Moonrise

and muscle greater than his own – but drove, drove, kept grappling close as the glaive's thick staff struck down, its hook caught behind his left shoulder. He drew his left-hand dagger and stabbed the man though fur, through scraping ribs, then deep.

The sentry, strong and older, coughed sudden blood into Baj's face, made a fist and hit him in the mouth as if they were brawling… then staggered back, plucking at the place the dagger had gone in, so the glaive's hook dragged Baj after him, then fell free.

Spinning away, Baj saw the man Nancy had wounded was kneeling, clutching a hand blurting blood – but another sentry was on her, driving her back, swinging his pole-arm's blade, through she struck at him high and low. There was blood on the glaive's steel.

Baj shouted as if a shout could save her – leaped to reach them, and was tripped so he fell… then rolled to his feet, slashing. Another of the sentries was on him – a man old enough to be his father, and strong, striking very fast, alternating his blade and the shaft's steel-capped butt. Baj, grappling him close as the other, was hit hard in the belly – and as they wrestled, saw from the corner of his eye, Errol, quick as a squirrel, climb up the back of the man Nancy fought, and stick a knife in his neck.

Then Baj was struck again. Where, he wasn't certain, perhaps at the side of his head, since the corridor's lamps went dim, and he woke that instant on his hands and knees, saw the sentry's booted feet shift to deliver a finishing stroke. – Obeying the Master's shouted command from years before, Baj lunged in full passata soto and thrust the rapier's blade up into the man's bowels.

Getting to his feet as the man went down – gripping his belly as if to hold life in – Baj saw a different dying man stumbling here and there, screaming, clawing up behind him where Errol still rode his back, eyes squeezed shut in pleasure, mouthing the knife wound, drinking.

Two more sentries had come. Baj faced one with wearied clumsy rapier strokes and dagger wards that rang left and right as he ducked first one way, then the other, to keep the glaive's point wavering.

Very tired, Baj urged the pole-arm's heavy blade a little aside, thrust for the man's face, drove the point through his cheek deep into the angle of his jaw, and backed him bleeding away as the second sentry rushed past, face convulsed with rage. This man raised his weapon high, then hacked it down.

Baj turned, intending to manage something, as Errol – eyes shut and still suckling, dreamy with pleasure on a shrieking mount – was struck at his back, and split. For an instant, the boy's snowy rib-ends showed, and the intricate chain of his spine… then flooded red.

Baj heard Nancy scream, turned to help – and was struck and knocked aside as the first of the Shrikes, in swift slipping thuds and scraping, came skidding, tumbling from the ice ramp, recovered, and charged with thrusting javelins.

Two sentries, still living, were lifted on those slender points, transfixed, kicking, making noises…

Baj looked for Nancy – and saw her alive and weeping, kneeling by ruined Errol, touching and plucking at the spoiled parts, as if she might heal him.

'Jumping Jesus.' Dolphus-Shrike came away from the others, shaking his head. 'Poor climbing boy…'

'Where were you?' Baj saw the place at the base of Dolphus's throat where the rapier's point would go.

The Shrike sighed. 'Some Boston people came and forced the iron gate. There were… a number.' One of the fallen sentries had still been alive. Baj heard the slice and gargle behind him as a Shrike cut the man's throat.

Richard, just off the slide, said, 'Fucking thing.' Then, finding his feet, saw what was around him, '… Baj… we had no choice but deal with people up there – which cost us men – and no time to send the bodies down. So… they're left for anyone to see.'

'Next time,' Baj said, though he had no idea what 'next time' that might be, '- next time, do as was done back on the streets. Leave a few men to hold, while the others go on to finish what must be finished.'

'Right,' Dolphus said, and Richard nodded. It was an acceptance that Baj found somehow expected, as if his fathers had spoken through him, their voices one in harmony. The plainsong 'Obedience.'

Nancy knelt in puddled blood, crooning as if the dead boy could still hear her.

Baj knelt beside, took her in his arms. 'Sweetheart… sweetheart, he never knew he was struck, it came so fast.' His left shoulder hurt where the glaive's hook had caught it… the same shoulder George Brock had hit with his hurled shield.

'I don't care,' Nancy leaned against him, weeping. 'I don't care.'

Baj saw she was cut down her left forearm, sliced through leather and cloth. Slow bleeding… not serious. 'He saved your life.'

She shook her head, took the opportunity to wipe her nose on his sleeve. 'He didn't mean to. He was only doing what he wanted to do.' Then, lisping, 'He was a child. Not like the rest of us, always scheming and wondering and… thinking.'

'True,' Baj said. His lip was sore, split and bleeding where the older man had hit him. His shoulder hurt. 'True…'

He heard Richard saying, 'Rest a minute,' looked across the corridor, and saw him helping Patience to stand. She stood, but swaying. '… The boy was killed?'

'Yes,' Richard said. 'I should never have brought him.'

Baj felt, and felt in the rest, exhaustion from the long run through Boston, the fighting – and more than either, from the task still before them. There was a great temptation simply to stay and rest awhile, consider further what must be done…

The great bell's tolling of alarm – somehow unheard through the fighting – rang softly shivering down the corridor of ice. It rang its slow, ponderous periods, and Baj woke to them.

'Dolphus,' he said, 'have your people gather the sentries' glaives, chop notches in the ice ramp, and prop the pole-arms up so anyone coming down after us will run onto the points.'

'Nasty.' Dolphus smiled, and gestured his men to the work. There were only seven tribesmen now, Dolphus making eight… All the others cut down, beaten down, holding the ice streets of Boston. Holding the pit-gate above. Marcus gone. Christopher gone, also.

'Patience,' Baj raised his voice, since she seemed still dreamy from the fighting. '- where do we go? And who still defends?'

'… We're in the tunnel to the bridge, entrance to the Pens.'

'Defenders?'

She seemed to wake, shrugged Richard's supporting arm away. 'Never many, only enough to keep order here and in the Pens. The guard roster was – used to be – a file of eighteen. There are locked gates for every tier, so more were never thought necessary, with Constable Formations in the town.' She glanced at the scimitar in her hand as if surprised to see she still held it, then slowly wiped its blade clean on her coat's cloth. A bruise was beginning to stain the side of her forehead. 'There may be… Talents working there, if the bell hasn't sent them all home.'

'Sweetheart,' Baj said to Nancy, 'do you have cloth to bandage that arm?'

'Yes. It's nothing much -'

'Dolphus,' Baj interrupted her, 'leave two men to finish setting the glaives. You and the rest follow me. – Patience?'

'I'm well enough,' Patience said, though, to Baj, she didn't look well enough.

'Then we go.' He led down the tunnel at a trot – led as if a wind were blowing at his back, whispering 'Decide and move…, decide and move, and they'll follow after.'

They followed climbing, soon enough, up an ice slope crosscut for better footing. There, Baj felt what the epics, Warm-time and after, never troubled with – the aches and stabbing pains in muscles, tendons strained in any desperate fight. As he climbed the slope, he felt even the injuries George Brock had inflicted, battering for advantage in the tundra circle. His cracked cheekbone… the left shoulder; that hurt again, of course…

And if so for him, and young – how much more for Patience and those older others? But he didn't slow. Time… time. There was a quote from some Warm-time Great Captain. 'Ask me for anything, but time.'

Still, Baj came to a stop when he climbed into the open. Stopped and stood still in a steady, biting wind.

Before him, the slope – dazzling under distant lamps – became the steep bone-white rise of a great unrailed bridge of ice that arched up and up over a crevasse wide as a tributory river, fractured, and darkening blue to black