Someone pressed against him in the crowd, the person's odor faintly canine… vulpine.
That person leaned against his arm. Bajazet turned in annoyance – and turned out of his dream. A thing was under the log beside him… a hard hand or paw resting on his outstretched arm.
Bajazet sat half up, reaching to his coiled sword-belt for the dagger. He found and fumbled it – struck the side of his face against the log, and gripped fur, his left arm up to guard his throat. Teeth. Teeth shone in moonlight.
He wrestled the thing in shadow, kicked, and Writhed out from under the log. The dagger was – he didn't have it. He jammed his forearm into the thing's jaws, and felt clamping then sickening puncture as fangs went in.
Hauling himself back and up, Bajazet tore his arm free, and was on his feet when he was kicked in the groin… It was a great relief, though he bent low in agony, and staggered. A relief it wasn't a riding thing, a wolf or mountain lion who'd come for him in the dark, but only a king's forester – and certain death. But later.
Still doubled over, he heard someone say, "I had to. What a silly." A girl's voice, lisping a little at the s.
Bajazet lunged away, and struck his forehead on a tree limb very hard with a cracking impact, so light flashed behind his eyes… his knees buckled.
"Ouch." A much deeper voice, almost an echo in it.
"Here… here, you silly man." The girl again, tugging at his sleeve, turning him in darkness, leading him back. "We're not bad. Well, Errol is bad, but we're not."… "We." Two, three of them at least.
"Your fault." The deep voice. "Clumsy Nancy."
Bajazet heard scrape and striking, saw a small shower of sparks. Another. Then soft puffing breaths.
He stood, dazed, his head hurting badly, the directing grip still on his right sleeve… and took an odd comfort, a restfulness in being caught in the night – caught by someone. Perhaps savages.
A single flame… then more, blossoming to a little fire by the fallen log.
A beast was bent over it, its broad muzzle lit to soft gold, its eyes reflecting silver circles of light.
Bajazet lost his breath and stepped back, but the grip on his sleeve yanked him to a halt.
"Don't be frightened, young lord."
Bajazet saw a girl, quite small, in blurred detail beside him – large eyes set at a slant, their slit pupils black with gathering of light. A long nose and narrow jaw, her hair falling from a sharp widow's peak to glow dark red in the firelight. She was wearing a sort of South Map-Mexican poncho, a belted hatchet… and moccasin-boots. She hadn't bathed recently; there was a musky odor.
Bajazet looked to the fire again – certain he'd been mistaken – and saw not. The creature was hunkered by the flames, watching him. Hunchbacked. It was hunchbacked, and very big, bigger than any man Bajazet had seen, even Festival wrestlers. Silvery whiskers ran down the sides of its face… its muzzle. Black-and-silver fur rose in a crest at the top of its head.
"He hurt himself," it said, the deep voice only a little thickened by a wide tongue, a heavy squared lipless mouth beneath a nose too broad and black. There were fangs… And the long heavy handle of a double-bitted ax, blade-edges gleaming, leaned against its arm.
"Boston – that's a Boston-made thing!" Bajazet spoke to the girl, or the night, and felt too sick to stand. Blood was running down from his forehead. There was some, sticky, in his left eye.
"Hurt," the big Made-thing said again. It was surprising how well it spoke. Spoke, then crouched silent as the girl was silent… both apparently content observing their captive, watching him manage to stand straighter as his groin's pain faded, watching him wipe blood from his eye.
Bajazet had known, as everyone knew, of these sorts of creatures – the riding things, and others – created by Boston-talents in captive tribeswomen's wombs. Lord Peter Wilson had explained how a few New Englanders could use their thoughts, guiding the finest-drawn gossamer threads of glass, to alter the making of babies. "… They have inferred – with, I suspect, help from Warm-time copybooks – that there are so-tiny twisted ribbons-of-planning inside only-slightly-less-tiny bits in the juices when men and women come together." The old librarian had nodded to himself.
"- Those little things, much too small to see, make what changes Boston wishes, when interferred with – as for instance, by mixing men's comings with those of animals." Lord Peter had made the face of smelling something spoiled. "… Some of these changes great, others hardly to be noticed once the child has formed in its mother's belly. It does seem, however, that many of these babies die."
The two in the fire's light were certainly just such creatures. Before, and beside New England's riding-things – tame, and feral – Bajazet had seen only Ambassador MacAffee's disgraceful occa, flying his baggage into Island. And only saw that once, before the monster left to return to its home…
Suddenly feeling sick – perhaps frightened sicker – Bajazet went to one knee, retching, vomiting remains of partridge. The Made-girl knelt and held him, cooing. "Oh, poor man. Oh… poor man." There were no s's in that, no slight lisps.
Empty, taking great choking breaths, he heard the big Made-thing say, "Comes of doing good… probably killed him."
"Did not!" With a little snarl. It seemed to Bajazet the girl was quick-tempered, and while he considered that, his head aching savagely, a tide of exhaustion rose within him, and he slid from her arms and lay down in his vomit to rest, not caring whether these two, like the riding-beasts, had a meal in view.
He woke at sunrise, in a different place – a little ragged clearing of early grass and weeds, so steep on a mountainside that he lay half upright on a spread blanket, his cloak drawn over him.
He was being mopped at; that was what had wakened him. His forehead being dabbed with cold water.
Bajazet turned his head, which hurt him, and saw a woman – a girl – he didn't know… then remembered from firelight.' She was dirty, smudged with grime as he supposed he must be. Dirty, and not very pretty, with too sharp and bony a face. She was doing something with a little wet cloth… touching his forehead where it hurt.
"Stop it." He tried to sit up, and was sorry. His arm hurt as his forehead hurt. He pulled the cloak aside and saw his shirt and jerkin were off, and his left arm had been bitten. Tooth marks, and two blood-crusted punctures.
"… What the fuck?!" A classic Warm-time inquiry, found in so many copybooks.
"Here." The Made-girl was offering a dark strip of fire-dried meat. Baj took it thoughtlessly as a baby, chewed and munched it – then reached for another. When he finished, she offered a small water-skin, and he swallowed and gulped from that… Then, no longer quite such a baby, he clambered to his feet – stood swaying, dizzy – and looked for his sword-belt, his bow. At least his trousers were on, and his boots.
The girl sat cross-legged, looking up at him. Startling eyes. They were… the pupils were yellow, the irises almost slit as a cat's. Not human eyes.
Bajazet saw his sword-belt neatly coiled in the grass, the sheathed rapier and dagger. He stooped for it, buckled it on, and drew both blades.
The girl sat watching him, and seemed concerned, though not by razor-edged steel. There was a glinting small silver medal – a little three-quarter moon – on a fine silver chain around her neck.
The other thing… Bajazet spun in a half circle to guard against it, heard giggling behind him – the girl was certainly laughing, and showed a flash of sharp white canine, though she covered her mouth with a narrow hand.