Mitchell Smith - Moonrise

"Better," Baj said aloud, and stood, the second arrow still on his string. "Better this way." The man sitting wounded down the mountainside seemed to be looking up at him. Certainly, he should start running after the others. Run – leave the man; leave the arrow. Who would say he should do otherwise?

Baj slid his second arrow over his shoulder into the quiver, then trotted, skidded, down the slope. The Robin sat as if patiently waiting for him – looking, with his beaked helmet, like the get of some unlikely Boston mating of woman and bird.

When Baj reached him, he saw the Robin sat the slope awkwardly, and smelled of shit. A boy, perhaps sixteen, seventeen years old, he stared up at Baj under the brow of his plumed helmet, and hissed-in rapid breaths of agony.

"I'm sorry," Baj said to him – a stupidity. The arrow had gone through from side to side. The fletching nestled against the boy's left ribs; the razor-edged head and inches of shaft stuck out lower, at his other side.

Time tapped Baj on the shoulder, and he – or perhaps a slightly different Baj – stepped behind the Robin, hauled his head sharply back, drew the left-hand dagger and cut the boy's throat. There was… a sort of wet sneeze and convulsion, and Baj – head averted so as not to see too much – bent, yanked the irreplaceable arrow on through the boy's body and free… then ran away north, strung bow on his shoulder, bloody dagger in one hand, bloody arrow in the other.

Galloping the slope through low shrubbery, over rubble scree, he ducked past a pine, paused, and managed to wipe the knife on his buckskins and sheath it. He ran on, still holding the arrow in a hand gloved with dirt and drying blood… It seemed to him impossible to stay clean in this wilderness.

Behind him, keeping irregular time to his flight, sounded the conversation of drums.

… He caught up in a little while. Staggering tired, and with a WT "stitch" in his right side, Baj saw the three Persons in miniature ahead and a little below him, trotting north into brush and rougher country. Richard was forging in the lead, leaving a wake of shrubbery forced aside, with Nancy and Errol following – the boy apparently now seeing well enough.

Baj, still hearing pursuing drums, saw they'd slowed a little to wait for him. – And as if she'd heard his thought, Nancy turned to look behind her. She looked, went on, then turned to look again and saw him. He knew it, even at the distance.

She stopped, let Errol scurry on, and stood waiting… watching him come down to them, his bow, still strung, bouncing at his shoulder. Richard stood waiting farther on – standing amid flowering bushes like a bear risen from a berry patch.

"What?" Nancy called to him as he came. "What?"

Meaning, Baj supposed, everything. "I… killed one. A scout. The other ran back. I think it slowed them a little."

Nancy shook her head as if she'd meant none of that, and stepped through a tangle to stare at him, poke and pat his arms and chest, then stand back. "Ease your bow," she said. "Do Sunrisers have to be told to do everything?" And she was away, running.

"How far?" Baj, gone to one knee under a young alder, tried to take a breath that didn't catch at his side. "How far does these people's territory run?"

Richard, seeming weary at last, sat panting in rough grass. "Certainly not much farther… Not much farther."

"You say," Nancy said. Errol curled beside her, she lay dappled by early evening shadows in a sapling's shade, her head resting on her pack. "Those villages could own another hundred Warm-time miles."

"Surely not," Baj said.

Drums ticked and tapped as if to contradict him – and sounded a little nearer. He drew in the deepest breath he could, and felt the catch in his side fading. "We need to move."

Richard nodded, heaved up to his feet, shrugged his big pack to settle it, and lumbered away through the trees.

"Where," Nancy said, "- is these mountains' Jesus and His mercy?" She rolled to her feet, took up her pack, and trotted out. Errol, coming awake, scrambled beside Baj to follow.

As they ran through the alder grove and out along a grassy lead – no true creek – Baj, glancing aside at Errol's face, saw only the usual alert and vacant abstraction. The same expression, surely, he'd worn as he came out of the woods, returning to where the woman waited, tied to her tree.

… They ran, rested again, and ran – but slower and slower as evening shadows lengthened. Baj no longer felt his legs; they moved beneath him, but separate as wagon wheels or a horse's hooves might be. He had more and more difficulty avoiding large stones and fallen branches, or the hook and hold of thornbushes in his way – and no longer stepped quite straight, but shambled a little to one side, then the other.

The Persons' blood was failing them as well. Richard's tongue, revealed a surprising purple, lolled a little as he padded on. Nancy, panting just behind, stumbled now and then, no longer sure-footed, with Errol pacing slower beside her. They had little run left in them.

"Night." Nancy used a breath to say it – and the four of them labored on as if sheltering darkness waited just ahead, past this water lead, past more alders. Past whatever lay along their way.

"… Night," Nancy had said, but there was still light enough to see they'd left a mountain behind, still light enough for the next mountain's long shadow to show against its green, when they noticed – Baj first – that only the wind and the day's last bird-calls sounded.

There was no sound of drumming.

They went on, regardless – flight seeming an end in itself – stumbled along for a little way, then slowed, walked… and stopped to stand stupid as spotted cattle.

"I suppose," Richard said, "- they might be coming on, silent."

But the Robins weren't. The continuous pressure of chase at their backs was gone. No one hunted them anymore.

Baj and the others dropped as if melting to the grass, tugged blankets around them, and lay cramped with aching muscles until sleep came to keep them company into nightfall… Errol, huddled close at Baj's back, whimpered in a dream.

"Is there no breakfast?"

Baj jerked awake to a chilly dawn, fumbled for his rapier's hilt – and found it as he blinked sleep from his eyes.

There was an old woman sitting on the summer grass, staring at him… at the others as they woke. Someone had beaten her, broken her nose and left blood on her face.

"Breakfast."

Then Baj saw it was Boston-Patience, sitting cross-legged and barefoot in a dirty blue coat, grimy white blouse, and worn blue trousers. She held her scimitar across her lap – but now looked too frail, too damaged to use it. Her left arm was strapped in a sling.

"Lady," Richard heaved himself up to stand, "- what happened to your boots?"

"My boots? What of my nose, Richard?" She sounded as if she had a snow-season cold.

"Who hurt you?" Nancy left her blanket, went to touch the woman's face – but Patience pushed her hand away.

"I hurt myself first, by dreaming in the air. Later, children threw rocks while I was a guest in a Robin's nest." She leaned a little to her right as she sat, used her sheathed scimitar for support. Her left arm and shoulder seemed strapped firm. "I asked about breakfast – and by the way, the tribesmen no longer follow… which is just as well, since they would have caught the four of you snoring."

"We have cold venison," Baj said.

"I'll take some… And how do you do, Baj-who-was-Bajazet? You certainly do quickly. I don't think I've ever seen such scurrying away below me, as you four fleeing. The Robins couldn't keep up, and I couldn't keep up – still unsteady Walking-in-air."