Mitchell Smith - Moonrise

… Through Warm-time hours poorly counted, Patience lay rough-shrouded in the dark, drifting and dreaming around a core of molten metal searing in her shoulder. She dreamed of her first sight of Max – then tiny, fat, red and slippery with juice and blood… And she'd known in that instant. Though so small, he'd still lain heavy as a man on her breast, crushing the air from her lungs. His eyes had been closed, but he'd watched her through the lids.

"He sees me," she'd said.

"But makes no sound." Woodrow Cabot-Lodge, slender and handsome, had leaned over as if he loved her, though no member of Cambridge Council was permitted that, even one appointed to sire a result upon her… Still, Patience had been certain he liked her – as who would not, and she so pretty? So clever.

"He will never speak, Woody," Patience had said, and knew it, though she didn't know why.

"… Never speak," Patience said, waking in her hollowed log. She took the fullest breath she could, and decided to live at least another day.

Morning would be surely… surely near. Time to begin to wriggle carefully back and back through rotting punk, paying the price in pain… then finally out into dawn's light and air. Another day or two would pass before the shoulder and starvation left her only lying down to do, to wait for death.

The Robin boys, having hunted through the dark and missed her, might be gone from the hemlocks – but not likely. They'd almost certainly be waiting along the forest's lower edge for vengeance, having lost poor Lou.

Pete Aiken woke first – had had no fire – rolled from a bed of hemlock boughs in his place at the bottom of the stand of trees, skin goose-pimpled in dawn's chill.

He trilled a territory warble. Heard no reply to east or west, and called again… Then, Gerald answered from the east. But only silence from Gerald's brother – an idiot, and certainly sleeping through sunrise.

Pete stretched till his joints cracked, eased his muscles from a cold night's sleep, then picked up javelin and hatchet, and paced deeper into the hemlocks to shit… The Boston-woman would have to come their way – or climb Wild-plum Mountain to its crest and over, deeper into Robin country.

She would have to come their way soon, come down through the bottom of the stand – or stay among the trees to lick mist from hemlock fronds for water, chew hemlock bark for food. She wouldn't even have sad Lou to eat. Gerald had brought out body and head last evening, both now safe under stacked stone.

Pete found a place, set his legs apart, tucked his kilt well up, and squatted. Paused, peed a little, then the first of healthy poop – a must, according to Charlotte-doctor. "Bad poop, bad health." She claimed that was Copybook, though what copybook she wouldn't say.

Pete took a breath, strained for the rest – and felt the lightest thread of coolness lie across the back of his neck. He thought it some dawn spider-web strand… then the coolness cut him, just a little.

Squatting, Pete turned his head, and saw a curving length of steel shining along his nape… Above it, a small, trembling, white-haired woman stood in a dirty blue coat.

He tensed to move – dive left to his hatchet, resting so casual on the forest floor. But the sword above him, as if eager on its own, slid deeper across the back of his neck, so he felt blood begin to run.

"Do I hold your life at my sword's edge, or do I not?" Her voice shook as she shook, and Pete didn't answer

Drawn very slightly across… the steel's edge sliced deeper.

"Is your life in my gift, or is it not?… I won't ask again."

Pete, who hadn't intended to answer an old woman who'd taken unfair advantage, surprised himself by saying, "Yes."

"Yes…?"

"My life… a gift." And having said so, regretted saying it – and wouldn't have, except for being caught like some child, shitting. Squatting for this Boston thing to creep up, lay her sword across his neck… He wouldn't have said it, but for that.

Cold steel lifted from him, left his nape warm with trickling blood.

"Wipe your bottom," the woman said – and Pete Aiken-Robin, tears of rage gathered in his eyes, took a handful of foliage to use, then threw that aside, stood up, stepped away and straightened his kilt's leather.

The woman, her left arm slung across her breast, was pale as cracked quartz, and swayed as she stood. She wiped her sword's curved edge on her coat, and managed at a second try to sheath it. "I've taken the life of one Robin," she said, "and given yours in return, so no debt remains. By that exchange… I claim a trader's hospitality."

Pete heard Gerald coming through the trees.

"Now," the woman said, her eyes black as blindness, "- now we will see if honor roosts with the Robins." And she staggered and fell into the hemlocks as if she were struck and dying.

After days of hard travel, and chess-and-fencing evenings, their camp was made back of a ridge overlooking a stretch of low country at last – New River's Valley, Richard had called it. Baj was happy enough to lie resting after eating most of a partridge, the birds taken by Errol's thrown sticks one by one, as they strutted a long hollow, furiously drumming for mates.

The successful hunter, pinched face so dirty no freckles showed, lay with his head on Baj's lap, making faint clicking noises. The boy seemed to have grown comfortable with him.

Baj was satisfied with ease, but Nancy apparently was not, came around the fire to poke and prod him with a makeshift wooden scimitar – the third of those, the first two having been beaten to flinders in attempts at murder.

"Nancy, another evening's rest might be a good idea."

"You said, 'When I can do to you.'"

"You can 'do to me' tomorrow."

No answer, then, but poke poke, prod prod.

"For the love of Mountain Jesus…" Baj shifted Errol, and got to his feet to get his spruce-stick rapier – worn and splintered, but usable a last time.

Richard, propped on one massive odd elbow, lay by the fire, smiling. "Lessons," he said, and Errol went to sit cross-legged near him, attentive.

Before this audience, Baj eased muscles stiffened by the day's mountainsides – and was attacked in mid-stretch. He brought his stick-sword up so nearly in time it seemed unfair that her whistling cut went over it and across his jaw hard as a whip's lash. Baj spun away in considerable numbing pain, and supposing he should be thankful she hadn't taken an eye out, set himself to fighting. The girl was… truly fast. There was no time – had been no time the last two lessons to wait to parry on the forte. The blows of her spruce scimitar – shorter, snappier strokes in direct attack, now, and delivered in series – needed to be caught early, near his stick's limber end, and allowed then in yielding parry to slide down to a firmer ward where the spruce was thicker… It required elegant fencing.

Required easy movement, too. Stance'y salle fencing with Person-Nancy was a losing notion; she circled and struck, circled and struck – and was pleased to close in corp a corp, where she seemed to want to bite as she slashed, then stepped away, leaving behind her faint vulpine scent.

"Timing," Baj said, as they fought. "Timing, speed," he beat in second, lunged to her outside low line and hit her, "- and distance."

"Shit." She tried to bind his spruce-blade, tried to kick him in the crotch. Baj found it… interesting. He was learning about Nancy – learning perhaps about other Persons, too, as he and the girl grunted and fought around the fire. Stop-thrusts no longer worked against her; she would attack swinging aside in quartata, lunging off the front foot. An absolutely awkward move that cost him braises until he learned to simply mirror her motion, so her cut passed him.