Free West of January by Dave Duncan Page B

his club to his shoulder, but backward—the wooden part against his shoulder, the long metal handle pointing up at the monster’s head. Thunder! Startled, I lost my balance on my bad knee and fell in a sprawl of agony. More thunder.
    A moment after I hit the ground, so did the tyrant, and the whole world seemed to bounce.
    The angel said, “Fornicating vermin!”
    In great agonizing spasms, I threw up all the water I had just drunk.
    —4—
    “W HAT IN THE NAME OF H EAVEN am I going to do with you?” the angel demanded.
    He was holding a bloody ax over one shoulder. Under his other arm he clutched the tyrant’s two foreclaws—curved, pointed murder, like shearing sickles…trophies. The rest of the vast carcass lay as the death throes had left it, so close that I could watch the insects settling on its eyes.
    I was sitting on the earth, still close to my damp patch of vomit, barely mobile at all. The angel had laid a wet compress on each of my knees, had washed the worst of my scrapes, and given me a rag to make bandages. He had produced smoked woollie meat for me to eat, and I had drained the water bottle.
    I was feeling shaky and light-headed, more like a small herder, or even a toddler, than a bold and predatory loner. The world was turning out to be a much tougher place than I had expected.
    To the angel I was obviously an unwelcome complication. All the time while ministering to me, he had muttered angrily under his breath. It was very foul breath—he stank. Everyone did, of course, but his sweat smelled different. Now his face bore a ferocious scowl.
    “You have been very kind, sir.”
    He spat. “You insult a herdmaster in front of his women. You provoke tyrants. Now you have mashed your knee. Your life expectancy is not very high, stupid.”
    “Sir?”
    “Oh, shut up!” He stumped back over to the chariot and tossed the foreclaws up into it. He wiped the ax on the grass and threw it in also. Then he turned around and glared at me, spreading his feet, folding fringed sleeves over the round white-haired belly that bulged through the front of his unbuttoned jerkin.
    “I was going to make sure you found a water hole. That was all. Not for your sake, you understand!”
    “No sir?”
    “Shut up!”
    “Yes sir.”
    “For your father’s sake… Then I saw the tyrant, and I decided to let it have you. It would have been a mercy. But you had the sense to keep still. And then you deliberately provoked it!” He glared in angry silence for a while. “Do you know how slim your chances are?”
    I shook my head, not understanding any of that.
    “About one loner in thirty lives long enough to make his kill. You have no herd, no bow…” He bared his yellow teeth. “And it’s hopeless anyway—the sun is coming.”
    “Sir?” I glanced uneasily up at the sun.
    “You’re almost into High Summer! Dry water holes…no grass…cactus…tyrants… An entire herd wouldn’t save you.” He shook his head in exasperation. “Stupid little herdboy doesn’t understand.”
    “Sir? What did you do to kill the tyrant?”
    Again that yellow-toothed snarl. He pointed. “That’s a gun. Only angels have them. That’s why people are nice to us.”
    I had thought it was because angels helped people.
    He was a strange man. I had very little experience with men, yet I could sense a deep rage in him. He was venting it on me, but I had done nothing to anger him.
    “I suppose I could take you with me until we find a decent slough. Except that there aren’t any left around here.”
    “No sir?”
    “No sir! And I’m heading west. Every pee hole from here to the ocean has a herd around it—packed like flies on a dead roo. You’ll die for certain, anyway. Why should I bother with you?”
    He was talking more to himself than me, but I said, “No reason.”
    The fat face scowled even more furiously, but for the first time he spoke to me as if what I thought might matter. “What do you want?”
    “To kill Anubyl.”
    He