Mitchell Smith - Moonrise

"I'd 'prefer' to have my brother back."

"Your brother is where he and endless others have gone, and no returning."

"If not that then, I'd prefer an end to talking." Bajazet – "Baj" would do well enough – turned and walked back the way they'd come, to let the Boston-woman follow or not. He could see the slight track they'd made, the disturbed foliage all silver and shadows.

She came behind him. "It is a pleasure to be dirt-walking, after weeks of going weary in the air. Though the reverse also becomes true… It is more difficult to push the ground away beneath and behind you as one grows older – and I've grown older quickly. Was made to do so, I believe… Boston-talents are cautious makers."

A tribesman – very tall, naked, densely tattooed – rose out of the brush before them like a partridge, but silently. He stared, his short spear's leaf-blade gleaming in moonlight… then turned away, down toward the valley's stream.

"No need, Baj." Patience had seen him put his hand on his sword-hilt. "He was sleeping away from their camp. He has an enemy, perhaps a Thrush whose village he's raided, who might come to him as he slept… The tribes will sometimes fight in alliance – except for Shrikes – but not at ease."

They went in silence for a while, until the Made-persons' campfire glowed a bowshot away.

"So," Patience said, coming up beside him. "- where does a young man go, then, to find justice for his injury?"

"I may go nowhere, if these tribesmen choose to kill me."

She laughed out loud – a richer laugh than he expected. "Baj, if the Sparrows had wanted you dead, you'd be dead already. And there aren't enough Thrushes here to decide it one way or the other… The hill-tribes respected your Second-father, the Achieving King – and what an… engaging man he was – though they did not love him. And fortunately for you, your first-father died before he could bring his Kipchaks campaigning to the East, and raise blood debts that only you could satisfy."

"Good news."

"Yes… Though except for the great pleasure of this victory – and their killing of the River's King (an unheard of, unimagined thing; Unkind-Harry now strutting under the Helmet of Joy) – the tribesmen might have decided to cut your throat, after all, and the throats of the three Persons that full-humans call Made-things, Moonrisers… And cut my throat, as well, if they could have caught me, though Harry has had notions, as used to be said, 'above his station.' The hill-men hate all Persons, though born of their own captive daughters."

"Perhaps," Bajazet – Baj – said, "perhaps because those are born to their lost daughters."

"Ah," Patience touched his arm, "- there I heard the voice of Small-Sam Monroe… How lucky you have been in your fathers." The night wind came stirring her long coat… his cloak.

"There seem to be tribesmen enough, in these hills and the hills north, to go up to Boston Town and demand their daughters back."

''Yes," Patience said, "- and they'd be tempted, Baj, but for the Guard. Boston is guarded by two – well, almost three thousand. The same who raid south of the ice, to take certain of the tribesmen's young women."

"Three thousand is not such a number. There looked to be almost a thousand hill-men come here to fight."

"No, not such a number, but they are all Persons. Our Richard – over there by the fire? – he was a Captain of One-hundred before he deserted Matthew-Curlew's Company… Would you care to fight Richard, Baj? Would you be hopeful if he faced you with his ax?"

"I see …"

"Yes – and so the Sparrows and Thrushes and Robins have seen, and confirmed in battles Middle-Kingdom and its Rule knew nothing of, deep in the Smoking Mountains. And that is why Unkind-Harry and his people here, would – but for the great favor we've done them – cut our throats."

"You're saying I can have no revenge on Boston-town for the murder of those I loved?"

Patience Reilly smiled; her teeth – small, even as a child's – shone white in moonlight. "I say no such thing. Come with us that long way north and east, Baj-that-was-Bajazet, and what you wish may be satisfied."

"How?"

"That," still smiling, "- is for me to know, and you to find out." Which was certainly a copybook saying, and from Warm-times.

… At the fire, the Made-people – "Persons"- lay asleep, the Fox-girl curled on Baj's wool blanket, hugging her scabbarded new sword to her. Richard, a great heap, snored softly on the fire's other side, the boy lying alongside his broad back for warmth.

Patience murmured. "Companions suitable for such a way… such difficulties?"

Murmured, but not softly enough. Richard opened his eyes, and lay watching them as the night wind came stronger, seething through the valley's brush on errands of its own.

Bajazet woke to dawn's damp cool, and distant voices down the valley. His back, beneath his cloak, was still warm from the fire's coals. His front was colder… Where had he read or heard of people sleeping between two fires? Had he read that, or been told of the old Trappers? Winter hunters…

He turned, stretched yawning – and saw the Made-boy, Errol, sitting close beside, legs crossed. The boy was staring at him.

"He's only looking." Richard's rich voice. "He's never seen a princely deep-sleeper before – a snorer used to safety, stoves, goose-feather beds, and guarded chambers."

The boy seemed too close. Bajazet – ah, "Baj," now – sat up… then stood up. Two days' rest (and horse meat) had left his ribs still sore, but the other bruises and scrapes much better… The bitten arm hardly hurt at all – itched, more than hurt. And his legs felt ready again for traveling; he stamped the sleep out of them. The boy, Errol, watched as Baj belted on his sword and dagger.

"He's interested in new things." Big Richard was hunched, shaggy, by the fire's last coals, holding chunks of horse meat over them, speared on a stick. "Breakfast," he said, his fang-toothed smile disturbing as a frown… Once a Captain of One-hundred, the Boston woman had said.

Baj stepped past the boy, and walked well out into the scrub to piss.

Paging brush aside, he found a place, unlaced his buckskins – very worn and grimy buckskins, now – and began to pee a pleasant stream… playing it this way and that, like a child.

"Lucky."

Baj jumped a little – and peed on his left boot, tucking himself away. "For Christ's sake." A phrase that would have gotten him burned, decades before.

The girl, Nancy, stood just behind him. "You men, Persons or human, are so lucky." The slight lisp there with Persons and so.

"Yes," Baj did up his buckskins' laces, "- very lucky."

"Well, you are," the Made-girl said, walking beside him back to camp. "Do you know what a task, a chore it is to always pull up our clothes, or take off our clothes, to do what men do simply as pouring from a cup?" She kicked some bramble aside."… Not fair."

Nancy was wearing her new scimitar – wearing it on the left side and a little too low, so it might catch her leg and trip her.

"Yes," Baj said. "I can see it would be a nuisance."

"Only one of many we suffer," Nancy said, reached out and struck Baj lightly on the shoulder, as if they were friends, and complaints not serious.

"Your sword should wear higher, Nancy." First time he'd used her name. "Hilt at your waist, not your hip – so the blade doesn't trip you."

The Made-girl – Person – stepped into their clearing, and began a little dance, apparently to see if that was so. The scimitar's curve did catch her leg, if only for a moment.

"Very well, I'll do as you say," she said, and took her belt up a notch with narrow hands, narrow fingers tipped with nails pointed and black.