Moonrise

by Mitchell Smith

  He'd expected the likes of Sparrows, shifting savages — but the two trotting across the slope below seemed more soldiers than that. There was a steady deliberation in their tracking....

  Baj rose slowly, drawing as he did. The arrow's fletching touched his cheek and he released, mindful to hold a little low.

  He should have nocked a second arrow as the first one flew — but instead stared like a raw hunter to see the shaft flick away, at first arching fast, flashing down the mountainside . .. then oddly seeming to sail slower, as if to be certain of its strike. Baj saw the gray fletching dot the near man's side, and he dropped his spear, staggered downslope like a drunk, stumbling, his mouth wide open. Then he tripped and sat down.

  Stupidly late, Baj nocked his second arrow — and found no one to shoot. The other Robin was gone racing back into the pines, and would be running to the others with word. It might make them careful enough to slow a little as they came.

  "Better," Baj said aloud, and stood, the second arrow still on his string. "Better this way." The man sitting wounded down the mountainside seemed to be looking up at him. Certainly, he should start running after the others. Run — leave the man; leave the arrow. Who would say he should do otherwise?

  Baj slid his second arrow over his shoulder into the quiver, then trotted, skidded, down the slope. The Robin sat as if patiently waiting for him — looking, with his beaked helmet, like the get of some unlikely Boston mating of woman and bird.

  When Baj reached him, he saw the Robin sat the slope awkwardly, and smelled of shit. A boy, perhaps sixteen, seventeen years old, he stared up at Baj under the brow of his plumed helmet, and hissed-in rapid breaths of agony.

  "I'm sorry," Baj said to him — a stupidity. The arrow had gone through from side to side. The fletching nestled against the boy's left ribs; the razor-edged head and inches of shaft stuck out lower, at his other side.

  Time tapped Baj on the shoulder, and he — or perhaps a slightly different Baj — stepped behind the Robin, hauled his head sharply back, drew the left-hand dagger and cut the boy's throat. There was... a sort of wet sneeze and convulsion, and Baj — head averted so as not to see too much — bent, yanked the irreplaceable arrow on through the boy's body and free... then ran away north, strung bow on his shoulder, bloody dagger in one hand, bloody arrow in the other.

  Galloping the slope through low shrubbery, over rubble scree, he ducked past a pine, paused, and managed to wipe the knife on his buckskins and sheath it. He ran on, still holding the arrow in a hand gloved with dirt and drying blood.... It seemed to him impossible to stay clean in this wilderness.

  Behind him, keeping irregular time to his flight, sounded the conversation of drums.

  ... He caught up in a little while. Staggering tired, and with a WT "stitch" in his right side, Baj saw the three Persons in miniature ahead and a little below him, trotting north into brush and rougher country. Richard was forging in the lead, leaving a wake of shrubbery forced aside, with Nancy and Errol following — the boy apparently now seeing well enough.

  Baj, still hearing pursuing drums, saw they'd slowed a little to wait for him. — And as if she'd heard his thought, Nancy turned to look behind her. She looked, went on, then turned to look again and saw him. He knew it, even at the distance.

  She stopped, let Errol scurry on, and stood waiting... watching him come down to them, his bow, still strung, bouncing at his shoulder. Richard stood waiting farther on — standing amid flowering bushes like a bear risen from a berry patch.

  "What?" Nancy called to him as he came. "What?"

  Meaning, Baj supposed, everything. "I... killed one. A scout. The other ran back. I think it slowed them a little."

  Nancy shook her head as if she'd meant none of that, and stepped through a tangle to stare at him, poke and pat his arms and chest, then stand back. "Ease your bow," she said. "Do Sunrisers have to be told to do everything?" And she was away, running.

  * * *

  "How far?" Baj, gone to one knee under a young alder, tried to take a breath that didn't catch at his side. "How far does these people's territory run?"

  Richard, seeming weary at last, sat panting in rough grass. "Certainly not much farther.... Not much farther."

  "You say," Nancy said. Errol curled beside her, she lay dappled by early evening shadows in a sapling's shade, her head resting on her pack. "Those villages could own another hundred Warm-time miles."

  "Surely not," Baj said.

  Drums ticked and tapped as if to contradict him — and sounded a little nearer. He drew in the deepest breath he could, and felt the catch in his side fading. "We need to move."

  Richard nodded, heaved up to his feet, shrugged his big pack to settle it, and lumbered away through the trees.

  "Where," Nancy said, "— is these mountains' Jesus and His mercy?" She rolled to her feet, took up her pack, and trotted out. Errol, coming awake, scrambled beside Baj to follow.

  As they ran through the alder grove and out along a grassy lead — no true creek — Baj, glancing aside at Errol's face, saw only the usual alert and vacant abstraction. The same expression, surely, he'd worn as he came out of the woods, returning to where the woman waited, tied to her tree.

  ... They ran, rested again, and ran — but slower and slower as evening shadows lengthened. Baj no longer felt his legs; they moved beneath him, but separate as wagon wheels or a horse's hooves might be. He had more and more difficulty avoiding large stones and fallen branches, or the hook and hold of thornbushes in his way — and no longer stepped quite straight, but shambled a little to one side, then the other.

  The Persons' blood was failing them as well. Richard's tongue, revealed a surprising purple, lolled a little as he padded on. Nancy, panting just behind, stumbled now and then, no longer sure-footed, with Errol pacing slower beside her. They had little run left in them.

  "Night." Nancy used a breath to say it — and the four of them labored on as if sheltering darkness waited just ahead, past this water lead, past more alders. Past whatever lay along their way.

  "... Night," Nancy had said, but there was still light enough to see they'd left a mountain behind, still light enough for the next mountain's long shadow to show against its green, when they noticed — Baj first — that only the wind and the day's last bird-calls sounded.

  There was no sound of drumming.

  They went on, regardless — flight seeming an end in itself — stumbled along for a little way, then slowed, walked. .. and stopped to stand stupid as spotted cattle.

  "I suppose," Richard said, "— they might be coming on, silent."

  But the Robins weren't. The continuous pressure of chase at their backs was gone. No one hunted them anymore.

  Baj and the others dropped as if melting to the grass, tugged blankets around them, and lay cramped with aching muscles until sleep came to keep them company into nightfall.... Errol, huddled close at Baj's back, whimpered in a dream.

  CHAPTER 14

  "Is there no breakfast?"

  Baj jerked awake to a chilly dawn, fumbled for his rapier's hilt — and found it as he blinked sleep from his eyes.

  There was an old woman sitting on the summer grass, staring at him... at the others as they woke. Someone had beaten her, broken her nose and left blood on her face.

  "Breakfast."

  Then Baj saw it was Boston-Patience, sitting cross-legged and barefoot in a dirty blue coat, grimy white blouse, and worn blue trousers. She held her scimitar across her lap — but now looked too frail, too damaged to use it. Her left arm was strapped in a sling.

  "Lady," Richard heaved himself up to stand, "— what happened to your boots?"

  "My boots? What of my nose, Richard?" She sounded as if she had a snow-season cold.

  "Who hurt you?" Nancy left her blanket, went to touch the woman's face — but Patience pushed her hand away.

  "I hurt myself first, by dreaming in the air. Later, children threw rocks while I was a guest in a Robin's nest." She leaned a little to
her right as she sat, used her sheathed scimitar for support. Her left arm and shoulder seemed strapped firm. "I asked about breakfast — and by the way, the tribesmen no longer follow... which is just as well, since they would have caught the four of you snoring."

  "We have cold venison," Baj said.

  "I'll take some.... And how do you do, Baj-who-was-Bajazet? You certainly do quickly. I don't think I've ever seen such scurrying away below me, as you four fleeing. The Robins couldn't keep up, and I couldn't keep up — still unsteady Walking-in-air."

  "We have no more salt," Nancy said, and handed the woman a strip of smoked deer.

  "I will do without," Patience said, then crammed, chewed, and swallowed. "I do need a bath of water to get the stink and dried blood off me — and you, girl, need the same. You smell like a wet dog and worse; do you have your bloodies?" She bit into the meat, tore more free.

  "No, I don't," Nancy said. But Patience paid no attention, only chewed, swallowed, and bit off more.

  "This is still Robin country," Richard said, "and will be, well past the Map Gap-Cumberland."

  "Yes," Patience swallowed venison, "— but belonging to a different village than the two that chased you, and unlikely to obey their drums." She took another bite, spoke with meat in her mouth. "Did those chase wrongly? Some chief's wife was killed...."

  "They didn't chase wrongly," Baj said.

  Patience looked at him, the last bit of deer dangling from her fingers. "So — are we speaking of stupidity? Or of something that couldn't be avoided."

  "... It might have been avoided," Richard said.

  "Mmm." She ate the last bite, munching it slowly, savoring. "Our weasel boy?"

  Errol was peeing against a small spruce, and paid no attention.

  "My fault," Richard said.

  Nancy said it almost with him. "My fault — and we thought... we thought if so, it might save trouble."

  "Save trouble?" Patience looked at Baj. "Not your fault, too?"

  "We were all careless."

  " 'Careless... ' Is there more meat?" Patience took a smaller piece from Nancy, sniffed it for soundness. "Well, none of you have been the fool I've acted." She reached up to tap her bandaged shoulder. "— And I must tell you, if we continue this stupid in the north, we'll die of it." She ate the meat... then looked odd, bruised face draining of color so its dried blood seemed black. She suddenly slumped back to lie stretched out in the grass amid delicate dawn ladies-slippers, beneath a sheltering chestnut oak.

  Nancy went to kneel beside her, but Patience shook her head, warded her away . .. and lay silent for a while, taking slow careful breaths.

  "You ate too fast," Nancy said, and received a hard look, though Patience lay where she was, took more deep breaths.... After a while, she said, "I saw glitter nearly in our way." She lifted her right hand, pointed north. "Water. I think a beaver pond. I need to wash myself." . .. And she slowly sat up, looking a little better.

  "We'll both go," Nancy said, "— you sailing, I striding; we'll wash ourselves clean."

  "I've had few dreams from my son," Patience said, as if someone had asked her. "They'll be interfering with him, trying to force him older..." Then, in a sudden lurching motion, she swung up off the grass as if beginning to stand. But instead, she slid, skidded strangely away just above the ground... faltered, then rose suddenly as if shoved from beneath and sat cross-legged in the air, rocking unsteadily and no higher than a man could reach.

  That beginning-to-fly disturbed Baj as if sea-sickness had come upon him with motions his eyes rejected. She hovered there a moment, a small white-haired lady come to mischief .. . then sailed away, slow swooping off to the north, barefoot, beaten, and bandaged, clutching her curved sword.

  Nancy bounded after the fleeting morning shadow, trailing her own. And Errol, attracted to the chase, trotted after them.

  Richard dug into his big pack, found his diminished roll of leather, the small kit of needles and spooled sinew. "Little feet," he said, "— so I should have enough, once I measure her." He unrolled the hide. "It's rare for the Robins — any tribesmen — to let captives go. Almost always, they find some use for them. Decoration... something." He sighed. "They skin Persons, sometimes, for what pelt they have."

  Baj searched his own pack, found a last slice of venison, smoked black, and sat beside Richard to chew it. "She's hurt, and not what she was."

  A honeybee wandered between them, humming to itself. Other bees, their motion amid wildflowers sensed as much as seen, drifted back and forth across the glade, their faint constant buzzing a sort of foundation for other summer-morning sounds, small birds singing in the evergreens, a hawk's thin distant cry, the varying ruffle of the mountain winds.

  "No," Richard said, "— she isn't what she was. As we, none of us, will be what we were."

  "And us not many, set against Boston."

  Richard turned to look at him, brown bear's eyes peering from under the shelf of brow. "No, we are not. The Township's constables could step on us five, crush us, and not even know it was done."

  "Encouraging..." Baj finished his venison, reached over, stretching, for his "canteen," pulled the wood stopper and drank long swallows of night-chilled water.

  "That we're so few, gives us our best chance." Richard stretched leather across his lap. "— That and the quality of what we intend to do.... Look at this hide, tanned so fine and soft. Oil this leather and respect it, and it won't fail until it's old as a Person — or human — grows old."

  "Good workmanship."

  "Yes," Richard said, "— and something that had to be discovered again, once the cold came down. I know of no copybook found that explains how leather was treated in Warm-times. Not even the Red-blood tribesmen — Mohawk or Abenaki — not even their people remembered how."

  "I suppose that's true." A bird was singing in the firs — two sharp-stepped notes.

  "Then someone realized anew that, of all things, piss and dung were required for tanning — though perhaps in Warm-times they'd found sweeter-smelling ways." Richard selected a curved needle from his kit, and threaded sinew through its tiny eye in one easy motion. "What's true of leather, is true of free being. The rawhide of hostage-taking and ruling battles must be worked — even if unpleasantly — worked at last to suppleness, and decent understanding." He set down his needle and thread. "We, who have the forms of beasts bred into us, see very clearly the beast that Sunrisers conceal."

  Listening to Richard, as often, slightly altered the previous "Richard" in Baj's mind. "That is craft philosophies," he said, "and sounds more sensible than most to me. But as to that 'even if unpleasantly,' how many women are held in Boston's ice?"

  "At least — Patience says — at least hundreds still kept alive."

  "Mountain Jesus..."

  Richard measured a length of rawhide lacing in half, then in half again, and snapped the strands in his great hands. "Yes, young Who-was-a-prince, that number of girls and women and old women — all once daughters of important tribesmen... and now, mothers of important officers and soldiers of the Person Guard."

  "And will the Guard and the tribesmen be grateful to us, Richard — once we slaughter those mothers and daughters, to set their sons and fathers free?"

  Richard shook his head. "I thought you realized, Baj. We'll surely be killed for what we do. The Shrikes — some at least — we hope will understand the necessity, and a few come with us. The Guard will have other tasks."

  "But 'understanding' will make no difference."

  "You see," Richard smiled a sad and toothy smile, "you have a prince's wisdom of costs. Of course understanding will make no difference." He measured and snapped more lacing. "Many tribesmen — and some of the Guard — will never accept such killings, however necessary, without revenge. We are talking about women loved and lost and dreamed of for many years."

  "Yes... of course. Too loved, too dreamed of, to allow their murderers — in whatever good cause — to stroll smiling through the country, afterward.
I see that."

  Richard nodded. "If we succeed in killing the hostage women — 'a large if,' I believe the copybooks say — if we succeed, there will be no place between the Oceans Atlantic and Pacific where we may rest for long with throats un-cut." He set his rawhide laces aside. "Hard news, I know, for Sunriser-Baj."

  "Hard news," Baj said, "— for Sunriser or Moonriser."

  "Yes."

  "And there is no way... no way we can free those women, instead?"

  Richard sighed. "We may not be given time even for murder — and since the Guard, outnumbered, will surely fail at Boston's gate, we'd only 'free' the women into the hands that already hold them captive."

  " 'Not given time...' But I'm too young to die." Baj had intended that as casually humorous, but found it sounded with a plaintive air, after all — which on reflection made it funnier.

  "I am, too," Richard said, very seriously.

  Baj began to giggle, couldn't help it — and such was hysteria (he supposed it was the old WT hysteria happening) that he couldn't stop, and soon was lying flat on the grass as sick-Patience had, but roaring with laughter.

  Richard, a monument of dark skin and fur-tufted muscle, sat staring at him. Then, slowly the broad-muzzled face widened to its fearsome grin, fangs were bared, and a deep-thumping laugh developed, sounding very like belly-rumbles.

  Baj, who'd been beginning to recover, was set off again by that, so both ended laughing in the sunny grass, laughing till their aching sides sobered them.... It was, for Baj, the most exquisite relief. It brought tears to his eyes — and visions with them, memories of the ones he'd loved, each laughing at whatever small circumstance had prompted it, so Baj saw them very clearly... saw behind them the bannered battlement or cut-stone office, the glassed garden or tower chamber where each stood.

  ... Laughter over, Baj lay resting in the grass, those memories a gift as sweet as if these mountains' Jesus had drifted by with the humming bees. Feeling older in one way, younger in another, he lay considering the fact of almost certain — no, of certain death, sooner or later — and decided to leave that fact beneath and behind him for the while, as Boston-Patience dismissed the solid earth for flights above it.