Mitchell Smith - Moonrise

So, the little rabbit's life, its reluctant gift, seemed to have renewed his.

He climbed the hill's sloping shoulder fairly fast, his sodden cloak slowly drying on his back. Climbed until he reached a bare rock knoll, scrambled up it… then stood to look behind him down a landscape of valley unfolding from valley, woods along the watercourses just beginning to green into spring. Bajazet felt the oddest longing for the River, many miles west and out of sight, though he supposed its silver might still be seen from these hill's highest crests… Since he'd come to it as a baby, pursued even then – carried from Caravanserai by a Kipchak bowman and his wife, to save him horse-trampling under Lord Ek-Tam's execution carpet – ever since he'd come to it, the Mississippi had flowed through his life, had always been near enough to ride to in half a day, as if always waiting to offer its current's infinite strength for him to lean on.

Standing, watching west, he saw something very small and bright in forest at the foot of a hill, a winking sparkle – certainly off Light Cavalry's sand-polished mail.

Likely only a troop, no more; the king would want swiftness in the chase, not some trundling array. The horsemen would be in skirmish order, as hounds and woodsmen ranged wet woods to recover his trace.

… The glitter faded into green. At that distance, Bajazet had seen no pennants, no banners, though King Gareth's red ensign would be there. They'd have stranger hounds with them, now, and foresters promised much if they tracked him – perhaps promised death if they didn't.

Bajazet climbed off the knoll, and – trotting, then walking, then trotting again – traveled as if the eastward slopes were level ground, and fear was feast enough, with every strength to give him.

That night, drowsing by a small, guarded fire, he heard distant trumpets – or the distant echo of them – sounding Sleep… sleep, you weary soldiers.

A beautiful call.

Through the next day to evening, the air grew colder with Lord Winter's northern wind – certainly one of his last.

The wind gusted… gusted… then gathered strength along hill ridges to come at Bajazet whining like a wolf to tear his warmth away, so he staggered, his frosted breath streaming, cloak flapping as he bent to find shelter in blowing evergreens. There would be no fire; no small fire could live in that wind, and any larger might be seen by the hunters, roll smoke into the air to be noticed for miles.

No fire. By full dark, wrapped in his cloak and curled close as he could crowd under a hemlock's draping branches, hands tucked under his buckskin jerkin and shirt-hem to warm at his belly, Bajazet felt his feet numbing in his boots.

The wind's noise was a deep-throated humming roar as gusts came through the trees. It grew colder… a cold seeming deeper still when cloud-mottled moonlight filtered through the evergreen's foliage.

Bajazet huddled, hugged himself, and shivered. It was odd how difficult it was to keep his teeth from chattering like a chilled child's. He thought if he could sleep he might be warmer – and tried, but the wind kept waking him… shouting in his ear, stinging, burning the skin of his face beneath the cloak's hood. The night grew still colder, perhaps as cold as Lord Peter Wilson had claimed the great void to be, that held the planets and the stars.

It began to be frightening. Too late now to build a fire – to be marked or not; no fire but a burning forest could live in that wind.

Glass-hours later – the wind still howling in moonlight – he could no longer feel his feet, his face. Then, Bajazet didn't wish to sleep, was afraid he would die if he did. Didn't wish it. Didn't wish it… but the cold drove him down.

… He woke to a still and frozen world – but was not frozen. Something weighed on him, was tucked under and around him in heavy harsh weave. He started, sat half up amid the hemlock's hanging branches, and found a thick blanket – thick as a thumb, and goat's wool by its oily odor – draped over him. The heavy fabric was frozen stiff as planking, and Bajazet lay for a moment trying to make sense of it, of its being there at all – then wrestled it off, footed it away to roll from under the hemlock and stand trembling… the rapier drawn before he'd thought of it, its lean steel swaying in gray dawn's light, seeking an enemy.

"Who?!" He swung in a circle, his rapier's blade whispering in the turn through icy air, and drew his left-hand dagger also.

"Who…?" Bajazet expected amused foresters – hard men to have chased fast enough through the days, then through a freezing night to catch him. Foresters, and an eager trooper or two. There'd be no killing them all.

Bajazet waited, his morning shadow his only company, and tried to stretch a little on guard, ease stiff muscles for the fight. The left-hand dagger… remember the dagger. The Master always reminding – the rapier for flourishing parry and thrust, but the dagger for close and finish. The Master before – the honored Butter – had preached the knife.

Bajazet took deep breaths, eased his shoulders, lowered his points a little off guard to relax his arms and wrists. There was no sound but sunrise breeze through evergreens and a single birch standing alone up the hill. No laughter… no moccasin-boots and cavalry boots kicking to him through winter-crumpled leaves and pine needles.

He realized, after a while – when little hedge-birds, gray and brown, flitted casually by… then back again – he realized he was alone.

But not alone last night. Blanketed against the cold – but by whom? By that creature seen (or imagined) perching in a tree? But there had seemed (or dreamed) only cruel smiling observation there, not friendship… Bajazet knew of no friend in Eastern forests. Perhaps a single fast-chasing huntsman, ghosting beside, tormenting with a cat's sense of humor until the king's men caught up? Or, more likely, preserving King Gareth's prey at the king's orders, for an extended torturing pursuit… to a satisfactory conclusion.

And if so, if Cooper intended the chase prolonged, he would have his wish.

Bajazet sheathed his weapons, crawled under the hemlock to retrieve his pack, bow, and quiver. Then he tugged the cold-stiff blanket out, rolled the thick wool lengthwise with some difficulty, tied each end with lengths of rawhide cord, then draped the blanket over his left shoulder, brought the rolled ends down and across, and tied them together at his right side. It made for some awkwardness with his pack, and the bow and quiver over his right shoulder, but an awkwardness that guarded him from any more of Lord Winter's departing rages.

He was hungry again – the little rabbit's gift of life had worn away – but not too hungry to run. Let the king's game player follow fast, and find a broadhead arrow waiting in the hills.

… By dark, a distance east, and down-slope in rough woods where streaks of snow still lingered in trees' shadows, Bajazet lay curled in the mocking gift's thick wool – his empty belly cramped – and stayed awake for a long while, waiting, listening. Then he drifted to sleep and a dream of Susan Clay. In the dream, she did him favors she'd refused before – and fed him, too, or at least offered food he never quite settled to eat. Bread pudding in a blue bowl, with thick, hot, imperial chocolate poured over it.

That must have been an end-of-sleep dream, because he woke to a misty morning, saying "Shit," as he realized the pudding was insubstantial and gone.

Bajazet sat up in the blanket – and bumped his head lightly on a small basket dangling just above him off a hickory sapling's limb.

At that tap, he thrashed out of the blanket, got to his knees with his dagger out – and saw nothing moving in the woods, no one standing or crouched… His possibles were as they had been beside him. But there was now that little basket, rough woven of twigs and winter-dried lengths of vine.