Dave Duncan - West of January

My heart burned with contempt for the angel. So my mother’s death was not his business? What use were the angels, then? Nasty little man, I thought—old, fat, and useless.

“You can’t go on much longer,” Loneliness remarked. “If you lie down, you will never rise. The sun will cook you while you sleep.”

He was right. Without water I would die soon. Even my eyeballs were dried out—I fancied my eyelids squeaked when I blinked, and I laughed long and loud at the thought. Todish would have found that funny, too, and Rilana…

I stopped in a hollow and tried digging in the clay with a stick. I found no water and almost fried my feet. I scouted for miniroo pellets, but even miniroos seemed to have vanished from the great lonely world.

“There is a hill,” my invisible companion remarked helpfully. “It is a little higher than the others. Climb that, and if you do not see water there, then give up.”

“That’s a good idea,” I said. “Thank you.”

I was almost ready to drop to hands and knees when I reached the top, and it was so wide and flat that I could not see the land beyond. Behind me, to the north, there was no sign of the family’s woollies; no sign of anything except endless gray rumpled landscape, shimmering and writing in heat haze below a cloudless sky. I must not stray east or west, or I would lose my sense of location. I wanted to keep that, so that I would be able to find Anubyl when I was ready to kill him.

“His danger does not seem very great,” Loneliness said, but I did not reply.

If Anubyl had truly found water holes in this direction, then I had missed them. Scouting was much easier on horseback than on foot.

For a while I sat on a rock and gave way to despair. Never had I been alone like this, out of sight of my family. Even our herder hunting parties had been communal affairs. The thirst and hunger were bad, but the solitude was worse. I was the only boy in the world.

Finally I managed to overcome my frightening torpor, climb onto my aching feet, and trail wearily over the flat summit. The country to the south came into view. I stood and stared blankly. It seemed just the same as the country to the north…except…

Fatigue had slowed my thinking, I suppose, and at first I thought it was only a roo. A single, solitary roo would be no great threat—and edible, if I could somehow catch it. Then a terrible recognition began. Roos traveled in packs, and this creature was alone. Roos bounded, and this one was walking. It was very far off to the southeast, two or three ridges over, and a roo would not be visible so far away Therefore it was very big. It had to be a tyrant.

At the distance it seemed white and the tiny forelimbs were invisible. The massive tail balanced the forward-sloping torso above the enormous hind legs, the gigantic melon-shaped head. The pointed ears stuck up like horns.

My mind began to race, rummaging through memory for all the stories I had heard. Tyrants were so huge that they could overturn and eat woollies. They were implacable and could outrun a horse. No arrow could penetrate them deep enough to kill. They had one weakness: their eyesight. All they could see was movement, and a man who stayed still was invisible to them. I dropped to a crouch.

But it saw me. Even at such a distance, even so small a motion, it had seen. The massive head swung around and the monster came to a halt, peering across the landscape, seeking the source of that movement. I stayed as still as a boulder, only my heart moving.

That may have been the first time in my life that I truly appreciated what time was—it crawled. Then the tyrant’s great jaws opened. And closed. And a faint roar came drifting over the ridges to me. I shivered, feeling a strange prickling down my back.

At last the tyrant decided that it had been mistaken. It started moving again, resuming its original progress, heading north.

I was enormously, intoxicatingly, relieved. All I needed to do was stay where I was, and it would go away.

Go away north. I thought of Anubyl, riding out with bow and sword to defend his ill-gotten riches. The tyrant would swallow him whole, and his horse also, and my soul rejoiced at the vision. Then I thought of the others: my brothers and sisters, my aunts, the woollies. The tyrant would have a great feast. Once it came in sight of the woollies, my family would be lost, for there was no way to make woollies keep still. There would be no way to keep the toddlers still either—not for the length of time it would take a tyrant to eat all that herd.

My sense of relief died. It dried up and blew away, and horror replaced it. I must try to turn the tyrant. We had been traveling southwest for the last few camps, so the monster was merely prowling, not following our tracks. I tried to convince myself that it would change direction of its own accord, as if by mere wishing I could create a wisdom about tyrants. But I watched, and it did not deviate at all from its course. It vanished briefly in a small dip and then reappeared, still striding northward.

Duty? I doubt that I had ever heard the word, but it was only Anubyl I hated. Aunt Amby, Aunt Ulith…young Todish, who had been my closest friend since Arrint left…even Rilana, nasty little snit though she was… Their faces floated before me in unexpected tears, and I knew that I must try. Better one than all.

When? Trembling, I rose.

Again it saw me. This time the motionless inspection lasted longer, the roaring was repeated several times. But it was still farther south than I was. I saw that I must wait until it had progressed more to the north. Then I would be turning it away from my family, roughly to the southwest. I must hope that it would pursue me for long enough to fix that southwest direction in its mind, so that when I had escaped it would continue to the southwest. If I escaped…but all I would have to do was freeze and it would lose me.

Or so I thought. The only animals I really knew were woollies and horses. Woollies were as stupid as cactuses, but I should have remembered that horses were not. I should have known that tyrants must have some means of catching prey and hence could not possibly be evaded as easily as that. I should have known that any predator in the grasslands would die of starvation were it so brainless. But had I known, I could not have done what I did.

I waited until I dared wait no longer. My terror seemed to be growing to fill the whole world and I thought my courage would fail. I poured sweat. My teeth chattered. I dribbled where I stood, not even daring a hand movement to lift my pagne—fear is agony, and we cowards pay dearly for our defect. The tyrant vanished, reappeared, vanished… Now it was moving away from me, and I thought I might do nothing if I waited any longer. I jumped in the air and waved my arms. I think I even yelled, although it was so distant that my voice would never have carried to it.

In instant reaction, the tyrant spun on one foot and headed toward me. Thirst and hunger and weariness were all forgotten now. A basic human instinct for survival took over, and I began to run in earnest. I fled.

Had I been smarter, I would never have started that race. Had I had any sense at all, I would have planned my route and conserved my strength for a final spurt. Instead, I plunged headlong down the slope into the next hollow and then straight up the opposite side. Not having eyes in the back of my head, I paused at the top and turned, panting for breath and watching for my pursuer. But this crest was lower and I could not see beyond the ridge I had left.

As the moments passed and the monster did not appear, I began to appreciate my stupidity. I did not know which way to run, and I was not sure I had any strength left to run with anyway.

Then it came into view, rising enormous over the skyline like the thunderclouds I could remember from my youth. And it was already on the hill I had just left. Far faster and far huger than I had realized, it seemed to grow up and up, white against the sky—ears and wicked eyes and then the enormous fang-filled jaws. Petrified, I could only stand and gasp for breath, and feel sick.