Mitchell Smith - Moonrise

Wearied to a near jog-trot, Baj and the others followed Patience past a shop where a woman and her daughter – the girl looking so like her mother, though naked where her mother wore furs – were emptying trays of loaves and biscuits into bins. There was the wonderful odor of baking… Looking back, Baj saw the women glance up as the Shrikes went past, and stand frozen, their hands to their throats.

He tripped again, almost fell – then trotted on beside Nancy, paying better attention… Baking, baking in a city of ice. Baking or any cookery – what pots, what pans? Certainly iron or fired clay for their stoves, which must burn black-rock coal, skidded on sledges in deep winter all the long way from West Map-Virginia, then likely hauled up onto the ice from some deep lead… Must burn that, and have great double-walled flues to carry the stoves' heat up and out before it melted their frozen bakeries, their cook-shops, their apartments.

… A little white dog, sharp-muzzled and fluffed with fur, scurried out into the road to chase them, and followed for a considerable way, snarling, threatening to bite.

A comical little creature; Baj imagined the child who owned it huddling under furs with the dog for warmth. Imagined all the Boston people – those many without the Warming-talent – living with constant cold, their only relief coats of pelt and the grudging heat of those iron stoves found necessary… All their days and nights spent in furs and southern wool, their children swaddled in defense against the glacier-cavern's killing air. A steady burden of suffering, where civilized men and women spent their lives – like the grimmest savages over-the-Wall – sheltered under snow and ice for warmth half-imagined… Forever breathing out slight clouds of frost.

Reason enough for the Township's ancient oddness, its cold and merciless heart.

… All of them were very tired now. Baj found his mind being left a little behind. Only the stinging cold and his aching leg-muscles assured him he was where he was, and not dreaming of it in some Smoking-mountain glen… His lungs ached with Boston's frigid air; his breath was bitter smoke. Nancy staggered beside him. Richard was panting, laboring just behind.

… They were out of the colonades, had left the streets of shops – with a woman suddenly screaming, pointing at them as they went – and were crossing a small square, fenced by four high ice buildings of windowed apartments. Baj saw, to the left and right, that those narrow frozen streets, their great apartment buildings, diminished into considerable distance – still gleaming bright under endless chains of hanging lamps.

The Walkers-in-air would tend those thousands of lights. Whale oil. Whale oil and captive little flames to pretend sun to the buried city.

Patience suddenly swerved left off the way, and led them stumbling after her into such a narrow high-walled close, an alley, that shoulders rubbed ice on either side, and they soon went single file, exhaustion's hoarse breaths echoing beside and above them.

Then she turned suddenly left again – and was gone.

There was a deep-stepped entrance, cluttered with frozen debris, with a low frost-splintered door in shadow at the bottom. Baj went down, shoved at the wood, and pushed through as it gave, Nancy and Richard behind him.

He stumbled into darkness and cold so absolute, so still, it seemed a sort of solid – freezing water made somehow breathable. Heard the Shrikes crowding in behind him.

"What is it?" Nancy said.

"Storage," Patience's voice, "for those living above. Now, rest."

Rest… Baj reached out, found Nancy still beside him, and hugged her as they sat on what was either freezing stone or rough ice. Errol burrowed between them. Tongue-dicks…

It was difficult to take deep relieving breaths of air so frigid. Baj sipped his breaths, slowly drew them into his lungs as his cramped leg-muscles eased… Warm-time minutes passing, he found it a great relief to sit still, and felt he would be willing to stay in the dark for awhile.

Nancy began to murmur something – then was silent as a sound came first whispering… then muttering… then roaring down the street past this building's front, a sound like an avalanche of stones, with shouting. It was a killing crowd – and certainly chasing them.

"This was a lucky rest." Dolphus's voice. "It seems that Boston has noticed us."

"When they pass," Patience said, "- we go."

That pursuing tumult, which had made even the ice building tremble, slowly seemed to drain away, passing… and in a little while, was gone but for occasional footsteps, men calling.

"Up," Patience said, from darkness. "Up and out!"

Up the ice steps behind the tribesmen, and into Boston's lamp-lit always day, Baj and Nancy jostled along the alley. At the street entrance, Patience half-skipped, half-sailed past them… drew her scimitar, and led them to the left – the way the mob had gone.

Four men – startled late chasers – were met there, and rolled under, transfixed by Shrike javelins.

Then Patience was away, running, bounding down the street. Baj, Nancy with him, galloped hard to catch up to her, with Richard, Errol, and the Shrikes coming up behind. The street lay empty and frost-white before them, its ice battered by the boots and bare feet of the crowd that had passed.

Coat-tails flapping, Patience reached the next intersection a little in the air… touched her left muk-boot to the ice, and spun to the right, leading away from the pursuers' tracks. Down a wider way, they ran walled high on either side by Boston's frozen apartments – shabby buildings, stained with rusty melt, their doorways, cornices, and corners blurred… poorly carved.

Someone threw something from a high window as they ran past. It smashed on the road. Then, more came down… and men appeared at the building entrances. Furred men, wool-clothed men, almost none naked. They had iron bars in their hands.

"Our windows are braced with iron." Patience, in a conversational way, while traveling fast. "- or they sag and crack." Baj, running almost beside, heard the "Our," felt the Our in her. However furious a lady for her stolen son, still Patience had come home. He heard it, saw in Nancy's sidelong glance that she had heard it too.

The men with iron bars began to come out as they passed. Baj and Nancy drew their swords… Women were screaming from the high windows… throwing things. A wooden stool cracked onto the ice beside Richard as he ducked aside. Pottery was coming down, smashing in the street. More men had gathered, came out with their iron bars – and Shrikes ran to meet them. Baj saw Marcus-Shrike leading.

Patience drew the rest of them on, leaving behind the cries of the impaled and dying, the grunts as brutal blows broke bones.

It seemed to Baj that soon there would not be enough of them left, even to murder women… And now came again the sound of many pounding feet – more pursuers – their distant voices a roaring and furious surf. The voices of Boston-in-the-Ice, a wonder, centuries old – and so long the source of sorrow for others. The Township, startlement over, was rising against them.

"We're almost… out of time." Richard, panting as he lumbered on.

Baj – tiring again, despite their cellar rest – turned to look back as he ran, and saw others doing the same, looking back for the first crowding shadows of enraged thousands coming after, to drown them in blood.

Patience – ground-running now, head down, arms pumping so her scimitar's blade flashed and flashed – brought them to the end of ice buildings, of windowed apartments… though the sounds of screaming still followed them from the street left behind, as women there saw their men fighting, dying on Shrike javelins.