West of January

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.

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.”

“Shuck him?”

“Peel him, in strips. Did you ever watch a cat sharpen its claws?”

I had never even heard of cats, although later I met them. They are very like small versions of the panthers, without the third eye. Cats are said to be useful for catching small vermin, but I never liked them.

Being ripped to death had no appeal, either. “Does no one escape?”

Orange shook his head again. “Panthers are deadly and impossibly quick. Compared to a panther, you move like a snortoise. They can see body heat and watch you even when there is no light in the mine. They patrol the tunnels, guard the captives, catch game… Ants depend on panthers like seafolk depend on great ones.”

“Can they talk?”

“No. But they understand very complicated orders. They are very well trained. Don’t try it, Knobil—not until you’re ready to die.” He sighed as if he were reaching that point himself.

I was thinking that over when he added, “And don’t ever anger the ants or draw attention to yourself. They like to execute someone every now and again. It’s a good example. And entertainment. Anything but utter humility is savagely punished. You showed too much purpose in the way you came over to me. Look cowed!”

I grunted, trying not to show my dismay. This man was an angel? Then I caught his eye. For a moment the glazed, waxy look was missing. It flicked back again like a lid on a basket.

“Notice that there aren’t quite enough hides to go around?” he asked softly. “They watch who sleeps under cover and who doesn’t. You’re allowed to enjoy the women if you want—if you have any strength left after your shift, that is. But if you start getting possessive, then that’s noticed, too. Don’t go to the same one every time. Any slave who begins to gather status is marked.”

That was better! An angel would be an obvious leader, so he was merely being cautious.

“You mean there’s no way out except death?” I asked.

He hesitated, glanced at my hair, and then nodded. “That’s right.”

“What do the angels think about this slavery?”

“Ah!” He sighed. “There is a very remote chance that Heaven will raid the nest and release the slaves…this is a small tribe. But there are never enough angels, friend Knobil. Ants get their name because they keep slaves. The life of a mineworker is nasty and usually short, so why send your own sons into the pit when you can send someone else’s? Any traveler is fair game. In fact, ants are notorious for all sorts of violence. Sometimes one tribe will attack another and try to take its mine—that wouldn’t help us, though. There would just be more slaves. No ant army ever ends its march with fewer people than it started with, either.”

What, I asked, was an ant army?

For a while he did not reply, then he lay down. Puzzled, I copied him. “We re noticed, Knobil,” he mumbled, staring at the sky and barely moving his lips. “Friendships are dangerous. You mustn’t come near me now for a while—four or five tours, at least. So listen and I’ll explain.

“You know that every tribe, every people, moves west? That’s the law of nature. Herders and ranchers drift around, but overall they move west. Traders come and go, but even a trader ends his life farther west than he began it. Seafolk move north to warm seas or estuaries. They go south to round the capes and headlands—or sometimes across them if they must—but in the end they’re moving west like the rest of us. Forest springs up before Noon and withers a month or so west of Dusk, so you could say that the forests move, also, and so do the people who live in them. Even Heaven moves.”

I had known that the herdfolk stayed ahead of the sun…

“What happens if you get east of the sun, then?” I asked the sky.

He grunted as if surprised at my ignorance. “The sun goes away. You’re left with cold and dark and snow. Half of the world is black and covered with ice, Knobil.”

Angels were always talking about this “ice” thing—Brown had, too. I tried in vain to imagine a sky without a sun.

“The ants are different. Nature didn’t spread ores around evenly, like forest or grass. The ants have kept more of the old wisdoms—reading and writing, and even a few arcane things that the saints have forgotten, or so they say. The ice of Darkside and the floods of Dawn destroy everything. Nothing made by human hand can last from one cycle to the next, and the world is always born anew. The landscape is changed, the workings buried or stripped away, but the ants keep records that tell them where the nests were in the last cycle. Each tribe has its own list, I suppose. They probably try to steal one another’s, which may be why they like to move to a mine site as close to Dawn as they can get, right up in the wetlands, to take possession early.”

Orange could have had no idea how little of his lecture I was understanding, but I let him talk.

“And they’ll stay at a mine as long as possible—unless they know of a better one thawing out, of course. They say that an ant can be born and live and die all in the same place—the sun low in the east when he is born, passing high overhead as he grows, and low in the west when he is a very old man.”

To a herdman, accustomed to an unchanging sun, that idea was utter insanity. I wondered if captivity had driven this ex-angel mad.

“So, when a tribe of ants does move,” he continued, “it may cross almost the whole length of Dayside. A child could be conceived after its parents left one home, and be walking and talking before they reached their next. That’s an ant army—a nest on the move. There can be two or three hundred of them, or more. The opportunities for pillage are not always overlooked—slaving, too, if they get the chance.”

“Don’t the angels care?”

“Yes, they do! No matter what nonsense you’ve heard, the angels do care about the ants! They try to keep watch. A big army will have chariots hovering around it like sheepdogs, but it may be spread over a huge tract of terrain, and there are never enough angels.”

He sighed again. “And sometimes the sheep catch the dogs.”

Before I could ask what nonsense I was supposed to have heard, someone shouted a warning. Orange scrambled to his feet, telling me to do the same. Sleepers were hastily kicked awake, and the whole paddock of slaves lined up at attention as a party of ants approached. And then we were divided into gangs and marched off.

And I was shown what my father’s hymns and prayers had never succeeded in explaining to me when I was a child—what Hell was.

—2—

THAT FIRST DESCENT INTO THE PIT was worse than anything I had yet endured at the hands of my captors. I was assigned to a gang of five other men and a woman, under the supervision of a weedy, tufty-faced youth. He sent the others off to their labors and looked me over contemptuously. Then he gave me a list of the punishments he could inflict on me if he chose: confinement in total darkness, clawing, mutilation, lingering death. Him I could have broken in half with my bare hands, but he had his panther at his side, so I cringed and groveled and promised to be a good slave.

At the mouth of the mine we met the other shift coming out. I was told to choose a man of about my size and take his gear. Thus I found myself pulling on a stinking leather smock, stiff with old sweat and dirt, shabby and patched and abrasive. It barely reached my knees. The rest of my equipment consisted of a metal helmet, a pick, a canteen, and a candle. The ants, I noted, also wore iron-toed boots and heavy breeches. I would have settled for the breeches. I was ordered into the tunnel.

We were close to High Summer, and there were always fifty or more living beings in those workings, not counting cats, yet the dusty air was bitterly cold. I had never known cold before in my life. I had seen darkness in the waters beneath the seafolk’s grove, but this darkness had a weight and solidity all its own. The tunnel sloped gently, going on and on, relentlessly deeper, branching often. The faint flicker from my light showed rough wet walls pressing in on either hand. Ahead of me was thick, heavy blackness, into which I must force my unwilling body.

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.

I suppose he died mostly from thirst. He could hear and see the stream, but the slightest movement would bring needle claws slashing down. He did do some crawling, at the cost of much skin and blood, but when he neared the water itself the panther took him by the ankle and dragged him back to where he started. We knew he was dead when it began to eat him, and after that there was no more talk of mass breakouts.

I remember when I first realized that I also had gone mad. I was lying under one of the filthy hides, being cooked, trying to go back to sleep. Unfortunately some herdman had lain down alongside me and was croaking psalms to his Heavenly Father. I could hear him and even smell him, but I was too exhausted to move away.

“Shut up!” I muttered, not raising my voice in case I woke myself completely.

He did not hear me and would not have reacted if he had. I reluctantly cracked open one eye and saw enough of a blood-caked furry leg to recognize Koothik. By then he was mad as a mating bogmoth, uncomprehending, needing constant clawings to make him heed orders. He wailed on, in a hoarse monotone.

“Idiot!” I said. “Your god isn’t listening. Try another for a change.” There were many gods worshipped in the slave compound—gods hidden in rocks and trees, gods of air and water, wood and bone, many gods.

“If your god cared,” I said crossly, “then he would not let this happen to you!” Koothik was no older than I was, but twice my size, a shaggy young giant picked up by traders when he was a loner, or perhaps sold to them by his father. “You haven’t done anything to deserve this,” I told him, still prone under my cover, the earth gritting against my cheek as I spoke. “You should be lounging in a comfortable tent, counting your daughters, tended by adoring women, lots of them.” That was the life he had been raised for.

Koothik, of course, neither heard nor replied.

Then I had an inspiration. I raised my head and checked around, but there was no one else within earshot. “I’ll tell you something, Koothik,” I said. “A big secret.”

Koothik’s mind was not there to hear, but I told the rest of him. “He can’t hear, Koothik! Our Father lives above the grasslands, and he can’t hear us from here. But I’m going to go back to the grasslands and I’ll tell him what’s happening to his children. Then he’ll throw thunderbolts and stop it! Then he’ll help us!”

Koothik uttered thanks for grass and wool…

“It’s wrong to treat men like woollies,” I explained carefully, lying flat again. “But I have a plan, Koothik! No use praying here, Koothik! I shall go back to the grasslands and pray to the Father, and he will hear me there and then come and rescue us all!”

Now I can detect certain logical weaknesses in that plan, but then it seemed very reasonable, and very comforting. And yet somehow I knew it for the insanity it was.

I turned over, but I was too excited to sleep. I decided I had been foolish to blurt out my plan to Koothik. He might tell the ants, and they would be frightened and kill me. I decided to tell no one else about my plan.

—3—

NOT LONG AFTER THAT, I met Hrarrh. Again I was stretched out on the hot clay of the paddock, just drifting off to sleep. This time my cover was pulled away—a not uncommon event. I decided to resist. I was thoroughly exhausted after a hard shift in a place called the Canyon, where the slaves worked in couples and the supervisor could watch us all the time. The woman running me then was the worst in the mine, worse than almost any of the men. She had paired me with an inadequate adolescent, forcing me to do more than my share. I felt as if I had earned that cover, although all a slave could earn by any effort was temporary freedom from pain.

I sat up and jerked the leather back again. Technically this was fighting, and someone would be watching to see who won the exchange. Too many wins would bring a mauling, but I was one of the best workers, so I could hope to get away with minor offenses once in a while.

Adjusting the stinking hide over myself once more, I glared challengingly at the would-be thief lying facedown on the dirt at my side. Then I looked again. He was barely more than a boy, still round with puppy fat, and he had the worst case of sunburn I had ever seen. His back was a marshland of water blisters, and his shoulders were cooked meat. Every part of him was red and peeling. By pulling off the cover, I had hurt him. His eyes were screwed up in pain.

“Maybe you do need this more than I do,” I said, feeling guilty. “Let me wet it for you.”

I clambered to my feet, limped across to the stream, and soaked the hide. Then I returned and spread it over him.

I flopped down at his side. “You won’t mind if I tuck my head under the corner? I’m Knobil.”

He scowled at me and said his name. It sounded like a cat snarl, and “Hrarrh” was the closest I could ever come to it. He had only a hint of mustache, but his shoulders were broad, and already his scalp was balding. Sunburn meant pale skin.

“You’re an ant!”

He opened his eyes again to glare. “A miner!”

“Beg your pardon! But it looks like you’re a slave now.” I had not seen him before. He was not of this tribe.

He nodded faintly and closed his eyes again. I put my head under the edge of the cover, for that made sleep a little easier. We spoke no more.

When I awoke, he was sitting with the cover draped over him, trying to shade himself. His burns had bled a lot, and I decided that he was dying. A man can lose only so much skin. He was rigid with pain.

“Did they raid your nest?” I was recalling what Orange had said.

He nodded his head without bothering to look me. “Prospecting parties—but we killed three of theirs.” He bared his teeth in satisfaction.

“And they took away your clothes?”

“Of course.” He seemed to find that deliberate cruelty quite reasonable.

When the bosses came to round up their gangs, Hrarrh knew what was expected of him. He lined up with the rest of us, looking surly. He was obviously too badly injured to work, but newcomers were normally given time to heal.

Slaves never learned any of the ants’ names. We addressed every one as “master” or “mistress,” and referred to them among ourselves by the names of their cats. At that time the slave master was a fat, rather tall man with gray in his beard and a face even flatter than most. He walked with a limp and was shadowed always by one of the largest panthers in the settlement, Whisper. Now he curled his bushy mustache at the new boy. “You’re excused, cat food!”

Hrarrh fell on his raw knees, touched his face to the man’s boots, and said loudly, “Master, I humbly beg permission to work in the mine!”

Any backtalk was cause for immediate mutilation, but the leader was obviously nonplussed by this insane request.

“You’re dying, dross!”

Still speaking to the man’s feet, Hrarrh said, “Then let me die working at the face, master, I beg you! Please! Please!”

The leader glanced at the gang bosses. They shrugged and grinned.

“I’d have to let Whisper clean you up first,” he said. That brought wider grins from the ants and made me shiver. The pain of the rough tongue and corrosive saliva on so much raw flesh would be unendurable torment.

“Thank you, master!” Hrarrh at once sat up, leaned back on his heels, spread his arms, and lifted his chin. He waited with eyes closed and teeth clenched.

The big cat glided forward at its master’s signal. Hrarrh flinched when the tongue first touched him, then remained motionless while the washing continued. The whole paddock, slaves and masters alike, watched this incredible display of endurance with something like awe, waiting for the screams to start—but they did not. How the boy remained conscious and sane and even silent, I could not imagine. It must have felt like a swim in boiling water. Sweat streamed down his face. He shivered convulsively with the effort, but otherwise his only motion was a steady jerking of his juvenile adam’s apple.

“Now stand and let him do your legs!”

Hrarrh rose very shakily He kept his eyes closed. He swayed, but he suffered even that additional torture in silence, his features visibly ashen under the burns. When it was finished he sank down with his head on the ground once more and hoarsely said, “Thank you, master.”

Even the ants were impressed. Clearly the leader had not expected the victim to withstand the torture, for he chuckled admiringly. Then he assigned him to the same gang as me.

The site called the Canyon lay deep in the mine, where the ore vein was almost but not quite vertical. It had started, I suppose, as a tunnel and was by then a deep trench, just wide enough for two men to stand shoulder to shoulder. The slightly sloping walls towered over us, up into darkness. They had been cross-braced with props, but we all knew that sooner or later the overhang would collapse. Still, it was more pleasant to work standing up, more companionable to have the whole gang in the same dig, and much less stressful when the panthers could not sneak in behind us unseen. We had a double gang, eight with picks and four with shovels. We paused at intervals to pass the buckets back to a winch hoist, and thus we all had to work at about the same pace.

Hrarrh was last to arrive, and of course the bitch boss put him in the pair closest to her, at my side. I had expected that. In the gloom his legs were already streaked with black lines of blood, so the coarse smock was abrading his tattered shoulders, but he at once began swinging his pick like a maniac. I wondered whether he was trying to kill himself. Probably the only uninjured places on his body were his palms, but soon the handle of the pick glistened wetly as he wore the skin from those also. He was only a youth, he was grievously ill, and yet I could barely keep up with his stroke.

In the Canyons teamwork, the slowest pair governed the times for bucket passing. With any reasonable partner, a stronger worker like me need not force himself very hard. We did need good judgment, for if one pair got too far ahead of the others, then the others would be disciplined. So would any man who slacked too obviously. I was sure that this addle-brained kid would soon flag, but he held the pace, our shovel boy was soon shoveling as he never had before, and we filled our first bucket long before the other teams. The sadist boss woman screamed at them for being outworked by a cripple. She confiscated all water canteens except ours.

The same thing happened with the next bucket. This time every man in the team got clawed, except Hrarrh and me.

About halfway through the shift, Hrarrh began to have fainting spells. When he came to, he would stagger to his feet and go at it again, but by then the other men had caught the smell of revenge, and the pace quickened. Try as I might, I could not do the work of two. Ours was now the late bucket. Hrarrh was unconscious so I was the one punished, but even the boss had been impressed. Instead of her cat, she used her iron-toed boots, giving me a few mild kicks on the shins. From her, that was almost praise.

By the end of the shift, Hrarrh had apparently collapsed for good. Candles were flickering out. The boss had a couple of the weaker workers scratched, as always, and then dismissed us, leading the way up the ladder. The others followed, stepping over Hrarrh’s motionless form.

We two remained, in the dark. I checked his pulse: he was alive. I carried our picks and canteens up the ladder, and at the end of a shift, even that was an ordeal. Then I came back down again. He was still unconscious, still alive. If this kid could work miracles, I decided, then I could, too. Somehow I got him over my shoulder; somehow I climbed the ladder, all the way wondering if any of the shoddy rungs would collapse under our combined weight. I laid him down rather clumsily when we reached the top, thinking my heart was about to explode.

“Who’s that?” he asked.

“Knobil.”

“Leave me.”

“No.”

“They’ll skin you.”

For a while there was no sound except my gasping. Then I said, “Can you walk?”

“Yes.”

“Then hold my coat. I know the way.”

It was not the first time I had left the mine in the dark. Once in a while we could steer by the candles of the incoming gangs, but most we just walked slowly through the blackness, fumbling at walls to locate branchings. I carried the equipment and Hrarrh kept a hand on me.

We reached daylight and waited for the dazzle to leave our eyes. Then I pulled his smock off for him, feeling it tearing loose from his sores. He was completely coated in blood, both wet and dry, his face haggard as death. The next shift was still milling around, dressing, but sneaking interested glances. Hrarrh straightened his shoulders, reeled over to one of the bosses, and crouched at his feet to beg for another licking. I decided he was mad.

The ant regarded him angrily, probably wondering how to punish a man who was being insubordinate by demanding punishment. If it was mockery, it was unanswerable. “Why?”

“So that I may heal faster and be able to do more work.”

“And why would you want to do that?”

“I was born a miner, master. I must be able to outwork the dross.”

The ant shrugged. “Then lie down.”

That was a wise precaution, for if Hrarrh fainted during the licking, the cat would slash him as he fell. He did not faint—his eyes opened afterward—but another slave had to roll him over so that the panther could clean his back. I carried him to the paddock.

I scrounged a few scraps of food that had not yet been consumed. I managed to rouse him enough to force it into him. No one else came near us. No slave ever wanted to attract attention, and the ants were openly watching from their side of the compound.

Hrarrh chewed with determination, forcing lumps down his throat and repeatedly gagging. His eyes were unfocused and he shivered uncontrollably. He was in deep shock, probably very close to death.

“Why are you doing this?” he asked faintly.

I shrugged. “Just eat.”

“You think I can help you escape?”

Certainly I would not mention my plan to an ant, even a captive ant. “If I did, I wouldn’t dare be seen with you.”

He nodded. “Then why?”

I was not sure of that myself. Probably, as a coward, I admired courage. “Someone helped me once, when I was hurt and alone.”

He worked that out while he chewed some more. Then he said: “You’re a fool. And so was he.”

I was surprised to find him still alive when I awoke. He lined up for the bosses and went through the whole incredible process all over again, from licking to final collapse.

But he did not faint quite so often during the shift, and he was conscious afterward as I carried him up the ladder. That was a bad journey, for I was weakened by overwork and lack of food, and we almost ran out of luck before the top. The other slaves again ignored us when we reached the compound, but they had left enough refuse in the trough for two good meals, and a pair of the dirty leather covers lay nearby, apparently over looked. Such consideration was unusual and might be lethal if the ants chose to interpret it as a sign of admiration or approval.

Three…four… By his fifth shift Hrarrh had stopped fainting and was producing almost as much as the slowest of the healthy men, yet he still needed my help on the ladder, and so it was that the two of us again returned to the paddock together. The other slaves were continuing their pretense that we did not exist. The two pariahs sat alone in a sunbaked emptiness, chewing their roots and gristle.

Hrarrh had pulled a hide around himself to protect his new skin from the sun, but that skin was in itself vindication of his faith in the healing powers of the panthers’ saliva. His puppy fat had already gone, which was an improvement, but the scars on his face did nothing for his looks. His nose seemed to have been applied too hot, so that it had melted and spread, and brow ridges like tree branches made him seem permanently surly. Tufts of wiry hair protruded through the scabs around his big mouth. He was an ugly kid. He was going to be a very typical ant.

I knew I had taken a risk by befriending him. Every moment we remained together increased that risk, so I had to satisfy my curiosity before retribution separated us.

“Now,” I said, “tell me why.”

He scowled. “Why what?”

“Why did you volunteer to be licked?”

“So I could work.”

“But why do you want to work?”

“Isn’t it obvious?! They have three dead men to avenge.”

I was baffled. “So?”

“So they wanted to give me time to heal. Then the bosses would have taken turns with me.”

“You hoped to die?”

He looked offended. “No!”

“They can do nothing to you that would hurt worse than that.”

“It would go on longer. And be more permanent.”

“But they still can!”

He shrugged and obviously regretted doing so. “You’re only a herdman. You don’t understand pride.”

“Pride? You endured those lickings for pride?”

“Partly. But I’ve shown that I’ve got balls, so maybe now they’ll let me keep them.” His gaze flickered across the compound toward the cottages. “Most tribes need new blood. Who knows? I’m a miner. Maybe one of the girls’ll take a fancy to me when I get some hair on my chest.”

I wondered if even a female ant could ever think of Hrarrh as good-looking, but perhaps he was a better judge of that than I was. While I was pondering this, I saw that he was looking hard at me.

“So I’ve got a chance,” he said. “You don’t. Why do you stay?”

“What do you suggest I do? Walk out?”

“Step off the top of the ladder.”

“I’m a coward.”

He scowled. “No slave ever escapes! Never!”

“What about angels, though? Don’t they sometimes raid a mine?”

“Angels? You’re crazy! Angels don’t mess with miners!”

“Are you sure?” I was remembering what Orange had told me.

He spat out something unchewable and stuffed a lump of unidentifiable meat in his mouth. “Certain! Heaven needs what we produce—lead, iron, copper… The angels leave the mines alone. If that’s what you’re waiting for, then you’ll wait till the sun sets.”

“But…” Was this what Orange had called nonsense?

“But nothing! Even if Heaven sent an army of angels, it couldn’t approach a mine like this without us—them, I mean—without them knowing. So all the slaves go down the mine, the ponies come into the paddock, and where s your evidence? What angel is going to venture into the mine to look? What happens to him if he does?”

I did not reply. He was very convincing.

“Or we just fight it out. Cat against gun is a fair match at close quarters. How many angels can Heaven afford to lose?”

“Not many, I suppose.”

“Damned few.” Then he said in a low voice, “Knobil, I’m grateful. It hurts me to say it, but I am. Now leave me alone! You’re going to be punished, and if you keep defying the rules like this, you’ll be shucked for sure. I’ve given you the best advice I can: Die easy!”

“Thanks.”

After a moment he added, “One other bit of advice, then: Stay away from traders.”

“Traders?” I had not seen traders since my youth on the grasslands, but of course the ore we dug must go somewhere.

Hrarrh’s scabby face was grim. “Traders sell slaves to us—even a herdman must have discovered that by now. They’re one of our main sources. A trader will sell his grandsons if he can see profit.”

“So why tell me to stay away from them? I’m already in the worst place I could be.”

He hesitated, glancing at my hair. “I’m not sure about that. Just remember my advice. The first bit was the best.”

He struggled to his feet and I said: “Hrarrh?”

He paused, scowling down at me. “Yes?”

“Good luck with the beautiful lady miner. And if it works out for you…remember me?”

He nodded. “I’m greatly in your debt. I won’t forget that, Knobil!” He limped away, clutching the rugged hide around him like a cape.

That was how I met Hrarrh.

—4—

I AVOIDED HIM ON THE NEXT SHIFT, and he managed on his own. As I came out of the mine, I was stopped by one of the bosses and sent back in with his crew. Double duty, without rest or food, ranked fairly high on the list of punishments—it had been known to kill a man—but it was better than some of the things they might have done to me. It also put me on the opposite tour from Hrarrh, so we could not meet again.

It was bad, but I survived. So did Hrarrh. For a long time thereafter I saw him only in passing, sometimes trading clothes and tools with him at changeover. He was one big walking scar, but his great ant shoulders soon bulged with muscle. The rumor mill said that he ranked with the best workers, yet the bosses were hard on him. No matter how much he produced in a shift, he could rarely escape blooding. But he was spared real mutilation, so his brutal gamble had apparently paid off.

How long?

I don’t know how long I was a slave for the ants. I saw their women progress from wedding to pregnancy to weaning—then to more pregnancies and children growing. I saw Hrarrh develop a huge black beard and his scalp go as bald as a fish’s belly.

We worked to exhaustion, we ate, we slept, we worked to exhaustion again, in unending, uncounted repetition.

The only recreation was casual copulation. The only excitements were rockfalls and counting the bodies. The only release from the brutal discipline was death. Anyone too sick, too mad, or too badly injured to work died and was fed to the panthers, not necessarily in that order.

Not all work was done underground. Good workers would be rewarded from time to time with a spell on the surface—tending fields, crushing ore, working the sluice and picking the valued dark pellets of ore off the hides that trapped them…cutting timber, grinding grain, wheeling barrows. Some of those tasks were as strenuous as mining, but at least they were done in daylight, and we worked our hearts to pulp in the mines to earn them. Then a moment’s hesitation to obey an order, or someone else’s turn, or just the whim of a surly boss, and the terrible dark returned.

Gangs and shifts changed. Sometimes I found that I was back on the same schedule as Hrarrh. Rarely we would talk—at the food trough or the pits, or in the drowsy times before sleep on the hard ground. We were careful not to be seen together very often, but I think I was the only slave he ever spoke to all. As a born ant, he regarded slaves as dross and beneath contempt, although he was now one of us himself. Even with me his manner was always gruff and arrogant.

Yet Hrarrh himself was the second straw of hope that kept me afloat. “I won’t forget,” he had said. So if he had a chance, then I had one also, however slim.

And Hrarrh’s reward arrived eventually, as I learned when I saw him striding across the compound in smart new leathers, leading a half-grown panther off to training. Soon afterward, I watched his wedding. Bald and bearded, he was indistinguishable from any other young male ant, but he owed me a favor. It might be long before he achieved enough seniority in the tribe to do anything about it, but from then on I could believe that I was a little less unfortunate than all my fellows. One ant was in my debt.

There were bad times and worse times, and a very few not-quite-so-bad times. Rarely the ants held a wedding or some other feast that left nobody to supervise us. Then the slaves gained a holiday also, to sit idle in the scorching sun and watch the dancing by the cottages under the trees. At those times the ant women shimmered in gowns of iridescent gossamer, swirling clouds of color. The slaves laughed behind their hands at this futile attempt to beautify such ugliness, but the male ants seemed to like their women that shape.

Half the races of Vernier were represented in the slave pen at one time or another. Herdmen were the most common, though, and the most prized. They were huge and they were docile. Trained in absolute obedience to their human fathers and then betrayed by them, betrayed also by their Heavenly Father, deprived of the unbounded sky of their youth, herdmen went mad very quickly, but they continued to obey. The great haul of seafolk boosted the workforce greatly, but thereafter the numbers dwindled as deaths outran recruitment. New slaves were brought in from time to time by the ants’ raiding parties, and many were brought by traders, although I never saw a trader in the compound.

I learned much about Vernier from the scattered moments of conversation with men and women of other shades and shapes and sizes. But I told none of them about my plan. As an oyster locks tight about a pearl, so I closed my abused body around my tortured mind, and closed that in turn about the tiny fire of purpose that gave my existence meaning—my plan. I would go to the grasslands and there complain to the Almighty.

Die or go mad—there was no other choice. I made friends and saw them die or go mad like me. I had sex with women who were forbidden to refuse, gaining small relief and no pleasure.

My plan ran around and around in my head when I was awake. Asleep, I was consoled by a recurring dream, where ants became snarks. Every sleep I dreamed it at least once. Leading an army of seamen, riding on great ones, I ravaged the ants’ nest. How wonderful were those dreamed great ones! They bounded in and out of the hard clay of the dream compound as if it were water, while I skewered ants by the dozen on a weightless and untiring spear, and panthers by the score. All the ants in my dream, though, had Hrarrh’s face, which seemed curious even to me.

Then I would awaken to perform the most arduous or disgusting tasks eagerly and without hesitation. Even small children could give orders to a slave, and throwing rocks at us while we slept was their favorite sport.

I saw shuckings. Once the victim was a woman, and after that even Anubyl did not seem so bad to me.

How long?

I don’t know how long I was a slave for the ants, but in my memories it seems to me now that the center of my life is missing, that what should have been the peak of my manhood is marked by a gaping black wound.

—5—

I DO NOT REMEMBER LEAVING THE ANT’S NEST, but it was Hrarrh’s doing.

Once we had been friends of a sort, two slaves muttering careful asides to each other and watching for watchers. Then we had been slave and ant, seeing each other at a distance, never speaking, living in separate worlds. Suddenly we were slave and master.

The workers hated a change of supervisor. Even those with a reputation for decency were always hard on a new gang for the first few shifts. Even more we hated the beginners, for they had to prove to the other supervisors that they were tough also. Hrarrh was one of those, and it was my misfortune to be assigned to his first shift. Nor did I like the look of his panther. It was fully grown now, but it twitched restlessly, as if poorly trained or not completely under his control.

Of course nobody spoke. We stood in a line while he looked us over—the usual six men and one woman, all standing like dead trees, eyes downcast. A woman or boy was always included to carry off the buckets and keep tally.

He began with her. “Tell me how each of these cripples did on the last shift.” Then he walked along the line with his panther pacing at his heels, and she called out the number of buckets each man filled. I had done twelve, everyone else the usual ten. He paused for a while in front of me but did not speak. I watched the ground until he moved away.

“For me,” he said, “each of you will do two more than last time. If not for me, then for Chuckles here. I should warn you, though—she’s inexperienced and she tends to cut deep. Last man at the face gets two strokes to start with, so run!”

We ran.

Very few men could achieve twelve, no matter what the threat. Fourteen was an impossibility. Fortunately our worksite was not far into the mine. Unfortunately it was a bad one. The vein was thin, the air bad, the roof almost too low for the buckets, and a man could barely raise his head at all. I usually worked there without my helmet. I banged my head often, but it eased the strain on my neck.

Flat on my belly, I flailed my pick against the rock in panic. I scrabbled up the cuttings and crammed them into a bucket, in reckless disregard for the scrapings of my hands against the roof. Could Hrarrh have been serious? Perhaps it was only the others he had hoped to inspire. Surely he could not expect any man to produce fourteen full buckets? Surely my long-ago kindness would carry some weight? He would not be hard on me if I failed—would he?

Fourteen?

Between the clinkings of my own pick, the faint sounds from the other rooms were an almost continuous barrage, so the others must have believed he was serious. But fourteen? I heard a few yells as time wore on, as the men tired and Chuckles was sent in to inspire them.

When I was topping off my thirteenth bucket, my candle died. That was the signal to stop. From the corridor outside drifted sounds of begging and screaming as Hrarrh carried out his threats against those who had not managed to fill twelve. I continued to work in the dark, waiting to be called out. Perhaps thirteen and a quarter would satisfy him.

Thirteen and a half…

Silence outside, and inside only the sound of my pick and strident breathing…

Thirteen and three-quarters. Why did he not call? Had he forgotten me? But a faint flicker from his lantern showed that he was still out there.

Fourteen!

It was done. I wriggled wearily to turn around on the gritty rock, struggling with my pick and two buckets of ore. I crawled painfully forward, pushing them, and emerged into the corridor at Hrarrh’s feet. I rose to my knees, fighting back the dizziness that always came after lying so long on my belly. Then I just stared at his boots, feeling so exhausted that I did not think I would care very much if he sent me out to be shucked.

For a while neither of us spoke. Instead of sitting or crouching beside him, the panther was pacing restlessly to and fro. Then the familiar voice said, “You are still a fool.”

I did not look up. “Why, master?”

“Have you ever heard of a man digging fourteen buckets in one shift?”

“No, master.”

“Why would I order you to do the impossible?”

“I don’t know, master.”

“Put it back.”

In horror I tilted my head to look up at him, although that was forbidden. Put it back? After all that work and pain? My knees, my hands, my elbows were raw. In the flickering light there was nothing of his face visible between beard and helmet except a glitter from his eyes.

He sighed. “No man can do fourteen! But you have—so now they’ll expect you to do it every time. For your own sake, slag, put the ore back where you got it. Now!”

I was so exhausted and so enraged that I did another impossible thing: I hesitated to obey an order.

Then—at last—he started to laugh. “Knobil! I wanted to talk to you! Alone. How else could I do that? I never dreamed you’d actually manage to fill fourteen buckets, you dumb herdman! The next shift’ll be here soon—now move!”

I gasped with relief. “Sorry, master…at once…” And so I pushed the two heavy buckets all the way back to the face and left them there. The next worker was going to have a pleasant surprise.

I crawled back out to the corridor and knelt once again before him, expectant, stirred by a growing excitement. What vital news could he have that he needed to impact to me alone?

“How many did you fill, then?” he asked.

I grinned. “Twelve, master.”

“But I told you to do fourteen.”

My relief froze before a cold breath of terror. He was only teasing, of course. Wasn’t he?

“Master, I am sorry.”

“You’re going to be sorrier.”

“But—” I stopped. My tongue was too dry to move.

He tilted my head back so I could see the sadness in his face. “The others are waiting to see, Knobil. They remember how you befriended me, so they are waiting to see what I do. I have to damage you. Surely you can see that? I have to show them. You’re two buckets short, slag!”

Two buckets short—a terrible failure.

Never had I suffered a major clawing. I had been scratched often enough, of course—my calves were a network of scars. A moment’s rest that slipped into an exhausted sleep…a pace that flagged near the end of a shift…even the unearned spite of a sadistic boss…any of those could bring a black terror creeping in unnoticed behind a worker, the sudden flash of pain. But never more than that. I had seen, and heard, other men’s backs or legs being shredded like lace, but always I had worked as hard as I was able and been a good slave…

Hrarrh was waiting—for what? What was I supposed to say?

“Yes, master.”

“Well, lie down! My wife’s a very good cook. My dinner’s getting cold.”

Trembling with both terror and deathly exhaustion, I turned around and stretched out, nose against the floor. The mine was silent except for distant dripping noises. There was another pause. I wished he would get on with it. I ached everywhere, and only fear was keeping me from falling asleep.

“Those are remarkable calves, Knobil! After so long in the mine! You must have been a very good dross!”

“Yes, master.”

Then two rock-crusher hands grabbed my ankles and jerked me backward, dragging me half out of my smock. He dropped my feet.

“And there isn’t a single mark on your thighs yet! Amazing!”

I shuddered and was silent. The panther had taken up position beside me, but I just stared at the floor, smelling damp rock and my own terror.

Suddenly Hrarrh began to laugh again. “Oh, Knobil! You believed me, didn’t you? You think I’d worry about the others? You think I’d claw a man who saved my life—just to please them?”

“You won’t, master?”

“Certainly not!”

I relaxed with a gasp of relief and was taken unaware by the searing rip of talons raking my right thigh from knee to buttocks.

“I’m going to,” Hrarrh explained, “but not because of them. I’ll do it just to please myself. You’re two buckets short, aren’t you?”

“Yes, master.”

I could not see the signals, of course, but the cat could, and each movement of his hand brought another fiery slash. Then I would spasm and scrabble my fingers on the rock, and wait for the next one—but I did not cry out.

Hrarrh kept making tsk! noises. “She’s still cutting too deep,” he said. Somehow I stayed silent, and no panther ever made a sound. There was only pain and more pain and greater pain, and Hrarrh’s voice, soft and patient and almost bored. “Do try not to jerk like that, Knobil. It makes it very hard for her to judge.”

And finally…“There, that ought to do it. Well…you might as well be symmetrical.” Two more…“Yes, that looks better. Now we have to clean you up, and I can go home to momma.”

Very bad. Now I knew what a major clawing felt like. But now came the licking, and that was always far worse that the scratching itself. I had not known a man could have so much sweat left in him after a full shift in the mine.

“They don’t enjoy this, either, you know, Knobil. They dislike the taste of human blood—that’s how they learn not to cut so deep. She’s really having trouble stopping the bleeding. But she’s only a beginner, so we’ll just have to be patient with her.”

I never was lucky enough to faint. I bit my tongue, and I bruised my face and hands by beating them against the rocky floor, but I did not disgrace myself by losing control of my sphincter, and I did not cry out. Hrarrh had endured such pain himself without a sound. He would despise me if I screamed.

And nothing can last forever. Eventually he was satisfied. Drained, finished, I lay like a rag on the rock at his feet. He had proved to his buddies that he would savage his former friend. I wondered if I would have the strength even to stand up. I waited for the order, and braced myself to make the effort…

“Turn over.”

“What?”

“Roll over!”

With great difficulty I obeyed, and the cold sandy floor gritted on my cuts. Lying on my back with my smock up around my belly, I felt even more vulnerable than I had before. The lantern flickered gently from a high ledge, making shadows writhe on the rough walls of the little crypt. The panther was pacing again. Seeming very tall, Hrarrh was staring down at me, rubbing his whiskers.

“Two buckets short? Is that enough punishment, do you think?” he asked.

I just grunted, tasting the blood from my bitten tongue, feeling the cold air on my sweat-soaked skin.

“I think that ought to satisfy them—don’t you?”

I managed to mumble, “Yes, master.”

“But it doesn’t satisfy me, Knobil.”

“Huh?”

“We’re going to do more. Yes, it’s too bad, but we will have to do more.”

“What! Why?”

He sighed. “Once a herdman, always a herdman! They make good slaves, but they’re not very smart.”

I had no strength to take any more, and I began to weep silently.

“You don’t understand pride, do you? I told you that before.”

I sobbed and choked and finally found my voice. “Please, master! No more clawing! I’ll work a double shift… I’ll lick your boots… I’ll do anything, anything at all—but, please! No more clawing…”

He shook his head in disgust. “That’s not good enough! You’d do any of those things anyway, if I told you to.”

He gestured. The panther slunk over rather sulkily and sat opposite him, on my other side. It looked down at me with eyes that momentarily glowed red.

Faint voices and clumping of ants’ boots echoed eerily through the mine.

“The next shift is coming!” Hrarrh said. “We must get a move on—my wife will be furious. The right shin to start with, then. And do keep still this time or you’ll lose a kneecap.”

He gestured. I felt the talons scrape along the bone. It was the worst yet.

I screamed.

It burst out before I knew it was coming—a howl of terror and torment beyond endurance.

“Ah!” Hrarrh said approvingly. “You did it!”

“What?”

“That’s what I wanted! Ever since you helped me, dross, I’ve wanted to hear you scream. Pride, remember? That was a very good scream—but I think you can do better. So now Chuckles is going to practice clawing, and you’re going to practice screaming. You’re going to weep and you’re going to beg, but mostly you’re going to scream. You’re going to scream your lungs out for me, Knobil, my friend.”

—6—

WHEN IT WAS OVER, two slaves carried me back to the paddock.

I did not sleep, and the clay where I lay became soaked with blood. As the bosses arrived for the next shift, I did manage to stand up, but I knew that he had ruined me. Nevermore would I be a top worker. No food, no sleep, loss of blood, too much pain—work was out of the question. The only remaining secret was how I would be put to death—quickly or slowly? Certainly he would begin the shift by ordering another licking for me. I wondered if it would be possible to blacken his eye before the panther felled me, and I knew that my quaking limbs were not even capable of throwing a punch.

What I had not expected was the amusement on the faces of the other bosses, the smiles of tolerant reproof directed at Hrarrh. They thought he had gone a little too far, but he would know better next time.

He looked over the gang and tapped me on the chest in passing. “You stay. The rest of you—the target is the same as last time, twelve buckets apiece. Penalties are doubled. Run!” They ran, and most of them were limping.

He was fooling himself. Any sadist could jack up output for one shift. We had delivered sixty-nine buckets for him, but now the output would drop because of injuries and exhaustion—and one death to come. Apparently that was something that every new boss had to learn for himself. Unfortunately the slaves paid for the lesson.

Gradually the paddock was clearing. Hrarrh had gone after his workers, leaving me standing alone. He had not said I was excused nor that I could sit down. Bending my legs only increased the agony, so I just stayed where I was and sweated in the glare. The off-duty shift came trailing back, heading for the food trough. With luck I would faint soon.

Eventually he came strolling out of the mine, blinking at the light. He was wearing work clothes and the helmet concealed his bald pate. At the gate he paused to lay down a small bundle he had been carrying under his arm, then he headed for me with Chuckles gliding at his heel, a black threat half the size of a pony.

I was the taller. I kept my chin up and looked him in the eye, and I tried not to sway. He was amused.

“Plotting rebellion, Knobil? Looking for a quick death?”

“That was what you advised, wasn’t it? Well, take me to the canyon ladder and I’ll do it for you.”

He shook his head and moved closer, glancing around cautiously. “Put your eyes down. Now listen carefully. You’re leaving!”

“Ha!” Talking back to a boss was an intense pleasure after so much humility. I had forgotten how good it felt to contradict someone.

Hrarrh’s eyebrows shot up. “Great! I was frightened you’d do a fade. You mustn’t die on me, Knobil!”

“I should hate to spoil your fun.”

A grin twisted his beard. “I knew you had guts! You couldn’t have saved me otherwise. Now…it’s dangerous for me to talk to you here, and worse in the mine. You know how it echoes. Can you listen while Chuckles washes your legs? You’ve got to have them done or those cuts will go bad. It won’t hurt so much as before.”

“What choice do I have?”

He nodded approvingly. “Good man! Anyone watching will think I’m gloating, but you try to listen, because it’s important.”

The workers from the other shift had completed their meal and were stretching out to sleep. They were staying well away from the dangerous ant and his victim. The panther crouched and touched a rough wet tongue to my ankle. I shuddered and waited for the flames to start. Hrarrh put his hands on his hips and leaned forward, sneering into my face, but his voice was softer than his expression.

“Believe this, Knobil. I did all that just to get you out of here!”

Pain starting…“Dead.”

His eyes flickered warily around again, but apparently no one was watching too closely. I was shivering and streaming sweat as fire began to engulf my leg. But he was right—it was not as bad as before. Nothing could have been.

He was still talking…

“…wont believe me, but I was bluffing. I swear it!”

Just for a moment, relief—No! It was another round in the game. He was going to cure me and then do it again.

The deep-sunk eyes registered concern. “Warn me if you feel giddy—I’ll call Chuckles off. You all right?”

The tongue had reached my thigh now, and my mouth tasted of blood again. I nodded.

“I don’t expect you to believe me, but you will. There are traders here.”

Traders?

“It’s those blue eyes of yours, Knobil, that hair. Traders sell us slaves, but never wetlanders. They buy wetlanders!”

For a moment a flash of hope drowned out the creeping agony in my leg—then again disbelief. “Why?”

“I don’t know. No one knows for sure. They don’t much care how old or what sort of shape they’re in—men or women, it doesn’t matter. But any trader will buy a wetlander. One bolt of silk is the standard price. It’s your only chance!”

The black cat had completed my right leg. It sat back on its haunches and moved its mouth as if to get rid of a bad taste. Then it stared hungrily at my navel.

“Ready for the other one or do you need a break?” Hrarrh’s sudden concern for my well-being was more terrifying than his previous open sadism. He was going to restore me to health and then do it all over again.

He saw the doubt in my eyes and grinned wolfishly. “I’ll show you!” He signaled to the cat and a paw flashed. I flinched and then peered down at my foot. There was a single, faint red line on it, but the skin was unbroken. I looked up again at Hrarrh in bewilderment.

“You made her cut deep before?”

He nodded, still grinning. “She’s the best-trained pet in the mine. I showed them a thing or two about cats!”

“But…but why?”

“To make you bleed lots. You look much, much worse than you really are. You’d have needed a hundred times as many normal scratches to bleed like that. No one’s looked close, right?”

Again, hope squirmed very softly as I tried to believe.

“I had to do it this way, Knobil! They think I went mad in there.” He glowered. “This is costing me, too—I’m in big trouble for spoiling a good slave. I was only supposed to have a little fun with you, but you trailed blood all the way out to the paddock… Even my wife heard you, back in her kitchen.”

“That wasn’t what you said when you were doing it!”

“But you’re not nearly as bad as you look, as long as you don’t get fever in the cuts. You sounded real bad and you look real bad. What the traders will do with you, I don’t know. But certainly you’ve got a better chance of escaping from them than you have from us.”

At last the torment of the licking ended. Hrarrh glanced around at the hot bright paddock, littered now with sleeping slaves. Outside, in the main compound, ants were going about their business as usual, but the other shift’s barrow had not yet appeared.

“Right.” He grinned uneven teeth at me. “Let’s go!” Unwanted slaves not publicly executed just vanished inexplicably. Now I was about to do the same, and no one would know where I had gone.

My heart beat insanely as I reeled along behind him. At the gate he retrieved his package and pointed with it—pointed away from the mine, toward the road. The road to freedom? Keeping my legs stiff, quivering as violently as I had during the worst moments of his tortures, I stumbled forward, hearing his boots behind me, knowing that the panther was there also.

At the end of the long ridge of tailings stood a big shed, used to hold supplies. Hrarrh directed me in behind it, out of general view. Grinning again, he unrolled the bundle to reveal shabby old leather trousers and a pair of tattered boots.

“Traders don’t like damaged goods,” he said. “Try not to bleed any more until they’ve shaken hands on a price for you.”

The traders were real. Two of them stood with three ants, a short way down the road. That must be why I had never seen them before—they were not admitted to the main compound. But they were certainly the same sort of traders I had seen in my youth—smart little men in ornate leather garments, decorated with brightly colored beadwork and pipings and tassels. They had curved-brim hats and neatly trimmed mustaches and pointed beards. Traders!

This was real!

My brain seemed to fade away. I registered only vaguely that a team of horses nearby was being burdened with sacks, that bales were being loaded and unloaded and carried around. This was real—I was going to escape! Shaking uncontrollably, I stood with eyes downcast until one of the traders snapped, “Look at me, slave!

“Blue as blue,” he admitted. “What’s wrong with him, Minemaster? He seems healthy enough.”

“Lost his spirit,” one of the ants growled. “Used to be a good worker. What’s he doing now, Hrarrh?”

“Two short last shift, sir,” my benefactor mumbled. Then he whined, “I think I can scratch more sense into him, if you’ll give me another chance, sir.”

“One more chance and you’d kill him!”

The discussion wandered around, and so did my wits. I was going! Freedom! Or at least another form of slavery. Nothing could be worse than the mine—nothing!

“As Our Lady Sun is my witness,” the trader said. I remembered the words from my childhood, but this time it was me who had just been sold. The two men shook hands and one of them mentioned paper.

Hrarrh coughed deferentially. “Do you wish him hobbled, sir?”

The trader said, “What? Oh yes, please.” He went back to complaining about how difficult it was to find paper, because the only good paper came from Heaven, but he did happen to have…

Hrarrh gave me a shove and pointed farther down the road, toward the horses. I stumbled off ahead of him. I was leaving. My life could start again. Whatever use traders had for wetlanders, whatever value wetlanders had for traders, nothing could be worse than the mine. Never again need I crawl down into that cramped dark hell…

“Here!” Hrarrh barked behind me, pulling my fluttering mind back to reality. We were almost down to the vegetable fields, standing between the pony corral and the tannery outside a big shack they called the machine shed. It was issuing loud clanging noises, as always. This was where the smiths worked.

“Master?”

He laughed and suddenly clapped a hard hand on my shoulder. “I’m not your master any longer, Knobil!”

“You’re my friend!” I said, trying to suppress sudden tears.

“Yes, I’m your friend. And you were mine also, when I needed one.”

“Hrarrh!” My voice cracked. “My friend! Hrarrh—”

“Calm down! It was my pleasure, Knobil, truly! Now, there’s one last thing to do…”

I choked, suddenly wary. “What?”

He grinned at my nervousness. “Traders don’t have cats to guard their slaves. They use fetters.”

He gestured to his panther to sit by the door, while his strong damp grip on my shoulder eased me into the shed—loud and impossibly hot despite the dim shade. Three or four ants were apparently trying to make as much noise as possible with hammers and rasps, raising dust. A grotesquely thick youth was grinding a plowshare on a treadle just inside the entrance. His shoulders were remarkable even by ant standards, burying his bald head in muscle up to the ears, making his beard protrude straight out from the top of his chest. In any other race he would have been regarded as deformed.

“The traders just bought this,” Hrarrh told him. “They want it hobbled.”

The smith looked me over without expression, wiping his forehead with a bushy arm. He nodded his head to indicate direction. “Put it on the anvil.”

“Lie down,” he said, out of the smith’s earshot, “and put your ankles up here. Don’t look so worried, Knobil! I’m not going to hurt you, promise!”

Still alternating wildly between hope and distrust, I lowered myself gingerly to the floor and lifted my feet, wincing at the pain in my thighs and wondering if the movement would tip pools of blood from my boots.

Hrarrh went around to the side of the anvil and took a firm grip on my ankles, adjusting my calves across it. “Can you flatten out?” he asked. “Raise your knees?”

I had no choice, for he was levering hard and also pulling. I curled myself until my shins were level and my buttocks high off the floor. Something sharp dug into my neck and shoulders. I pushed down with my hands to relieve the stress on my abdomen. My thighs stung where the muscles flexed, and if Hrarrh thought he was not hurting my lacerated calves…

He looked content then, smiling down at me fondly. I did not like that sleepy smile.

“I didn’t tell you, did I, Knobil, that I’m a father now?”

“Congratulations…” If he was going to put fetters on me, then why was he not removing my boots?

He nodded in satisfaction. “Minemaster Krarurh’s first grandson! After eight granddaughters! I’m a hero, Knobil!”

Suddenly I understood and was filled with terror. “So he gave you a present?”

Hrarrh nodded. “Certainly. I explained that I had a problem, and he understood at once. He said I could do whatever I wanted to correct the matter.”

My heart could hardly sink any more, not in that upside-down position. “And what did you decide?”

He grinned like a cat. “I was going to shuck you—but we do that for mere insolence, don’t we? I could have let Chuckles eat bits off you, but that’s commonplace. An offense like yours calls for something special.”

Pride! Long ago he had been too weak to refuse my aid, and I forced it on him. I was a constant reminder of that time of weakness. I insulted him by just being alive.

“And the traders are better?”

The gloating was back, quite openly. His eyes were shiny. He licked his lips. “Much better! Of course I won’t be there to see, but…a fitting end! Much better.”

He turned his head slightly, and I saw that the mountainous youth was standing beside me, impassively clutching a sledge.

“Which one, Hrarrh?” he asked.

“You said you weren’t going to hurt me!” I yelled.

Hrarrh sighed happily. “I’m not. He is.”

Screaming would not help me now. I howled, almost upside down, more utterly helpless than ever. “I did you a kindness!”

Hrarrh bared his teeth. “It was a humiliation, slag!”

“Which one?” the smith asked again, raising the hammer overhead.

Hrarrh looked at me, and for a moment I thought he was going to ask me to choose. What I saw in his eyes then taught me what true hatred really was. How had he managed to keep it bottled up for so long? I had driven him mad. Perhaps all ants must be insane, for they could not treat their slaves as they do if they believed that those slaves were people like themselves.

I have no doubts that Hrarrh was mad. Since adolescence, he had been waiting for this revenge, this chance to wipe out the memory of a kindness that was an insult, a debt owed to an inferior: a non-ant.

He heaved my feet back, so that my knees, not my shins, were on the anvil. I yelped with pain and surprise.

“Do them both!” he said.

Later he dragged me outside and draped me over a horse’s back like a blanket, and at last I fainted.

I do not remember leaving the ants’ nest.