Helliconia: Helliconia Spring, Helliconia Summer, Helliconia Winter (78 page)

The eruption of various nations southwards along the ranges of the Nktryhk – particularly those warrior nations temporarily banded together behind Unndreid the Hammer – had changed that. Under pressure, the Driats bestirred their bivouacs and went marauding into the lower valleys of Thribriat, which lie in the rain shadow of the massive Lower Nktryhk.

A cunning warlord, known as Darvlish the Skull, had brought order to their ragged ranks. Finding that the simple Driat mind responded to discipline, he formed them into three regiments and led them into the region known as the Cosgatt. His intention was to attack JandolAnganol’s capital, Matrassyl.

Borlien already had the unpopular Western Wars on its hands. No ruler of Borlien, not even the Eagle, could hope really to win against either Randonan or Kace, since those mountainous countries could not be occupied or governed even if conquered.

Now the Fifth Army was recalled from Kace and sent into the Cosgatt. The campaign against Darvlish was not dignified with the title of war. Yet it ate up as much manpower as a war, cost as much, was fought as passionately. Thribriat and the wilderness of the Cosgatt were nearer to Matrassyl than the Western Wars.

Darvlish had a personal animus against JandolAnganol and his line. His father had been a baron in Borlien. He had fought by his father’s side when JandolAnganol’s father, VarpalAnganol, had appropriated his land. Darvlish had seen his father cut down by a youthful JandolAnganol.

When a leader died in battle, that was the end of fighting. No man would continue. Darvlish’s father’s army turned and ran. Darvlish retreated to the east with a handful of men. VarpalAnganol and his son pursued them, hunting them like lizards among the stoney mazes of the Cosgatt – until the Borlienese forces refused to go further because no more loot was forthcoming.

After almost eleven years in the wilderness, Darvlish had another chance, and took it: ‘The vultures shall praise my name!’ became his war cry.

Half a small year before the king divorced his queen – before
the idea even invaded his mind – JandolAnganol was forced to muster new troops and march at the head of them. Men were in short supply and required pay or the loot the Cosgatt would not yield. He used phagors. The phagor auxiliaries were promised freedom and land in return for service. They were formed into the First and Second Regiments of the Royal Phagorian Guard of the Fifth Army. Phagors were ideal in one respect: both the male and female fought, and their young went into battle with them.

JandolAnganol’s father before him had also rewarded ancipital troops with land. It was as a result of this policy – forced on the kings by manpower shortage – that phagors lived more comfortably in Borlien than in Oldorando, and were less subject to persecution.

The Fifth Army marched eastwards, through jungles of stone. The invaders melted away before it. Most skirmishes were confined to dimday – neither side would fight either during darkness or when both suns were high. But the Fifth Army, under KolobEktofer, was forced to travel during full day.

It travelled through earthquake country, where ravines ran obliquely across its path. Habitation was scanty. The ravines were a tangle of vegetation, but there, if anywhere, water was to be found – as well as snakes, lions, and other creatures. The rest of the land was pocked with umbrella cactus and scrub. Progress across it was slow.

Living off the land was hard. Two kinds of creature dominated the plain, numberless ants and the ground-sloths which lived off the ants. The Fifth caught the sloths and roasted them, but the flesh was bitter in flavour.

Still the cunning Darvlish withdrew his forces, luring the king away from his base. Sometimes he left behind smouldering campfires or dummy forts on elevated sites. Then a day would be wasted as the army investigated them.

Colour-Major KolobEktofer had been a great explorer in his youth and knew the wilds of Thribriat, and the mountains above Thribriat, where the air finished.

‘They will stand, they will stand soon,’ he told the king one evening when a frustrated Eagle was cursing their difficulties. ‘The Skull must soon fight, or the tribes will turn against him.
He understands that well. Once he knows we’re far enough from Matrassyl to be without our supply trains, he’ll make his stand. And we must be ready for his tricks.’

‘What kind of tricks?’

KolobEktofer shook his head. ‘The Skull is cunning, but not clever. He’ll try one of his father’s old tricks, and much good they did him. We’ll be ready.’

The next day, Darvlish struck.

As the Fifth Army approached a deep ravine, forward scouts sighted the Driat host drawn up in battle lines on the far bank. The ravine ran from northeast to southwest, and was choked with jungle. It was more than four times a javelin’s throw across from one bank to the other.

Using hand signals, the king mustered his army to face the enemy across the ravine. The Phagorian guards were stationed in front because the ranks of motionless beasts would bring anxiety into the dim minds of the tribesmen.

The tribesmen were of spectral aspect. It was just after dawn: twenty minutes past six. Freyr had risen behind cloud. When the sun broke free of the cloud, it became apparent that the enemy and part of the ravine would be in shadow for the next two or more hours; the Fifth Army would be exposed to Freyr’s heat.

Crumbling cliff slopes backed the Driat array, with higher country above. On the royal left flank was a spur of high ground, its angles jutting towards the ravine. A rounded mesa stood between the spur and the cliffs, as if it had been set there by geological forces to guard the Skull’s flank. On top of the mesa, the walls of a crude fort could be seen; its walls were of mud, and behind the ramparts an occasional pennant was visible.

The Eagle of Borlien and the colour-major studied the situation together. Behind the colour-major stood his faithful sergeant-at-arms, a taciturn man known as Bull.

‘We must find out how many men are in that fort,’ JandolAnganol said.

‘It’s one of the tricks he learnt from his father. He hopes we’ll waste our time attacking that position. I’ll wager no Driats are up there. The pennants we see moving are tied to goats or asokins.’

They stood in silence. From the enemy’s side of the ravine,
under the cliffs, smoke rose in the shadowed air, and an aroma of cooking drifted across to remind them of their own hungry state.

Bull took his officer to one side and muttered in his ear.

‘Let’s hear what you have to say, sergeant,’ the king said.

‘It’s nothing, sire.’

The king looked angry. ‘Let’s hear this nothing, then.’

The sergeant regarded him with one eyelid drooping. ‘All I was saying, sire, is that our men will be disappointed. It’s the only way a common man – by which I mean myself – can advance himself, sire, to join the army and hope to grab what is going. But these Driats aren’t worth looting. What’s more they don’t appear to have females – by which I mean women, sire – so that the incentive to attack is … well sire, on the low side.’

The king stood confronting him face to face, until Bull backed away a step.

‘We’ll worry about women when we have routed Darvlish, Bull. He may have hidden his women in a neighbouring valley.’

KolobEktofer cleared his throat. ‘Unless you have a plan, sire, I’d say we have a nigh-on impossible task here. They outnumber us two to one, and although our mounts are faster than theirs, in close combat our hoxneys will be flimsy compared with their yelk and biyelk.’

‘There can be no question of retreat now that we have caught up with them at last.’

‘We could disengage, sire, and seek for a more advantageous position from which to attack. If we were on the cliffs above them, for instance—’

‘Or could capture them in an ambush, sire, by which I mean—’

JandolAnganol flew into a rage. ‘Are you officers, or she-goats? Here we are, there stands our country’s enemy. What more do you want? Why falter now, when by Freyr-set we can all be heroes?’

KolobEktofer drew himself up. ‘It is my duty to point out to you the weakness of our position, sire. The smell of some women as booty would have encouraged the men’s fighting spirits.’

In a passion, JandolAnganol said, ‘They must not fear a subhuman rabble – with our cross-bowmen we shall rout them in an hour.’

‘Very good, sire. Perhaps if you would address Darvlish as filth it would increase our men’s fighting spirit.’

‘I shall address him.’

A dark look was exchanged between KolobEktofer and Bull, but no more was said, and the former gave orders for the disposition of the army.

The main body of men was dispersed along the ragged lip of the ravine. The left flank was strengthened by the Second Phagorian Guard. The hoxneys, numbering fifty in all, were in poor condition after their journey. They had been used mainly as pack animals. Now they were unloaded so as to serve as cavalry animals, to impress Darvlish’s men. Their loads were piled inside a shallow cave in the spur, and guards put on them, human and phagor. If the day was not carried, those supplies would provide booty for the Driats.

While these dispositions went forward, the wing of shadow suspended from the shoulders of the opposite cliffs was retracting, like a giant sundial set to remind every man of his mortality.

The Skull’s forces were revealed as no less imposing than they had seemed when shrouded in blue shade. The ur-human tribes wore a tatterdemalion collection of hides and blankets thrown on their bodies with the same negligence as they threw themselves on their yelks. Some wore bright-striped blankets rolled about their shoulders, to give themselves extra bulk. Some wore knee-high boots, many were barefoot. Their headgear inclined to massive biyelk-fur headpieces – often horned or antlered to denote rank. A feature common to many was the penis, painted or embroidered on their breeches in furious erection to denote their rapacious intent.

The Skull was readily visible. His leather and fur headpiece was dyed orange. Antlers thrust forward from it about his moustachioed face. A sword wound sustained in his earlier battles with JandolAnganol had slashed away his left cheek and the flesh of his lower jaw, leaving him with a permanent death-grin, in which bone and teeth played a part. He managed to look fully as ferocious as his allies, whose fur-fringed eyes and prognathous jaws gave them a naturally savage aspect. A mighty biyelk was his steed.

He raised his javelin above his head and shouted, ‘The vultures shall praise my name!’ A ragged cheer came from the throats about him, echoing from the cliffs behind.

JandolAnganol mounted his hoxney and stood in the stirrups. The shout he gave carried clear to the enemy host.

He called in pidgin Olonets, ‘Darvlish, have you dared to stand before your face rots away?’

A murmur of sounds rose from both confronting armies. The Skull kneed his biyelk to the edge of the precipice and bellowed across to his enemy.

‘Do you hear me, Jandol, you woolly-eared dung-beetle? You were farted out of your father’s left instep, so why come you here, daring to face real men? Everyone knows your knackers are knocking together in fear. Crawl away, you dropping, crawl away and take those mangey arse-combings of warriors with you.’

His voice echoed back and back again from the cliffs. When the silence was complete, JandolAnganol replied in similar vein.

‘Yes, I hear your womanish bleatings, Darvlish of the Dunghills. I hear your claim that those clap-ridden three-legged Others beside you are real men. We all know that real men would never associate with the likes of you. Who could bear the stench of your decay but those barbaric monkeys with phagor-scumber for grandmothers?’

The orange head gear shook in the sunshine.

‘Phagor-scumber, is it, you dimday hrattock! You know whereof you talk, since a plateful of phagor-scumber is your daily diet, so much do you worship those horned Batalix-buggerers. Kick them into the ravine and dare to fight fair, you crap-crowned cockroach!’

A roar of savage laughter came from the Driat host.

‘If you have so little respect for those who are the climax of creation by comparison with your yelk-yobs, then shake the spiders and scabs from your stinking codpiece and attack us, you cowardly little half-faced Driat dildo!’

This address continued for some while. JandolAnganol was revealed as increasingly at a disadvantage, not having the resources of Darvlish’s foul mind on which to draw. While the
verbal battle was in progress, KolobEktofer sent off Bull with a small column of men to create a diversion of their own.

The heat intensified. Plagues of stinging things visited both armies. The phagors wilted under the gaze of Freyr and would soon break ranks. The insults wound up.

‘Epitaph for an ancipital earth-closet!’

‘Catamite of a Cosgatt ground-sloth!’

The Borlienese army started to move along the lip of the ravine, shouting and brandishing their weapons, while the Driat horde did the same on the other side.

KolobEktofer said to the king, ‘How shall we tackle the mesa fort, sire?’

‘I’m convinced you are right. The fort is a decoy. Forget all about it. You lead the cavalry, with infantry and the First Phagorian following. I will march the Second Phagorian behind the mesa, so that the Driats lose sight of us. When you engage them, we will charge from cover and attack their right flank, cutting in behind them. It should then be possible to drive Darvlish into the ravine with a pincer movement.’