Moonrise

filled when he noticed an odd rill in the shallow current a few feet down. He finished filling, palmed a wood stopper firmly in – and as he stood, saw a dead man was lying there under only a few inches of rapid shallow water, the morning sun flashing on the stream's surface… A tall tribesman lay there, naked – but with all his feathered decorations, with his spear lying close to hand, his hatchet strung on its rawhide cord at his side.

The warrior's chest had been opened by a trooper's saber stroke from left shoulder down, so white cut tips of ribs – and the folds and lumps of darker things beneath – were seen in bright water as if sunk into a magic mirror.

Standing, looking for them, Baj saw two… three more dead men lying one after the other just downstream, buried in that odd way along the creek's shallow flow – so, he supposed, their essence might be carried by the current to whatever hunting paradise these people anticipated… The king's troopers had taken their toll.

He knelt again – careful not to look upstream, so the drinking water might, after all, have no blood of tribesmen threaded through it – filled the last water-skin, stoppered it… then tucked the canteen's strap, the skins' rawhide thongs over his shoulder, and started back up the slope to camp. The boy, Errol, ambled behind him, clicking his tongue to a sort of simple rhythm.

Baj took up the rhythm with him, produced tongue-clicking variations – apparently to the boy's amusement – so they climbed past tribesmen up the slope, making cricket music as they went.

* * *

'But do we want him?'

'Nancy…' Richard was gathering oddments, sorting them into his big leather possibles-bag. A small buckskin sack of salt; linen folds of herbs that might (or might not) be healthy; a thick roll of fine tanned leather; his horn tinderbox, filled with flossy punk and rattling pieces of flint; steel needles and spools of tendon thread; a chip of obsidian sharper than any edge of steel; a little folding peg chess-set and its tiny pieces, and a small fat copybook of The Common Prayers of Warm-time Oxford, England. '- Nancy, he carries steel points like a soldier, sword and dagger.' Richard put the last of his goods away, tucked the bag into his wolf-hide pack along with slabs of smoked horse meat, then buckled it closed, leaving a cooking pot and heavy coil of braided leather line strapped to the back.

'I have a sword, now!'

'He has points and a bow and arrows. I'd say he's been trained in weapons. He would have made me a good young infantryman – and an officer soon enough.'

'He's a boy. He barely has hair on his face.'

Richard sighed a patient sigh. 'He's full-human – and if we're told correctly, of Kipchak blood, men who have little hair on their faces… We are the hairy ones.'

'You are. I'm not.'

'… I've seen you bathing naked, little Person.'

'- And you mean by that? What do you mean by that?' Nancy hackling like a chicken- bird rooster.

Richard hefted his pack. 'I meant nothing but observation of the narrow line of fur running down your spine at the small of your back – in a charming way, to be sure. Now, get your things together. I would rather we didn't wait in this valley until the Sparrows forget the favor we've done them.'

'You want him with us, so you'll have a Sunriser to obey.'

'You are not big enough, comb-honey, to make me angry… Now, get your things together. And unless you have a better reason than fear he will dislike what your Also-father left in you – then Baj-who-was-a-prince marches north with us.'

'You are all beast,' Nancy said, '- a bear who talks, as other bears dance at festivals.' She bent to roll a blanket, then tie the rolled ends with leather thongs. '… If I didn't love you, I would not call you a Person at all.'

'So, I'm chastised.' Richard cocked his head. 'They're back.'

'… The hill-men have put their dead into the water,' Baj said, stepping into the clearing. Errol ambled in behind him. 'And it seems to me to be time to go… if I'm going with you.'

'Pack,' Big Richard said. 'And carry your bow strung, while we have daylight.'

* * *

Baj thanked Floating Jesus – Mountain Jesus, now – for his two days and nights of rest in Battle-valley, otherwise there'd have been no keeping up with the three Persons. He saw now how they'd managed to parallel pace him up into the hills… The three of them – Richard and Nancy each burdened by a considerable pack – traveled the days from dawn to dark (and its hasty small-fire camp) with only pauses for swallows of water, for smoked scraps of leftover horse meat. They moved – not terribly fast, not running – but steadily almost running. And neither uphills nor down-hills, nor brush, woods, nor clearings seemed to change that pace.

It was a wearying way to go – that oddly became almost exhilarating as the early-summer sun rose each morning to half-circle over, so Baj kept up in a sort of daily dream where effort became effortlessness… It helped of course, that they were not pursued; there wasn't the exhaustion of fear. And helped as well that his sore ribs grew less sore each day's hiking. The girl's bite was almost healed.

But into this dreaming, one after-noon when hard going had became easier going, came visitors almost real – so Baj heard them very clearly, sensed them watching as he labored through budding green, the always sloping country… Once, Baj passed King Sam Monroe – saw him clearly, standing in shadow under a bending willow where a pollen-dusted rivulet ran.

Stocky and strong, his cropped hair gone almost gray, the hilt of his long-sword jutting behind his right shoulder, the king spared only a preoccupied smile as Baj struggled by, splashing shallow water while he followed massive Richard, who smelled like untanned fur… The king was seen more clearly than any other, though Queen Rachel sang an idle song – heard down a corridor, perhaps, or from her solar window while she and Old Lord Peter copied copies, and read them to each other.

Later, going to all fours – as his companions had already – to climb a slope of weathered stone with only hand-holds here and there, cracks to jam his fingers in, Baj heard Ralph-sergeant's hobnailed boots come clopping, then the knock at his door. 'Your brother,' Ralph-sergeant said, '- is fishing at Silver Gate (though why in the rain, I couldn't tell you) and wishes you to come and bring him luck.'

And that was something that had been said, years before – and being true, drove the dream away. Prince Bajazet went with the dream, perhaps to join the others, perhaps to fish at the jetty with Newton, on a rainy day. Going, he closed his chambers' door behind him…

As the sunny shadows shifted, Big Richard and Small Nancy led on, changing place every now and then – and, Baj noticed, going easily to all fours on the steepest slopes and rises. They halted for nothing… sometimes sucked water from their leather pouches as they went.

Baj labored along just behind – but kept up… kept up, while the boy, Errol, seemed to weave past and circle them all like a summer snake… disappearing, reappearing. He dropped back from time to time, apparently to scout behind them – then came wending forward to take a long lead, also apparently to scout. The boy's restless comings and goings, all the while Baj and the others were traveling fast, were unsettling in a way, reassuring in another. They were not pursued.

The Daughter's short summer had come upon the hills; they were dappled, as the Mississippi's banks and coastal woods had begun to be, with the warm weeks' hurried dark greens and light greens that rested the eyes, though the trees' blossoms, the thickets' blooms still waited. So, though there was no easy going, there was beautiful going.

'What are you looking at, looking around all the time?' Nancy had glanced over her shoulder, apparently an annoyed vixen, though with no brushy tail, no big ears to twitch. '- And what are you smiling at now?'

'It's a pretty day,' Baj said, slightly breathless, since they were almost-running up a considerable slope with laurel saplings always in the way. '- And why I was smiling, is my business.' The saplings did make hand-