West of January (34 page)

The giant flashed teeth in a beam of pleasure. His great hands scooped me from the canoe as if I were a sachet of petals. He laid me over his shoulder, went up the bank in two huge bounds, and hurtled off through the woods at a long-legged sprint. With supermen like these to serve her, what possible need could the spinster have for a cripple like me?

Head down, I was jiggled and bounced. My knees enjoyed being bent forward no better than being bent backward, and I was only vaguely aware of a narrow muddy track winding through dense and fetid jungle, dark and damp. Then we emerged into sunlight. More mud squelched beneath those enormous feet, and the pace quickened. The giant came to a sudden stop and just stood. I remained dangling over his shoulder, rising and falling with every rasping breath.

“You going to put me down?” I inquired of his kidneys.

“No,” said a voice, rumbling so deep that I felt it as much as heard it.

I gripped his sweaty loins and levered myself up as well as I could, partly to ease the strain on my legs and belly, partly to look around. As far as I could determine through the slit in my hood, we were in the center of a large and very muddy compound. I saw leaf-covered huts shaped like pots, with glimpses of an encircling stockade beyond. The canoes were arriving, being carried in on the paddlers’ heads—on the double, of course. There would be no trace of our arrival left outside the settlement, therefore, except footprints in the mud, and the next shower would erase those. Shisisannis was bringing up the rear, running also, and clutching the bag that contained Silent Lover.

There were other men around. I could hear the rhythmic chant of a gang working in unison, an irregular thudding of axes, a distant bleating of livestock. I could even see a dozen or two of the inhabitants. Half of them were dark-skinned men very like my captors, striding around in spotted fur pagnes and decorated with either tattoos or strings of beads, some carrying spears. But the other half were draped from crown to toe in all-enveloping burnooses, as I was. Mostly those muffled figures were just standing, staring in my direction. Some, at least, were too tall to be women, and with a sudden flash of hope, I decided that they must all be wetlanders like me, being kept out of the sun.

Wetlanders came from the far west, so we must be a rare breed so close to Dusk. To collect a dozen or more of us would take considerable time and expense, so whatever the spinster did with wetlanders, she would not put them to a quick death. I felt a little better, then.

Apart from those mysterious shrouded figures, though, I could see no one but men, no women or children or old folk. The spinster maintained a private army of young males, a very impressive and virile collection, judging by those I had met so far. I wondered why she needed them, who her foes were. And again I wondered at the source of her power over them.

In the center of the compound, not far from me, stood a massive carving in the likeness of a rearing snake, its cobra hood spread wide and the rest of its body looped around the base, all painted green and yellow, and strangely repellent even to me, who believed in no god. Then I could not keep my head up any longer. I sagged down, feeling sick and giddy.

Our canoes had been stowed alongside a group of others. The men came running across toward my bearer, Shisisannis going to one side of him and the rest lining up on the other. Then they all just stood, in a silence broken only by heavy breathing, waiting for someone, or something, but with none of the comments or muttered complaints I would have expected. I had my wrong end pointing forward and could not see what they were watching. All I could see was feet, but I did notice that they were placed at the edge of a patch of white gravel, markedly different from the juicy mud that covered the rest of the compound, steaming gently in the sunlight.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Other than that he seems fit?”

“Quite healthy, Majesty.”

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

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

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

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

“Great Queen, the stockade progresses but slowly…”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I pitched forward in a dead faint.

─♦─

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

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

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

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

“Majesty… I was thoughtless.”

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

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

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

“Forgive you? Why?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“What happened to your knees?”

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

“How do you know about my knees?” I asked warily.

Just when I had decided that he would not reply, he uttered a curious little gasping sigh and said, “The lady told me she was buying a wetlander, but his knees were damaged.”

“How many wetlanders are there here?”

“Just me. And now you.”

My heart sank at the news. I had hoped for more company. But conversely this stranger must be very glad to have me join him.

“I am Quetti.” His voice was muffled by the hood, but there was also an odd quality to it that I could not place.

“Knobil.”

“That is not a wetlander name.”

“My father was a wetlander, I think. My mother was of the herdfolk.”

“That explains…” He paused again, this time for longer. Again he sighed. “That explains your size.”

“What about my size?”

“You are too big for a wetlander. We are slighter.”

I thought of Orange-brown-white, the ants’ captive and the only wetlander I had ever met. He had been a slim small man. “My mother was little, though.”

“Herdwomen bear large sons.” The curious quality in my companion’s voice was a jumpiness, a quaver. “You’re as big as Shisisannis!” He sounded annoyed at that.

I had believed myself a dwarf in my youth, but now I knew I was as tall as the men of most races. Swimming, and then slavery, had given me fair bulk, so what he said was perhaps true, but why did it matter?

“Who are those people, the ones dressed like us?”

“Snakemen. Swampmen. A couple of treefolk.”

“But why are they being kept covered?”

“It is better to be out of doors than shut up in the pens.”

“She just sent Ing-aa to the pens. What—”

“I saw. But he will be of little use at pasture. The lady has told me often: Small as I am, to her I am worth fifty like Ing-aa.”

“And me also?” I asked cautiously.

“More, I suppose,” he agreed grumpily, his tone showing a trace of the jealousy I had expected in Shisisannis and Ing-aa. “There is more of you.”

My questions were not bringing me much wisdom. How much time did I have to cross-examine this cryptic Quetti? Could I trust whatever he might tell me? I glanced out at the spinster. She was near the end of the row, embracing one of the snakemen. “How does she do that?” I asked. “Can she really reward so many men with her favors?”

Quetti chuckled dryly under his hood. “She rewards them mostly with promises. And pretty ribbons. Shisisannis, sometimes…” Again a long pause, another sigh. “The rest of us rarely get more than words. Even me! Um-oao and Ah-uhu do better, I think.”