Moonrise

found it.

CHAPTER 22

'Damn you, Baj.' Richard was kneeling before him, grimacing, watching as a near-human Guards physician stitched along the right cheekbone, as he'd already sewn the wound over Baj's right ear. '- I told you to watch his shield!'

'I didn't know they threw them…'

'They do every fucking thing with them!'

'The cheekbone is cracked, but very slightly.' The physician, whose eyes had been contributed by an animal Baj didn't recognize, had gentle hands. 'Cracked, but not busted – you know the WT word busted?'

'Yes, doctor, I do.'

'Well, it isn't. Leave it alone, don't hurt it again, and it will heal quickly.' He recommenced his sewing, tugging at Baj's cheek, hooking the small, curved needle in and out. 'Good scars,' he said.

'Poor Baj.' Patience was sitting watching. They all were watching, gathered in their canvas-walled patch of tundra, duplicated exactly, camp to camp. 'Our prince will not be so handsome, now.'

'And he shouldn't be. He's a fool.' Nancy was wincing as Baj winced, while the needle went in and out.

'Hold still,' the doctor said. 'Tender Sunriser skin…'

Nancy was recovered after a long while of silence. Richard had found her lying in the tundra, halfway back to camp. She'd been lying with her face in her arms – Errol whining beside her, worried. When Richard turned her over, her eyes were tight shut.

'He's dead,' she'd said, having heard only the clash and ring of steel, and no notice from hundreds of silent soldiers.

'No… no.' Richard had cradled her in his arms. 'No, not dead!'

'Dying,' Nancy'd said, and wouldn't open her eyes when Errol came scurrying, having retrieved Baj's left-hand dagger.

They hadn't allowed Baj to come to her, since he ran blood – right cheek split open, scalp sliced above his right ear.

Patience had knelt by Nancy in sedge grass. She and Richard both reassuring her.

When Nancy did open her eyes, she'd said, 'You don't know how much I hate him.'

'Yes, sweetheart,' Patience had bent to kiss her. 'We know how much you hate him.'

'… Other one just missed the top of the ear,' the physician leaning to bite off his suture's excess at Baj's cheek.

'Too bad,' Nancy said, watching. 'George Brock should have taken that ear, and the other one too.'

* * *

Baj, having vomited dinner at sunset, lay alone behind the bales in his blanket pallet – Nancy gone with Patience to rouse Sergeant Givens for soothing vodka – his head hurting as if it rested in hot coals. The left shoulder, where Brock's thrown shield had struck him, was mottled dark blue, and very sore.

Patience had asked the Guard doctor for some herb or far-southern poppy paste, and the physician had stared at her in astonishment. 'He's not a child.'

'Not a Person, either,' Patience had said, but the doctor had snorted, gathered his gear, and gone. Still, Baj found the cold a fair comfort, its sunset-wind stroking, chilling the wounds to dullness, though he still felt the stitches pulling.

He recalled the duel – but as if it had been only the beginning of pain, and of no other importance. He supposed George Brock-Robin might have killed him, fighting as his nature would have ordered. A terrible leaping rush, fangs bared – a smashing shield and slicing blade – with no practiced ranker's restraint, none of the Guard's trained battle discipline… He would have hacked Baj down like a storm.

Fortunate Baj, a victor, lay with his wounds to the wind, and would have been happy with them frozen solid and senseless… Still, he slept a little while, then woke in darkness, feeling very clearly, in his right hand and wrist, the stumbling throb of George Brock's heart as the rapier's point found and pierced it… with good cause. Perhaps.

And as if that thought had called her, Nancy came out of the dark, and knelt to him. 'Are you awake?'

'Yes.'

'We have vodka – do you want some?'

'No, sweetheart; I'm doing well enough.'

She arranged the bedding, then unlaced her muk-boots, pulled them off with the foot wraps, undressed, and squirmed under the blankets beside him. She reached to hug him close, so he felt smooth bare belly, the tender proddings of her twin rows of little nipples, the weight of a soft strong thigh.

'I forgive you,' she said, lay with him under the combing wind… and soon, so lightly, began to lick his wounds.

* * *

Travel was difficult the first day. Though his injuries were not much, a severe headache had come with them, which sunlight made worse, so Baj marched squinting, Nancy wincing with him when he misstepped on mounded tussocks. The guard-troopers, slouching by on their big mounts, glanced down in passing, but said nothing to him concerning the duel.

At evening, and grateful for the day's end, Baj found fading light easier on his eyes, and the headache less severe, so he managed seal stew without upset. He also, encouraged, beat Richard at chess – an almost accident, since both of them had forgotten a knight hidden in plain sight. Which prompted a discussion of accident and oversight as determinants of history.

A discussion acting perfectly as a medicine draft to send Baj to sleep where he sat. The last he recalled was Richard saying, 'Well… that's rude.'

The usual trumpet – then rye-porridge – at dawn's first light, found Baj's headache almost gone, the sewn injuries less uncomfortable, the sore shoulder much better. And the sun, that morning, troubled him only a little.

These improvements lasted half the day, until the goat-eyed cavalry colonel trotted past, cursing an unlucky officer who – riding beside him – said only, 'Sorry, sir.' The colonel glanced down, saw Baj trudging along – and pleased, perhaps, by the shame that had been visited on the infantry, a tender-ass Sun-riser having slaughtered one of their own – called out, 'Get this young swordsman a ride!'

For which kindness, ungrateful Baj cursed the colonel through a freezing after-noon, since while horses had a gentle gait, moose did not. The headache returned, as copybooks had it, 'with a vengeance.'

Still, no trooper, riding beside him or riding past, mentioned the fight. Only Dolphus-Shrike – fur bundled, javelins over his shoulder, his yellow hair knotted at his neck – come jogging along fast as the trotting mount, smiled up at Baj, and said, 'I see I'll have to watch my mouth before such a champion, such a Jack Monroe.'

'Not today,' Baj said, standing a little in the stirrups to ease jolting, and the Shrike laughed.

So, a difficult after-noon, and a day that brought the Companies to the Wall's wide lap of moraine – ten to twenty WT miles of huge rounded drumlin hills, outwash rubble, and milk-water cirques appearing in the tundra… then great shallow lakes, ice-skimmed and stretching out of sight with flocks of ducks and geese rising in roars of wing-claps from them, then swirling away over other shallow waters that had to be splashed through or widely skirted, and fast foaming streams to be forded with difficulty and some danger… occasionally crossed twice as they wound and wended in the way. It was slow marching.