West of January

by Dave Duncan

  Later I did ask Lon. He told me of the mud that had barred his wagon’s way westward into Dawn, and also of the Dying Lands in the east, beyond which Heaven lurks amid the blizzards of Dusk. I did not want to discuss Heaven with the traders, though.

  “Where are you heading now?” I asked Jat.

  But of course that was a matter that Jat was reluctant to discuss with me. “To and fro,” he said, waving a lazy hand. “Borderlands give the best trading.”

  Neither of us was aware that Vernier was about to spring yet another of its traps, although a fairly harmless one. Angels had been passing the word for some time, and Jat’s ignorance showed how reluctant traders are to share information among themselves.

  The conversation had died of too much caution. The wagon paused and then lurched. Misi belched. She twisted her thick torso around so that she could look at me.

  “Where do you want to go, Knobil?” she asked.

  Misi had been listening to the talk, had understood every word, and had then asked outright the one question I preferred not to answer, but by then I was so completely convinced of her stupidity that I did not notice when the mask briefly slipped.

  “Will I ever walk again?” I countered.

  “Yes. Maybe not well, though.”

  I eyed Jat, whom I still thought of as the brains of the partnership. “When I get these splints off, would you teach me to ride?”

  “Of course, Knobil!” If he meant that, he had an exceptionally slow horse in mind for me. “Be glad to.”

  “Then what, Knobil?” Misi asked. “Where will you ride to? Heaven?”

  “Why should I do that?” I retorted, still not realizing that I was crossing wits with the woman I believed to be a mental snail. “I have no desire at all to go to Heaven!” and there, at least, I was speaking the truth.

  “Thought you’d want to tell the angels about the slaves in the mine,” Jat remarked blandly.

  This was dangerous ground. Whatever they said, these wily traders were harboring me only because they could smell profit—somewhere, somehow—and Hrarrh had not sent me on this journey out of benevolence. Angels would be able to give me advice and possibly rescue. And, yes, they would certainly ask me about slavery.

  When I had denounced Anubyl for killing my mother, Violet had ignored my protest. Wiser now, I knew how angels defined violence. They would intervene only if the violence was between cultures. A herdman beating his women was not breaking the rules of his own group, and angels had already far too much to do without trying to change social patterns. But slavery crossed boundaries, and the angels would take action if they could.

  Yes, the ants owned slaves. They bought them from traders. Heaven was powerless against a mine full of ants, but a trader caravan was vulnerable.

  So I met that rapier gaze as steadily as I could. “I have a very low opinion of angels, Jat, very low!” Again I was being truthful. “You ever trade in slaves, Jat?”

  Amused, he shook his head. “Not so far. It’s a mean way to make a living. But if I’m ever crossing the grasslands and a starving loner crawls up to me—I suppose I’d feed him. Then he’d owe me, wouldn’t he? It would be like having a plump doe drop dead on your campfire. Hard to refuse.”

  “Let him starve! It would be kinder. But as far as I know, there are no slaves in your train nor in any of the others. If an angel comes by, I won’t make trouble. I’m very grateful to all of you. I won’t start cuddling up to angels.”

  The little man nodded in unusual silence. I did have a strong suspicion, though, that one of the other wagons held slaves—I had seen some youths being exercised once, in the far distance. And I knew for certain that one of Misi’s storage chests had held a gun, because I had snooped, early in my recuperation. It had not been there the next time I looked, but it would be around somewhere. Angels would certainly want to know about that gun and where it had come from.

  “So?” Misi said. “Not Heaven. Where do you want to go, Knobil?”

  I had not been long enough out of the mine for my wits to have healed. I knew I must return to the grasslands, and I still vaguely believed that that was because I had business with the Heavenly Father there—but I also knew that I no longer believed in any of the myriad gods and goddesses I had heard worshipped in the slave compound. My logic needed more work, but my intent was clear. Back to scenes of my childhood I must go.

  “If I can some how earn a horse of my own, then I shall head for the grasslands,” I said. “Being a seaman on the March Ocean was pleasant. The cold seas of Saturday don’t attract me.”

  “Be a herdman?” Jat snorted in disbelief.

  Misi pouted doughy lips. “That’s no life! They’re animals! You learn to ride and then stay with us! We’ll make a trader of you.”

  She turned her attention back to the hippos as if the matter were now settled. Jat grinned at the passing scenery and said nothing. He was perhaps thinking, as I was, of Knobil and Misi as cab partners. My reaction had perhaps shown on my face.

  I promised to consider Misi’s suggestion. I was quite sure that Jat had some other end in view for me, but I could do nothing until I got my legs back, except continue my attempts to seduce Misi Nada.

  ─♦─

  In retrospect, that conversation ought to have warned me that I had grievously underestimated Misi. How stubborn the human brain is, how reluctant to change any of its own opinions! I should have seen the evidence. A moron could not have hauled me from death’s gut as Misi had. A moron could not play apothecary and healer to the whole caravan, as Misi did. A moron would certainly not have been allowed to trade with the slashers.

  We were now approaching the most fertile part of Vernier, where the inhabitants follow a form of agriculture called slash-and-burn. The women raise crops, harvest them, and then move west to where the men have already cleared new ground. After the planting and its associated rites, the men gradually slip away again westward to start the next clearing. In Heaven I met several slashers, and at least one had obvious trader blood in him. In theory, though, the male traders stayed away from the slasher women’s villages and sent in their own women to bargain. When Misi was chosen for this duty a second time, I at last began to wonder.

  Part of my blindness certainly sprang from pride. Ever since Jat had explained the traders’ customs to me, I had been trying my wiles on Misi, the skills I had developed so highly in the seafolk’s grove. Whenever the two of us were alone, I expressed my desire by word and eye and hand. Misi’s reaction was one of complete incomprehension, leaving me baffled. I peevishly concluded that she could understand nothing more subtle than an outright business offer, and I had no trade goods. To admit that there was a mind inside that big head would be to admit that it had outsmarted me.

  And when Misi began removing my splints for short periods, my suspicions became hard to ignore. I did not want to exercise my knees, for even the smallest bend produced fearful agony. Misi insisted, standing over me, threatening to use force. Cursing and screaming by turns, I would obey—but only because I believed her threats. And when I was incapable of bearing more, she would gently tie the planks to my legs again and wipe my streaming brow.

  But she only did this when we were alone. When Jat asked how I was progressing, she told him straight lies. I was surprised, but I did not contradict her. So perhaps I had guessed.

  In the end it was the shirt that convinced me. Ever since I had known her, Misi had been working on that shirt. Now bright thread hid every scrap of the underlying silk. It was obviously a man’s garment and, I assumed, intended for Jat. But traders gave nothing away, in spite of Jat’s tales of freeing slaves to bring good luck.

  Taking advantage of some smooth terrain, I had been sleeping. I awoke to the sound of voices. For a moment I thought they were discussing me. When I opened my eyes, however, I saw Jat wearing the new shirt. Another lay discarded at my side, beside his leather coat. He was preening mightily, admiring as much of himself as he could contort into the little m
irror. If one’s taste ran to such ostentation, then that shirt was the treasure of a lifetime. Even I could see that it was a masterpiece.

  The dealing had started. Misi was sitting on one of the chests, set outside on the step, and had now turned around to plant her big feet flat inside the cab. Her meaty hands rested on her knees, and her eyes had shrunk back into sinister caverns of fat.

  “Not one more twenty-seventh!” Jat said over his shoulder. “Pick something else, anything else but—oh, hi Knobil. Anything else at all.”

  Misi’s pout became a glare.

  “Fourteen sacks of phosphate?” Jat suggested, earning a loud snort. “Well, how about the dapple foal? Kan wants it. Nine-eighteenths of the copper pots?”

  She seemed to like none of his ideas. She shrugged hugely. “The rest of the bronze pelts?”

  Jat’s attention went to his fingers. “Nineteen thirty-thirds of my twenty-two thirtieths?”

  “The molasses and your share of the oats?”

  “Thirteen twenty-fourths of the wool and the bag of agates?”

  “All the wool and two-thirds of the agates?”

  “The bleach, the sickles, and the glass beads?”

  They kept this up for some time, while I listened in amazement. I had seen Jat bargaining with Lon and even with some of the other men—it was their favorite occupation. But I never heard it done faster, with less hesitation, or with more authority. Offer and counteroffer went leaping around the cab like a herd of roos; speed was part of the technique. Misi apparently knew the details and values of Jat’s holding as well as he did.

  Usually such session ended with an agreement, a handshake, and a repeat of the terms before a witness and in sunshine. But not this one. “Leave it, then,” Misi growled, and she swung around once more to attend to the team.

  Angrily Jat pulled off the overpriced garment, threw it down, and flounced off like a sulky child. He was still fastening buttons as he cantered away.

  Stunned, I stretched out to catch hold of the discarded shirt. I lifted it and had begun to fold it when I saw that Misi had twisted around to glare her grotesque face in my direction.

  “Work those knees more, Knobil!”

  “Yes, Misi,” I said humbly. “I will.”

  If she had fooled me for so long, which one of us was the smarter?

  —8—

  BLACK-WHITE-RED

  I BARELY HAD TIME TO ADJUST TO MY NEW VISION OF MISI WHEN, with no warning at all, there was trouble.

  Our train happened to be in the lead. The men had been up ahead on a scouting or hunting expedition. Now they came cantering back with bows strung, with horses steaming and prancing. They were all good horsemen, those trader males, but they were shouting a lot and I could see that some of their mounts were giving trouble, as if anxiety was infectious. When Jat scrambled onto the platform, I saw that his eyes and nostrils were dilated as if he were spooked himself. Then he turned to Misi and began to whisper urgently in her ear.

  The country was patchy woodland, rolling in large hills and ridges under dismal low clouds. The rain had stopped, but the air was still full of the feel of it. Odd movements of wind stirred gusts of mist amid the copses, and the twisted white tree trunks hovered like flocks of ghosts on the edges of reality.

  Often, as now, I huddled in a blanket for warmth. The sun, when visible, had fallen halfway down the sky, lower than I had ever seen it, and shadows stretched eerily out to the east. I sorely missed the constant cloudless blue of the grasslands.

  For several sleeps we had been skirting a large river to the south of us. Jat had spoken of deep jungle beyond it. To the north bare spines of rock rose faintly, higher than anything I had seen since we had left the Andes. Long ago burned off by High Summer, those would now be incapable of growing anything, even when watered. So this might be a natural pass, a narrowing of the borderlands, an obvious place to ambush traders. There was danger—I could smell it.

  I could stand on my feet now, but only briefly and not without pain. Walking was still beyond my powers, and I was happier wearing my splints. Whatever lurked ahead of us, I could not flee it at any speed greater than the snail crawl of the hippos, for I could not even sit astride a horse yet.

  Of course trader women never rode and would never abandon their wagons. The men, I suspected, might. If the danger was some predatory animals—or men—then I could expect to take part in a collective defense. I had not shot an arrow since I joined the seafolk, but even a sitting man can use a bow.

  Or I might be the danger. Jat straightened up and looked back at me again. He smiled automatically, but for once his jauntiness failed him, and his smile was obviously as utterly false as I had always suspected it to be. He jumped down and hurried over to the other men, who had dismounted and were walking their horses, arguing fiercely.

  So the trouble did concern me. I laid away my sewing, untied my splints, and began some leg exercises. Misi was keeping her eyes on the team and had not looked around.

  Angels?

  Slave trading was a forbidden violence. If there was an angel waiting up ahead, then the traders had only three choices—turn back, kill the angel, or dispose of the evidence. I was helpless. Dreams of jumping out the window and running for the woods must remain only dreams.

  Jat and the other men were standing in a group just ahead, holding their horses’ reins and still arguing. Lon Kiv cantered up and dismounted also.

  Puffing and bedraggled from sleep, Pula scrambled onto the platform to relive Misi, who clambered down, painfully awkward, and plodded forward to join the discussion. The talkers stopped to form a circle in a sheltered spot, the train drawing slowly away from them.

  All the trader men had gathered, with only the one woman?

  That confirmed my guess: Knobil was the problem. I wondered if I dared hang my head out the window to watch, and I decided that I would be wiser to pretend to be unconcerned. That was not easy.

  I lay back, grunting with pain as I gripped and bent each leg in turn. The amount of movement I could tolerate was pitiful, and even short exercise sessions still left the joints puffed and sore. I felt as helpless as I had when Hrarrh had loosed his horrors upon me. I hoped that traders granted quick deaths. A sword thrust would be better than being tossed aside in the bushes and left to die.

  The talk lasted a long time. I worked my knees until I thought they would smoke. I even lurched over to sit on the front bench, near to Pula, and tried talking to her, but that was always hopeless. Misi was certainly much smarter than she pretended, but I had not yet discovered whether Pula had a brain at all.

  Then Misi returned, wheezing from unaccustomed exertion. She heaved her great bulk up on the platform, evicted her daughter, and took the reins again. Pula dismounted without a word.

  “Misi, what’s going on?” I was beside her, still on the chest—barely—but facing backward. Her feet were out on the platform and mine inside, on the floor.

  She chewed her usual wad of paka for a while, until she caught her breath. “Nothing.”

  “Rubbish! Is it angels?”

  That earned no detectable reaction.

  I did not wait for the ruminated response. “Misi, I won’t tell! I’m very, very grateful to you. You saved my life! Trust me!”

  Pula had somehow found her way into the middle of the team and was doing something with the harness. Misi yanked on the traces, which are attached to the hippos’ ears, reportedly their only tender part and certainly the only place any attachment could be made on their vast brown smoothness. I once tried to steer a team of hippos. It took all the strength I possessed, and much more patience, for if hippos are smarter than woollies, then the victory is narrowly won. They remember no signal for longer than a man could draw a breath. To make a team stand still for more time than that is impossible.

  Misi halted the rear pair. The front two continued to plod ahead, bearing their great yoke. In a moment the rear pair began to move again, but now they were pulling the train by themselve
s. The loose pair advanced more quickly, with Pula following, holding the traces and gradually turning them in a slow arc to the left.

  “Trust you to do what, Knobil?”

  “Trust me not to tell the angel that I’m a slave.”

  Chew…chew…“You’re not a slave, Knobil.” Chew…“What angel?”

  I considered trying to strangle her, but my hands would not have girdled her neck. She would have swatted me like a bug anyway.

  And she was right not to trust me. One glimpse of an angel and I would start screaming at the top of my lungs, yelling for rescue.

  She began to turn the train to the right. We were going back, then? But why divide the team? Seething with mingled anger and worry, I could do nothing but wait and watch. Eventually we had turned to retrace our path, and I saw that the train itself had been divided also. Pula was guiding the loose hippos toward the now-stationary rear wagon. Jat and Lon were throwing open doors, pulling out goods. Now I could guess what had been decided during the long debate—the various partnerships had been dissolved.

  Later, when all the rearranging was complete, I found myself riding with Misi and Pula in the cab of a very short one-wagon train and still heading back to the west. All the others had vanished eastward with Jat and Lon driving the other half of what had once been the joint rig, although I had never before seen men handling a team. Apparently Misi and Pula had traded one of their wagons for two of the men’s hippos. Certainly other merchandise had been involved in the transaction, including me.

  Among traders, anything was negotiable.

  ─♦─

  My two huge companions sat on the bench at the front of the cab. I was stretched out again on the bed, at the back, and almost ready to weep from frustration. Which woman did I belong to? Or did they each own a part of me? Six clay pots for his right arm… I should be grateful they had not shared me out with a saw. I was certain now that the traders had heard word of angels up ahead, and now I was being borne away from them and from my only hope of rescue.