Mitchell Smith - Moonrise

"Breakfast." Big Richard stood from beside the fire, and held out a long scorched stick, with chunks of smoking horse meat stuck along it. The boy, Errol, came suddenly scurrying, reached up, snatched the first steak off, then went away hunched to protect his meal.

Baj took the second – burned his fingers on it so he waved it a little cooler – and handed it to Nancy, who seemed uncertain at the courtesy.

"Court manners." Richard held the stick out to Baj again… then took his own steak from it. "We will be civilized as Selectmen." The big Person sat again in his odd way, took a slow savage bite of meat. "If, that is, you accompany us, Prince."

"Baj, not 'Prince.' And since I have nowhere else to go to harm Boston – and no one else to go with – I'll travel with you."

"Good." Richard finished his breakfast in two bites. The horse meat hadn't improved overnight; it took Baj considerable chewing to get it down. He noticed Nancy, sitting cross-legged, gnawing away as a puppy might at a piece of gristle, her lip lifted, using her side teeth… Still, coarse feeding or not, he felt the surge of strength from it. When he finished, he went to rummage in his back-pack for his canteen – found it empty – circled the fire's ashes to pick up their three sewn water-skins, and started down to the stream.

Nancy swallowed a bite, and said, "Not alone."

"No." Richard shook his heavy head. "Not alone."

"Errol…!" Nancy looked around for him. "Errol!" The boy peered out of brush across the clearing, a small piece of meat gripped in his hand.

She pointed at Baj. "You go with him… Prince, the Sparrows are afraid of Errol. They think his Moonriser-blood has made him mad."

"Baj. Not 'Prince.'" He gestured the boy to him, then walked down the valley's slope, shoving through thicket, supposing Errol would follow.

He passed tribesmen as he went… then more of them down near the stream. As to Sparrows and Thrushes, the only difference seemed to be in decoration… Sparrows wearing feathered necklaces and bracelets. Thrushes – probable Thrushes, and fewer – wearing strung withered fingers around their necks, or wooden beads painted gray or blue… Each of these men glanced at him… glanced behind him – at the boy, he supposed – then turned away. They seemed not so much unfriendly as ignoring. He and the boy, Errol – whom Baj could barely hear working down through the tangle behind him – were not "there" for the hill-men. Would likely only he there if hatchets and spears were called for.

And there was that possibility in the air. Baj had felt it, a time or two, boarding river-boats where many sweat-slaves hauled and carried, and while riding wide estate fields for hunting reasons or picnic reasons, when long lines of bond-serfs labored there, preparing onion fields, squash and cabbage fields, for Daughter-Summer's eight weeks.

On those occasions – at least a time or two – he'd felt how frail was a boss's whip against so many with picks and hoes ready in their hands, who had glanced at him… then glanced away just as these free savages did. Leaving the possibility in the air.

The small stream's water ran clear and cold – and Baj, kneeling, had his canteen and two of the water-skins filled when he noticed an odd rill in the shallow current a few feet down. He finished filling, palmed a wood stopper firmly in – and as he stood, saw a dead man was lying there under only a few inches of rapid shallow water, the morning sun flashing on the stream's surface… A tall tribesman lay there, naked – but with all his feathered decorations, with his spear lying close to hand, his hatchet strung on its rawhide cord at his side.

The warrior's chest had been opened by a trooper's saber stroke from left shoulder down, so white cut tips of ribs – and the folds and lumps of darker things beneath – were seen in bright water as if sunk into a magic mirror.

Standing, looking for them, Baj saw two… three more dead men lying one after the other just downstream, buried in that odd way along the creek's shallow flow – so, he supposed, their essence might be carried by the current to whatever hunting paradise these people anticipated… The king's troopers had taken their toll.

He knelt again – careful not to look upstream, so the drinking water might, after all, have no blood of tribesmen threaded through it – filled the last water-skin, stoppered it… then tucked the canteen's strap, the skins' rawhide thongs over his shoulder, and started back up the slope to camp. The boy, Errol, ambled behind him, clicking his tongue to a sort of simple rhythm.

Baj took up the rhythm with him, produced tongue-clicking variations – apparently to the boy's amusement – so they climbed past tribesmen up the slope, making cricket music as they went.

"But do we want him?"

"Nancy…" Richard was gathering oddments, sorting them into his big leather possibles-bag. A small buckskin sack of salt; linen folds of herbs that might (or might not) be healthy; a thick roll of fine tanned leather; his horn tinderbox, filled with flossy punk and rattling pieces of flint; steel needles and spools of tendon thread; a chip of obsidian sharper than any edge of steel; a little folding peg chess-set and its tiny pieces, and a small fat copybook of The Common Prayers of Warm-time Oxford, England. "- Nancy, he carries steel points like a soldier, sword and dagger." Richard put the last of his goods away, tucked the bag into his wolf-hide pack along with slabs of smoked horse meat, then buckled it closed, leaving a cooking pot and heavy coil of braided leather line strapped to the back.

"I have a sword, now!"

"He has points and a bow and arrows. I'd say he's been trained in weapons. He would have made me a good young infantryman – and an officer soon enough."

"He's a boy. He barely has hair on his face."

Richard sighed a patient sigh. "He's full-human – and if we're told correctly, of Kipchak blood, men who have little hair on their faces… We are the hairy ones."

"You are. I'm not."

"… I've seen you bathing naked, little Person."

"- And you mean by that? What do you mean by that?" Nancy hackling like a chicken-bird rooster.

Richard hefted his pack. "I meant nothing but observation of the narrow line of fur running down your spine at the small of your back – in a charming way, to be sure. Now, get your things together. I would rather we didn't wait in this valley until the Sparrows forget the favor we've done them."

"You want him with us, so you'll have a Sunriser to obey."

"You are not big enough, comb-honey, to make me angry… Now, get your things together. And unless you have a better reason than fear he will dislike what your Also-father left in you – then Baj-who-was-a-prince marches north with us."

"You are all beast," Nancy said, "- a bear who talks, as other bears dance at festivals." She bent to roll a blanket, then tie the rolled ends with leather thongs. "… If I didn't love you, I would not call you a Person at all."

"So, I'm chastised." Richard cocked his head. "They're back."

"… The hill-men have put their dead into the water," Baj said, stepping into the clearing. Errol ambled in behind him. "And it seems to me to be time to go… if I'm going with you."

"Pack," Big Richard said. "And carry your bow strung, while we have daylight."

Baj thanked Floating Jesus – Mountain Jesus, now – for his two days and nights of rest in Battle-valley, otherwise there'd have been no keeping up with the three Persons. He saw now how they'd managed to parallel pace him up into the hills… The three of them – Richard and Nancy each burdened by a considerable pack – traveled the days from dawn to dark (and its hasty small-fire camp) with only pauses for swallows of water, for smoked scraps of leftover horse meat. They moved – not terribly fast, not running – but steadily almost running. And neither uphills nor down-hills, nor brush, woods, nor clearings seemed to change that pace.