West of January

WHEN I WAS TOLD THAT THREE-BLUE HAD RETURNED from yet another mission, I was disgusted to realize that it must have been his fifth, while I was still just frittering my life away in Heaven, achieving nothing. I found him in the scriptorium, in bright sunlight and the usual clutter, with Gabriel and half a dozen worried saints.

Quetti was one of the senior angels now. His dimple had become a cleft and scalp showed through the golden hair, but otherwise he was little changed. His grin of welcome was broad enough, but brief. I envied him his tan. Sunshine was one thing I missed badly. In Heaven, the sky is not only often cloudy and dull, but actually dark about half of the time, an unnatural and unwholesome condition that always reminded me of mine tunnels.

“Roo?” Kettle’s voice boomed across the big room as I entered. “Now I know we have a problem—Roo’s here!”

“Always glad to help out,” I agreed. They knew why I always turned up when there was a problem.

Quetti had been dispatched far to the northwest, to where the Alps were emerging from Dawn’s ice sheets. As the sun crosses March in every cycle, meltwater builds up north of the range in a gigantic lake. The tundra drainage freezes off at just about the time the icecap clears the western end of the barrier. The result is the Great Flood, a catastrophe in the wetlands. It had been the height of the lake that Quetti had been sent to inspect.

But angels’ field reports never quite agree with those from previous cycles, because the geography is always changing. The saints’ job was to turn Three-blue’s notes into maps, and maps into predictions.

Kettle was leaning over the big table again, growling. “This is impossible! Blind wetlander! Michael should have sent a seaman!”

“Three-blue’s a match for any seaman,” I said, winking at Quetti.

Kettle just muttered, attending to the task at hand.

Somewhat later—at about the time my stomach’s rumblings became louder than the snortoises—we had reached a consensus. Not only was the lake too high, but the ice was receding too fast. Moreover, the Great Flood had been coming earlier every cycle, and no one had noticed that trend. We made notes all over the current reports to warn the saints in the next cycle—but that didn’t solve the problem. The timing looked very bad.

At length, Quetti left the learned men to their disputations and took me aside. He perched one hip on the edge of a desk, blithely upsetting carefully stacked papers. “I’ll get this one?”

“You want it?”

He nodded, so I nodded. “Likely you’ll get it, then.”

He smiled briefly. “How’s the equipment situation?”

“Same as usual,” I said. “Drivers’ll be your headache. There are four ant armies on the move just now.”

Quetti made a lewd remark about ants and the impossibility of angels ever keeping them honest. “Who’s around?”

I listed the angels presently in Heaven, starting with seamen and wetlanders; he nodded or pouted as I went along, rarely having to ask for details on one he didn’t know. I left out a few who were too old or sick, and I included Two-gray, whose broken leg was almost healed, and White-red-white, whom Quetti disliked.

By the end, his face was grim indeed. “Seven? Only seven of us?”

“You want rough-water sailors, them’s your choice.”

He muttered an oath, his blue eyes staring bleakly past me at unseen horrors. I felt very, very glad that I was not in his place. Seven men could never warn all of the wetlanders in time. They would get caught by the flood, and more than likely that mean Scroll of Honor. Another disaster Heaven had failed to prevent!

Blots, the scriptorium’s snortoise, had started slithering down a long slope. Saints muttered angrily as their light failed.

Quetti turned that cold glare on me and cocked an eyebrow.

“Fancy a little fieldwork for a change?”

I suppressed a shiver. “Oh, I’d love to help you out. But Michael just can’t bring himself to give me my wheels.”

My feeble attempt at humor was ignored. “I’m serious. This is going to be a bad one, Old Man.”

“You’re crazy!” I said hastily. “I’m no rough-water sailor.”

“I’ll cook breakfast while you’re learning.”

I told him firmly that if he wanted angels just so he could drown them, then we had a plentiful supply better qualified than me.

“Some may be seamen or wetlanders,” he said, “but you’re both! I know how fast you pick up things. Well, do this one for me—seven men and seven chariots for the mission. Double drivers to get them there faster. Three per cart coming back, naturally. How many to start?”

Was this some sort of trick? “Twenty-eight men and fourteen chariots, of course.”

His smile was almost lost in the gloom. “See? I tried to do that sort of sum all the way back from April, and I never came up with the same answer twice.”

Gabriel had adjourned the meeting. Daylight had gone, and candles were not allowed in the scriptorium. A saint nipped out to raise the flag over the door, an appeal for dogsleds. Quetti and I told the others to go ahead, being happy to sit and talk angel talk. With cherubim I talked cherub talk, and seraph talk with seraphim. I had no group of my own.

We two were the last. We went out to the porch and began pulling on damp-smelling furs. Judging by the racket outside, Blots had found a thick grove of dead trees buried in the snow of the valley bottom. He was likely to remain there for a considerable time, until complete darkness and falling temperatures triggered his primitive reflexes. Then he would go looking for the sunset again.

Without warning, Quetti said, “Roo? Why won’t you ask for your wheels? There’s so much to be done, and so few of us to do it!”

“Ah! Three-blue, you are treading close to one of Heaven’s great mysteries, one of Cloud Nine’s favorite philosophical debates! Is it even worth doing everything you can, when it amounts to so little compared to what’s needed? I’ve noticed that eager young cherubim never doubt. ‘Of course!’ they say. But the rheumy old saints and retired angels—they usually shake their heads. Men even older than me, each one of them looking back on a whole lifetime of achievement and seeing that it doesn’t really amount to anything at all. None of us is going to change the course of history, Quetti, so why—”

“Stop evading the question.”

I hauled at legging laces, doubled over and unable to speak.

“Knobil, you’d make a great angel,” Quetti said.

I unbent slightly. “You know why Michael couldn’t give me my wheels, even if I asked for them. Everyone knows, so you must.”

“That is plain idiocy!” Quetti said hotly. “You came to Heaven by pure accident. The Compact wasn’t designed to prevent accidents, it was designed to stop men setting up dynasties. Heavens, Roo, you’re not going to set yourself up as a king!”

I went back to my lacing without commenting.

“Have you asked him?” Quetti persisted.

I did not have to answer that either, because a dogsled came yelping and jingling over the snow, following Blot’s wide track. Quetti held the door for me to go first, and I stepped out on the platform, reaching for the rail at the top of the ladder. Far to the east, the sky was black and twinkling with stars, the Other Worlds. Rail and platform were both slick with black ice. Without warning or understanding, I was airborne.

Blots was one of the largest of the snortoises, a small mountain of unimaginable age. For scores of human lifetimes he had hauled his great bulk along, lubricated by snow, munching dead wood and fungus, heedless of anything except the direction of sunset. His roars were mere belching, not communication. He had no enemies, and if he had offspring, they were of no more interest to him than the scriptorium he bore on his back. In all my time in Heaven, I only once saw a snortoise mating, a procedure that demolished the paper mill and tilted the bakery almost vertical.

On the way down I had time to reflect that, although this was far from being my first fall in Heaven, I had never fallen from the very top of a ladder before and had never had time to wonder what I was going to land on. Dead trees tend to break off in very nasty spikes. I wondered also about the resulting damage—broken hips seemed about the minimum for starters. The ladder was at the snortoises rear, of course, because the flippers can crush a man quite easily, and the snow there would be rock-hard after Blots had slid on it. Anything I hit would probably smash me to pieces.

But no. With the sort of perfect timing a man could not repeat in three lifetimes, Blots saved me. What Heaven usually regarded as a rare but highly unpleasant threat proved to be my salvation, and I came down into an explosion of snortoiseshit.

Quetti and the seraph sled-boy dug me out, cleaned me up so I could breathe, and then rushed me over to Nightmare, which happened to be close. I woke up lying on my own bed, in the largest and most comfortable cubicle of the whole dormitory building, one I had appropriated long ago.

“Just lie still,” Quetti said. “The kid’s gone for a medic.”

What kid? Why did my ankle hurt? Then I began to remember and also to discover a whole world of additional bruises. Oddly enough, although I had been stunned, my head did not ache at all.

“I think I survived,” I said. “What is that appalling stink?”

“You stepped in something,” Quetti said. He was sitting close by my bunk, and even the flickering lamplight showed the concern on his face. I felt rather touched.

“I’m okay, really.” I reached out to clap him on the shoulder and caught a glimpse of my arm. I suddenly understood my miraculously soft landing. “Oh hell! I won’t be okay when the cherubim come back here! The place will never be habitable again.”

“The important thing is that you’re alive!” Quetti said. “It had to happen eventually, I suppose. Those gymnastics of yours give us all the willies. Your luck had to run out eventually.”

“I’d say my luck did all right.”

He nodded and swallowed and did not speak for a moment. I counted bruises and scrapes, moving limbs gently. Nothing too serious.

“Knobil!”

“Mmm?” I opened my eyes.

“You’re drowsy! Stay awake till the medic comes.” Quetti looked even more concerned than before.

“Minor concussion,” I said. “Talk to me.”

“You talk to me. Tell me why you stay around here? A man with no knees shouldn’t be running up and down ladders all day long.”

“No wings.” I did feel sleepy, now that he’d mentioned it.

“You’re getting older, Knobil. How much longer can you manage those ladders?”

I wanted to drift away…without the stench if possible; with, if necessary. “Got no choice.”

“Be an angel! You’d be much safer in a chariot than climbing ladders here in Heaven.”

I shook my head, fighting to keep my eyes open, watching golden lamplight play over the crooked snortoiseshell ceiling.

Quetti’s voice rose as if he were angry. “You mean Michael won’t let you? You’ve asked?”

“Don’t want to be an angel. No good angel. Want to go home to the grasslands.”

“Oh, of course!” Quetti said skeptically. “Nothing like the roo-eat-roo life of the grasslands. And I suppose Michael won’t even give you leave to do that?”

I shook my head, my eyelids drooping in spite of all I could do.

“What?” He sounded startled. “Seriously? You’re a prisoner?”

“Can’t walk.”

“Then why not just bum a ride with someone and go?”

“Michael,” I mumbled. “Revenge.”

That—if I have remembered the conversation correctly—was where the misunderstanding arose. I meant that I was certain Michael had guessed my secret dream and would feel bound by his angel vows to hunt me down and stop me at all costs.

But Quetti said furiously that he was the best damned angel Heaven had, and Michael wouldn’t dare take any revenge on him, by Heaven, and the senile old bogmoth would likely be dead before he came back the next time anyway, and I could ship out quietly with him, Quetti, anytime I wanted.

At that point sheer terror should have snapped me wide awake—the realization that I could escape from Heaven at last and go attend to my sinister purposes—but all I can remember saying is “Thank you.”

—2—

THE MEDICS KEPT ME FLAT on my back until my ankle healed and I grew bored. Then I told them to go eat a snortoise, and I got up. But the long rest had given me time to think. As my dizziness passed, I began to see what had happened, but I was not seriously worried. Quetti would need time to prepare his departure, and during that time I would find some opportunity to tell him I had changed my mind. Ladders or not, Heaven was a much safer place than the grasslands, so there was no chance that a coward like me would ever find the courage to accept Quetti’s offer of escape.

Besides, I told myself sternly, to accept his help would be to abuse his friendship quite shamelessly. Like Michael, he was sworn to suppress violence. Like Michael, he would have to try to stop me if I moved to put my mad plans into effect.

I almost told him so. He had come to visit and was ready to leave when I started to fumble out the words: “Three-blue, you know how the herdfolk live. If I go back to the grasslands to become a herdmaster, then I shall have to kill someone.”

Quetti laughed. “Of course! But you’re a demon with a bow, Roo. I remember! You’ll own half the woollies on Vernier in no time.” Still chuckling, he stalked away. Obviously he had not believed me. He probably didn’t think I was man enough to kill in cold blood—and there I tended to agree with him, so why did it matter?

And yet…even though I never expected to find the courage to go, as soon as I was mobile, I found myself laying in a supply of arrows. Surreptitiously I made myself a pagne. I already possessed one of the best bows in Heaven. Everyone else was much too busy helping Quetti to notice what I was up to.

Only seven angels had rough-water sailing skill, and two refused the mission when they heard the odds. A couple of cherubim volunteered in their place. They were brothers, and fisherfolk, a scanty people who scrape out a narrow living on the rocky shores of the Ocean with the aid of trained birds. These two swore that they could handle sailboats in any weather. Uriel and I ran them through an abbreviated landside training, and Michael gave them their stripes. Seven it would be. They seemed very young to be so eager to die.

I was shoeing a horse when Quetti appeared in shiny new buckskins. He pushed back his hat brim and said, “Ready?”

My heart leapt into my throat, but my voice said “Sure!” before I could stop it.

Somewhere inside of me, another voice said, “Now you’re done it!”

I looked around for a seraph to finish the horseshoe I was working on. The smithy was deserted—which was odd. “Just a moment,” I said and quickly tidied up. Then I scribbled a note, threw the pony some hay, and lurched down the ramp to join Quetti.

For once, Heaven was enjoying fine weather. The sun stood clear of the horizon; snow was melting and dribbling from skeleton branches. Open ground was slushy and the sky was actually blue.

“I have to go by Nightmare and pick up a couple of things,” I said as I settled onto the sled.

And this time it was Quetti who said, “Sure.” He was driving the sled himself, and I should have been suspicious right there. Still as innocent as a raw egg, I collected my bow and arrows, my tiny bundle of possessions. We went racing off again over the snow, with the bellows of snortoises rising among the trees on all sides.

Leaving Heaven? I still did not believe I could be such an idiot. And I would vanish with no farewells and be long gone before Michael realized. Strange, I thought, how all my departures had been like that. My family on the grasslands, the seafolk, even my fellow slaves in the mine—each time I had just disappeared without a word of goodbye.

“It wasn’t easy!” Quetti yelled in my ear.

Enjoying the exhilaration of my last dogsled ride, I didn’t pay much attention at first. “What wasn’t?” I shouted over my shoulder.

“Gabriel said you’re worth any six saints he’s got.”

“He’s an idiot, and he always was,” I remarked absently.

“Sariel said you’re the only man in Heaven who can get a fair deal from the traders.”

Then I twisted around on the sled and stared up in horror at Quetti standing behind me, cracking his whip in high spirits. He was flushed by the wind and grinning. He had told Sariel?

“And Uriel—Uriel insists that Heaven is now training angels in half the time it used to take, and all because of you. A cripple drives the cherubim to gibbering frenzy, he says.”

“Quetti! You didn’t…”

“And Raphael says much the same about the seraphim.”

“Quetti! You didn’t—”

But he had. Openmouthed with horror, I was swept into a wide and sunny clearing. In the center, in splendid isolation, stood a bright red chariot that I had never seen before, while the entire population of Heaven seemed to be assembled around the perimeter. Quetti drove the dogs at a fiendish pace all around, whirling his whip overhead and howling, while a ghastly, unbearable cheer arose from the crowd. I wanted to melt away like the icicles.

The dogs came to a panting halt alongside a patch of bare mud, and there stood the five archangels, distinguishable by the colors of their furs.

Quetti stepped down and held out a hand, grinning like a crocodile. I let him haul me to my feet. I was speechless, tongue-tied. What sort of joke was he playing?

He waved a hand at the archangels. “They all agreed that nobody ever deserved his wheels more than you do.”

“Michael?” I whispered.

Quetti chuckled. “Together they can overrule him.”

So he meant four archangels, not the one who was already tottering in my direction, unsteady on the muddy footing. He was tiny, even in his bulky white furs, and I could not remember when I had last seen him out of doors. He was carrying a buckskin jacket. There were ribbons on its sleeve.

“But…you’ve ruined him!” I said, aghast. “Shamed him! They’ll turn on him now!”

Quetti discarded the grin and dropped his voice. “About time! He’s too old, Roo—past it! You’ve been propping him up too long.”

Me, propping…? Then Quetti tactfully strode off, heading for the other four. I watched the handshakes and smiles of satisfaction. Uriel, Sariel, Gabriel, Raphael—they had voted me an angel, and now they would depose Michael for violating the Compact. Here was one conspiracy I had not been able to warn him of in time.

Then Michael came to a halt in front of me, and the cheering and chattering died away as everyone waited for speeches. But he spoke too softly for any ears but mine, and the real message was the reproach and hurt in the watery blue-blue eyes.

“You never told me you wanted to be an angel! You could have asked, couldn’t you? At least you might have asked!”

“I don’t want that! Quetti misunderstood something I said.”

He blinked in surprise, and then his familiar smile returned. He chuckled with relief. “Then how do we get out of this mess, son?”

Why should he ask me? He was the wizard, wasn’t he? But I had not realized how he had aged. Maybe Quetti was right. Maybe I had been propping him up—advising, informing, troubleshooting. I was the loner, the all-rounder, the man nobody questioned.

“I just wanted to go,” I said unhappily. “To slip away unseen.”

He recoiled as if I had struck him. “Leave me?”

“Go home to the grasslands.”

He shook his head angrily “And who do I get to do my reading for me? Huh? Tell me that! Who can I trust when I want to talk out a problem?” He glared at me.

I had no answer for him. The audience had gone very quiet, seeing that something was wrong, but not knowing what.

Michael’s eyes narrowed. I could read him now. I saw the sly calculations underway. “You never did tell me why you wanted to go back there, son…?”

“It’s my homeland.”

He shook his head. “I think there’s more to it than that! I don’t remember you ever taking the oath, Knobil, do I?”

I should have known he’d have a few tricks left. “No. I never did.”

Scanty yellow teeth showed in a leer. “And they won’t let you be an angel unless you do! Probably they won’t even let you leave! What happens if I tell them that you haven’t taken the oath, huh?”

Knowledge is dangerous. Every man swore the oath against violence when he was admitted to Heaven, even a pimply new seraph. I had never been formally admitted, so I never had—and Michael alone had remembered. He had guessed that I still yearned for revenge, and he must have been close to guessing how I planned to achieve it. The angel oath would make it impossible.

He saw my hesitation, and triumph flickered in those bright blue eyes, the eyes of my earliest memories.

But there were no gods in Heaven. The oath was sworn “by my soul, by my honor, by my worth and self-respect.” I, of all men, should have no trouble with those words. “I’ll swear,” I said with a shrug. Was I bluffing? I’m not sure.

“You’ll leave me?” he said. Tears welled up. “I saved you from Uriel when you first arrived, remember? You’ll leave your own father? They’ll haul me down now, son. The wolves will tear me down. I need you!”

I glanced over at Quetti and the other four archangels—obviously concerned now, and impatient. The sunlight was fading; the onlookers becoming restless, shuffling feet. With Michael deposed, the other four would elect Uriel in his stead. He was the obvious choice.

“Go back and live among those stinking savages?” Michael said.

It is amazing how easily a man can convince himself of something he really wants to believe. Uriel would be a much better leader than this decrepit old ruin, I decided. And perhaps Quetti was right—I had been propping Michael up, meddling in Heaven’s affairs and thereby only increasing its usual inefficiency.

“Give me the damned jacket!” I said, and I grabbed it.

The awful cheering broke out again at once, louder than ever. If Michael tried to tell them that I’d never taken the oath, then no one noticed, for he was swept aside in the rush of people surging forward to congratulate me. That was a horrible ordeal, but better than watching the old man’s distress.

Add that to my list of crimes, then. I betrayed my mother and, when I got the chance, I betrayed my father also.

—3—

THE HARDEST PARTS OF ANY JOURNEY were always the beginning and the end, because Dusk is full of deadfall. Three-blue told me the best route out, but he insisted that I drive. When we stopped for our first camp he let me do all the work, and I began to suspect more knavery. Yet to lounge by a campfire with Quetti was a reminder of long ago, of our trek together and of a certain lost innocence. We slipped back into calling each other by our real names, and we reminisced until our eyelids drooped.

Not far into the second leg of our journey we came to a long slope with little snow. I spilled wind from the sails and we glided to a halt. “Time for the wheels,” I said cautiously.

Quetti was picking his teeth with a porcuroo needle. “Go ahead.”

“You are a traditional, first-class, iron-shod bastard!”

“It’s your chariot, Three-red.”

“Slug!”

He smirked.

“Creep!”

He yawned and reached for a book he had brought along, which was strictly against regulations.

“What exactly are you trying to prove?” I asked.

He closed the book and blinked his pale eyes at me.

“You should be an angel. You’re the best. Heaven needs you! But you have a strange inability to appreciate your own accompl—”

“You got that sludge from Michael!”

Quetti grinned. “Long, long ago! In fact, I think it was when he gave me my wheels. He thinks—”

“I know what he thinks! I’ve heard it a hundred times. Michael, you see, could not tolerate the thought that the only son he can ever know is a dumb herdman, a cripple, a coward, and a total failure! So he invented that absurd—”

“Failure?” Quetti lowered his downy eyebrows. “Coward? Spell that! Careless of me not to have noticed!”

“Coward!” I insisted.

“And a failure? You think—”

“YES!” I could shout even louder than he could. Afterward I was to wonder what lived in those woods and what it thought of this argument. At the time I was too furious to think of anything.

“You’re an angel. You’re on your sixth mission, and it will probably kill you. What have I ever done—”

“You saved my life!” Quetti bellowed. He was turning red.

“Then show a little gratitude and shut up!” I said.

And I scrambled down to change skis to wheels.

Quetti smirked again and went back to his book,

Very soon after that we discovered bog—the hard way. That meant winching, a detestable, backbreaking torment. Quetti read his book. I did what was necessary to haul us out of the bog. Muddy, sweaty and weary, I then settled into my seat and glared hard at my companion. He gazed back at me with the same bland wistful innocence that always made girls want to drag him off to bed.

“Explain,” I said through clenched teeth, “in small words, just what you are trying to prove.”

“That you are capable of being as good an angel as anyone.”

“I know that.”

He blinked in surprise. What Quetti would never understand was that it was not the amount of good in a man that matters—for we all have some of that—but the quantity of evil. I have always had more than my share of that.

“I don’t want to be an angel.” I ripped the three red stripes one by one from my sleeve and dropped them overboard. “I never swore the angel’s oath. I never will. I asked you for a ride back to the grasslands, and that’s all I want now.”

Quetti flushed angrily. “My people are going to die, Knobil!”

“Mine are dying already.”

He stared at me blankly, and then all the color ran out of his face. Feeling better, I reached for ropes and brake, and the chariot creaked off down the slope, sails filling. The noise made conversation impossible, and Quetti just sat and stared at me with a very puzzled, very worried expression.

When I needed to rest, though, he took the tiller without a word, and thereafter we had little time for talk. Sailing double shifts, rarely stopping even to visit with the locals, we made double time. Scarlet hill and scarlet sails, a bloody chariot bore death swiftly to the grasslands.

Angel chariots travel alone—to cover more country and to ease the burden on the locals’ hospitality. The shortest route from Heaven to Dawn lay along the borderlands south of the Tuesday Forest, and Quetti had sent some of his troop that way, but to detour northward over Monday’s moors was faster. Northward we went, through country new to me. Blustery cold winds chivied us along. Herds of long-legged wildlife fled away before us over cushioned tundra, darkly green and brightly salted with flowers.

We made good time, yet Vernier is very big. One thing I had not brought from Heaven was a razor. Quetti disapproved of an angel with whiskers, but if mine surprised the ranchers we met, then they were too polite to question. By the time we came to March and began to swing southward, I had a beard I could run my fingers through—perhaps not yet down to herdman standards, but a splendid silver and gold jungle nevertheless.

For the first time I had a chance to practice angel navigation. With chart, compass, theodolite, barometer, and a rough idea of a date, an angel can locate himself well enough to come within sight of any mountain he chooses. Nothing smaller than a mountain makes a reliable landmark. Violet had not needed navigation to find an ocean, so I had been ignorant of it, which was one reason Quetti and I had taken so long to reach Heaven. Now we knew, but our road was easy. We headed west until we were north of the sun, then west-southwest. Soon we were crackling and slapping our way through the immature growth of the early jungle.

Sleep by sleep, the sun rose higher and the heat grew more insufferable. Juvenile woodland faded imperceptibly into endless vistas of waving grasses, and our wheels were green with sap. Quetti became growly and ill-tempered, especially when I made up little songs about the smell of boiled wetlander. He was drowning in sweat, and I, in nostalgia—the scent of grass alone brought tears to my eyes. Cotton trees appeared around the ponds in the hollows, and the green-gold hills rolled away forever under an indigo sky. I was coming home. My heart sang like a choir of flute bats.

When we saw the Urals to the west, faint pale smudges on the horizon, Quetti sighed and said they were beautiful. True wetlanders are all nutty about ice. I merely snorted and turned our course more westward. These ranges had been another hazard for the herdfolk, with the flocks emerging larger and less numerous than they went in. Massacre in the passes was a regular affair in every cycle, but Heaven ignored that violence as an internal herdfolk affair.

These were not the grasslands I had seen with Violet, a hellscape of starving woollies and terrified people crammed like cactuses into a tiny corner of their normal range. Kettle had estimated that two-thirds of the herdfolk had perished in the disaster, and a single generation could hardly have restored their numbers. Quetti and I could go three or four sleeps without seeing a single herd. Woollies leave a grazed track streaked with dung that even a blind snortoise could follow, and yet we saw very few even of those. The landscape was much vaster than I had remembered, and much emptier, and my sense of foreboding grew more deadly.

I was aware of my weakness. If I brooded too long on danger, my resolve would fail. Suddenly I made my decision. I had halted on a hilltop to check our position. When I laid down my almanac, I knew that we were well into the best grazing. A fine little lake sparkled below us, large enough to attract a herdmaster, yet small enough for my sinister intent. The cotton-tree grove was confined to one end of it, leaving the rest without cover: an ideal ambush.

I began pulling off my boots.

Quetti was sitting on one of the bedrolls in the bow. He shoved his hat brim higher and looked at me quizzically.

“This is it,” I said. I opened a chest and took out my pagne. He watched for a moment and then said, “You’re still determined to go through with this madness? Ritual suicide?”

“I’m a herdman. This is my destiny.”

“Shouldn’t you at least wait until we find a suitable herd?”

I frowned, grunting with the effort as I removed my pants. “Ambush the sucker from the chariot, maybe? Seems to me you ought to have oath problems with that idea, angel!”

“Oh, Knobil!” His voice went so quiet I could barely hear it over the wind. “Do you really think I’d care about that?”

I dropped my bag of food over the side. I eyed the bedding longingly and decided it would be cheating to take it. Loners sleep on bare ground. I clawed myself up to the mast until I was upright.

Quetti also rose and he picked his way closer, saying “Knobil?” again, more threateningly.

“Yes, Quetti?”

“You’re trying to prove yourself again! I won’t argue that you’re not capable of being a herdmaster, because I’m sure that you are. But why go about it this way? No herdman is going to ride up to a water hole like this with his eyes closed, just so you can skewer him! You know how grass holds tracks! He’ll see them, and then what’ll you be?”

“A winner!” I said. “You don’t know how those big lunks think, lad. He’ll also see your wheel marks and assume that angels made the tracks. If he doesn’t, then I just have to show myself—”

“And he’ll be off like a scared roo!”

“The hell he will be! He won’t know I’m a cripple, will he? He’ll try to kill me, to stop me trailing him back to his herd. Don’t you see? And I have a secret weapon—this bow of mine has twice the range of any bow made in the grasslands. I doubt that any herdman could even draw it. They’re big, but no one’s ever taught them the knack. My arrows are better, too. So, my shoulders against his legs? That’s a fair match—”

“You’re crazy!”

“Then I’ll make a good herdman.”

“You’ll starve to death first!”

Quetti did have a point there. I glanced around at the bar ridges, barren of anything but grass, rippling in the scorching heat—not a sign of animal life, not a cloud. Yet to use the chariot to find a herd and then lay my ambush in its path would certainly be cheating. I could not kill a man without giving him some sort of chance. But how long would I have to wait?

“Someone will drop in,” I said. “There may be roos—”

“They’ll eat you before you eat them!”

I shrugged and held out a hand. “Bye, friend. Thanks for the ride… Keep an eye on that front axle.”

Quetti narrowed his eyes, ignoring my hand. “Let’s try it this way, then. Angels trade sometimes—I’ll buy a few woollies and a couple of girls for you.”

That arrangement would not suit my purpose at all, but how could I explain this to Quetti? He had the sense not to ask too many questions, but he must have known that I was up to worse things than killing one herdman. This farewell was much harder than I had hoped. “And what will those girls see, old buddy? A crippled dwarf, a yellow-haired freak! It’s not me I have to prove myself to—it’s them! The only way I can impress herdwomen is to ride up on their owner’s horse with…with his head under my arm.”

I still remember the spasm of nausea I felt as I said that.

Quetti noticed. “And of course you’d need herders, too, wouldn’t you?”

“Of course.”

He blinked and shook his head sadly at me. I could almost believe I saw tears form in those ice-blue eyes. Not like Quetti!

“I’ll scout around—”

I’d had enough—we’d both start weeping like toddlers in a moment. “Stay out of it!” I snapped. “Even if all you do is to divert a herd in this direction, you’ll still be breaking your angel oath. This is my life, wetlander. Let me live it out.”

I clambered out of the chariot, awkward as a landed fish. I slung my bow over one shoulder, my quiver over the other, and I hefted out a bag of jerky.

By then Quetti had moved to the driver’s seat and was leaning on the gunwale. “All right! I promise I won’t send any herds this way. But I’ll come back in—”

“I’ll put an arrow in you. I mean it!”

He muttered something I missed. Then he shrugged. In silence we shook hands and smiled at each other uncomfortably. We had run out of words, and some things do not fit into words very well anyway.

Braced against the thrust of the wind, I stood barefoot in the grass and watched his sails dwindle away along a ridge until they were wiped out by the rippling heat. Then I spun around and roiled off down to the trees.

By the time I reached them, Loneliness was chuckling in my ear.

—4—

I WAS DISAPPOINTED TO DISCOVER that there were no miniroos around, but of course barriers of ocean and mountain would have thinned out the wildlife as much as the people who shared the same habitat. Probably there would be few roo packs, either, although that was a knife with two edges. I made a fishing rod and caught nothing; few grassland lakes contain fish. Birds passed overhead once in a while, but there was nothing I could do about that: only angels have guns.

So my existence was limited by the contents of my grub sack. That made life simple. I stowed the bag carefully in a tree, in case something with three eyes came by while I slept. If something with two eyes came at those times, then I would never awaken, so there was no complication there, either.

Herdmasters scout water holes. If one arrived before I did, then he would almost certainly approach close enough to let his horse drink. He would likely ride all the way around, checking for skulking loners, like me. I could hide in the undergrowth, and my arrows would reach any part of the shore. I was ten times as good with a bow as any herdman. If my shot was true, I would fell him. If his horse did not bolt, I could ride back to his herd and claim it. If I could find it. Life was very, very simple now.

I explored the terrain until my feet were sore. I made myself a comfortable place to sit. I sat. I wished I did not already feel hungry. And I wished that Loneliness would stop laughing.

A shot awakened me. The all-red chariot stood on the skyline. I heaved myself to my feet and reached for my bow. Quetti was already starting down the slope, hatless so that the sun blazed on his golden hair. Obviously he had believed my threats, and the shot had been to avoid catching me unaware and provoking a reflex attack. Good angels are cautious types.

I had eaten once and slept twice. That was not long enough for him to be seriously worried about me. Nor had there been time for me to have changed my mind, so there was something new. I laid down the bow and waddled out of the trees to meet him.

He came to a halt before he was within knife range and warily raised a hand in the sign of peace.

“Approach, friend!” I said. God in Heaven! It was good to see a human face again.

He came closer and stopped again, his faint mocking smile playing over his lips. He needed a shave, and his eyes were a sleepless red. “Doing all right?”

“Fine.”

He chuckled, disbelieving. “Remember when we first met, Knobil? You told me what had happened to your knees—and there you were in a spinsters den.”

“So?”

“I said you didn’t have much luck.”

Again I said, “So?” What was amusing him? If he was playing a game, I could not see what it might be.

He paused to yawn—mostly for effect, I supposed. “Your luck’s just changed.” He gestured a thumb over his shoulder. “I stopped to check out the sweeties at the first camp I came to.”

“And?”

“The herdmaster’s name is Gandrak.” He grinned to let the suspense build…“He’s dying.”

“What? Why?”

“Fell off his horse. I think he’s twisted his gut, or something. Nothing I can help with, Knobil, and he’s very close to death. His women are in a panic.” The pale eyes were wide and guileless.

“This is on the level? You’re not setting this up?”

Quetti shook his head.

“A herdmaster should win his herd by killing a man—”

“No. They need you, herdman. There are no other herds around, not that I can find. Three women and their kids…they can’t ride horses and scout water holes—they’ll die if you won’t come. They need a man, Knobil!”

Holy Father, but it was tempting! I dropped my eyes and scratched my head, pretending to think the matter over.

Either Quetti was lying and had been biding his time behind some nearby ridge, or he had worked a miracle of tracking and navigation to find his way back to this one water hole.

Angels did not believe in miracles, but a herdman could…

“Six horses!” Quetti remarked innocently. “The usual garbage mostly, but there’s one half-decent mare.”

I know I reacted to that, for a slight grin teased at the corners of his eyes. I looked away quickly. I did not want to know how much he had guessed about my dream.

“And at least three of the herders were looking down at me. You’ll have to clean those out real soon.”

He knew! Was he going to block me? I looked up and met perhaps the widest grin I had ever seen on his face.

“It’s on the level, Knobil. You want to say a prayer of thanks now, or something?”

“Maybe I should,” I said. “You first, and the Father next.”

He shook his head gently. “Looks like the Father wants you to succeed! But if you’re plotting what I think you are, you’re going to need a lot more divine help—a lot more! Better thank Him first.”

I thumped Quetti’s shoulder and turned hastily away. “I’ll get my bow,” I said.

—5—

AGAIN I STOOD IN THE GRASS and watched the scarlet chariot sail away over the ridges, creaking and bouncing; but this time I caught a faint snatch of song from Quetti, and we waved our faint goodbyes. He had refused my offer of hospitality. Neither of us wanted to endure another farewell.

Again I lurched down a hillside in my awkward gait, feeling absurdly naked in my pagne and hat. This time I had no sack of meat, and faint thoughts of roast dasher wandered already around my salivary glands.

I headed for the brilliant tents and the anxious crowd awaiting. Smoke streamed from the fire, and two last small herders were racing in from the distant woollies, passing a fresh grave.

I thought of Anubyl and his arrival at my father’s camp, and I remembered my awful terror then. Pushing my hat back on my head, I donned a cheerful expression. Then I remembered what a monstrosity I must seem to them, and I hastily changed my expression to one of studied competence.

I reached the first tent, and there stood a wide-eyed child.

Holding a baby.

Great Heaven! I had forgotten how young…

“Don’t kneel,” I said hastily. “I can’t, so why should you? I am Knobil.”

“I am Jasinala, sir.”

“And who is this sweet little lass?”

Jasinala shivered with terror. “It’s a boy, sir.”

“He’s a fine young fellow,” I said hastily. “Er…you’ll do better next time.”

“Oh, I shall try, sir!” She seemed hardly able to believe my benevolence. Real herdmasters disapproved of women who bore sons. Pretty little thing, I thought. I smiled again to reassure her and rolled over to the next.

Tolomith, she said. She seemed very little older than Jasinala, but she had three small children clutching at her. I eyed the youngest and made a guess. “You are bearing?”

She nodded unhappily. “I think so, sir. But I can—”

“No! Keep it! I wish you safe labor, Tolomith.” I was no impatient, sex-mad Anubyl. Alongside all these children I felt like a grandfather.

And unless something terrible had happened to all my seafolk offspring, I certainly must be a grandfather by now, many times over!

But Tolomith was beautiful.

Then the third…

“I am Allinoth, sir.”

“I am Knobil.”

She was about my age, grizzled and plump. There were ten children clustered around her, but no babes, no toddlers. Her two oldest boys flanked her like trees. She must be a survivor of the great disaster, while Jasinala and Tolomith would be the next generation. The herdfolk were only just reestablishing their culture.

I saw bewilderment chase the fear from Allinoth’s face and realized that I was grinning widely at her. I was thinking how this camp would have seemed to me when I was traveling with Violet, and how disgusted I would have been then had he chosen Allinoth’s tent for us to share. Likely I would adjust to having child wives in time, but at the moment this mature mother of ten seemed a much more interesting companion for me than those two unfortunate girls. Yet why should I think of them as unfortunate? They probably thought themselves very lucky not to have been sold to the traders.

Allinoth’s oldest daughter was holding her chin up defiantly. She had her hands behind her, and I decided she was pulling her robe tight so I would notice the bulges.

“And you?”

“Haniana, sir.”

“You’re very beautiful.”

She blushed and smirked sideways at her mother. Well, I would certainly make her wait longer than she expected.

Then I could look at Allinoth’s sons. As Quetti had said, three were near to adolescence. The two largest were obviously twins, alike as two arrows and skinny. They flinched at my attention, but their cold and sullen gaze was telling me that a crippled midget did not meet their standards of manhood. They were both holding their arms very close to their sides.

“Your names?”

“Karrox, sir.”

“Kithinor, sir.”

“Can either of you use a bow?”

They shook their heads in terrified denial.

“Then, after I have enjoyed some of your mother’s cooking and perhaps had a little rest… I shall start your lessons. Look over there!” I pointed across the lake, to where one far tree stood apart from all the others, in solitary defiance. They turned to stare uncomprehendingly. I took my time, for it was a very difficult shot, even for me. Then my arrow streaked over the water…thunk!

“Like that!”

Their eyes flicked back to mine, brimming with instant respect. I wondered if the future of Vernier had been changed by that one deft bowshot.

“Karrox, organize the herders. Kithinor, dig out my arrow—carefully! Then you can both cut a good stout, straight branch apiece. About this long and this thick. I’ll show you how to shape it. Of course you won’t be as good as me for quite a long while. But we’ll work on it together. And riding lessons, too!”

One flew off like a startled bird, the other began berating the youngsters. I turned back to their mother, who was glowing at me as if she had just been promised Paradise.

“I have not tasted roast dasher since I was a little older than them,” I said. “Have you any dasher meat?”

She beamed, nodding. “It’s not quite fresh, sir, but certainly not tainted yet.”

I smiled an uneasy acceptance.

“And afterward, sir? We should make up a tent for Haniana?”

I was about to say that as senior, she was entitled to entertain me first. But Haniana smirked again and pulled her shift ever tighter, and I remembered Rilana, my sister, and her ambitions at that age. No real herdman would have hesitated for an instant—and I was already far from being the ideal herdman. I resigned myself to staying in character for the role I was playing.

“Of course,” I said.

Allinoth sighed with relief. “And…sir? You did mean what you told my boys? You will not send them out yet?”

“I meant it. I have big plans for them.”

Twins! Truly the Heavenly Father was smiling on my madcap venture. I inspected the horses, then went over to the hearth and played with a couple of toddlers until the food was ready. Afterward Haniana got what she wanted. She seemed to enjoy the process a lot. To be honest, so did I.

Oh, my beloved Haniana!