Mitchell Smith - Moonrise

"Thank the Shrikes," Baj said.

"Yes," Patience said, "thank the Shrikes." With some effort she got to her feet, and went to those climbers as they sat resting, or stood coiling line, and kissed each on the cheek.

Murmurs from the other tribesmen. Baj counted fourteen, fifteen men. They'd brought no women with them.

A number of long light sleds lay near – with each harnessed team, three pairs of caribou, standing restless, casting the stretched shadows of end-of-day. A small herd of the animals shifted in a rope enclosure, antlers clicking softly as they touched others… Past them, the gently undulating plain of snow, the great glacier's cap, stretched away and away to its own horizon.

The waiting Shrikes, short and sturdy in their caribou parkies and high muk-boots, javelins casual over their shoulders, were taking their friends' heavy packs, rope-coils, and bandoleers of gear from them, to pack on the sleds… Three came to Baj and the others, and shouldered their packs to load. Left them their weapons.

Baj stood, took Nancy's hand, and walked back near the Wall's crest as if to assure himself they'd truly done what they'd done. There, standing safe from that supreme vertical, it seemed to him this snow-prairie was one world, and the land miles below, quite another. So strong a notion was this that he looked up as if a third – a sky-world – might hover still higher over their heads… But there was only depthless blue.

They walked back to Patience and the others; Marcus-Shrike and several tribesmen were standing with them. "You all," Marcus said, "did very well, for strangers. But that witless boy," indicating Errol, who was peeing a pattern on the snow, "- he did best."

"We are very sorry," Patience said – and was certainly going to say "sorry about the loss of Henry-Shrike" when she noticed a change in the tribesmen's faces, so she never finished. And no one else mentioned it, either.

"I know why," Richard spoke low to Baj later, as the Shrikes rocked their sled-runners loose, preparing to travel north. "For them, what is not spoken of is not completely so. They will never want a final good-bye for Henry-Shrike, since that will mean he's truly dead."

Whistles, then. Apparently the Shrikes' equivalent of drums and trumpets. Whistles for the start.

All the climbers rode for a long while, resting, as the sleds glided behind the caribou over glittering perfect white that undulated slowly up, then slowly down, as if they sailed a calm snow-sea. But after a distance gone toward night and halting, first the Shrikes, then Baj and the others, climbed off to stretch their legs, trotting alongside. Poor trotting, with staggers and tripping at first, even for the tribesmen, the level taking getting used to.

The relief from every instant's threat of death also took getting used to – Baj startling the tribesmen once by diving into the snow to stretch and roll like a hound freed from kennel, in celebration of the gift of safety. Nancy fell to join him, and Richard also lay ponderously down. Then Patience came, and Errol bounded over to flop down beside them… They all mouthed the snow of safety, as the tribesmen turned to watch them, and the sleds slid by.

Then all were on their feet again, trotting unsteadily over the snow in sunset light after the Shrikes' steady-pacing teams, whose harness jingled with steel-and-copper sequins. They hurried along the narrow ruts the sled-runners left behind, Baj holding Nancy's mittened hand to confirm he had her still.

… At nightfall in a sled-circled camp – the rising moon blurred by buffeting wind, blowing ice-crystals – Baj and the others, drowsy as tired children after meat and blubber cooked over cold-dried caribou dung, were steered to hide-sheltered fur pallets. Where, nested with Nancy in an odd little leather tent pitched within a larger round one – for additional warmth, apparently – Baj had no reason but fear-remembered to jolt awake, certain a braided climbing-line had parted, and the long fall begun.

… Then, what more delicious than safety realized? Safety, warmth, and love, with Boston's North Gate seeming only a Map-place, to be found in some forever future, but never now.

The glacier's snowy plain – broken only here and there by stupendous crevasses whose depths, blue vanishing to black, echoed to no tossed chunks of ice – proved otherwise featureless but for its gentle rises, gentle descents.

It became a dream's frozen landscape for Baj as they traveled on, trotting beside the sleds, then riding for a while, then off to trot again. They traveled as if through time, on time's white and frozen road – from day to night, night to day, day to night once more – with only occasional howling storms come over endless ice to fasten them to a present.

The Shrikes ran almost silent over the glacier's broad back, but for impatient whistles, signings of this task or that to be done: lashings to be checked; the restless caribou stung with whipped leather lines to stay hauling each sled in harness together; scouts to go running ahead… scouts to drop behind to catch up later. Then, as early evening fell in shrouds of hazing ice-crystals or blowing snow, the caribou unharnessed to wander in a guarded herd, pawing the snow for last season's lichen. The sleds unpacked, the great round hide-tents – "biggies"- set up supported by long fanned struts of precious southern pine. Then "bitties"- little hide tents placed as dens within the great ones – were pitched with tensioned cords tied strut to strut.

And all labor made twice – three times – the labor by cold and wind. At its gentlest, the wind sliced slowly, shallowly as a stroking razor; at its fiercest, it struck like an ax.

When – rarely now, as days went by – the sun came flashing off the ice, it blinded for hours anyone who stared without slit-goggles to take pleasure in it.

The cold days' work wore fingers raw through every glove or mitten. Made numb faces, feet, and hands. So Baj saw, in their world, the forming of the Shrikes by weather with no mercy, no forgiveness in it, where only green lichen and the caribou made life possible at all.

Still, there was an ease. When lying exhausted in a close bitty-tent, with Lord Winter bellowing a gale outside the biggy, Baj rested wonderfully warm by a single tallow candle and the heat of naked Nancy beside him on the furs – her odor mingling fox with weary girl – so his sleep was the richest he'd known, a pleasure anticipated through each traveling day.

… More than a Warm-time week had certainly passed when this fine sleep was broken by an animal's bleating scream – and Baj was off the furs and out of the bitty-tent, struggling into his parky, hopping to get fur trousers on, and muk-boots. Then out of the biggy's entrance-flaps into still and absolute cold under rich moonlight, bending to set his bow. Nancy was coming out behind him, scimitar drawn, when the animal screamed again – and Baj saw, an easy stone's throw away, a great mound of snow with dead-black eyes standing upright over a fallen caribou. The mound of snow opened dreadful jaws, bent for a great ripping bite, and the caribou's screams ceased.

Icy arrow nocked to the string, Baj stood clear of a sled's heaped load, drew to his ear – and as he released, was struck hard across the face with a whipping crack as the bow exploded in his hand. Its ruins hung by the bow-string as Shrikes came running in shuttling moon-shadow, setting javelins to their atlatles.

The white bear turned toward them. Annoyed, unafraid, one huge paw resting on his prey.

"A relative!" Richard, heavy double-bitted ax in hand, had come up beside Baj.

The javelins began to hum, the Shrikes grunting with effort at each throw, and Baj saw what their atlatles provided – another foot-and-a-half of throwing leverage as they whipped the light spears away. The javelins flicked over the snow, far, and almost quick as arrows. They hummed like short-summer bees, swarming, converging on the bear, impaling him thump thump thump so he staggered, snarling, quilled with them. He turned to pace away as if disgusted, leaving spattered blood black in moonlight.