Brian Aldiss - Helliconia Spring

The mass of animals was crossing the frozen river, churning snow. Their noise came plain to the two watchers, not solely the sound of their hoofs but the rasp of their breath, and a continued chorus of grunts, snorts, and coughs, a click of horn against horn, the sharp rattle of ears being shaken to dislodge ever persistent flies.

Three biyelks stepped forth together on the frozen river. With sharp resounding cracks, the ice broke. Shards of it almost a metre thick reared up into view as the heavy animals fell forward. Panic seized the yelk. Those on the ice attempted to scatter in all directions. Many stumbled and were lost under more animals. The cracking spread. Water, grey and fierce, jetted into the air—fast and cold, the river was still flowing. It rushed and broke and foamed, as if glad to be free, and the animals went down into it with their months open, bellowing.

Nothing deterred the oncoming animals. They were as much a natural force as the river. They flowed ever on, obliterating their companions who stumbled, obliterating too the sharp wounds opened in the Vark, bridging it with tumbled bodies, until they surged up the near bank.

Now Yuli raised himself on to his knees and lifted his ivory spear, his eyes blazing. His father seized his arm and dragged him down.

“See, phagors, you fool,” he said, giving his son a furious, contemptuous glare, and stabbing ahead with his spear to indicate danger.

Shaken, Yuli sank down again, as much frightened of his father’s wrath as by the thought of phagors.

The yelk herd pressed about their outcrop of rock, lurching by on either side of its crumbling base. The cloud of flies and stinging things that sang about their twitching backs now enveloped Yuli and Alehaw, and it was through this veil that Yuli stared, trying to get a sight of phagors. At first he discerned none.

Nothing was to be seen ahead but the avalanche of shaggy life, driven by compulsions no man understood. It covered the frozen river, it covered the banks, it covered the grey world back to the far horizon, where it tucked itself under the dun clouds like a rug under a pillow. Hundreds of thousands of animals were involved, and the midges hung above them in a continuous black exhalation.

Alehaw dragged his son down and indicated a spot to their left with one shaggy eyebrow. Half-hidden beneath the skin that served as their bivouac, Yuli stared at the advance. Two giant biyelks were lumbering towards their coign of vantage. Their massive white-furred shouldiers were almost on a level with the ledge. As Yuli blew the midges away from before his eyes, the white fur resolved itself into phagors. Four of them, two riding on each biyelk, clung tight to the hair of their mounts.

He wondered how he had missed sighting them before. Though they merged with their giant steeds, they exhibited the presence of all who ride while others travel on foot. They clustered an top of the biyelks’ shoulders, directing their moody bull faces ahead towards the higher ground where the herd would stop and graze. Their eyes glared out under upward-curving horns. Every now and again, one would shoot out his white milt, curving it up the slot of his powerful nostrils, to remove plaguing midges.

Their clumsy heads pivoted above the bulk of their bodies, which were completely covered with long white hair. The creatures were all white, except for their pink-scarlet eyes. They rode the striding biyelks as if they were part of them. Behind them, a crude leather carrier holding clubs and weapons swung to and fro.

Now that Yuli was alert to the nature of the danger, he discerned other phagors. Only the privileged rode. The rank and file of their nation went on foot, proceeding at a walking pace matching that of the animals. As he watched, so tense he dared not even brush the flies from his eyelids, Yuli saw a group of four phagors pass within a few metres of where he and his father lay. He would have had no difficulty in spearing the leader between the shoulder blades, had Alehaw given the command.

Yuli looked with particular interest at the horns that passed him, two by two. Smooth though they appeared in the dull light, the inner and outer edges of each horn were sharp from base to tip.

He coveted one of those horns. Horns of dead phagors were used as weapons in the savage recesses of the Barriers. It was for their horns that learned men in distant towns—couched in dens remote from storm—referred to phagors as the ancipital race: the species with two sharp edges.

The leading ancipital strode along dauntlessly. Lack of an ordinary knee joint made his an unnatural-looking stride. He marched mechanically as he must have done for miles. Distance was no obstacle.

His long skull was thrust forward in typical phagor fashion, low between his shoulders. On either arm he wore hide straps, to which were attached outward- pointing horns, their extremities tipped with metal. With these, the creature could prod away any animal that walked too close to him. Otherwise, he was unarmed; but to a nearby yelk, a bundle of possessions had been tied, a bundle including spears and a hunting harpoon. Adjacent animals also involuntarily carried baggage belonging to the other phagors in the group.

Behind the leader were two more males—so Yuli assumed—followed by a female phagor. She was of slighter build, and carried some kind of bag tied round her middle. Under her long white hair, pinkish dugs swung. On her shoulders rode an infant phagor, clutching uncomfortably at its mother’s neck fur, its head clamped down on her head. Its eyes were closed. The female walked automatically, as though in a daze. It was a matter for conjecture for how many days she and the others had been walking, or how far.

And there were other phagors, spread thinly round the outskirts of the moving concourse. The animals took no notice of them, accepting them as they accepted the flies, because there was no alternative to acceptance.

The noise of the drumming hoofs was punctuated by laboured breathing and coughing and breaking wind. Another sound rose. The phagor who led the small group was emitting a kind of hum or growl, a rough noise delivered over a vibrating tongue which varied in pitch; perhaps it was intended to cheer the three who followed. The sound terrified Yuli. Then it was gone, and the phagors too. More animals streamed by and eventually more phagors, continuing stanchlessly. Yuli and his father lay where they were, occasionally spitting flies from their mouths, waiting for the time to strike and win the meat they desperately needed.

Before sunset, the wind got up again, blowing as before off the ice-caps of the Barriers, into the faces of the migratory army. The attendant phagors matched with their heads down, eyes slitted, and long trails of saliva fanned from the corners of their mouths and froze across their chests, as fat freezes when thrown out on the ice.

The atmosphere was iron. Wutra, god of the skies, had withdrawn his shawls of light and shrouded his domain with overcast. Perhaps another battle had been lost to him.

From under this dark curtain, Freyr became visible only when it reached the horizon. Blankets of cloud rumpled back to reveal the sentinel smouldering in a perspective of golden ashes. It shone out with spirit over the wastes—small but bright, its disc no more than a third as large as that of its companion star, Batalix, yet Freyr’s light was greater, fiercer.

It sank into the eddre of the ground and was gone.

Now was the time of dimday, which prevailed in summer and autumn, and which almost alone distinguished those seasons from even less merciful times. Dimday suffused a dazed half-light across the night sky. Only at times of New Year would Batalix and Freyr rise and set together. At present their lives were solitary, hidden frequently behind cloud which was the billowing smoke from Wutra’s war.