Brian Aldiss - Helliconia Summer

A silence fell.

Perhaps Taynth Indredd feared to continue.

JandolAnganol jumped to his feet, a look of anger on his dark features.

The little runt, Yuli scrambled up alertly, as if to do whatever his master might bid.

“I went to Sayren Stund in Oldorando to ask for help only against common enemies. Here you gather like vultures! You confront me in my own court. What is this quarrel you dream up between us? Tell me.”

Taynth Indredd and his advisor, Guaddl Ulbobeg, conferred. It was the latter, the friend of the king’s, who answered him. He rose, bowed, and pointed to Yuli.

“It’s no dream, Your Majesty. Our concern is real, and so is that creature you bring here amongst us. From the most ancient times, human kind and phagor kind have been enemies. No truce is possible between beings so different. The Holy Pannovalan Empire has declared holy crusades and drumbles against these odious creatures, with a view to ridding the world of them. Yet your majesty gives them shelter within his borders.”

He spoke almost apologetically, his gaze downcast, so as to rob his words of force. His master restored the force by shouting, “You expect aid from us, coz, when you harbour these vermin by the million? They overran Campannlat once before, and will again, given the opportunity you provide.”

JandolAnganol confronted his visitors, hands on hips.

“I will have no one from outside my borders interfere with my interior policies. I listen to my scritina and my scritina does not complain. Yes, I welcome ancipitals to Borlien. A truce is possible with them. They farm infertile land that our people will not touch. They do humble work that slaves shrink from. They fight for no pay. My treasury is empty—you misers from Pannoval may not understand that, but it means I can afford only an army of phagors.

“They get their reward in marginal land. Moreover, they do not turn and run in the face of danger! You may say that that is because they are too stupid. To which I reply, that I prefer a phagor to a peasant any day. As long as I am King of Borlien, the phagors have my protection.”

“You mean, we believe, Your Majesty, that the phagors have your protection as long as MyrdemInggala is Queen of Borlien.” These words were spoken by one of Taynth Indredd’s vicars, a thin man whose bones were draped in a black woollen charfrul. Again, tension filled the court. Following up his advantage, the vicar continued, “It was the queen, with her well-known tenderness towards any living thing, and her father, the warlord RantanOboral—whom your majesty’s grandfather dispossessed of this very palace not twenty years back—who began this degrading alliance with the ancipitals, which you have maintained.”

Guaddl Ulbobeg rose and bowed to Taynth Undredd. “Sire, I object to the trend this meeting is taking. We are not here to vilify the Queen of Borlien, but to offer aid to the king.”

But JandolAnganol, as if weary, had sat down. The vicar had sought out his vulnerable spot: that his claim to the throne was recent and his consort the daughter of a minor baron.

With a sympathetic glance at his lord, SartoriIrvrash rose to face the Pannovalan visitors.

“As his majesty’s chancellor, I find myself amazed—yet it’s an amazement blunted somewhat by custom—to discover such prejudice, I might even say animosity, among members of the same great Holy Pannovalan Empire. I, as you may understand, am an atheist, and therefore observe detachedly the antics of your Church. Where is the charity you preach? Do you aid his majesty by trying to undermine the position of the queen?

“I am grown to the withered end of life, but I tell you, Illustrious Prince Taynth Indredd, that I have as great a hatred of phagors as you. But they are a factor of life we must live with, as you in Pannoval live with your constant hostilities against Sibornal. Would you wipe out all Sibornalese as you would wipe out all phagors? Is it not killing itself that is wrong? Doesn’t your Akhanaba preach that?

“Since we are speaking frankly, then I will say that there has long been belief in Borlien that if Pannoval were not engaged in fighting Sibornalese colonists along a wide front to the north, then it would be invading us to the south, as you now attempt to dominate us with your ideologies. For that reason, we are grateful to the Sibornalese.”

As the chancellor stooped to confer with JandolAnganol, the Sibornalese ambassador rose and said, “Since the progressive nations of Sibornal so rarely receive anything but condemnation from the Empire, I wish to record my astonished gratitude for that speech.”

Taynth Indredd, ignoring this sarcastic interjection, said in the direction of SartoriIrvrash, “You are so much at the withered end that you mistake the reality of the situation. Pannoval serves as a bastion between you and southward incursions of the warlike Sibornalese. As a self-proclaimed student of history, you should know that those same Sibornalese never cease—generation after generation—from trying to quit their loathesome northern continent and take over ours.”

Whatever the truth of this last assertion, it was true that the Pannovalans were as offended to find Sibornalese as phagors in the council room. But even Taynth Indredd knew that the real bastion between Sibornal and Borlien was geographical: the sharp spines of the Quzint Mountains and the great corridor between the Quzints and Mordriat called Hazziz which at this period was a scorching desert.

JandolAnganol and SartoriIrvrash had been conferring. The chancellor now spoke again.

“Our pleasant guests bring up the subject of the warlike Sibornalese. Before we enter into further botheration and insults, we should proceed to the heart of the matter. My lord King JandolAnganol was lately grievously wounded in defending his realm, so much that his life hung by a thread. He praises Akhanaba for his deliverance, while I praise the herbs my surgeon applied to the wound. I have here the cause of the injury.”

He called forth the Royal Armourer, a small and savagely moustached man dressed in leather who stumped into the centre of the room and then produced a leaden ball, which he held up between thumb and forefinger of a gloved hand. In a formal voice, he announced, “This is a shot. It was dug from out his majesty’s leg with a surgeon’s knife. It caused great injury. It was fired from a piece of hand artillery called a matchlock.”

“Thank you,” said SartoriIrvrash, dismissing the man. “We recognize that Sibornal is greatly progressive. The matchlock is evidence of that progress. We understand that matchlocks are now being made in Sibornal in great numbers, and that there is a later development, by name a wheel lock, which will spread greater devastation. I would advise the Holy Pannovalan Empire to show genuine unity in the face of this new development. Let me assure you, this innovation is more to be feared than Unndreid the Hammer himself.

“I must furthermore advise you that our agents report that the tribes which invaded the Cosgatt were supplied with these weapons not from Sibornal itself, as might be expected, but from a Sibornalese source in Matrassyl.”

At this statement, all eyes in the court turned to the Sibornalese ambassador. It happened that Io Pasharatid was just refreshing himself with an iced drink. He paused with the glass halfway to his mouth, a look of distress on his face.

His wife, Dienu Pasharatid, reclined on cushions nearby. She rose now, a tall and graceful woman, thin, greyish in cast, severe in appearance.

“If you statesmen wonder why in my country you are called the Savage Continent, look no further than this latest lie of magnitude. Who would be to blame for such arms trading? Why should my husband be always mistrusted?”