"No thoughts, then, yourself?" Richard turned the moccasin in his huge hands, flexed the double sole.
"No. I've been... I've been too busy to worry about it." The night wind was rising; Baj felt its chill through his cloak's thick wool. "— But if you want a child's thoughts, Richard, as to Gods and various Jesuses... well, when I was ten years old, I imagined that all Greats existed in a... a sort of swirling substance, like tumultuous water, like the river we crossed. I thought they all existed there, spinning and sailing this way and that — and if you called (if I, as a boy, called), I might catch one's attention while he or she whirled past. And if I caught them in an eddy, if they were still enough to hear such a minor voice, then they might command something done — or might not, if they thought that more humorous — before the currents of all things spun them away either to pleasures or more important duties — I wasn't sure which."
"That's a picture." Richard set cross-stitches, thick fingers deft, the curved needle sauntering in and out under moonlight barely bright enough for shadows.
"Only a boy's picture, imagining some explanation for the confusions of the world."
"Yes, an unreliable place."
"As I, so young, discovered at every festival, when perfect looked-for gifts — a champion racing stallion, a ten-crew iceboat built by the Edgars — could rarely be depended on.... And I've found, recently, that a child's imagined currents may be only a single great whirl-pool, by which we, and every Jesus also, might be taken under."
Richard sighed a deep sigh. "You see, wisdom at ten years old. And grimmer wisdom at twenty."
"Not wisdom. Only wishes and words, Richard — and either of my fathers would have been bored (one politely, the other likely not) to hear me. These aren't the sorts of questions that even Used-to-be-princes are meant to bother their heads with — which was one of the pleasures of being a prince."
"Try the right." Richard handed the moccasin over, and Baj stood to tug it on, cross-tie the lacings.
"... That's really... that's comfortable. Thank you very much, Richard."
"I require a payment," Richard said.
"Name it." Baj paced back and forth through moonlight in his new moccasin-boots. They were very light on his feet, and so simply made — sized, sliced, folded and sewn. It was oddly pleasant, wearing them, to feel the details of earth — as he would, of course, also feel the details of sharp stones.
"You are to pay me. .. the beginning of forgiveness for the murder of the Robin lady."
Baj stood still, and noticed that Richard, seated for his sewing, yet nearly met him eye-to-eye. That massive boulder-size seemed to hold sadness to match its muscle.
"Payment given, Richard."
"And in your imagined rapids, your whirling pools," the big Person shifted and heaved to his feet, "— in them, no ship of mercy sails?"
"Only, I suppose, as a Warm-time poet put it: 'in the narrow currents of our faltering hearts.'"
Then a long, deep, considering hum. Baj supposed it was Richard's method for keeping the sounds of the world from troubling his thoughts.
"— I'd be more interested," Baj said, "in what you, and Nancy also, make of the world."
Richard, looming over, smiled his grizzle-bear grimace. "We make... do."
When Nancy returned — still silent to Baj, as he to her — the three of them wrapped themselves in their cloaks and blankets under sheltering birches, Errol, innocent as any puppy, curled against Baj's side. And after a time, all — even a wakeful Once-a-prince, remembering a Robin woman's eyes — slept to the conversation of wind and trees.
Until, just before dawn, the rattle and thud of drums came to wake them.
CHAPTER 13
Patience thought the drumming was dreamed, aching echoes of her bruises and broken nose.
She woke still savage from the stone-fight the day before, shamed that she'd been driven like a badger into the hut, dragging the log-round's weight and hunched warding thrown rocks. Though she'd left injured children behind her — and would have killed some if she could, despite loving her own... her ungrateful son who hadn't visited since she fell.
The drums were rolling, grumbling away like a great departing wagon — already distant, joining others deeper into the hills.
The village seemed to stir and boil in the last of night around her, but no one disturbed the sheepskin at the hut's door.
Her strapped shoulder now only slightly sore, Patience got up from her pallet — with necessary courtesy to her chain-tether and log — and dragged that load to the entrance hide. Supposing she was being unwise, she paged the sheepskin aside to a brightening dawn, the sounds of men running, and women's click-clacking calls and scolding.
"Get back inside." The sentry stared down at her over the shaped wooden beak of a war-helmet. No face to be seen there . but the voice familiar.
"... Peter Aiken?"
"Get inside." The leaf-bladed javelin turned slightly in his
grip.
Patience stepped back into the hut, let the sheepskin fall, and stood by her log-anchor, waiting.
And as sure as if commanded, Pete Aiken-Robin stooped to enter... then stood tall, bare-chested and armed, his carved helmet's blue plume touching the rough wattle ceiling. She saw he belted a heavy hatchet, and a sword. The sword was a scimitar, and hers.
"You look very fine, Peter," Patience said. "You look as a warrior should. — But why are you standing my guard?"
"Three sheep," Aiken said, in fair book-English. "— Given to John Little to take his place."
"... Ah. Is it possible that honor still lies with the Robins?"
"It still lies with me," Aiken said, sounding to Patience very young. "My word was given — and my word stands." He set his javelin into the near corner. "I took your sword from the trophy lodge.".
"And your word stands... at what cost?"
Aiken shrugged. "Fuck 'em."— So perfect a use of the ancient WT phrase that Patience couldn't help smiling, and saw beneath the helmet's beak, the young man grinning with her.
"If you live, Pete Aiken," she said, "— if you live, you will be a chief."
Aiken reached up, loosened a strap, and lifted his plumed helmet off. Without it, hair tousled, he seemed only a boy. "Then I'll have to run faster than Chad Budnarik; he wanted your head for the garden."
"Peter," Patience said — and knew as she spoke that she was no longer what she'd been. "Peter, if it's your death, don't do it."
"You're not my mother," he said. "And honor is men's business." He stooped to examine the ankle-shackle and chain. "This would ruin my hatchet to try to break."
There were shouts outside, and they both stayed still, waiting as the noise went past.
"What's happening?"
"We were drummed.... Some people, passing by, killed Ed Marble's wife. He's a war-chief just north, and they're a friendly village to us."
"So, your men are going out."
"Yes, they are." He shook the chain. "Hatchet wouldn't break it."
Patience picked up her greatcoat from the pallet, draped it over her shoulders, and buttoned it — one-handed — at her throat. Then, silent, she settled herself into the quietness of anything-might-happen.
Aiken picked up his helmet and put it on. Then he bent to the log-round, gathered it in both arms — and heaved it up with a grunt. "... Come on!" He shouldered the sheepskin aside and marched out the entrance, with Patience, barefoot, hopping awkwardly close beside him.
An odd-looking pair — and were looked at, stared at, by several leather-kilted women filling clay jars of water at the steep streamside below. Others, women, children, and old people, were standing far down the settlement, watching a file of armed men trotting away to the north on the far side of the creek, spear-heads bright in first light, their long hide shields at their shoulders. Others, gone before, were only dawn shadows in among distant birches, going away, the drumming going with them.
Pete Aiken, heavy-burdened, yanking Patience stumbli
ng along, strode upslope onto a beaten path above a row of huts — outpits stinking from one to the next as they went. Three children and a small brown dog came to follow them — but at a distance that grew more distant when Patience, hobbling, picked up a rock and bared her teeth at them.
Puffing out effort-breaths, hugging the log-round tight, Aiken staggered on as Patience managed to stay with him, the shackle scoring her ankle each quick awkward step, as if the little brown dog had come to bite her.
They passed a wide garden to their right, and Patience, struggling to keep up, bruising her toes to kick tangling chain ahead with every step, saw cauliflowers growing in it... then saw they weren't, but rows of skulls — all full-human, none shaped oddly as Persons' skulls might be. There were some heads still fleshed, but all stuck rotting in the ground for birds and summer insects to polish to decoration. Brown-feather quills bristled from eye-holes where broken shreds of white still spoiled.... Thrushes.
Aiken stopped at last, and set the log-round down with a
grunt of relief beside the only hut built above the path — a small open-sided shed, with a neat true-garden laid out just past it Patience smelled charcoal and hot iron, saw instruments and steel tools pegged to the shed's back wall. Blacksmith's — and no blacksmith.
"Willard's gone fighting. That's what he likes to do...." Aiken ducked in, searching among tools, tongs, and hammers.
It occurred to Patience, standing tethered and sore ankled long-shadowed now by morning, that the blacksmith's hut presented a future certain — however distant — a future in which Boston's hostage women, its fierce Person Guard, would have proved insufficient. The village forges, their tools and shaped metal, the fine steel beaten out on their anvils — but above all the notion they presented of planning, making, and completing — would end at last more formidable than any plots, any savage armies.
Pete Aiken came out into the sunshine with a heavy hammer and cold chisel.... Patience found the chisel particularly impressive. To make a hammer was nothing much. To forge and temper a chisel, was.
"I don't... I don't see how to take the shackle off, and not hit you." Aiken knelt in sunlight to examine the problem. "But I can do the chain."
A young woman in a yellow wool skirt, her scarred breasts bare, had come up to the high path, was standing watching them. Patience stared at her, and the woman turned and went away... but with purpose.
"Trouble," Patience said.
"My sister — and always trouble. I'm going to... I need the anvil." He gripped the shackle's chain and dragged the log-round into the shed, Patience floundering with it, then went outside again for the hammer and chisel.
Time . .. time. Patience felt her heart beating the moments away. Moments for Aiken's sister to come to save a foolish brother from himself, bring other women and some older men, armed, to help her.
"Here." Aiken took her ankle, yanked it so she suddenly sat down on dirt and ashes, then laid her leg across the anvil's iron, and pushed her worn trouser-cuff up out of the way.
Now very brisk and certain, he set the chisel-blade at a chain-link near the shackle, swung the hammer high — then whipped it down while Patience, no longer impatient, sat frozen.
She felt the blow up into her hip — heard the ringing clang an instant later. Pete Aiken bent to stare at the cut, then with no hesitation raised the hammer and struck again, then again... Patience, eyes closed, resigned to losing her foot.
"Done." Though he hit it a fourth time, not so hard.
Patience looked and saw the link gleaming where it parted. There were voices down the path.
Aiken shook the chain, worked the link free, then stood, picked up his helmet, and put it on. "Honor satisfied," he said, slid her scabbarded sword from his belt, and handed it to her. "I'll stand to hold them while you run."
A woman — two women — were calling in their clicking pidgin, using no understandable book-English at all.
Patience got to her feet with the severed chain-length jingling, stretched up and kissed Pete Aiken's mouth beneath the helmet's beak. "Brave man," she said, and left him silent — apparently not used to kisses from aging Persons with broken noses. Outside, several tribeswomen, two with hatchets in their hands, were standing back along the path. There were children behind them — and coming trotting the same way, four older men with spears kicked their way through a flock of chicken-birds.
Patience — doubt and fear bundled together and set aside — called out, "Good-bye." Meaning good-bye to honorable Pete Aiken, good-bye to her jailor-log, good-bye to the village of Robins-by-the-Creek.... Certainly able now (thank every Jesus) to set aside a shoulder only tender, an ankle only bruised — as she set aside the shouts coming chasing, uproar and argument with Aiken in their way — Patience welcomed restful concentration.
She trotted up the path in sunshine (chain-links musical at her ankle), and said a convinced good-bye to the earth beneath her feet. She emptied her mind of all but thrusting the world down and away, thrusting it behind — and her bare feet going lighter and lighter, till paddling in the air, she sailed gently swaying up... and up, with only a futile hatchet whirring its farewell.
* * *
Though Nancy and Richard seemed disturbed at such swift discovery and vengeance chase, even Errol nervous as they packed their packs and ran — Baj felt oddly at ease; he'd been pursued before, and by closer-coming and more formidable hunters.
"I apologize," Nancy said, a little out of breath. She'd bounded up beside while they ran full out past birches and north along the mountain's shrubby slope. Surprisingly fast Richard lumbering slightly ahead, as always.
"Apologize to those behind us." Baj was thankful he was running in new moccasins, not old boots. "Apologize to them," he said, and leaped a tangle of summer vine vine, "— not to me."
Nancy didn't answer, though she gave him the yellow-eyed glance he'd expected. She kept with him for a while, then strayed to the left and up-slope, more comfortable with rougher going.
The drums kept up. No longer deep, rolling growls, they sounded in nervous chasing taps and rattles, as if persuading their prey's hearts to beat to that unsustaining rhythm.
Stones and pebbles bruised Baj's feet through flexible conforming leather, but light swift running was consolation enough. He ordered his legs, and they obeyed.... No matter how fast the Robins came, they'd started well behind. "And may catch up, never," Baj said aloud, high-stepping through windfall branches down a draw — dead branches, bare and black from Lord Winter's last several seasons, come down with run-off and rotting to punk. He ran through, breaking some in crumbling wet, and smelled the dank odor of spoiling wood as he went on.
Tap... tap tap. The drums coming behind them.
Legs aching but working well, Baj ran up beside Richard — the massive Person pacing along so swiftly, steadily, his heavy, furred pack like a clinging gray wolf on his back.
"How far... will they chase?"
Richard plunged into a stand of young evergreens as if they were an ocean's surf, and vanished but for green turmoil as he went. Baj ran downslope through more scattered trees, then up-slope again to join as Richard burst into the clear.
"How... far?"
"To their territory's edge," Richard said, his breath coming short. "— And stop there. They won't.. . want a war."
Richard had an odd way of running — looking odder the closer Baj ran with him. It was a two-legged gallop, and would have seemed more comfortable on four. An odd way, but ground-eating, steady and fast.
Baj ran, saw Nancy bounding across the slope above, and heard a wailing cry behind them. He thought some swift tribesmen had caught up — looked back, and saw Errol among evergreens, the boy staggering with his face in his hands.
"Hurt!" Nancy called. "Hurt!" And reversed her run remarkably — in one instant, fleeing north on a saplinged slope... in the next, back the other way, so an imagined brushy tail seemed to flirt behind her.
"For God's sake .. ." An ancient oath, an
d considered indecent in the Kingdom. Baj slowed, stopped, and saw Nancy trotting back to the boy.
Ahead, Richard stood still, looking back. He called out... something. The chasing drums seemed to answer with a rainfall patter of beats and pauses — and Baj realized that of course it was drum talking they were hearing. Drummed threats, drummed promises being made.
The morning sunshine seemed to pulse with Baj's heartbeat as he ran back the way he'd come, lifting his bow off his shoulder.
Behind him, Richard called again.
Nancy, this side of evergreens, had Errol gripped by the arm, was helping the boy along. "His eyes," she said, "— a branch whipped his eyes, running." Baj saw the line scored across the boy's face, a spot of blood in the boy's right eye, tears in both.
"He'll see again in a moment or two. Lead him away!" Baj knelt to bend the recurved bow and string it, then reached over his shoulder for an arrow. Saw the girl and sniveling boy just standing there. "Go on! Go!"
And away she went, half-dragging Errol along.
There was a soft rubbing sound amid the drumming. Some tribesman stroking his drum's taut hide — and heard too clearly, now.
Weasel enough to work back to cut that poor woman's throat — and now, runs into a fucking tree! It seemed to Baj it would have been best to let the Robins have the boy — no use but for murdering, and killing birds.... He nocked the broadhead arrow, and scrambled sideways up the mountainside, thinking to wound a man, slow them just a little to make up this lost time.
Though, once he was set and had a clear shot where the evergreens broke below — the three Persons running north, Richard and Nancy holding the boy half-suspended between them — the drums still seemed a distance behind.
Baj had a little while to wonder if his was a foolish ambush after all — but had wondered it only once when two men came out of the pines with bright spear-points questing. They wore plumed bird-beak helmets, were naked to kilted waists, and wore hatchets, but carried no shields.
Expected, they were still surprising to see, so close behind. Baj supposed these were light scouts and the fastest runners... the others farther back, coming with the drums.
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