Mitchell Smith - Moonrise

"I see…" Bajazet said. "And also saw three of your 'Persons' killing a tribesman. Eating him."

"You did not."

"I said, I did. Three of the big riding things – gone feral, I suppose."

"Mampies," Richard said.

"Oh… Mamps." The girl made a face. "They're not Persons."

"They are," Richard said.

"Well, they're very stupid, and have no souls."

"They're stupid, Nancy," Richard said. "But they have souls."

… Listening to more on the question of Mampies and their possible souls – a subject that appeared not to interest the boy, Errol – Baj was content to sit quiet at the fire. He stretched gingerly, testing his aching ribs.

Through the day, and into evening – having polished his sword and dagger blades, then rubbed them against rusting with a tallow-piece from his pack – Bajazet drowsed by the Odd-three's fire. The past days' weariness seemed to have settled into his bones… and he was very hungry.

At nightfall, a battle-injured tribesman came limping, and tossed thick chunks of horse meat to them. – Tossed, it seemed to Bajazet, as one might toss meat to hounds, after a hunt. No other tribesman came near.

… While he ate horse steak, cooked surprisingly well-done, considering his company – chewing, swallowing slowly as he could to keep such richness down a starved belly – Bajazet found himself calm as if he had a future certain, as if all uncertainty had been worn out of him while he'd fled with death trotting at his heels.

Now, there was the strangeness of his met companions – a man, with some part bear; a girl, some part coyote or fox; a silent boy, part… something. Their strangeness, and the suddeness of the traitor king's death, amounting to life for him – at least life enough for a meal of horse meat.

Later, the four of them rested, fire-watching without talk, listening – at least Bajazet listening – to the tribesmen singing down the valley. Sparrows, Thrushes… His Second-father had once mentioned that some western, and all the eastern tribes, had years before quit their tribal names for the names of birds, though no one knew why.

"Perhaps," King Sam had said, "- since Middle-Kingdom and Boston have sometimes harried and broken them, East from the river, South from the ice, perhaps the tribes renamed to leave their defeats, their losses behind to start again, feathered for a different future."

The Sparrows, at their many fires along the valley stream, were singing all together a slow, measured anthem, with no harmonies attempted. The music echoed in soft strophes from the hillsides, as if their ancestors sang with them… Listening, Bajazet thought he recognized an ancient Warm-time hymn. "The Glory In Mine Eyes, is the Coming of the Lord…"

The Boston-woman returned in the dark with a scabbarded sword in her hand, as well as the other at her belt. She put back her coat-tails, and sat cross-legged at their fire without asking. – Making, to Bajazet, a fourth oddity present. It felt… unsettling to be in this company, while the only true-blood humans paraded the night naked, with filed teeth, singing.

"Woods-hatchets are handy," the Boston-woman said, "- and knives necessary, but they never become the friends swords do. Though they say great Warm-time Bowie was loved by such a belt-blade." Smiling, she lifted the slim, sheathed scimitar from her lap, leaned through the fire's smoke, and handed it to the Made-girl, Nancy.

"- Tom MacAffee was a lazy man, and weak-wristed for being so bulky; this weapon is no heavier than mine. I think, with fox's muscle aiding, you'll find it very comfortable to swing."

The Made-girl said, "Thank you, Lady Patience-Lodge. Thank you dearly," drew some inches of fine steel free of tooled red leather, then bent to kiss it.

So, it was some small portion of fox's blood that Nancy had. Now, Bajazet could see it in her clearly… The yellow slit-pupiled eyes, and russet hair soft as fur. The sharp-featured face and long jaw, its white eyeteeth still making his bitten forearm ache.

"Patience Riley," the Boston-woman said. "- Only nearly Lodge… Unkind-Harry, the Sparrows' war chief, wanted that sword for his own, but I persuaded him; he's too tall for it, anyway. And you needn't thank me, Nancy. The blade is small payment for your seeing that our Judas goat, here," she smiled at Bajazet, "- was kept safe to draw the treacherous Cooper on and on."

A "Judas goat," the creature that led spotted cattle to the slaughterhouse. Bajazet felt his face heated by more than the fire's warmth.

"I've offended you." The Boston-woman smiled at Bajazet through dying flames. She seemed to smile often, find many matters amusing. "- But only with the truth. Do you think it wise to be offended by the truth?"

"The truth, Lady," Bajazet said, "- is usually offensive, or it would be called something else."

"Ah…" She stared at him, and Bajazet could see in the fire's warm light how beautiful she must have been before the years and some grave care had touched her face, and whitened the length of her hair.

"No thank-you gift for me?" Richard's voice was low as a warship's drum. "- Or Errol?" He rose to his feet with an odd rocking motion, and stretched, yawning.

"As for you, Richard," the woman said, "- your great double-ax needs no improvement. And Errol has no notion of gifts, and never will have, as his partial-father weasel had no notion of them. They are as lost on him as conversation."

The boy had looked up at his name being mentioned, and Bajazet saw no sign of that animal's blood in his body, which might have been any wiry human boy's… The sign was in his eyes, empty of all but the fire's reflection.

"So this conversational creature is better?" The big Made-man hulked over to her.

"Moonrisers are the best of beast and man." The Boston-woman rose to stand the size of a child beside him, and reached up to stroke his cheek. "- And what was meant to be, before Sunriser-humans imagined themselves better than they were." She smiled at Bajazet. "… Now, come walk with me, Who-was-a-prince."

Bajazet stayed sitting where he was, not interested in obeying this Boston smiler.

"… And if I asked, please?"

The court's lessons of courtesy were likely the cause of his rising, then, to follow her into the dark. As he went, he heard behind him, at the fire, the soft whisper of steel drawn from scabbard. Then the swift ruffle … ruffle, of a curved blade testing the air.

"Can you use that lean, straight sword of yours?" the Boston-woman's voice before him in the dark.

"Yes," Bajazet said. "And very well."

"Then, Who-was-a-prince, you might teach Nancy what you can." Bajazet could see, by starlight, by the faint glow of tribal fires down the valley stream, the woman's white hair leading through thicket. "- Not that her hatchet has been bad practice for learning the crisscross strokes of a slicing blade. But wards, parries, the use of the point…"

"I don't see what opportunity I'd have to teach her anything."

They'd walked a fair distance along the valley's brushy slope – Bajazet able to follow more by sound than sight – when a small hand came from shadow to rest on his chest. "Here, is private enough. We will be voices in the dark, you and I – as the tribesmen believe all we Persons to be children of the dark, and made under a rising moon."

Then she was silent for a while. Bajazet heard nothing but the wind down the valley's hills, stirring the tangle of scrub around them. The tribesmen were no longer singing… He hadn't noticed when they'd stopped.

"What do you imagine, boy? Do you imagine returning to Island?"

"No," Bajazet said – and realized he'd decided before knowing he'd decided.