Moonrise

'I know the far-north Shearwaters.' Another officer, scarred and short-muzzled. 'Don't know this Simon, though.'

The Wolf-General sighed. 'Well, see the message is taken wherever to the man, with my gratitude and commendation for her courage… As if there were nothing more important for us to do.'

'Thank you,' Baj said.

'I don't require thanks for acts of honor.' Sylvia stood surveying them, her eyes improbably gentle, her gray crest stained where blood had spattered. The bronze breast-and-back she wore was dented, and chopped through in a narrow place at her left side, where a halberd's swing had struck her.

'Are you hurt at your side, there?' Baj said.

The question seemed to startle her – certainly startled her officers.

After a moment, she said, 'Not badly.'

'Your aunt…?'

'… Dead.'

Baj saw in the Wolf-General's partly-human face, in her entirely human eyes, exactly what he had seen in Cooper's as the traitor king charged down upon him – a recognition of the mingled pride and sorrow of leadership. And he knew he would have seen the same in his First-father's face – his Second-father's too, if he'd been wise enough to look for it.

Sylvia Wolf-General licked her chops. 'Where is the woman, Patience?'

'Gone to her son, ma'am.'

'An oddity, I understand.'

'As who is not?' Baj said.

Sylvia laughed, jaws wide and grinning – then shook her head. 'Sunriser arrogance,' she said. 'But Moonrisers will rule in Boston now. And more decently than was the case under you Simple-bloods.'

'To be hoped,' Baj said.

The Wolf-General stared at him a moment more, then bent to her ice table, its sheaves and stacks of southern paper. 'I have a year's orders to give,' she said, and seemed to be talking to herself, her harsh voice softer. '- Victory is more trouble than defeat.'

She said nothing more for a while, and Nancy tugged at Baj's sleeve to be going. Dolphus and his Shrikes shifted, restless.

Sylvia looked up. 'Yes. It is time and almost past time, Prince, for you to leave us.' Her breath frosted in the ice building's air. '- Leave this Township, and New England entirely.' Her curved black nails tapped a sheet of paper. 'With our thanks, of course. Our thanks, and generous payment to you and your companions for your service.'

'I would be… an awkward guest?'

'You would be a guest who might someday encourage interference from your family's old friends in the Rule, from its fine navy come up along our coast. Interference I will not have.'

'And so…'

'And so,' Sylvia Wolf-General said, 'the best of fortune attend you in your travels. In yours,' she glanced at Nancy, 'and your companions'.'

'A day?'

'Oh, Prince,' Sylvia smiled, 'take two days. Rest… enjoy a hot bath. Did you know these people have a public bath? An icehouse with many iron tubs over iron stoves – burning black-rock like their others.'

'Good news.'

'Yes. Civilization, and I intend to enjoy it. A bath-house open to the ice-cavern's air, I understand, to prevent heat and steam from melting matters, but still wonderful.'

'Then,' Baj bowed to her, 'since baths and travel preparations will take up our time, I'll say farewell, General.'

'Farewell,' Nancy said.

'You've found luck, Nancy?' the General said.

'I've found luck.'

Sylvia Wolf-General nodded. 'And to you,' she glanced at Richard, 'I return a deserter's honor, so you may style yourself 'Captain' again, and not wince for shame.'

'… Thank you, ma'am.'

'So, you – you three, I assume, with any of these tribesmen who care to join you – may have your two days' rest. But if I ever see you after, Prince, I will have your head… A matter of state.'

'Understood,' Baj said, and as he turned to leave, paused. 'Both my fathers would have enjoyed meeting you, General.'

Sylvia bent to her papers again. 'As to enjoyment, I can't say. But I believe they would have found themselves… occupied.'

CHAPTER 29

Baj knew he had the left-shoulder thing, and another, bandaged, but was surprised – as Nancy, Richard, and perhaps the Shrikes were surprised – by minor wounds they hadn't known they'd received, until weapons were racked, and bloodstained and sweat-stiffened furs peeled off and laid on wooden benches at the baths.

The porticoed row of huge iron tanks – braced over stoves holding seething trays of coals – was already filling with bellowing guardsmen given temporary passes. Scarred, their knot-knuckled hands splashing, they thrashed and rolled in steaming water, some skins sleek and shining, some matted with soaked pelt.

Baj led the others, naked – Nancy uniquely beautiful, Richard very different, the Shrikes only pale heavily- muscled human – to a far tank still empty. Roiling clouds of steam were rising even to Boston's high-hanging lamps, so they glowed misted-gold. There, the great cavern's freezing wind pulled the steam to pieces, streamed it away under vaults of blue and diamond ice.

They balanced at the walkway's edge, and plunged in. Dolphus and his Shrikes, strangers to bathing except at rare hot springs, jumped last and reluctantly – but then were most pleased, yelling loudest as they thrashed and sputtered in deep, milky, hot water, the tank's iron bottom too hot to touch toe to for more than a moment.

Smelling of the glacier's mineral skirt, the water licked gently at bruises and sprains, soaked bandages, opened clotted injuries, and brought out tiny plumes of blood as they bathed… Most of those slashes had been to wrists and forearms, though here and there a steel point had pecked through furs unnoticed, only bloody-marking instead of deep enough for death. The hot water opened all those shy places, and took strained muscles in its soft hands, gently stroked and twisted them to ease… They all, bobbing together in mineral lather and steam, moaned with pleasure as if at sex.

Just surfacing from a peaceful underwater kingdom, stretching and turning in ringing pressing heat, Baj rose to vaporous air to find Richard, a soaked and shaggy monument, floating like an island beside him. The dark, bear's eyes examined Baj through drifting steam. '… We are alive,' Richard said, took a fanged mouthful of milky water, and spit it to the side. 'We are alive, Baj, and have won. None of our dead fighters – and none of the ladies who died – would begrudge us.'

'I hope not,' Baj said, to shouts and splashes from tanks nearby.

'Hope not what?' Nancy busily swimming to him. Determined swimming in a Vulpine style, pretty head held high, red crest drenched dark, her slender hands thrashing before her.

'Hope not to be drowned by a fox-girl.'

'Liar,' she said, splashed to him, grappled, and kissed his nose.

'I have to teach you to swim Austral.'

'I know how to swim.'

'Yes, sweetheart – and you're beautiful, but Austral is faster through the water. And in Kingdom River, it was swim fast or freeze.'

'I am pretty.' She lay back, floating in his arms.

'Very pretty… Let me see where you were hurt.'