Brian Aldiss - Helliconia Spring

Three thousand miles from Oldorando, in the Nktryhk, daily temperatures showed wide variation, from minus twelve degrees centigrade to minus one hundred and fifty degrees, about the temperature at which krypton turns to liquid.

Change accumulated, at first as what may be termed latent change. Then its effects were rapid, as temperature gradients in the upper atmosphere responded to increased radiations from Freyr. The process was steady but quantal. On one occasion, Earth Observation Station Avernus recorded a twelve-degree rise in temperature at a 16.6-mile equatorial altitude within the course of an hour.

With this warming up, stratospheric circulation increased strongly, and the planet was swept by storms. Jet streams were observed over Nktryhk travelling at speeds in excess of two hundred seventy-five miles per hour.

Suddenly, the childrims were no more.

The beginnings of what was to spell a renascence for mankind and animals brought disaster for the childrims. The conditions that created them dispersed between one year and the next. Their vortices of piezoelectric dusts and charged particles were too fragile to survive a more dynamic system. They were gone, leaving behind them evanescent trails of sparks in the rarefied upper air. The sparks soon died.

Yuli and Loil Bry looked in vain for the childrims. Laintal Ay soon forgot he had ever seen them.

Groups of phagors were emerging under the greenish sky common at that altitude, where the sentinels—when not buried in cloud—directed their rays through multitudinous ice crystals. The phagors, stalluns and gillots alike, moved into position with their inhuman gait. Many had birds perched on their shoulders or flying just above them. The birds and the phagors were white, the terrain white or brown and exsiccated black, the sky beyond livid green. The living things were outlined against the Hhryggt Glacier.

The course of the glacier was divided at one point by a massif of plutonic rock which, like an infernal castle, had withstood centuries of siege. The ice had scoured its walls, yet it survived, rearing its bunched towers towards the sky. Where the ice river fell away was a firn-covered plateau. Here stood the ancipital leader, immobile, while the cohorts of his crusade assembled.

It was the components belonging to the kzahhns of Hrastyprt who first decided to bring destruction upon the Sons of Freyr who lived in the remote plains. The young kzahhn was Hrr-Brahl Yprt. He would lead the crusade. It was his grandstallun, the great Kzahhn Hrr-Tryhk Hrast, who had been destroyed by those distant Sons. Under Hrr-Brahl Yprt would the legions ride forth in revenge.

For under Hrr-Brahl Yprt the component had prospered, regaining strength lost since Freyr last burned the world. Force of numbers as much as conscious decision urged it from its altitudinous fastnesses to begin this migration of irresistible scale.

Vengeance moved in their harneys, but action was triggered by favourable temperature gradients in the stratosphere. A heat message thrilled along the five- hundred-mile length of the glacier, as it spilled down from the airless plateau of High Nktryhk to the excoriated valleys east of the Oldorandan plain, drawing out ancipitals from its eaves and crevices.

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 353 After Small Apotheosis of Great Year 5,634,000 Since Catastrophe. By a more modern 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.