Moonrise

'No, not such a number, but they are all Persons. Our Richard – over there by the fire? – he was a Captain of One-hundred before he deserted Matthew-Curlew's Company… Would you care to fight Richard, Baj? Would you be hopeful if he faced you with his ax?'

'I see…'

'Yes – and so the Sparrows and Thrushes and Robins have seen, and confirmed in battles Middle-Kingdom and its Rule knew nothing of, deep in the Smoking Mountains. And that is why Unkind-Harry and his people here, would – but for the great favor we've done them – cut our throats.'

'You're saying I can have no revenge on Boston-town for the murder of those I loved?'

Patience Reilly smiled; her teeth – small, even as a child's – shone white in moonlight. 'I say no such thing. Come with us that long way north and east, Baj-that-was-Bajazet, and what you wish may be satisfied.'

'How?'

'That,' still smiling, '- is for me to know, and you to find out.' Which was certainly a copybook saying, and from Warm-times.

… At the fire, the Made-people – 'Persons'- lay asleep, the Fox-girl curled on Baj's wool blanket, hugging her scabbarded new sword to her. Richard, a great heap, snored softly on the fire's other side, the boy lying alongside his broad back for warmth.

Patience murmured. 'Companions suitable for such a way… such difficulties?'

Murmured, but not softly enough. Richard opened his eyes, and lay watching them as the night wind came stronger, seething through the valley's brush on errands of its own.

CHAPTER 6

Bajazet woke to dawn's damp cool, and distant voices down the valley. His back, beneath his cloak, was still warm from the fire's coals. His front was colder… Where had he read or heard of people sleeping between two fires? Had he read that, or been told of the old Trappers? Winter hunters…

He turned, stretched yawning – and saw the Made-boy, Errol, sitting close beside, legs crossed. The boy was staring at him.

'He's only looking.' Richard's rich voice. 'He's never seen a princely deep-sleeper before – a snorer used to safety, stoves, goose-feather beds, and guarded chambers.'

The boy seemed too close. Bajazet – ah, 'Baj,' now – sat up… then stood up. Two days' rest (and horse meat) had left his ribs still sore, but the other bruises and scrapes much better… The bitten arm hardly hurt at all – itched, more than hurt. And his legs felt ready again for traveling; he stamped the sleep out of them. The boy, Errol, watched as Baj belted on his sword and dagger.

'He's interested in new things.' Big Richard was hunched, shaggy, by the fire's last coals, holding chunks of horse meat over them, speared on a stick. 'Breakfast,' he said, his fang-toothed smile disturbing as a frown… Once a Captain of One-hundred, the Boston woman had said.

Baj stepped past the boy, and walked well out into the scrub to piss.

Paging brush aside, he found a place, unlaced his buckskins – very worn and grimy buckskins, now – and began to pee a pleasant stream… playing it this way and that, like a child.

'Lucky.'

Baj jumped a little – and peed on his left boot, tucking himself away. 'For Christ's sake.' A phrase that would have gotten him burned, decades before.

The girl, Nancy, stood just behind him. 'You men, Persons or human, are so lucky.' The slight lisp there with Persons and so.

'Yes,' Baj did up his buckskins' laces, '- very lucky.'

'Well, you are,' the Made-girl said, walking beside him back to camp. 'Do you know what a task, a chore it is to always pull up our clothes, or take off our clothes, to do what men do simply as pouring from a cup?' She kicked some bramble aside.'… Not fair.'

Nancy was wearing her new scimitar – wearing it on the left side and a little too low, so it might catch her leg and trip her.

'Yes,' Baj said. 'I can see it would be a nuisance.'

'Only one of many we suffer,' Nancy said, reached out and struck Baj lightly on the shoulder, as if they were friends, and complaints not serious.

'Your sword should wear higher, Nancy.' First time he'd used her name. 'Hilt at your waist, not your hip – so the blade doesn't trip you.'

The Made-girl – Person – stepped into their clearing, and began a little dance, apparently to see if that was so. The scimitar's curve did catch her leg, if only for a moment.

'Very well, I'll do as you say,' she said, and took her belt up a notch with narrow hands, narrow fingers tipped with nails pointed and black.

'Breakfast.' Big Richard stood from beside the fire, and held out a long scorched stick, with chunks of smoking horse meat stuck along it. The boy, Errol, came suddenly scurrying, reached up, snatched the first steak off, then went away hunched to protect his meal.

Baj took the second – burned his fingers on it so he waved it a little cooler – and handed it to Nancy, who seemed uncertain at the courtesy.

'Court manners.' Richard held the stick out to Baj again… then took his own steak from it. 'We will be civilized as Selectmen.' The big Person sat again in his odd way, took a slow savage bite of meat. 'If, that is, you accompany us, Prince.'

'Baj, not 'Prince.' And since I have nowhere else to go to harm Boston – and no one else to go with – I'll travel with you.'

'Good.' Richard finished his breakfast in two bites. The horse meat hadn't improved overnight; it took Baj considerable chewing to get it down. He noticed Nancy, sitting cross-legged, gnawing away as a puppy might at a piece of gristle, her lip lifted, using her side teeth… Still, coarse feeding or not, he felt the surge of strength from it. When he finished, he went to rummage in his back-pack for his canteen – found it empty – circled the fire's ashes to pick up their three sewn water-skins, and started down to the stream.

Nancy swallowed a bite, and said, 'Not alone.'

'No.' Richard shook his heavy head. 'Not alone.'

'Errol…!' Nancy looked around for him. 'Errol!' The boy peered out of brush across the clearing, a small piece of meat gripped in his hand.

She pointed at Baj. 'You go with him… Prince, the Sparrows are afraid of Errol. They think his Moonriser-blood has made him mad.'

'Baj. Not 'Prince.'' He gestured the boy to him, then walked down the valley's slope, shoving through thicket, supposing Errol would follow.

He passed tribesmen as he went… then more of them down near the stream. As to Sparrows and Thrushes, the only difference seemed to be in decoration… Sparrows wearing feathered necklaces and bracelets. Thrushes – probable Thrushes, and fewer – wearing strung withered fingers around their necks, or wooden beads painted gray or blue… Each of these men glanced at him… glanced behind him – at the boy, he supposed – then turned away. They seemed not so much unfriendly as ignoring. He and the boy, Errol – whom Baj could barely hear working down through the tangle behind him – were not 'there' for the hill-men. Would likely only he there if hatchets and spears were called for.

And there was that possibility in the air. Baj had felt it, a time or two, boarding river-boats where many sweat-slaves hauled and carried, and while riding wide estate fields for hunting reasons or picnic reasons, when long lines of bond-serfs labored there, preparing onion fields, squash and cabbage fields, for Daughter-Summer's eight weeks.

On those occasions – at least a time or two – he'd felt how frail was a boss's whip against so many with picks and hoes ready in their hands, who had glanced at him… then glanced away just as these free savages did. Leaving the possibility in the air.

The small stream's water ran clear and cold – and Baj, kneeling, had his canteen and two of the water-skins