Dave Duncan - West of January

I awoke stiff, bruised, and famished. By then the surface of the sea was already dotted with fins and spoutings. Even as I watched, more great ones were emerging from the mouth of the canyon. Of course I did not know about Two-pink-green. I did not know that my mission had been completely unnecessary. I assumed that the honor was mine, and I congratulated myself on being a hero. All Brown need do now was watch as the seafolk were rounded up by the great ones and borne away to safety. That was, indeed, what happened. Unlike the tragic dying in the grasslands, there was no disaster on the March Ocean in this cycle. Not everyone made it—many bodies floated back down the Great River—but most did, and Heaven recorded a success.

Battered and naked and starving, though, the self-hailed hero wanted breakfast. In the tumult of the canyon I had lost everything except my knife and my amulet. I mounted a rock at the water’s edge and hopefully sang Frith’s name. The shore sloped steeply. In a miraculously short time he thrust his head up almost at my feet and tossed me a fish, clicking welcome and amusement. I called out my thanks, greatly relieved that he had not deserted me.

Yet raw fish is a dull diet. After I had taken the edge off my hunger, I began collecting dry leaves from below the densest shrubs and soon worked up a sweat twirling a stick, while I pondered my immediate future.

The passage of the canyon had been a torment for even a strong mount and a relatively skilled rider. Towing coracles of terrified children and pregnant women would be a feat I just could not imagine the tribe achieving without my help. There was not a man I would trust to keep his head. My obvious duty was to return to the March Ocean and take charge.

If Frith refused to go through that hell again—and of course my craven heart hoped that he would refuse—then I could camp quite happily on this hospitable shore. Or so I thought. I could wait for the tribe—great ones and people both. So I thought. Even if I was asleep when they passed through the gates of the mountain, Frith and Pfapff would tell them where I was. They would almost certainly head for this stream anyway, the first fresh water. Whether I went back or stayed, we should be reunited. I would ask Frith, and he would decide. I saw no other possibility.

But I was fairly certain that Frith would take me.

By the time I had worked all that out, I had roasted a piece of my fish on the rocks of my hearth. I skewered it on a stick. With my mouth watering, I rose to my feet to find a comfortable spot, away from the heat.

I had earned this feast, I thought, and a rest in this so-serene campsite. I had earned the joy of smelling grass again, and the soothing shade of real trees, the inspiring view of mountains and shore. This was Paradise, and I longed to share it with Sparkle and my friends.

Above me, the smoke from my fire climbed slowly up the azure sky, visible to half the world.

I think of that moment as the end of my innocence.

SOMETHING HURLED ME DOWN, spun me over with sharp agony in my shoulder, and then crushed me into the ground. It dug claws into my shoulders and belly. It pushed a black-furred muzzle close to my face. Too dazed and horrified even to scream, I stared up at huge yellow eyes with vertical slits for pupils, at pointed ears, at white teeth as long as my toes. It snarled and spat, and the reek of its breath was nauseating.

“Stay very still,” said a nearby voice, “or it will rip out your guts.”

I rolled up my eyes and pretended to faint. I felt my knife being taken, then the weight moving off me. A boot slammed into my ribs. “Now get up!” Obviously my deception had failed.

I clambered dizzily to my feet. My captor was short and broad, clad in stiff black leather garments, soiled and much patched. Little of his face was visible between a wide leather hat and a bristling beard—both of them black—but I could make out a broad flat nose and evilly glittering eyes.

I clenched my jaw to prevent my teeth from chattering insanely. I was streaming blood. There were claw marks horribly close to my groin. The cause of my injuries was sitting on its haunches near the fire, watching me narrowly with a third yellow, slit-pupil eye, wiping its jowls with one paw. It was furry and black and as large as an adolescent girl. It had eaten my dinner.

“What’s your name?”

“Knobil.”

He kicked my shin—hard. I yelped and staggered. The animal spun around, snarling.

“Address me as ‘master’!”

“Yes, master!”

He nodded. “If you give me any trouble, I’ll have my friend here bite your knackers off. Makes a man more docile—understand?”

“Yes, master!”

“How many more of you are there around?”

“None, master.”

He kicked my other shin—harder. I staggered again and almost fell. The panther crouched threateningly. “The truth!”

Shrill with terror, I insisted that I spoke the truth. I babbled about the angel and the great ones.

He nodded and reached up to the amulet that was the only thing I wore. Checking for valuables, I supposed. “What’s in there?”

“Angel tokens, master.”

He guffawed. “More pilgrims end up in the pit than in Heaven, dross! They won’t help you.” He snapped the tie and contemptuously hurled my precious amulet away. “Now kneel!”

I lowered myself reluctantly under the panther’s steady glare.

“Stay very still. I’m going to have Feather lick those scratches. That stops the bleeding and prevents sickness, but it stings, and if you make any sudden movement, she’ll strike. You have been warned!”

He made a sign with his fingers. Snarling, the monster crept toward me, low to the ground, keeping its forward eyes on mine. Its muzzle came close to my face and I gagged again at its fetid breath. Then a big pink tongue reached out to lap the blood on my savaged shoulder. I felt only a rough scraping until it reached the wound, and then the sudden pain was excruciating, like salt, or fire. I managed not to flinch too much and I did not scream. I was never lucky enough to faint.

I reeled up the valley, following the stream, with the panther close behind me and the man behind her. Thorns ripped my bare skin, rocks cut my feet, and I was in constant danger of vomiting from pain and terror, but I believed every one of the man’s threats, so I just kept moving, as fast as I was able.

We came at last to a small glen where tents nestled under the trees. Half a dozen black-clad men were lounging around, and two more were bathing in the stream. They were all short and broad, with dark porcupine beards. Their faces were burnt red, but the rest of their skin was almost as pale as mine, as I could see from the bathers. Their features were broad, their legs short and bowed, their shoulders broad as mountains. More of the great black cats roused from their slumbers to eye me hungrily.

An older man climbed to his feet. “You got one!”

“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.