Mitchell Smith - Moonrise

They were… it was very much like dancing together, but with steps swift, harsh, and unexpected. As the Master would have recommended, he watched those quick little moccasined feet shift and shift, watched for balance and rhythm change – and watched her yellow eyes for surprises, often betrayed by anticipatory glee.

They circled and battled in clattering noise and a haze of human sweat – and sweat slightly different – despite the chill of evening. Richard and Errol, an audience of two, sat entertained by thrusts, curses, slashes, bruises and occasional little stippled lines of blood.

Nancy caught Baj very nicely in the shoulder with her point – the scimitar's point apparently beginning to occur to her after previous evenings' furious cuts and slashes. He took the hit, said, "I'm hurt," spun into her, "- and you're dead."

"How?"

He prodded her lean belly with a short stick he'd stuck in his belt, awaiting the occasion. "Left-hand dagger. Always remember the left hand. Always remember knives. Don't be so fucking sword-proud." The Master would have been pleased to have his quote repeated – advice original with the dead and honored Butter-boy.

"Not fair!" Very angry, her crest of widow-peaked red hair risen like a cock's comb.

"All is fair," Baj said, "- in love, and war." It was the perfect Warm-time phrase, and Nancy Some-part-fox had no answer for it.

"How many years," Richard said, "- how many years to learn such nice use of points? My soldiers were rarely so elegant in sticking… chopping."

"Eleven… twelve years."

"I will not need twelve years." Nancy tossed her frayed stick-sword aside and sat by the fire on a folded blanket.

"No." Baj held his hands to the flames to warm them as the night's chill settled down. Bruised fingers, bruised hands from fencing with no cross-hilts or guards. No gloves, either. "No, you're very quick. But be warned; I haven't taught you nearly all I was taught, and there are men – women, too – who would find me easy to kill with a blade.".

"Perhaps dear Patience Riley," Richard said, "- who fought the fat man in the air."

Baj recalled the woman's amusement when he'd touched his dagger's hilt by starlight. "I suppose so… yes. She perhaps could kill me."

"Soon," Nancy lay down to sleep, "- soon I will be able to kill you."

"Not until you remember better that a scimitar has a point to go with its edge." Baj spread his blanket, that smelled so warmly of goat and wood smoke. "Not until you remember that it's the first two or three WT inches of any blade that does most of the work. And not until you remember the left hand's dagger."

… Baj, lying down, tugging a fold of blanket over him, couldn't imagine what copybook "imp of perversity," what odd urge to anger her possessed him, that he added, "And likely not even then, since you're a girl."

Silence.

He looked across the failing fire, saw Richard's heavy-muzzled face a mask of comic apprehension.

Still… silence. But through eddying smoke, Baj saw burning yellow eyes.

In the morning, as he stood behind a fractured boulder, pissing, Baj heard the big Made-man's soft heavy step.

"Brave boy," Richard said, came to stand beside, unlaced to produce a dark peculiar cock, and relieved himself. "Brave boy," he said. "She must like you, despite your smell."

"And you know that, how?" Baj shook himself and fastened up.

"I know it, because you woke this morning with no tooth-marks on your throat."

They went back to the camp smiling, though were not met with smiles. "Robin country," Nancy said, "before and behind. No country for traveling fools."

At mid-morning, halfway down a wooded draw, Richard stopped, shrugged his pack off, and squatted in his odd way, waiting for them to catch up. When Errol trotted on to pass him, the big Person reached out, caught his dirty wool shirt, and held him still.

"Now, listen to me." Richard's great double-bitted ax lay across his knees, and he absently tested its keeness with a thumb. "I was a Captain of Boston's Guard, and know the country we're coming to – still Robin country, high and low, where the Wall's spring melt has run the New River wider… Then mountains east again, and soon along Map The-Valley-Shenandoah."

"I know those places," Nancy said, "from coming south."

"- This east corner of Map-Kentucky is Robin country," Richard said, "and will be their country in lowland and the first few mountains after, in Map West-Virginia, as on the oldest copied Exxons… We've kept our fires reverse of the ridges the last two nights – but from now on, no fires. If their light didn't reveal us, their smoke-smell might."

"Cooking…?" Baj eased his pack off, and sat cross-legged in an alder's delicate summer shade.

"You must learn raw meat, Baj."

"Very well."

Nancy, leaning on a sapling's slender trunk, made a sound in her throat.

"- I'll do what needs to be done." Another throat sound.

"I don't care what meat I eat," Baj said. "But I do care where we go, and why, and the achievement-how. You've said Shrikes, the Person Guard, and the purpose a secret… The Boston-woman told me that was for her to know, for me to find out. Well, I want to find it out now. I'm tired of climbing mountains on only the promise of harm to Boston."

Richard stared at him. "What we intend is not to be talked of, except to Persons – and Sunriser-humans too – who will accomplish it. You know accomplish?"

"I know it. I've read more and better than you, Richard. Words are close to me."

"No life," Nancy said, "- not even yours, Good Reader, is worth this being talked of so Boston knows it."

"I'm here," Baj said, "- whether you like it or not. I have my brother's blood, our friends' blood to answer to, and not to either of you."

Richard hummed a considering hum, deeper than most. "Baj, if you should in any way endanger this… even inadvertently, say by merest mention to any we might chance to meet going north – I'll kill you."

"Fair enough."

"… Very well. To come at it… Robins are the most many, and the most uncertain of the tribes. They claim to be the old Cherokee, though very few Red-bloods still rule them. They are people who can't be trusted, since they hate hard among themselves, though their daughters – chief's daughters, usually, and the daughters of other important men – have also been taken by the Guard campaigning south from time to time, as even down in Map-Tennessee, the Thrushes and Sparrows have lost girls to Boston."

"Took my mother," Nancy said.

Listening, Errol made a soft squealing sound, a noise with nothing human in it.

"Took mine, also," Richard said. "Made me, and kept her."

"The tribes' women taken, used, then some held in Boston?"

"Foolish boy," Nancy said. "All held, that live."

"How else?" Richard tapped the steel of his ax's head with a curved horny nail. "How else hold the tribes at bay, and keep Boston's Guard obedient – but by holding dear mothers, dear sisters, dear daughters hostage?"

"But you deserted."

Richard, squatting hunched and massive, stared at Baj with small brown eyes half-buried in a shelf of brow – and seemed no longer friendly Richard… A little time passed that seemed a long time, so Baj regretted forgetting advice from the Master. "If trouble might come, don't let it catch you sleeping or sitting on your ass."

But Richard seemed to ease, and said, "My mother, Shrike Tall-Edna, cut her throat in the Pens with a broken cup to free me."

"… Then," Baj said, and had to clear his throat, "- then Lady Weather bless that brave woman."

Richard nodded and seemed satisfied.

"- So," Baj said, "the Person Guard serves Boston with no choice but serving, since the city holds a number of their mothers hostage."