Mitchell Smith: Moonrise

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…?"