West of January

AND SO I HAVE TOLD YOU WHAT YOU WANTED TO KNOW—of Heaven and the angels, of my early life, and of how I returned to the grasslands in middle age. Surely you will not also have me tell of my greater shame, of the killing time and the crimes I committed when I was old?

You will? Ah, you youngsters are callous…

—2—

ALWAYS I HAD KNOWN that what I planned must shed much blood. Always I had hated the thought. I would like to think that a little more than pure cowardice kept me procrastinating so long in Heaven, and if so, then it was the hatred of bloodshed.

And even after I had taken over Gandrak’s family—even as I worked to bend the twins to my purpose—I still clung to a faint delusive hope that perhaps the herdmasters would be willing to negotiate.

Ha! The first one certainly wasn’t. His name was Trathrak, and he came out at full gallop, with arrows flying like hail. I was riding slowly toward his camp, through billowing grass high as a man’s belt, heading downwind so my voice would carry. I was unarmed, and I held my hands up to show I came in peace. Michael, had he been there, would have screamed that I was being a suicidal fool. He would have accused me of insane delusions of inadequacy that required me to prove myself now because I had gained my herd without killing for it. Sometimes too much insight can blind a man, and he would have been completely wrong in this case, of course—I went unarmed only because I wanted to talk.

Ironically, I should have died had I carried a weapon.

I did now know Trathrak’s name then. I knew only that he had many more woollies than I, with four tents showing, and he had been unfortunate enough to steer his herd near to mine just when my plan demanded its first victim. I soon knew that he was big and quite young, and I quickly came to understand also that he emphatically did not want to talk. He wanted to stamp my corpse into a floor mat. I turned tail and fled before the blizzard. As a lifelong coward, I was good at fleeing.

He gained on me, partly because I let him do so, partly because I was being careful to retrace my exact trail. I had headed straight for the sun on my way in, and therefore my shadow should guide me out, but in long grass at full gallop that is not as easy as it sounds. Trathrak drew closer, his arrows zipping by me much too near. Then, just as I decided that I must have strayed from my path and was about to die, Karrox rose up on one side of him and Kithinor on the other.

It was their first battle, and they were still only boys—they could have been excused a miss or two. They did not miss. With icy deliberation, they each put an angel’s steel-tipped arrow into Trathrak’s ribs.

Aware of an insanely pounding heart, I chased after his mount and caught it. The clammy caress of the wind on my face steadied my nausea as I rode sadly back to where my two young assassins stood in the whispering grass, gazing down proudly at the corpse.

When I slid from my saddle, I almost fell. I felt ill. I have caused many deaths in my life, as you have heard, but this was the first time I had ever planned a deliberate killing and carried it out, and I shivered at a sense of loss. I stared down in shock and disgust at the young giant’s body, wanting to shout at him to rise and stop pretending.

Yet I think I mourned less for him than for myself, and for all the others who must follow him if his death was not to be without meaning. For his sake, now, I must go on. For my own, I must believe that the bloody path I had chosen would lead to a righteous outcome.

The twins would be expecting me to say a prayer for the dead, and I couldn’t force out the words. I wiped my forehead and took a deep breath… I even managed to fake a grin as I raised my head. I was prepared to send Kithinor to fetch their horses, safely hidden beyond a hill. What I saw on Kithinor’s face frightened me much more that anything Trathrak had done. I glanced around at Karrox, and of course his expression was a mirror image of his brother’s—sinister gleam in tunnel-black eyes, faint smile wreathed in dark fuzz.

Finding twins of their age had seemed like a real stroke of luck to me, for twins tend to cooperate more than other brothers. Even herdfolk male twins do. As I had come to know Kithinor and Karrox, as I had trained them to shoot and to ride, I had confirmed that yes, they did have cooperative tendencies. And now they had a perfect chance to use them. We had two herds now. They did not need me anymore.

I smiled broadly, falsely. “Your arrow hit him in the heart, Karrox! It was the better shot, so you get first choice of the women.”

Karrox raised his eyebrows into the dark tangle of his hair and adjusted his grip on the bow. The arrow was pointing down, not at me—not yet—but he couldn’t miss at that range. Not if he closed his eyes and turned around three times, he couldn’t miss.

“You have both done well!” I said heartily. I pivoted to face Kithinor. He had unstrung his bow and drawn his knife instead. The youths were far taller than me now. They could run, too. “Better luck next time!” I added, less certainly.

Kithinor said “Huh?” and gazed inquiringly past me, at his twin.

“Well, we’re certainly not going to stop now, are we?” I said, ignoring the mountain of ice in my belly. “Three herds are better than two—more woollies, more women. And four will be even better than three!”

I could hear dice rolling inside their shaggy heads. Kithinor frowned down at me as if he were inspecting a rug, or something else inanimate and of doubtful value. I am certain that I would have died had I held a weapon in my hand, had there been a knife at my belt or a bow at my saddle. It was the code of the grasslands, the herdsman’s way of thought. They did not need me anymore, but equally I might not need them, so obviously they must strike first, before I did.

But I had no weapons except fingernails, and I was a feeble cripple… Kithinor’s unsubtle features twisted in indecision for a moment and then returned to indifference. He glanced again at his brother and nodded. Obviously they had decided that at worst there was no hurry. “I’ll do better’n him next time,” he agreed.

Thus the killing began.

I paid off my young henchmen in women, but I took none for myself. I was collecting boys instead.

I combined the two herds into one and angled south until we came across more tracks.

Three herds, then four… The twins cooperated because I was making them rich. With so many women to husband, they soon had no time for plotting, anyway—I had to shout at them to make them even keep up their archery practice. They began to turn dangerous again after the sixth or seventh battle, but by then I had outwitted them. With a dozen young bowmen at my call, and two or three close by me always as bodyguard, I could play them all off against each other, ruling as I had seen Ayasseshas do, and Michael.

So I survived and the killing went on. On all the plains only four or five herdmen agreed to talk, and not one ever settled down as my subordinate. Even if I sent a troop of twelve mounted bowmen against him, a herdmaster’s instinct to fight was still irresistible. Unable to conceive of cooperation, they would inevitably fall into the ambush trap that I had used against Trathrak.

Of course, few herdmen had ever survived to middle age, but my systematic bloodbath washed an entire generation from the grasslands. All herdmen were young now, except me.

Eventually some trader told Heaven what I was doing. But I was undeniably a herdman by birth and so my actions did not class as violence between groups, no matter what drastic changes I had made in the local rules. Renegade angels are not unknown in the records. Many men have used their Heavenly training to seize undeserved power. Their influence has always vanished when they died, and Heaven could take a long view. In my case, after a hot debate of which I did not learn until much later, the angels decided not to interfere. It was too late anyhow, even then.

The younger I caught the boys, the better I could mold them.

Karrox and Kithinor had been adolescent and too old to change much, and so were the few starving loners we had found and rescued. Eventually the twins reverted to type and rebelled, together with some others of my earliest recruits. Thinking like traditional herdmen, they could not see that boy babies and girl babies were produced in equal numbers and therefore the only alternative to ritual murder was monogamy—or if they did see that, then they preferred the traditional solution.

I was running out of women by then and setting limits on the number a man could own. I did not try to take any of the twins’ women away from them; I just stopped giving them more. So they organized the Great Revolt, and even there they were using the cooperative habits I had taught them. They lost anyway. Sadly I made examples of them, and I shared out their women among more loyal supporters. The ants had taught me the value of terror, and so had the spinster. But her sons’ end killed poor Allinoth, and for a while I was so sickened that I seriously considered giving up. It was dear Haniana who stiffened my backbone then and gave me the courage to continue. She can never replace Misi, but without her support I should not have achieved half of what I have done.

Studying the grasslands with saint-trained eyes, I saw that woollies, like snortoises, try to hold position with respect to the sun. Although they are controlled more by temperature than by light, they do seek to keep their snouts in shadow; thus, they automatically head west. Obviously, therefore, a woollies natural pace must move it at roughly the same rate as the sun moves. Once I understood that, I withdrew all the herders and watched to see what happened. Soon I had one enormous herd, not quite continuous but almost so, stretching in a north-south line across the width of the grasslands. This arrangement needed very little herding, and another of its benefits was that no one could get lost. Cropped grass lay east of the herd, long grass west of it. People moved north and south along the herd as necessary.

Death by death my power grew. After the Great Revolt, my subjects gave me little trouble. My boys had become my young men, and they roved the grasslands in my name. I rewarded them with women and ribbons and fancy tides.

Long before the last of the independent herdmasters had been tracked down, I was already starting to move against the two other groups that dwelt within my domain.

Gandrak’s horses had been oversized trash, and Trathrak’s no better. I knew how traders joked about their worst beasts being “fit only for a herdman.” So horseflesh was one of my first problems, one I solved by imposing a fine of three horses for every slave discovered in a caravan. I chose which three. The traders screamed about violence between groups and threatened to report me to the angels. I told them to go ahead, please.

My scheme ought not to have worked, of course. Had the traders simply spread the word to ignore loners and avoid transporting slaves across the grasslands, then that would have been the end of it. But I knew how the traders hated to lose an advantage or do favors for one another. By the time the news got around, there were no more wandering loners anyway, and my cavalry could run down anything on the plains.

I allowed no one else to deal with the traders, and I drove up the price of yarn until I could afford some simple luxuries to reward loyalty.

Herdmen, I discovered, were not born stupid—it was their wasted, barren culture that made them so. Under my guidance, the next generation grew up smarter. I founded singing schools and provided suitable songs of instruction. I created a corps of dedicated couriers, because a strong runner can travel long distances faster than a horse can in that climate. It also gave the youngsters more to do.

Even from the first, the women were inclined from habit to obey me without question, and they raised their children to do so, too. When they saw that their sons were not dying at puberty, when I halved the birthrate with a decree that babies must be breast-fed—then I had their souls forever. Now meek little herdwomen will denounce their own menfolk to me if they as much so suspect a disloyal thought. I hate that! It is only Haniana’s unflagging support that gives me the strength to do what I then must.

Eventually I was able to stop using women as rewards, but all marriages still required my approval, and I made sure that the woman was content. In an astonishingly short time, young maidens were expressing opinions on all sorts of subjects, and young herdmen were displaying interest in bathing, combing, and paring.

As Michael had long ago predicted, I never found any sign of Anubyl, nor of my family. They must all have perished in the great dying beside the March Ocean.

I was ready by then to realize my dream of revenge on the ants—and yet I had already come to realize that it would be a hollow satisfaction. I had once thought that I would destroy Heaven if it tried to block me. Now I saw that it could not block me and I needed it, an ironic situation indeed. Thus, as soon as I felt I had the power required, I issued a decree banning angels from the grasslands. Heaven and I must deal eventually, and I knew how long Heaven took to decide anything. My impertinence was sure to gain its attention. Besides, my troops enjoyed the sport of chasing chariots even more than roo hunting.

Mineral deposits can occur anywhere on Vernier, but they are more common in Wednesday than in any other day, because Wednesday is bigger. Many mines pass through the grasslands.

As a slave in the ants’ nest, I had dreamed of escaping and returning with an avenging army, riding on great ones. That was because the seamen had taught me to hunt that way, and it was the only form of cooperation between men that I then knew.

The spinster taught me much more. She had used an army to kidnap recruits to build her army. Admittedly she had enslaved her victims in a way I never could, but thereafter she had rewarded mostly with ribbons and titles and fine words.

The traders and the ants, the tribes of jungle and desert, and finally the angels—I had learned from all of them. Gradually I had refined my original muddled dream into a workable plan. Heaven can never throw enough men against the ants. My eager young warriors are armed with only bows and spears—no guns—but their shadows darken the hills. They worship me and they will die for me.

Traders will always part with information, for a price.

I located the nests. I learned the size of each tribe and its slave workforce and the name of its minemaster—and one of those names was Krarurh. It might not be the same one—a son, perhaps, or even that very grandson whose birth had resulted in my being given to Hrarrh—but I knew which nest I must attend to first.

That was a very bloody business, for my troops were inexperienced and the cats spooked the horses. Fortunately the mine was an open trench rather than an underground complex of tunnels. Thus it was not easily defended, and the ants were no more accustomed to battle than my herd-men were. Many slaves died in the carnage, but so did all of the cats and every adult male ant and many of their women, also. One body I identified with joy as that of the smith who had mashed my knees. Of Hrarrh there was no sign. He was either dead already or merely absent.

A man can’t have everything, I suppose.

And yet I almost hope he is still alive, for I probably had taken his family. All the women and children were distributed among my men, along with the rest of the booty. So I had my revenge.

All news reaches Heaven eventually, and this time the debate was fiercer. I was already very unpopular with the angels, and I expect that the archangels considered using force against me. In the end they wisely decided to negotiate, as I had known they must.

An exhausted young runner swayed on his feet before me as he gasped out his news: chariots had reached the grasslands and a party of three angels sought audience. In my delight, I promoted the lad to Warrior Junior Grade on the spot, and also all of the previous bearers who had relayed that message on its long trip from the borders to my palace. None of those couriers had even been born when I left Heaven, and now, at last, Heaven was coming to me.

I sent back orders that the angels were to be brought in on horseback, without their chariots—and without their guns.

—3—

NOTHING IN MY LONG LIFE has ever amused me more than the expression on those angels’ faces as they were led into my palace. As always, it stood on high ground to catch the breeze, but that particular hill chanced to be especially high. The walls were open on three sides to show vistas of gold-green grassland rolling away forever into hazy distance. Clustered around the stabbing blue of nearby lakes, the myriad bright tents that always accompany the palace sparkled like spilled jewels. I do not know why my presence requires at least a thousand supporters in attendance at all times, but it does, and when the angels arrived there were probably nearer to three thousand—but that was not by chance.

Everywhere there was color. Herdfolk love color, and now we could afford the best dyes on Vernier. Overhead the sun glowed through the brilliant fabrics of the roof, which the wind ran in long billows, stirring colors in their welcome soft-hued shade. The thick rugs underfoot were alive with color, and the downy cushions on the chairs also. Color glittered back from polished wood, from silver goblets and shiny silver plates of sugared fruits from Thursday As the guests sank open-mouthed into their seats, maidens in scintillating dresses offered them refreshments.

There was brilliance even in the pagnes and headdresses of my bodyguard, the twenty-five young giants who stood around like trees enclosing a forest glade. Tall and rigid as the poles that supported the roof, each held a spear that could have skewered a horse. Ayasseshas would have approved of my audience chamber.

The angels seemed small to me, and old. Yet even the oldest, who was also their leader, must be young enough to be my son, or even grandson by herdfolk ways. Indigo-two-green he was now, but I thought I could remember him as a cherub—it had been so long since I left Heaven that I could not be sure. His stoop might be from fatigue, of course. He was a hook-nosed desertman, and in his youth his hair had been red. Now it was mostly white.

And so was his beard! My orders had been followed more strictly than I had intended. The visitors had been snatched from their chariots with nothing but the clothes they wore, buckskins now unbearably filthy and sweat-stained. Not merely guns, but razors also had been left behind at the borders of the grasslands, and herdmen had no razors to lend. All three men were thickly whiskered. They would certainly have been rushed along at the fastest pace they could endure, and the length of those beards brought home to me the huge extent of my domain. Sometimes even I forget how much land I rule.

Exhausted and travel-soiled, those angels were angry. They knew that I had deliberately flaunted my power to humiliate them. They were impressed as well as frightened, and they hated me for it. They must have been thinking that the Great Compact had failed at last. Never had a despot risen to such power before.

Their arduous trek along the herdline had brought them through half the population of the grasslands. They had seen a teeming, civilized people, a prosperous nation where they had expected only scattered bands of savages. At every rest stop—while eating, then falling into exhausted sleep in the little tent settlements—they would certainly have heard the singing. Some of my psalms would have shocked them greatly, perhaps as much as their glimpses of the first real army ever raised on Vernier. And if many of the troops they had seen ride by in the distance had happened to be the same troops going around in circles…well, I had been trained by one of the sharpest traders who ever chewed a paka leaf.

Stiffly upright on their chairs, my guests glared at me. I probably did not meet their expectations. My long white hair and long white beard would seem bizarre to them. So would my golden robe—not to mention my ugly bare feet resting on the embroidered footstool before the throne.

I have had long practice in overawing herdmen, time to develop a certain presence. Ayasseshas would say I had just grown more pompous, I suppose, but it works. The angels were impressed.

I let them gaze awhile. The wind thumped the roof, and a steady clinking floated up from the smithy halfway down the hill. Much nearer, the thunk! of arrows told of archery practice in progress.

“Tell me news of Heaven,” I said when the angels’ eyes began to wander. “Who is Michael now?”

Indigo thrust a hand in his pocket. Instantly twenty-five spears were aimed at his heart. He froze. I gestured, and the twenty-five spears returned to vertical, butts thumping the rug simultaneously.

The angels all turned very red.

“You do not trust angels, Herdmaster?”

“Sir, I trust you implicitly,” I said with total falsehood. “My lads here are a little nervous. Just don’t move suddenly, and I think everything will be all right…and be careful how you address me. Herdmaster is a relatively junior rank in my army.”

“How do you wish to be addressed, then?” Indigo inquired, his eyelids lowered in fury.

“My people call me—but you wouldn’t like that, I suppose. Choose one of my earlier names, for I have had many—Knobil, Golden, herdbrat, dross, Nob Bil, Old Man, Roo…and I suppose I was indeed Herdmaster, briefly—before my apotheosis. Please yourselves.” I smiled graciously.

“Knobil, then!” Gritting his teeth and moving slowly, Indigo drew a paper from his pocket. “Holy Michael sent this message.”

A sword-girt youngster twice his size took the letter and brought it over to me, kneeling as he offered it. There was no name on the outside. I broke the seal and found four words within. I had read nothing for so long that at first they were only squiggles, and blurred squiggles at that. I held the message out at arm’s length and forced old eyes and brain to work.

Shaky handwriting: Remember Silent Lover. Quetti.

I leaned back on my throne and thought about that. So my friend had survived the Great Flood, and I was glad. He had reached the top, obviously, which was not surprising. He didn’t trust his messengers, which was. He was warning me of treachery, and perhaps even admitting that he might have to betray me himself.

Heaven must be divided as never before. Had Quetti seen the same opportunity for treachery that I had, or was he worried only about my life, which was a trivial thing? He must be old now, I realized, and I was much older.

“I shall not attempt to pen a reply,” I announced. “Please inform His Holiness that I thank him for his greetings, and I wish him the long life and contentment he so well deserves.”

Indigo nodded his head warily. All three angels were as taut as bowstrings.

“Now, what can I do for you gentlemen?” I asked cheerfully.

“You have used violence against a tribe of miners,” Indigo said bluntly.

“I massacred them,” I admitted. “It was bloody.”

“How many men did you lose?” Obviously subtlety was not Indigo’s greatest talent, and I wondered if Quetti had chosen him for that reason.

“Only fifty-two,” I said and enjoyed the reaction. To lose fifty-two men would cripple Heaven completely.

“Only?”

“I have thousands—but I grudge every one, I assure you. I was angry even to lose any of the slaves we were trying to rescue.”

“Violence is a breach of the Great Compact!”

“Not always,” I said mildly. “Section Six extends the right of self-defense to include vengeance when there are no angels within call. I once suffered grievously from those ants.”

The three angels exchanged glances. Perhaps they had known which tribe I had struck and had anticipated that defense. My history was on file in Heaven, and they should have known not to expect an ignorant savage headman.

“There are other restrictions,” Indigo said frigidly. “And the reason that there were no angels within call was that you were keeping them away. But even if Heaven could overlook that attack as having been provoked, there have been three other mine attacks since.”

“Five, now. It has taken you long enough to get here.” I nibbled a date with my few remaining teeth. “But the other mines submitted to me voluntarily and released their slaves. No blood at all was shed. No violence.”

“You threatened them with hundreds of armed men!”

“Thousands.”

“Are you saying that you were bluffing?”

I shrugged and dropped the pit into a convenient silver bowl. “It’s a hypothetical question.”

“One of those mines was outside the normal range of your group.”

I nodded. “Two of them, now. And there are many others still within my grasp. I am planning to strike at all of them.”

The angels recoiled like startled cats. Heaven had never been openly defied like this before. “You are telling us that we can’t stop you?” demanded one of the others, a thick-chested seaman, Two-blue-white. Indigo glared briefly at him.

“More or less,” I said. “If Heaven kept the ants under control, then the problem would not arise. Slavery I will not tolerate! Do you defend it?”

“Of course not!” That was Two-blue again.

I let the conversation lapse for a moment. I was unused to such excitement, but I must push on quickly while the angels’ weariness gave me a small advantage—so said the trader in me. I had made Haniana promise to stay away, but she would promise anything. If she thought I was overtaxing my strength, she would come scuttling in like a mother platypod defending her larvae. Where would my grandeur be then?

The canopy thumped gently, and the blacksmiths clinked. Most nerve-scraping of all, though, was the monotonous thud of arrows drifting up from the butts. It apparently vexed Indigo.

“Why are doing this?!” he shouted. “Those weapons have steel blades! This drink is cool, so you have must have introduced pottery, and a smithy is—”

“Other peoples enjoy such things,” I protested mildly.

“But you broke your angel oath—”

“I swore no oath!” My tone was sharp enough that some of the guards twitched ominously. “I obtained all these things from the traders.”

The angel scowled and then muttered. “My apologies.”

“Accepted. And talking of trade, would you care to make me an offer on fifty-nine guns?”

“Guns? Where did you get guns?”

I waved a blue-veined hand vaguely. “We find them when looking for slaves…in mines and trader trains, and so forth.”

The angels were aghast. “Fifty-nine?” Indigo muttered. Heaven was perpetually short of guns.

“That’s whole ones. Three baskets of parts, too.”

“So your hordes will ride beyond your group borders, will they?” Even in the cooling breeze of the palace, Indigo’s forehead shone with sweat. Fatigue and anger and fear all fought for possession of his face. “You will destroy the Great Compact and build an empire? And it will all collapse when you die.”

“Maybe not,” I said. “There will be no equal to take my place, of course, but my teachings will live on. You did hear my people singing, didn’t you?”

Three heads nodded, even as three mouths sneered.

“You are a poet…ah, Knobil.”

“I always had a knack; it came in handy. Psalms were the only way I could find to spread my laws. So I will live on in their hearts. Herdfolk have always sung. Now they sing my laws, is all. I cannot be replaced, but there will always be a king of the grasslands, I think, as the psalms decree.” I could no longer hide my amusement at their expressions. “I came from Heaven, of course. When I…return…then a mortal will rule in my name.”

“A thousand mortals will rule!” Indigo said.

“No.” I stared out at the distant skyline. Of course I will never know, but I have thought of this often, and I have convinced myself—most of the time—that it will work as I have planned. “No, I think not. With everyone living along the herdline, one narrow strip—just one man, the strongest. You cannot steal woollies; you cannot drive them off. They are so slow! One long herd, one king. That will be the way of the grasslands from now on.”

“You are insane!”

Indigo was being very brave and also very stupid to tell me so in my own throne room—a typical sandman. He flinched as I frowned at him.

“Didn’t we meet once?”

He nodded, looking surly. “I became a cherub just before you left.”

“I remember! Twist, they called you! I gave you archery lessons!” For a moment we smiled at each other in mutual nostalgia. Then I pulled myself back to the important business of frightening these emissaries. Frightened men do not bargain well. “Of course I know that angels are the only folk on Vernier who recognize no gods, and I can see that it must hurt to have to treat with one! But I never wanted to be a god, Twist. It just happened.”

Suddenly the third man spoke up. He was Yellow-green-gray, the youngest, and therefore likely the smartest. He had the shaggy look of a wolfman, intent and narrow-faced.

“But why?” he said in a soft voice, staring at me with steady golden eyes. “Why would you, you who had accepted Heaven’s care, you who could have been an angel—Michael swears you would be wearing the white instead of him, had you stayed—why did you build this monstrous armed force?”

“It began because I wanted vengeance,” I said and concentrated on the bowl of fruit near my hand, wishing to hide the sadness that his youthful outrage roused in me, “but then it just took off on its own… I saw the great dying, you know. I saw the angels try. I saw them fail. They failed because the herdfolk would not cooperate. I wanted to teach my people cooperation.”

“There’s nothing wrong with cooperation—”

“And this was the only way I could find to do it.” I looked over at Yellow, and his face was slightly blurred to me. “Cooperation was all I wanted,” I said sadly. “I knew that if the herdfolk cooperated, then they could cut off the ants’ supply of slaves—gain this…” I waved at the walls of my palace and the tent city beyond.

A note of hope crept into the youngster’s voice: “Then you will now disband your army?”

“No…no, I can’t. Fighting seems to be the only thing that I can make them cooperate for—does not the Great Compact warn us that violence is a disease that breeds and spreads? I knew the danger, angel, but I saw greater evils than that. First we fought the herdmasters and united the people. Then we chased traders—and angels, for practice. Now ants—at last! But if I disband my troops they will surely start fighting each other. Then it will all collapse, and everything, all my life’s—” I stopped and took a deep breath. I was tiring faster than they were. I ought to wait until another time. They were weary, but I was twice their age. Three times as old as Yellow.

Haniana would be spying on me from behind the drapes.

After a moment, Yellow spoke again, the others apparently leaving it to him for the moment. “If you attack any more nests, then Heaven must act against you. All the rest of Vernier will expect it.”

I rubbed my eyes and straightened up on my throne. Could he be serious? “Heaven can’t stop me, sonny! My army is preparing to leave very soon, to inspect another mine, and there will be seventeen hundred mounted men, each with a spare mount, plus twelve hundred on foot—and they can travel very nearly as fast.”

The angels stiffened in shock and exchanged glances.

“Will you tell us where?” Yellow inquired quietly. He must have believed me to be even more senile than I felt—but I did not mind telling him.

“There is an iron mine down in Tuesday, east of here. Do you know it?”

“I know of it.” His tone was cautious.

“The ants keep slaves, so the traders tell me.”

The three angels all frowned, and then Yellow’s golden eyes began to twinkle. “The traders load up with the mine’s produce, then report on slaves to you, and so provoke you to attack—thereby driving up prices?”

“Absolutely right,” I agreed. “I suggested it to them…but if there are no slaves there, then there will be no violence started by me.”

The three men glanced at each other, and again they left the conversation to young Yellow. “If you proceed, then Heaven will lose all credibility unless it moves against you.”

“It would be a gnat moving against a woollie,” I said. “Do you have power to negotiate?”

“Some,” Indigo muttered.

I waved a hand in dismissal. “You are wasting my time. Go!”

The guard with the sword began to come forward.

“We have plenty of authority!” Yellow said sharply, earning a hard glare from his seniors. “Plenipotentiary authority if unanimous.”

Ah! I waved back the guard and smiled benevolently at my guests. Good for Quetti! “Then I must make you an offer, I think, since Heaven has nothing to offer me.” A lie, of course. The angels went tenser than ever, fists clenched, eyes slitted. They were the worst traders I had ever met. Thank you, Quetti!

“Do you defend these slave-owning ants in Tuesday?” I threw the question at the wolfman cub, who obviously had twice the brains of the other two put together.

“Of course not!” He flushed angrily.

“But you deny me the right to clean them out?”

“Yes. They are outside—”

“Then the answer is simple! You must clean them out before I do!”

“We would if we had the power!” he shouted.

“I’ll give you the power,” I said. “Three thousand men.”

My visitors almost jumped from their chairs, and again a warning ripple ran through the watching guards.

Indigo took over as spokesman. “You are serious? On what terms?”

“That they be used for that purpose and only for that purpose. That the Supreme High War Leader may withdraw if he feels that your orders are unwise and will cost too many lives—the Great Compact permits this.”

“Yes…yes, it does.” He glanced in disbelief at his two companions, then back at me. “You will place your army at Heaven’s disposal, to support the Compact? All of your warriors?”

“Gladly. Heaven knows, I have no other use for them.”

They laughed aloud, believing that I was joking. Certainly Heaven needed the power. That had been obvious all my life. Long ago Kettle had shown me the numbers—there were no more angels then than there were twenty cycles ago, while the rest of the population has surely been increasing as mankind grows more skilled at winning a living from Vernier. Heaven was undermanned, but now I held the center, and almost all the world was within reach of my warriors.

“And what do you want in return, Almighty Father?” Indigo asked.

“Call me Knobil.”

He glanced uneasily at the circle of guards. “Knobil, then.”

“Two things—firstly, a promise that Heaven will use my army and not let it rot, because there is much to be done and warriors lose their edge easily.”

Three heads nodded in quick agreement. Even Indigo could see what angels might achieve with an army behind them.

“Secondly, I want herdmen in Heaven… herdman angels.”

“What? That’s all? Why?”

“Ask Michael to explain when you get back,” I said wearily. Quetti had guessed. Quetti would not betray me, but others might, not yet, perhaps, but in the far future. Silence itself can kill. That was what his message meant.

The angels exchanged suspicious glances.

I sighed wearily. Heavens, but I was tired! Every time I blinked, my eyelids grated. “Herdmen have never been angels, until me. Yes, some herdmen angels will return to the grasslands and make a play for the throne—I’m sure that politics will be a bloody occupation among my people in future. Yes, a Heaven-trained king may be dangerous, but ex-angels are supposed to be civilized! Train them well, that’s all.”

“And in return,” young Yellow said eagerly, “the king of the grasslands will lead his army against Heaven’s enemies whenever the archangels call?”

Indigo objected: “He can’t promise—”

“I can put it in a psalm,” I said. “I have it ready.”

“And all you want from us is a guarantee that Heaven will accept herdman pilgrims?” They itched with suspicion. Apparently I must spell it out for them after all.

“That’s all. Just a fair chance, like any other youngsters. I think you’ll find they do pretty well.”

The angels glanced around the cordon of giants. Yellow uttered a juvenile snigger. “We’ll need bigger chariots!”

“Why?” Indigo demanded again. “Heaven would accept them now.”

“Would it?” I asked bitterly. Remember Silent Lover! “Would it really? And will it always?”

“The March Ocean?” Yellow was the fastest.

“Yes.” The throne room blurred without warning. The far views of grassy hills and steel-sharp lakes…the unbounded sky and the sprinkled jewels of the tents… I saw only a watery white blaze.

“I was there,” I said, and the memories were suddenly at my throat, choking me. “I saw the great dying. Two-thirds of my people starved, because they would not cooperate. Children. Beautiful women. Strong men. Now I have taught them cooperation…and I do not think they will forget…” My voice choked off into silence, into the sound of the wind and the faint thud of arrows, and somewhere children singing my praises.

“But they need the warning,” Yellow said softly, completing the thought. “With herdman angels in Heaven, Heaven can not forget to send the warning!”

I nodded, infinitely relieved that it was all out at last, and suddenly feeling older than the grasslands themselves. “I want…” I said. “I just want things to be different next time. No great dying, the next time the sun comes to the west of January.”

—4—

SO THERE YOU ARE, LADS. That’s the true story. Despite what your mothers taught you, I am not a god. I am even less of a man. I was always a coward. I slaughtered hundreds, yet I never fought a fair battle and I never bloodied my own hands.

No matter whatever else you may have heard, I was never an angel or even a cherub, only a hanger-on. A great killer, but never a hero. I was lucky, of course.

A contemptible man, really—a failure. I failed my mother and I betrayed my promise to Violet. I killed Pebble, my first friend, and Sparkle, whom I thought I loved. If I’d been there… And above all, I failed my adored Misi by not deceiving the angels properly and by telling the spinster about her… I betrayed my real father. I abused Quetti’s friendship.

I am not a god! The angels will question you hard about this if—when—you get to Heaven. Remember that—Knobil is not a god!

I shall prove it soon, I think. Meanwhile I can sit in the shade and snooze; waiting for my next meal of juicy roast dasher; remembering what might have been, dreaming what never was…

You are the first. You must set an example, every one of you. Heaven will judge the herdfolk by you. You are all big; try also to be great. Travel in groups if you will, but when the road divides, then make your own choices.

Remember always that every man must find Heaven for himself.