After only a few weeks in that close-box, she'd be pleased to have Boston people come for her, would weep with relief to be traveling north to the Common for burning in Justice's iron stove.
Ruined. All ruined by a moment of suckle-dreaming in the air... and no one to forgive her for it.
* * *
"That's one of seventeen villages — at least there were seventeen, when I served with the Guard." Richard, seeming comfortable with the vacancy beneath them, sat to Baj's left, Nancy's right — his large moccasin-boots kicking idly over the edge of a granite slip overhanging a small stream's valley perhaps a thousand Warm-time feet below. Errol would not come near the drop.
The mountains' haze was laced over the village with drifting smoke from a dozen fires along its creek. All revealed beneath them in miniature — as if a river lord had ordered a savages' settlement made to table-top scale for his small son's festival day.
"Robins," Nancy said, "claim to be near civilized."
"Take heads." Richard brushed a fly away.
"Yes. They take heads."
"To steal wisdom?" Baj imagined he was a Boston Talent, and might push off the cliff's edge and float out into the air. A wonderful thing....
"Yes." Nancy stared down at tiny huts, where people small as summer ants wended busily. "Such fools they are. Were Cherokees, once, and smarter."
"We go past?"
"Baj," Richard reached up with an easy motion, captured the returned fly and crushed it, "— we go well past. It's Shrikes we go to meet, not these."
"Why not these? They have no cause to love the Township. Aren't their girls taken?"
"Taken," Nancy said, "— and they have cause. But village Robins hate other village Robins even more, though they prey on Thrushes, and take Finches' heads if they raid farther east. They'll take their own people's heads, sometimes, trying to become chiefs.... Boston burrows among them like maggots in rot."
"Then why not bring the Sparrows north, and Thrushes?"
Richard shifted at the brink to be more comfortable. "Bringing those savages anywhere, is like carrying hot water in cupped hands. It burns and runs out through your fingers."
"More honor to the Boston-woman then," Baj said, "— for persuading them to gather and fight Cooper-the-King.... Though I suppose my days of scurrying gave her time enough."
"No small potatoes, still," Richard said, using an ancient phrase, "— to have gotten it done."
"I think Unkind-Harry liked her." Nancy leaned over to spit into space. "Thought he might fuck her... learn to Walk-in-air. Which shows what a fool he is; which shows what fools the Sparrows are, that he's their wisest and chief."
"Brave, though," Baj said, and heard, as if he were there again, the surf-sound of Sparrows shouting as they came down against Kingdom cavalry.
"Between courage and foolishness," Richard said, and held up an odd thumb and blunt forefinger, almost touching, "— is the narrowest measure."
"I have stood with foolishness, mainly," Baj said, smiling.
"Not true, but you are a fool to say so." Nancy scrambled up from the granite edge — then stood still, staring.
Baj turned to look. Errol was standing a rock-throw back, by wind-beaten scrub pines. The boy was pointing.... And Baj saw, down where the slope fell away to the north, four deer grazing amid larger pines and dwarf rhododendra. Two bowshots distant.
He got up, and crouching, went to his pack, unbuckled his sword-belt and let it lie... then took up his bow and knelt to string it. The breeze was in his face . .. the deer up-wind. Who would have expected the animals to feed this high? A young buck — looked at a distance to be a six-pointer — and likely three does.
Baj selected two arrows — wouldn't have time for more — and still crouching low, moved slowly down the slope. Difficult traveling over stone... through scrub. And made no easier by blisters from the scrap-cloth wrappings on his feet, instead of his lost wool stockings; even with holes worn, they'd been more comfortable in boots.
He wended down the mountainside, his belly — griped and empty — commanding him to make no stupid mistake, no foolish noise or commotion to frighten the deer away. The breeze still blew to him .. . though shifting, shifting a little to his left, so he shifted to face it more squarely as he moved, keeping low.
There would have been no chance to approach them but for the mountain pines. Baj stole along, watching his footing over roots, rubble, and scree, careful to keep at least one wind-bent tree between him and the herd.
After a while more of careful approaching, a blister sore in his right boot, Baj came to a space there was no crossing in cover, a long ledge of light-gray stone with no pine growing — and still high, high above them as the deer drifted, grazing.
Crouched to almost kneeling, he set a broadhead to the bowstring, took a deep breath .. . and waited a moment, the summer sun warm against his face. The mountain's air, the scent of deeper forest far below, and himself as himself all seemed to combine to one, a happiness. He slowly rose, drew his bow — and knew he was about to miss, already saw the arrow's path out and down, just over the young buck's back.
Shooting downhill... shooting downhill! Baj relaxed the bow and sank back. Through the last sheltering branches, he saw the deer drifting.
Then he stood, drew the bow, saw his point as beneath the back of the buck's shoulder, and released.
The bow thumped hard in his hand, and he and the young buck below both stood to attention as the arrow introduced them. The buck was gathered to jump when the broadhead went in at an angle behind its shoulder, so it made its leap and leaped again — the does bounding after down the slope... then, at a distance, running past as the buck stumbled, recovered, tripped and fell kicking.
Baj unstrung and eased his bow as Nancy, Richard, and Errol came past him, scrambling down, bounding as the fleeing deer had done, sounding — except for the silent boy — odd cheers... mixed roars and yelps.
The buck was dead when Baj reached them. Errol had cut its throat.
Then, Richard reached down, gathered the animal's back hooves in a one-handed grip, and by that, easily lifted the buck up into the air and held it high — for lack of any tree tall enough to hang it on — held it swinging, its blood draining, spattering onto stone.
It was an astonishing demonstration of strength. Baj couldn't imagine any festival strongman who could have done it.
And not only that, but Richard held it so — one-handed — all the while Nancy and the boy gralloched, gutted, carved, and butchered out the meat... bundled it into the hide for carrying.
"With no fire, Richard," Baj said, "— most will be wasted."
"We should have no fire."
"But one last fire, carefully set with weathered wood?"
"Baj doesn't want to eat raw." Nancy, wet red to her elbows, was slicing out a rack of ribs.
"If not roasted, most will rot."
Richard, standing like a statue — the ruined buck, now almost skeletal, still hanging from his hand — began his deep uneven humming of consideration.
"Here." Nancy handed Baj a bleeding slice of liver, sprinkled with gall. .. watched him munch and chew at it, bent to keep blood from running down his front.
"Good?"
Baj swallowed and said, "No. — But that's not my reason. We have days of traveling out of this buck, if the meat is cut thin and cooked in smoke.... There may not be another deer."
"The Robins keep sheep," Nancy said. "There will be sheep wandering."
"And missed when we take one," Richard bent and laid the buck's remnant on stone scree. "So the tribesmen come looking."
"A last fire. An evening fire of seasoned wood," Baj said. "High on the slope, and in a hollow, so not seen from below, and no one on the mountaintop to smell it."
"And if seen?" Nancy said. "If smelled? We are in their country."
"I killed the fucking deer. It should be cooked!"
Errol drifted closer, apparently drawn by raised voices.
"Now, children," Richard said, "— no quarreling," and loomed over them as might some monstrous mother out of fable-tales. "It's unwise, but we'll have our fire — and hope that lasting meat proves worth it."
Nancy bared her teeth. "I blame you," she said to Baj, "if we suffer for it."
... But it seemed they wouldn't, since by nightfall — and a cool wind blowing from the north, Lord Winter's reminder, summer or not — they'd found a narrow space between two boulders in a field of fallen rock, collected only years-dried storm-broken branches, and set their fire so the north wind picked smoke up and shredded it away over the mountain's crest.
Over this careful fire, on greener branches to keep the spits from catching, long strips of thin-sliced venison were draped and turned, portion after portion, slow cooking in smoke through half the night for keeping-meat.
The steaks and fat-ribs were roasted otherwise — quickly, on green-wood forks deep among the brightest coals, roasted sputtering, fat just charred along the edges — and by the Persons, not roasted long.
Richard and Nancy, hunched by the fire with boulders at their backs — and days of hunger also behind them — barely singed their meat before lifting it away, dripping, spitting burned blood — and bit into it, ripping pieces from it as if the deer were still alive, and might escape them.... Errol, apart at his usual distance, stuffed as furiously.
Baj found him less disturbing. Any hungry boy, poorly raised and rarely fed, might have done the same. But Richard and Nancy fed as any hounds might have, fangs flashing into meat, heads shaken to tear bites loose to swallow. And all quickly, quickly as if Baj or someone else might reach across the fire and snatch meat from them. There were no growls... no snarling, but those seemed ready.
Baj ate, and tried to avoid watching them eat. Those two — who had come to seem so richly human — now displayed again whatever portion of animal had been twisted into their breeding.
There was for him... a distaste. And some fear of them, that shamed him.
"What's the matter?" Nancy stared at him, her narrow face dappled with blood and juices.
"Nothing."
"Not nothing. You looked at us!"
"I didn't —"
"You looked at us." She elbowed Richard as he chewed. "He looked at us badly!"
"I did not."
"You lie. I saw your face, watching." Nancy threw her piece of meat into the fire with a small fountain of bright sparks. "Being disgusted was in your look, you nasty blood-human. And because of our eating!" Her face contorted with rage. "It's our mouths — our teeth. It's the animal that was stuck in us, you fuck-your-mother thing!"
"I wasn't doing that."
"lie, lie, and lie again like all Sunriser shits who think they're better!" She stood, tears in the yellow eyes. "He waits," she said to Richard, "— to see you lift your leg against a tree. He waits for me to sniff someone's bottom like a dog! To bend and lick myself."
"I don't."
"It's your doing! It is all your doing!" And she was gone out of the fire's light.
After a silence in which only Errol ate, Richard lowered a chewed venison rib, and said, "She didn't mean you, as you."
"... I know what she meant," Baj said. He looked into the fire's coals so as not to meet the big Person's eyes. "I know the only differences between Boston and the River Kingdom are place and custom and arms. The dangerous come-at-you's of both are blood-human... as are the Talents' cruel studies, also."
"Trouble," Richard said, "is made by all, Baj, who wish and want." He raised his rib-bone and took a tearing bite. "— And by Persons as much as any."
"I'm back," Nancy said from the dark. "I am back to eat — and if the Sunriser doesn't like it, he can lass my part-fox ass!" She stepped into golden firelight — red gold on her widow's peak of hair — sat in her place, snatched a chop sizzling from its spit-stick and bit into it, shook her head to tear a chunk loose. Brutish, but for tears still streaking her face.
"It's true," Baj said. "It... disturbed me a little, to watch you both eat. I suppose it always has, because it shows the blood in you." He cleared his throat. "Bears have always frightened human people. A wise old man, our librarian, told us once that men used to worship bears.... And foxes and men have played hunting games forever — the foxes winning more times than not."
"I'm not listening." Nancy gnawed her bone.
"Those things are true, just the same."
"Talk talk talk," Nancy tossed the bone away, "— talk does not equal one bad look."
"Then forgive me," Baj said. "I apologize."
"You're forgiven," Richard said, "— and now, I suppose I can mention your smell without offense." He smiled a toothy smile.
"You stink," Nancy said. "You smell like an owl."
"I didn't know owls smelled."
Richard handed him a fatty portion, still sputtering. "They smell like humans," he said.
... That night, drifting in and out of sleep in his wrapped blanket, Baj, roused by a cold wind come south into the mountains, regretted the fire's warmth and warm ashes. Richard had insisted on moving their camp more than a bow-shot across the slope, in case the fire had given the Robins notice.
Sleeping and almost sleeping, Baj considered the difference between traveling from — as running from a furious king — and traveling to, as now he ventured toward the Shrikes and Boston's Guard, for vengeance, and perhaps the cold earth's good.... It seemed to him, that direction made surprisingly little difference in journeys.
CHAPTER 12
A smith, with spark-scarred hands and singed leather apron, roused Patience in early after-noon, gestured her up and off her pallet, and led her outside past a guard — a short tribesman bearing hide-shield and heavy hatchet, and looking almost strong as the smith.
A short thick iron-bound section of log was waiting, with a yard's length of rusty chain to what seemed a leg shackle.
Patience, having dressed that morning — with the help of Charlotte-doctor — in her boots, dirty blouse, trousers, and worn blue coat — stood a little stunned by sunlight and the busy murmurs of a village of wattle huts ranked steeply down to the left along a mountain stream. A considerable village, seen in daylight — more than forty small dwellings, and three larger ones. One, certainly bachelor quarters.... All she could see were handsomely plastered light mud-brown beneath brighter painted scenes of hunting, and perhaps of war, the colors (berry colors, oak-leaf colors, under-bark colors) all oranges, dark reds.... The village looked better than it smelled; sheep grazed between the huts, and Patience saw an open shit-pit seething with summer flies beside the nearest beaten path.
The smith, who appeared to speak no book-English, or very little, directed Patience with grunts and gestures, brought her beside the log-round, sat her on it, then tugged her right boot and stocking roughly off... set the shackle's hinged limbs just above her ankle, closed them — and tested the fit, turning the iron a little this way and that. It was painful enough that Patience noticed her bound shoulder now only ached, and not so severely.
It seemed the smith judged very well — shook the iron, checked for tightness to the bone — then, like an impatient lover, shoved Patience down along the log, and placed her leg where he wanted it across the round's iron band.
A rivet fitted to key the shackle closed, the smith produced a heavy hammer Patience hadn't seen, and — without pause for care — drew back and hit the rivet's head five clanging savage blows so swiftly she only had time to be frightened by the third.
Done, the smith took his hammer and walked away past two admiring naked little boys, and a small girl who needed to blow her nose. More children were gathering, but the adults — perhaps two hundred men and women, all kilted, feather-scarred, and bare to the waist — paid Patience no attention, but worked among the hutments, choring, tending small gardens.
She stood, found one boot awkward, and tugged it and the stocking off so she stood by the log-round barefoot. She tried a step, found the shackle griping, abrading h
er skin, and bent to tuck the stocking in around it for a cushion.
A second step proved that hauling the log-round would be constant labor. Even with two good arms, she would not be able to hoist the thing more than a few inches off the ground. And nothing that was not quite light could be carried while Walking-in-air. Chained, her traveling would be by dragging over earth, and no other way.
The tribe would keep her — for themselves or Boston — keep her from Maxwell forever.
Patience had wept only a few times in her life; easy weeping was simply not in her, but she would have wept in sunshine by the Robins' stream, except for being interrupted of the notion by a scatter of dung — sheep dung, she hoped — that was thrown and hit her in the face.
She turned, chain jingling, and saw a naked young boy, summer-tanned, grinning at her. The dung pieces were of no use, so Patience stooped for a small stone and slung it sidearm — sadly, right-handed — so it only whizzed past the boy's head, instead of striking with a satisfactory tock. Still, it backed him up, startled.....Backed him farther when she searched and stooped for a second rock.
"Two teeth!" Patience called — meaning two to be taken in payment for one — Boston's improvement of the most ancient rule of all.
If the Robin boy didn't understand the reference, he understood the stones, and turned, bent to slap his scrawny ass to her, then trotted away and out of range to join a circling crowd of dogs and children, boys and girls all naked in summer's warmth, all grimy with dirt and their home hearths' smoke and soot.
"No fucking helpless Person ever!" Patience noticed she'd already adopted a prisoner's muttered self-conversation. She gripped her rock, an only friend, tossed it... caught it again, and bent to look for another likely one, perhaps a little heavier, to crack a man's skull. The log-round was difficult... difficult to drag. She put the rock in her coat pocket. Then — her bound shoulder complaining, though she used her right hand — she gripped to haul on the chain and spare her ankle. The round grunted like a stupid animal, and scraped reluctantly over weedy dirt, while she searched for her second good stone.
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