Mitchell Smith - Moonrise

"Willard Adams, Tenured," Patience said. "And still working wonders in the Mailman lofts. You haven't heard the bell of Enemy-at-the-Gate?" She cocked her head to mime listening, and the bell struck its regular note for her… its peal shivering softly through corridors of ice.

"I've heard the bell," the old man said, "- and assume these creatures and tribesmen are part of the reason, with friends no doubt pecking futilely at one of the city's entrances… And I know you," he looked unpleasant, "a nasty exile booted from the Township, from Harvard Yard, for lack of cooperation. More than mostly Irish, I've always thought – well-named Riley – and no part Lodge at all."

"Kill him?" Dolphus Shrike.

"These savages," the old man stuck his tongue out at the Shrikes, "are fit company for an in-fact Moonriser exile, who brewed a gross and mind-rotten baby out of our best blood."

"Where is Woody Lodge, Willard?"

"Woodrow Cabot-Lodge is gone west to mention matters to ice-tribesmen in Map-Minnesota. Gone away for shame at what has sprouted from your spoiled belly… Now, I have training to accomplish, and so leave you and the rest of these… Persons… to the Constables."

The old man put out his arm to set Baj aside, and strode into the corridor as if he were alone.

"Constables," the Mailman said from his shoulder.

Patience said, "Kill him."

A Shrike Baj had heard called Perry, struck the old man's spine with the butt of a javelin, and Willard Adams gasped, turned away – and suddenly rose up into the air as the Mailman called, "Uh-oh!" and flew from his shoulder. The old man thrashed higher, skinny naked legs flailing as he rose, and Shrike javelins – Perry's and two others' – flashed up to strike at him, sliced his legs so he screamed and mounted higher, almost to the corridor's blue-ice ceiling.

"Bad," Nancy said. "Badly cruel, and he so old!"

"Stay still." Baj held her arm – and glancing at Patience, saw nothing but satisfaction in her face while the Shrikes stirred in a swift whirl of lancing, as if in a dance, whipping bright steel up to catch Willard Adams as he flapped and crawled along the ceiling. A blade went in at his groin, and the old man screamed and tried to twist away – but where the Shrikes could not follow, their javelins could, and rose and struck him again, so he was silent but for grunting as the steel went in… then suddenly slid down out of the air and fell among them, choked on his blood, and died.

The Shrikes stood back as hounds stand back from a torn coyote.

"Uh-oh… uh-oh… " The Mailman, winging away, sailed up the stairwell they'd descended.

"Cruel." Nancy pulled her arm out of Baj's grip.

Baj said nothing, but the old man's death stirred nausea in him as if he'd eaten spoiled meat, so he felt he had to hurry… hurry to do what must be done before the sickness overwhelmed him. His own voice called "Faster!" to him, called for such speed in action there'd be no time for thinking, for imagination, no time for choices.

"Move," Patience said, and Baj was glad to do it. Glad that as they ran the frigid corridor, no more old men came out to die… Though there was something that battered at a door they passed, smashing into the iron to be let out. No one opened that door to see what it might be.

Patience – skipping, then sailing just beneath the hallway's hanging lamps – led them fast. The walls' ice-blue and the hanging lamps' gold combined to send light wavering, flashing, settling in odd shadows as they went. It seemed to Baj that running to exhaustion had been most of what they'd done in Boston-town… was perhaps most of what all soldiers, all fighting people did.

Passing iron doors – though none presented signs or markers – Patience sometimes called back, "Birthing… Discoveries of Tiny Things… Considerations… Good-bye to Naughty Changes…" No one paused at any of these doors.

Near the corridor's end, one iron door stood partly open, though no one could be seen, but only a single oil lamp shining down on a bench and a table glittering with blown glass vessels in odd shapes and sizes.

"Surprises Examined," Patience had called, tapping that half-open door with her sheathed scimitar when she went by. Then, reaching a stairwell, she whirled to the right and down it, coat-tails bannering.

Richard, galumphing down the ice steps after Baj and Nancy, puffing clouds of frost as he came, muttered "Frozen-Jesus…" apparently praying for a rest.

But Patience, as if she were young again and tireless – though the side of her forehead showed deeply bruised – gave them no rest, but bounded down and around through two turns of stairs and landings, all cut from ice mature – blue, and hard as stone.

Then there was a pause. Baj heard the ring and clash of steel – and he and Nancy, turning the stairway's corner, saw Patience, scimitar drawn, fighting with two stripe-coated sentries. Five… six more men were coming up the steps at her.

Still alive by virtue of such close quarters, where the men's pole-arms were awkward, Patience hacked a man down and was wrestling with the other as Baj and Nancy dove into the fighting. The landing, skidding slick and close-walled, was a gift to scimitar and rapier-and-dagger, a curse to long-staffed partisans. The sentries would have been wise to drop those, and draw their knives, but were given no time for it. Pierced and slashed – another down – they staggered bleeding back as Richard came, stepped over a dying man and struck another with his ax, the Shrikes flooding after to fight down the steps.

Patience, cut and bleeding at the back of her left wrist, and limping – led them down the flight of stairs over still-moving bodies, their blood crawling, wrinkling as it froze over blue ice. One of the Shrikes, Ned – silent, and tall for his tribe – was left dying as well.

No one else had been lost, or dangerously wounded, though many had been cut or hammered – and Nancy had been badly bruised when she'd slipped, fallen, and been kicked hard in the struggle. Baj had stepped back then to stand over her against a sentry gripping his glaive short – -jabbing with the thing – until she got to her feet again to fight, snarling. Furious, she'd slashed out left and right, so both Baj and the sentry had stood away in almost comic agreement before the surge and striking drove all three of them apart – and the sentry into Shrike knives.

The stairs ended at a chained iron gate that stood sturdy under five swinging blows from Richard's ax – then broke by the key-turn at the sixth, and he drove through with the rest of them after.

One sentry, a man almost old and very frightened, stood waiting in a wide entrance hall, his glaive's heavy blade up to strike. He said, "Who are you?"

"You know me, Thornton." Patience took a step to him. "Put up, and come to no harm."

The man stared at her, then at the others. "No," he said, and stayed on guard.

Behind him, Baj heard Dolphus-Shrike say, "One chance is chance enough," then grunt with effort, and a javelin came hissing past – very close past Patience. The sentry had no time to see it before it struck him in the throat and sent him stumbling back to sit, then he on his side as if to sleep in the shallow bed of his blood. Dolphus went to tug his javelin free.

"You might have hit me," Patience said to the Shrike.

"Embarrassing, but unlikely." Dolphus shook red drops from the javelin's blade. "Where now?"

"Down to second-floor gallery," Patience said, and led the way – slower now, as if she were tiring at last – across the hall and down a narrower stair than those before.

"One more gate," she said.

"Well," Richard grunted, "I'll have no ax-edges left." And at the foot of the stairs, with Patience standing aside, he beat at an iron gate again, a Shrike clapping his hands to the rhythm of five ringing blows before the gate broke open.