Dave Duncan - West of January

Worst of all, though, as I stumbled and scurried ahead of my sneering guard and his four-pawed enforcer, was the sense of being buried, of the mountain peak squeezing in on me. I had been reared under the limitless sky of the grasslands. This living burial was in itself a torment more terrifying than almost anything I could have imagined. The cold and the smell of rock and the darkness knotted my insides in spasms of fear.

Eventually we took a smaller branch, then another, and came at last to a dead end. The ceiling was so low I had to crouch, and the whole cramped space was visible, even in the faint glimmer of my tiny candle and the ant’s lantern. I was puzzled by a steady clinking, for I could not see where it came from, and it echoed mysteriously all around.

“The one.” The kid pointed at a row of small holes around the cave at floor level, looking barely larger than miniroo burrows. I hesitated, nauseated by the weight of mountain above me. The boy gestured and the panther sank on its haunches, snarling. Quickly I lay down with my clutter of equipment and began to wriggle in.

And wriggle…and wriggle… The walls spread out, but the ceiling stayed right above my head. The floor was cold and wet and abrasive against my legs. Water dripped continually. I could hear that I was being followed, and I was pathetically grateful for the company.

At last the journey ended, the two of us lying side by side on our bellies, facing a vein of crumbling black rock that was obviously worth much more than I was. If I tried to raise my head to look at it properly, my helmet struck the roof. The tunnel was wide enough that I could have just touched both sides by stretching out my arms, but floor and ceiling sloped sharply to the left. I was hard against one wall, the kid almost leaning on me. Two battered buckets were there, waiting for us.

“You fill ten buckets.” The contemptuous voice was at my ear. “The black stuff. None of the white—that’s dross. Like you. As you fill each one, you shout for another, and the woman will bring it.”

“Yes, master.” And the echoes whispered, master, master.

“You stop and come out when the candle dies. If you haven’t done ten, you’ll be encouraged to do better next time.”

“I’ll try, master.”

“You’d better, slag. Look back.”

I twisted awkwardly around and saw two eyes glowing in the faint flicker of the lantern.

“Sliver will be checking on you,” my driver said. “He can see you even without light, and you won’t hear him coming.”

“I’ll work hard, master!”

“Yes, you will. If I don’t hear that pick going, I’ll send in Sliver.” He gestured with one hand. A big padded foot stroked the back of my bare calf. I squealed and the boy laughed.

“Next time he won’t have his claws sheathed.” He took his lantern and began to scramble away, then thought of a last warning. “Work forward, not sideways. If the cut gets too wide, the roof will fall.”

“I’ll remember, master.”

“This one’s too wide already.” He departed with a clatter and scratch of boots, leaving me in a silence broken only by the clink of my pick and the harsh breathing of a man working as hard as terror could drive him.

How long? I don’t know how long I was a slave for the ants.

I survived, and perhaps nothing in my long life is quite so strange as that. Many seafolk were brought in after me; obviously the ants had expected the great migration. All they had needed to do was set a trap by the first fresh water. Seafolk came easy.

Seafolk went easy, also. Those gentle people made very poor slaves. Strangers to violence, they just lay down and died.

The third or fourth batch after mine included Whistler, one of the boys from my own tribe. He brought nightmare news of women giving birth in coracles as they were towed through the madness of the Great Canyon. Several had died most horribly, including Sparkle. I spoke but once with Whistler, for after his second shift he tried to run away. I was lucky to be underground at the time.

His news should have killed me faster than the panthers killed him. I had been very fond of Sparkle—indeed, I would have sworn that I had loved her as much as man could love woman, for I had not then learned what true love is. Her death seemed to mark her as just one more victim in the wake of disaster I trailed—my parents, Violet, Pebble, Sparkle. Anyone I ever cared for died, it seemed.

And her death was entirely my fault. Even in the worst parts of the canyon there had been quiet pools where a boat could have lingered. Had I not been so stupid as to let myself be caught by the ants I would have been there, in that canyon hell. A little common sense and Sparkle would have lived. Even young Whistler said that much, and I believe it still.

I was a seaman—I should have lain down and faded away, as so many of them did. Even if I could escape from the ants’ nest, where would I go, what would I gain? My tribe was already lost on the vast South Ocean. I had no family there anyway, for not one child was recognized as mine. The ant who caught me had thrown away my angel tokens, but I had long since lost any desire to be an angel. Sparkle’s death was as much the fault of Brown-yellow-white as it was mine, and the prisoner Orange was no hero to admire. The angels had failed to save the herdfolk, they had destroyed my idyllic life in the grove—or so I thought—and they apparently could do nothing about these monstrous slave-owning ants. I hated and despised angels. I had no wish to be an angel. I had no wish to live at all.

Some slaves just seemed to dissolve; that was an easy death and one I prayed for. Some tried to escape or fight back, but I was far too craven to risk what happened to them.

All the other captives went mad—some in one way, some in others. But we all went mad after our fashion. All of us.

“Knobil?” The whisper came as I crouched at the trench. On one side of me a lumbering hairy herdman named Koothik was mumbling prayers, as he did all the time, everywhere. On the other side was Orange, the former angel.

I whispered back under the madman’s gabble and the loud drone of insects, keeping my head down. “Sir?”

“I am planning an escape.”

“I’m with you.”

“It will be very dangerous. Many of us will die.”

Here was the answer I had been looking for! “Of course.”

“They don’t seem to have any weapons but cats. If enough men with shovels go for a panther, some should survive.”

“Of course.”

“We’ll strike in the mine door at a change of shift. Take the bosses hostage.”

“Great!” It would be a quick death, and that was all I wanted.

Koothik rose and lumbered away. Orange’s whispering grew more urgent. “Try to enlist two more leaders. Be very careful who you talk to. Report back when ready.”

“Will do,” I said, without moving my lips.

“Better to die bravely than Unger on as a slave.”

“Absolutely!”

“Brave man!” the angel whispered, and he walked away before anyone noticed our conversation.

Then I realized what he had just said. Brave man? Me? That was the only time while I was a slave of the ants that I ever laughed aloud.

The first three men I approached turned me down flat, and I began to grow desperate. There were so few sane enough to trust!

Before I could try a fourth, Orange was betrayed or else became too obvious. As he came trudging out of the mine at the end of shift, he was ordered to halt in the middle of the settlement, near the stream, while the rest of us returned to the paddock. There was no trial, no explanation, no announcement. He was left there in full view, a naked man dribbling sweat onto his shadow, alone, waiting. He soon fell over, and the life of the compound went on around him regardless, as if he had already ceased to exist. A single cat guarded him, replaced by another when it grew weary.