Moonrise

Baj came last, pressed a little to keep up through dense growths of thorn and bird berry. Nancy trotted in front of him, her light-footed shadow, hunchbacked by her pack, slanting beside her. They stirred whirring grass-hoppers up and around them as they went.

Baj heard that sort of whirring whisper behind him – then cold steel touched the back of his neck. He yelped, wheeling, drawing his sword as Patience hung in the air just above him, smiling, her head haloed by the sun. 'It might be wise to watch behind you, Baj Who-was-et cetera. Behind and above. I am not the only Talent out of Boston.'

Baj took a breath, put up his rapier, and said, 'Good advice.'

'You know Warm-time's 'et cetera'?' She sheathed her scimitar, and swung slightly in the air, her face, despite the little spints along her nose, now looking only lightly bruised.

'I know it, Lady.'

Patience thrust a small moccasin down. 'Pull me to the ground. It feels good in the back of my head… something rubs inside there.'

Baj reached up to hold her foot, then gently drew her from the air. There was an odd… resistance.

'Feels good,' she said, sliding down to him and along his chest and belly to stand in the grass. 'Feels good… ' She rested there against him, smiling up into his face, black eyes so close he saw nothing else, so she might have been a girl, and beautiful.

'is she hurt?' Nancy, coming back to them.

'No,' Patience said, and stepped away. 'I was teasing your prince as if I were still young, and perfect.'

'He's not my prince,' Nancy said, lisping the prince a little, and turned away as Richard came lumbering back to them.

'What have you seen?' he said.

'I've seen what you should see,' Patience said. 'That is a small Robin village, burning, and the Robins still stand in it.'

'I doubt they'd welcome us,' Richard said.

'Oh, but they will,' Patience said, '- and smiling.'

… And so it proved. The Robin village, its houses once ranked down along a stream – the water tumultuous after the storm – was burned, burned to nothing but sticks of char and furnaced wattle-clay. The villagers smiled in welcome, some with ravens perched on their heads.

A forest of perhaps fifty or sixty of them grinned, propped upright in the ruins of their homes, blistered black and impaled on fire-scorched stakes. Several curl-tailed brown dogs shied and muttered a distance away, and a little flock of brown chicken-birds pecked and strutted by the stream.

Baj bent and vomited, sickened by smell more than sight. The drifting odor was of overcooked pig, charred, sweet, and delicious.

'No children.' Patience cleared her throat, spit, and kicked a cinder aside. 'So whoever it was, once the killing was over, had the children herded for serfs… Too far south for this to have been done by Shrikes, though the method is theirs.'

'Method?'

'Baj, the Shrikes are named for sticking people up on sharp stakes or, over the Wall, on tall made-icicles.'

'And not the Guard's doing,' Richard said.

Nancy suddenly sprinted through smoking remnants, took Errol by the back of his neck and dragged him, kicking, from what he'd been doing. '… No,' she said, cuffing Errol still, 'this was not the Guard.'

Baj wiped his mouth with his bandanna. 'Because none were eaten?'

Richard turned on Baj in a surprisingly sudden way. 'Eating true-humans is a true-human do, as you should remember, since your own river-people are known for it!'

'Were known for it.' Baj said.

'Oh,' Patience said, '- I imagine some backcountry river lords still hold festival lunch… But not the Guard's doing here, Baj. They wouldn't have troubled with burning, and they wouldn't have taken the children. They'd have asked for the chief's daughter, taken her if she seemed useful – but not killed anyone, unless opposed.'

'And if opposed?'

'Then,' Richard said, and seemed even angrier, '- then, everyone and everything, even singing basket-birds and puppies.'

Baj knelt by the village stream to wash his bandanna. 'Let's get the fuck away from here.' Probably quoting from some copybook he'd read; it had Warm-times' harsh impatient ring.

'Get away, yes,' Nancy said. 'But which way to do it?'

'We're almost to the Pass I-Seventy,' Patience said, '- and have no choice but keep north to cross it into Map- Pennsylvania.'

'Well enough,' Baj stood and wrung his bandanna out. '- If soon enough.' He breathed lightly and through his mouth, but the odor still came in.

'Away from here, first,' Richard said, and strode off down the stream, his shaggy head lowered, apparently so as not to see too much of what he passed.

They all filed after him, Nancy holding Errol by the arm. Patience came last, ground-walking. 'What is in the air, is seen in the air,' she said.

Richard led them down the Robins' stream – then over it, across cleverly set stepping-stones, big enough that they were only splashed, crossing. Once over, they traveled through scattered forest – of mainly evergreens, with only a few tamarack, aspen, and balsam poplar. The Wall's breath, over this lowland, was now close enough to be too chill for many hardwoods, summer or not.

The trees in these groves bore birds like bright fruit. Baj had seen the red-crossbills and siskens north on the River, but not the little purple finches – very like the pets, though different colors, that ladies kept in their chambers at Island… He supposed Patience, meeting these feathered creatures in the air, must puzzle them.

After perhaps two glass-hours, Richard ducked into a hemlock thicket, stopped in its small ragged clearing – cool and deep-green as underwater – and shrugged off his pack.

'And we stop, why?' Patience brushed an evergreen frond away from her face.

'We're coming near to Map I-Seventy.' Richard bent his odd knees, sat, then rocked back to lean against his pack. 'So I thought we'd rest the day out here – then go on to cross the open at night.'

'And be up into the Map-Tuscaroras by dawn.' Patience nodded. 'Seems sensible.' She sat cross-legged, her scimitar across her knees, as the others shed their packs and settled. Settled as well as memory of the burned Robins allowed.

Baj, drowsing, found paintings of those people in his mind, roasted mouths open, as if they spoke and screamed. He tried to recall the little birds instead…

They lay at ease, or slept through the rest of the day, lulled by the hemlocks' shade and rich perfume – which reminded Baj, when he roused, of the exhalations of court ladies at Island, who'd taken to chewing sugared pine- gum to sweeten their breath. It could be scented sometimes, passing a group of them laughing in long paneled gowns, belted with daggers, and neck-laced with ropes of freshwater pearls or Map-Arizona turquoise. Ladies guarded by dangerous lovers, brothers, and fathers, and grown delicate and sometimes cruel as the pretty insect- eating flowers raised in corners of the glass gardens…

Baj woke in early evening – as all the other sleepers woke together, like children in a nursery, and rummaged for the last of smoked turkey-bird.

'A good rest,' Patience said. They sat in a fire-circle, eating, though there was no fire in the glade. 'I was tired. These mountains… I once Walked-in-air, and occasionally on the ground, from Boston to North Map-Mexico. And thought little of it.'

'How many WT miles?' Nancy was examining Errol's hair for nits, the boy stretched out with his head in her lap like a fireside dog, drowsing.

'I suppose… more than two thousand. Though I came down to the east of here, where there is at least some civilization, if you count shepherds and cattle-herders and small farmers. And I did have an occa carrying my baggage – fool that I was not to steal one from the penthouse this last time I left. I would have had to kill sentries to do it… had no permission, no