Mitchell Smith - Moonrise

The Shrikes, having considered, had risen as one to travel through blowing snow. A semicircular route, a day-long curve at first to the north… then, by night, around east to settle at last where blizzards had driven their burdens into great snow-dunes, only three Warm-time miles from Boston's north gate.

Baj, trotting beside laboring caribou, had time enough to think of other things than necessary murders… He imagined one-eyed Howell Voss, certainly now the King – a man in his fifties, thoughtful, merciless – and with a Queen his equal. Many spoiling heads, all those friends of New England, of the Coopers, would be grinning from Island's battlements. That King, that Queen, and the old ferret, Lauder, would have hunted them down.

A lesson, as well, to the whole Rule – Middle-Kingdom, North Map-Mexico, Map-Texas, and the Western Coast. What Small-Sam Monroe had achieved, would stand.

And the Prince Bajazet? The adopted brother hunted and likely lost in the east's savage wilderness – at most a minor legend, and soon forgotten.

There was… a comfort in the knowledge of it. A freedom the then Prince Bajazet had never known, even in brothel brawls along the river. What he'd been, had vanished as if swept away on the Mississippi's current. What he became, would be of his own carpentry.

Commencing, of course, with the slaughter of innocents. The hostage womens' blood, girls' blood, would run along the rapier's blade to obscure its legend, with good cause…

Under a setting moon, after the last day and night of traveling from the Wall, they reached the snow-dunes – the only major rises Baj had seen in more than two weeks on the plain – and the Shrikes prepared to shelter in them.

First, they loosed their caribou herd – and all the teams but three pairs – scattered them to wander back into freezing emptiness. Then they killed the last – cut their throats as they stood in harness, so the animals, spattering blood blackened by moonlight, slowly knelt in place as if praying to whatever Beast-Jesus cared for them.

Baj and the others then joined the labor of butchering out – Baj realizing as they did, that the Shrikes, expecting death, had left themselves no way to escape it.

The offal – and the sleds, still loaded with shelters and gear – were snow-buried for concealment against passers-by, under drifts the next snowfall would bury deeper.

… It was by the last of moonlight, that the Shrikes began to burrow snow caves deep into the dunes, for shelter and concealment – mining in with knives and ice hatchets and hands to run six to eight-foot tunnels into darkness, then shape and hollow small round buried dens, their snow hard-packed, and with only a javelin's piercing, higher, for through ventilation.

Baj and Richard, having watched, and crawled into one to see how, it had been done, began their own – which ended badly when their entrance tunnel collapsed, so Nancy and Patience (Errol tongue-clicking, capering useless) had to dig them out.

Dolphus-Shrike strolled from moonlight, smiling. " 'If at first you don't succeed…'" A partial and annoying quote. Then strolled away, still smiling, when Richard snarled and picked up his ax.

An annoying quote – but proved. The "try again" was successful, though the den they scooped out with great effort (and seeming large in the labor) was so small they packed it like barreled salt fish. Errol, restless, uneasy in darkness relieved by a single tallow candle, kicked and bit when crowded, until Nancy lost her temper and hit him on the head.

Oddly, it made for a very comfortable place of sleep through the day – except for condensation dripping – warmer than swaddling furs, and out of the wind. Here, by flickering candlelight, with rich twining odors, the silence interrupted only by Errol's restlessness – and once, Richard's thunderous fart – Baj lay with Nancy squeezed close against him, so close that only a small unlacing of fur and leather was necessary to find her dampness and enter it, so they lay locked… hardly moving, happy, and complete.

It was a sweetness so great, so simple, it made Baj weep. Nancy knew it, even in near dark, and licked the tears from his face.

… As the vertical terrors of ice-climbing had become a way of life, then the endless snow prairie another – so days of denning became a third, crawling from snow-tunnels at night for the necessaries, for exercise (mad moonlit races through the dunes), and to share portions of raw caribou, caribou heart, and caribou liver with the Shrikes. It became simply how things were done.

Hibernating in the snow-cave's candlelight, Baj once roused from a dream of his birthday, a celebration at Island. His birthday… his birthday… What was the present date, Warm-time? Not deep enough, yet, into Lord Winter's grip. On the last day of the ancient October, he would be twenty-one.

Time became built of sleep, and waking from sleep, of crawling carefully through the narrow tunnel to eat, then squatting in blowing snow to be rid of what had been eaten… though the rhythm was interrupted once, when seven of the Shrikes came trotting in moonlight from a scout south, with no news yet of the Wolf-General's Guard, though with news of a sort. A family of hunters – New Salem trash, out after musk-ox or bear – had been found by the Shrikes, and killed for secrecy. A baby had been considered to be spared, then not.

" 'Can't make an omelette…'" Dolphus-Shrike, all silver from the moon, had winked at Baj and Patience, who, out for rations, had heard the scouts' report.

"I'm getting weary of Warm-time quotes," Baj said, as they crawled, dragging a raw rack of caribou ribs into the narrow night-dark tunnel to their den.

"I've been tired of them for years," Patience said, coming behind him. "Those people knew too much – and too little."

… Raw ribs in the den, meat stripped and chewed – chewed longest by Baj and Patience and Errol, chewed briefest by Richard and Nancy, as tearers and gulpers. Then the long bones splintered for bloody marrow.

The next two long, warm, close days, ended at dawn of the third, with Paul-Shrike bulky at their den's entrance.

"The Guard has come to the Township's south," he said, then backed out down their tunnel.

It seemed to Baj somehow unfair, and much too soon to have to come out of warm caves a last time, and stand in slate-gray light, a bitter wind blowing. They gathered in groups, unsheltered in daytime at last, the tribesmen testing the steel points of their javelins, the edges of their knives… Patience wielded her scimitar against hissing wind gusts – Nancy the same in imitation – while Richard left his great ax at ease over his shoulder, familiar past any exercise.

Baj drew what seemed a reluctant rapier, and gently tried the narrow blade's flex and spring. He cut his left thumb slightly, touching the edge.

As the wind died to icy-breezing, Nancy came crunching to him over the snow. "You stand guard for us, Prince – once, we're in."

Baj shook his head. "I said, no. The women, the girls I kill – you won't have to."

"Oh, Baj…" She looked away from him, eyes cloudy with tears, "- we should have seen that you ran free, and not have taken and used you for this."

He hugged her, their sword-blades clashing slightly in the embrace, as if jealous. "Then, sweetheart, I would have had no fox-girl… and no happiness."

Baj had imagined a great gate, pillars upholding grand doors of ice as the north entrance to Boston-town. But no such thing.

There was instead an immense mouth – barely visible with the sun just risen – roughly round, and two… three bow-shots across, a vast open mouth in the plain of snow. It was a gape of shadows sinking to blackness, where icy flurries blew fountaining up on a deep humming wind that bore the breath of many lives lived far below.