paying no attention that he could see to even dangerous passages, where only solitary sailing birds circled alongside possible slipping… to certain falling, and death.
When – on scree slopes – Baj went to all fours for a WT yard or two, as Richard and Nancy went more often, he could still feel a tenderness in his bitten forearm, as if a tip of one of the girl's fangs had touched the bone… An odd sensation – and, for what reason he couldn't have told, Baj had the most sudden yearning for Pedro Darry's company. How Pedro – still handsome, still a rake at forty years and more in his leather, lace, and satins – how he would have laughed, standing balanced on a precarious boulder. Thrown back his head and roared with laughter at Baj scuttling along behind small portions of bear's blood and fox's blood, with a measure of weasel circling somewhere behind.
'What in the Lady's name have you been
How sweet that laughter would sound, if it brought Pedro to life again, to stand beside him. No better company in desperate circumstance than that merry swordsman… What had Mark Cooper said at the lodge, those moments before the dagger went in? 'Darry killed three of our people…'
And Baj – climbing a merely steep stretch at last – could see it. A stone hallway, tapestries lifting a little along the walls as the river wind blew through. Then steel's bright sounds, bright glances of light along sword-blades flashing. Sad the Cooper man who first met that smiling face over sharp edges, bitter points. Sad the second man… and the third. They would have tried to turn him, get past him in the corridor to strike his back.
The fourth man must have managed.
Charm and laughter, all gone to spoiling dirt. And their complicity in that theft of life, only the least of Boston's robberies.
Baj climbed faster, until he saw Nancy's worn leather pack bobbing just ahead. Loss, it seemed, made strength.
He caught up and went beside her for a while – made the mistake of trying to help her over a great fracture in the stone, and received a satirical grin for it, and no thanks as she bounded up and over. It was in that sort of motion her mixed heritage was plain, that and her vulpine odor, as if an elegant vixen had been changed by some Warm-time wizard to a girl.
She climbed without his help, but Baj still kept up with her, so they traveled side by side for a while. At the next fracture – quite severe, as if a side of the great crest had broken – she stepped behind him, put a narrow hand on the seat of his buckskins, and with startling strength shoved him up.
When he got to his feet, she climbed past with that same grin. The long jaw, its sharp white teeth, seemed made for it, as foxes smiled at lost hounds casting.
'Thank you,' Baj said, and kept on. It was surprising how even the early-summer sun burned down at these heights, so he wished he had a hat. Hats not common on the River, where the wind made fun and blew them away…though ladies sometimes secured them under their chins with bands of far-southern silk. It came to Baj as he threaded through a stand of stunted spruce, that he might not – almost certainly would not – see the Kingdom River again. Not feel the rainy winds that drove down its current in the short-summers… not feel the savage sleet that blew as Lord Winter came down from the Wall.
No care by Floating Jesus any longer, uncertain as that had proved to be. No songs of the fishermen sounding on lamp-lit evenings on the River, as they lured the salmon to their nets. No girls chased laughing through Island's glass-roofed gardens. No comfort of the grand company of civilization close around him. Now – and likely forever – wilderness, risk… and loneliness, save for odd companions.
Richard led them down-slope at last, down from their third long wearying ridge. 'Off the crest,' he rumbled, 'and safer.' Downhill, Richard went as any human, any 'Sunriser' man might have gone, standing upright, but with heavy swaying to his gait, the double-bitted ax held casual over his right shoulder, its edges gleaming above his bulky backpack's fur.
They found Errol a considerable way down the mountain's side, squatting waiting by a small rock spring in evergreens. The boy had built a neat stack fire of twigs and weathered fallen wood, and seemed to be waiting for a starter spark.
Baj and the Persons came down to it, unloaded packs, cloaks and rolled blankets. Baj set down bow and quiver, dug out his tinderbox – struck flint sparks into its fine floss, blew those bright, then took a burning tuft and tucked it into the tinder.
… Supper was smoked boar; the first cuts off the last ham – though dry, edges fire-charred – still very fine. Richard and Nancy sat at the fire, ripping, chewing from their chunks; Baj slicing from his, with Errol gnawing a distance away. It was surprising how quickly one great ham had gone already…
Finished, Baj left the fire to pee – and downhill, off to the side of that cover, found a small pond a spring had made in a cup of stone and weedy turf. The setting sun shone off the still water in reflected red and gold, that then rippled slightly as the first of evening breezes came cool through the mountains… From this pond, Baj could see over pine and hemlock to more mountains marching north and east, their immense sunset shadows leaning one against the other. The air came into his lungs clear as iced vodka… so they ached a little, but nicely.
He bent over the water's edge, looked down, and saw amid sunset colors a very young man with a grimy older man's face, thin, lightly beard-stubbled, windburned and weary. He would have known himself – but only after an instant's puzzlement.
Grimy… And as if with the sight, the stink of old sweat, worn stockings, and dirty buckskins came quite strongly.
He stood back, unbuckled his sword-belt, and balanced heron-wise on one leg, then the other, to pull off his boots. Then he walked down into the water. Its chill, halfway up his buckskins, shocked him to stillness, so he stood only wriggling stockinged toes in frigid fine sand until he grew used enough to go on – and finally, with a gasp, submerged himself in a dark-green world so bitterly cold it seemed to bite him.
Baj stood up in soaked cloth and buckskin – the water to his waist, the evening air now seeming wonderfully warm – and stomped in place, raising dark clouds of sand and green stuff around him. Then he stooped for handfuls of that fine sand and began to scrub his clothes with it as if it were ash-lye soap.
When he'd done what he could for deerskin, far-south cotton, and wool, he stripped the soaked stuff off, threw it up onto a shelf of rock, and scrubbed himself – a painful process with sand and cold water. His scalp and long hair particularly painful to rub hard and rinse, rub hard and rinse…
Finished, his skin sore and stinging, Baj rung out his hair as best he could, and marched splashing up out of the water – the air feeling so much warmer. He bent to slide his dagger from its sheath, then knelt naked at the pond's edge to stare down at his reflection, and shave.
Another painful process. Anyone doubting that hot water, fine soaps and lotions were markers of civilization, could be quickly convinced by shaving with a slim-bladed weapon in ice water on a mountaintop.
Considering, watching his face reflected in fading evening light as the dagger whispered coarsely down his cheek… considering, Baj decided to let his mustache – admittedly not yet much of a mustache – to let that grow. He would certainly look older with it.
… Finished, now blade-sore as well as sand-sore, he dragged his sodden clothes on (all but the stockings), laced the buckskin trousers, buttoned the shirt and leather jerkin, then picked up his sword-belt and boots and went barefoot back up the slope, a wet stocking over each shoulder, the dagger in his free hand.
He shoved through the stand of evergreens – darkening with the first of night – and stepped, dripping, up to the fire.
His odd companions seemed pleased by what they saw. The boy, Errol, smiled. Nancy covered her mouth.
'Not cold?' Richard said. The night wind rising was a north wind. The fire bent and bannered to it.
'A little.'
While the three of them watched, entertained, Baj bent to dry his dagger on a blanket corner – sheathed it, and set his weapons-belt aside. Then he stood close before the fire, stretched his arms wide, and turned slowly around and around while drenched buckskin and dripping cloth began to steam.
The Persons seemed very pleased by that, and Errol stood up across the fire, stretched his arms out, and began to turn in imitation, as if joining a tribal dance.
The fire burned close enough, and hot enough, that Baj began to feel less chill – and reminded himself not to dry the buckskins completely, so they'd stiffen and shrink. Same with the cotton shirt, as far as shrinking… Laundry
