Brian Aldiss - Helliconia Spring

Below the tree squatted a large male phagor. Perhaps he waited to make some kind of attack. Whatever he waited for, he remained without movement, beyond occasionally flicking an ear. His cowbird sat on a branch of the tree, as far as it could get from the injured man.

Man and phagor had been washed onto the shores of the island, half-drowned. The former had climbed to the one point of safety he, in his injured state, could find. He clung to the trunk of the tree when the wind blew.

The wind was too warm for the phagor. He moved at last, standing swiftly and turning without a backward look, to pick his way among the boulders that filled most of the narrow island. After watching for a while with its head craned forward, the cowbird extended its wings and flapped after its host.

The man thought to himself, If I could catch and kill that bird, it would be a victory of sorts—and it would be worth eating.

But Aoz Roon had more pressing problems than hunger. First he had to overcome the phagor. Through the sheltering leaves as dawn came, he could see the riverbanks from which he had been brushed. There, on marshy ground, stood four phagors, each with a cowbird perched on his shoulder or wheeling lazily above him; one held the mane of a kaidaw. They had been standing there for hours, almost without movement, staring towards the island.

Keeping a safe distance from them along the water margin was Curd. The hound sat uneasily, he whined, he paced back and forth, scanning the darkly swirling floods.

Biting his bearded lower lip against the pain, Aoz Roon tried to slide farther along his branch, so as to watch his immediate adversary’s retreat. It moved slowly. Since there appeared to be nowhere to go on the island, he imagined that the monster would merely make a circuit and come back; had he been in better fettle, he might have devised some unpleasant surprise for it when it returned.

He squinted out at the sky. Freyr was disentangling itself from a barrier of trees, apparently intact after its experiences of the previous day. Batalix, having risen already, was lost in cloud. Aoz Roon longed to sleep but dared not. The phagor probably felt the same way.

There was neither sight nor sound of the monster. All that could be heard was the perpetual gargle of water in the rush of its progress southwards. It had been icy cold—Aoz Roon remembered that well. His enemy would be suffering from the immersion.

It seemed likely that the phagor would be setting a trap for him. Despite his pain, he felt a compulsion to climb from the tree and investigate. The decision made, he waited a few minutes to gather his strength. He scratched himself.

Movement was difficult. His limbs had stiffened. His great black skins were still heavy with water. The main problem was his left leg; it was painfully swollen and hard; he could not bend his knee. Nevertheless, he managed to slither down the tree, finally falling flat on the ground. He lay there in agony, panting, unable to rise, expecting at any moment to feel the phagor leap out and kill him.

The phagors on the bank had seen his move and were calling, but their voices, which lacked the carrying power of a man’s, could scarcely be heard above the rushing water. Curd also set up a howl.

Aoz Roon got to his feet. By the foaming edge of the water, he found a branch stripped to its bark, which served as a crutch. Fear, cold, sickness, swirled in him like floodwater, almost causing him to collapse. He felt his flesh heavy on him—chill yet enflamed. He stared about in desperation, scratching himself, mouth hanging open, watching for attack. The phagor was nowhere to be seen.

“I’ll get you, you scumble, if I never manage anything more… I’m Lord of Embruddock yet…”

He moved forward step by step, keeping the piles of boulders that cluttered the spine of the island between him and the nearer bank, so that the phagors standing vigil could not see him. To his right, stones, debris, lank grass, trailed down into the flood, whose smooth treachery whirled away towards a distant bank. Mist allied itself to the water, curling above its marbled surface.

Malnourished saplings and older trees shared his shipwreck, many dismasted by boulders heaved against them by early inundations. This complex area of natural disaster was no more than twelve metres across at its widest; yet its length—like the spine of a great submerged creature—divided the flood for farther than eye could see.

Like a wounded bear, he limped forward, taking care, in his anxious tour of inspection, to lumber on the margins of the water and keep as much space as he could between himself and possible attack.

A stag, head high, eyes aflash, burst from a fern thicket in front of him. He fell in startlement as it plunged into the flood until only its red-brown head bearing three-pointed antlers was above the water. Uttering a plaintive bellow, it yielded its powerful body to the greater power of the waters, which carried it away in a wide arc. The creature appeared unable to gain the farther bank, and was still swimming bravely when Aoz Roon lost sight of it in banks of mist.

Later, clambering over a fallen tree, he sighted the cowbird again.

It was watching him with its lapidary reptile eye, perched on the sod-and- boulder roof of a hut. The hut’s walls were of cut stone; piled shingle, ferns, spavined saplings sought to turn the hut into a natural object. Aoz Roon worked his way round to the front of this refuge, concluding that the phagor must be inside.

Where the ground dipped, water swirled within three feet of the door. Here, the island had broken down. It emerged a few metres farther upstream, to continue its circumscribed course, a thin ship bearing a purposeless freight of stones. Its two parts were divided by a stretch of eddying water no more than knee-deep. The bear- man could wade to better safety. The phagor, with that hatred of water which marked its species, would never follow.

The chill of the current bit into his bones like alligator’s teeth. He was groaning loudly as he staggered to the continuation of the island. He fell. He remained prone, scrabbling among rock, twisting to look back at the hut. The adversary must be inside—sick, injured, as he himself was.

He dragged himself up and toured the island, casting about stupidly, eventually using his knife to cut two firm stakes. Tucking them under one arm, he thrust himself back into the cruel stream, hobbling across with the aid of his crutch. He kept his gaze fixed on the hut door.

As he reached it, there was movement over his head. The cowbird swooped down and slashed open his temple with the barb of its beak. Dropping crutch and stakes, he sliced the air with his knife. The next time the bird plunged, he cut its breast. It banked clumsily and landed on a log, shedding feathers speckled with its red blood.

He staggered forward and jammed the two stakes in place, one under the latch, the other under the upper hinge of the door. The door began immediately to shake. Hammering and bellowing followed, as the phagor fought to get out. The stakes held firm.

He picked up his crutch. As he turned to beat his retreat back to the islet, his gaze fell on the cowbird. It was hopping from one foot to the other, blood dripping from its breast. He lifted his crutch above his head and brought it down hard, killing the bird.

Holding it under one arm, he hobbled through the freezing water a third time.

On the other side, he threw himself down to massage some life back into his legs. He cursed the pain in his bones. The hammering on the hut door continued. Sooner or later, one of the stakes would work out of place, but for the present the phagor was put of action and the Lord of Embruddock triumphant.

Dragging the cowbird, Aoz Roon crawled between two trees that leaned together, pulling stones round himself for protection. Weakness flowed over him in waves. He fell asleep with his face buried in the still warm breast feathers of the bird.