Mitchell Smith - Moonrise

The Shrikes, with shrill celebration whistles, ran him down, thrusting javelins here and there – and as the great bear stumbled, two leaped on its massive snowy back, hacking, stabbing with their knives as it moaned, shuddered, and lay down to die while still the long knives worked away.

It was a sample of Shrikes in battle, and sobering.

Richard set his ax on his shoulder. "Your bow…"

"Went to pieces."

"Must have frozen through on the Wall, Prince!" Dolphus-Shrike returning from the killing of the bear. "Too many woods glued together…" He tossed a javelin in the air, caught it. "In Lord Winter's country, simplest is best."

"Yourself excepted, I suppose."

"I," Dolphus-Shrike said, "- am the exception that proves the rule." And on that fine copybook quote, strolled past.

The tribesmen retrieved the huge hide only – and squatted around it in the snow, industrious in the moon's uncertain light, scraping it clean of fat and sinew with their knives. They brought no meat to camp.

"Eat black bear or brown bear," Marcus-Shrike, answering Baj's question, "- and you get strong. But eat white bear, and you get sick and sometimes die. There's a badness in the flesh, for certain in the liver."

"No one in Boston," Patience said, "- eats white bear. Same reason. Either tiny worms in the meat, or something unfortunate in the liver."

" 'Unfortunate.'" Marcus-Shrike shook his head. "So much meat left to the ravens and white foxes."

… After the encounter with the bear, Baj looked for other interruptions, other events as they traveled. But there were none – except a painful interlude, when Patience plucked out the stitching in his cheek, and the side of his head… Otherwise, nothing to vary the running alongside the sleds to spare the laboring teams, nothing to vary the occasional ride to rest, the sled's runners whispering, sliding through snow behind the pleasant tinkling of decorations on the caribou's harness… Patience, usually running with them, sometimes Walked-in-air – but low, beneath the horizon's line of sight, and watchful of sudden crevasses falling away beneath her… Once, as she trotted beside him, Baj heard her murmuring to her son, as if the child might hear her over a wilderness of ice and snow. "I'm coming to you, darling. My sweet, sweet boy… "

They traveled through various weathers. As if to a rhythm Lord Winter might be beating out, there came brutal cold in brilliant sunshine days, when the snow plain flashed and sparkled unbearably bright, so even the eye-masks were insufficient. Then, Baj and the others – the tribesmen, too – ran sometimes with eyes shut, depending on the sounds of the rest to stay close, and not stray out and away over the blazing prairie to wander alone and blind in searing light.

There were those days, and – almost alternately – days of blizzard, not quite as cold, but battering by howling wind and driven snow that flayed exposed skin, so Baj imagined the Wolf-General, head thrown back, howling as her condemned were flayed on Headquarters Street.

It came to him, as they ran and sledded, that the affairs of Sun-risers or Moonrisers would always seem of less importance, since Lady Weather had administered her lessons of the Wall, and the glacier's plain of snow. They were all only climbers, only travelers-by, whether Sunriser Kings or Khans, Moonriser Generals or Boston Talents. Even dear Nancy – and himself – were only come… to go, while the cold-struck earth, seeming so mighty a traveler, rolled on through even colder, grander emptiness, that noticed it not at all.

… As the days passed, then a second WT week, the drinking of snow melted in canteen or water-skin tucked against the belly, the chewing of seal blubber and strips of caribou slow-roasted over dung-fires – became the only way, and thoughts of other drink, other food, other weather, only foolishness. The climbing weariness was long gone, and Baj and the others ran as the Shrikes ran, and rested rarely.

Sometimes, in the evenings, he and Nancy fenced lightly – cautious for their steel's fragility in such cold – and both practiced hurling javelins from atlatles, providing amusement for the Shrikes, who stood out beyond the sleds as targets for them, considering that safer than bystanding.

"I see no reason," Dolphus-Shrike said, watching them one evening as their javelins gadded hissing off to left or right, "- I really see no reason why we Shrikes should not rule the world."

… Days later, in a clouded gray dawn following a snowstorm more severe than usual, the Shrikes rose only to squat in circles – as if around ghost fires – chewing the inevitable seal-blubber. Waiting, not traveling.

Baj and the others stood together, also chewing.

"Well," Patience said, "- who's going to ask, to be certain?"

They'd learned that the tribesmen, like all primitives – and, of course, many of those not primitive – counted power in momentary increments, so that to have to ask indicated weakness, and to be asked, strength, no matter how unimportant the question.

Baj sighed, and went to ask.

"Why have we stopped?"

The Shrikes at that circle seemed surprised. Why? Why have they stopped? Startled at such ignorance.

The Shrike named Paul looked up at him. "We stopped, because we're here."

"Here…"

The Shrike pointed with his thumb. "Boston – nine WT miles that way."

"Ah…" Baj thought of avoiding the next question, which would cost him respect for at least the day – then remembered he'd been a prince, and asked it. "How do you know?" There was certainly no sign of habitation… no buildings to be seen anywhere in that direction.

Satisfied smiles around the circle at that. "We smell it," Paul-Shrike said. "The city breathes, farts, as a man breathes and farts. It smells on the wind."

Baj found that closeness oddly shocking to hear – snow travel, and for nearly three weeks, did not lend itself to arrivals. Even less, to this arrival.

He went back to the others with the news. "I thought so," Patience said, and Richard nodded. They had all thought so – from wind-carried odor apparently – except of course for Errol, who neither knew nor cared.

Nancy took Baj gently by the nose. "Sunrisers are poor smellers."

"The Shrikes knew."

"The Shrikes are savages," she said, and leaned up to kiss the nose she'd pinched.

"But no houses… no structures at all."

"Boston, Baj," Patience said, "is in the ice, and of the ice."

"Yes, I knew it was, but… all of it?"

"All of it," Nancy said, and tried to pinch his nose again, so had to be parried, then hugged… And doing so, Baj thought of the women waiting in Boston-town. They, so soon to be slaughtered, would feel much as Nancy felt in his arms, sturdy, small, and soft over slender bones. His heart began a familiar tattoo. It sounded in his chest as if it had concerns of its own, of fear, and preparation for action.

"Baj…" Golden eyes, that saw into him as the Shrikes' javelins had entered the bear. "Baj – when we go into the city, I will kill the women for you. Richard and I, and Patience and the Shrikes will kill them. You stand guard for us against the Constables coming."

"Yes," Richard said, his breath smoking in morning cold.

"No. I'll do what must be done."

"And be changed," Patience said, "- from Who-was-a prince?"

"Or not," Baj said. "How many innocents died under the yataghans of my First-father's tumans? How many under the sabers of my Second-father's cavalry? Though neither might have wished it so." He tried a smile. "Who am I, to deny my heritage?"

Breezes, that had brought the odors of the city to the camp, slowly began to strengthen as the night's storm wind – reversing its track – now began to sweep back from a dark horizon. Small swirls of snow were spinning across the glacier's frozen prairie.