Moonrise

by Mitchell Smith

  From there, she fell and struck the ground.

  ... Patience tried to set tearing agony aside, and lay still for a moment. Then moved her head, moved her fingers and toes, carefully waggled her left hand to find if any nerves had been torn in the dislocation.

  All moved. And she could breathe, and see, though suffering several hurts — none severe as the left shoulder's.

  Patience took deep breaths, thought mindful warmth to keep herself from further shock... then carefully stood up out of a confusion of broken branches, her greatcoat, and sheathed scimitar akimbo. Her hat... her hat was nowhere to be seen beneath tall spruces. A Boston hat, broad-brimmed, blue-dyed, and made of beaver felt. An irreplaceable hat...

  She wandered, stumbling a little, looking for a strong low branch forking into a narrow V. Surprising how difficult that was to find, where there were nothing but trees.... She searched, hissing-in deep breaths against the pain, found two almost good enough — and then a third that was.

  The left hand would move; its arm — hanging so oddly, almost behind her back — would not move, so Patience had to reach across with her right to grip its wrist. She lifted the left arm with only a single short yelp of agony, hauled it high, and jammed and wedged the wrist into the branch's rough fork. She began to faint... but wouldn't let that happen.

  Another very deep breath.

  Then she bent her knees, and jumped up and away, lunging hard to the right. She screamed, felt a grating almost-click, and landed with a grunt, things tearing in her shoulder, the world swaying almost away from her.

  ... A pause while she stood sick, vomiting a little down her front. The pain was so great that it drove her out of herself, took all of Patience Nearly-Lodge Riley, and left only a stranger standing.

  ... It was this stranger who rearranged the awkward arm, no matter how the woman screamed and wept. The stranger set the left wrist back into the branch's fork, forced it firmly... then paused to consider the angle necessary, the turn and twist necessary, the force necessary to leave the left arm's shoulder-joint no place to go but together.

  That decided, the stranger allowed Patience back in — crouched stunned for a moment by her agony — then leaped again.

  Grinding, and a surprisingly loud clack as what fit, fit.

  Calling "Ohhh... ohhhh," Patience turned slow circles away from pain, then sat hunched on thick spruce needles, rocking back and forth to comfort herself as she would a child. A ferret seemed to cling to her left shoulder, chewing its way to the bone. Chewing at the bone, tearing tendons with its teeth. As if that. As if that...

  With hours passed, it became only a deep drumbeat of pain, rhythmed with her heartbeat. Patience had sliced a wide strip of her greatcoat's hem free with her scimitar's edge, knotted the cloth into a sling one-handed . .. and carefully tucked her left arm angled in to rest.

  Then, there was only the long night left to get through, until less pain might allow the concentration for Walking-in-air. If that proved not possible, then ground-walking the mountains' forest and stone would have to be the way north and east, and pain beside the point.

  * * *

  It was surprising, how familiarity dealt with fear. Just as he'd become weary of being frightened as the king had pursued him, so Baj became weary, after another day, of fearing falling.

  Soon enough, he clambered along the mountain ridges fairly fast, and kept up — or almost up — with the Persons. Not that all these heights were airy, uncertain footing along granite cliffs. These mountains were so soft — anciently worn, according to Richard — that often their ridge peaks were rounded, rich with evergreens and even drifts of berry bushes here and there, though only tiny buds showed on those, and spring leaves hardly bigger, but a dark and bitter green.

  Nancy no longer had to call, "Keep up!" and seemed to Baj to be relaxing from whatever annoyance she'd appeared to nurse the days past. She traveled on in her swift pacing way — more lightly than lumbering Richard — paying no attention that he could see to even dangerous passages, where only solitary sailing birds circled alongside possible slipping... to certain falling, and death.

  When — on scree slopes — Baj went to all fours for a WT yard or two, as Richard and Nancy went more often, he could still feel a tenderness in his bitten forearm, as if a tip of one of the girl's fangs had touched the bone.... An odd sensation — and, for what reason he couldn't have told, Baj had the most sudden yearning for Pedro Darry's company. How Pedro — still handsome, still a rake at forty years and more in his leather, lace, and satins — how he would have laughed, standing balanced on a precarious boulder. Thrown back his head and roared with laughter at Baj scuttling along behind small portions of bear's blood and fox's blood, with a measure of weasel circling somewhere behind.

  "What in the Lady's name have you been up to?" Then, more laughter, observing Who'd-been-Bajazet — grimy, sweat-stained, sparse stubble unshaved — climbing the cliff-faces like a nervous squirrel, his rapier's scabbard-tip tapping the stone behind him.

  How sweet that laughter would sound, if it brought Pedro to life again, to stand beside him. No better company in desperate circumstance than that merry swordsman.... What had Mark Cooper said at the lodge, those moments before the dagger went in? "Darry killed three of our people..."

  And Baj — climbing a merely steep stretch at last — could see it. A stone hallway, tapestries lifting a little along the walls as the river wind blew through. Then steel's bright sounds, bright glances of light along sword-blades flashing. Sad the Cooper man who first met that smiling face over sharp edges, bitter points. Sad the second man .. . and the third. They would have tried to turn him, get past him in the corridor to strike his back.

  The fourth man must have managed.

  Charm and laughter, all gone to spoiling dirt. And their complicity in that theft of life, only the least of Boston's robberies.

  Baj climbed faster, until he saw Nancy's worn leather pack bobbing just ahead. Loss, it seemed, made strength.

  He caught up and went beside her for a while — made the mistake of trying to help her over a great fracture in the stone, and received a satirical grin for it, and no thanks as she bounded up and over. It was in that sort of motion her mixed heritage was plain, that and her vulpine odor, as if an elegant vixen had been changed by some Warm-time wizard to a girl.

  She climbed without his help, but Baj still kept up with her, so they traveled side by side for a while. At the next fracture — quite severe, as if a side of the great crest had broken — she stepped behind him, put a narrow hand on the seat of his buckskins, and with startling strength shoved him up.

  When he got to his feet, she climbed past with that same grin. The long jaw, its sharp white teeth, seemed made for it, as foxes smiled at lost hounds casting.

  "Thank you," Baj said, and kept on. It was surprising how even the early-summer sun burned down at these heights, so he wished he had a hat. Hats not common on the River, where the wind made fun and blew them away .. .though ladies sometimes secured them under their chins with bands of far-southern silk. It came to Baj as he threaded through a stand of stunted spruce, that he might not — almost certainly would not — see the Kingdom River again. Not feel the rainy winds that drove down its current in the short-summers... not feel the savage sleet that blew as Lord Winter came down from the Wall.

  No care by Floating Jesus any longer, uncertain as that had proved to be. No songs of the fishermen sounding on lamp-lit evenings on the River, as they lured the salmon to their nets. No girls chased laughing through Island's glass-roofed gardens. No comfort of the grand company of civilization close around him. Now — and likely forever — wilderness, risk . .. and loneliness, save for odd companions.

  Richard led them down-slope at last, down from their third long wearying ridge. "Off the crest," he rumbled, "and safer." Downhill, Richard went as any human, any "Sunriser" man might have gone, standing upright, but with heavy swaying to his gait, the double-bitted ax held casual over his rig
ht shoulder, its edges gleaming above his bulky backpack's fur.

  They found Errol a considerable way down the mountain's side, squatting waiting by a small rock spring in evergreens. The boy had built a neat stack fire of twigs and weathered fallen wood, and seemed to be waiting for a starter spark.

  Baj and the Persons came down to it, unloaded packs, cloaks and rolled blankets. Baj set down bow and quiver, dug out his tinderbox — struck flint sparks into its fine floss, blew those bright, then took a burning tuft and tucked it into the tinder.

  ... Supper was smoked boar; the first cuts off the last ham — though dry, edges fire-charred — still very fine. Richard and Nancy sat at the fire, ripping, chewing from their chunks; Baj slicing from his, with Errol gnawing a distance away. It was surprising how quickly one great ham had gone already....

  Finished, Baj left the fire to pee — and downhill, off to the side of that cover, found a small pond a spring had made in a cup of stone and weedy turf. The setting sun shone off the still water in reflected red and gold, that then rippled slightly as the first of evening breezes came cool through the mountains.... From this pond, Baj could see over pine and hemlock to more mountains marching north and east, their immense sunset shadows leaning one against the other. The air came into his lungs clear as iced vodka... so they ached a little, but nicely.

  He bent over the water's edge, looked down, and saw amid sunset colors a very young man with a grimy older man's face, thin, lightly beard-stubbled, windburned and weary. He would have known himself — but only after an instant's puzzlement.

  Grimy... And as if with the sight, the stink of old sweat, worn stockings, and dirty buckskins came quite strongly.

  He stood back, unbuckled his sword-belt, and balanced heron-wise on one leg, then the other, to pull off his boots. Then he walked down into the water. Its chill, halfway up his buckskins, shocked him to stillness, so he stood only wriggling stockinged toes in frigid fine sand until he grew used enough to go on — and finally, with a gasp, submerged himself in a dark-green world so bitterly cold it seemed to bite him.

  Baj stood up in soaked cloth and buckskin — the water to his waist, the evening air now seeming wonderfully warm — and stomped in place, raising dark clouds of sand and green stuff around him. Then he stooped for handfuls of that fine sand and began to scrub his clothes with it as if it were ash-lye soap.

  When he'd done what he could for deerskin, far-south cotton, and wool, he stripped the soaked stuff off, threw it up onto a shelf of rock, and scrubbed himself — a painful process with sand and cold water. His scalp and long hair particularly painful to rub hard and rinse, rub hard and rinse...

  Finished, his skin sore and stinging, Baj rung out his hair as best he could, and marched splashing up out of the water — the air feeling so much warmer. He bent to slide his dagger from its sheath, then knelt naked at the pond's edge to stare down at his reflection, and shave.

  Another painful process. Anyone doubting that hot water, fine soaps and lotions were markers of civilization, could be quickly convinced by shaving with a slim-bladed weapon in ice water on a mountaintop.

  Considering, watching his face reflected in fading evening light as the dagger whispered coarsely down his cheek... considering, Baj decided to let his mustache — admittedly not yet much of a mustache — to let that grow. He would certainly look older with it.

  ... Finished, now blade-sore as well as sand-sore, he dragged his sodden clothes on (all but the stockings), laced the buckskin trousers, buttoned the shirt and leather jerkin, then picked up his sword-belt and boots and went barefoot back up the slope, a wet stocking over each shoulder, the dagger in his free hand.

  He shoved through the stand of evergreens — darkening with the first of night — and stepped, dripping, up to the fire.

  His odd companions seemed pleased by what they saw. The boy, Errol, smiled. Nancy covered her mouth.

  "Not cold?" Richard said. The night wind rising was a north wind. The fire bent and bannered to it.

  "A little."

  While the three of them watched, entertained, Baj bent to dry his dagger on a blanket corner — sheathed it, and set his weapons-belt aside. Then he stood close before the fire, stretched his arms wide, and turned slowly around and around while drenched buckskin and dripping cloth began to steam.

  The Persons seemed very pleased by that, and Errol stood up across the fire, stretched his arms out, and began to turn in imitation, as if joining a tribal dance.

  The fire burned close enough, and hot enough, that Baj began to feel less chill — and reminded himself not to dry the buckskins completely, so they'd stiffen and shrink. Same with the cotton shirt, as far as shrinking.... Laundry matters, and who would have dreamed they'd ever be a concern of his?

  He slowly turned and turned — Errol, expressionless, turning precisely with him across the fire — and felt the cloth drying on his back, felt a warning tightness in his buckskin trousers... so stepped a little away from the flames.

  As he did, Nancy tossed a pork rind aside, stood — hesitated to find the unison — then joined so the three of them spun together.

  Richard clapped heavy hands to keep the beat, heaved to standing in his odd way, and began massively revolving with them, half-humming, "Boom... boom... boom." So they all turned and turned, arms outstretched, sending long fire-shadows whirling across the mountain slope.

  ... So primitive a dance seemed to have been dance enough when morning came. Baj — smelling, he thought, at least a little better than before — noticed an easing of difference. Perhaps only an easing of his perception of difference, so Nancy seemed less changeable; Richard less remote. Errol remained as he had, a step aside.

  It seemed to Baj, as breakfast pork was finished, and private morning shits were taken in the evergreens, that he appeared to be living a sort of epic poem, though with a farcical element. Perhaps too much of a farcical element — thoughtless arrogance turned to terrified flight — for serious poetry.

  But good stories, perhaps to be told later. If there was a later.

  ... Down one wooded mountain... then up the next. By sun-overhead, Baj found he'd developed a permanent prejudice against up-and-down country. The River had flowed level, its banks had been level — even in flood — and it seemed that style of country was in his bones. Perhaps from his First-father's prairies as well. Level seemed... more sensible.

  They chewed sliced ham as they climbed, drank from canteen and water-skins along the ridge, then stoppered them descending. Baj found the beauty of these steep places, a beauty greener with short summer's every day, their only compensation — at least at the pace Richard and Nancy set. But he kept up, buckskins a little stiff, a little tight.

  "And we hurry," he said to the Made-girl — they were managing along a rough fracture-ledge with nothing beautiful about it, "— we hurry to get where?"

  "To meet the Guard, campaigning in Shrike country," slightly lisping the word's beginning. Thrike.

  "Ah... I see," Baj said, and was sorry he'd asked and been reminded. That tribe had been heard of even far west on the River — as ferocious, with a custom of impaling living men and women on tall, shaped spikes of ice (or sharpened wooden stakes in warmer weather) in imitation of their unpleasant totem bird. "Wonderful..."

  Nancy grinned, reached over and patted his arm. His bitten arm — which now only itched.

  There were odors — once they'd gotten off the cliff ledge — odors of wildflowers, of woods herbs just springing, sweeter than any Baj remembered. The River had smelled only of meltwater, and the traces men left in its currents. The coast woods also had had something of that dankness to them... which these mountain forests did not, their meadows certainly not, since they were carpeted with coming flowers. Pink lady's-shoe, Baj had seen before, and blossoming clover. But the others — yellows, tiny foliate azures — he wasn't sure of, perhaps had never noticed, if they grew in lowlands.

  The perfume of those, when he crossed a clearing behind Richa
rd's tireless padding, was delicate at first as if it were the sunlight's own odor, then grew stronger on a breeze.

  In one such meadow — deeply slanting off a mountain's crest — Baj stopped with the others as if the grand view commanded their attention. Through the clear air of late afternoon, without even a sailing hawk or raven to mark the sky's cloud-tumbled blue, rank on rank of mountains — their slopes dark with spruce and hemlock forest — marched away for endless Warm-time miles.

  "All those to be climbed, I suppose."

  Richard looked back, smiling. "Not all, Baj."

  "Only most," Nancy said, hitched her pack higher, and made what Baj had found to be her usual slight springing bound, that settled to swift walking. She led down off the meadow, where shaded worn stone hollows still held fragile traceries of snow, and Baj and Richard followed along.... Errol, traveling unusually close, skipped and hopped beside then behind them, sometimes stooping for pebbles to throw sidearm at nothing in particular.

  * * *

  Camped in early evening on a wide jutting shelf of stone almost halfway down a mountainside, Baj found his face and forehead hot with sun-burn — that light certainly striking harder at such heights.... He'd read of sun-burn, of course, knew that sailors on the Gulf Entire — and even more so farther south — might suffer it in the short summer.

  He'd had windburn and weather-burn, of course, ice-boating on the river. But this sun-redness was new.... Another new thing.

  Nearly the last of the wild boar's meat was supper, with spring onions and small dug roots, roasted at the fire's edge.... Then, sitting back from the green-wood flames, since they stung his sun-burned face, Baj watched as Nancy — humming a three-note tune — polished the blade of her scimitar with a scrap of leather.