Mitchell Smith - Moonrise

"Thank me?" Nancy said.

"Well, I was thanking Mountain Jesus for level ground at last… But also, I thank you and Richard. In your company, I've become a… more human human."

"That," she said, and was smiling, "- is to go from bad to worse."

They laughed loud enough for Richard to turn and frown at them, so they became serious, and looked right and left across the meadows as they went to the sleeping ridge. It was so like a great creature lying down, that Baj began a poem… that turned instead, as he paced along, into a tale for children – of a gentle monster, immense, named Pepperada-Dodo, who befriended all young creatures, animal, human, or Person, and guarded them – though, too shy to be seen as himself, appearing always as a modest mountain, carefully cloaked in evergreens.

A disguise successful, as Baj found – bow now eased, and arrow quivered – climbing the ridge's steep slope, hauling himself up it from sapling to sapling, his pack weighing heavier and heavier, his moccasin-boots slipping in rain-soaked soil or scrabbling up shelves of stone. Less soil, more stone as he climbed higher, Nancy stepping up more lightly beside him.

When they stopped climbing to catch their breath – Richard above them, massive, still moving quietly up the hill – Baj scanned the sky for Boston-Patience, but saw above the evergreens no tiny flag of blue coat drifting across blue sky.

They gathered at the crest – Errol squatting, drawing white lines on a round of surfaced stone with a sharp-edged rock – and met the strongest stink of burning yet, rising up the reverse slope. To the north, where the country sank away to a deep, wide valley, a smudge of light-brown smoke towered, broken by breezes.

"Past that burning," Richard said, "- is the Pass I-Seventy."

"Can we avoid the burning?" Baj was amused to hear himself ask a question that wouldn't have occurred to him only weeks before. Caution and care had come to stay.

"No," Richard said, "- though we can try, by one or two WT miles, going by."

"That's a Robin village," Nancy said. "We passed it, coming south."

"They built too low." Richard shook his head. "Hill tribes live longer in the hills."

Errol began hitting the stone with his rock. Tock tock tock, until his rock powdered and broke.

From the bottom of the ridge, they walked north, keeping to the trees where they could, and hold direction. Filing through birch groves and tangled brush along a narrow glittering run, they saw the smoke still rising, a little to their right.

Baj came last, pressed a little to keep up through dense growths of thorn and bird berry. Nancy trotted in front of him, her light-footed shadow, hunchbacked by her pack, slanting beside her. They stirred whirring grass-hoppers up and around them as they went.

Baj heard that sort of whirring whisper behind him – then cold steel touched the back of his neck. He yelped, wheeling, drawing his sword as Patience hung in the air just above him, smiling, her head haloed by the sun. "It might be wise to watch behind you, Baj Who-was-et cetera. Behind and above. I am not the only Talent out of Boston."

Baj took a breath, put up his rapier, and said, "Good advice."

"You know Warm-time's 'et cetera'?" She sheathed her scimitar, and swung slightly in the air, her face, despite the little spints along her nose, now looking only lightly bruised.

"I know it, Lady."

Patience thrust a small moccasin down. "Pull me to the ground. It feels good in the back of my head… something rubs inside there."

Baj reached up to hold her foot, then gently drew her from the air. There was an odd… resistance.

"Feels good," she said, sliding down to him and along his chest and belly to stand in the grass. "Feels good… " She rested there against him, smiling up into his face, black eyes so close he saw nothing else, so she might have been a girl, and beautiful.

"is she hurt?" Nancy, coming back to them.

"No," Patience said, and stepped away. "I was teasing your prince as if I were still young, and perfect."

"He's not my prince," Nancy said, lisping the prince a little, and turned away as Richard came lumbering back to them.

"What have you seen?" he said.

"I've seen what you should see," Patience said. "That is a small Robin village, burning, and the Robins still stand in it."

"I doubt they'd welcome us," Richard said.

"Oh, but they will," Patience said, "- and smiling."

… And so it proved. The Robin village, its houses once ranked down along a stream – the water tumultuous after the storm – was burned, burned to nothing but sticks of char and furnaced wattle-clay. The villagers smiled in welcome, some with ravens perched on their heads.

A forest of perhaps fifty or sixty of them grinned, propped upright in the ruins of their homes, blistered black and impaled on fire-scorched stakes. Several curl-tailed brown dogs shied and muttered a distance away, and a little flock of brown chicken-birds pecked and strutted by the stream.

Baj bent and vomited, sickened by smell more than sight. The drifting odor was of overcooked pig, charred, sweet, and delicious.

"No children." Patience cleared her throat, spit, and kicked a cinder aside. "So whoever it was, once the killing was over, had the children herded for serfs… Too far south for this to have been done by Shrikes, though the method is theirs."

"Method?"

"Baj, the Shrikes are named for sticking people up on sharp stakes or, over the Wall, on tall made-icicles."

"And not the Guard's doing," Richard said.

Nancy suddenly sprinted through smoking remnants, took Errol by the back of his neck and dragged him, kicking, from what he'd been doing. "… No," she said, cuffing Errol still, "this was not the Guard."

Baj wiped his mouth with his bandanna. "Because none were eaten?"

Richard turned on Baj in a surprisingly sudden way. "Eating true-humans is a true-human do, as you should remember, since your own river-people are known for it!"

"Were known for it." Baj said.

"Oh," Patience said, "- I imagine some backcountry river lords still hold festival lunch… But not the Guard's doing here, Baj. They wouldn't have troubled with burning, and they wouldn't have taken the children. They'd have asked for the chief's daughter, taken her if she seemed useful – but not killed anyone, unless opposed."

"And if opposed?"

"Then," Richard said, and seemed even angrier, "- then, everyone and everything, even singing basket-birds and puppies."

Baj knelt by the village stream to wash his bandanna. "Let's get the fuck away from here." Probably quoting from some copybook he'd read; it had Warm-times' harsh impatient ring.

"Get away, yes," Nancy said. "But which way to do it?"

"We're almost to the Pass I-Seventy," Patience said, "- and have no choice but keep north to cross it into Map-Pennsylvania."

"Well enough," Baj stood and wrung his bandanna out. "- If soon enough." He breathed lightly and through his mouth, but the odor still came in.

"Away from here, first," Richard said, and strode off down the stream, his shaggy head lowered, apparently so as not to see too much of what he passed.

They all filed after him, Nancy holding Errol by the arm. Patience came last, ground-walking. "What is in the air, is seen in the air," she said.

Richard led them down the Robins' stream – then over it, across cleverly set stepping-stones, big enough that they were only splashed, crossing. Once over, they traveled through scattered forest – of mainly evergreens, with only a few tamarack, aspen, and balsam poplar. The Wall's breath, over this lowland, was now close enough to be too chill for many hardwoods, summer or not.