Mitchell Smith - Moonrise

Wending after the cavalrymen as the camp was completing around them, stepping aside for troopers riding past, and burdened work-parties, it became plain to Baj that what might have seemed confusion, was its opposite.

"These are disciplined people."

Richard turned his head to stare down at him. "What did you think? That we – that Moonriser Guardsmen would be a mob, or hunting pack?"

"No… of course not."

Richard grunted and lumbered on. Nancy stuck a sharp elbow into Baj's ribs. "Runaway tongue," she said.

… The Cavalry's Lines lay along the western edge of camp. Past them, soldiers were digging a wide ditch in the tundra's grass and flowers, pickaxes swinging, spades shoveling down to permafrost. "They always circle-ditch a camp," Nancy said, "- to hesitate a rush if tribesmen come."

"A useful thing, particularly at night…" Richard led them along a row of great black buttocks, the moose standing short-tied to a long chain anchored at measured places by heavy stakes driven into the ground.

"Step wide," Richard said. "They kick."

Baj stepped wide.

Midway down the Line – as the file of cavalry was halted, the men dismissed to their duties – Richard went past to a lean-to shelter where two of the near-Sunrisers, officers' gold chain-links fastened to their mailed shoulders, sat on stacked saddle-blankets, scribbling on slates. The older one, tall, and slightly stooped, looked up as Richard came.

"And why, by the Wall," he said, "- aren't you skinned and screeching for desertion?"

Richard didn't try to salute. "Too valuable to lose, Colonel."

The stooped officer naaa'd a short laugh, and Baj saw a goat's horizontal pupils in human eyes, a human face. "Best one today," the colonel said, then glanced at Patience, "The Township lady…?"

"Yes."

"Umm-hmm. And you, Richard – and these – are troubling me… why?"

"For bedding and rations, sir."

"Ah. Why don't you and your friends – hello, Nancy – why don't you and your friends go bother the infantry?"

"Because it would mean fighting, sir."

"Fighting," the colonel tossed his head. "Can't have that, can we, Burt?"

"No, sir," the other officer, a two-link captain, said. His eyes were gray, and entirely human. "Can't have fighting."

The colonel stared at them a moment. "All right, Richard-Shrike. Bedding and rations – but stay off the feed bales – and away from my troopers."

"Yes, sir."

The colonel looked at Errol. "That's an idiot boy."

"Twisted weasel," Nancy said. "Mess-kettle cleaner since he was little, and they beat him." Errol, uneasy at the attention, tongue-clicked.

"Well," the colonel said, "if he gets among my moose and disturbs them, I'll have him nailed to a feed box. Understood?"

"Understood," Richard said.

"No offense meant to you, Lady," the colonel said to Patience, "- by these notices."

"None taken."

The colonel bent to his slate, and said nothing more as Richard led them away and down the Lines to a shelter where a large sergeant of supply – with odd hands and an unpleasant corporal – grumbled in poor book-English, then had thick bracelets of red ration-strings looped around their wrists, and fat rolled pallets tossed to them, each slate-noted.

"Fuckin' be sure you return these," the corporal said. "I'm not payin' for 'em."

… They spread blankets, unrolled pallets, then settled onto soft tundra turf just beyond the Line, wind-sheltered by canvas feed stores raised close on either side. Soldiers were digging the encampment ditch an easy bowshot away… and past them there was only a great level, the plain of sedge and dwarf willow – grass green, moss brown – stretching the Warm-time miles north, to the frost-white horizon of the Wall.

Wind came streaming from that northern ice, weighty, biting with cold that here proved short-summer's date a lie – so Baj, Richard, and Nancy wrapped their cloaks around them, and Errol burrowed under a blanket. Patience, her scimitar in her lap, sat cross-legged, looking north – her worn blue coat apparently warm enough.

It seemed to Baj that he and the others were changed in some subtle fashion. No longer quite what they'd been in the mountains – so few in the freedom of those grand landscapes. Here, in the Guard's marching camp, they appeared diminished, cramped (as they were cramped, hemmed in, and at others' mercy). Here, a simple order would see them dead – though after a scrambling fight, to be sure. An order, the necessity of which, Boston might have anticipated.

The icy wind come ruffling, Baj imagined Nancy dead in this place, huddled hacked and ruined on bloody blankets at the feet of panting soldiers. The golden eyes gone dark with death.

That, and his death and all their deaths, required only a few grating wolfish words – and from more a muzzle, than a mouth. So much coarser than Nancy's elegant indications. He needed to write a poem to her…

They all lazed, eased from traveling, as the glass-hours passed into after-noon. Nancy lay drowsing beside Baj, and Errol slept, twitching in some weasel dream.

"What," Baj said, when the wind, that had been so steady, shifted to westerly, "- what is that stink?"

"The bales," Nancy said. "Feed bales. Moose don't care much for grass."

"Under-bark and summer water-plants, bog cabbage," Richard said, "- packed damp, then the bales frozen on the ice in slit hides, so some air comes through when they thaw."

"And stink," Nancy said.

"Mountain-Jesus knows it," Baj said.

Nancy shook her head. "Frozen-Jesus here, Baj, held forever in the ice. Or, of course, we can call to Lady Weather."

"This odor…" Patience said. "There are disadvantages to moose, though heroes have ridden them."

"It must," Baj said to her, "be such a gift to travel in the air… and not afoot or riding some reluctant beast. But everything clean and clear, with distance meaning so little."

Patience stared at him.

"… I meant no offense."

"You don't offend me, Baj. I'm only surprised you still think there is some wonderful way, that is not wonderfully dear… I travel in air, Walk-in-air, at the penalty of making myself a sort of idiot, most of my mind empty of everything but keeping the earth away, so only by… leaking notions past can I think of anything else." She shrugged. "When I was young, there was more room in my head for other considerations – and I could still hold altitude while mulling them."

She paused so long it seemed she'd lost her thoughts' thread… then said, "There may be harder work, for one growing so swiftly older. Perhaps rowing an oar in a Kingdom warship. Perhaps hacking fire-coal from the tribal hills of West Map-Virgina. – Perhaps those are harder work, but I doubt it. One week of Walking-in-air, unspools months of most Talents' lives." She smiled. "Though, when I was a girl, and very strong in that piece of brain, I disregarded the cost – as I disregarded everything that was not a wish of mine."

"Then rest on the ground, dear," Richard said. "Sylvia Wolf-General meant what she told you."

"I'm sure she did," Patience said, "and only hope she also still means harm to Boston. I sent a Mailman to her in Lord Winter's season – an expensive young Mailman sacrificed, 'lost to hawks,' since I killed it on its return, for secrecy… Also, on the ice at

Salem, I spoke to her sister, a major, as well. There was – is – an agreement, if she hasn't decided for the Township after all."

"Sylvia's mother and an aunt both died in the Pens, birthing." Richard tried his ax's edges, then searched in his possibles for his whetstone."- Supposed to have been a Sparrow shaman's daughters, captured by Fish-hawks in a raid. Then the Guard came to the coast, and took them… I doubt the General has changed her mind."