Mitchell Smith: Moonrise

He began to back away… back away. His legs appeared to do that without his asking. Just beyond, the man still shrieked; the trees seemed to shiver with it.

Bajazet half turned to run – then found he feared ignorance even more, the not knowing what might follow and come upon him. Perhaps come upon him in the night… So it seemed he was too frightened even to run. And at least now there would be light to shoot by.

There were no more screams.

He took a shaky breath, then began to walk forward slowly through the trees, walked as if in nightmare, bow half drawn. The daylight seemed to have grown brighter, so every detail appeared perfectly clear.

He crouched, moving under hanging branches – and still seeing so clearly… seeing each leaf, each plant-stalk. In shadow beside an elm's rough trunk, he knelt and stared out across a wide clearing, brown-black with winter-killed grass.

Only a bow-shot away, three things were eating – one tugging a loop of blue-white intestine from something in the grass. Yanking, tearing it free. There was a man on the ground – a tribesman, Bajazet could see tattoos down his arms amid the blood. A tribesman still alive, though certainly dying. His hands, his arms were raised out of the grass as if to push the things away. Bleeding hands.

Then one of the eaters bent to the man's head, and bit into it like an apple. Baj heard the sound.

He knew them, knew what they were, though these three – gone feral – wore no harness, no saddles, and their bare mottled skin was scarred by weather and woods-living. They were Boston's riding-creatures, massive, human-headed, four to five times the size of a man, and womb-twisted into huge, squat, four-footed mounts. Bajazet had seen them many times along the boon-docks, ridden by New England's merchants and officials, the creatures' legs grown heavily bent for a springing gait, their arms and hands turned to long fores ending in flat, calloused, broad-fingered pads.

One of them – the one that had tugged free a portion of the man's gut – chewed that and swallowed. It raised its great round head (a head almost perfectly human, gray hair grown shaggy, tangled), sniffed the air, then turned to look across the clearing.

There was no question but it saw Bajazet kneeling in shadow… It stared at him a long moment with wide, idiot eyes a light shade of gray or blue, then smiled and stuck out a flat bloodstained tongue. Stuck its tongue out at him like a naughty child. Bajazet ran, still clutching bow and arrow. A poor, staggering run, but the very best he could do. He ran back through the trees, then up into the hill's undergrowth, listening… expecting to hear great swift four-footed paces coming behind him.

But there was only silence, except for the breezy sounds of an end-of-winter afternoon. Silence when he stumbled to a stop at last by a red-berry bush, bending exhausted, a cramp in his left side.

He caught his breath, then shouldered his bow, quivered the arrow, and hurried on across the brow of the hill – still going east, though making a wide half-circle around the feeding beasts.

As he went, tripping now and then when he glanced, fearful, behind him, it seemed to Bajazet almost a wished-for thing to find a file of cavalry and their furious king, caught up and waiting to kill him, so his death would at least be in human company.

Late in after-noon, walking, then trotting unsteadily, then walking again to struggle through underbrush, Bajazet supposed his flight – to someone resting in a warm room after dinner, with a copybook on his lap – might seem a suitable subject for epic poetry. Poetry of a sort. Treachery, murders for a crown, a young prince fleeing through forest… meeting monsters. Might very well be a poem, if dirt and desperation, if eating insects were left out of it.

Bajazet recalled Lord Peter – the old librarian peacefully dead and River-buried later in the same year – recalled him smiling after reading Bajazet's epic, skip-rhymed triplets on Kingdom River's flow through history from Warm-times onward. At seventeen, Bajazet had imagined himself a romantic figure, a duelist poet, and bound to be fatal to the ladies.

"I've read worse," the Lord Librarian had said, "- and I've read better, poems made with longing and love, rather than pride in a great stack of rhymes, almost all of them beside the point." Most of the old man's teeth were gone, so his th's, tongued off his palate, sounded odd.

Bajazet, having expected praise – even astonishment – had stood in the library goggling at the insult.

"Of course," the old man had murmured, "- of course, if you believe me mistaken, you'll wish Queen Rachel to read this. There is no one with better judgment of writing's worth."

Bajazet had envisioned killing the withered creature by hitting him with the heaviest possible copybook off his shelves. Failing that, he'd said nothing, turned to stride out of the chamber in dignity.

"Prince Bajazet."

"What?" He turned back at the door.

"You asked me once about your First-father…"

"Yes, I asked once – and was told nothing."

The old man had shifted on his high stool, his bony behind likely no comfort. "Answers, like questions, have their proper-times. Do you wish to hear about him now?"

Bajazet had wished to tell the time-dried mummy to go to Lady Weather's hell of storms unceasing, but found he couldn't. He'd stood, listening.

The old man had smiled at him, gums almost toothless as a baby's. "As you know, I tutored the Khan Toghrul through his boyhood at Caravanserai… I was fond of him, and found him brilliant beyond all others, though crippled."

"Crippled…?"

"Yes. By the necessity to dominate all within his reach, and to extend that reach absolutely. It was a hunger in him, insatiable – and ruled his life as completely as he ruled others. But for that sad hunger, he would have been the greatest man of our age, superior even to the king."

"The king beat him."

"Yes, Sam Monroe defeated him – but only barely, and in alliance with Middle Kingdom. The king has never pretended he was the khan's equal in battle, has never pretended his success against him was not more a matter of good fortune than genius… And in that admission – its self-knowledge and sense of proportion – is revealed all reasons why he is the Great Rule's king… while your First-father is gone into history."

"But, what was he… what was he like?"

"Ah…" The Lord Librarian had closed his eyes for a moment, remembering. "Toghrul – as a boy, a young man – was serious, but also humorous in a somewhat chilly way. Absolutely confident. He was slender – as you are. Handsome – as you are. But much older for his years; the boy in him quickly vanished. Still, some of those close to your father, loved him; certainly the old khan loved his son, though he seemed puzzled by him on occasion.

So, Toghrul was loved by some, but feared by everyone but his father, one or two old generals, I suppose… and of course, your mother."

"My mother…"

"I met the Lady Ladu only twice, and in passing – once on a path through the summer garden's brief beds of pansies and so forth. She was short, sturdy, and rather plain. Kipchak chieftains tend to be hawks – their ladies, partridges. She was no beauty, except for her eyes – your eyes, now. Eyes at first black, then seen to be the dark gray of evening. She was said to be very gentle… And of course, soon after your father's death, was murdered, with Chancellor Razumov, for sending the infant-you out of Ek-Tam's reach."

Bajazet had tried to speak… say something, but found he couldn't, as if the library's warmth, its grumbling stoves, were smothering him.

"Murders," the old man said, "- that among others, decided the king, your Second-father, to go west, defeat that general, and see him disemboweled at Map-Oakland."