Mitchell Smith - Moonrise

She led them into a park, or what seemed a park. There were trees – the first they'd seen since they'd climbed the Wall – hemlocks planted in great carved-ice tubs of dirt set out in rows. They stumbled, faces and hands numb with cold, into that shade and shadow, relieved of the reflected sparkle and glare of Boston's myriads of hanging lamps, constellations crowded as starshine.

The surf sound… the crowd was coming behind them.

Richard, a weary Errol holding onto his hand, caught his breath, and called, "Patience -"

But she was already off, down a row of trees. There was a huge gate there – a true gate, it seemed to Baj, with bars of iron hinged and fixed into a low thick vault of ice. The ice-face had been sculpted into figures – seen clearer as they followed her – figures of a tree giving birth from its branches to a naked women… who, lying legs spread, gave birth to what seemed a goat, a goat presenting an egg on its out-thrust tongue. The- egg, by the gate's right base, cracking to birth what seemed a partridge, but with a weeping baby's head.

… A man in blue-striped furs had come to the gate carrying, like the Constables, a staff weapon, but this a heavy single-bladed partisan. A sentry-guard of some sort, though not half-armored as the Constables had been. He spoke with Patience through the gate, stared at Baj and the others as they came up, and shook his head.

Patience said, "The Faculty's orders." But the man shook his head again.

Patience swung her scimitar blurring out from behind her back, struck between the gate's iron bars, and took him in the throat with the point. Then she shoved to swing the iron open, but the sentry's body, still thrashing, blocked it until Richard reached her, hunched, and drove the gate wide.

… As they crowded in, Baj saw that beyond this, there was another entrance – or exit. A round pit, its edge polished, was set in stone flooring. – A hole in the ice introducing only darkness, it seemed a small replica of the immense crater they'd stepped down, around and around, to enter Boston from the north.

Patience wiped her scimitar's blade on her coat-tail, then sheathed it. "Fall sliding," she said, stepped into the ice hole and was gone.

"For God's sake…" Dolphus-Shrike, and a WT phrase that would have gotten him burned in the south, some years ago.

"Perhaps." Baj scabbarded his sword. "Richard, throw the dead man after us, and swing the gate closed before you all follow."

"Yes."

Baj reached to gather Nancy in – as she, scimitar sheathed, gathered Errol – then took them with him into the pit.

They fell in darkness, tangled – arms, legs, scabbarded swords, and struggling Errol. They fell skidding, ice-sliding in swift sickening circles, Errol whining as they went swooping down and down.

"Be ready!" Baj called out – though ready for what he couldn't have said. They swung in such swift circles that he felt them floating for moments as they fell – floating, then a sickening pressure against slick ice as they flew round and round, so he swallowed vomit.

Finally, a long relieving slide straight – a blessing by Frozen-Jesus to be no longer spinning in circles – and a round of light growing before them.

"Be ready…!" The light grew and they slid into it and swiftly out along an ice incline, then stumbled and fell onto a frosted floor where low lamps were lit along a corridor.

Patience stood waiting with a dead man. He'd been furred, as the other sentry, in striped blue – now turned sticky crimson. A simple pole-arm, a glaive-gisarme, lay beside him, great blade and back-hook bright in lamplight.

"Get up," Patience said to them; her voice was shaking. Baj and Nancy scrambled to their feet as Errol ran little widdershins circles, tongue-clicking, apparently unwinding from his slide.

"We're… at the base of the gallery bridge to the Pens," Patience said – and a young man swung into the corridor down the way, and came sailing high off the ice floor, open blue coat fanning behind him. He called, "Ah… our exile – and come with the reasons for the bell!" A handsome young man, pale, and with a fine mustache, he held a drawn scimitar in his hand. Patience had just time to turn and say, "Jacob," and he was on her with swift slashing strokes – driving her back and back to steel's music. Other sentries, furs striped blue, came running behind him with glaives balanced in their hands.

The young man parried a cut, kicked Patience into the corridor wall, said, "Sad end for an Almost-Lodge," and struck to put her sword aside, then kill her.

Baj, rapier drawn, lunged past a sentry to them as Patience fell to the side, the young man turned to finish her. Baj would not have reached him in time – but his sword did, and half a foot of steel slid through the young man's coat and into the small of his back.

He arched, frozen for a moment – and as Baj tugged his blade free, Patience thrust up into the man's belly and killed him. "Jacob," she said again, but sadly, after she'd done it.

Baj turned and struck at the sentry – certainly caught him with the edge – and saw Nancy backed along the corridor to the ice ramp they'd slid down, a glaive's blade-point riding in at her belly. She cut along the weapon's wooden shaft, caught the man's guiding hand there and severed fingers so the sentry recoiled, spattering blood – as the man Baj had slashed in passing turned, sliced face bleeding, and charged him, swinging his weapon's broad blade.

Baj ducked, and the sentry was on him, chopping. Too close for sword-work. Baj drove into him – struck weight and muscle greater than his own – but drove, drove, kept grappling close as the glaive's thick staff struck down, its hook caught behind his left shoulder. He drew his left-hand dagger and stabbed the man though fur, through scraping ribs, then deep.

The sentry, strong and older, coughed sudden blood into Baj's face, made a fist and hit him in the mouth as if they were brawling… then staggered back, plucking at the place the dagger had gone in, so the glaive's hook dragged Baj after him, then fell free.

Spinning away, Baj saw the man Nancy had wounded was kneeling, clutching a hand blurting blood – but another sentry was on her, driving her back, swinging his pole-arm's blade, through she struck at him high and low. There was blood on the glaive's steel.

Baj shouted as if a shout could save her – leaped to reach them, and was tripped so he fell… then rolled to his feet, slashing. Another of the sentries was on him – a man old enough to be his father, and strong, striking very fast, alternating his blade and the shaft's steel-capped butt. Baj, grappling him close as the other, was hit hard in the belly – and as they wrestled, saw from the corner of his eye, Errol, quick as a squirrel, climb up the back of the man Nancy fought, and stick a knife in his neck.

Then Baj was struck again. Where, he wasn't certain, perhaps at the side of his head, since the corridor's lamps went dim, and he woke that instant on his hands and knees, saw the sentry's booted feet shift to deliver a finishing stroke. – Obeying the Master's shouted command from years before, Baj lunged in full passata soto and thrust the rapier's blade up into the man's bowels.

Getting to his feet as the man went down – gripping his belly as if to hold life in – Baj saw a different dying man stumbling here and there, screaming, clawing up behind him where Errol still rode his back, eyes squeezed shut in pleasure, mouthing the knife wound, drinking.

Two more sentries had come. Baj faced one with wearied clumsy rapier strokes and dagger wards that rang left and right as he ducked first one way, then the other, to keep the glaive's point wavering.