Dave Duncan - West of January

I did not know what use this cord would be for breeches, but I said nothing. Amby flashed me a worried glance and bent to her task again.

“He let Arrint take food and water,” she said defensively.

But no woollies, no woman.

“Who’s next?” I asked bitterly. “Todish?”

“He is growing fast.” Then she added quietly, “You were born before Arrint.”

I had already come to suspect that. I was learning the difference between growing up and growing bigger, coming to realize that I was never going to be big. My fair complexion disguised my increasing maturity, but now I had to keep my elbows close to my ribs, and this talk reminded me that I had not been doing so. Fortunately Amby seemed to be concentrating entirely on her braiding and had not noticed.

Always I stayed as far away from Anubyl as I could, but at the moment he was out riding;—he had mastered the horses—so I could be brave. “It is shameful to make you and Ulith and Talana share a tent!”

She shook her head. “Oh no! Old wives do not need a tent each. It is customary. A man does not want too many tents showing. We do not mind sharing. We do not all sleep at the same time! We are grateful for being allowed to stay at all, Knobil.”

“Then it is shameful about Oapia and Salaga!” Two of my half-sisters had been promoted to their own tents. Anubyl was spending much time with them.

Amby glanced up briefly at me. Her wrinkled cheeks blushed very bright. She dropped her eyes again. “No.” Then this white-haired mother of many children started to stammer as she told me things that a woman should not discuss with a man, only with other women. She explained the incest problem. She explained why my father had been required to trade daughters to obtain new women. Anubyl need not do so—he had an unlimited supply ripening to hand.

Once I understood that, she added more truths. “Of course, a loner can circle around and kill his own father, Knobil. But it is a foolish thing to do. He is better to find another man’s herd, so he gains more women for his own use. Do you see?”

I saw. I saw also that these were things my father should have lived to tell me. I was much more interested in vengeance than in this legendary sex thing. I said nothing.

Amby muttered quietly, “You will tell the others, Knobil?”

Were the women afraid that we boys would mutiny? They were overestimating us, I thought. I was the oldest, apparently, and I was a craven nothing. Did they think I might lead a revolution? I turned my head away so she would not see my tears and shame. I detested Anubyl with every breath I drew. I dreamed constantly of vengeance and justice, but I was a yellow-haired runt, a blue-eyed freak. And a coward also! Revolution? I was not capable of talking back to a woollie.

Amby sighed. “There! That’s done! Pass me that knife please, Knobil.”

Reluctantly I rose and went where she pointed.

“Be careful!” she called. “It is very sharp.”

I took the knife to her, preparing a snappy retort about being old enough to know about knives. Then the odd quality in her voice registered. She held out the knots, and in silence I cut off the loose ends for her. I was puzzled, but she was avoiding my eye.

“I have a good sharpening stone,” she said. “Makes a knife so sharp you can split hairs with it.”

Then she rose and walked away, out of the tent.

I was left holding the knife. It was a very tiny knife, the smallest in camp. At my feet lay the cord she had braided. It would make an excellent bowstring.

I had aimed my line of woollies so that it would pass by a very large boulder and give me double cover. I was sitting behind the boulder, biting my tongue with concentration and getting cramps in my fingers. I had never heard of shaving, so it had not occurred to me that a very sharp knife could be used razor fashion. It is not easy to grip hairs in your own armpit to cut them, and blood running down my ribs would certainly attract attention. But this was why Amby had given me the knife. It might buy me more time to grow a little more, and I understood time just enough to appreciate that. I had the bowstring wrapped around my thigh, under my pagne.

Armpits or not, I was determined that I would not be sent away any time soon. I was terrified at the prospect. Anubyl had gone out into the grasslands and survived, learned his archery and other skills. He had grown to manhood and then proved it by winning women and fortune. But he was big and I was a midget, or so I thought.

Yet the waiting was torture also. I dreaded my coming ordeal, but simultaneously almost hoped for it, for then I would be free to go off alone to a tree-filled hollow somewhere and make a bow and learn to use it. I would shadow the family’s progress from water hole to water hole until I was ready. Then I would gain my revenge!

Somebody laughed, and I almost cut myself. It was my sister Rilana, watching my antics.

“Come and help me then, if you think it is so funny.”

She shook her head and knelt down at a safe distance. “What you are doing is not proper,” she said smugly.

“Easy for you to say! How are you going to feel when he drags you into a tent and pushes bits of himself inside you?” I was still weak on the theory of intercourse.

She smirked. “Rantarath says it feels wonderful. She always asks him for more, she says. Jalinan says he does it better than Father did.”

“Dungpiles!”

“What do you know? Perhaps you should cut something else off with that knife. You obviously have no other plans for it.”

I felt sudden terror. “You won’t tell him I have a knife?”

She considered. “Maybe. Maybe not.”

“I’ll—I’ll cut your breasts off! Except you haven’t got any!”

“Yes, I do.” She smoothed her woolen dress to show the bumps. “Anubyl says they are growing nicely. He felt them. He says I am going to be next after Thola, as soon as he gets all the others bearing.”

“He killed our father! He beat our mother to death! And you want him lying on you, kissing you, rubbing on you?” I felt sick at the thought.

Rilana tossed her hair. “Yes. I shall please him greatly and make lots of daughters for him and be the best of all his women.”

Where this argument might have led, I cannot guess. It ended there, though. The wind changed. We heard the noise simultaneously, and I suppose my eyes widened at the same moment as hers did—a distant squealing and rattling, the sound of an angel’s chariot.

Rilana was about to run, but I jumped and caught her arm. She was taller than me, but I was stronger.

“You stay here and herd!” I said.

“Why? It’s your turn. I want to go and see the angel.”

“I am going to the angel!” Hope blazed within me. Here was a solution that I had not thought of and certainly had not expected. “You stay here!”

“Will not!”

I punched her and she yelped. “I am going to the angel!” I insisted. “Angels stop violence! So I am going to tell them what Anubyl did to Father and what he did to Mother. The angel will punish him!”

I RACED BETWEEN THE WOOLLIES like a dispossessed dasher, not even waiting to conceal my illegal knife. When I reached the other side of the herd, I stopped, balked already. Below me was the camp and beyond that the pond. It was a poor one, a slimy puddle in a wide expanse of white dried mud, flanked by a tangle of crisp brown undergrowth and the stark silver skeletons of trees. Against that drab decay, our five tents shimmered in the sun’s glare, a line of brilliantly colored prisms. The angel’s chariot stood on the far ridge, dark against the sky.

It was a strange, dirty violet color, with one red sail and one dark blue. Even as I watched, the red sail vanished, and then the blue did the same, more slowly.