Moonrise

for the king's pleasure, or hurry back to the column to report the prey in view. – He would, of course, choose the first. Bringing a king encouraging word was one thing; bringing him what a Warm-time copybook had called the object of the exercise was another, and meant royal favor.

'In the fucking open!' Bajazet called out his stupidity to himself. He'd only had to take the bird and keep going, not squat there on the stone like some suppering sweat-slave for the hunters to come upon.

He deserved to be caught. In the fucking open! He ran with the strength the partridge had given, as the little rabbit had given strength before. Ran down into woods on the hill's last eastern slope, and saw nothing but forest and the next hill – a softly rounded mountain, really – rising before him… already dusted the faintest green of spring in the evening's last light.

He bit into the bird's leg, chewed it as he ran. It was hide and seek, after all – a game in everything but penalty. Could he wait at the hill's foot, watch to see if the follower grew careless enough to catch a broadhead arrow? He might, if he were less afraid…

By full dark, Bajazet was on the opposite slope of that next, and higher, hill, and like a winter bear, was searching for a den. He thought he might run a little farther, then they would have him – would already have had him, but for the day of rain. The strange hounds were the problem, eager on his trace. If not for them, he might have lost the king's people in the hills.

If not… if not.

Clouds had come to blur the light of the rising moon, so Bajazet stumbled into trees, searching. He saw deeper darkness under a slanting fallen trunk… and weary, untied his blanket roll by touch, and crawled down and under into close coolness and odor of leaf mold and rotting wood. It was -only partial cover; some moonlight filtered past the log's sides. But cover enough. He curled in his blanket, wishing for a comforting dream.

CHAPTER 4

Bajazet dreamed, but found little comfort. There were vague imaginings, conversations with strangers begun but never completed – then a deeper dream of matters brightly colored, a great parade of odd men armed and in formation as soldiers, pacing along. Crowds – many of those people naked, though not so odd – standing silent as they watched; women weeping. The parade marched through a great, vaulted, palace of ice, so all color shimmered and flashed in reflection. A band among the marchers was playing music he'd never heard before.

Someone pressed against him in the crowd, the person's odor faintly canine… vulpine.

That person leaned against his arm. Bajazet turned in annoyance – and turned out of his dream. A thing was under the log beside him… a hard hand or paw resting on his outstretched arm.

Bajazet sat half up, reaching to his coiled sword-belt for the dagger. He found and fumbled it – struck the side of his face against the log, and gripped fur, his left arm up to guard his throat. Teeth. Teeth shone in moonlight.

He wrestled the thing in shadow, kicked, and Writhed out from under the log. The dagger was – he didn't have it. He jammed his forearm into the thing's jaws, and felt clamping then sickening puncture as fangs went in.

Hauling himself back and up, Bajazet tore his arm free, and was on his feet when he was kicked in the groin… It was a great relief, though he bent low in agony, and staggered. A relief it wasn't a riding thing, a wolf or mountain lion who'd come for him in the dark, but only a king's forester – and certain death. But later.

Still doubled over, he heard someone say, 'I had to. What a silly.' A girl's voice, lisping a little at the s.

Bajazet lunged away, and struck his forehead on a tree limb very hard with a cracking impact, so light flashed behind his eyes… his knees buckled.

'Ouch.' A much deeper voice, almost an echo in it.

'Here… here, you silly man.' The girl again, tugging at his sleeve, turning him in darkness, leading him back. 'We're not bad. Well, Errol is bad, but we're not.'… 'We.' Two, three of them at least.

'Your fault.' The deep voice. 'Clumsy Nancy.'

Bajazet heard scrape and striking, saw a small shower of sparks. Another. Then soft puffing breaths.

He stood, dazed, his head hurting badly, the directing grip still on his right sleeve… and took an odd comfort, a restfulness in being caught in the night – caught by someone. Perhaps savages.

A single flame… then more, blossoming to a little fire by the fallen log.

A beast was bent over it, its broad muzzle lit to soft gold, its eyes reflecting silver circles of light.

Bajazet lost his breath and stepped back, but the grip on his sleeve yanked him to a halt.

'Don't be frightened, young lord.'

Bajazet saw a girl, quite small, in blurred detail beside him – large eyes set at a slant, their slit pupils black with gathering of light. A long nose and narrow jaw, her hair falling from a sharp widow's peak to glow dark red in the firelight. She was wearing a sort of South Map-Mexican poncho, a belted hatchet… and moccasin-boots. She hadn't bathed recently; there was a musky odor.

Bajazet looked to the fire again – certain he'd been mistaken – and saw not. The creature was hunkered by the flames, watching him. Hunchbacked. It was hunchbacked, and very big, bigger than any man Bajazet had seen, even Festival wrestlers. Silvery whiskers ran down the sides of its face… its muzzle. Black-and-silver fur rose in a crest at the top of its head.

'He hurt himself,' it said, the deep voice only a little thickened by a wide tongue, a heavy squared lipless mouth beneath a nose too broad and black. There were fangs… And the long heavy handle of a double-bitted ax, blade- edges gleaming, leaned against its arm.

'Boston – that's a Boston-made thing!' Bajazet spoke to the girl, or the night, and felt too sick to stand. Blood was running down from his forehead. There was some, sticky, in his left eye.

'Hurt,' the big Made-thing said again. It was surprising how well it spoke. Spoke, then crouched silent as the girl was silent… both apparently content observing their captive, watching him manage to stand straighter as his groin's pain faded, watching him wipe blood from his eye.

Bajazet had known, as everyone knew, of these sorts of creatures – the riding things, and others – created by Boston-talents in captive tribeswomen's wombs. Lord Peter Wilson had explained how a few New Englanders could use their thoughts, guiding the finest-drawn gossamer threads of glass, to alter the making of babies. '… They have inferred – with, I suspect, help from Warm-time copybooks – that there are so-tiny twisted ribbons-of-planning inside only-slightly-less-tiny bits in the juices when men and women come together.' The old librarian had nodded to himself.

'- Those little things, much too small to see, make what changes Boston wishes, when interferred with – as for instance, by mixing men's comings with those of animals.' Lord Peter had made the face of smelling something spoiled. '… Some of these changes great, others hardly to be noticed once the child has formed in its mother's belly. It does seem, however, that many of these babies die.'

The two in the fire's light were certainly just such creatures. Before, and beside New England's riding-things – tame, and feral – Bajazet had seen only Ambassador MacAffee's disgraceful occa, flying his baggage into Island. And only saw that once, before the monster left to return to its home…

Suddenly feeling sick – perhaps frightened sicker – Bajazet went to one knee, retching, vomiting remains of partridge. The Made-girl knelt and held him, cooing. 'Oh, poor man. Oh… poor man.' There were no s's in that, no slight lisps.

Empty, taking great choking breaths, he heard the big Made-thing say, 'Comes of doing good… probably killed him.'

'Did not!' With a little snarl. It seemed to Bajazet the girl was quick-tempered, and while he considered that, his head aching savagely, a tide of exhaustion rose within him, and he slid from her arms and lay down in his vomit to rest, not caring whether these two, like the riding-beasts, had a meal in view.

* * *

He woke at sunrise, in a different place – a little ragged clearing of early grass and weeds, so steep on a