Dave Duncan - West of January

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.”