Mitchell Smith: Moonrise

As Mark Cooper was certainly killed, since now he was still and silent, and smelled of shit.

Bajazet crammed and ate until he ached, drank more beer to ease it down… remembering Mark as a small boy, a playmate always amiable, biddable, so often looking surprised at what the great world offered childhood… Bajazet chewed rye-bread rolls and little roasted potatoes, though they seemed to have no taste at all.

So much gobbling finally made him feel faint, and he had to go sit on the room's cot, bow his head… take deep breaths to keep from vomiting. He sat sick, as Mark lay at ease in a rich sticky pond, keeping him company.

"I hope you lied to me, about being sorry," Bajazet said, though now that seemed to make no sense. Perhaps Mark would have understood it… There was the strongest urge to lie down on the cot, the room so warm with its little stove in the corner. The strongest urge to do that, and sleep, so that waking later might prove all a dream, and Noel Purse come in and say, "Are we hunting, Baj? Or sleeping the fucking day away?"

It seemed stupid to stand, but he did. Stupid to search his own locker for his small leather pack, with its flint-and-steel, spare southern-cotton shirt, ball of useful rawhide cord… also a red-checked bandanna, and yesterday-morning's hunter's ration of pemmican, river-biscuit, and little round of hard cheese. A canteen – why in the world did Warm-time copybooks call water flasks canteens?… Strap pack and so forth on over his cloak. And take what else? What else, and why anything, only to run again?

After thinking for what seemed a long time – Mark lying patient on the floor – Bajazet also chose his recurved bow and a quiver of fine broadhead shafts, shouldered them, then cautiously opened the door to no voices from below… and only soft snoring from another chamber. He stepped into the corridor, closed the door behind him, and walked what seemed a long way down to the familiar window… clambered out to the familiar fire-ladder – the bow's curved upper arm knocking on the window's frame – then climbed carefully down. More burdened now… and less.

The camp's ground, when he reached it, seemed the first thing in a while solid and real. Real as the chase to come, that would make a poor joke of the hunt before. Now it would be the new king who pursued – a king bereft of his son and that son's future. A king with now no dynasty possible, no continuance. Gareth Cooper would chase, if necessary, to the Smoking Mountains… would have to, or be seen weak as well as lacking any heir.

Bajazet, belly overfull to aching, strolled through firelit darkness – waved once to the two men still talking a long bowshot away, standing casual guard by the lodge's entrance.

Two dead men, soon enough, when the king – pigeoned the news – came to the lodge and asked who had stood watch while his son was murdered… Some huntsmen, of course, some militia would continue to cast, seeking his trace. But the full hunt would now await the king's coming – a two-days' sail up from Island. Bajazet would have at least that advantage.

He walked on… walked out of camp, ducked into forest and was gone. Gone running into the last of night, fleeing east and alone through dark, still, and frozen woods.

He'd slept till near midday, when the hounds woke him, casting uncertain and far away.

Uncertain, since they must be following the scent of clothes taken from his chamber's press, then echoed on boot-prints into the woods. Their master's scent, and never before that of prey. So, fragile and reluctant trailing – and thank Lady Weather, or they would have him in a day's running. The foresters, those fine trackers, were more dangerous.

Bajazet had slept on his belly like an exhausted child – the stems of winter-killed grass were printed across his right cheek. He sat up, then stood, and shook frost-beads and dead leaves from his cloak… He'd certainly heard the hounds, but then had lost their yodels. They'd be Warm-time miles behind him, west, down a small stream's valley. He'd slept the last of night and half the day beneath a budding alder – and had had to, or stagger in circles and drop to be found as they came on behind him.

"I killed him," he said aloud, and saw Mark's eyes again, astonished as he sank down. There was satisfaction to waking to that memory, though he supposed it would be better not to dwell on it, draw pleasure from the killing to chew on as spotted cattle chewed to swallow their mouthfuls twice. Better not to dwell on that with pleasure… and also not to talk aloud too often, since he had no good advice to give himself – nor encouragement, either.

So the hounds, poor followers – but the chase was not yet in full cry. When King Gareth came, it would be with fresh hounds, foresters, and at least a troop of the Army-United's regular Light Cavalry. Those hunters would be difficult to lose.

Likely impossible to lose, though the chase took them days, weeks. A new king – a traitor king – his only son murdered, could not afford to return to the river, the river lords, and other greats of the Great Rule, without the killer's fire-dried heart dangling from the Helmet of Joy.

A long, long chase then, and an almost certain end to it. – And if not that end, then what? An escape into deep and deeper wilderness, peopled with savages – and worse than savages, Boston's made-creatures gone feral? And so to an even meaner death?

Bajazet kicked a shit-hole with his boot heel, swung his cloak off, unlaced his buckskins, lowered them and under-drawers, and squatted for necessity… then used damp leaves to clean himself, and kicked the place covered. He laced his trousers, then reached up to lift his sword-belt, pack, bow and quiver from the low alder branches he'd hung them from the night before. He buckled the sword-belt, then drew on his cloak, strapped his leather pack to his back, and shouldered the quiver and unstrung bow.

The hounds again. Still distant, several Warm-time miles to the west.

Bajazet walked… then jog-trotted east along the narrow stream. He didn't know its name, so as he traveled, named it Confusion – and after a while, his night stiffness easing with the exercise, used it as such. He sat, and took his boots and thick stockings off. Then, holding them high, ran to splash down into the icy water… and out and up the opposite bank. Ran a little way angling north – then back the way he'd come and into the stream again… jumping, slipping, stepping from sand to rock to shingle, forging upstream until his legs, in soaked buckskins, ached with effort and freezing water, and his toes were bruised and bleeding from stubbing on stones.

He climbed out the opposite bank again, trembling with cold, cloak-hem dripping, sat to dry his feet in the cloak's hood… then put on stockings and boots to run again, angling north until the sounds of the stream were lost behind him, and only his footfalls broke the woods' silence.

He ran while he could – when the close trees and tangled brush allowed it – then, very tired, breathing like a Festival runner, he stopped and bent by a berry bush, hands propped on his knees, to catch his breath.

"I should have taken a horse," he said aloud – then remembered not to do that, and was silent. He saw himself – Mark Cooper dead – walking to the horse-lines past snoring troopers, choosing some shifting charger (a tall hot-hided roan) amid the warmth and odor of other horses. Unclipping its halter tether, and leading it away, stamping, snorting, to jump swinging up onto its bare back… knee it to a trot, then kick it galloping out of camp, leaving shouts and flaring torches behind.

Bajazet imagined that so well, he looked behind him as if the horse were there, tethered to a tree while he rested from hard riding.