Mitchell Smith - Moonrise

"Yes." Nancy stared down at tiny huts, where people small as summer ants wended busily. "Such fools they are. Were Cherokees, once, and smarter."

"We go past?"

"Baj," Richard reached up with an easy motion, captured the returned fly and crushed it, "- we go well past. It's Shrikes we go to meet, not these."

"Why not these? They have no cause to love the Township. Aren't their girls taken?"

"Taken," Nancy said, "- and they have cause. But village Robins hate other village Robins even more, though they prey on Thrushes, and take Finches' heads if they raid farther east. They'll take their own people's heads, sometimes, trying to become chiefs… Boston burrows among them like maggots in rot."

"Then why not bring the Sparrows north, and Thrushes?"

Richard shifted at the brink to be more comfortable. "Bringing those savages anywhere, is like carrying hot water in cupped hands. It burns and runs out through your fingers."

"More honor to the Boston-woman then," Baj said, "- for persuading them to gather and fight Cooper-the-King… Though I suppose my days of scurrying gave her time enough."

"No small potatoes, still," Richard said, using an ancient phrase, "- to have gotten it done."

"I think Unkind-Harry liked her." Nancy leaned over to spit into space. "Thought he might fuck her… learn to Walk-in-air. Which shows what a fool he is; which shows what fools the Sparrows are, that he's their wisest and chief."

"Brave, though," Baj said, and heard, as if he were there again, the surf-sound of Sparrows shouting as they came down against Kingdom cavalry.

"Between courage and foolishness," Richard said, and held up an odd thumb and blunt forefinger, almost touching, "- is the narrowest measure."

"I have stood with foolishness, mainly," Baj said, smiling.

"Not true, but you are a fool to say so." Nancy scrambled up from the granite edge – then stood still, staring.

Baj turned to look. Errol was standing a rock-throw back, by wind-beaten scrub pines. The boy was pointing… And Baj saw, down where the slope fell away to the north, four deer grazing amid larger pines and dwarf rhododendra. Two bowshots distant.

He got up, and crouching, went to his pack, unbuckled his sword-belt and let it lie… then took up his bow and knelt to string it. The breeze was in his face… the deer up-wind. Who would have expected the animals to feed this high? A young buck – looked at a distance to be a six-pointer – and likely three does.

Baj selected two arrows – wouldn't have time for more – and still crouching low, moved slowly down the slope. Difficult traveling over stone… through scrub. And made no easier by blisters from the scrap-cloth wrappings on his feet, instead of his lost wool stockings; even with holes worn, they'd been more comfortable in boots.

He wended down the mountainside, his belly – griped and empty – commanding him to make no stupid mistake, no foolish noise or commotion to frighten the deer away. The breeze still blew to him… though shifting, shifting a little to his left, so he shifted to face it more squarely as he moved, keeping low.

There would have been no chance to approach them but for the mountain pines. Baj stole along, watching his footing over roots, rubble, and scree, careful to keep at least one wind-bent tree between him and the herd.

After a while more of careful approaching, a blister sore in his right boot, Baj came to a space there was no crossing in cover, a long ledge of light-gray stone with no pine growing – and still high, high above them as the deer drifted, grazing.

Crouched to almost kneeling, he set a broadhead to the bowstring, took a deep breath… and waited a moment, the summer sun warm against his face. The mountain's air, the scent of deeper forest far below, and himself as himself all seemed to combine to one, a happiness. He slowly rose, drew his bow – and knew he was about to miss, already saw the arrow's path out and down, just over the young buck's back.

Shooting downhill… shooting downhill! Baj relaxed the bow and sank back. Through the last sheltering branches, he saw the deer drifting.

Then he stood, drew the bow, saw his point as beneath the back of the buck's shoulder, and released.

The bow thumped hard in his hand, and he and the young buck below both stood to attention as the arrow introduced them. The buck was gathered to jump when the broadhead went in at an angle behind its shoulder, so it made its leap and leaped again – the does bounding after down the slope… then, at a distance, running past as the buck stumbled, recovered, tripped and fell kicking.

Baj unstrung and eased his bow as Nancy, Richard, and Errol came past him, scrambling down, bounding as the fleeing deer had done, sounding – except for the silent boy – odd cheers… mixed roars and yelps.

The buck was dead when Baj reached them. Errol had cut its throat.

Then, Richard reached down, gathered the animal's back hooves in a one-handed grip, and by that, easily lifted the buck up into the air and held it high – for lack of any tree tall enough to hang it on – held it swinging, its blood draining, spattering onto stone.

It was an astonishing demonstration of strength. Baj couldn't imagine any festival strongman who could have done it.

And not only that, but Richard held it so – one-handed – all the while Nancy and the boy gralloched, gutted, carved, and butchered out the meat… bundled it into the hide for carrying.

"With no fire, Richard," Baj said, "- most will be wasted."

"We should have no fire."

"But one last fire, carefully set with weathered wood?"

"Baj doesn't want to eat raw." Nancy, wet red to her elbows, was slicing out a rack of ribs.

"If not roasted, most will rot."

Richard, standing like a statue – the ruined buck, now almost skeletal, still hanging from his hand – began his deep uneven humming of consideration.

"Here." Nancy handed Baj a bleeding slice of liver, sprinkled with gall… watched him munch and chew at it, bent to keep blood from running down his front.

"Good?"

Baj swallowed and said, "No. – But that's not my reason. We have days of traveling out of this buck, if the meat is cut thin and cooked in smoke… There may not be another deer."

"The Robins keep sheep," Nancy said. "There will be sheep wandering."

"And missed when we take one," Richard bent and laid the buck's remnant on stone scree. "So the tribesmen come looking."

"A last fire. An evening fire of seasoned wood," Baj said. "High on the slope, and in a hollow, so not seen from below, and no one on the mountaintop to smell it."

"And if seen?" Nancy said. "If smelled? We are in their country."

"I killed the fucking deer. It should be cooked!"

Errol drifted closer, apparently drawn by raised voices.

"Now, children," Richard said, "- no quarreling," and loomed over them as might some monstrous mother out of fable-tales. "It's unwise, but we'll have our fire – and hope that lasting meat proves worth it."

Nancy bared her teeth. "I blame you," she said to Baj, "if we suffer for it."

… But it seemed they wouldn't, since by nightfall – and a cool wind blowing from the north, Lord Winter's reminder, summer or not – they'd found a narrow space between two boulders in a field of fallen rock, collected only years-dried storm-broken branches, and set their fire so the north wind picked smoke up and shredded it away over the mountain's crest.

Over this careful fire, on greener branches to keep the spits from catching, long strips of thin-sliced venison were draped and turned, portion after portion, slow cooking in smoke through half the night for keeping-meat.

The steaks and fat-ribs were roasted otherwise – quickly, on green-wood forks deep among the brightest coals, roasted sputtering, fat just charred along the edges – and by the Persons, not roasted long.