West of January

by Dave Duncan

  I was the taller. I kept my chin up and looked him in the eye, and I tried not to sway. He was amused.

  “Plotting rebellion, Knobil? Looking for a quick death?”

  “That was what you advised, wasn’t it? Well, take me to the canyon ladder and I’ll do it for you.”

  He shook his head and moved closer, glancing around cautiously. “Put your eyes down. Now listen carefully. You’re leaving!”

  “Ha!” Talking back to a boss was an intense pleasure after so much humility. I had forgotten how good it felt to contradict someone.

  Hrarrh’s eyebrows shot up. “Great! I was frightened you’d do a fade. You mustn’t die on me, Knobil!”

  “I should hate to spoil your fun.”

  A grin twisted his beard. “I knew you had guts! You couldn’t have saved me otherwise. Now…it’s dangerous for me to talk to you here, and worse in the mine. You know how it echoes. Can you listen while Chuckles washes your legs? You’ve got to have them done or those cuts will go bad. It won’t hurt so much as before.”

  “What choice do I have?”

  He nodded approvingly. “Good man! Anyone watching will think I’m gloating, but you try to listen, because it’s important.”

  The workers from the other shift had completed their meal and were stretching out to sleep. They were staying well away from the dangerous ant and his victim. The panther crouched and touched a rough wet tongue to my ankle. I shuddered and waited for the flames to start. Hrarrh put his hands on his hips and leaned forward, sneering into my face, but his voice was softer than his expression.

  “Believe this, Knobil. I did all that just to get you out of here!”

  Pain starting…“Dead.”

  His eyes flickered warily around again, but apparently no one was watching too closely. I was shivering and streaming sweat as fire began to engulf my leg. But he was right—it was not as bad as before. Nothing could have been.

  He was still talking…

  “…wont believe me, but I was bluffing. I swear it!”

  Just for a moment, relief—No! It was another round in the game. He was going to cure me and then do it again.

  The deep-sunk eyes registered concern. “Warn me if you feel giddy—I’ll call Chuckles off. You all right?”

  The tongue had reached my thigh now, and my mouth tasted of blood again. I nodded.

  “I don’t expect you to believe me, but you will. There are traders here.”

  Traders?

  “It’s those blue eyes of yours, Knobil, that hair. Traders sell us slaves, but never wetlanders. They buy wetlanders!”

  For a moment a flash of hope drowned out the creeping agony in my leg—then again disbelief. “Why?”

  “I don’t know. No one knows for sure. They don’t much care how old or what sort of shape they’re in—men or women, it doesn’t matter. But any trader will buy a wetlander. One bolt of silk is the standard price. It’s your only chance!”

  The black cat had completed my right leg. It sat back on its haunches and moved its mouth as if to get rid of a bad taste. Then it stared hungrily at my navel.

  “Ready for the other one or do you need a break?” Hrarrh’s sudden concern for my well-being was more terrifying than his previous open sadism. He was going to restore me to health and then do it all over again.

  He saw the doubt in my eyes and grinned wolfishly. “I’ll show you!” He signaled to the cat and a paw flashed. I flinched and then peered down at my foot. There was a single, faint red line on it, but the skin was unbroken. I looked up again at Hrarrh in bewilderment.

  “You made her cut deep before?”

  He nodded, still grinning. “She’s the best-trained pet in the mine. I showed them a thing or two about cats!”

  “But…but why?”

  “To make you bleed lots. You look much, much worse than you really are. You’d have needed a hundred times as many normal scratches to bleed like that. No one’s looked close, right?”

  Again, hope squirmed very softly as I tried to believe.

  “I had to do it this way, Knobil! They think I went mad in there.” He glowered. “This is costing me, too—I’m in big trouble for spoiling a good slave. I was only supposed to have a little fun with you, but you trailed blood all the way out to the paddock… Even my wife heard you, back in her kitchen.”

  “That wasn’t what you said when you were doing it!”

  “But you’re not nearly as bad as you look, as long as you don’t get fever in the cuts. You sounded real bad and you look real bad. What the traders will do with you, I don’t know. But certainly you’ve got a better chance of escaping from them than you have from us.”

  At last the torment of the licking ended. Hrarrh glanced around at the hot bright paddock, littered now with sleeping slaves. Outside, in the main compound, ants were going about their business as usual, but the other shift’s barrow had not yet appeared.

  “Right.” He grinned uneven teeth at me. “Let’s go!” Unwanted slaves not publicly executed just vanished inexplicably. Now I was about to do the same, and no one would know where I had gone.

  My heart beat insanely as I reeled along behind him. At the gate he retrieved his package and pointed with it—pointed away from the mine, toward the road. The road to freedom? Keeping my legs stiff, quivering as violently as I had during the worst moments of his tortures, I stumbled forward, hearing his boots behind me, knowing that the panther was there also.

  At the end of the long ridge of tailings stood a big shed, used to hold supplies. Hrarrh directed me in behind it, out of general view. Grinning again, he unrolled the bundle to reveal shabby old leather trousers and a pair of tattered boots.

  “Traders don’t like damaged goods,” he said. “Try not to bleed any more until they’ve shaken hands on a price for you.”

  ─♦─

  The traders were real. Two of them stood with three ants, a short way down the road. That must be why I had never seen them before—they were not admitted to the main compound. But they were certainly the same sort of traders I had seen in my youth—smart little men in ornate leather garments, decorated with brightly colored beadwork and pipings and tassels. They had curved-brim hats and neatly trimmed mustaches and pointed beards. Traders!

  This was real!

  My brain seemed to fade away. I registered only vaguely that a team of horses nearby was being burdened with sacks, that bales were being loaded and unloaded and carried around. This was real—I was going to escape! Shaking uncontrollably, I stood with eyes downcast until one of the traders snapped, “Look at me, slave!

  “Blue as blue,” he admitted. “What’s wrong with him, Minemaster? He seems healthy enough.”

  “Lost his spirit,” one of the ants growled. “Used to be a good worker. What’s he doing now, Hrarrh?”

  “Two short last shift, sir,” my benefactor mumbled. Then he whined, “I think I can scratch more sense into him, if you’ll give me another chance, sir.”

  “One more chance and you’d kill him!”

  The discussion wandered around, and so did my wits. I was going! Freedom! Or at least another form of slavery. Nothing could be worse than the mine—nothing!

  “As Our Lady Sun is my witness,” the trader said. I remembered the words from my childhood, but this time it was me who had just been sold. The two men shook hands and one of them mentioned paper.

  Hrarrh coughed deferentially. “Do you wish him hobbled, sir?”

  The trader said, “What? Oh yes, please.” He went back to complaining about how difficult it was to find paper, because the only good paper came from Heaven, but he did happen to have…

  ─♦─

  Hrarrh gave me a shove and pointed farther down the road, toward the horses. I stumbled off ahead of him. I was leaving. My life could start again. Whatever use traders had for wetlanders, whatever value wetlanders had for traders, nothing could be worse than the mine. Never again need I crawl down into that cramped dark hell…

 
“Here!” Hrarrh barked behind me, pulling my fluttering mind back to reality. We were almost down to the vegetable fields, standing between the pony corral and the tannery outside a big shack they called the machine shed. It was issuing loud clanging noises, as always. This was where the smiths worked.

  “Master?”

  He laughed and suddenly clapped a hard hand on my shoulder. “I’m not your master any longer, Knobil!”

  “You’re my friend!” I said, trying to suppress sudden tears.

  “Yes, I’m your friend. And you were mine also, when I needed one.”

  “Hrarrh!” My voice cracked. “My friend! Hrarrh—”

  “Calm down! It was my pleasure, Knobil, truly! Now, there’s one last thing to do…”

  I choked, suddenly wary. “What?”

  He grinned at my nervousness. “Traders don’t have cats to guard their slaves. They use fetters.”

  He gestured to his panther to sit by the door, while his strong damp grip on my shoulder eased me into the shed—loud and impossibly hot despite the dim shade. Three or four ants were apparently trying to make as much noise as possible with hammers and rasps, raising dust. A grotesquely thick youth was grinding a plowshare on a treadle just inside the entrance. His shoulders were remarkable even by ant standards, burying his bald head in muscle up to the ears, making his beard protrude straight out from the top of his chest. In any other race he would have been regarded as deformed.

  “The traders just bought this,” Hrarrh told him. “They want it hobbled.”

  The smith looked me over without expression, wiping his forehead with a bushy arm. He nodded his head to indicate direction. “Put it on the anvil.”

  “Lie down,” he said, out of the smith’s earshot, “and put your ankles up here. Don’t look so worried, Knobil! I’m not going to hurt you, promise!”

  Still alternating wildly between hope and distrust, I lowered myself gingerly to the floor and lifted my feet, wincing at the pain in my thighs and wondering if the movement would tip pools of blood from my boots.

  Hrarrh went around to the side of the anvil and took a firm grip on my ankles, adjusting my calves across it. “Can you flatten out?” he asked. “Raise your knees?”

  I had no choice, for he was levering hard and also pulling. I curled myself until my shins were level and my buttocks high off the floor. Something sharp dug into my neck and shoulders. I pushed down with my hands to relieve the stress on my abdomen. My thighs stung where the muscles flexed, and if Hrarrh thought he was not hurting my lacerated calves…

  He looked content then, smiling down at me fondly. I did not like that sleepy smile.

  “I didn’t tell you, did I, Knobil, that I’m a father now?”

  “Congratulations…” If he was going to put fetters on me, then why was he not removing my boots?

  He nodded in satisfaction. “Minemaster Krarurh’s first grandson! After eight granddaughters! I’m a hero, Knobil!”

  Suddenly I understood and was filled with terror. “So he gave you a present?”

  Hrarrh nodded. “Certainly. I explained that I had a problem, and he understood at once. He said I could do whatever I wanted to correct the matter.”

  My heart could hardly sink any more, not in that upside-down position. “And what did you decide?”

  He grinned like a cat. “I was going to shuck you—but we do that for mere insolence, don’t we? I could have let Chuckles eat bits off you, but that’s commonplace. An offense like yours calls for something special.”

  Pride! Long ago he had been too weak to refuse my aid, and I forced it on him. I was a constant reminder of that time of weakness. I insulted him by just being alive.

  “And the traders are better?”

  The gloating was back, quite openly. His eyes were shiny. He licked his lips. “Much better! Of course I won’t be there to see, but…a fitting end! Much better.”

  He turned his head slightly, and I saw that the mountainous youth was standing beside me, impassively clutching a sledge.

  “Which one, Hrarrh?” he asked.

  “You said you weren’t going to hurt me!” I yelled.

  Hrarrh sighed happily. “I’m not. He is.”

  Screaming would not help me now. I howled, almost upside down, more utterly helpless than ever. “I did you a kindness!”

  Hrarrh bared his teeth. “It was a humiliation, slag!”

  “Which one?” the smith asked again, raising the hammer overhead.

  Hrarrh looked at me, and for a moment I thought he was going to ask me to choose. What I saw in his eyes then taught me what true hatred really was. How had he managed to keep it bottled up for so long? I had driven him mad. Perhaps all ants must be insane, for they could not treat their slaves as they do if they believed that those slaves were people like themselves.

  I have no doubts that Hrarrh was mad. Since adolescence, he had been waiting for this revenge, this chance to wipe out the memory of a kindness that was an insult, a debt owed to an inferior: a non-ant.

  He heaved my feet back, so that my knees, not my shins, were on the anvil. I yelped with pain and surprise.

  “Do them both!” he said.

  Later he dragged me outside and draped me over a horse’s back like a blanket, and at last I fainted.

  I do not remember leaving the ants’ nest.

  —7—

  THE TRADERS

  THE TROUBLE WITH THE ANTS, KETTLE SAID, was that they did not understand pain.

  I disagree.

  This exchange took place in a room known only as “Cloud Nine.” No one knew where so absurd a name could have come from, and Kettle claimed to have seen it mentioned in very old records. It was the recreation nook for the cherubim, just big enough for five tables and a tangle of mismatched stools and chairs. Dark and stuffy, cramped and loud, Cloud Nine was where the apprentice angels gathered for relaxation. There was singing there and arguing and much drinking of a brew that was given the courtesy tide of “beer,” although its progenitors were fermented fungi, not grain. Storms might rage in the darkness outside and icy gales might shriek; damp furs might often stink in heaps by the doorway and snow might eddy in around ill-fitting antique casements; but within its smelly squalor there was warmth and laughter and the rambunctious fellowship of young men bound by a common dedication and a purpose shared. Angels scorned the place, having their own establishment—angels usually regarded themselves as beyond consorting with mere cherubim anyway—but sometimes a saint would drop in, and once in a while even one of the archangels, although a presence so august tended to dampen the joviality considerably.

  Saint Kettle was a regular visitor. A true scholar, was Kettle. He had studied more of the arcane lore than anyone, even Gabriel, his nominal superior. He was a wonderful teacher and great company. Knowing ten times as much as the curriculum required him to teach, he tried to teach all the rest anyway. He liked nothing better, even after a long session of lecturing, than to join a group of us around a table in a snug and shadowed corner of Cloud Nine and let us ply him with foam-capped steins of ale. Then the conversation would range over all of Vernier and all the wisdom of the ancients, while the gleam of lanterns painted fresh young faces on the circling dark.

  Kettle’s own round, seaman face would wax ruddier and ruddier, the girdle constricting his voluminous purple gown would strain tighter and tighter, and his laugh would roll louder and louder and louder from the shadows; but he would still be booming out triple-distilled wisdom when all his juvenile listeners were much too befuddled to understand a word of it. I knew how to switch steins unobtrusively in the gloom, although the smart ones eventually learned that beer seemed more potent when they sat next to me.

  It was in Cloud Nine that Kettle and I argued about the ants. With Kettle argument was always permissible, and in Cloud Nine he blatantly provoked it.

  There were six of us on that occasion, squashed in around the table beside him—Ginger, Dusty, the Fox, and me, plus two young newcomers known as
Ham and Beef. None of them were ants. Indeed, I only ever knew two ants in Heaven and both were angels, so I never heard their original names.

  By custom, no cherub ever addressed another cherub by his true name, either. Every cherub naturally expected to win his wheels eventually and be known thereafter only by a color scheme, so perhaps that preference for nicknames was not merely a juvenile aping of the angels, but also a sort of hopeful superstition. Moreover, a man’s real name was a reminder of his racial origin, and we were always careful not to reveal prejudices about those. All cherubim were equal, at least in theory. Of course in practice the subject was skirted often, in cautious teasing and careful testing. That was education also, for angels need to know the idiosyncrasies of all races, but in Cloud Nine I was neither Knobil nor Golden. Usually they called me the Old Man, which I did not mind, and sometimes Roo, which I did.

  On this occasion, Kettle had challenged the racial matter head-on, stamping all over our usual taboo. He had been explaining why people differed—why herdfolk men were much larger than their women, but trader women larger than their men, or why seamen like himself had lungs like water butts—

  And bellies like beer barrels, Ginger remarked dryly, and was sent for the next round in consequence.

  Good times.

  There were three reasons for races to differ, Kettle said. First was just culture, and he pointed out that a, say, wetlander raised in a, say, herdfolk tribe would think like a herdman because of his upbringing—not that herdmen thought much at all, of course. That was a calculated taunt, so I vowed violence upon him and anyone else seen smiling, as I was expected to.

  “Second, of course,” he said, “is natural selection. Human beings are less susceptible than other species, because we can control our own environment, but obviously a seaman with a big chest is less likely to drown than a skinny one.”

  Thereupon I raised my stein in a silent and solitary toast to a departed friend. In all the world, and all of Heaven, I had found no better man.

  “And selection explains why ants have skulls like marble bowling-nuts, less likely to be damaged if banged into a tunnel roof—”