She laughed out loud – a richer laugh than he expected. "Baj, if the Sparrows had wanted you dead, you'd be dead already. And there aren't enough Thrushes here to decide it one way or the other… The hill-tribes respected your Second-father, the Achieving King – and what an… engaging man he was – though they did not love him. And fortunately for you, your first-father died before he could bring his Kipchaks campaigning to the East, and raise blood debts that only you could satisfy."
"Good news."
"Yes… Though except for the great pleasure of this victory – and their killing of the River's King (an unheard of, unimagined thing; Unkind-Harry now strutting under the Helmet of Joy) – the tribesmen might have decided to cut your throat, after all, and the throats of the three Persons that full-humans call Made-things, Moonrisers… And cut my throat, as well, if they could have caught me, though Harry has had notions, as used to be said, 'above his station.' The hill-men hate all Persons, though born of their own captive daughters."
"Perhaps," Bajazet – Baj – said, "perhaps because those are born to their lost daughters."
"Ah," Patience touched his arm, "- there I heard the voice of Small-Sam Monroe… How lucky you have been in your fathers." The night wind came stirring her long coat… his cloak.
"There seem to be tribesmen enough, in these hills and the hills north, to go up to Boston Town and demand their daughters back."
''Yes," Patience said, "- and they'd be tempted, Baj, but for the Guard. Boston is guarded by two – well, almost three thousand. The same who raid south of the ice, to take certain of the tribesmen's young women."
"Three thousand is not such a number. There looked to be almost a thousand hill-men come here to fight."
"No, not such a number, but they are all Persons. Our Richard – over there by the fire? – he was a Captain of One-hundred before he deserted Matthew-Curlew's Company… Would you care to fight Richard, Baj? Would you be hopeful if he faced you with his ax?"
"I see…"
"Yes – and so the Sparrows and Thrushes and Robins have seen, and confirmed in battles Middle-Kingdom and its Rule knew nothing of, deep in the Smoking Mountains. And that is why Unkind-Harry and his people here, would – but for the great favor we've done them – cut our throats."
"You're saying I can have no revenge on Boston-town for the murder of those I loved?"
Patience Reilly smiled; her teeth – small, even as a child's – shone white in moonlight. "I say no such thing. Come with us that long way north and east, Baj-that-was-Bajazet, and what you wish may be satisfied."
"How?"
"That," still smiling, "- is for me to know, and you to find out." Which was certainly a copybook saying, and from Warm-times.
… At the fire, the Made-people – "Persons"- lay asleep, the Fox-girl curled on Baj's wool blanket, hugging her scabbarded new sword to her. Richard, a great heap, snored softly on the fire's other side, the boy lying alongside his broad back for warmth.
Patience murmured. "Companions suitable for such a way… such difficulties?"
Murmured, but not softly enough. Richard opened his eyes, and lay watching them as the night wind came stronger, seething through the valley's brush on errands of its own.
CHAPTER 6
Bajazet woke to dawn's damp cool, and distant voices down the valley. His back, beneath his cloak, was still warm from the fire's coals. His front was colder… Where had he read or heard of people sleeping between two fires? Had he read that, or been told of the old Trappers? Winter hunters…
He turned, stretched yawning – and saw the Made-boy, Errol, sitting close beside, legs crossed. The boy was staring at him.
"He's only looking." Richard's rich voice. "He's never seen a princely deep-sleeper before – a snorer used to safety, stoves, goose-feather beds, and guarded chambers."
The boy seemed too close. Bajazet – ah, "Baj," now – sat up… then stood up. Two days' rest (and horse meat) had left his ribs still sore, but the other bruises and scrapes much better… The bitten arm hardly hurt at all – itched, more than hurt. And his legs felt ready again for traveling; he stamped the sleep out of them. The boy, Errol, watched as Baj belted on his sword and dagger.
"He's interested in new things." Big Richard was hunched, shaggy, by the fire's last coals, holding chunks of horse meat over them, speared on a stick. "Breakfast," he said, his fang-toothed smile disturbing as a frown… Once a Captain of One-hundred, the Boston woman had said.
Baj stepped past the boy, and walked well out into the scrub to piss.
Paging brush aside, he found a place, unlaced his buckskins – very worn and grimy buckskins, now – and began to pee a pleasant stream… playing it this way and that, like a child.
"Lucky."
Baj jumped a little – and peed on his left boot, tucking himself away. "For Christ's sake." A phrase that would have gotten him burned, decades before.
The girl, Nancy, stood just behind him. "You men, Persons or human, are so lucky." The slight lisp there with Persons and so.
"Yes," Baj did up his buckskins' laces, "- very lucky."
"Well, you are," the Made-girl said, walking beside him back to camp. "Do you know what a task, a chore it is to always pull up our clothes, or take off our clothes, to do what men do simply as pouring from a cup?" She kicked some bramble aside."… Not fair."
Nancy was wearing her new scimitar – wearing it on the left side and a little too low, so it might catch her leg and trip her.
"Yes," Baj said. "I can see it would be a nuisance."
"Only one of many we suffer," Nancy said, reached out and struck Baj lightly on the shoulder, as if they were friends, and complaints not serious.
"Your sword should wear higher, Nancy." First time he'd used her name. "Hilt at your waist, not your hip – so the blade doesn't trip you."
The Made-girl – Person – stepped into their clearing, and began a little dance, apparently to see if that was so. The scimitar's curve did catch her leg, if only for a moment.
"Very well, I'll do as you say," she said, and took her belt up a notch with narrow hands, narrow fingers tipped with nails pointed and black.
"Breakfast." Big Richard stood from beside the fire, and held out a long scorched stick, with chunks of smoking horse meat stuck along it. The boy, Errol, came suddenly scurrying, reached up, snatched the first steak off, then went away hunched to protect his meal.
Baj took the second – burned his fingers on it so he waved it a little cooler – and handed it to Nancy, who seemed uncertain at the courtesy.
"Court manners." Richard held the stick out to Baj again… then took his own steak from it. "We will be civilized as Selectmen." The big Person sat again in his odd way, took a slow savage bite of meat. "If, that is, you accompany us, Prince."
"Baj, not 'Prince.' And since I have nowhere else to go to harm Boston – and no one else to go with – I'll travel with you."
"Good." Richard finished his breakfast in two bites. The horse meat hadn't improved overnight; it took Baj considerable chewing to get it down. He noticed Nancy, sitting cross-legged, gnawing away as a puppy might at a piece of gristle, her lip lifted, using her side teeth… Still, coarse feeding or not, he felt the surge of strength from it. When he finished, he went to rummage in his back-pack for his canteen – found it empty – circled the fire's ashes to pick up their three sewn water-skins, and started down to the stream.
Nancy swallowed a bite, and said, "Not alone."
"No." Richard shook his heavy head. "Not alone."
"Errol…!" Nancy looked around for him. "Errol!" The boy peered out of brush across the clearing, a small piece of meat gripped in his hand.