Moonrise

by Mitchell Smith

  "Oh, Howell Voss will have a kingdom to rule — the Great Rule, from Map-Mississippi to the Ocean Pacific. For several years, he'll only hold New England at arm's length. You would be 'excess baggage,' — another fine copybook phrase — though treated however kindly."

  "Excess baggage..."

  "Yes. Isn't it sad, Baj, how unfair the world is? I've often thought so."

  "So, only dreary truths from you, Lady — who seem to know so much."

  "If you'd prefer lies, you still are a boy." She reached out to a shrub, tore free another leafy switch.

  "I'd 'prefer' to have my brother back."

  "Your brother is where he and endless others have gone, and no returning."

  "If not that then, I'd prefer an end to talking." Bajazet — "Baj" would do well enough — turned and walked back the way they'd come, to let the Boston-woman follow or not. He could see the slight track they'd made, the disturbed foliage all silver and shadows.

  She came behind him. "It is a pleasure to be dirt-walking, after weeks of going weary in the air. Though the reverse also becomes true.... It is more difficult to push the ground away beneath and behind you as one grows older — and I've grown older quickly. Was made to do so, I believe.... Boston-talents are cautious makers."

  A tribesman — very tall, naked, densely tattooed — rose out of the brush before them like a partridge, but silently. He stared, his short spear's leaf-blade gleaming in moonlight... then turned away, down toward the valley's stream.

  "No need, Baj." Patience had seen him put his hand on his sword-hilt. "He was sleeping away from their camp. He has an enemy, perhaps a Thrush whose village he's raided, who might come to him as he slept.... The tribes will sometimes fight in alliance — except for Shrikes — but not at ease."

  They went in silence for a while, until the Made-persons' campfire glowed a bowshot away.

  "So," Patience said, coming up beside him. "— where does a young man go, then, to find justice for his injury?"

  "I may go nowhere, if these tribesmen choose to kill me."

  She laughed out loud — a richer laugh than he expected. "Baj, if the Sparrows had wanted you dead, you'd be dead already. And there aren't enough Thrushes here to decide it one way or the other.... The hill-tribes respected your Second-father, the Achieving King — and what an... engaging man he was — though they did not love him. And fortunately for you, your first-father died before he could bring his Kipchaks campaigning to the East, and raise blood debts that only you could satisfy."

  "Good news."

  "Yes... Though except for the great pleasure of this victory — and their killing of the River's King (an unheard of, unimagined thing; Unkind-Harry now strutting under the Helmet of Joy) — the tribesmen might have decided to cut your throat, after all, and the throats of the three Persons that full-humans call Made-things, Moonrisers.... And cut my throat, as well, if they could have caught me, though Harry has had notions, as used to be said, 'above his station.' The hill-men hate all Persons, though born of their own captive daughters."

  "Perhaps," Bajazet — Baj — said, "perhaps because those are born to their lost daughters."

  "Ah," Patience touched his arm, "— there I heard the voice of Small-Sam Monroe.... How lucky you have been in your fathers." The night wind came stirring her long coat... his cloak.

  "There seem to be tribesmen enough, in these hills and the hills north, to go up to Boston Town and demand their daughters back."

  ''Yes," Patience said, "— and they'd be tempted, Baj, but for the Guard. Boston is guarded by two — well, almost three thousand. The same who raid south of the ice, to take certain of the tribesmen's young women."

  "Three thousand is not such a number. There looked to be almost a thousand hill-men come here to fight."

  "No, not such a number, but they are all Persons. Our Richard — over there by the fire? — he was a Captain of One-hundred before he deserted Matthew-Curlew's Company.... Would you care to fight Richard, Baj ? Would you be hopeful if he faced you with his ax?"

  "I see..."

  "Yes — and so the Sparrows and Thrushes and Robins have seen, and confirmed in battles Middle-Kingdom and its Rule knew nothing of, deep in the Smoking Mountains. And that is why Unkind-Harry and his people here, would — but for the great favor we've done them — cut our throats."

  "You're saying I can have no revenge on Boston-town for the murder of those I loved?"

  Patience Reilly smiled; her teeth — small, even as a child's — shone white in moonlight. "I say no such thing. Come with us that long way north and east, Baj-that-was-Bajazet, and what you wish may be satisfied."

  "How?"

  "That," still smiling, "— is for me to know, and you to find out." Which was certainly a copybook saying, and from Warm-times.

  ... At the fire, the Made-people — "Persons"— lay asleep, the Fox-girl curled on Baj's wool blanket, hugging her scabbarded new sword to her. Richard, a great heap, snored softly on the fire's other side, the boy lying alongside his broad back for warmth.

  Patience murmured. "Companions suitable for such a way... such difficulties?"

  Murmured, but not softly enough. Richard opened his eyes, and lay watching them as the night wind came stronger, seething through the valley's brush on errands of its own.

  CHAPTER 6

  Bajazet woke to dawn's damp cool, and distant voices down the valley. His back, beneath his cloak, was still warm from the fire's coals. His front was colder.... Where had he read or heard of people sleeping between two fires? Had he read that, or been told of the old Trappers? Winter hunters...

  He turned, stretched yawning — and saw the Made-boy, Errol, sitting close beside, legs crossed. The boy was staring at him.

  "He's only looking." Richard's rich voice. "He's never seen a princely deep-sleeper before — a snorer used to safety, stoves, goose-feather beds, and guarded chambers."

  The boy seemed too close. Bajazet — ah, "Baj," now — sat up... then stood up. Two days' rest (and horse meat) had left his ribs still sore, but the other bruises and scrapes much better.... The bitten arm hardly hurt at all — itched, more than hurt. And his legs felt ready again for traveling; he stamped the sleep out of them. The boy, Errol, watched as Baj belted on his sword and dagger.

  "He's interested in new things." Big Richard was hunched, shaggy, by the fire's last coals, holding chunks of horse meat over them, speared on a stick. "Breakfast," he said, his fang-toothed smile disturbing as a frown.... Once a Captain of One-hundred, the Boston woman had said.

  Baj stepped past the boy, and walked well out into the scrub to piss.

  Paging brush aside, he found a place, unlaced his buckskins — very worn and grimy buckskins, now — and began to pee a pleasant stream... playing it this way and that, like a child.

  "Lucky."

  Baj jumped a little — and peed on his left boot, tucking himself away. "For Christ's sake." A phrase that would have gotten him burned, decades before.

  The girl, Nancy, stood just behind him. "You men, Persons or human, are so lucky." The slight lisp there with Persons and so.

  "Yes," Baj did up his buckskins' laces, "— very lucky."

  "Well, you are," the Made-girl said, walking beside him back to camp. "Do you know what a task, a chore it is to always pull up our clothes, or take off our clothes, to do what men do simply as pouring from a cup?" She kicked some bramble aside."... Not fair."

  Nancy was wearing her new scimitar — wearing it on the left side and a little too low, so it might catch her leg and trip her.

  "Yes," Baj said. "I can see it would be a nuisance."

  "Only one of many we suffer," Nancy said, reached out and struck Baj lightly on the shoulder, as if they were friends, and complaints not serious.

  "Your sword should wear higher, Nancy." First time he'd used her name. "Hilt at your waist, not your hip — so the blade doesn't trip you."

  The Made-girl — Person — stepped into their clearing, and began a little dance,
apparently to see if that was so. The scimitar's curve did catch her leg, if only for a moment.

  "Very well, I'll do as you say," she said, and took her belt up a notch with narrow hands, narrow fingers tipped with nails pointed and black.

  "Breakfast." Big Richard stood from beside the fire, and held out a long scorched stick, with chunks of smoking horse meat stuck along it. The boy, Errol, came suddenly scurrying, reached up, snatched the first steak off, then went away hunched to protect his meal.

  Baj took the second — burned his fingers on it so he waved it a little cooler — and handed it to Nancy, who seemed uncertain at the courtesy.

  "Court manners." Richard held the stick out to Baj again... then took his own steak from it. "We will be civilized as Selectmen." The big Person sat again in his odd way, took a slow savage bite of meat. "If, that is, you accompany us, Prince."

  "Baj, not 'Prince.' And since I have nowhere else to go to harm Boston — and no one else to go with — I'll travel with you."

  "Good." Richard finished his breakfast in two bites. The horse meat hadn't improved overnight; it took Baj considerable chewing to get it down. He noticed Nancy, sitting cross-legged, gnawing away as a puppy might at a piece of gristle, her lip lifted, using her side teeth.... Still, coarse feeding or not, he felt the surge of strength from it. When he finished, he went to rummage in his back-pack for his canteen — found it empty — circled the fire's ashes to pick up their three sewn water-skins, and started down to the stream.

  Nancy swallowed a bite, and said, "Not alone."

  "No." Richard shook his heavy head. "Not alone."

  "Errol... !" Nancy looked around for him. "Errol!" The boy peered out of brush across the clearing, a small piece of meat gripped in his hand.

  She pointed at Baj. "You go with him.... Prince, the Sparrows are afraid of Errol. They think his Moonriser-blood has made him mad."

  "Baj. Not 'Prince.'" He gestured the boy to him, then walked down the valley's slope, shoving through thicket, supposing Errol would follow.

  He passed tribesmen as he went... then more of them down near the stream. As to Sparrows and Thrushes, the only difference seemed to be in decoration.... Sparrows wearing feathered necklaces and bracelets. Thrushes — probable Thrushes, and fewer — wearing strung withered fingers around their necks, or wooden beads painted gray or blue.... Each of these men glanced at him... glanced behind him — at the boy, he supposed — then turned away. They seemed not so much unfriendly as ignoring. He and the boy, Errol — whom Baj could barely hear working down through the tangle behind him — were not "there" for the hill-men. Would likely only he there if hatchets and spears were called for.

  And there was that possibility in the air. Baj had felt it, a time or two, boarding river-boats where many sweat-slaves hauled and carried, and while riding wide estate fields for hunting reasons or picnic reasons, when long lines of bond-serfs labored there, preparing onion fields, squash and cabbage fields, for Daughter-Summer's eight weeks.

  On those occasions — at least a time or two — he'd felt how frail was a boss's whip against so many with picks and hoes ready in their hands, who had glanced at him . .. then glanced away just as these free savages did. Leaving the possibility in the air.

  The small stream's water ran clear and cold — and Baj, kneeling, had his canteen and two of the water-skins filled when he noticed an odd rill in the shallow current a few feet down. He finished filling, palmed a wood stopper firmly in — and as he stood, saw a dead man was lying there under only a few inches of rapid shallow water, the morning sun flashing on the stream's surface.... A tall tribesman lay there, naked — but with all his feathered decorations, with his spear lying close to hand, his hatchet strung on its rawhide cord at his side.

  The warrior's chest had been opened by a trooper's saber stroke from left shoulder down, so white cut tips of ribs — and the folds and lumps of darker things beneath — were seen in bright water as if sunk into a magic mirror.

  Standing, looking for them, Baj saw two... three more dead men lying one after the other just downstream, buried in that odd way along the creek's shallow flow — so, he supposed, their essence might be carried by the current to whatever hunting paradise these people anticipated.... The king's troopers had taken their toll.

  He knelt again — careful not to look upstream, so the drinking water might, after all, have no blood of tribesmen threaded through it — filled the last water-skin, stoppered it... then tucked the canteen's strap, the skins' rawhide thongs over his shoulder, and started back up the slope to camp. The boy, Errol, ambled behind him, clicking his tongue to a sort of simple rhythm.

  Baj took up the rhythm with him, produced tongue-clicking variations — apparently to the boy's amusement — so they climbed past tribesmen up the slope, making cricket music as they went.

  * * *

  "But do we want him?"

  "Nancy..." Richard was gathering oddments, sorting them into his big leather possibles-bag. A small buckskin sack of salt; linen folds of herbs that might (or might not) be healthy; a thick roll of fine tanned leather; his horn tinderbox, filled with flossy punk and rattling pieces of flint; steel needles and spools of tendon thread; a chip of obsidian sharper than any edge of steel; a little folding peg chess-set and its tiny pieces, and a small fat copybook of The Common Prayers of Warm-time Oxford, England. "— Nancy, he carries steel points like a soldier, sword and dagger." Richard put the last of his goods away, tucked the bag into his wolf-hide pack along with slabs of smoked horse meat, then buckled it closed, leaving a cooking pot and heavy coil of braided leather line strapped to the back.

  "I have a sword, now!"

  "He has points and a bow and arrows. I'd say he's been trained in weapons. He would have made me a good young infantryman — and an officer soon enough."

  "He's a boy. He barely has hair on his face."

  Richard sighed a patient sigh. "He's full-human — and if we're told correctly, of Kipchak blood, men who have little hair on their faces.... We are the hairy ones."

  "You are. I'm not."

  "... I've seen you bathing naked, little Person."

  "— And you mean by that? What do you mean by that?" Nancy hackling like a chicken-bird rooster.

  Richard hefted his pack. "I meant nothing but observation of the narrow line of fur running down your spine at the small of your back — in a charming way, to be sure. Now, get your things together. I would rather we didn't wait in this valley until the Sparrows forget the favor we've done them."

  "You want him with us, so you'll have a Sunriser to obey."

  "You are not big enough, comb-honey, to make me angry.... Now, get your things together. And unless you have a better reason than fear he will dislike what your Also-father left in you — then Baj-who-was-a-prince marches north with us."

  "You are all beast," Nancy said, "— a bear who talks, as other bears dance at festivals." She bent to roll a blanket, then tie the rolled ends with leather thongs. "... If I didn't love you, I would not call you a Person at all."

  "So, I'm chastised." Richard cocked his head. "They're back."

  "... The hill-men have put their dead into the water," Baj said, stepping into the clearing. Errol ambled in behind him. "And it seems to me to be time to go... if I'm going with you."

  "Pack," Big Richard said. "And carry your bow strung, while we have daylight."

  * * *

  Baj thanked Floating Jesus — Mountain Jesus, now — for his two days and nights of rest in Battle-valley, otherwise there'd have been no keeping up with the three Persons. He saw now how they'd managed to parallel pace him up into the hills.... The three of them — Richard and Nancy each burdened by a considerable pack — traveled the days from dawn to dark (and its hasty small-fire camp) with only pauses for swallows of water, for smoked scraps of leftover horse meat. They moved — not terribly fast, not running — but steadily almost running. And neither uphills nor down-hills, nor brush, woods, nor clearings seemed to change tha
t pace.

  It was a wearying way to go — that oddly became almost exhilarating as the early-summer sun rose each morning to half-circle over, so Baj kept up in a sort of daily dream where effort became effortlessness.... It helped of course, that they were not pursued; there wasn't the exhaustion of fear. And helped as well that his sore ribs grew less sore each day's hiking. The girl's bite was almost healed.

  But into this dreaming, one after-noon when hard going had became easier going, came visitors almost real — so Baj heard them very clearly, sensed them watching as he labored through budding green, the always sloping country.... Once, Baj passed King Sam Monroe — saw him clearly, standing in shadow under a bending willow where a pollen-dusted rivulet ran.

  Stocky and strong, his cropped hair gone almost gray, the hilt of his long-sword jutting behind his right shoulder, the king spared only a preoccupied smile as Baj struggled by, splashing shallow water while he followed massive Richard, who smelled like untanned fur.... The king was seen more clearly than any other, though Queen Rachel sang an idle song — heard down a corridor, perhaps, or from her solar window while she and Old Lord Peter copied copies, and read them to each other.

  Later, going to all fours — as his companions had already — to climb a slope of weathered stone with only hand-holds here and there, cracks to jam his fingers in, Baj heard Ralph-sergeant's hobnailed boots come clopping, then the knock at his door. "Your brother," Ralph-sergeant said, "— is fishing at Silver Gate (though why in the rain, I couldn't tell you) and wishes you to come and bring him luck."

  And that was something that had been said, years before — and being true, drove the dream away. Prince Bajazet went with the dream, perhaps to join the others, perhaps to fish at the jetty with Newton, on a rainy day. Going, he closed his chambers' door behind him....

  As the sunny shadows shifted, Big Richard and Small Nancy led on, changing place every now and then — and, Baj noticed, going easily to all fours on the steepest slopes and rises. They halted for nothing... sometimes sucked water from their leather pouches as they went.