Mitchell Smith - Moonrise

There were, no doubt, good reasons for Bajazet to have watched the end, to have seen the River's men, the River's new king – a traitor beyond question – brought down and butchered. But those reasons were apparently not good enough. He closed his eyes, stood blind, and only listened to the slowly fading sounds of shouts, shrieks of agony, the silvery ring of fighting-steel… And, after a long while, silence except for distant quiet conversation, and a wounded man begging for his mother.

… When he opened his eyes, the warning tribesman was gone, and Bajazet's legs – strong enough to have carried him many miles of forest and hills for many days – now became too weak to stand on, and he sat by the stream in sparse, damp spring grass, feeling sick with relief at this rescue – if it was to be a rescue. The hill tribes had no cause to love him for his own sake – perhaps less cause to love him for either of his fathers'.

The morning – its sky's clear vibrating blue barely streaked with yesterday's clouds – seemed extraordinarily important, its every detail perfectly etched, its breeze the perfection of air. He was, perhaps, to live… and so young, possibly live for years. He bowed his head in his hands and breathed… breathed, felt his heart stroking gently in his chest as if making him promises… promises of a future.

Gentle fingers touched, stroked the side of his face. "Poor, tired… tired prince," the Made-girl, Nancy, said.

Bajazet raised his head, and saw the narrow valley lying thick with dead and dying. A slaughtered horse, a black, dammed the little stream so it murmured, trickling to left and right.

"Not hurt with any new hurt?" The Made-girl knelt beside him, narrow head tilted in inquiry, watching him with lemon-yellow eyes.

"I have no new hurts," Bajazet said, and though his side ached, and he felt many sore scrapes and deep bruises from falling down the mountainside, told the truth.

… Unsteady, he got to his feet, and fumbled to sheathe steel in a valley where all steel was streaked with blood and other matter. Then he followed Nancy up into the valley's brush, past drifts of tribesmen – all already summer-naked to please Lady Weather's daughter, their greased furs left piled in distant village huts. White-skinned, brown-skinned, and black, some were leaping in celebration, whirling, chirping and trilling their totems' calls. Tall men with grease-plaited hair, feather-tattooed, they seemed starved of everything but ropy muscle, restless movement, and scarred ferocity. They smelled of wood smoke.

Guided up the valley's northern slope to a small clearing almost private with budding thicket, Bajazet saw his gift blanket once again, lying unrolled on the ground – went to it, and fell onto its thick leaf-scattered warmth. Then the world and all its sorrows seemed to roll away beneath him, so both screams of a tortured prisoner, and shouts of celebration, faded into sleep.

… He woke in cool misty morning – wakened by calls below, along the valley's little stream. He'd slept yesterday's noon, afternoon, and all the night away.

"Oh, for a great bow." A deep, deep voice. The big Made-man, Richard, stood massive past Bajazet's blanket, staring down the valley toward the calls, the shouting. Seen from behind, Richard might have been a festival bear, dressed in huge shirt and pantaloons, and trained perhaps to dance slow measures. "A great bow," he said.

Bajazet saw the boy – Errol? – also standing, watching… and got up himself, though slowly and with difficulty, he was so sore and stiff. His left side was very tender – ribs badly bruised, but apparently not broken – and his arm hurt, where the girl had bitten him.

All this pain, of course, spoke of life and living, so Bajazet felt wonderfully well.

Standing, staring down the valley, he saw an oddness. Spears were fountaining up… hundreds of them being thrown high in the air. Some the short, stabbing assags, others – light javelins – being hurled remarkably high.

"There," Richard rumbled, and Bajazet saw a fluttering thing sailing up the valley's air. A cloak or coat was flapping in the wind. Sheaves of spears, and a few hurled hatchets, rose to meet it… almost reached… then fell short.

The Made-girl, Nancy, came running through a shrub tangle – bounding through it, really, beast-blood perhaps revealed in that light, swift, ease of movement. "The Boston person – from the River!" She took Bajazet's jerkin hem and hauled at him. "Come! Come and hide!"

He went with her a few steps, then stopped despite her tugging. A woods-wise man might conceal himself in this thick scrub from anyone on the ground, even from troopers on horseback – as the tribesmen had shown – but not from a creature flying over.

"No use," he said, and the girl let go. "And I doubt he cares to search for me."

And that seemed so, for the flying person – though not, supposedly, flying, but rather spurning the ground away and behind him by the trick of a talent-piece in his brain – that person patrolled up the valley, then back down it again, apparently observing the scattered ruin of the king's troopers. The ruin of the king… And all the way up and back, the futile spears rose to almost catch him.

"Oh," Richard said again, "- oh, for a great bow."

And, as if the sailor had heard and taken notice, he swerved up the valley's northern slope in a long, slow, curving path through the air… Bajazet could clearly see, even at the distance, the long dark-blue coat-tails flapping in the slow wind of passage… the broad-brim blue hat set firmly on the man's head.

"I know him," he said. "Tom MacAffee. Ambassador from New England."

"Yes," Nancy said, "we know of him. All-Irish, and sent from Boston to be cruel." She made a face, which made her face seem odder. "- He is who helped your foolish new king to be a king."

"And how would you know this?"

"We know because a Boston Person told us so – and we know because the king expected this MacAffee to help hunting you from high, and was angry he was late coming up-river… The officers said that in camp." The Made-girl cupped a small ear, an ear like any girl's, to illustrate listening. "- So their soldiers heard and said it also. From the soldiers, to the foresters. From the foresters, to the sweat-slaves – and those spoke of it when shoveling shit along John trench, while a half-breed Sparrow listened." The girl's lip lifted from a white canine. "We are not all as foolish as princes."

Bajazet had already begun to set this oddity straight – had his mouth open to do it – when he recalled Noel Purse, years before, on a Westfield hunt, advising him and Newton how to go on with the ladies. "Don't argue with 'em. You do, an' lose – you lose. You do an' win – still, you lose."

Newton had looked concerned at this bad news. "But Guard-Captain, there has to be a way…"

"Oh, there is, Prince – agree."

With this grim advice, Newton and Bajazet had ridden thoughtful through Westfield woods, wild boar forgotten.

"Well," Bajazet said to the Made-girl, "- at times, I have been foolish."

Noel Purse was instantly proved correct. Nancy smiled, looking almost pretty. "Oh, as princes go, I suppose you're better than most." That slight lisp there on all the s's.

Richard began to pace heavily a few steps to the left, then to the right. Bajazet had seen caged snow-tigers, caged bears, pace in just that way at Island, though not muttering, "Has Mountain Jesus no lightning for that Boston thing?"

Again, it seemed as if the man Walking-in-air had heard – for suddenly as he'd swerved across the valley, he turned his curving course to fly almost directly to them.

"Beneath the blanket!" Nancy yanking at Bajazet's jerkin again.