Moonrise

Those sounds became a swift, rhythmic, pounding jangle over the continuing ponderous, paced thunder of the alarm… Baj, Richard, and several Shrikes, keeping low, went to the gallery's balustrade and peered down at the boulevard now filling with grim men, rank on rank in bronze half-armor, chest and back – many lightly clothed beneath it, others colorfully furred, some naked but for the metal. All carried halberds slanted over their right shoulders.

Bell staffs – Baj had read of them, but never seen one – rose at the front of every long column… then were struck down together in a great ringing chorus, and the hundreds of Constables stepped off together, left feet first – booted or bare. They swung away down the boulevard to the rhythm of shaken bells, so their gleaming halberds' heads – each ax, hook, and point – swayed all together, a sparkling awning of bright steel above them as they marched.

'Soldiers,' Richard said, 'whatever they're called.'

Dolphus-Shrike nodded. 'Yes, soldiers… Patience, do they go to South Gate?'

'Wait.' She stood up to watch. 'If they turn on the Street of Flowers…'

Baj, Richard, and Dolphus-Shrike also stood to watch the wide formations march away through shimmering light, frosting breaths streaming behind them, their columns cleaving the people to either side as they went.

'A halberd,' Richard said, 'is a difficult weapon to deal with. A slight soldier – Sunriser or Moonriser – strikes with its weight as if strong. A strong soldier is made even stronger.'

'… They're turning,' Patience said. 'Turning down Flowers – toward South Gate.' The great bell still tolled, steady as a giant's heartbeat.

Dolphus gestured his tribesmen to their feet. 'And that's how far?'

'From here, more than a WT mile.' She stood in her colored coat, still watching. The bell staffs rang in the distance, a song crystalline as their city.

'You must have heard those little bells as a child,' Nancy said to her. 'Wakened to them in the night.'

'Yes,' Patience said, and turned away. 'Heard it and loved it and our Constables, before it became the music of betrayal… and these people took my son.'

The jangle of marching-bells was muffled to quiet as the last ranks, far down the way, turned out of sight… so only townspeople and their children were left hurrying along the frozen boulevard, past its great gleaming columns.

'Now,' Patience said, '- and we must go fast, or lose our chance. Pass or kill any who interfere… but remember what we came to do.' She trotted down the gallery with Baj and the others catching up, and the Shrikes after them – some skidding on slick ice as the regular ponderous notes of the great bell rang shivering.

Down the long gallery… to wide flights of frost-dusted stairs – Patience, then all of them running, jumping two steps at a time to reach the boulevard.

… Hurrying Boston people saw them, saw them but seemed to pay only temporary mind – as if on a day of surprising threat from the south, a certainly-township lady might reasonably lead a party of oddities and ice-tribe hunters. Leading them somewhere… perhaps necessary in the emergency.

Still, Baj noticed one or two paying more attention.

'This leaving us alone won't last,' he said.

Nancy laughed beside him, breathless. 'That's why… we're running.'

Down the boulevard – even wider than it had looked from the gallery, its pavement-ice scored with deep cross-hatching for better footing – Baj saw several of the brown-furred Carvers chipping at its curbs as Patience ran and more-than-ran before them. She sailed sometimes just above the ice, white hair streaming, with Baj and Nancy running just behind and to her left, Richard lumbering swiftly by her right side… Errol, very lively, skipped behind with the Shrikes.

The great bell still rang its deep, slow measured notes, that seemed to jar the icy air around them… Under its sound, Baj heard the swift whispers of their boots on frost.

They ran and outran people's occasional shouts, starts, commencements of some sort of action – ran past and were gone. Though at last, just past where the Street of Flowers crossed, ran not quite fast enough.

Baj heard a curse and scramble back among the Shrikes – turned and saw one of the tribesmen wrestling, dragging a young Boston boy along. The Boston boy, furred in dotted colors, had a knife. He took a javelin-thrust through his belly and fell kicking, looking astonished as the Shrike ran on.

Baj drew his rapier, and ran with it in his hand. Beside him, Nancy had her scimitar out. And glancing over, he saw Patience had drawn also. There was a run of bright blood – from her killing down the North Gate – still frozen along the curved blade.

As they ran the streets of ice – smaller ice buildings standing on each side, their doorways seeming to be sheeted iron, painted black – as they ran, Patience leading fast, the great bell of alarm still rang, its vibrations hanging in the air.

… They'd left the turn, the Street of Flowers, well behind, and Baj – feeling now tireless, though Boston's frigid wind was numbing his face – wondered as they went, why 'Street of Flowers,' and supposed snow flowers might have been meant. Or whores, perhaps… He saw – and his boot-soles felt – small lumps and bumps of debris frozen into the street's frosted pavement. Things people had thrown away: scraps of food, broken matters, certainly little frozen turds left by dog-pets. All become a pavement of garbage – wonderful WT word. 'Garbage' frozen into the streets of the glittering city. A city whose lamps cast constant shadows, constant light – where no sun, no moon, shone for day or night.

'Obvious rhyme there,' Baj thought, congratulated himself for some remnant of poetry still kept – and his mind off his feet, tripped on nothing much in the street, skidded on ice trying to recover, and went down hard onto his right knee.

'Baj.' Nancy sliding to a stop.

'I'm up – I'm up!' And he was, with a Shrike shoving him along to hobble at a ran on an unhappy knee. It seemed to Baj that stopping to fight someone would be a great relief from this forever running the streets of Boston… Streets – their citizens also now rushing here or there – where running boot-steps gave back flat rapid echoes from ice buildings close on either side. Echoes, and different smells than Island's rich scents of river, fish, and granite. Boston's odors were of humans, freezing air, and perhaps a drift of coal smoke lingering before the cavern wind blew it away.

And, as if his prayer for relief had been answered with a fighting pause, a man came out of Warm-time's 'nowhere' and struck at Richard with something – an iron something – and was struck back so Richard had to wrench his great ax free… then gallop to keep up.

More trouble behind them with the Shrikes as well. Baj heard it, heard a woman screaming, but didn't look back.

They all turned again as Patience turned, to run down a quiet narrower street with no one watching, no Bostons hurrying after with iron in their hands. Only the hard-rain sounds of their boots as they passed staring men and women, and the soft squeaks and clinks of leather and steel. Baj's knee, having complained, was feeling better.

… Though panting for breath, still they went swiftly – trained by weeks of sled-running. They followed Patience to the right around another corner through bright revealing light, under constellations of hanging lamps glowing on their chains above them. Chains depending now from slightly lower ice ceilings, whose vaults still no thrown spear might reach, nor even the most forceful arrow. They ran on ridged and frosted white, pacing beside their active shadows.

The narrow street was fenced each side by walls of ice rising three, four stories, and pierced in regular rows with small square windows where – in many – lamplight glowed. Between those close walls of window lights, Patience half-ran, half-flew with Baj and the others after her like hounds.

People shouted from those windows as they went, and Nancy said, 'Apartments…' She caught her breath. 'They keep everyone together, but still apart.'

Apartments of ice, not Island's stone… Baj was sorry to be reminded of what was missed by this charging like cattle-broke-loose, running past bright-lit wonders all the Map-Country had heard of, and almost none had seen… And he here for nothing but murder, so he ran in darkness, despite the light.

Over a building's high roof (tiles of ice shone there), he saw a flight of several Walkers-in-air. Men or women –