Moonrise

the side… But after a time (and occasionally in terror), he slowly found the short swinging stroke that drove the narrow points picking into the ice as a war hammer pecked skulls. His wrists looped to the hatchet handles, he picked left-handed into sound ice… hauled himself up to pick higher with the right… then kicked-in standing places with his muk-boots' spikes to swing the hatchets again.

It was brutal work, extraordinarily wearying… but the left shoulder loosened under the discipline, its stiffness fading as the Shrikes' attention to him faded. Soon – the sun past straight-up – no Marcus, Henry, or Christopher came to hoist Baj along.

Above him, Nancy (and Richard, higher) climbed laboriously as he did, with careful hand and foot – while Errol, staying with the leading Shrikes and apparently unconscious of height, seemed to scamper up easily as a southern squirrel, leaving windblown banners of fine ice-particles behind him.

As Baj, already very tired, worked his slow way, a huge cornice, large as a river lord's hold and detached a mile or more above by the sun's mild melting – fell ponderously moaning past, turning… turning as it went. One of many such, large and small, sailing, cascading down throughout the day. Only fortune, only luck unreliable, kept any one of them from wiping all the climbers from the height.

The sun threw a passing shadow across fractured ice beside him, and Baj – minding a slippery stance, a tenuous hold – looked carefully out to see Patience in mid-air, a pebble's toss from the ice-face… drifting cross- legged, eddying like a leaf in wind. Her eyes were open, but she didn't seem to see him. She slowly swung away, away from the Wall's sheer… and it appeared to Baj that she flew – Walked-in-air – with some awkwardness, as if spurning both a cliff of ice and the icy earth below, made for difficulty.

To hold oneself in the air by only thinking it was now so frightening a notion it made Baj look away from her, not wanting to see anyone hanging on nothing – where truly was nothing but empty air… and a great distance to fall.

He stared instead at the ice close before him – and saw, in its crazed surface, mirror enough to make out a hollow-cheeked, scant-bearded man, sewn with scars and no longer truly young. Baj closed his eyes and held on, stayed clutching where he was… only for a few moment's rest… Then, with a scrape and rattle of ice-chips, someone came clambering swiftly down to him, and Dolphus-Shrike, close as a lover though on ice vertical, whispered in his ear. 'Who won't climb up, will be thrown down.' And was gone, scrambling the cliff, leaving ice powder sifting on the wind.

Baj opened his eyes and climbed.

CHAPTER 23

The evening seemed to come after forever… During the climbing day, Baj had imagined falling – worse, imagined Nancy falling – so many dreadful times that terror itself seemed to weary. After that, he'd climbed only for grim effort's sake – trying clumsily to imitate the Shrikes, for whom these towering battlements of untrustworthy ice seemed nearly a home.

Still, ceasing was a pleasure as the sun set – so that west, down the Wall's horizon, its glittering immensity gradually diminished to a distant gleaming thread… Evening shadows grew swiftly in and about spires of ice where the climbers held fast, tiny as twelve specks of dust in a world of vaulted white. The Shrikes – like furred swift far- southern spiders – began to weave a web of braided line and steel ice-hooks between sheer walls, shelves, and notches of blue ice and white ice as the wind hummed through.

Baj and the others – excepting Errol, who seemed at ease playing along their wind-swept ledge – roosted together like exhausted swallow-birds, clinging to their best holds while watching the Shrikes work.

'I was so frightened.' Nancy, fur-hooded, gripped Baj's arm as if to prevent a fall. 'I was frightened all day…' Her breath smoked out on freezing air.

'I, also.' Richard hummed for a moment, deep as a bass banjar. 'I'm too big for this. Too heavy.' He was clutching an anchored leather line, his crest and fur-tufts spangled with ice. '- We came south last year from the barren grounds, Map-Ohio. Ran from Matthew-Robin's company. Never been on this… thing, since I was basketed down as a boy to train to join the Guard.'

'I wasn't frightened,' Baj said, keeping his breathing shallow to save his lungs from frostbite. 'I was fucking terrified.' A perfect use of Warm-time's fucking, so often misplaced in modern ignorance.

A weary giggle from Nancy. 'We're all terrified, except Errol.'

'And what,' Richard said, '- at least four more days to go?' He had to raise even his voice against the evening wind, which had begun to sing several songs at once, blowing through cathedrals of ice.

'Look at that fool!' Nancy called, 'Errol – stop… stop doing that!' The boy was traversing a slender braided line hand-overhand above nothing but icy air.

The Shrikes, busy working – hammering in hooks with their hatchets, swinging from here to there – seemed pleased with Errol. Called encouragement.

'Stupid Sunriser assholes…' Nancy gave the Shrikes hard looks. 'Savages.'

Baj saw one of the tribesmen seem to hear her over the wind. 'Shhh… Sweetheart, this is absolutely not the time or place for insults.'

'Absolutely not,' Richard clutched his leather line to him, '- though it's likely we'll freeze in the night, anyway.'

With a rattling flap of colored coat-tails in the wind, a pinch-faced Patience swung out of the sunset and into the ice just above them… scrabbled for a grip, found one – precarious, where the surface had cracked like a fallen pitcher – and hung there.

'I need…' She could barely be heard. 'I need help.'

Baj, shamefully reluctant, took a cold-stiffened hand from its good hold (remember to mitten, remember to mitten) began to climb to her – and was greatly relieved when a Shrike, apparently sensitive to climbing trouble, seemed to stroll across a monstrous vertical, took Patience in a hug, and with only casual managing, brought her down to the others.

'Stay,' the Shrike said, and was gone back to web-making.

'My fault,' Patience said, her teeth chattering. '… My fault for getting too swiftly old., I came off the Wall years ago as if it were a snowbank, and no more. Now, the earth seems a long way down… difficult to push against.'

Nancy shifted to put an arm around her. 'Then don't Walk-in-air, dear. Stay and climb with us.'

'Soon, I'll have to – and give the Shrikes another clumsy creature to care for.'

Dolphus-Shrike, looking cheerful with a round ice-frosted face, clambered down to them. 'Shake a leg!' And to Baj, '- Know that one?'

'No, I don't.' Baj imagined the clever chieftain with a dagger-blade in his belly… A refreshing vision.

'Oh, very ancient WT,' the Shrike perched smiling, his filed teeth a polished white. 'A naval term – means to start a dance, a celebration.'

Baj couldn't help himself. 'Sounds absolutely wrong – fragment mis-read, and wrong. If truly naval, probably had nothing to do with dancing.'

Dolphus stopped smiling.

'If we freeze to death here,' Patience said, '- while two fools argue what neither knows, we will make very angry ghosts.'

Dolphus smiled again, said, 'Princes should be ignorant; it's the only advantage of the ruled.' He gestured up with his thumb. 'Climb. It's bed-time.'

… The 'bed' had been woven for them, a long narrow hammock – sling seating – its casual wide-spaced netting, braided-rope. It hung from six lines fastened down its length, and anchored with steel hooks hard into blue ice.

'Sit,' said Dolphus-Shrike when they'd climbed very cautiously to it. 'Tuck your muk-books up, and wrap your blankets over your furs, or you'll freeze in the night… And if pissing or shitting must be done, then push down fur trousers and hide trousers, and do those things through a netting gap – but with care. No dirty ropes in the morning!'

He and Henry-Shrike saw them settled in a row, crowded side by side – Baj, then Nancy, then Patience, then