Moonrise

She gave him a look. 'I have my sword.'

'I know. I'm depending on your protection.' And received a sharp elbow to the ribs.

A rustle in the air above them as they hiked – the morning wind still very cold under a rising sun. 'They're coming,' Patience said, swung so low that Baj could have jumped to touch her greatcoat's hem. '- And I see no other Talents Walking-in-air above them.'

Baj stared ahead… but saw nothing but tussock grasses combing in the wind. Heard the distant merry tune piping on.

They walked west – spots in the tundra occasionally coldly wet and soft enough so they sank almost to their knees, and had to haul their moccasins sucking out. 'A few WT weeks ago,' Richard said, marching a little hunched under his big pack, '- warm as it gets so close to the Wall, the mosquitoes would be coming up in numbers to choke you, breathing them in.'

Baj said, 'Thanks for small blessings, then.' And when Errol suddenly stopped and stood staring, glanced past him and saw something running toward them. Coming at a gallop.

'Another one,' Nancy said, and pointed to the right. 'They're stupid, barely Persons at all…'

Two. Coming at a run and very fast.

For a moment, Baj thought they were deer, only trained somehow to scout. Certainly they were four-legged hooved things. Then he saw that the front legs bent at elbows, and ended in knot-knuckled hands… Small packs and scabbarded light hatchets rode their backs where saddles might have gone. Their skin, mottled brown, seemed hairless… their necks – longer than men's necks – curved up to small heads barely human, with eyes set wide as horses'.

One, galloping up, called, 'Whooo?' in tenor very like an owl. The other echoed him. – Her; Baj saw two soft breasts between the long front limbs. Both scouts stood restless, a short bow-shot away.

'Richard from Shrike!' Richard called. 'Once, a captain of the Guard!'

'Patience!' Patience called, sweeping down to settle. 'Patience Nearly-Lodge Riley. Citizen… in exile.'

The closer Scout nodded, intelligent enough to take that in, then turned her head to examine Baj… Nancy.

'Baj!' he called to her, '- who was Bajazet, of Middle-Kingdom.'

The Scout stared, and shook her head slightly, as a horse might have. The other stood silent.

Nancy called, 'Nancy… from Thrush! And this boy is Errol, once scrubber to H-Company Mess, Second Regiment!'

'I know youuuu,' the Scout said, lifted her long, inhuman right arm, and pointed with thick-caloused knuckles.

Nancy said nothing.

'All understood,' the Scout hooted – then suddenly wheeled, and galloped away.

The other didn't follow. It turned, prancing a little, bent its head to snatch a bite of tufted sedge, then stood waiting, apparently to accompany them.

'The Wolf-General,' Richard called to it, '- Sylvia is with these companies?'

The Scout stared, but didn't answer.

'She'd better be,' Patience said. Then, certainly from a copybook, added, 'Or we're screwed.'

'Let's go.' Richard strode away. Toward silence, now; the distant rise-and-shine music had ended.

They walked the lumpy tussocks, looking west, while the Scout trotted in easy wide circles around them… Errol, after a while, ran out to chase him, and wouldn't come to calls. But the Scout- – after an initial shying away – seemed not to mind, left his hatchet scabbarded, and he and the boy commenced a chase and be-chased game over the tundra, though Errol was never fast enough to catch him.

'Two more,' Richard said, and Baj saw movement… then made out two other Scouts galloping toward them. These did not approach closely, only circled once, then again, and ran away west.

Errol, panting in exhaustion, had just come back to them, when Nancy said, 'There.' And pointed… What seemed at first animals – from their compactness, their brown fur – gradually became nine… ten… a WT-dozen men trotting toward them in a long extended line.

Sunshiners, it seemed to Baj. True-human tribesmen, by the look of them. Short men, rounded with smooth fat over muscle, and wearing parities and trousers of caribou hide trimmed with fisher fur, the parky hoods tucked back and away from their faces. Each carried two or three light javelins, and an atlatl tucked into a wide belt with a sheathed long-bladed knife.

'Shrikes.' Richard stood still, and swung his double-bladed ax off his shoulder.

One of the tribesmen – the man on the left of their line – whistled a single shrill note, and the others slowed and drifted, while he come forward.

A round face, smiling. His teeth were filed to points. As he came, he called, 'Captain Richard!' his breath smoking in the icy morning air.

'Dolphus…!' Richard spoke softly over his shoulder. 'I fought against him on Berkshire ice. He's an Under-chief, important.'

'And a relative,' Patience said. 'Isn't he?'

'Was my mother's cousin,' Richard said, and the Shrike chief, hearing, nodded as he walked up to them – stepping neatly, Baj saw, always between the grass tussocks. The furs he wore – the parky, and caribou-hide muk-boots and trousers – were beautifully dressed, decorated with the fisher fur, ermine tails, and little fans of porcupine quills dyed orange and blue.

'His mother – my father's brother's eldest daughter,' the Shrike said. He spoke in a humming drone, as if on a single alto note. It was, Baj supposed, where Richard had gotten his thoughtful hum.

The Shrike chief didn't seem fierce; he seemed pleasant. His hair, the color of southern straw (though with gray mixed in it) was plastered with animal fat… drawn into a clubbed pigtail at the back. His green eyes seemed amused.

'Heavens,' he said, '- what a bunch.' A reader, Baj thought, filed teeth or not, and comfortable with copybook- English.

The Shrike smiled, examining them. 'A deserter from the Guard, an ex-Boston air-walker, an army whore, an idiot boy, and… someone who was someone, but isn't anymore.'

Baj felt Nancy standing still and silent beside him, and anger rose hot, seized his mouth, and spoke. 'Enough of a someone,' he said, '- to run a steel blade up your fat ass!'

The Shrike widened his eyes in a demonstration of surprise, glanced from Baj to Nancy, then smiled his pleasant filed-tooth smile. 'It must be love,' he said. 'If I offended, Prince, I beg your pardon. – And the lady's.' Certainly a literate savage, and unimpressed by threats.

Nancy said nothing.

Richard took a side-step to stand between Baj and the Shrike. 'What are you doing with the Guard, Dolphus?'

'I'm doing what you intend doing. Persuaded to try it, in any case. Boston is becoming… tedious.'

'And the Guard?'

'I won't say they'll welcome you, Richard – weren't happy to welcome me and my men. But they've admitted a truce with us… for a while. The rest of the Guard companies – fewer – have been sent down to the Coast-Atlantic on dubious, but convenient orders. Orders that might hold just long enough.' He shrugged. 'It's sad, really, since we were preparing an unpleasant surprise beneath the Wall for your so-clever Sylvia.'

'You'd be the first savage to manage it.'

'Well,' Dolphus-Shrike smiled, '- sooner or later, someone is bound to.'

The tribesman spoke the easiest, most authentic book-English that Baj had heard since fleeing Middle- Kingdom. Better, more… relaxed, than even the Wishful-believers had managed. It was as if a man had traveled the centuries from Warm-times, wrapped himself in fur, taken up javelins and atlatl, and filed his teeth.

'Sylvia's with you?'

'Oh, with respect still due, I'd say we're with her.'

Baj noticed that the other Shrikes had casually moved to circle them. It would be difficult to defend against javelins hissing in from all directions. He reached back to his quiver, slid an arrow out, and nocked it to his bow- string… Dolphus-Shrike, noticing past Richard's bulk, winked at him, and said, 'In case of difficulties – me