Mitchell Smith - Moonrise

"Done." Though he hit it a fourth time, not so hard.

Patience looked and saw the link gleaming where it parted. There were voices down the path.

Aiken shook the chain, worked the link free, then stood, picked up his helmet, and put it on. "Honor satisfied," he said, slid her scabbarded sword from his belt, and handed it to her. "I'll stand to hold them while you run."

A woman – two women – were calling in their clicking pidgin, using no understandable book-English at all.

Patience got to her feet with the severed chain-length jingling, stretched up and kissed Pete Aiken's mouth beneath the helmet's beak. "Brave man," she said, and left him silent – apparently not used to kisses from aging Persons with broken noses. Outside, several tribeswomen, two with hatchets in their hands, were standing back along the path. There were children behind them – and coming trotting the same way, four older men with spears kicked their way through a flock of chicken-birds.

Patience – doubt and fear bundled together and set aside – called out, "Good-bye." Meaning good-bye to honorable Pete Aiken, good-bye to her jailor-log, good-bye to the village of Robins-by-the-Creek… Certainly able now (thank every Jesus) to set aside a shoulder only tender, an ankle only bruised – as she set aside the shouts coming chasing, uproar and argument with Aiken in their way – Patience welcomed restful concentration.

She trotted up the path in sunshine (chain-links musical at her ankle), and said a convinced good-bye to the earth beneath her feet. She emptied her mind of all but thrusting the world down and away, thrusting it behind – and her bare feet going lighter and lighter, till paddling in the air, she sailed gently swaying up… and up, with only a futile hatchet whirring its farewell.

Though Nancy and Richard seemed disturbed at such swift discovery and vengeance chase, even Errol nervous as they packed their packs and ran – Baj felt oddly at ease; he'd been pursued before, and by closer-coming and more formidable hunters.

"I apologize," Nancy said, a little out of breath. She'd bounded up beside while they ran full out past birches and north along the mountain's shrubby slope. Surprisingly fast Richard lumbering slightly ahead, as always.

"Apologize to those behind us." Baj was thankful he was running in new moccasins, not old boots. "Apologize to them," he said, and leaped a tangle of summer vine vine, "- not to me."

Nancy didn't answer, though she gave him the yellow-eyed glance he'd expected. She kept with him for a while, then strayed to the left and up-slope, more comfortable with rougher going.

The drums kept up. No longer deep, rolling growls, they sounded in nervous chasing taps and rattles, as if persuading their prey's hearts to beat to that unsustaining rhythm.

Stones and pebbles bruised Baj's feet through flexible conforming leather, but light swift running was consolation enough. He ordered his legs, and they obeyed… No matter how fast the Robins came, they'd started well behind. "And may catch up, never," Baj said aloud, high-stepping through windfall branches down a draw – dead branches, bare and black from Lord Winter's last several seasons, come down with run-off and rotting to punk. He ran through, breaking some in crumbling wet, and smelled the dank odor of spoiling wood as he went on.

Tap… tap tap. The drums coming behind them.

Legs aching but working well, Baj ran up beside Richard – the massive Person pacing along so swiftly, steadily, his heavy, furred pack like a clinging gray wolf on his back.

"How far… will they chase?"

Richard plunged into a stand of young evergreens as if they were an ocean's surf, and vanished but for green turmoil as he went. Baj ran downslope through more scattered trees, then up-slope again to join as Richard burst into the clear.

"How… far?"

"To their territory's edge," Richard said, his breath coming short. "- And stop there. They won't… want a war."

Richard had an odd way of running – looking odder the closer Baj ran with him. It was a two-legged gallop, and would have seemed more comfortable on four. An odd way, but ground-eating, steady and fast.

Baj ran, saw Nancy bounding across the slope above, and heard a wailing cry behind them. He thought some swift tribesmen had caught up – looked back, and saw Errol among evergreens, the boy staggering with his face in his hands.

"Hurt!" Nancy called. "Hurt!" And reversed her run remarkably – in one instant, fleeing north on a saplinged slope… in the next, back the other way, so an imagined brushy tail seemed to flirt behind her.

"For God's sake…" An ancient oath, and considered indecent in the Kingdom. Baj slowed, stopped, and saw Nancy trotting back to the boy.

Ahead, Richard stood still, looking back. He called out… something. The chasing drums seemed to answer with a rainfall patter of beats and pauses – and Baj realized that of course it was drum talking they were hearing. Drummed threats, drummed promises being made.

The morning sunshine seemed to pulse with Baj's heartbeat as he ran back the way he'd come, lifting his bow off his shoulder.

Behind him, Richard called again.

Nancy, this side of evergreens, had Errol gripped by the arm, was helping the boy along. "His eyes," she said, "- a branch whipped his eyes, running." Baj saw the line scored across the boy's face, a spot of blood in the boy's right eye, tears in both.

"He'll see again in a moment or two. Lead him away!" Baj knelt to bend the recurved bow and string it, then reached over his shoulder for an arrow. Saw the girl and sniveling boy just standing there. "Go on! Go!"

And away she went, half-dragging Errol along.

There was a soft rubbing sound amid the drumming. Some tribesman stroking his drum's taut hide – and heard too clearly, now.

Weasel enough to work back to cut that poor woman's throat – and now, runs into a fucking tree! It seemed to Baj it would have been best to let the Robins have the boy – no use but for murdering, and killing birds… He nocked the broadhead arrow, and scrambled sideways up the mountainside, thinking to wound a man, slow them just a little to make up this lost time.

Though, once he was set and had a clear shot where the evergreens broke below – the three Persons running north, Richard and Nancy holding the boy half-suspended between them – the drums still seemed a distance behind.

Baj had a little while to wonder if his was a foolish ambush after all – but had wondered it only once when two men came out of the pines with bright spear-points questing. They wore plumed bird-beak helmets, were naked to kilted waists, and wore hatchets, but carried no shields.

Expected, they were still surprising to see, so close behind. Baj supposed these were light scouts and the fastest runners… the others farther back, coming with the drums.

He'd expected the likes of Sparrows, shifting savages – but the two trotting across the slope below seemed more soldiers than that. There was a steady deliberation in their tracking…

Baj rose slowly, drawing as he did. The arrow's fletching touched his cheek and he released, mindful to hold a little low.

He should have nocked a second arrow as the first one flew – but instead stared like a raw hunter to see the shaft flick away, at first arching fast, flashing down the mountainside… then oddly seeming to sail slower, as if to be certain of its strike. Baj saw the gray fletching dot the near man's side, and he dropped his spear, staggered downslope like a drunk, stumbling, his mouth wide open. Then he tripped and sat down.

Stupidly late, Baj nocked his second arrow – and found no one to shoot. The other Robin was gone racing back into the pines, and would be running to the others with word. It might make them careful enough to slow a little as they came.