Moonrise

Errol had gone on his way, skittering off into stands of hemlock, fir, and stunted spruce grown leaning over granite ledges. Neither Richard nor Nancy waited for Baj, though he could see them from time to time – objects neither green nor granite-gray, and in purposeful motion. And not so far ahead, only a continual stone's throw or bow-shot across some shaded defile. When not seen, their traveling was told by warblers lifting from evergreens, or birdsong gone silent.

For a time, annoyed, Baj tried to catch up with them… then, tiring of that, he paid attention to his own hiking instead. The rough touch and grip of fir saplings used for hand-holds, the damp sweet smell and stroke of foliage as he paged hemlock branches out of his way. The soft fern beds giving way to unforgiving stone beneath his boots. He paid attention to the pleasures of moving… breathing to move well, and after a while was surprised, on a long downhill, to find Nancy almost beside him, stepping down… stepping down, bent a little under the weight of her pack.

He climbed down beside her – going sideways in steeper places for better footing with his boot-soles' edges. In those places, she went sideways, also, but on all fours, one or both narrow hands lightly touching the mat of pine needles, her comb of widow-peaked hair a darker red under the trees.

Nancy's odor didn't seem so strong, now she wasn't wet. Perhaps some rankness had washed away – like his sweat – in the fall's cold water.

'Your boots are stupid. Clumsy.'

'They are what I have,' Baj said, and climbed beside her down a stand of fir to a run of yellow birches, just in bud, along a narrow mountain meadow striped by late after-noon's shadows. Big Richard was standing by a tree, waiting for them.

'Deer,' he said, lifted his head and sniffed the air.

Nancy, beside Baj, snuffled. 'Old smell,' she said.

'Old today – not old from tomorrow.' Richard pointed across the meadow. 'They bed down there.'

'Not anymore.'

Richard sighed. 'May I say something without a no from you?'

'I won't argue with you,' Nancy said. 'It's like arguing with a stump.'

'I could take my bow across,' Baj said. '… Wait for them to come in the evening.'

'No deer,' Nancy said. 'Other things come through.'

Richard didn't seem to hear. 'Yes, do it. There's a creek running there.' He glanced down at Nancy. 'I smell it.'

'Creek, yes. Deer, no.'

Richard paid no attention to that. 'The buck will come in, leading. If he's young – take him. If he's an old antler, try for a follower.'

'Okay.' One of the most useful Warm-time words of agreement… And it was odd, but Baj now found Richard more human than before – men together beneath birches, planning a hunt, ignoring a woman's carping. '- Okay.' He took his bow off his shoulder, knelt to brace and string it, then stooped for a wisp of weed, and tossed it for the wind. 'You two stay here – and keep Errol on this side.'

Richard grunted agreement, then swung his heavy, furred pack off, set his great ax against a tree, and lay down with the same odd rocking motion he used to stand up.

As Baj selected three broadheads from his quiver, Nancy – leaning against a narrow birch with her hand on the hilt of her scimitar, stood staring yellow-eyed, as if at a festival fool lacking only the little bells in a little hat.

* * *

Baj crossed the meadow in sinking sunlight, his bow in his hand, pleased with walking on the flat after so much climbing of ups and downs. It seemed to be a beaver-dam fill, growing only summer weeds and the first blue stars, with another wildflower – yellow – he didn't know the name of. No saplings had rooted in the open yet.

At the meadow's other side, a steep bank fell away to a rivulet bog with skunk cabbage starting here and there among dwarf willows… a stand of alder. Mottled shadows moved across the green as an early breeze of evening began to blow. Tiny insects – gnat flies – danced in the air, almost invisible.

Baj crossed the little run… found fairly firm ground past it where a greening tangle of berry vine grew along the bog's edge. He settled there, unbuckled his sword-belt, set it out of his way, and sat with his back to a young alder's trunk. It would be a clear shot, from there, at any deer come to drink – though a long shot if it came downstream, where the willows thickened.

Baj selected an arrow, set it to his bowstring. The fine broad-head's steel had been engraved with the outline of a miniature scorpion, the sigil of the royal armory… Old Howell Voss had fought under that banner. If the Boston-woman, Patience, had been telling the truth, then soon – as king – he would be choosing his own, and new banners would unfurl over the Great Rule from the Mississippi to the Ocean Pacific… Though now, no business of Baj's. No business of his at all.

He sat, the alder trunk still day-warm at his back, closed his eyes, and tried to imagine a Warm-time summer – a twelve-week summer – and that after a warm spring, with a warm fall still to come! Lady Weather's daughter lying smiling, sighing, her long soft legs spread for their pleasure… No wonder, as ancient Lord Peter had said, there was no way of knowing such lucky people completely, no matter how many ancient books were found, copied, and read.

Baj sat straighter, watching past budding bramble as shadows grew slowly longer, the last brightness of the day began to fade… A summer so long there was no hurry, when flowers, when all plants, from onion and cabbage to far-southern corn stretched themselves leisurely up toward the sun in months of warm, warm green.

In that climate, any fool might have written poetry without the word ice appearing ever. Though it was true that his own River-epic had used the various transparencies of ice to some effect. Perhaps to too much effect… What was not written was also poetry, of a silent kind, the mute sister to what was written and spoken. The unseen reverse, as of a silver coin. And if that were true, then all men – all Made-men also, of course – spoke a sort of silent poetry to themselves quite often, even if unmetered and inelegant.

Movement… Movement down in the willows? Baj rose to one knee and began – only began – to draw the string back a little. No gloves; he felt the beginning bite at his draw-fingers. Movement… but no deer, only early evening breezes through willow branches.

He relaxed, and relaxed the bow – having a vision of himself triumphant, striding into camp with a gutted buck across his shoulders. Letting it slide to the grass as simply the casual getting-of-meat by a formidable hunter. – Which imagined playlet made it sadly likely he'd occasionally acted the theatrical jackass at Island.

… More comfortable to consider the poetry of silence, the poetry of speech. A thing was what it was called, after all, and often silently – as he called himself an archer, in carrying a bow and intending to feed those three Persons. Call them his friends, since he had no others in a situation so startling, so bizarre (there was a wonderful WT word) that no poet or romancer could have suggested it.

Baj shifted against the alder's slender trunk – shifted slowly so as not to startle any observant animal. Nothing moved along the boggy run but occasional warblers flighting, and interlaced branches swinging barely budded in the mountain breeze.

Recollection came with that breeze. Of wind at his last archery. When? Not hunting – it hadn't been a hunting occasion… It was a memory of river wind across the north-lawn butts at Island. Prince Bajazet and his friends: Martin Clay, Ernie Parker, Pat DeVane, and Pedro Darry – Commander of Island's Guard and middle-aged Master of the Revels. Wonderful swordsman, too, though desperately bad with a bow. Pat DeVane had been their wizard there, though he hadn't shot well that morning. Too much wind – gusty wind, hard to judge.

That memory came to Baj, but not quite freshly, as if those friends' voices, the strumming bowstrings and hissing arrows, sounded only for Prince Bajazet, who no longer lived at Island, or anywhere…

The evening slowly darkened. Bird-flights less frequent, bird-song softer as shadows became shade everywhere.

A bare shrub shook down the way. Then shook again.

Baj, alert, drew his bow a little just as a beast – no deer – shoved through foliage and out into the patch of bog.