West of January (3 page)

This, I think, had been an unusually long trek, or else I was a very young herder still, for I had been allowed to ride part of the way on one of the baggage woollies. But we had arrived at last. My father had ridden in, also, having satisfied himself that no dangers lurked in the vicinity. I was jumping up and down in my eagerness to rush over to the new pond and fall in, for we youngsters lived more in the water than out of it, but before anything else happened, the whole family had to give thanks to the Almighty for leading us safely to this haven. That meant that we had to wait for the older children who were bringing up the herd. Woollies cannot be hurried.

Native to the hot lands of Wednesday, woollies seldom stray even into the southern edges of Tuesday. For all their enormous size, they are very primitive. Their dense siliceous coats maintain the high body temperature they need and also protect them from predators. Woollies never move faster than a walk, but they never stop moving—rounded stacks of gray wool, eating constantly, crawling endlessly over the landscape, with only a short pink snout protruding at the front. They have three small eyes in the snout, although they see poorly. Turn the snout with a stick, and the woollie will change direction.

The woollies loomed as large in my childhood as the unbounded land itself or as the burning-metal sky. I took them all equally for granted, essential components of a world.

At last the herd crept into view over a distant ridge. The herders came running in to join us, and my father called for the first hymn. After that he led us in prayer and then a second hymn. We children sang almost all the time, but his strong bass voice inevitably reminded me of thunder. Our faith was simple: we believed in a Heavenly Father who must be obeyed. If we were good, we would go to Paradise; else, to Hell. I grew up believing that Paradise must be very much like the grasslands, with a plentiful supply of dashers for food and miniroos for sport. Hell, I had been informed, was cold and dark. As I had never met either cold or dark, my ideas of Hell were vague. It mattered little, for we had few opportunities to be bad.

As soon as the service was ended, we small ones raced off to enjoy our bath. Some older children were sent to guide the herd again, for woollies are too stupid to be natural herd animals and would scatter like seeds if left unattended. Several boys headed for a nearby miniroo warren to launch a massacre—looking back, I am sure they benefited more from the exercise than from any meat they caught, although a miniroo is a tasty treat when spitted, charred over hot coals, and eaten whole. The women had a fire to build, tents to pitch, and screaming children to feed. Babies were always raised on woollie milk so that their mothers could conceive again as soon as possible.

When I came dripping back to report on the pond, I found Aunt Amby and my mother just about to milk one of the baggage woollies before it was returned to the herd. They had enlisted the aid of Kanoran, largest of the boys. Each took a travois pole, thrust it under the beast, and heaved. It always seemed like a miracle that human muscles could move such a mass, but slowly the woollie toppled over on its side. As long as its snout was then held off the ground, it was helpless and could be milked—unless it contained a dasher. This one did.

Pink and hairless and incredibly fast over short distances, the dashers are the woollies’ males. They live on milk from the rear teat—the front teat is for the young—and they have no teeth. They do, however, have truly vicious claws. A dasher roasted is the finest feast in all Vernier, and catching them was the greatest sport in our childhood. Like all herdmen, I still bear dasher scars. The wounds can easily go bad, and I lost several brothers to the game; my sisters always seemed to have more sense.

Of course, the dasher did what dashers always do—streaked to the nearest woollie to take cover. As often happens, there was already another in residence. One or the other—they cannot be told apart until they start wounding each other—emerged at once and headed for another woollie. The procedure was due to be repeated until the refugee found a vacancy or was killed, but in this case Kanoran made a wild leap and threw himself on the second dasher—or perhaps it was the first dasher at its second appearance—and expertly snapped its neck before it clawed him to shreds.

To kill a dasher single-handed was a noble feat. Kanoran proudly delivered his prey to the cooks and then went strutting around, letting us lesser folk admire his gashes while they were still bleeding. And admire we did, secretly wishing we had some like them. The girls started singing a hero’s song.

Milk and woollie meat were our staple diet; roast dasher was our delicacy. Soon everyone not herding had drawn close, tugged by that seductive odor. Even my father, who had been grooming his horses, came striding over, the currycomb still in his hand.

We all rose, of course, even the toddlers. One of the women said timorously that the feast was not quite ready yet, but my father ignored her. He was staring hard at Kanoran, as if he had been overlooking him recently. Proud hero shrank into cowering boy beneath that fearsome gaze.

“Raise your arms, lad.”

Kanoran obeyed in silence, a guilty pallor seeping into his face. One of the women—his mother, I suppose—choked back a sob at what was then revealed, and I think it was that more than anything else that imprinted the scene on my memory. I was certainly too young to understand what terrible sin had been committed. The meal was forgotten. My father glanced at Aunt Amby, and the distress in her face disturbed me even more.

“Olliana, sir?” she whispered.

He thought for a moment, then nodded. He led the trembling Kanoran aside. They walked together up a nearby hillock. They sat down and talked. My father talked; his son listened.

He was a good man. Some herdmen take the word
loner
at its literal meaning. I saw this done later, but my father was not so cruel. Indeed, he was generous. I do not know what facts of life were imparted in those talks, for I never received one, but I suppose only the obvious—sex and how it worked; custom and dangers; angels, perhaps, and traders; and certainly the incest taboo, for the herdfolk take that rule very seriously.

When the long talk was ended, Olliana was waiting, dressed in a fine new wool robe of many colors. On her back she carried a bundle that the women had made up for her—food, I expect, and a knife, and a pot maybe, and tinder. Eyes downcast, she walked at her brother’s heel as he left the camp.

However much his inner self may have quaked, Kanoran bore his head up bravely as he walked away into the world. He did not look back at us sobbing children. He wore only his calf-length woolen pagne. He carried only a sling but he was allowed to take four woollies, and two people could live easily on the milk from four woollies. Some fathers gave more than four then, but few gave a woman as well. In those times a woman was worth ten or a dozen woollies. Later the price dropped to one or two.

Woollies move slowly. The tiny herd of huge creatures was visible for a long time, trailing slowly away over the ridges. The boy and girl beside them were smaller, and they vanished sooner.

I saw this scenario happen many times as my brothers and half-brothers grew older—footprints on my trek through childhood. My father, I suppose, was aging; thus, his family also. Puberty rites came more frequently as I grew to be a herder, helping the older children at first, then teaching youngsters in my turn. Never did we think of herding as work. It was what life was. Children herded woollies. Women cooked and made babies. They also spun wool; they wove and dyed and sewed cloth. Men—but we only had one man to study.

He was never idle, never at peace. Mostly he rode his horses, each in turn, tiring them long before he tired himself and endlessly scouting the countryside for signs of strangers—strangers were dangers. Of course, we children did not know that. I remember him returning once with blood on him. The women told us that he had fallen, but probably he had taken an arrow.

He wore boots and leather breeches. In wet weather he would add a poncho and a broad-brimmed hat. A knife hung at his belt, a sword and bow by his saddle. He practiced his archery often, letting us boys watch him and run to retrieve his shafts, but never allowing us to try for ourselves. Slingshots were permitted—indeed, we were encouraged to become proficient with them. A sling is a good weapon against small game and predators, but only at close range. Arrows carry farther. Thus he taught us the principle of archery, but withheld the skill. He never explained the reason for that, and we should not have believed him if he had.

His face I can still see clearly, but always outlined against the roof of a tent or against the sky. His hair and beard were dark and flowing, and the glitter of his black eyes was the terror of my dreams. More imposing than anything else in my existence, even the landscape itself, my father ruled his family without raising voice or hand. No one ever hesitated or questioned. He was impassive and rarely spoke, but by the standards of the herdfolk he was a good man. He must have had a name, but I don’t know what it was.

He spent much of his life on horseback, scouting the land in all directions. A horse is a four-legged, two-eyed mammal, much smaller than a woollie, but much faster. Horses were another symbol of wealth, and eventually my father had three of them.

So we knew that children grew larger, and we knew what women did, and we boys respectfully studied my father. As I said before, he was a good man by his own standards. He was kind to me, without cause. Disposing of unwanted babies is an ancient and widespread human custom but he had let me be, although he must have known I was not his. I was always small for a boy. I had gold hair and blue eyes, unlike everyone else in the family.

No, he was not my father, but I can think of him in no other way. I used to think his name was “Sir,” until I heard him use that word himself to a trader.

Traders were rare, although more common than angels. We saw their caravans only from afar and their womenfolk not at all. Likewise, whenever traders were around, my father would order his older daughters and his women into the tents. Trading was done on neutral ground, with us boys trotting to and fro, carrying out the cloth or yarn my father sold, bringing in the wares he bought. I remember it as being hard work, for woollie wool is heavy. I envied those wealthy traders with their many horses.

Traders seemed very small men to us herders, but very grandly dressed. Their shirts were exploding rainbows of color; their trousers garishly decorated with beadwork and piping. They wore short pointed beards, and hats with curled brims, and jeweled swords dangling at their sides.

Small or not, they frightened me—I was scared my father would trade me off for something. That is not as foolish as it sounds, for the traders often had girls to offer. He bought his fifth woman, Rantarath, from traders. I was old enough to notice how much cloth she cost and young enough to think she could not possibly be worth it. But my father never sold off his surplus daughters—he gave them away to his sons, which in a herdman was true generosity. What he did trade was cloth and wool. In exchange he acquired pots and tools, dyestuffs and medicines…a new sword once, I recall…a better horse. Our needs were simple.

The sun always shone. Rain became scarce as I grew older. Life continued with few interruptions to mark its passing. We ate when we were hungry and slept when we were sleepy—outdoors, curled up on the sun-warmed grass by the tents. Except on a move, there would always be some of us asleep and some awake, but the life of the camp continued regardless—children singing, pots clattering, the click of looms, the crack of wood chopping, the laughter of the toddlers.

Only when my father was sleeping were we told to keep quiet. He never slept alone. He honored each tent in turn, playing no favorite—unless, of course, a woman was due to conceive again and needed special attention. It might seem like a very fine life for a man, if the risks were not considered.

He knew the risks and he took precautions. He scouted far, studying the grass to see where other herds might have passed recently. He watched, too, for roo packs, although once in a while roos would slip by him and come bounding through the camp, hoping to catch an undefended toddler. Woollies were armored against roos, but we were not. Often my father would return with a dead roo dangling from his saddle and a bloodstained arrow in his quiver. Roo meat was second only to dasher in flavor, and their leather is the finest of all.

Those roo attacks were landmarks in an otherwise uniform existence. There were few others—visits by angels or traders, other herds passing in the far distance. And puberty.

My older brothers and sisters disappeared, two by two. Imperceptibly I became one of the oldest. Traders became rarer and angels more common. Trouble is angels’ business. They knew what was happening. They must have told my father, but he may not have believed.

We children certainly knew nothing of that. I had been born in January, when the sun had been roughly over the January-December line. Now we were into February, and the sun stood high to the east, apparently motionless and unchanging. Yet the winds grew lighter, ponds rarer, rain less frequent. The grass was sparser, more grazed by other herds; dungheaps were more numerous. My father must have been finding greater and greater difficulty in directing our progress.

On the face of it, he was prospering. He had more woollies for milk and meat. More food would support more women to breed more children to herd more woollies. The other herdfolk prospered also.

But the sun does move, and ahead of us lay the March Ocean—and inevitable disaster.

—2—

W
E HAD NO WAY TO MEASURE
time except by eating and sleeping. What clock could be less reliable than a growing boy’s stomach? Yet four landmarks defined the end of my childhood, and they seem in retrospect to have stood very close together.

My oldest brother, Aloxth, had gone. The next, Indarth, would soon follow him out into the great world. Being one of the older lads now, I was aware of what must happen, but it worried me as little as death, for it seemed as remote. Yet the time came when I discovered Indarth cowering behind a woollie, sobbing in terror. He showed me the damning evidence he had just discovered, and I swore not to tell. Yet I spared him little sympathy, for we two had never been close. Indeed, I obtained some amusement from noting how thereafter he avoided my father’s presence and how he held his elbows close to his sides, trying at the same time to disguise the increasing breadth of his shoulders. His sense of guilt must have been obvious to the adults, and probably all the other loners in their turn had done the same. As I have said, our father was a kindly man, and he always gave his sons as much time to grow up as decency permitted. Indarth s terror was the first of my four landmarks.