sleep.
But the new Lord of Embruddock also had his pride, and did not come.
His rule proved neither better nor worse than the previous one. He remained at odds with his council for one reason and with his young lieutenants for another.
Council and lord agreed where they could for the sake of a peaceful life; and one matter on which they could agree without inconvenience to themselves was on the subject of the troublesome academy. Discontent must not be allowed to breed. Needing the women to work communally, they could not forbid them to gather together, and so the prohibition was useless. Yet they did not revoke it — and that vexed the women.
Shay Tal and Vry met privately with Laintal Ay and Dathka.
‘You understand what we’re trying to do,’ Shay Tal said. ‘You persuade that stubborn man to change his mind. You are closer to him than I can manage.’
All that came of this meeting was that Dathka started making eyes at the reticent Vry. And Shay Tal became slightly more haughty.
Laintal Ay returned later from one of his solitary expeditions and sought Shay Tal out. Covered with mud, he squatted outside the women’s house until she emerged from the boilery.
When she appeared, she had with her two slaves bearing trays of fresh loaves. Vry walked in a docile way behind the slaves. Once more, Oldorando’s bread was ready, and Vry set off to supervise its distribution — though not before Shay Tal had snatched a spare loaf for Laintal Ay. She gave it to him, smiling and throwing back her unruly hair.
He munched gratefully, stamping his feet to warm them.
Milder weather, like the new lord, had proved more a convulsion than an actual progression. Now it was cold again, and the moisture beading Shay Tal’s dark eyelashes froze. All about, white stillness prevailed. The river still flowed, broad and dark, but its banks were fanged by icicles.
‘How’s my young lieutenant? I see less of you these days.’
He swallowed down the last of the loaf, his first food in three days.
‘Hunting has been difficult. We’ve had to travel far afield. Now that it’s colder again, the deer may move nearer home.’
He stood alertly, surveying her as she stood before him in her ill-fitting furs. In her coiled quietness was the quality that made people admire and stand back from her. He perceived before she spoke that she saw through his excuse.
‘I think much of you, Laintal Ay, as I did of your mother. Remember your mother’s wisdom. Remember her example, and don’t turn against the academy, like some of your friends.’
‘You know how Aoz Roon admires you,’ he blurted out.
‘I know the way he has of showing it.’
Seeing that he was disconcerted, she was more kind, and took his arm, walking with him, asking him where he had been. He glanced now and again at her sharp profile as he told her of a ruined village he had visited in the wilds. It lay half buried among boulders, its deserted streets like dried streambeds, fringed with roofless houses. All its wooden parts had been taken or had rotted away. Stone staircases ascended to floors that had long since disappeared, windows opened on prospects of tumbled rock. Toadstools grew in the doorsteps, driven snow accumulated in the fireplaces, birds made their nests in flaking alcoves.