Brian Aldiss - Helliconia Summer

The incoming wave had overturned the Golden Friendship’s longboat. Those who did not stay submerged long enough rose to meet the clouds of fish-lizard.

SartoriIrvrash found himself struggling in the water with the wounded, among whom he soon saw Odi Jeseratabhar. One of her cheeks was torn, and a fish-lizard was embedded in the flesh of the back of her neck. Many of the wounded were being attacked by predatory gulls. SartoriIrvrash himself was uninjured. Fighting his way over to Odi, he lifted her in his arms and began to wade ashore. The water kept getting deeper.

His face came close to the assatassi embedded in her neck, his eye close to its great boney eye, from which all life had not yet faded.

“How can mankind ever build up bulwarks against nature, when it keeps flooding in like a deluge, indifferent to what it carries away?” he said to himself. “So much for you, Akhanaba, you hrattock!”

It was all he could do to keep the unconscious Odi’s head above water. There was a spit of land only a few yards distant, yet still the water rose about him. He cried in fear—and then on the spit he saw a man who resembled JandolAnganol’s hated general, TolramKetinet.

TolramKetinet and GortorLanstatet were studying the Sibornalese ship, the Vajabhar Prayer, which lay only a short distance to their right. The tidal wave had flung it ashore, but a swirling rebate of waters from the Kacol floated it again. Apart from the assatassi peppering its starboard side, it was in good order. The crew, thoroughly demoralised, were throwing themselves ashore and making off into the bushes to safety.

“The ship’s ours for the taking, Gortor. What do you say?”

“I’m no sailor, but there’s a breeze rising from the shore.”

The general turned to the twelve men with him.

“You are my brave comrades. None of you lacks courage. If one of you had lacked courage for a moment, we all would have perished. Now we have one last exploit before we are safe. There is no help for us at Keevasien, so we must sail along the coast. We are going to borrow this white caravel. It’s a gift—though a gift we may have to fight for. Swords ready. Follow me!”

As he ran down the strand, his force following, he almost bumped into a bedraggled man struggling for the shore with a woman in his arms. The man called his name.

“Hanra! Help!”

He saw in astonishment that it was the Borlienese chancellor, and then the thought came, Here must be another that JandolAnganol has cheated…

He halted his party. Lanstatet dragged SartoriIrvrash from the flood, two of the men took hold of the woman between them. She was moaning and returning to consciousness. They dashed on to the Vajabhar Prayer.

The crew and soldiery of the Shiveninki vessel had suffered casualties. Some were killed; any wounded by the assatassi were mostly ashore. Birds darted over the ship, eating fish-lizards caught on the rigging. There remained a handful of soldiers with their officers to put up a fight. But TolramKetinet’s party swarmed up the seaward side of the vessel and took them on. The opposition was already demoralised. After a halfhearted engagement, they surrendered and were made to jump ashore. GortorLanstatet took a party of three below, to round up any hiding and get them off the ship. Within seven minutes of boarding, they were ready to sail.

Eight of the men pushed the caravel. Slowly, the ship swung about and the sails filled, torn though they were by the fish-lizards.

“Move! Move!” shouted TolramKetinet from the bridge.

“I hate ships,” GortorLanstatet said. He fell on his knees and prayed, hands above his head. There was an explosion, and water sprayed all over them.

Their piracy had been seen from the Golden Friendship. A gunner was firing one of the cannon at them from a range of two hundred yards.

As the Prayer, at no more than walking pace, glided out of the shelter of the overhanging jungle, a stronger breeze caught it. Without needing to be told, two gunners among the Borlienese manned one of the cannon on the gundeck. They fired it once at the Golden Friendship ; then the angle between the ships became so acute that the muzzle of the cannon could not be turned sufficiently in the square gunport to aim at the flagship.

The gun crew in the flagship were faced with the same problem. One more ball flew over, landing in the undergrowth of the island, then silence. The eight men in the water swarmed up boarding nets and climbed on deck cheering as the Prayer gathered way.

The island foliage slid away to port. Trees were being attacked by the scavenging birds, devouring impaled assatassi, while the hornets and bees they disturbed buzzed savagely round them. The Prayer was about to pass the Uskuti ship, Union, still beached with its bows into the land.

“Can you blow it up as we pass?” GortonLanstatet shouted down to the gundeck.

The gunners ran to port, opened the gunport, primed the clumsy cannon. But now they were moving too fast, and the gun could not be made ready in time.

The disgraced Io Pasharatid was among the crew and soldiery on the Union who had deserted ship to flee from the death-flight into the island jungle. He went first. His desertion owed more to calculation than panic.

Alone among the Sibornalese in the fleet, he had once visited Keevasien. That had been during his tour of duty as ambassador to the Borlienese court. While he had no love of the place, it was in his mind that he might purchase supplies there to eke out the boredom of ship’s rations. His calculation was that he might take off two hours during the general panic without being missed.

Seeing the burnt-out ruins of the town had changed his mind. He returned to the scene of action in time to witness the Vajabhar Prayer gliding by his own ship, with Hanra TolramKetinet, favourite of the queen of queens, standing on its quarterdeck.

Io Pasharatid was not entirely sunk in self-interest, though in this instant jealousy played some part in his actions. He ran forward, rallying the men who crouched among the bushes; driving them back aboard the Union. The tidal wave had set it on a strip of beach, unharmed.

After some manoeuvring with oars, assisted by the flood tide, they floated the carrack free of the beach. The sails were trimmed and, slowly, her bows drifted round towards the open sea.

Signal flags were run up, reporting that the Union was in pursuit of the pirate. The signal was intended for the eyes of Dienu Pasharatid on the Golden Friendship ; but she would never read another signal. Hers was one of the first human deaths occasioned by the death-flight of the assatassi.

Only when they were out of the bay and a fresh west wind was carrying them slowly against the prevailing ocean stream, did TolramKetinet and SartoriIrvrash take the chance to embrace each other.

When they had given each other some report of their adventures, TolramKetinet said, “I have little to be proud of. Since I am a soldier, I cannot complain where I am sent. My generalship has been such that my forces dissolved without my being able to fight a single battle. It is a disgrace I shall always live with. Randonan swallows men whole.”

The ex-chancellor said, after a moment, “I am grateful for my travels, which were no more planned than yours. The Sibornalese used me, but from the experience has come something valuable. More than valuable.”

He made a gesture indicating Odi Jeseratabhar, whose wound was now dressed, and who sat on the deck listening to the men talking, her eyes closed.

“I’m getting old and the loves of the old are always funny to mere youths like you, Hanra. No, don’t deny it.” He laughed. “And something more. I realize for the first time how fortunate our generations are to live at this period of the Great Year, when heat prevails. How did our ancestors survive the winter? And the wheel will turn, and again it will be winter. What a malign fate, to grow up as Freyr is dying and know nothing else. In parts of Sibornal, people don’t see Freyr at all during the centuries of winter.”