For which kindness, ungrateful Baj cursed the colonel through a freezing after-noon, since while horses had a gentle gait, moose did not. The headache returned, as copybooks had it, "with a vengeance."
Still, no trooper, riding beside him or riding past, mentioned the fight. Only Dolphus-Shrike — fur bundled, javelins over his shoulder, his yellow hair knotted at his neck — come jogging along fast as the trotting mount, smiled up at Baj, and said, "I see I'll have to watch my mouth before such a champion, such a Jack Monroe."
"Not today," Baj said, standing a little in the stirrups to ease jolting, and the Shrike laughed.
So, a difficult after-noon, and a day that brought the Companies to the Wall's wide lap of moraine — ten to twenty WT miles of huge rounded drumlin hills, outwash rubble, and milk-water cirques appearing in the tundra... then great shallow lakes, ice-skimmed and stretching out of sight with flocks of ducks and geese rising in roars of wing-claps from them, then swirling away over other shallow waters that had to be splashed through or widely skirted, and fast foaming streams to be forded with difficulty and some danger .. . occasionally crossed twice as they wound and wended in the way. It was slow marching.
At necessary halts, some troopers, whirling humming slings, galloped along beneath the sailing clouds of birds — their moose pounding through puddles in spray — and sent stones hissing up to bring down several.
At one such delay, Nancy ran up alongside Baj's mount with his bow and quiver in her hands.
"Oh, for Christ's sake..." That ancient exclamation still risky in some places.
"Get one!" said the merciless girl, and reached them up.
The moose had no change of gait beside ambling rolling trot or a dead run, and dead run would be required for duck chasing. There also seemed a question whether the reins had any function — they'd certainly had none for Baj so far.
He gritted his teeth, which hurt the hurt cheek, strung and braced the bow in the saddle — something he'd done before, hunting, though not with a bruised and aching shoulder — then drew an arrow from the quiver — one of his last from the River. He took the rein-ends in his teeth, nocked the arrow to the bowstring... and drummed his heels into the moose's massive flanks.
What reins and duckings did not do, kicks apparently did — and Baj found himself tearing along from a brutally wrenching start, going at a racehorse's speed but with side-swaying and surging up and down like a festival crank-ride.
The velocity, and tossing this way and that as the animal galloped — hammering sedge, smashing through milky runs of melt-water — had all the discomforts of nightmare. Baj's sore head and sore shoulder seemed to snarl at him as he flew across the tundra, out of the saddle as often as in it.
It was so bad, so painful it became funny, and Baj released himself so he seemed to drift laughing beside that unfortunate rider, reins in his teeth, clutching his bow as he went flying, jouncing, reeling across the country on a great, black, bulge-eyed beast.
"Hattie," the trooper had named her as he'd handed her over, dubious, but giving Baj a leg up.
Baj called "Hattie!..." muffled by bitten leather as he leaned back, hauling on reins apparently set in stone.
Then he gave up, spit the leather out, and went along — as copybooks often had it — "for the ride."
He even managed to draw with an unhappy shoulder and shoot at seven ducks whirring over (though not going much faster than he was) — missed the flock by a distance, and of course that arrow lost in melt-water.
Hattie gave no sign at all of slowing, but Baj, growing used to windy great speed, jolting pain, and eccentric motion, managed to nock a second arrow — shot it at almost random, and out of a great whistling dark ceiling of geese, killed one.
* * *
The day after, they were under the loom of the Wall. The companies, at sunset, camped two miles from its base in a wilderness of foaming rapids not yet frozen, and fractured fallen mountains of blue ice and white ice. Boulders — seeming, in number, a heaped limitless drift of river-bank pebbles — lay with many big as manor houses, and all ground smooth-sided as planed planks.
The milky river rapids, the threads of short-summer's melt — though many ran several bowshots wide — thundered in waterfall down from massive ice-faces, parapets, ramparts here rising two miles high, to crash in fountaining spray, then surf along great dunes of the glacier's till.... That sound, continuous as it had been for centuries — though greater or lesser with freeze and thaw — shook the ground, drum-rolled to echo from the Wall, then rumbled away to the east and west as if the Wall asked and answered questions fundamental, along three thousand miles from ocean to ocean.
Kingdom River, the Mississippi, could have run along the base of that frozen monument, and been no more than moat to a fortress inconceivable.
Somewhat subdued since his ride the previous day — Hattie having been retrieved by her concerned trooper, carefully examined, kissed on the nose, then taken away to the Line to feed — Baj had seen the Wall before, from a headwater branch of the River, though at a much greater distance.... But this was the near thing itself, a miles-high, horizon-wide palace, its vaults ice-white, ice-gray, ice-blue, with glittering sheets of melt in sunset light, their roaring waters carving down great crevasses, shaping ice canyons in the air, persuading immense formations — twice, as he stood watching — to slowly lean... lean out and away from the mass, and topple dreamily down.
Then the thunder and breaking in huge fountains of white spray, while the soaked soil shook under Baj's muk-boots, vibrated like a drumhead.
Nancy came to stand beside him, looking up as he looked up, and raised her voice to nearly a shout. "It isn't a get-used-to thing!"
"No, it isn't." He saw the making of their centuries of cruel weather, the destruction of ancient Warm-times represented by this magnificent thing — that of course proved no Lord Winter, but matters senseless, and much greater than even a God's deciding.
"Come eat," Nancy spoke into his ear, and they walked hand-in-hand over rubble and freezing drift, though air drafty with blowing mist, heavy with the odors of ice and stone.
... Though Baj's aches and injuries, already much less painful, wouldn't have troubled him after a second evening's bellyful of goose and its grease, roasted over horded dried dung — the Wall's earth-shaking, its crashing sounds, did not permit a night's sleep in more than snatches. So he rose — as they all, and the companies rose — weary in a bitter morning, to their rye-porridge.
It seemed to Baj, despite the night — and present noise — that the glacier's towering front had become slightly more peaceful.
"Probably," Richard said when he mentioned it, "— summer melt's ending, so it'll be a little quieter every day. Already be starting to freeze hard in places along the rim. Let three, four WT weeks go by, you could camp here in almost quiet.... And after that, in very quiet, though rivers run beneath it always. — Lord Winter's piss, the Shrikes say."
Errol stood up with porridge on his chin, and pointed over the outwash plain, its ponds and lakes gleaming with night ice. More than a mile away, past a great mounded drumlin-hill, a herd that must have been thousands of caribou was lacing through frozen cirques and melt-leads.... Baj could make out swifter, smaller shapes sifting through the herd's edges. Wolves.
"No better hunting," Nancy said, "— than before the Wall." Her breath steamed in the frigid air.
"For white fox, white weasel, white hare, wolf, white bear, musk-ox and caribou." Patience was packing her possibles. "The white bears also hunt us."
Errol, still staring out at the caribou, was jogging in place as if to chase them.
Nancy clapped her hands for his attention. "Come sit!" He turned to her... wandered over.
"What when he's grown," Baj said, "— and won't come when called?"
Errol stared at Baj, head cocked.
Baj smiled at him, though his sewn right cheek felt stiff as he did. "Yes, I'm talking about you — but not in a bad way."
"He knows
when we talk about him," Nancy said. She tongue-clicked for his attention, patted a space of hide beside her. "Want to come sit?"
Errol stayed where he was, turned his head to watch the caribou.
"And when he's grown?"
"Baj," Richard smiled, rolling his blanket, "none of us are likely to have much more time to grow."
"Why," Baj said, "do I keep forgetting that?"
"Because you wish to." Patience stood, shrugged on her pack.
"Because you're a fool." Nancy came, crouched, and began to tickle him.
"Don't." Baj tried to get up and get away. "— I'm wounded!" But she tickled anyway.
Richard tugged on his furred muk-boots. "We have company."
Four mounted Persons were galloping toward them — their mooses' splayed hooves making rapid dull thump-thump-thumps over drifts of till.
"The General." Richard stood up. Baj and Nancy as well.
Sylvia Wolf-General rode in among them as she had before, as if to use her saber — it seemed to Baj her accustomed approach — and pulled up hard in the same sliding stop as her troopers followed, her big mount tossing strings of clear slobber.
"You," she said, the harsh wood-saw voice. She pointed a long black-nailed finger at him, "— You have had what sword-play I permit, and cost me a Banner-bearer. Never again, in any camp of mine or near it, whatever the future we go to."
"Understood, ma'am." Baj bowed to her.
"Not good enough, Son-of-great-ghosts." She reined her sidling mare-moose still, and stared down at him.
Looking up into that inhuman — more than human — face, a carnivorous mask with lady's eyes, Baj felt sudden admiration for her, and for the Boston-Talents whose centuries of merciless mind-making and science of so-tiny bits had resulted at last in such savage perfection.... And, of course, in his darling Nancy.
"I understand, ma'am — and will obey."
The Wolf-General nodded. "Now, you four and your idiot-boy listen to me. We part here, we to march east along the Wall — and you, to rest the day. Rest, eat your rations, and so be ready to climb with Dolphus-Shrike and his people at first light, tomorrow." Her lip lifted from an eye-tooth. "They are lying Sunshiner barbarians, and certainly treacherous when it suits them. But they are what you have — and you are what they have — so make do." She stilled her restless mount. "... Remember, once you get to Boston's North Gate — you are to wait 'till we reach the south of the city. Only then, when their Constables reinforce south to meet our assault, go in with your Shrikes and do... what must be done."
The Wolf-General sat for a few moments, staring at them. "We will at least divert and keep the Constables busy for you. We will hit them hard, with all our strength. — But I promise, if you fail to free our people's mothers from their lives, I will not fail to free you from yours." She spun the mare-moose rearing, spurred it... and was gone, her troopers after her, back to their busy preparing camp, where trumpets were announcing preparations to march.
"... And Dolphus," Richard said, "— comes right after."
Baj turned and saw the Shrike trotting over icy waste toward them, carrying a heavy pack, his javelins tied in a slender bundle over his shoulder. Seven more savages were coming with him, each in caribou parkies, each burdened, each armed.
"Baj," Patience touched his arm, "— and you, Nancy, both of you guard your tongues with these people. Shrikes are clever, and Dolphus-Shrike speaks very well and has read deeply in Warm-time's copybooks. But a savage he remains — forget it, insult his shade of home ice or his uncle, and he and his men will cut your livers out if feeling kind... or skin your head and let you wander screaming, if not feeling kind."
"Shrikes on the one side," Baj said, "Sylvia Wolf-General on the other."
"— And Boston waiting." Nancy drew her scimitar, and sat with a piece of tallow to tend the blade from icy mist gusting now and then.
"You can joke with the Shrikes," Richard said, "but be sure they know you're joking.... We go with them to likely kill a few of their sisters."
"We'll be very courteous." Baj found he was feeling fairly well... no longer as sore, head or shoulder, though the cracked cheekbone was tender, and likely would be for a while.
"Good morning!" Dolphus-Shrike trotted to them.
"Good morning, Chieftain," Baj bowed.
"Ah..." Dolphus blew out frosting breath. "The Champion has been warned not to upset such a collection of ice-dwelling brutes as we are."
"To a point," Baj said.
"Of course. With everyone, it's only to a point before points come out." He gestured his men forward. "Here's Henry... Marcus... Christopher... Paul, and so forth. These last three are too worthless to name." The last three — all like the others, short stocky men with blond or ginger hair, round-faced, light-eyed, and apparently pleasant — grinned file-toothed, and nodded.
Each Shrike was burdened by a bulky pack, weighty rolled hides, and thick coils of greased, braided leather line. They also belted pairs of light adze-hatchets (hatchets for ice, it seemed to Baj, since each narrow head had a curved back-spike), and carried as well, a row of steel hooks, snap-circles, and grapnels clinking along a rawhide bandoleer.
"And we don't go today?" Patience said.
Dolphus shook his head. "No. A day of rest is in order for ice-virgins such as yourselves — though I know you're familiar, lady. A day of rest, first — and it seemed to me we might as well camp together. Begin to understand each other."
"Fair enough," Baj said.
The Shrike grinned. "I'm so glad you agree. And, Warm-times' 'by-the-bye,' we'll bring more burden for you. Rope lines, seal-jerky and so forth. We cannot carry your everything."
"Again, fair enough," Baj said.
"Now..." Dolphus and his men began to shed their packs and equipment, one tossing chunks of dung on the fire to increase its heat."— Now, I don't know what Sylvia and her people told you of our timing. I wasn't invited to the General's pavilion, being only a Sunriser tribesman. .. . But this is how we'll go. We climb the Wall, which will take," he looked them over, "will take at least six or seven days, with possibly a halt to rest you." He smiled. "— After which, we meet friends, then run the ice certainly more than two WT weeks north and east to Boston Township, killing any unluckies we encounter along the way, to keep our secret."
"More than two weeks?" Baj said. It seemed unfair to have come so far, and still have farther to go. Traveling over the ice...
Dolphus-Shrike nodded. "Oh, yes. — Then, with luck, and after a time snow-buried by the North Gate, we'll find the Guard come up south of the city to join us, slow as always, and with a longer way to go.... They'll have marched up the Crease, where the glacier's split open, to leave their mounts and find easy climbing. Then met our freighter-sleds — twelve teamers — to accommodate all their supplies, their armored numbers, their... notions of civilized campaigning."
He turned to look at the Wall, was silent for a moment, then turned back. "In the morning, we will not linger. So, at first light, you'll finish furring; see your blankets are rolled tight and tied where you buckle your packs; strap swords — and that ax, Captain — to your packs to be out of the way, climbing.... And you will wear the mittens. They'll be corded to your sleeves, so when you need your hands bare to climb, take them off, then mitten-up right after. If a finger or toe turns black, we cut it off. If a hand or foot — the same. And who slows us too much, we also cut off." A smile. "I hope I don't sound cruel."
One of his men — Marcus — said, "No, no, never cruel," and the other Shrikes grinned. They seemed to Baj a merry group.
"A last few matters," Dolphus said, kicked stones away, and sat by the fire. "We will lend you ice hatchets, two to each, and expect their return. We will also lend you strap-spikes for your muk-boots, and expect those to be returned.... And lady," to Patience, "if you can Walk-in-air up the Wall, more power to you; you're with us now, not the Guard." It was the first time Baj had heard that copybook phrase actually used. More power to you..
.
"And eat," Marcus-Shrike said, settling alongside his chief with the other tribesmen.
"Yes," Dolphus said. "Eat rich while you can; we'll hunt ducks, today."
"Drink water." Marcus.
"Yes, drink a lot of water." Dolphus took something — a piece of seal-blubber — from a parky pocket, held it out to the fire for a moment, then began chewing it. "And now, Tender-ones — rest, doze, nap like babies.... Oh, is there one among you who considers him or herself useful at pick-up sticks? Would care, perhaps, to wager?"
"I might," Patience said.... And that game had just commenced, when trumpets announced from the camp. Then drums. And as Baj, Nancy, Richard and several Shrikes stood to watch, the leading elements of the Guard swung from their pebble-drift camp, and marched out, unit by unit, splashing through milky run-off on their way.
Scouts were trotting south of east, to come to easier marching along the Wall. Banners came behind them — and among them, Baj could see the Wolf-General quite clearly. She seemed to be laughing at something one of her staff-officers had said.
And behind her, in long columns, the companies marched in step, arms and armor gleaming in morning light. The bloods of infantry — bear and wolf — their drums thumping, were spaced between Supply's pack-moose and two-wheel wagons, and the trotting squadrons of near-Sunriser troopers... whose trumpeters, loping past the ranks, sounded the first notes of "Yanking Tootle" as they rode.
Watching those formations... those solders go — old Sergeant Givens certainly perched on a wagon, with his barrels and baked goods — Baj felt his fathers standing beside him.
* * *
Just-before-dawn was announced by an avalanche thundering off the Wall — to startle all of them, even the Shrikes.
"Wall calls," a sleepy tribesman said, and awake, the Shrikes, with Baj and the others, gathered around a fresh-started dung fire to warm themselves a little in freezing silvery air, and eat frost-coated pieces of yesterday's ducks.
Food finished, and all having scattered into the landscape to do the necessary, equipping began of possibles, extra coiled leather line, rolled blankets, fat leather sacks of seal-jerky and strips of frozen blubber. Ice hatchets, cords looped to their handles, were thrust through belts, weapons all strapped firm to back-packs, and full canteens and water-skins swung on cords beneath parkies to keep their water liquid.
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