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forest floor. By that time he had another arrow nocked. When the animal didn t
move, he slipped from the saddle and trotted toward it.
To stare dumbfounded. It looked like a sort of cross between man and dog, with
coarse green-gray fur. It would, he thought, weigh about four tradestone --
roughly twelve kilos. The arrow had entered its chest and thrust out its back.
It was, of course, a monkey, a macaque. They d lived in those hills from
ancient times, and increased with the return of extensive forest, despite a
difficult climate. With the worsening winters of recent decades, they d
decreased again, the survivors tending to have the thickest fur and the
greatest mass-to-surface ratio.
Kneeling, he examined it more closely. It had ears much like a man, and hands,
and a gnome-like face, but its feet had thumbs. He wasn t sure if he d killed
some kind of person or not. It wore no garment though, or belt or anything
else, so he decided it wasn t. He hobbled his horse, and within five or six
minutes had gutted, skinned, and spitted the creature and constructed and lit
a fire.
Even so, he didn t watch it roast. Without the fur, it looked more human than
ever, though the proportions were wrong -- the legs were as much like a dog s
as a man s, and the forearms were too long for the upper arms. The genitals,
on the other hand, were almost miniatures of his own.
At the first bite he nearly got sick, but controlled it. To find the meat
tough and a little dry, but sweet withal. He thought wryly that now he knew
what a cannibal knew -- how the flesh of a man
tasted.
As he ate, he thought about his situation. He had no idea where Nils might be,
or how to find him. And summer wouldn t last forever. Nor did he care to
winter alone in an unknown land, although if he had to . . . Perhaps he should
turn back westward to the land of the Buriat and winter there. He didn t doubt
that Achikh would take him in. As for Baver
-- Hans shook his head. He d seen the star man taken away, and there d been
nothing he could do for him.
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He didn t stop eating till one thighbone was bare. The sun was only midmorning
high, but his belly was stuffed, so he lay down in a gap, to nap where the sun
had warmed the ground.
His dream was confused and ugly, even frightening. He seemed to waken from his
nap to see a creature like the one he d eaten, but it was as big as Nils,
carried a sword, and wore armor. You have eaten my child, it said. Now you
will have to live with my wife and me, be our son and tend our cattle.
Where do you live? Hans asked.
Up there. The creature pointed into the treetops. Then, even bigger than it
had been, it grasped Hans by the scruff as if he were a cat, and began to
climb. He wanted to struggle, but it seemed hopeless. The creature s knife was
within his reach, and he considered drawing and striking with it. But clearly
it was a human of some hairy sort, and he had killed its child. It seemed to
him he owed it something. If it wanted him to herd its cattle, he d just have
to do it.
When they reached the treetops, a skyboat awaited them, with steps. A hairy
woman stood in the door. Is this the one that did it? she asked. Without
waiting for an answer, she took Hans from the hairy man, and gripping him with
both hands, began to roar, shaking him. She shook him hard and long, her roar
seeming too great to come from any human throat. Terror swelled. Then she
dropped him.
It seemed he fell and fell, so frightened that the scream stuck in his throat.
When he landed, his eyes flew open, dispelling the dream. There had been no
impact, and for a moment its absence changed terror to surprise, but he
continued to shake, as if those great hairy hands still held him like a dice
box. And the roaring continued, like the sound of an avalanche. The fist of
fear gripped him hard again, for it seemed the world itself must break apart
with such shaking. Yet when he looked upward, the treetops, which should have
been lashing back and forth, stood quiet against the midday sky. With that,
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