Moonrise

mountainside that he lay half upright on a spread blanket, his cloak drawn over him.

He was being mopped at; that was what had wakened him. His forehead being dabbed with cold water.

Bajazet turned his head, which hurt him, and saw a woman – a girl – he didn't know… then remembered from firelight.' She was dirty, smudged with grime as he supposed he must be. Dirty, and not very pretty, with too sharp and bony a face. She was doing something with a little wet cloth… touching his forehead where it hurt.

'Stop it.' He tried to sit up, and was sorry. His arm hurt as his forehead hurt. He pulled the cloak aside and saw his shirt and jerkin were off, and his left arm had been bitten. Tooth marks, and two blood-crusted punctures.

'… What the fuck?!' A classic Warm-time inquiry, found in so many copybooks.

'Here.' The Made-girl was offering a dark strip of fire-dried meat. Baj took it thoughtlessly as a baby, chewed and munched it – then reached for another. When he finished, she offered a small water-skin, and he swallowed and gulped from that… Then, no longer quite such a baby, he clambered to his feet – stood swaying, dizzy – and looked for his sword-belt, his bow. At least his trousers were on, and his boots.

The girl sat cross-legged, looking up at him. Startling eyes. They were… the pupils were yellow, the irises almost slit as a cat's. Not human eyes.

Bajazet saw his sword-belt neatly coiled in the grass, the sheathed rapier and dagger. He stooped for it, buckled it on, and drew both blades.

The girl sat watching him, and seemed concerned, though not by razor-edged steel. There was a glinting small silver medal – a little three-quarter moon – on a fine silver chain around her neck.

The other thing… Bajazet spun in a half circle to guard against it, heard giggling behind him – the girl was certainly laughing, and showed a flash of sharp white canine, though she covered her mouth with a narrow hand.

'We won't hurt you,' she said.

As she said it, the We became evident. The big Made-man stepped hunching out of a greening vine tangle just downhill, as if born from it. Then came loping, wide as a tree, the great double-bitted ax seeming only a hatchet in his hand.

Bajazet looked to his bow and quiver – no time. He stamped to be sure of his footing, and stood on guard.

The creature padded to a stop only Warm-time yards away. It looked more human in sunlight than in firelight, its small brown eyes seeming humorous as a bear's might as it ate short-summer's honey, brushed aside swarming bees. The Made-man was dressed in a loose shirt of woven raw wool – a silver medallion hung tiny against its cloth – and wore rope-belted homespun trousers cut short. Its forearms and hands seemed almost human, though massive, and lumped with muscle, but the legs were very strange – short, thickly bent, and hugely knotted at the knees, as if they might almost bend the other way… The skin on the legs was tufted with black-and-silver hair.

The girl stood. 'This is Richard. I am Nancy. And we will be friends.'

'Not,' the deep, deep voice, '- not until he puts down the points.'

'Leave me alone.' Bajazet was relieved his voice was steady. 'Let me go. I need to go, and have nothing to give you.'

'We don't want anything,' the girl said. Girl, or something very close to a girl. Nancy. He wondered what animal's tiny twisted ribbons had been mixed with a man's, to put into her mother's belly.

'Listen…' Bajazet's head ached as if he'd struck it again. 'I have nothing to do with you people or your masters -'

'We have no masters,' the Made-girl said. 'We are not beasts to have masters – or humans to have masters, either. We are Persons, though tribesmen call us Moonrise people, since they think we are changed under its light – while they greet sunrise always the same.'

'Then listen, whatever you are. The king… there are people hunting me. I have to go. I have to go now.'

'Yes,' the Made-girl said, '- very soon.'

Bajazet kept his guard, the weapons' hilts comforting in his hands. 'If he catches me here, he'll have you both killed as well. He has soldiers with him.'

'One hundred and seventeen,' the big Made-man – Richard – said, 'with foresters and kennel-men counted.'

'Your new King of the Great Rule has chased days too far east,' the girl said, '- and with too few. It's a known thing in South Map-Tennessee. All the tribes know it, though they muffle their drums.' The girl, Nancy, shook her head, the mane of red hair feathering down her shoulders.'- Why is he so eager in the hunt? It's really…' She turned to the Made-man. 'Remarkable?'

A nod of the great head. 'So perfectly the proper Warm-time word. Remarkable.'

'We thought it very remarkable,' she said to Bajazet, '- that a man of power would do such a foolish thing.'

'I killed his only son.' It seemed odd he felt ashamed to say it. As odd as standing in a sunny mountain meadow with sword and dagger in his hands… speaking with these creatures.

'Ah. Then no longer remarkable.' Richard had a wonderfully rich voice… The girl had covered her mouth with her hand, as he'd seen sweat-slave tribeswomen do on the river, shocked or surprised.

'Cooper killed my brother – all our friends.'

'But it's so sad,' Nancy said, lisping her s's slightly. 'Does he imagine that two young princes dead are better than one?'

'I suppose so, miss.' Bajazet had answered as he would have any gently-born young lady – and wondered if he might be dreaming, since it didn't seem a waking sort of conversation.

'We were puzzled,' Richard said, '- why he chased and chased… Would you please put down your points?'

Bajazet sheathed sword and dagger, but kept his hands on the hilts. 'I'm going to gather my things, now, and go.' He bent, picked up his bow and quiver.

'And have you pity for your sad king?' The Made-girl's head cocked to one side in inquiry. She seemed, except for small tender human ears, very like a curious fox. 'Your sad king, who has lost his son?'

'… Pity?' Bajazet's head still ached, pounding slowly to the beat of his heart. His bitten forearm hurt worse. 'That fucking traitor is hunting me down!'

'But are you now hunted by a traitor king?' The Made-man squatted oddly in spring grass, his small brown eyes curious. '- Or by a father whose only son is dead?' He did appear more human in daylight. More human, but not human. He was too big, his face too muzzled to be only a face… and there was the crest of fur, silver-black, and skin mottled a dark gray. The huge hands, resting on its odd knees, were almost thick as they were broad.

'We are curious,' Nancy said, '- whether moral matters are important to princes? They are somewhat important to us, though not to Errol.' She came close, peering at Bajazet's forehead. 'That was a bad bump.' A slightly vulpine odor came with her… and a girl's sweet breath. She took his left arm in a small hard-calloused hand, its nails pointed, short, and black, and turned his forearm so the bite mark showed in crusted blood. '- But this has bled very well; not many too-tinies should grow in it.'

It seemed to Bajazet she looked better than the Made-man, though still very odd. Small, slender, and angled. Her face – long-jawed, long-nosed – was a face, even in daylight, though it was a face people passing by would always turn to see again, with its widow-peaked pelt of long dark-red hair as fine as fur, and eyes yellow as Map South-Mexican lemons. When she'd spoken, her teeth had glinted white in morning light.

'- We've been traveling just north of you, several days.' She'd been staring at the bite marks – and suddenly bent her narrow head and began to lick at the wound as a dog might.

'Don't!' Bajazet tried to jerk his arm away, but she held it, looked up and said, 'Silly. You're a silly prince.'

'Let her do as she wants,' Richard rumbled. 'It helps healing – her bite, after all – and if you argue, we'll hear about it till the dear moon changes.'

So Bajazet, supposing he must be dreaming after all, stood still in storm-cleared sunshine while his injury was licked, its crusted blood mouthed away… the girl as attentive as if she performed for love.

Something behind Bajazet clicked its tongue. Startled, he twisted half around, his free hand crossing to his dagger's hilt. Sitting fairly close behind him – and come quietly to do it – a skinny freckled boy, looking no more than eleven or twelve in stained rough-weave shirt and pants, smiled and clicked his tongue again. He wore the same