West of January (49 page)

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—

N
OTHING 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.