West of January

by Dave Duncan

  We emerged at last from a rift in the mountains onto calm water stretching out of sight in three directions. I thought it must be another ocean, but it was only an inland sea lying to the east of the Andes. On Heaven’s maps it looks very small.

  Here I was greeted by a gentle rain, an experience I had almost forgotten, the first shower I had seen since my childhood. It cleared almost at once, to show a nearby hillside clothed in rich grass and bearing real trees.

  I was battered and spent, much too weary to think of food. Frith took me to this idyllic shore. I drank deeply at a stream of crystal water, found a dry spot under a bush, and lay like a dead man.

  ─♦─

  I awoke stiff, bruised, and famished. By then the surface of the sea was already dotted with fins and spoutings. Even as I watched, more great ones were emerging from the mouth of the canyon. Of course I did not know about Two-pink-green. I did not know that my mission had been completely unnecessary. I assumed that the honor was mine, and I congratulated myself on being a hero. All Brown need do now was watch as the seafolk were rounded up by the great ones and borne away to safety. That was, indeed, what happened. Unlike the tragic dying in the grasslands, there was no disaster on the March Ocean in this cycle. Not everyone made it—many bodies floated back down the Great River—but most did, and Heaven recorded a success.

  Battered and naked and starving, though, the self-hailed hero wanted breakfast. In the tumult of the canyon I had lost everything except my knife and my amulet. I mounted a rock at the water’s edge and hopefully sang Frith’s name. The shore sloped steeply. In a miraculously short time he thrust his head up almost at my feet and tossed me a fish, clicking welcome and amusement. I called out my thanks, greatly relieved that he had not deserted me.

  Yet raw fish is a dull diet. After I had taken the edge off my hunger, I began collecting dry leaves from below the densest shrubs and soon worked up a sweat twirling a stick, while I pondered my immediate future.

  The passage of the canyon had been a torment for even a strong mount and a relatively skilled rider. Towing coracles of terrified children and pregnant women would be a feat I just could not imagine the tribe achieving without my help. There was not a man I would trust to keep his head. My obvious duty was to return to the March Ocean and take charge.

  If Frith refused to go through that hell again—and of course my craven heart hoped that he would refuse—then I could camp quite happily on this hospitable shore. Or so I thought. I could wait for the tribe—great ones and people both. So I thought. Even if I was asleep when they passed through the gates of the mountain, Frith and Pfapff would tell them where I was. They would almost certainly head for this stream anyway, the first fresh water. Whether I went back or stayed, we should be reunited. I would ask Frith, and he would decide. I saw no other possibility.

  But I was fairly certain that Frith would take me.

  By the time I had worked all that out, I had roasted a piece of my fish on the rocks of my hearth. I skewered it on a stick. With my mouth watering, I rose to my feet to find a comfortable spot, away from the heat.

  I had earned this feast, I thought, and a rest in this so-serene campsite. I had earned the joy of smelling grass again, and the soothing shade of real trees, the inspiring view of mountains and shore. This was Paradise, and I longed to share it with Sparkle and my friends.

  Above me, the smoke from my fire climbed slowly up the azure sky, visible to half the world.

  I think of that moment as the end of my innocence.

  —6—

  THE ANTS

  SOMETHING HURLED ME DOWN, spun me over with sharp agony in my shoulder, and then crushed me into the ground. It dug claws into my shoulders and belly. It pushed a black-furred muzzle close to my face. Too dazed and horrified even to scream, I stared up at huge yellow eyes with vertical slits for pupils, at pointed ears, at white teeth as long as my toes. It snarled and spat, and the reek of its breath was nauseating.

  “Stay very still,” said a nearby voice, “or it will rip out your guts.”

  I rolled up my eyes and pretended to faint. I felt my knife being taken, then the weight moving off me. A boot slammed into my ribs. “Now get up!” Obviously my deception had failed.

  I clambered dizzily to my feet. My captor was short and broad, clad in stiff black leather garments, soiled and much patched. Little of his face was visible between a wide leather hat and a bristling beard—both of them black—but I could make out a broad flat nose and evilly glittering eyes.

  I clenched my jaw to prevent my teeth from chattering insanely. I was streaming blood. There were claw marks horribly close to my groin. The cause of my injuries was sitting on its haunches near the fire, watching me narrowly with a third yellow, slit-pupil eye, wiping its jowls with one paw. It was furry and black and as large as an adolescent girl. It had eaten my dinner.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Knobil.”

  He kicked my shin—hard. I yelped and staggered. The animal spun around, snarling.

  “Address me as ‘master’!”

  “Yes, master!”

  He nodded. “If you give me any trouble, I’ll have my friend here bite your knackers off. Makes a man more docile—understand?”

  “Yes, master!”

  “How many more of you are there around?”

  “None, master.”

  He kicked my other shin—harder. I staggered again and almost fell. The panther crouched threateningly. “The truth!”

  Shrill with terror, I insisted that I spoke the truth. I babbled about the angel and the great ones.

  He nodded and reached up to the amulet that was the only thing I wore. Checking for valuables, I supposed. “What’s in there?”

  “Angel tokens, master.”

  He guffawed. “More pilgrims end up in the pit than in Heaven, dross! They won’t help you.” He snapped the tie and contemptuously hurled my precious amulet away. “Now kneel!”

  I lowered myself reluctantly under the panther’s steady glare.

  “Stay very still. I’m going to have Feather lick those scratches. That stops the bleeding and prevents sickness, but it stings, and if you make any sudden movement, she’ll strike. You have been warned!”

  He made a sign with his fingers. Snarling, the monster crept toward me, low to the ground, keeping its forward eyes on mine. Its muzzle came close to my face and I gagged again at its fetid breath. Then a big pink tongue reached out to lap the blood on my savaged shoulder. I felt only a rough scraping until it reached the wound, and then the sudden pain was excruciating, like salt, or fire. I managed not to flinch too much and I did not scream. I was never lucky enough to faint.

  I reeled up the valley, following the stream, with the panther close behind me and the man behind her. Thorns ripped my bare skin, rocks cut my feet, and I was in constant danger of vomiting from pain and terror, but I believed every one of the man’s threats, so I just kept moving, as fast as I was able.

  We came at last to a small glen where tents nestled under the trees. Half a dozen black-clad men were lounging around, and two more were bathing in the stream. They were all short and broad, with dark porcupine beards. Their faces were burnt red, but the rest of their skin was almost as pale as mine, as I could see from the bathers. Their features were broad, their legs short and bowed, their shoulders broad as mountains. More of the great black cats roused from their slumbers to eye me hungrily.

  An older man climbed to his feet. “You got one!”

  “The fish are running,” my captor said. “This seems to be the first.”

  The headman looked me up and down approvingly. I was a healthy young male for his slave workforce, and much swimming had given me bulk. He rolled hair back from his teeth in a gruesome smile. “Good silk, too!”

  The man behind me chuckled. “When he’s older, though. You—dross! Over to the tree!”

  He handed me a length of coarse rope and told me to sit, to tie one end around my ankle and the other a
round the tree. He signaled instructions to his cat. It dropped to a crouch, watching me fixedly.

  “I know you can untie that,” the man said, “but I don’t advise it.”

  He walked away. The panther stayed put, and so did I.

  ─♦─

  Four men went off downstream to wait for more victims. Later two others came in carrying the carcass of a deer slung on a pole. Beside them stalked the panthers that had caught the deer for them. The men ate the best parts, the panthers the second best, and I got some scraps of offal. Long conditioned to a diet of fish, I soon became deathly ill.

  Two or three sleeps and meals later, more captives began to arrive, escorted by men and cats. We were roped in a string, ankle to ankle, with the same token tether that held me. The real bonds were the watching cats; the ropes, merely an added humiliation.

  Obviously the slavers had known of the coming migration, and seafolk were easy victims as soon as they set foot on shore to find water. These newcomers were all gibbering with terror, like frightened children. By that time my gut had begun to adjust to red meat and I had recovered a tiny sliver of self-control, so I tried to reassure them as well as I could. Tacitly they accepted me as leader. I did not realize how greatly that increased my danger.

  We were not allowed to stand upright, and we were kept naked. This deliberate degradation was intended to break us, as was the frequently imposed agony of having our injuries licked by the panthers, although that brutal torment did speed up the healing.

  The seventh and eighth victims were both women. They had been stripped and gang-raped by the slavers before being brought over to us. We soothed them as best we could, and we did not molest them.

  Eight was apparently a convenient number to transport. Our ankles were untied; we were roped neck to neck instead and marched off under guard. Two men and two panthers accompanied us, although one of each would have been sufficient to balk any attempt at escape. We did not know that, yet we were already so cowed by the systematic brutality that not one of us even tried.

  The worst part of the journey was still the lickings. At every stop, the guards made the panthers clean our scrapes and the raw flesh on our feet. The pain was frightful. Once of the women flinched too abruptly. The cat’s instant reflex uncovered her ribs.

  Our way led high up into the mountains. The guards carried rations for themselves, but not for us. Only once did they stop on the journey to hunt, and then we got some scraps to eat. We slept eight or nine times, I think, but we were half-starved and staggering when we eventually arrived at the mine. Had the distance been very much greater, some of us would not have arrived at all.

  The site had originally been a notch in mountain, for two sides were steep and covered with natural scrub. A high wall of tailings partly closed it off, forming a boxlike hollow.

  Along one side stood a row of small cottages with brightly painted doors and cheerful window awnings. To me they were like wooden tents, but it was obviously a pleasant settlement, shaded by stately trees. Grass grew there and even flowers. A small stream wound through this pleasant hamlet, then crossed over the bare roadway to water the livestock on the other side of the hollow.

  There, in barren sunlight, the slaves’ pen was a paddock of dry clay outlined by a ramshackle rail fence. There was no shade, and at first glance I thought it was littered with corpses. Then I saw that those were sleeping slaves. Most had animal hides to cover themselves, but some just lay in the open. All were filthy, and all naked. About a quarter of them were women. Two or three were mumbling or chanting in the monotonous tones of the insane, praying to the various deities who had forsaken them.

  I was to learn that there were about seventy or eighty adults and children in the tribe, and perhaps a hundred slaves at that time. We were close to High Summer, so rain was rare and very welcome. Sun was the problem, and the lack of shelter and clothing was more of the deliberate brutality I had come to recognize. But recognition did not stop it from being effective. My father had treated his woollies with more respect.

  The long torment of the journey was over. We were fed, then permitted to fall on the dirt and sleep.

  ─♦─

  When I awoke, groggy from the heat, I drank and bathed in the stream. I could see women washing clothes in it by the cottages, and I wondered what other purposes it had served before it reached me. Then I stood awhile, to consider the problem. Now that the first shock was wearing off, I must start thinking of escape. A life of captivity held no appeal. I wanted to return to the sea before all the great ones left for the South Ocean.

  The talus behind me could have been climbed, but not quietly nor unseen. The opposing hillside behind the huts was steep and coated with thorny shrubs. I decided that panthers would move through those a great deal faster than I could. The end of the hollow was almost sheer, with an ominous tunnel opening in it. Slaves were going and coming with barrows.

  The fourth side looked out across a wide valley at some spectacular mountain scenery, which I was in no mood to appreciate. I already knew that the track up the hillside had been long and bare. I remembered a corral with some runty ponies in it, but the panthers could surely run me down long before I could reach that, and run down the ponies also. Obviously my departure was going to need some organizing and assistance.

  The compound was not busy, nor was it deserted. Men of the tribe strolled to and fro as if on business, while vague hammering and jingling noises suggested that there were probably more of them around. At the heels of every adult male stalked one of the big black panthers. A group of children and kittens played loudly together near the stream. By the shacks, women were tending babies or doing womanly things, like spinning. Few of the women had cats.

  Whoever these people were, they were ugly in my eyes. Even the younger men had dark beards as bristly as thistle patches, but they were all bald—males lost their hair at adolescence and most of the women went bald later, although I did not notice that then. The men wore black leather; the women, dresses in gaudy patterns that merely stressed their wearers’ toadlike squatness.

  Around me, thirty or forty slaves lay or sat within the paddock, some sleeping, some just staring at nothing. They were all scabby and dirty, more like dry weeds than people. The mad ones were still wailing, or else another group had taken over their religious duties; insanity was never absent from the compound. Then I was astonished to notice a man with hair as fair as my own. I walked over and sat down beside him.

  He was older than I was, thin and wiry. His legs and back were a network of fine red and white scars. There was gray in the flaxen tangle of his beard. His tan showed that he had worn no clothes for a long time—my loins and buttocks were sunburned to blisters where my pagne had formerly provided protection. He turned to look at me with dulled blue eyes.

  “Knobil,” I said and held out a hand.

  He hesitated and then responded. “Orange.”

  I blinked. “Orange what?”

  He winced and looked away. “Orange-brown-white.”

  “Sir—”

  “Just ‘Orange,’ please. Even that is a mockery. I should not use it.”

  “I was a herdman,” I said, “and then a pilgrim, and then a seamen. Now I am a slave?”

  He nodded. “And that is the end of your story.”

  “Tell! I don’t know who these people are, or why they want us.”

  “They call themselves miners. Everyone else calls them ants. Don’t let them hear you say that, though.”

  “Ants or miners, I intend to escape.”

  He shook his head. “I expect somebody will try soon. Wait and see what happens before you try it yourself.”

  “What happens?”

  “They usually tie him up by his thumbs and have one of the panthers shuck him.”

  “Shuck him?”

  “Peel him, in strips. Did you ever watch a cat sharpen its claws?”

  I had never even heard of cats, although later I met them. They are very like small v
ersions of the panthers, without the third eye. Cats are said to be useful for catching small vermin, but I never liked them.

  Being ripped to death had no appeal, either. “Does no one escape?”

  Orange shook his head again. “Panthers are deadly and impossibly quick. Compared to a panther, you move like a snortoise. They can see body heat and watch you even when there is no light in the mine. They patrol the tunnels, guard the captives, catch game… Ants depend on panthers like seafolk depend on great ones.”

  “Can they talk?”

  “No. But they understand very complicated orders. They are very well trained. Don’t try it, Knobil—not until you’re ready to die.” He sighed as if he were reaching that point himself.

  I was thinking that over when he added, “And don’t ever anger the ants or draw attention to yourself. They like to execute someone every now and again. It’s a good example. And entertainment. Anything but utter humility is savagely punished. You showed too much purpose in the way you came over to me. Look cowed!”

  I grunted, trying not to show my dismay. This man was an angel? Then I caught his eye. For a moment the glazed, waxy look was missing. It flicked back again like a lid on a basket.

  “Notice that there aren’t quite enough hides to go around?” he asked softly. “They watch who sleeps under cover and who doesn’t. You’re allowed to enjoy the women if you want—if you have any strength left after your shift, that is. But if you start getting possessive, then that’s noticed, too. Don’t go to the same one every time. Any slave who begins to gather status is marked.”

  That was better! An angel would be an obvious leader, so he was merely being cautious.

  “You mean there’s no way out except death?” I asked.

  He hesitated, glanced at my hair, and then nodded. “That’s right.”

  “What do the angels think about this slavery?”

  “Ah!” He sighed. “There is a very remote chance that Heaven will raid the nest and release the slaves…this is a small tribe. But there are never enough angels, friend Knobil. Ants get their name because they keep slaves. The life of a mineworker is nasty and usually short, so why send your own sons into the pit when you can send someone else’s? Any traveler is fair game. In fact, ants are notorious for all sorts of violence. Sometimes one tribe will attack another and try to take its mine—that wouldn’t help us, though. There would just be more slaves. No ant army ever ends its march with fewer people than it started with, either.”