Dave Duncan - West of January

Then a sigh ran through the waiting platoon. I heard footsteps on the gravel.

“Shisisannis!” said a woman’s voice. “My devoted War Band Leader, Shisisannis!”

Shisisannis sank to his knees. “My beloved Goddess!”

“You have done as I asked!” Her voice was deep and throaty, and she spoke as if to a lover.

“To please you is all I seek in life, my Queen. Command and I obey. And if I ever fail you, Majesty, in the slightest detail of your desires, may I be put at once to pasture.”

I heard a tinkling laugh that I did not like. “You serve me better thus, Shisisannis my joy. He is a true wetlander?”

“And already very pale. But his knees are worse than you were told, my Queen. He can barely walk.”

“Other than that he seems fit?”

“Quite healthy, Majesty.”

“Knees are helpful…but not the most essential items.” The men laughed at her joke. “Rise now, War Band Leader. Ah, too long have I neglected you, you most perfect pillar of manhood. I yearn for your strong embrace.” In public such words should be spoken only with humor or mockery, but these sounded like real seduction. Remembering Shisisannis’s expression when he had talked of this woman, I decided she must be in earnest, unbelievable though that might seem. “This ribbon is one I give only for exceptional service. Wear it as my personal promise of a greater reward in store. As soon as my duties allow, I shall send for you, for none is a more dutiful servant or more deserving of whatever favors a valiant warrior may claim from an eager and grateful lover.”

Shisisannis rose. “Majesty… I…” His voice broke. He sounded overwhelmed.

“You have done well to return so soon. You must go now and rest.”

I could not believe my ears. She was sending him off to bed?

“Great Queen, the stockade progresses but slowly…”

She laughed again. “You will not serve me well by working yourself to death, Shisisannis, as poor Yshinanosis did. Rest first. It is my wish.”

Two more feet came forward into my inverted field of view—brown female feet in golden sandals. They rose on tiptoe, and I took the ensuing silence to mean that Shisisannis was being rewarded with a kiss. My dizziness and nausea were mounting, my attention was wandering, but I could have sworn that his knees trembled.

Then the woman’s heels sank down, and she stepped away again, out of my view.

“And Ing-aa! Canoemaster Ing-aa, my great black bull!”

The blood collecting in my head, the constriction of my gut, the sweltering heat of my gown, and the agony in my legs—I was failing rapidly. Red waves surged before my eyes, and bile rose in my throat. Yet I could still somehow register that there were unholy things going on. “Black bull?” She was inveigling Ing-aa with the same crude sexual cajolery that she had given Shisisannis, and Shisisannis was right there at their side. She had two young bulls present and by any normal standards of male behavior they should already be rolling around on the ground, doing their utmost to maim and impair. Yet Shisisannis chuckled with the others as she made lewd remarks about Ing-aa’s size, promising him the same reward she had pledged to Shisisannis. I did not understand.

Then, through my fog of pain and nausea, I heard her say, “But show me this prize you have brought me, lover.”

Ing-aa slid me forward so my feet hit the ground. He lifted me easily and twirled me around to face the spinster, then set me down again and let go.

I caught a brief, blurred glimpse of a female figure in a shimmering gown of water silk.

I pitched forward in a dead faint.

Of course my collapse was mostly a reaction to the head-down position and the sudden correction, compounded by overheating, fear, and pain. I was unconscious for only a few moments.

“He is coming around, my Lady.” Ing-aa’s voice spoke close above me.

I was stretched out on my back, although I had first landed on my nose and forehead. My hood had been pulled from my face and the front of my gown opened. The ground swayed, my ears sang, and I kept my eyes shut.

“That is fortunate.” There was no seduction in the woman’s voice now.

“Majesty… I was thoughtless.”

“Very! You know his value.” She was furious, and that was encouraging for me.

I peered narrowly through eyelashes. A huge black shape was kneeling at my side, his fingers on the pulse in my neck. It had to be Ing-aa.

“Majesty! Forgive me!” He sounded heartbroken or…

“Forgive you? Why?”

“My Queen…” No, not heartbroken. I had heard that tone in the ants’ nest. The fingers on my throat trembled.

“I want no fools in my service.” Her voice cut like a butcher’s knife. “Go to the pens and make yourself useful there.”

“Oh, Great One… I beg you…” The giant was whining. A drop of water fell on my chest.

The spinster spoke again, less harshly. “Your strength will serve me well, and if you make amends, then later we shall see…”

Ing-aa moaned and rose. I closed my eyes. Feet squelched in the mud and were gone.

Ayasseshas’s voice again: “Um-oao, Ah-uhu? Bear him gently. Put him in the shade. I shall see to him shortly, when I have thanked all these brave fellows.”

Hands lifted me and rushed me away. I heard gravel, then bare feet on boards, as I felt myself carried up steps. Continuing to feign unconsciousness, I was gently laid down. The footsteps departed.

I seemed to be alone, but I lay still, pondering what I had learned. I had value. That was very hopeful. But what were the “pens” that could so terrify a colossus like Ing-aa? Pens implied livestock, and Shisisannis had mentioned pasture. I could still hear a bleating in the distance, but the only punishment that came to mind was mucking out stalls, and a trivial indignity like that would hardly provoke such obvious dread.

I had been laid upon a rug, I thought, and a cautious glance showed a roof of beams and woven leaves far above. Quick looks to each side… I was lying on a sort of porch, stretched out on a thick woolen rug laid over what must be a plank floor. I raised my head and confirmed my assumptions.

There was no one watching. I sat up and felt only a passing dizziness. I heaved myself back a few feet to lean against a wall, then rubbed the scrapes I had acquired in my fall. There was a door at my side, so my guess of porch had been correct. In the center, two chairs and a table sat on another richly patterned rug. The only real furniture I had ever seen had belonged to the ants, and this was much finer than theirs, gleaming bright. I knew the style of the rugs. They had come from the grasslands, tough woollie yarn in bright colors, though the specific designs were none that my mother and aunts had ever used. My trader experience wondered how much they had cost here, so far from their birthplace.

Beyond the shadowed veranda the sun blazed on the apron of white gravel. At the far edge of this stood Shisisannis and his little band, black men and dark brown, still in their line of inspection. Only Ing-aa had gone. The spinster was working her way along the line, welcoming each man in his turn. At her back stood two more of the tall swampmen bearing swords, a personal bodyguard. As I watched, Ayasseshas rose on tiptoe again to embrace one of her champions. How did one woman bewitch so many men?

And in the shadows of the huts beyond the snake totem pole, I saw again those strange hooded and gowned figures—solitary, motionless, and apparently watching. Who were they, and why so idle?

“What happened to your knees?”

I twisted around in alarm. One of the brown-shrouded people was standing in a dark corner, beside the door. I had overlooked him—or possibly her, although the voice had sounded more male than female. There was no way to tell who or what was inside that garment, and I could see nothing but darkness within the peephole of the hood.