Mitchell Smith - Moonrise

Baj sat, feeling muscles ease down his back and along his thighs and calves with a mild aching of relief. The Made-girl beside him smelled of soaked cloth and leather, of camp-fire smoke, and the faint sour odor of a fox's wet fur.

Richard – looking only a little smaller, damp – lumbered swiftly past them, and continued along a stony slope, great ax swinging in his hand.

"Go on," Nancy said, bent over her blade, and Baj had grunted to his feet when she said, "He's afraid of the water."

Baj looked where she looked, and saw Errol dancing at the waterfall's other side. The boy ran forward to the toppling wall of water – stopped, and ran back as if it might chase him.

"He won't do it," Nancy said, and stood. "He swims wonderfully, but fears falling water. I'll get Richard to come and make him cross."

"No need. I'll get him." Baj trotted back down the stone, already wondering how to do it.

"Careful!" she called after him. "Careful!"

Baj, cautious on wet rock, dropped his pack, unbuckled his sword-belt, and ducked back under the fall's torrential weight. The water hadn't yet heard the last of winter; it was wonderfully cold.

He came out the other side in a shower of spray, and saw Errol backing away as if he were bringing the waterfall with him.

"Won't hurt you," Baj said, meaning he wouldn't and the fall wouldn't, but Errol – thin face pale beneath dirt and freckles – seemed not to trust that. He took more steps back, and drew a knife with his left hand. A broad-bladed knife, its steel flecked with rust… but the fine edge bright as silver. There were tongue-clicks; the boy seemed frozen, staring at glassy water toppling to foam and thunder.

Nancy was calling… something. Baj could barely hear her through the noise of falling water.

"There are moments," the Master had said once, in the salle, "- moments that must not be allowed to become more than moments. They're to be dealt with directly."

Good advice, and though the Master had been instructing on booze-house quarrels and useful ball-kicking, it seemed to apply here.

Baj unknotted his bandanna from his throat, shook water from it, then strolled up to the boy – ignoring the knife, careful not to notice it – stepped around behind him casually as if that had already been agreed to, then gently draped the cloth over Errol's eyes. The boy, blinded, stood still.

Baj, standing close, felt wiry muscle ease… and exactly as he would have with a colt caught in a stable fire, began to murmur soothing nonsense, and gently urged Errol along. Urged him along… And though the boy stiffened in fright again as the wall of water poured before them, Baj kept his eyes covered, said, "Shhh… shhhh," and led him in, holding him close with one arm. They moved together, ducking, buffeted with freezing cold… Then walked out from under.

Errol – standing sodden, his knife still in his hand – tossed his head exactly as a colt might have done, drops flying as Baj took the bandanna away, knotted it back at his throat, and went to pick up his pack and sword-belt, his heart still a little hurried.

Nancy, her scimitar sheathed, pack shouldered, stared at him, said, "Careful along the edge," and walked away.

Harder traveling then, over rocky outcrops reared surprisingly high past narrow gorges carved from north and north-east by centuries of the short-summers' snow-melt.

Errol had gone on his way, skittering off into stands of hemlock, fir, and stunted spruce grown leaning over granite ledges. Neither Richard nor Nancy waited for Baj, though he could see them from time to time – objects neither green nor granite-gray, and in purposeful motion. And not so far ahead, only a continual stone's throw or bow-shot across some shaded defile. When not seen, their traveling was told by warblers lifting from evergreens, or birdsong gone silent.

For a time, annoyed, Baj tried to catch up with them… then, tiring of that, he paid attention to his own hiking instead. The rough touch and grip of fir saplings used for hand-holds, the damp sweet smell and stroke of foliage as he paged hemlock branches out of his way. The soft fern beds giving way to unforgiving stone beneath his boots. He paid attention to the pleasures of moving… breathing to move well, and after a while was surprised, on a long downhill, to find Nancy almost beside him, stepping down… stepping down, bent a little under the weight of her pack.

He climbed down beside her – going sideways in steeper places for better footing with his boot-soles' edges. In those places, she went sideways, also, but on all fours, one or both narrow hands lightly touching the mat of pine needles, her comb of widow-peaked hair a darker red under the trees.

Nancy's odor didn't seem so strong, now she wasn't wet. Perhaps some rankness had washed away – like his sweat – in the fall's cold water.

"Your boots are stupid. Clumsy."

"They are what I have," Baj said, and climbed beside her down a stand of fir to a run of yellow birches, just in bud, along a narrow mountain meadow striped by late after-noon's shadows. Big Richard was standing by a tree, waiting for them.

"Deer," he said, lifted his head and sniffed the air.

Nancy, beside Baj, snuffled. "Old smell," she said.

"Old today – not old from tomorrow." Richard pointed across the meadow. "They bed down there."

"Not anymore."

Richard sighed. "May I say something without a no from you?"

"I won't argue with you," Nancy said. "It's like arguing with a stump."

"I could take my bow across," Baj said. "… Wait for them to come in the evening."

"No deer," Nancy said. "Other things come through."

Richard didn't seem to hear. "Yes, do it. There's a creek running there." He glanced down at Nancy. "I smell it."

"Creek, yes. Deer, no."

Richard paid no attention to that. "The buck will come in, leading. If he's young – take him. If he's an old antler, try for a follower."

"Okay." One of the most useful Warm-time words of agreement… And it was odd, but Baj now found Richard more human than before – men together beneath birches, planning a hunt, ignoring a woman's carping. "- Okay." He took his bow off his shoulder, knelt to brace and string it, then stooped for a wisp of weed, and tossed it for the wind. "You two stay here – and keep Errol on this side."

Richard grunted agreement, then swung his heavy, furred pack off, set his great ax against a tree, and lay down with the same odd rocking motion he used to stand up.

As Baj selected three broadheads from his quiver, Nancy – leaning against a narrow birch with her hand on the hilt of her scimitar, stood staring yellow-eyed, as if at a festival fool lacking only the little bells in a little hat.

Baj crossed the meadow in sinking sunlight, his bow in his hand, pleased with walking on the flat after so much climbing of ups and downs. It seemed to be a beaver-dam fill, growing only summer weeds and the first blue stars, with another wildflower – yellow – he didn't know the name of. No saplings had rooted in the open yet.

At the meadow's other side, a steep bank fell away to a rivulet bog with skunk cabbage starting here and there among dwarf willows… a stand of alder. Mottled shadows moved across the green as an early breeze of evening began to blow. Tiny insects – gnat flies – danced in the air, almost invisible.

Baj crossed the little run… found fairly firm ground past it where a greening tangle of berry vine grew along the bog's edge. He settled there, unbuckled his sword-belt, set it out of his way, and sat with his back to a young alder's trunk. It would be a clear shot, from there, at any deer come to drink – though a long shot if it came downstream, where the willows thickened.