West of January (21 page)

“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 around 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 versions 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.”

What, I asked, was an ant army?

For a while he did not reply, then he lay down. Puzzled, I copied him. “We re noticed, Knobil,” he mumbled, staring at the sky and barely moving his lips. “Friendships are dangerous. You mustn’t come near me now for a while—four or five tours, at least. So listen and I’ll explain.

“You know that every tribe, every people, moves west? That’s the law of nature. Herders and ranchers drift around, but overall they move west. Traders come and go, but even a trader ends his life farther west than he began it. Seafolk move north to warm seas or estuaries. They go south to round the capes and headlands—or sometimes across them if they must—but in the end they’re moving west like the rest of us. Forest springs up before Noon and withers a month or so west of Dusk, so you could say that the forests move, also, and so do the people who live in them. Even Heaven moves.”

I had known that the herdfolk stayed ahead of the sun…

“What happens if you get east of the sun, then?” I asked the sky.

He grunted as if surprised at my ignorance. “The sun goes away. You’re left with cold and dark and snow. Half of the world is black and covered with ice, Knobil.”

Angels were always talking about this “ice” thing—Brown had, too. I tried in vain to imagine a sky without a sun.

“The ants are different. Nature didn’t spread ores around evenly, like forest or grass. The ants have kept more of the old wisdoms—reading and writing, and even a few arcane things that the saints have forgotten, or so they say. The ice of Darkside and the floods of Dawn destroy everything. Nothing made by human hand can last from one cycle to the next, and the world is always born anew. The landscape is changed, the workings buried or stripped away, but the ants keep records that tell them where the nests were in the last cycle. Each tribe has its own list, I suppose. They probably try to steal one another’s, which may be why they like to move to a mine site as close to Dawn as they can get, right up in the wetlands, to take possession early.”

Orange could have had no idea how little of his lecture I was understanding, but I let him talk.

“And they’ll stay at a mine as long as possible—unless they know of a better one thawing out, of course. They say that an ant can be born and live and die all in the same place—the sun low in the east when he is born, passing high overhead as he grows, and low in the west when he is a very old man.”

To a herdman, accustomed to an unchanging sun, that idea was utter insanity. I wondered if captivity had driven this ex-angel mad.

“So, when a tribe of ants does move,” he continued, “it may cross almost the whole length of Dayside. A child could be conceived after its parents left one home, and be walking and talking before they reached their next. That’s an ant army—a nest on the move. There can be two or three hundred of them, or more. The opportunities for pillage are not always overlooked—slaving, too, if they get the chance.”

“Don’t the angels care?”

“Yes, they do! No matter what nonsense you’ve heard, the angels do care about the ants! They try to keep watch. A big army will have chariots hovering around it like sheepdogs, but it may be spread over a huge tract of terrain, and there are never enough angels.”