Baj and the others went reflected in the columns' gleaming rounds, so they seemed to meet themselves again and again, running figures — though running slower, now — with familiar faces appearing, then smeared, stretched away, and gone.
There were shops along those streets. Shops deep in niches between the pillars, with men and women hurrying to put their various goods away — goods laid out on ice counters or likely rare wooden counters, or counters apparently made from slabs of stone. Wonders in all shapes and colors. Great soft drifts of fur displayed, black, striped, spotted-gray, and white. And a niche of trays of southern fruit, brought somehow — on the frozen sea? — all that long way north.... Then stacks of knitted-wool clothes... shelves of bright steel tools.
All wonders, for Baj, in a town of wonders — marvels being passed by at a labored run — and all for a purpose of murder. It occurred to him how delighted old Lord Peter Wilson would have been to see it all.... A city so magical.
Were there Boston poets for this... this frozen city? Perhaps crouching naked, warmed by their minds over desks of ice, and writing of the souls of Persons their Talents had made, souls now grown richer than their own.
Wearied to a near jog-trot, Baj and the others followed Patience past a shop where a woman and her daughter — the girl looking so like her mother, though naked where her mother wore furs — were emptying trays of loaves and biscuits into bins. There was the wonderful odor of baking.... Looking back, Baj saw the women glance up as the Shrikes went past, and stand frozen, their hands to their throats.
He tripped again, almost fell — then trotted on beside Nancy, paying better attention.... Baking, baking in a city of ice. Baking or any cookery — what pots, what pans? Certainly iron or fired clay for their stoves, which must burn black-rock coal, skidded on sledges in deep winter all the long way from West Map-Virginia, then likely hauled up onto the ice from some deep lead.... Must burn that, and have great double-walled flues to carry the stoves' heat up and out before it melted their frozen bakeries, their cook-shops, their apartments.
... A little white dog, sharp-muzzled and fluffed with fur, scurried out into the road to chase them, and followed for a considerable way, snarling, threatening to bite.
A comical little creature; Baj imagined the child who owned it huddling under furs with the dog for warmth. Imagined all the Boston people — those many without the Warming-talent — living with constant cold, their only relief coats of pelt and the grudging heat of those iron stoves found necessary.... All their days and nights spent in furs and southern wool, their children swaddled in defense against the glacier-cavern's killing air. A steady burden of suffering, where civilized men and women spent their lives — like the grimmest savages over-the-Wall — sheltered under snow and ice for warmth half-imagined.... Forever breathing out slight clouds of frost.
Reason enough for the Township's ancient oddness, its cold and merciless heart.
... All of them were very tired now. Baj found his mind being left a little behind. Only the stinging cold and his aching leg-muscles assured him he was where he was, and not dreaming of it in some Smoking-mountain glen.... His lungs ached with Boston's frigid air; his breath was bitter smoke. Nancy staggered beside him. Richard was panting, laboring just behind.
... They were out of the colonades, had left the streets of shops — with a woman suddenly screaming, pointing at them as they went — and were crossing a small square, fenced by four high ice buildings of windowed apartments. Baj saw, to the left and right, that those narrow frozen streets, their great apartment buildings, diminished into considerable distance — still gleaming bright under endless chains of hanging lamps.
The Walkers-in-air would tend those thousands of lights. Whale oil. Whale oil and captive little flames to pretend sun to the buried city.
Patience suddenly swerved left off the way, and led them stumbling after her into such a narrow high-walled close, an alley, that shoulders rubbed ice on either side, and they soon went single file, exhaustion's hoarse breaths echoing beside and above them.
Then she turned suddenly left again — and was gone.
There was a deep-stepped entrance, cluttered with frozen debris, with a low frost-splintered door in shadow at the bottom. Baj went down, shoved at the wood, and pushed through as it gave, Nancy and Richard behind him.
He stumbled into darkness and cold so absolute, so still, it seemed a sort of solid — freezing water made somehow breathable. Heard the Shrikes crowding in behind him.
"What is it?" Nancy said.
"Storage," Patience's voice, "for those living above. Now, rest."
Rest... Baj reached out, found Nancy still beside him, and hugged her as they sat on what was either freezing stone or rough ice. Errol burrowed between them. Tongue-dicks...
It was difficult to take deep relieving breaths of air so frigid. Baj sipped his breaths, slowly drew them into his lungs as his cramped leg-muscles eased.... Warm-time minutes passing, he found it a great relief to sit still, and felt he would be willing to stay in the dark for awhile.
Nancy began to murmur something — then was silent as a sound came first whispering... then muttering... then roaring down the street past this building's front, a sound like an avalanche of stones, with shouting. It was a killing crowd — and certainly chasing them.
"This was a lucky rest." Dolphus's voice. "It seems that Boston has noticed us."
"When they pass," Patience said, "— we go."
That pursuing tumult, which had made even the ice building tremble, slowly seemed to drain away, passing... and in a little while, was gone but for occasional footsteps, men calling.
"Up," Patience said, from darkness. "Up and out!"
Up the ice steps behind the tribesmen, and into Boston's lamp-lit always day, Baj and Nancy jostled along the alley. At the street entrance, Patience half-skipped, half-sailed past them... drew her scimitar, and led them to the left — the way the mob had gone.
Four men — startled late chasers — were met there, and rolled under, transfixed by Shrike javelins.
Then Patience was away, running, bounding down the street. Baj, Nancy with him, galloped hard to catch up to her, with Richard, Errol, and the Shrikes coming up behind. The street lay empty and frost-white before them, its ice battered by the boots and bare feet of the crowd that had passed.
Coat-tails flapping, Patience reached the next intersection a little in the air... touched her left muk-boot to the ice, and spun to the right, leading away from the pursuers' tracks. Down a wider way, they ran walled high on either side by Boston's frozen apartments — shabby buildings, stained with rusty melt, their doorways, cornices, and corners blurred... poorly carved.
Someone threw something from a high window as they ran past. It smashed on the road. Then, more came down... and men appeared at the building entrances. Furred men, wool-clothed men, almost none naked. They had iron bars in their hands.
"Our windows are braced with iron." Patience, in a conversational way, while traveling fast. "— or they sag and crack." Baj, running almost beside, heard the "Our," felt the Our in her. However furious a lady for her stolen son, still Patience had come home. He heard it, saw in Nancy's sidelong glance that she had heard it too.
The men with iron bars began to come out as they passed. Baj and Nancy drew their swords.... Women were screaming from the high windows... throwing things. A wooden stool cracked onto the ice beside Richard as he ducked aside. Pottery was coming down, smashing in the street. More men had gathered, came out with their iron bars — and Shrikes ran to meet them. Baj saw Marcus-Shrike leading.
Patience drew the rest of them on, leaving behind the cries of the impaled and dying, the grunts as brutal blows broke bones.
It seemed to Baj that soon there would not be enough of them left, even to murder women.... And now came again the sound of many pounding feet — more pursuers — their distant voices a roaring and furious surf. The voices of Boston-in-the-Ice, a wonder, centuries old — and so l
ong the source of sorrow for others. The Township, startlement over, was rising against them.
"We're almost... out of time." Richard, panting as he lumbered on.
Baj — tiring again, despite their cellar rest — turned to look back as he ran, and saw others doing the same, looking back for the first crowding shadows of enraged thousands coming after, to drown them in blood.
Patience — ground-running now, head down, arms pumping so her scimitar's blade flashed and flashed — brought them to the end of ice buildings, of windowed apartments... though the sounds of screaming still followed them from the street left behind, as women there saw their men fighting, dying on Shrike javelins.
She led them into a park, or what seemed a park. There were trees — the first they'd seen since they'd climbed the Wall — hemlocks planted in great carved-ice tubs of dirt set out in rows. They stumbled, faces and hands numb with cold, into that shade and shadow, relieved of the reflected sparkle and glare of Boston's myriads of hanging lamps, constellations crowded as starshine.
The surf sound... the crowd was coming behind them.
Richard, a weary Errol holding onto his hand, caught his breath, and called, "Patience—"
But she was already off, down a row of trees. There was a huge gate there — a true gate, it seemed to Baj, with bars of iron hinged and fixed into a low thick vault of ice. The ice-face had been sculpted into figures — seen clearer as they followed her — figures of a tree giving birth from its branches to a naked women... who, lying legs spread, gave birth to what seemed a goat, a goat presenting an egg on its out-thrust tongue. The- egg, by the gate's right base, cracking to birth what seemed a partridge, but with a weeping baby's head.
... A man in blue-striped furs had come to the gate carrying, like the Constables, a staff weapon, but this a heavy single-bladed partisan. A sentry-guard of some sort, though not half-armored as the Constables had been. He spoke with Patience through the gate, stared at Baj and the others as they came up, and shook his head.
Patience said, "The Faculty's orders." But the man shook his head again.
Patience swung her scimitar blurring out from behind her back, struck between the gate's iron bars, and took him in the throat with the point. Then she shoved to swing the iron open, but the sentry's body, still thrashing, blocked it until Richard reached her, hunched, and drove the gate wide.
... As they crowded in, Baj saw that beyond this, there was another entrance — or exit. A round pit, its edge polished, was set in stone flooring. — A hole in the ice introducing only darkness, it seemed a small replica of the immense crater they'd stepped down, around and around, to enter Boston from the north.
Patience wiped her scimitar's blade on her coat-tail, then sheathed it. "Fall sliding," she said, stepped into the ice hole and was gone.
"For God's sake..." Dolphus-Shrike, and a WT phrase that would have gotten him burned in the south, some years ago.
"Perhaps." Baj scabbarded his sword. "Richard, throw the dead man after us, and swing the gate closed before you all follow."
"Yes."
Baj reached to gather Nancy in — as she, scimitar sheathed, gathered Errol — then took them with him into the pit.
CHAPTER 27
They fell in darkness, tangled — arms, legs, scabbarded swords, and struggling Errol. They fell skidding, ice-sliding in swift sickening circles, Errol whining as they went swooping down and down.
"Be ready!" Baj called out — though ready for what he couldn't have said. They swung in such swift circles that he felt them floating for moments as they fell — floating, then a sickening pressure against slick ice as they flew round and round, so he swallowed vomit.
Finally, a long relieving slide straight — a blessing by Frozen-Jesus to be no longer spinning in circles — and a round of light growing before them.
"Be ready...!" The light grew and they slid into it and swiftly out along an ice incline, then stumbled and fell onto a frosted floor where low lamps were lit along a corridor.
Patience stood waiting with a dead man. He'd been furred, as the other sentry, in striped blue — now turned sticky crimson. A simple pole-arm, a glaive-gisarme, lay beside him, great blade and back-hook bright in lamplight.
"Get up," Patience said to them; her voice was shaking. Baj and Nancy scrambled to their feet as Errol ran little widdershins circles, tongue-clicking, apparently unwinding from his slide.
"We're... at the base of the gallery bridge to the Pens," Patience said — and a young man swung into the corridor down the way, and came sailing high off the ice floor, open blue coat fanning behind him. He called, "Ah... our exile — and come with the reasons for the bell!" A handsome young man, pale, and with a fine mustache, he held a drawn scimitar in his hand. Patience had just time to turn and say, "Jacob," and he was on her with swift slashing strokes — driving her back and back to steel's music. Other sentries, furs striped blue, came running behind him with glaives balanced in their hands.
The young man parried a cut, kicked Patience into the corridor wall, said, "Sad end for an Almost-Lodge," and struck to put her sword aside, then kill her.
Baj, rapier drawn, lunged past a sentry to them as Patience fell to the side, the young man turned to finish her. Baj would not have reached him in time — but his sword did, and half a foot of steel slid through the young man's coat and into the small of his back.
He arched, frozen for a moment — and as Baj tugged his blade free, Patience thrust up into the man's belly and killed him. "Jacob," she said again, but sadly, after she'd done it.
Baj turned and struck at the sentry — certainly caught him with the edge — and saw Nancy backed along the corridor to the ice ramp they'd slid down, a glaive's blade-point riding in at her belly. She cut along the weapon's wooden shaft, caught the man's guiding hand there and severed fingers so the sentry recoiled, spattering blood — as the man Baj had slashed in passing turned, sliced face bleeding, and charged him, swinging his weapon's broad blade.
Baj ducked, and the sentry was on him, chopping. Too close for sword-work. Baj drove into him — struck weight and muscle greater than his own — but drove, drove, kept grappling close as the glaive's thick staff struck down, its hook caught behind his left shoulder. He drew his left-hand dagger and stabbed the man though fur, through scraping ribs, then deep.
The sentry, strong and older, coughed sudden blood into Baj's face, made a fist and hit him in the mouth as if they were brawling... then staggered back, plucking at the place the dagger had gone in, so the glaive's hook dragged Baj after him, then fell free.
Spinning away, Baj saw the man Nancy had wounded was kneeling, clutching a hand blurting blood — but another sentry was on her, driving her back, swinging his pole-arm's blade, through she struck at him high and low. There was blood on the glaive's steel.
Baj shouted as if a shout could save her — leaped to reach them, and was tripped so he fell... then rolled to his feet, slashing. Another of the sentries was on him — a man old enough to be his father, and strong, striking very fast, alternating his blade and the shaft's steel-capped butt. Baj, grappling him close as the other, was hit hard in the belly — and as they wrestled, saw from the corner of his eye, Errol, quick as a squirrel, climb up the back of the man Nancy fought, and stick a knife in his neck.
Then Baj was struck again. Where, he wasn't certain, perhaps at the side of his head, since the corridor's lamps went dim, and he woke that instant on his hands and knees, saw the sentry's booted feet shift to deliver a finishing stroke. — Obeying the Master's shouted command from years before, Baj lunged in full passata soto and thrust the rapier's blade up into the man's bowels.
Getting to his feet as the man went down — gripping his belly as if to hold life in — Baj saw a different dying man stumbling here and there, screaming, clawing up behind him where Errol still rode his back, eyes squeezed shut in pleasure, mouthing the knife wound, drinking.
Two more sentries had come. Baj faced one with wearied clumsy ra
pier strokes and dagger wards that rang left and right as he ducked first one way, then the other, to keep the glaive's point wavering.
Very tired, Baj urged the pole-arm's heavy blade a little aside, thrust for the man's face, drove the point through his cheek deep into the angle of his jaw, and backed him bleeding away as the second sentry rushed past, face convulsed with rage. This man raised his weapon high, then hacked it down.
Baj turned, intending to manage something, as Errol — eyes shut and still suckling, dreamy with pleasure on a shrieking mount — was struck at his back, and split. For an instant, the boy's snowy rib-ends showed, and the intricate chain of his spine... then flooded red.
Baj heard Nancy scream, turned to help — and was struck and knocked aside as the first of the Shrikes, in swift slipping thuds and scraping, came skidding, tumbling from the ice ramp, recovered, and charged with thrusting javelins.
Two sentries, still living, were lifted on those slender points, transfixed, kicking, making noises...
Baj looked for Nancy — and saw her alive and weeping, kneeling by ruined Errol, touching and plucking at the spoiled parts, as if she might heal him.
"Jumping Jesus." Dolphus-Shrike came away from the others, shaking his head. "Poor climbing boy..."
"Where were you?" Baj saw the place at the base of Dolphus's throat where the rapier's point would go.
The Shrike sighed. "Some Boston people came and forced the iron gate. There were... a number." One of the fallen sentries had still been alive. Baj heard the slice and gargle behind him as a Shrike cut the man's throat.
Richard, just off the slide, said, "Fucking thing." Then, finding his feet, saw what was around him, "... Baj... we had no choice but deal with people up there — which cost us men — and no time to send the bodies down. So... they're left for anyone to see."
Moonrise Page 40
