Moonrise

them,' he said, and leaped a tangle of summer vine vine, '- not to me.'

Nancy didn't answer, though she gave him the yellow-eyed glance he'd expected. She kept with him for a while, then strayed to the left and up-slope, more comfortable with rougher going.

The drums kept up. No longer deep, rolling growls, they sounded in nervous chasing taps and rattles, as if persuading their prey's hearts to beat to that unsustaining rhythm.

Stones and pebbles bruised Baj's feet through flexible conforming leather, but light swift running was consolation enough. He ordered his legs, and they obeyed… No matter how fast the Robins came, they'd started well behind. 'And may catch up, never,' Baj said aloud, high-stepping through windfall branches down a draw – dead branches, bare and black from Lord Winter's last several seasons, come down with run-off and rotting to punk. He ran through, breaking some in crumbling wet, and smelled the dank odor of spoiling wood as he went on.

Tap… tap tap. The drums coming behind them.

Legs aching but working well, Baj ran up beside Richard – the massive Person pacing along so swiftly, steadily, his heavy, furred pack like a clinging gray wolf on his back.

'How far… will they chase?'

Richard plunged into a stand of young evergreens as if they were an ocean's surf, and vanished but for green turmoil as he went. Baj ran downslope through more scattered trees, then up-slope again to join as Richard burst into the clear.

'How… far?'

'To their territory's edge,' Richard said, his breath coming short. '- And stop there. They won't… want a war.'

Richard had an odd way of running – looking odder the closer Baj ran with him. It was a two-legged gallop, and would have seemed more comfortable on four. An odd way, but ground-eating, steady and fast.

Baj ran, saw Nancy bounding across the slope above, and heard a wailing cry behind them. He thought some swift tribesmen had caught up – looked back, and saw Errol among evergreens, the boy staggering with his face in his hands.

'Hurt!' Nancy called. 'Hurt!' And reversed her run remarkably – in one instant, fleeing north on a saplinged slope… in the next, back the other way, so an imagined brushy tail seemed to flirt behind her.

'For God's sake…' An ancient oath, and considered indecent in the Kingdom. Baj slowed, stopped, and saw Nancy trotting back to the boy.

Ahead, Richard stood still, looking back. He called out… something. The chasing drums seemed to answer with a rainfall patter of beats and pauses – and Baj realized that of course it was drum talking they were hearing. Drummed threats, drummed promises being made.

The morning sunshine seemed to pulse with Baj's heartbeat as he ran back the way he'd come, lifting his bow off his shoulder.

Behind him, Richard called again.

Nancy, this side of evergreens, had Errol gripped by the arm, was helping the boy along. 'His eyes,' she said, '- a branch whipped his eyes, running.' Baj saw the line scored across the boy's face, a spot of blood in the boy's right eye, tears in both.

'He'll see again in a moment or two. Lead him away!' Baj knelt to bend the recurved bow and string it, then reached over his shoulder for an arrow. Saw the girl and sniveling boy just standing there. 'Go on! Go!'

And away she went, half-dragging Errol along.

There was a soft rubbing sound amid the drumming. Some tribesman stroking his drum's taut hide – and heard too clearly, now.

Weasel enough to work back to cut that poor woman's throat – and now, runs into a fucking tree! It seemed to Baj it would have been best to let the Robins have the boy – no use but for murdering, and killing birds… He nocked the broadhead arrow, and scrambled sideways up the mountainside, thinking to wound a man, slow them just a little to make up this lost time.

Though, once he was set and had a clear shot where the evergreens broke below – the three Persons running north, Richard and Nancy holding the boy half-suspended between them – the drums still seemed a distance behind.

Baj had a little while to wonder if his was a foolish ambush after all – but had wondered it only once when two men came out of the pines with bright spear-points questing. They wore plumed bird-beak helmets, were naked to kilted waists, and wore hatchets, but carried no shields.

Expected, they were still surprising to see, so close behind. Baj supposed these were light scouts and the fastest runners… the others farther back, coming with the drums.

He'd expected the likes of Sparrows, shifting savages – but the two trotting across the slope below seemed more soldiers than that. There was a steady deliberation in their tracking…

Baj rose slowly, drawing as he did. The arrow's fletching touched his cheek and he released, mindful to hold a little low.

He should have nocked a second arrow as the first one flew – but instead stared like a raw hunter to see the shaft flick away, at first arching fast, flashing down the mountainside… then oddly seeming to sail slower, as if to be certain of its strike. Baj saw the gray fletching dot the near man's side, and he dropped his spear, staggered downslope like a drunk, stumbling, his mouth wide open. Then he tripped and sat down.

Stupidly late, Baj nocked his second arrow – and found no one to shoot. The other Robin was gone racing back into the pines, and would be running to the others with word. It might make them careful enough to slow a little as they came.

'Better,' Baj said aloud, and stood, the second arrow still on his string. 'Better this way.' The man sitting wounded down the mountainside seemed to be looking up at him. Certainly, he should start running after the others. Run – leave the man; leave the arrow. Who would say he should do otherwise?

Baj slid his second arrow over his shoulder into the quiver, then trotted, skidded, down the slope. The Robin sat as if patiently waiting for him – looking, with his beaked helmet, like the get of some unlikely Boston mating of woman and bird.

When Baj reached him, he saw the Robin sat the slope awkwardly, and smelled of shit. A boy, perhaps sixteen, seventeen years old, he stared up at Baj under the brow of his plumed helmet, and hissed-in rapid breaths of agony.

'I'm sorry,' Baj said to him – a stupidity. The arrow had gone through from side to side. The fletching nestled against the boy's left ribs; the razor-edged head and inches of shaft stuck out lower, at his other side.

Time tapped Baj on the shoulder, and he – or perhaps a slightly different Baj – stepped behind the Robin, hauled his head sharply back, drew the left-hand dagger and cut the boy's throat. There was… a sort of wet sneeze and convulsion, and Baj – head averted so as not to see too much – bent, yanked the irreplaceable arrow on through the boy's body and free… then ran away north, strung bow on his shoulder, bloody dagger in one hand, bloody arrow in the other.

Galloping the slope through low shrubbery, over rubble scree, he ducked past a pine, paused, and managed to wipe the knife on his buckskins and sheath it. He ran on, still holding the arrow in a hand gloved with dirt and drying blood… It seemed to him impossible to stay clean in this wilderness.

Behind him, keeping irregular time to his flight, sounded the conversation of drums.

… He caught up in a little while. Staggering tired, and with a WT 'stitch' in his right side, Baj saw the three Persons in miniature ahead and a little below him, trotting north into brush and rougher country. Richard was forging in the lead, leaving a wake of shrubbery forced aside, with Nancy and Errol following – the boy apparently now seeing well enough.

Baj, still hearing pursuing drums, saw they'd slowed a little to wait for him. – And as if she'd heard his thought, Nancy turned to look behind her. She looked, went on, then turned to look again and saw him. He knew it, even at the distance.

She stopped, let Errol scurry on, and stood waiting… watching him come down to them, his bow, still strung, bouncing at his shoulder. Richard stood waiting farther on – standing amid flowering bushes like a bear risen from a berry patch.

'What?' Nancy called to him as he came. 'What?'