Moonrise

by Mitchell Smith

  The men were close behind her; Patience could hear their swift steps through the trash.

  Soon to be caught. Then a fight — and perhaps another Robin killed before they hacked her down.

  She slowed .. . slowed to turn to meet them — and saw amid the splintered tumble of ruined trees below, a possible spoiled hollow. She thought it was a shadow, then thought not — and leaped out into the air to fall thudding into timber... rolled off some rough round and fell again through jumbled stacks of trunks and branches, her shoulder a lance of agony flashing in her mind white as washed wool.

  When she lay still, bark-burned and bleeding, her scabbarded sword's belt twisted and turned beneath her, Patience took time for only one difficult breath . .. then crawled deeper into the wreckage, crawled beaten and bruised as if her back were broken, to where she'd seen the hollow. She sought through descending night... and heard the Robins' chirps and whistles above, as they trotted searching along the embankment's edge.

  She crawled and clambered — then saw the dark hollow, its massive log-end angled between two smaller broken trees. Gritting her teeth against groans, Patience struggled over the lowest log — and found the hollow just above her. She reached up, right-handed, into its dark crumbling space .. . hauled herself half into it... and had to shake her left arm out of its sling to aid.

  Then, with pain past pain filling her mind like an icy ocean, Patience used both arms — left shoulder twisting in and out of joint with soft crunching, brilliant blazes of agony — used both arms to drag herself up and into a rough, narrow space, rotted deep. Cramped so each breath was half-measure, she wriggled deeper into the great log, scabbarded sword scraping, snagging to haul at its belt, then jolting free. She inched farther into darkness, into shredding damp and spoil. Blood ran in her mouth from lips bitten for silence... and she finally lay satisfied to die there, if promised never to be found.

  ... Through Warm-time hours poorly counted, Patience lay rough-shrouded in the dark, drifting and dreaming around a core of molten metal searing in her shoulder. She dreamed of her first sight of Max — then tiny, fat, red and slippery with juice and blood.... And she'd known in that instant. Though so small, he'd still lain heavy as a man on her breast, crushing the air from her lungs. His eyes had been closed, but he'd watched her through the lids.

  "He sees me," she'd said.

  "But makes no sound." Woodrow Cabot-Lodge, slender and handsome, had leaned over as if he loved her, though no member of Cambridge Council was permitted that, even one appointed to sire a result upon her.... Still, Patience had been certain he liked her — as who would not, and she so pretty? So clever.

  "He will never speak, Woody," Patience had said, and knew it, though she didn't know why.

  "... Never speak," Patience said, waking in her hollowed log. She took the fullest breath she could, and decided to live at least another day.

  Morning would be surely... surely near. Time to begin to wriggle carefully back and back through rotting punk, paying the price in pain... then finally out into dawn's light and air. Another day or two would pass before the shoulder and starvation left her only lying down to do, to wait for death.

  The Robin boys, having hunted through the dark and missed her, might be gone from the hemlocks — but not likely. They'd almost certainly be waiting along the forest's lower edge for vengeance, having lost poor Lou.

  * * *

  Pete Aiken woke first — had had no fire — rolled from a bed of hemlock boughs in his place at the bottom of the stand of trees, skin goose-pimpled in dawn's chill.

  He trilled a territory warble. Heard no reply to east or west, and called again.... Then, Gerald answered from the east. But only silence from Gerald's brother — an idiot, and certainly sleeping through sunrise.

  Pete stretched till his joints cracked, eased his muscles from a cold night's sleep, then picked up javelin and hatchet, and paced deeper into the hemlocks to shit.... The Boston-woman would have to come their way — or climb Wild-plum Mountain to its crest and over, deeper into Robin country.

  She would have to come their way soon, come down through the bottom of the stand — or stay among the trees to lick mist from hemlock fronds for water, chew hemlock bark for food. She wouldn't even have sad Lou to eat. Gerald had brought out body and head last evening, both now safe under stacked stone.

  Pete found a place, set his legs apart, tucked his kilt well up, and squatted. Paused, peed a little, then the first of healthy poop — a must, according to Charlotte-doctor. "Bad poop, bad health." She claimed that was Copybook, though what copybook she wouldn't say.

  Pete took a breath, strained for the rest — and felt the lightest thread of coolness lie across the back of his neck. He thought it some dawn spider-web strand... then the coolness cut him, just a little.

  Squatting, Pete turned his head, and saw a curving length of steel shining along his nape.... Above it, a small, trembling, white-haired woman stood in a dirty blue coat.

  He tensed to move — dive left to his hatchet, resting so casual on the forest floor. But the sword above him, as if eager on its own, slid deeper across the back of his neck, so he felt blood begin to run.

  "Do I hold your life at my sword's edge, or do I not?" Her voice shook as she shook, and Pete didn't answer

  Drawn very slightly across... the steel's edge sliced deeper.

  "Is your life in my gift, or is it not?... I won't ask again."

  Pete, who hadn't intended to answer an old woman who'd taken unfair advantage, surprised himself by saying, "Yes."

  "Yes...?"

  "My life... a gift." And having said so, regretted saying it — and wouldn't have, except for being caught like some child, shitting. Squatting for this Boston thing to creep up, lay her sword across his neck.... He wouldn't have said it, but for that.

  Cold steel lifted from him, left his nape warm with trickling blood.

  "Wipe your bottom," the woman said — and Pete Aiken-Robin, tears of rage gathered in his eyes, took a handful of foliage to use, then threw that aside, stood up, stepped away and straightened his kilt's leather.

  The woman, her left arm slung across her breast, was pale as cracked quartz, and swayed as she stood. She wiped her sword's curved edge on her coat, and managed at a second try to sheath it. "I've taken the life of one Robin," she said, "and given yours in return, so no debt remains. By that exchange... I claim a trader's hospitality."

  Pete heard Gerald coming through the trees.

  "Now," the woman said, her eyes black as blindness, "— now we will see if honor roosts with the Robins." And she staggered and fell into the hemlocks as if she were struck and dying.

  CHAPTER 10

  After days of hard travel, and chess-and-fencing evenings, their camp was made back of a ridge overlooking a stretch of low country at last — New River's Valley, Richard had called it. Baj was happy enough to lie resting after eating most of a partridge, the birds taken by Errol's thrown sticks one by one, as they strutted a long hollow, furiously drumming for mates.

  The successful hunter, pinched face so dirty no freckles showed, lay with his head on Baj's lap, making faint clicking noises. The boy seemed to have grown comfortable with him.

  Baj was satisfied with ease, but Nancy apparently was not, came around the fire to poke and prod him with a makeshift wooden scimitar — the third of those, the first two having been beaten to flinders in attempts at murder.

  "Nancy, another evening's rest might be a good idea."

  "You said, 'When I can do to you.'"

  "You can 'do to me' tomorrow."

  No answer, then, but poke poke, prod prod.

  "For the love of Mountain Jesus..." Baj shifted Errol, and got to his feet to get his spruce-stick rapier — worn and splintered, but usable a last time.

  Richard, propped on one massive odd elbow, lay by the fire, smiling. "Lessons," he said, and Errol went to sit cross-legged near him, attentive.

  Before this audience, Baj eased muscles stiffene
d by the day's mountainsides — and was attacked in mid-stretch. He brought his stick-sword up so nearly in time it seemed unfair that her whistling cut went over it and across his jaw hard as a whip's lash. Baj spun away in considerable numbing pain, and supposing he should be thankful she hadn't taken an eye out, set himself to fighting. The girl was... truly fast. There was no time — had been no time the last two lessons to wait to parry on the forte. The blows of her spruce scimitar — shorter, snappier strokes in direct attack, now, and delivered in series — needed to be caught early, near his stick's limber end, and allowed then in yielding parry to slide down to a firmer ward where the spruce was thicker.... It required elegant fencing.

  Required easy movement, too. Stance'y salle fencing with Person-Nancy was a losing notion; she circled and struck, circled and struck — and was pleased to close in corp a corp, where she seemed to want to bite as she slashed, then stepped away, leaving behind her faint vulpine scent.

  "Timing," Baj said, as they fought. "Timing, speed," he beat in second, lunged to her outside low line and hit her, "— and distance."

  "Shit." She tried to bind his spruce-blade, tried to kick him in the crotch. Baj found it... interesting. He was learning about Nancy — learning perhaps about other Persons, too, as he and the girl grunted and fought around the fire. Stop-thrusts no longer worked against her; she would attack swinging aside in quartata, lunging off the front foot. An absolutely awkward move that cost him braises until he learned to simply mirror her motion, so her cut passed him.

  They were... it was very much like dancing together, but with steps swift, harsh, and unexpected. As the Master would have recommended, he watched those quick little moccasined feet shift and shift, watched for balance and rhythm change — and watched her yellow eyes for surprises, often betrayed by anticipatory glee.

  They circled and battled in clattering noise and a haze of human sweat — and sweat slightly different — despite the chill of evening. Richard and Errol, an audience of two, sat entertained by thrusts, curses, slashes, bruises and occasional little stippled lines of blood.

  Nancy caught Baj very nicely in the shoulder with her point — the scimitar's point apparently beginning to occur to her after previous evenings' furious cuts and slashes. He took the hit, said, "I'm hurt," spun into her, "— and you're dead."

  "How?"

  He prodded her lean belly with a short stick he'd stuck in his belt, awaiting the occasion. "Left-hand dagger. Always remember the left hand. Always remember knives. Don't be so fucking sword-proud." The Master would have been pleased to have his quote repeated — advice original with the dead and honored Butter-boy.

  "Not fair!" Very angry, her crest of widow-peaked red hair risen like a cock's comb.

  "All is fair," Baj said, "— in love, and war." It was the perfect Warm-time phrase, and Nancy Some-part-fox had no answer for it.

  "How many years," Richard said, "— how many years to learn such nice use of points? My soldiers were rarely so elegant in sticking... chopping."

  "Eleven . .. twelve years."

  "I will not need twelve years." Nancy tossed her frayed stick-sword aside and sat by the fire on a folded blanket.

  "No." Baj held his hands to the flames to warm them as the night's chill settled down. Bruised fingers, bruised hands from fencing with no cross-hilts or guards. No gloves, either. "No, you're very quick. But be warned; I haven't taught you nearly all I was taught, and there are men — women, too — who would find me easy to kill with a blade." .

  "Perhaps dear Patience Riley," Richard said, "— who fought the fat man in the air."

  Baj recalled the woman's amusement when he'd touched his dagger's hilt by starlight. "I suppose so... yes. She perhaps could kill me."

  "Soon," Nancy lay down to sleep, "— soon I will be able to kill you."

  "Not until you remember better that a scimitar has a point to go with its edge." Baj spread his blanket, that smelled so warmly of goat and wood smoke. "Not until you remember that it's the first two or three WT inches of any blade that does most of the work. And not until you remember the left hand's dagger."

  ... Baj, lying down, tugging a fold of blanket over him, couldn't imagine what copybook "imp of perversity," what odd urge to anger her possessed him, that he added, "And likely not even then, since you're a girl."

  Silence.

  He looked across the failing fire, saw Richard's heavy-muzzled face a mask of comic apprehension.

  Still... silence. But through eddying smoke, Baj saw burning yellow eyes.

  * * *

  In the morning, as he stood behind a fractured boulder, pissing, Baj heard the big Made-man's soft heavy step.

  "Brave boy," Richard said, came to stand beside, unlaced to produce a dark peculiar cock, and relieved himself. "Brave boy," he said. "She must like you, despite your smell."

  "And you know that, how?" Baj shook himself and fastened up.

  "I know it, because you woke this morning with no tooth-marks on your throat."

  They went back to the camp smiling, though were not met with smiles. "Robin country," Nancy said, "before and behind. No country for traveling fools."

  At mid-morning, halfway down a wooded draw, Richard stopped, shrugged his pack off, and squatted in his odd way, waiting for them to catch up. When Errol trotted on to pass him, the big Person reached out, caught his dirty wool shirt, and held him still.

  "Now, listen to me." Richard's great double-bitted ax lay across his knees, and he absently tested its keeness with a thumb. "I was a Captain of Boston's Guard, and know the country we're coming to — still Robin country, high and low, where the Wall's spring melt has run the New River wider.... Then mountains east again, and soon along Map The-Valley-Shenandoah."

  "I know those places," Nancy said, "from coming south."

  "— This east corner of Map-Kentucky is Robin country," Richard said, "and will be their country in lowland and the first few mountains after, in Map West-Virginia, as on the oldest copied Exxons.... We've kept our fires reverse of the ridges the last two nights — but from now on, no fires. If their light didn't reveal us, their smoke-smell might."

  "Cooking...?" Baj eased his pack off, and sat cross-legged in an alder's delicate summer shade.

  "You must learn raw meat, Baj."

  "Very well."

  Nancy, leaning on a sapling's slender trunk, made a sound in her throat.

  "— I'll do what needs to be done." Another throat sound.

  "I don't care what meat I eat," Baj said. "But I do care where we go, and why, and the achievement-how. You've said Shrikes, the Person Guard, and the purpose a secret.... The Boston-woman told me that was for her to know, for me to find out. Well, I want to find it out now. I'm tired of climbing mountains on only the promise of harm to Boston."

  Richard stared at him. "What we intend is not to be talked of, except to Persons — and Sunriser-humans too — who will accomplish it. You know accomplish?"

  "I know it. I've read more and better than you, Richard. Words are close to me."

  "No life," Nancy said, "— not even yours, Good Reader, is worth this being talked of so Boston knows it."

  "I'm here," Baj said, "— whether you like it or not. I have my brother's blood, our friends' blood to answer to, and not to either of you."

  Richard hummed a considering hum, deeper than most. "Baj, if you should in any way endanger this... even inadvertently, say by merest mention to any we might chance to meet going north — I'll kill you."

  "Fair enough."

  "... Very well. To come at it... Robins are the most many, and the most uncertain of the tribes. They claim to be the old Cherokee, though very few Red-bloods still rule them. They are people who can't be trusted, since they hate hard among themselves, though their daughters — chief's daughters, usually, and the daughters of other important men — have also been taken by the Guard campaigning south from time to time, as even down in Map-Tennessee, the Thrushes and Sparrows have lost girls to Boston."
<
br />   "Took my mother," Nancy said.

  Listening, Errol made a soft squealing sound, a noise with nothing human in it.

  "Took mine, also," Richard said. "Made me, and kept her."

  "The tribes' women taken, used, then some held in Boston?"

  "Foolish boy," Nancy said. "All held, that live."

  "How else?" Richard tapped the steel of his ax's head with a curved horny nail. "How else hold the tribes at bay, and keep Boston's Guard obedient — but by holding dear mothers, dear sisters, dear daughters hostage?"

  "But you deserted."

  Richard, squatting hunched and massive, stared at Baj with small brown eyes half-buried in a shelf of brow — and seemed no longer friendly Richard.... A little time passed that seemed a long time, so Baj regretted forgetting advice from the Master. "If trouble might come, don't let it catch you sleeping or sitting on your ass."

  But Richard seemed to ease, and said, "My mother, Shrike Tall-Edna, cut her throat in the Pens with a broken cup to free me."

  "... Then," Baj said, and had to clear his throat, "— then Lady Weather bless that brave woman."

  Richard nodded and seemed satisfied.

  "— So," Baj said, "the Person Guard serves Boston with no choice but serving, since the city holds a number of their mothers hostage."

  "All who live once breeding is done." Nancy showed her teeth. "Not so very many. But Boston holds those, and keeps their names and numbers secret so no Guardsman or tribal chief knows if his loved one lives or not. Boston holds them — and frees them never."

  "My mother," Richard said, "— sent me word of her promised self-killing by a Faculty Instructor who owed a favor. Else I would never have known it."

  "Still, the tribes..."

  "Our mothers," Nancy said, "— are their daughters, so both Persons and tribesmen are knotted to Boston town by loved one's lives."