Free West of January by Dave Duncan Page A

the uneven terrain. Two of the wheels were alongside the main body, just in front of the mast. The other two stuck out behind on a sort of flat tail.
    Inasmuch as the chariot was like anything else I had ever known, it resembled the baskets in which my mother and aunts had gathered roots—wide and flat-bottomed, with sides sloping outward. But those baskets had been rectangular, and while the chariot was squared off at the back, in front it was pointed with a long pole protruding there, the bowsprit. The sharp front is of no great advantage on land, but it does help when the chariot floats on water. These were all things I was to learn much later, like mast as the name of the vertical pole in the middle.
    The chariot swung suddenly up the slope on which I stood, slowed, and then turned aside before it reached me, stopping with a final squeal and sway. Silence returned. The angel was sitting by the mast, peering at me from under his wide-brimmed hat.
    He bent from sight and then straightened up. “Catch!” he shouted. His throw was a poor effort, and the missile landed several steps short of me, but it was a leather water bottle. I almost forgot my pain as I lurched over to grab it. Nothing in the entire world could have been more welcome. Few things in my life have matched the joy of that drink. I spilled water over my chest in my eagerness. I almost choked. In that climate there was no such thing as cool water, of course, but I could feel the wet relief running down inside me, all the way to my stomach.
    By the time I lowered the half-empty bottle, suddenly nauseated, the chariot’s sails had disappeared and the angel was climbing down clumsily at the back. Then he waddled over to me with a flat-footed rolling gait, wiping his red face with a grubby cloth. In his other hand he held a club, a wooden blade on a long, thin metal handle.
    “Thank you, sir,” I croaked.
    He scowled, looking me up and down. “You did that deliberately, didn’t you?”
    “Did what, sir?”
    “I was watching. I saw it notice you and then lose you. I thought you were safe. Then you started to run.”
    “I thought it would find my family. I hoped to turn it.”
    “You’re a brainless little bastard!”
    “Yes sir.”
    He grunted and turned to look back the way he had come. “Your cute little pet will be along shortly. Keep still again, and let’s hope it goes right by us.”
    And if it didn’t? Would he hit it with his club? He seemed strangely unworried.
    “You can’t outrun it, sir? In your chariot?”
    “Shut up!”
    As he spoke, the tyrant came into view around a distant bend in the valley. I froze. The ground began to throb below the great feet as the monster approached, growing larger with a terrifying swiftness. It came straight for us, as if it would pass between us and the chariot. From the corner of my eye I saw the fearsome silver head against the sky when it passed behind the mast. This was its closest approach yet. A rank, animal stench stung my nostrils. It moved beyond my sight, and I dared not turn my head to follow.
    I remember watching the set of three colored ribbons streaming in the wind at the top of the mast and wondering why that sort of movement did not attract the monster. Either it could ignore wind motion somehow, or else it saw moving objects well enough to know that ribbons were of no interest to it. Once again I was not even daring to blink. The angel was motionless also, near me but out of my view. I stared at mast and distant sky, and I trembled.
    The death tread stopped.
    Silence. Only the wind…
    Roar! The noise was so close that I jumped.
    “Oh, for Heaven’s sake!” my companion snarled. That broke the spell. The tyrant and I moved at the same time. I turned, and it was so close that I had to bend my head and look upward. It was spinning around, its beady eyes glaring down at us in triumph, the great jaws opening. I clearly remember the wet ropes of spittle hanging from them.
    The angel raised