Mitchell Smith - Moonrise

The other didn't follow. It turned, prancing a little, bent its head to snatch a bite of tufted sedge, then stood waiting, apparently to accompany them.

"The Wolf-General," Richard called to it, "- Sylvia is with these companies?"

The Scout stared, but didn't answer.

"She'd better be," Patience said. Then, certainly from a copybook, added, "Or we're screwed."

"Let's go." Richard strode away. Toward silence, now; the distant rise-and-shine music had ended.

They walked the lumpy tussocks, looking west, while the Scout trotted in easy wide circles around them… Errol, after a while, ran out to chase him, and wouldn't come to calls. But the Scout- – after an initial shying away – seemed not to mind, left his hatchet scabbarded, and he and the boy commenced a chase and be-chased game over the tundra, though Errol was never fast enough to catch him.

"Two more," Richard said, and Baj saw movement… then made out two other Scouts galloping toward them. These did not approach closely, only circled once, then again, and ran away west.

Errol, panting in exhaustion, had just come back to them, when Nancy said, "There." And pointed… What seemed at first animals – from their compactness, their brown fur – gradually became nine… ten… a WT-dozen men trotting toward them in a long extended line.

Sunshiners, it seemed to Baj. True-human tribesmen, by the look of them. Short men, rounded with smooth fat over muscle, and wearing parities and trousers of caribou hide trimmed with fisher fur, the parky hoods tucked back and away from their faces. Each carried two or three light javelins, and an atlatl tucked into a wide belt with a sheathed long-bladed knife.

"Shrikes." Richard stood still, and swung his double-bladed ax off his shoulder.

One of the tribesmen – the man on the left of their line – whistled a single shrill note, and the others slowed and drifted, while he come forward.

A round face, smiling. His teeth were filed to points. As he came, he called, "Captain Richard!" his breath smoking in the icy morning air.

"Dolphus…!" Richard spoke softly over his shoulder. "I fought against him on Berkshire ice. He's an Under-chief, important."

"And a relative," Patience said. "Isn't he?"

"Was my mother's cousin," Richard said, and the Shrike chief, hearing, nodded as he walked up to them – stepping neatly, Baj saw, always between the grass tussocks. The furs he wore – the parky, and caribou-hide muk-boots and trousers – were beautifully dressed, decorated with the fisher fur, ermine tails, and little fans of porcupine quills dyed orange and blue.

"His mother – my father's brother's eldest daughter," the Shrike said. He spoke in a humming drone, as if on a single alto note. It was, Baj supposed, where Richard had gotten his thoughtful hum.

The Shrike chief didn't seem fierce; he seemed pleasant. His hair, the color of southern straw (though with gray mixed in it) was plastered with animal fat… drawn into a clubbed pigtail at the back. His green eyes seemed amused.

"Heavens," he said, "- what a bunch." A reader, Baj thought, filed teeth or not, and comfortable with copybook-English.

The Shrike smiled, examining them. "A deserter from the Guard, an ex-Boston air-walker, an army whore, an idiot boy, and… someone who was someone, but isn't anymore."

Baj felt Nancy standing still and silent beside him, and anger rose hot, seized his mouth, and spoke. "Enough of a someone," he said, "- to run a steel blade up your fat ass!"

The Shrike widened his eyes in a demonstration of surprise, glanced from Baj to Nancy, then smiled his pleasant filed-tooth smile. "It must be love," he said. "If I offended, Prince, I beg your pardon. – And the lady's." Certainly a literate savage, and unimpressed by threats.

Nancy said nothing.

Richard took a side-step to stand between Baj and the Shrike. "What are you doing with the Guard, Dolphus?"

"I'm doing what you intend doing. Persuaded to try it, in any case. Boston is becoming… tedious."

"And the Guard?"

"I won't say they'll welcome you, Richard – weren't happy to welcome me and my men. But they've admitted a truce with us… for a while. The rest of the Guard companies – fewer – have been sent down to the Coast-Atlantic on dubious, but convenient orders. Orders that might hold just long enough." He shrugged. "It's sad, really, since we were preparing an unpleasant surprise beneath the Wall for your so-clever Sylvia."

"You'd be the first savage to manage it."

"Well," Dolphus-Shrike smiled, "- sooner or later, someone is bound to."

The tribesman spoke the easiest, most authentic book-English that Baj had heard since fleeing Middle-Kingdom. Better, more… relaxed, than even the Wishful-believers had managed. It was as if a man had traveled the centuries from Warm-times, wrapped himself in fur, taken up javelins and atlatl, and filed his teeth.

"Sylvia's with you?"

"Oh, with respect still due, I'd say we're with her."

Baj noticed that the other Shrikes had casually moved to circle them. It would be difficult to defend against javelins hissing in from all directions. He reached back to his quiver, slid an arrow out, and nocked it to his bow-string… Dolphus-Shrike, noticing past Richard's bulk, winked at him, and said, "In case of difficulties – me first?"

"Who better?" Baj said.

"Then thank heavens we're all to be friends," the Shrike gestured to follow, and walked away, "- as long as we live."

"What of him, Richard?" Patience seemed at ease, though her hand was on her scimitar's hilt.

"Dolphus? He's a shaman, an educated man among the Shrikes."

"But a fighter."

"Oh, yes. He doesn't have to be – but he is. Got bored with copybooks, apparently."

"And the Robins, south, fear those people?" Baj said.

"Robins," Nancy said, "- and the Thrushes and Fish-hawks. The Shrikes are very clever. And cruel."

"If he hurts you again," Baj said, "- with his well-read WT mouth, I'll kill him."

"… I should have told you," Nancy said, and Baj saw tears in golden eyes.

"You came near enough telling me, sweetheart. But it would have made no difference, and makes no difference now." He took her narrow hand as they walked along… and tried, as he could see the Shrikes doing, stepping only between tussocks.

"Don't… Baj, don't fight him."

"Not if I can help it. He frightens me."

Nancy laughed, and wiped tears away with her sleeve. "Even for a Sunriser," she said, "- you're odd." She hugged him, so they walked awkwardly, then leaned up to nip his earlobe, so Baj imagined happy years of minor injuries… Still, there crossed his mind a shadowed scene of Nancy naked in firelight, drunk, laughing, surrounded by a hulking pack.

The thought, the image shamed him… and all the worse since there was no way to beg pardon for that treachery of imagination.

He held her closer, so they stumbled along, awkward as Festival sack-racers. Bent, and kissed her.

… Soon, standards heaved up on the plain, and formations could be seen beneath them, mounted and foot – some shining in steel, some uniformed in furs, and others, it seemed, in multicolored woolens. All marching east – without music, but together, so their ranks swayed slightly to one side then the other, as they came.

"Who is Sylvia," the Shrike chief called to them, smiling, "- that all our swains commend her?" It sounded to Baj like a copybook quote, though he didn't remember it… Old Lord Peter would have known.

Ahead of them, riders came galloping from serried ranks bright with polished armor under the morning sun. Five… six, coming fast under a green staff-banner rippling to their wind of passage.

Lances. Baj saw lances held socketed easily upright. And, he thought, bows cased beside their saddles… But it was not horses they rode. And not the great pale Made-things some Boston people shipped to Middle-Kingdom for their mounts. He'd seen those… Mampies. Seen others later, gone wild and murdering.