"Where's Nancy?"
"Tending the women, Baj." Collected and herself again, as if there'd been no begging for her life, Patience stared down as the long columns, to called commands, came to a march, march — and halt, almost below the gallery wall. Halberds swung up, then were grounded on the road's ice with a thud and rattle like a hailstorm striking.
A number of men in the formation were naked but for bronze breast-and-backs. Three of those — standing together to the right of the ranks — looked up, searching the galleries... saw Baj and the others at the second-floor parapet, and pointed them out.
"They've come for us," Richard said. "And now they see how few we are."
"Yes," Patience said, "now they see. But the West-Gate commanders must have heard before, that some invaders were already in the town, and were going to the Pens."
"Panic... rumors." Baj watched the men below; the long ranks were shifting uneasily. He could hear voices over the cavern's wind.
"Yes." Patience nodded. "They must have feared to leave a possible great number of us at their backs — so came the long march here."
"Well," Dolphus said, "they've succeeded. We're not at their backs — and hardly any number of us at all."
"Then why," Baj said, "aren't they coming up?" The two great warning bells still rang over Boston — but drums and trumpets sounded nearer, and faint howls of victory.
Below — despite commands, and one officer's threatening halberd — the ordered files of Constables were becoming more ragged. Their ranks now were only roughly ranks as, here and there, men left formation to walk... then trot back the way they'd come.
"They see — they hear — the city lost," Patience said, "and are afraid for their families in Township-west.... Do you realize what we've done? We've done an accidental wonder! Diverted these from the defense, and so let Sylvia Wolf-General come into the city!"
"Perhaps," Richard said. "... I suppose the impossible might have became possible, when these men marched here, instead of to South Gate."
Below, even with filtering away, hundreds of the West-Gate Constables of Boston still stood in their ranks, waiting commands for a battle already lost.
"They will not come up," Baj said.
"From your lips," Dolphus, with an apt and ancient quote, "— to God's ear."
A woman cried out, back in the Pens. As if that cry had sent her, Nancy came out onto the gallery. "Constables are here, but don't come up?"
"Not yet," a Shrike said.
"We have a woman dying." There was blood soaking Nancy's parky sleeves. "Another was, and so sick I cut her throat to ease her away. Also there's one with the strings to her left leg cut so she'll never walk again, but hobble."
"Do you need me, Nancy?" Patience said.
"No. There's no more good to do except by Guard-doctors." Nancy turned to go back to the pens. "Baj — call me if the Constables come up."
"I will, but they won't."
"No," Patience said, softly as to herself. "No, they won't."
Baj touched Patience's hand, where it rested on the ice parapet. "Still, sadness for you," he said, "even with winning."
"Yes... sadness." There were tears in her black eyes. Ice-chips melting on obsidian. "But this is nothing undeserved. If not now, then later — and if not Sylvia, then some other Moonriser general. The Guards, our soldier Persons, our sharpened edges, were bound to slice us someday...." She turned to him. "And you, Prince. Do you forgive me?"
"I forgive none of us."
The silence following became oddly richer. "Listen!" a Shrike said, and all then heard the quiet of Boston's great bells tolling no more.
That quiet was filled with distant clamor and trumpet calls, an approaching rumble of kettle-drums — and below, the clatter of halberds dropped on ice as the last of the Constables' formations broke apart... and men ran the crevasse road, back to their homes.
Only several officers, naked but for half-armor, stood like statues on the ice.
"Run, you fools," Richard said, but softly.
"They won't." Baj shook his head. "Their blunder has brought their soldiers here, wasting battle time, when they would have made the difference at South Gate. They've marched their men — and their city, as it was — into only history."
Turning from the rampart, he felt a sudden knife-cut of disappointment, at being certain to live on as who he'd become."... Now, everything is won, except the lives of the women we killed."
Richard muttered something — reached over suddenly to grip Baj's arm, and shook him hard. "We are not Weather-Greats, to know what was to come! You are certainly not." Another hard shake. "Don't be so proud of sorrow!"
"... I promise," Baj said. "If you don't break my arm." Guards Persons had appeared at the crest of the crevasse bridge. Banners, with steel glinting under. Moonriser trumpets called over the glittering city — and under their music, a rising chorus, the shouts, the howls of Person soldiers come at last into Ancient Boston-in-the-Ice.
* * *
Sylvia Wolf-General was bandaged. A wound, a slash at the side of her throat, had almost killed her. Just above the mail gorget, there was stained cloth against pale skin and blood-stuck gray fur.
She stood with her officers at a great blue-ice table in the almost transparent entrance rotunda of what had been the Township's Clear Hall of Perfect Justice, its polished floor, walls, and ceiling, gleaming wonders under lamps whose evening light was no different than morning's. The building's frozen perfection kept, apparently, by having no iron stoves vented near, so the cold was penetrating as knife points.
Baj and the others had passed, beside the entrance, a tall, statue: a woman with a sword, sculpted in green ice, her eyes carved as blindfolded. They'd passed her... then, as they came in through massive iron doors, had seen a great mechanical clock built of wood and spring-machinery that whirred and clicked. A silver crescent moon was rising above its figure twelve.
Baj had assumed the machine's gear-cuts and wheels were fine-powdered with black lead — like ice-ships' rigging — rather than oiled, to ease their rubbing in such cold.
.. . The General's near-violet eyes were the beautiful same, but weary at the end of a fighting day. Her voice, still a rip-saw, sliced through the silence that had at last succeeded baying hunting calls... occasional shrieks down the long, frozen streets of Boston, where most citizens, stunned, huddled in their ice apartments.
"An accidental favor is no favor at all," she said, with a flash of fang in that murderous mask — to show Baj, Nancy, and Richard, to show Dolphus and his surviving Shrikes how little the luring away of the West-Gate Constables had mattered. "We would have won through, even with those other soldiers there."
"No," Baj said to her, "— you would not. You won barely, as it was." His shoulder, where the glaive-hook had caught him, hurt when he moved his arm. His injuries, all their injuries, kept modest by luck and sudden assault — also by sacrificed Errol.. . the sacrificed Shrikes — had been hastily bandaged and were reminding now, stiffening in clotted blood.
"You say she lies!" A wolf-blood officer took a step toward him, almost-hand on his saber's hilt. This was not the handsome officer; the handsome one was missing, as was the General's grim aunt — both, Baj supposed, lying with, the mounds of dead piled at South Gate. Sunrisers... Moonrisers, now lying brothers in arms.
"Don't touch hilt to me," Baj said to the officer, "unless you want to die." Speaking out of disgust with killing, so one more seemed to matter not at all. Behind him, he heard Dolphus-Shrike murmur, "Uh-oh."
The Wolf-General said, "Leave it, Ronald," and the officer took his hand from his sword and stepped back. "... Very well," she said. "It was a possible small favor."
"I ask one in return," Baj said.
"And that is?"
"A woman I killed at the Pens... her name was Mary-Shearwater. She asked that her father be told how she died, and bravely. And that she loved him."
"Ah. And the father is...?"
"A t
ribal elder. Simon."
"I know the far-north Shearwaters." Another officer, scarred and short-muzzled. "Don't know this Simon, though."
The Wolf-General sighed. "Well, see the message is taken wherever to the man, with my gratitude and commendation for her courage.... As if there were nothing more important for us to do."
"Thank you," Baj said.
"I don't require thanks for acts of honor." Sylvia stood surveying them, her eyes improbably gentle, her gray crest stained where blood had spattered. The bronze breast-and-back she wore was dented, and chopped through in a narrow place at her left side, where a halberd's swing had struck her.
"Are you hurt at your side, there?" Baj said.
The question seemed to startle her — certainly startled her officers.
After a moment, she said, "Not badly."
"Your aunt...?"
"... Dead."
Baj saw in the Wolf-General's partly-human face, in her entirely human eyes, exactly what he had seen in Cooper's as the traitor king charged down upon him — a recognition of the mingled pride and sorrow of leadership. And he knew he would have seen the same in his First-father's face — his Second-father's too, if he'd been wise enough to look for it.
Sylvia Wolf-General licked her chops. "Where is the woman, Patience?"
"Gone to her son, ma'am."
"An oddity, I understand."
"As who is not?" Baj said.
Sylvia laughed, jaws wide and grinning — then shook her head. "Sunriser arrogance," she said. "But Moonrisers will rule in Boston now. And more decently than was the case under you Simple-bloods."
"To be hoped," Baj said.
The Wolf-General stared at him a moment more, then bent to her ice table, its sheaves and stacks of southern paper. "I have a year's orders to give," she said, and seemed to be talking to herself, her harsh voice softer. "— Victory is more trouble than defeat."
She said nothing more for a while, and Nancy tugged at Baj's sleeve to be going. Dolphus and his Shrikes shifted, restless.
Sylvia looked up. "Yes. It is time and almost past time, Prince, for you to leave us." Her breath frosted in the ice building's air. "— Leave this Township, and New England entirely." Her curved black nails tapped a sheet of paper. "With our thanks, of course. Our thanks, and generous payment to you and your companions for your service."
"I would be... an awkward guest?"
"You would be a guest who might someday encourage interference from your family's old friends in the Rule, from its fine navy come up along our coast. Interference I will not have."
"And so..."
"And so," Sylvia Wolf-General said, "the best of fortune attend you in your travels. In yours," she glanced at Nancy, "and your companions'."
"A day?"
"Oh, Prince," Sylvia smiled, "take two days. Rest... enjoy a hot bath. Did you know these people have a public bath? An icehouse with many iron tubs over iron stoves — burning black-rock like their others."
"Good news."
"Yes. Civilization, and I intend to enjoy it. A bath-house open to the ice-cavern's air, I understand, to prevent heat and steam from melting matters, but still wonderful."
"Then," Baj bowed to her, "since baths and travel preparations will take up our time, I'll say farewell, General."
"Farewell," Nancy said.
"You've found luck, Nancy?" the General said.
"I've found luck."
Sylvia Wolf-General nodded. "And to you," she glanced at Richard, "I return a deserter's honor, so you may style yourself 'Captain' again, and not wince for shame."
"... Thank you, ma'am."
"So, you — you three, I assume, with any of these tribesmen who care to join you — may have your two days' rest. But if I ever see you after, Prince, I will have your head.... A matter of state."
"Understood," Baj said, and as he turned to leave, paused. "Both my fathers would have enjoyed meeting you, General."
Sylvia bent to her papers again. "As to enjoyment, I can't say. But I believe they would have found themselves... occupied."
CHAPTER 29
Baj knew he had the left-shoulder thing, and another, bandaged, but was surprised — as Nancy, Richard, and perhaps the Shrikes were surprised — by minor wounds they hadn't known they'd received, until weapons were racked, and bloodstained and sweat-stiffened furs peeled off and laid on wooden benches at the baths.
The porticoed row of huge iron tanks — braced over stoves holding seething trays of coals — was already filling with bellowing guardsmen given temporary passes. Scarred, their knot-knuckled hands splashing, they thrashed and rolled in steaming water, some skins sleek and shining, some matted with soaked pelt.
Baj led the others, naked — Nancy uniquely beautiful, Richard very different, the Shrikes only pale heavily-muscled human — to a far tank still empty. Roiling clouds of steam were rising even to Boston's high-hanging lamps, so they glowed misted-gold. There, the great cavern's freezing wind pulled the steam to pieces, streamed it away under vaults of blue and diamond ice.
They balanced at the walkway's edge, and plunged in. Dolphus and his Shrikes, strangers to bathing except at rare hot springs, jumped last and reluctantly — but then were most pleased, yelling loudest as they thrashed and sputtered in deep, milky, hot water, the tank's iron bottom too hot to touch toe to for more than a moment.
Smelling of the glacier's mineral skirt, the water licked gently at bruises and sprains, soaked bandages, opened clotted injuries, and brought out tiny plumes of blood as they bathed.... Most of those slashes had been to wrists and forearms, though here and there a steel point had pecked through furs unnoticed, only bloody-marking instead of deep enough for death. The hot water opened all those shy places, and took strained muscles in its soft hands, gently stroked and twisted them to ease.... They all, bobbing together in mineral lather and steam, moaned with pleasure as if at sex.
Just surfacing from a peaceful underwater kingdom, stretching and turning in ringing pressing heat, Baj rose to vaporous air to find Richard, a soaked and shaggy monument, floating like an island beside him. The dark, bear's eyes examined Baj through drifting steam. "... We are alive," Richard said, took a fanged mouthful of milky water, and spit it to the side. "We are alive, Baj, and have won. None of our dead fighters — and none of the ladies who died — would begrudge us."
"I hope not," Baj said, to shouts and splashes from tanks nearby.
"Hope not what?" Nancy busily swimming to him. Determined swimming in a Vulpine style, pretty head held high, red crest drenched dark, her slender hands thrashing before her.
"Hope not to be drowned by a fox-girl."
"Liar," she said, splashed to him, grappled, and kissed his nose.
"I have to teach you to swim Austral."
"I know how to swim."
"Yes, sweetheart — and you're beautiful, but Austral is faster through the water. And in Kingdom River, it was swim fast or freeze."
"I am pretty." She lay back, floating in his arms.
"Very pretty.... Let me see where you were hurt."
She lifted a slender arm with only a faint fringe of wet fur to her elbow — and displayed a soggy bandage above the wrist, oozing red. "See?" She made a small fist. "No strings sliced."
"What else?"
"Little cuts... nothing. And I was kicked; somebody kicked my leg when I fell."
"The arm needs to be cleaned with vodka, and perhaps sewn."
"We all need sewing. I saw where you were hurt." She hugged him closer, touched his shoulder's soaked bandage with a finger, and stared at him so near her golden eyes went slightly crossed.
"— What's funny?" Lisping her s a little.
"We're funny."... Perhaps funny, Baj thought, as they floated together — and certainly, except for poor Errol, very lucky. Luck and surprise had kept them alive, though bruised and whittled.
Nancy sighed and lay back into his arms. "Sad child Errol," she said, as if she'd read his mind. "He was always with us
, yet not with us. I miss him, gone only this morning. I look around, here and there, to see that he's behaving...."
"He saved your life, comb-honey. May Lady Weather warm him for it."
"You bad man." She nipped the side of his neck. "You do not pray to any Great!"
"I make a Thanks-exception, for the gift of your life."
.. . Baj was first out, climbing from the tank to the wooden walkway — dripping, with fine threads of blood lacing down his forearms — and down his back from the left shoulder.
"A duty call, sweetheart," he said, to Nancy's questioning look. And to all of them, drifting — wallowing, in Richard's case — he raised his voice over the guardsmen's racket. "Meet at the troopers' mess .,.."
His wounds — no bone chipped, no tendon or spurt-artery sliced through, though one had been slightly nicked on his right forearm — were unbandaged and cleaned at one of the bath-house tables with vodka (the shoulder-cut stinging worst), then sewn and rebandaged by a Guard medic with a dog's dark and sympathetic eyes.
Treated, then passed along for new issue to a grumbling quartermaster of the Guard — advantage apparently being taken of soldiers and commanders actually clean — Baj was surprised to be directed to the senior officers' benches. "Staff's orders for you an' yours, Sunriser. — Travelin' goods."
There, he was clothed in underthings, foot-wraps, and buckskin. Then fitted with a light, superbly wrought mail hauberk and its Corinthian helmet, and dressed in rich furs (lynx, fisher-cat, and wolverine) from a great heap of all sizes of luxury plate and mail, fine cloaks, trousers, and jackets — treasures no doubt courtesy of Boston's plundered shops and storerooms.... And, with some difficulty finding a fit, was presented new muk-boots as well.
Washed, injuries stitched, dressed so well and warmly — and impressed by the Guard's attention to such matters, with a desperate battle won only hours before — Baj went down the bath pavilion's carved-ice staircase, his new fisher-cat cloak thrown back as he buckled his sword-belt. He noticed, among the several sewn-cut pains and muscle strains, a deep ache in his left hip, bruised by some blow he couldn't recall.
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