Mitchell Smith - Moonrise

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MOONRISE
Book Three of the Snowfall Trilogy
BY
MITCHELL SMITH
Copyright © 2004 by Mitchell Smith
ISBN 0-765-34059-3
Version 1.0
My Lord lives still, in his son — the child with strangers, but alive.
Last words of Michael Razumov, Khanate Chancellor, at his execution
Do the seasons warm? Perhaps a very little, though the wall of ice still stands across the continent, the seas
lie shrunken, and Lord Winter rules more than eight Warm-time months each year.
If Warm-times do come again, I will not see them, since I am dying, and so leaving the service of the
Achieving King. And, after all, I have seen enough. I cannot believe in the Shadow World, though I wish to,
for there my friends would be waiting for me. My dear Catania, and Newton — sad, reluctant ruler.
Dangerous Jack Monroe... my Gardens Lady Bongiorno, and the late great Queen of Kingdom River. They
have seemed too grand, too vivid for death's idiot emptiness.
I have not been so grand, so vivid. Still, I will miss my breakfasts.
NOTE FOUND IN THE DESK OF NECKLESS PETER WILSON, LORD LIBRARIAN AT ISLAND. FILED IN THE DAILY
BOOK BY HER HONOR, THE LADY PORTIA-DOCTOR.
Introduction
Knowledge of one's self — a study often unrewarding as a southern songbird's battering at its own
reflection. Futile as complaining of cold in a world gone to cold for six hundred years, thanks to treacherous
Jupiter's altered orbit.
I have seen persons cry, of course, and found it odd.... No longer. Imagine my startlement, imagine
the sudden pain in my eyes as tears, hot tears in my rooms carved from ice, came welling at the news that
Small-Sam Monroe, an old — May I call him friend? I believe I may. — When news came to me that he
and his queen had perished in a storm on the Gulf Entire. Their ship, aptly named Unfortunate, had
foundered.
I had seen him last — he was not yet called the Achieving King — almost twenty years before. Only
his first great victories were behind him. Still to come were the campaigns against Manu Ek-Tam in
Map-California, and the organizing of the Great Rule of North Map-Mexico, Middle Kingdom, and the
West.... Young, stocky, and strong, with beautiful eyes in a fighting man's grim face, he'd kissed me
good-bye (our only kiss), and helped me up onto the occa's back — a stupid and inferior occa, sent up by
my Second-cousin Louis from Map-McAllen.
The Made-beast had been sent to save me weeks of Walking-in-air back to New England — to
which, I'd thought then, I'd been so foolishly recalled. Thought that, and wrongly, since my order home was
to an appointment of infinitely greater honor than even that of Ambassadress to a Kingdom certain to grow
greater.
The occa had grunted, groaned, flapped up from Island's East battlement into the freezing river
wind... then sailed its first wide ascending spiral. It was the last I saw of Sam Monroe, looking up in the
company of his officers, all still dressed in their wedding finery, leathers, jewels, and velvets, their veteran
sword-scored armor polished to shining.
I have been to weddings, since — Boston taking contractual matters very seriously and in
celebration, so we march through frozen Cambridge singing — but have been to no such wedding as Sam
Monroe's and his Princess Rachel, where sadness and joy were so mingled that the ceremony seemed the
very mirror of our lives.
From Early Years, the Memoirs of Patience (Nearly-Lodge) Riley
Property of Boston Township Public Library.
Removal or disfigurement is a CAPITAL OFFENSE.
CHAPTER 1
Someone chased with a sense of humor.
A hunting horn winded along the river's bank. The hoofbeats following those notes came cracking
through the last of Lord Winter's fading snow and puddle ice, fell softer over mud. Someone called —
perhaps a name, perhaps an order.
These were Heavy Cavalry reservists, unsuited to rough-country chasing, which was certainly why
Bajazet was still alive, light Cavalry, light Infantry, would have filtered here and there until they had him.
It was a blessing of both Blue Sky and Lady Weather to have gifted him with terror enough to
smother sorrow, so he could lie trembling beneath a frozen log, fallen to rot years before, thinking more of
staying alive than remembering the king, his Second-father, and his Second-mother, Queen Rachel.
Remembering Newton — named for a royal grandfather — and his brother in all but blood.
It seemed to Bajazet, lying hunched in puddled ice under frozen wood, that the true world had been
taken from him, with only this desperate dreamed one left. And the taking accomplished in only a day. He
heard the hunting horn again... but distant.
Newton, a year younger, but bigger, stronger, kinder — older in every important way — had seemed
indestructible as the king had seemed indestructible. Prince Newton, only nineteen years old, but already
with endless hours spent in tedious councils, and study with ancient Wilson, while Bajazet, even quite young,
was amusing himself in Natchez brothels... also amusing himself puncturing, though not murdering, less
accomplished swordsmen — husbands, for the most part. This, until the king, one day, came into the salle,
gestured the bowing Master aside, chose two fighting rapiers from the rack... tossed one to Bajazet — and
attacked to wound or kill him.
They'd fought across the slippery oil-puddled floor, until the king parried a desperate thrust in quarte,
reposted... and, during what had seemed recovery, reversed and ran Bajazet through the left shoulder.
Then, the king had stepped in to disarm — breaking Bajazet's right wrist — and while stepping out, had
kicked him in the groin so he fell, curled in three agonies.
Portia-doctor had done wonders with a short slender iron rod, heated to only dull red. Then done
more wonders with a wrist-splint, and very gradual exercise — Queen Rachel coming, anxious, to stroke
Bajazet's forehead, leave imperial chocolate candies, and a kitten for company. Newton coming to make
jokes . .. play checkers and chess. So that after the so-short summer, Bajazet — then barely eighteen, after
all — had been left with only rapier memories, and an occasional ache in his left shoulder. The wrist was
good as ever.
Healed, he'd encountered the king in the West Glass Garden. Sam Monroe had smiled. "Lessons
learned, Baj ?"
"Yes, sir."
"And what lessons were they?"
"... That there is always someone better. And only luck prevents the meeting."
"And?"
"Dueling is one thing. Fighting is another."
"... And?"
"A decisive blow may be struck in retreat."
"And...?"
"Pain is too important to be suffered or inflicted without good cause."
Then, the king had gathered Bajazet into his arms as if he were still a child, and hugged him hard
before letting him go. Strong arms, and the scent of leather and chewing tobacco. "Your First-father," the
king had said, "— the Lord Toghrul, would have been proud of you."
And on the first day of Lord Winter's festival, the king had given Bajazet a sword — a rapier made
by Guild-master Rollins himself, its blade (of imperial wootz steel) folded and hammered again until even
Rollins had lost count of the doing, so the slender double-edge, slightly sharper than a barber's best razor,
and needle pointed, could with great effort be bent into a curve — to then spring humming, perfectly
straight. The sword's grip was wound with twisted silver wire, its coiled guard forged of simple steel. A
fighting instrument, its only decoration a cursive along the base of the blade — with good cause.
This weapon, its belted black-leather scabbard matched with that for a long left-hand dagger as finely
made, was the only thing of value Bajazet had with him under the frozen log. — And if he hadn't already
been up and dressed for before-dawn's hunt breakfast when men in Cooper livery came kicking through the
lodge doors, he would have had to flee naked out the upstairs window and down the wooden fire-ladder —
Old Noel Purse shouting, Run... RUN! amid the noise of steel on steel, breakfast tables toppling, the
screams of dying men.
Naked, Bajazet would himself have died in the icy day he'd been hunted through East-bank woods.
But, up early for pig sausage and fried chicken-eggs when treachery came calling, he'd snatched up his
sword-belt, then run in imperial cotton under-things, buckskin jerkin and trousers, wool stockings, fine
half-boots, and a pocket knife with a folding blade. A long wool cloak as well — plucking that from a wall
peg the only thoughtful act of a frantic scurry down the corridor from his chamber to the window and its
fire-ladder, while a few brave men bled for him below. His only thoughtful act...
If he'd always been alone in the world — unknown, unknowing First-father or Second-father — he
would not be weeping now, for shame. Shame at imagining what Toghrul Khan, what Sam Monroe would
have thought of him scrambling along the hall, breathless as a girl, then half-falling down the ladder to run
into the woods — the formidable duelist, the dangerous boy, proved only a Lord of Cowards, and a fool.
Old Noel Purse had said, "Better not," at the notion of going to the hunting camp. Had said, "Better
not," but hadn't explained. Bajazet had assumed it was thought unseemly, with the king and
Queen Rachel lost for only months.... But his brother — crowned
Newton-the-Second only weeks before — had said, "Nonsense; I know you loved them," and turned
back to a desk half-buried in paper-work.
"Can't I be of some help...?" had been Bajazet's only and casual offer.
Newton had turned again to smile at him. "And I'll need your help, Baj. I'd be a fool to waste the son
of Toghrul Khan.... But for now, one of us at least should be without care. So go hunting, for the both of
us." It was... unbearable to remember. As the royal family's affectionate adoption of a baby boy — sent
by the Kipchak chancellor to save him from Manu Ek-Tam, the would-be khan — as that was unbearable
to remember. All memories that could be ended by simply standing up out of mud and ice from under a
rotting log, and shouting until green-armored cavalrymen heard him and came riding. Then, out sword, and
an end to it.
Only anger prevented him. Anger at himself — even more than at Gareth Cooper — for
carelessness in not considering what opportunity must have been seen after the king's death, with Newton
only nineteen, and kinder than most at Island. A kind and thoughtful prince. Too kind... too thoughtful. The
king had held the river lords down, the Sayres, DeVanes... and Coopers. Had held New England to caution
as well. Boston and its Made-creatures stepping lightly in country of the King's Rule.
Newton should have caught up those reins at his crowning, set the bit hard at once — with his
adopted brother to help him. But Newton had been young, thoughtful, and kind. And his brother had gone
hunting.
And now, was hunted... and deserved to be. It didn't occur to Bajazet to even wonder if Newton
were still alive. Cooper and his friends — known also as friends of Boston — would have made no such
blunder. As they must also have considered Newton's brother, and found him worthy of at least casual
killing.... He lay beneath his icy log into the evening, and made no noise, though his nose ran from weeping,
his empty stomach muttered as glass-hours went by. Lying huddled there, Bajazet found that the rapier
thrust, broken wrist, and bruised balls of almost two years before, had been no pain at all compared to the
loss of loved ones.
Daylight faded slowly to nearly dark, so he lay safer though aching with cold, heard no hunting horns,
and dreamed an uneasy dream of being warm and fed. A celebration, a shifting remembrance of Tom
MacAffee's welcome dinner, Boston's Ambassador sent to Island after years of none, and bad feelings....
The food at Bajazet's place, set on hammered silver, was lamb-chops, roasted carrots, and potatoes. He
saw this clearly, and seemed to eat, but — distracted by MacAffee's laughter — somehow never quite
chewed and swallowed, though he tried to keep his mind to it. In his dream, he did consider how clever
Boston had been to send a fat and cheery man to represent so frozen and grim a state, its nastiness born in
palaces of ice.
Bajazet dreamed, but was filled by no dream food, warmed not at all by the six great iron Franklins
rumbling down the dining hall. He did watch the king and Queen Rachel, and stole glances at Newton,
sitting beside him, with great attention, as if to be certain of remembering them, though his dream offered no
reason for it.
... From the colors and confusion of that lamp-lit banquet, Bajazet woke — trembling with cold, sick
with hunger — to the odor of leaf-mold, wet wood, and soaked snow. The evening wind, come with fading
light, hissed in the trees. That wind mentioned death as it passed over, so — with lying still and dying the
alternative — he rolled stiffly out onto frozen mud, sheathed rapier tangling his legs, and tugged folds of his
cloak free of skim-ice. He managed up onto all fours, crawled a little way cramped and sore as if badly
beaten... then, grunting like an old man with the effort, staggered to his feet to stand hunched, shivering in
darkness.
"What...?" Bajazet asked aloud, as if his First and Second fathers both lived, and stood under the
trees, listening. They listened, perhaps, but didn't answer him.
What should be done? What could be done, but run or die — and more likely run then die?
His First-father would likely have said, "Surprise is the mother of victories." But what surprise was
possible, now? The hunters would hunt again in morning light — and be surprised only by how long it had
taken to catch and kill him.
"Lessons learned?" His Second-father had asked in the Glass Garden.
Among the answers: a decisive blow may be struck in retreat.
Feeling faint, Bajazet leaned against a birch for strength, and felt that unless he attempted
something, sorrow and shame would kill him, sure as the cavalrymen. He would fail, and wish to fail, and
the horsemen or the cold would catch him. — Why not, instead of certain losing, at least attend his fathers'
lessons?
"Something," he said to the tree. "Something surprising... and attempted by a man in retreat." He'd
called himself a man, to the birch, and supposed now he would have to be one while he lasted, and no
longer only a young prince, the king's ward, and in so many ways still a boy.
He stroked the tree's sheeted bark as if the birch were a friend, and cared for him. "Good-bye," he
said to it, imagined a poem about the dignity of its stillness, so superior to mens' foolish motions... then found
the dog star through the birch's branches, and began to walk west, back toward the river, the way he'd
come. It seemed a strange and foolish thing to do, to pay a debt of honor owed only to the dead, and
himself.
* * *
He was walking, hurrying, hooded cloak wrapped tight against the wind, before he was clear in his
purpose. Still, it seemed certain the way he'd come was the way to go... go quickly as he could, back
through frozen tangle as darkness began to grow deeper.
Gareth Cooper — no doubt swiftly crowned King Gareth now — was a tall, slender man, as his
father had been, stooped, prone to illness and not strong, though Coopers had always been strong enough in
purpose. A reedy man, whose wife had died of crab-cancer years before.... Now, a new king — by
treachery — and with only one child. One son and heir to prove a dynasty to the river lords and other
magnates of the Great Rule along the Mississippi, south into North Map-Mexico, and west to the Ocean
Pacific.
Bajazet, barely twenty years old and an improbable successor, would not have been important
enough for the king to come kill him... but perhaps slightly too important for some liveried captain's
responsibility. Who better, then, to deal with the last of family business, than the king's only son?
It certainly seemed possible, even likely. Bajazet, trusting in the first hints of cloudy moonlight for his
footing, trotted back through the woods as if cold and hunger were sufficient sustenence. He traveled as
certain of direction as if back-tracking the lingering scent of his own terror the day before. Moving fast,
ducking through tangles, then running full out where occasional clearings widened to shallow snow and
wind-burned grasses, he traveled due west through evening into deeper night, short-cutting all the
meandering ways he'd fled — and cowered here and there to hide.
In this forest, standing back from the river's east bank, there was only one place — the Lodge —
suited to house a new Prince of the Rule as he directed a hunt.... No doubt young Mark Cooper's people
had scrubbed the blood from the dining-room flooring, washed it off white plaster walls, mopped it from the
stair risers where Purse's men had stood and died to give Bajazet his moments running.
Mark Cooper — a playmate since childhood, plumper than most of his family, lazy, and amiable even
as a little boy. Seeming lazy and amiable, cautious of a fierce father... an even fiercer grandfather while
that unpleasant old man had lived.
Could Mark have always been called a friend? Yes.
* * *
After what must have been at least six glass-hours of woods-running, of dodging sudden trees,
scrambling over fallen logs... of exhausted stumbles, scrapes and scratches from frozen branches as he'd
shoved and wrestled through to the next clearing, Bajazet smelled at last the smoke of camp.
And as he came nearer, heard horses whinny... heard the quieting noise and banter of troopers —
the last of their patrols long since ridden in, their mounts grained and tended. The men, now also fed, would
be settling into sleep at the fires, weary after riding the long day, and into night.
Bajazet paused at the edge of the lodge clearing, stood shadowed under the branch-broken crescent
moon, and took deep recovering breaths. He was shivering with weariness and cold.... There seemed to be
no sentries posted, except for two men standing a distance to the left, talking, by the lodge front's wide
half-log steps. No reason for many guards to be posted, after all…. A hound was yodeling in the kennels,
interested in these stranger cavalrymen come to camp.
The hounds hadn't been set after him, the whole chase. It must have been thought they weren't to be
trusted to track and pull down one of their accustomed masters. And true, there wasn't a soft-eyed
scent-hound or brute mastiff there that Bajazet hadn't played with as a puppy. Even more than Newton,
he'd had a way with them.
"You don't respect him," he'd said once to his brother, concerning a hound's stubborn disobedience.
Newton had smiled. "I find men difficult enough to respect, Baj. I don't have enough left for even an
amiable dog." Though, as was Newton's way, he was more patient thereafter.
... The kennel quieted after a time. The lodge camp quieted. Only a fire's hiss and crackle, only an
owl far away, only the night wind sounded through the trees as Bajazet walked cloaked into camp as if he
were a forester with ordinary business there — had perhaps been out to john trench, and was coming back
to coarse blanket and pack pillow. Though the two men at the lodge's steps, if they'd noticed, might have
wondered why he strolled around to the back of the building, where no fires burned.
Bajazet threw back the cloak's hood, managed his scabbarded rapier clear, and climbed the
fire-ladder back up the way he'd come, a coward fleeing, the morning before. The climb — a dozen rungs
up a simple ladder — was surprisingly difficult; he had to stop once to rest, and hung there, very tired.
The window was swung closed, its leaded squares of glass giving blurred vision down an empty
corridor lit by two whale-oil lamps hung to ceiling hooks by fine brass chains.
Odd, that he'd never noticed such detail. It all seemed new, not quite the lamp-lit hallway it had been.
He'd left the memory of it behind, as he fled.
Bajazet drew his dagger, slid the long, slender blade between window frame and jamb... and forced
it, levering just beneath the simple catch. It was wonderful how the knife spoke to him through its grip, the
steel reporting angle and effort... mentioning its limits, but not seriously.
Bajazet felt the latch at the blade's top edge, and lifted it.
The window squeaked and swung wide. He threw a leg over and was in, stood in indoor warmth for
a moment, smelled roasted meat, and suddenly felt sick. The heat seemed furnace heat, so he swayed,
wanting to lie down. He closed his eyes, breathed deep... and felt a little better. Then, his eyes open, he
walked as through a dream down the long corridor to his chamber. And, as he lifted the door latch, felt
certain as Floating-Jesus who he would find. He stepped in, and closed the door behind him.
Mark Cooper, awake in this small hour as if by appointment, stood startled before the sideboard and
a tray of food, barefoot in a bed-robe of velveted maroon.
"... Baj!... Thank Lady Weather! I thought these idiots might have killed you." Great relief on young
Mark's face. Great relief. "I just got out here, late, and put a stop to it. No reason for you to be involved in
this at all." Mark took a step forward, then a step back as Bajazet came to him."... My father. My father
has ordered things —"
"Newton?"
A nod from sad Mark Cooper. "I'm just so sorry, Baj. Dad... I never thought he'd do something like
this!"
"Pedro, and the others?"
"Well... I don't know about all of them. But Darry killed three of our people — my father's men. It
was all just a real tragedy." He shook his head. "Terrible..."
Perhaps it was hunger that so sharpened a person's eyes. Sharpened his ears as well. Bajazet heard
Mark's voice subtly uncertain as a banjar's slightly warped by having been brought indoors directly on a
winter evening. The voice, like that instrument's, was almost true, but not quite. Cooper's eyes, still the mild
blue of his childhood, had shifted, just slightly, toward the door — for escape, for what help might come to
him if he had time to shout, if a slant-eyed, dark-eyed fugitive, grimed with mud and smelling like a forest
creature gone to earth, weren't standing so close, his hand on the hilt of his long left-hand dagger.
Bajazet saw the food on the sideboard was still steaming, brought up not long ago. A hot meal now
seemed as good a reason as revenge. As good a reason as leaving Gareth Cooper with no heir to his stolen
throne."You'll be safe, Baj." The heir, frightened, and barefoot in his bed-robe. "Really. I promise,
absolutely."
"And will also bring Newton back to life?" Bajazet drew the left-hand dagger as he reached to cover
Mark's mouth with his right hand, stepped in, and thrust him deep, three swift times with rapid soft punching
sounds — into the gut, the liver, and through the heart's gristle.
Mark stood on his toes with the long blade still in him, arching away, squealing into the muffling hand
like a girl in her pleasure. Then fell forward, staring, slumped into Bajazet... clutched his cloak, and seemed
to slip down forever as the steel slid out of him.... He settled onto the floor, grunting, turned on his side with
urine staining his robe, and took slow steps there as if walking through a tilted world. Then liquid caught and
rattled in his throat.
Bajazet, staggering as if his dagger had turned to strike at him, as if the whole of the last day and
night had turned to strike at him, stumbled to the sideboard, and wiped his blade carefully on a fine linen
napkin. He sheathed it, then took up slices of venison from a serving platter, folded them together dripping
gravy and red juices, and crammed them into his mouth.... Chewing seemed to take too long; he bolted the
meat like a hunting dog, drank barley beer from a small silver pitcher only to aid in swallowing... then
gathered and swallowed more venison, gravy running down his fingers, spattering on fine figured wood and
linen. Tears also; he cried as he ate, and supposed it was because he was still young, and though he'd
injured men in foolish duels, had never killed a man before.
As Mark Cooper was certainly killed, since now he was still and silent, and smelled of shit.
Bajazet crammed and ate until he ached, drank more beer to ease it down... remembering Mark as a
small boy, a playmate always amiable, biddable, so often looking surprised at what the great world offered
childhood.... Bajazet chewed rye-bread rolls and little roasted potatoes, though they seemed to have no
taste at all.
So much gobbling finally made him feel faint, and he had to go sit on the room's cot, bow his head...
take deep breaths to keep from vomiting. He sat sick, as Mark lay at ease in a rich sticky pond, keeping him
company.
"I hope you lied to me, about being sorry," Bajazet said, though now that seemed to make no sense.
Perhaps Mark would have understood it.... There was the strongest urge to lie down on the cot, the room
so warm with its little stove in the corner. The strongest urge to do that, and sleep, so that waking later
might prove all a dream, and Noel Purse come in and say, "Are we hunting, Baj ? Or sleeping the fucking
day away?"
It seemed stupid to stand, but he did. Stupid to search his own locker for his small leather pack, with
its flint-and-steel, spare southern-cotton shirt, ball of useful rawhide cord... also a red-checked bandanna,
and yesterday-morning's hunter's ration of pemmican, river-biscuit, and little round of hard cheese. A
canteen — why in the world did Warm-time copybooks call water flasks canteens?... Strap pack and so
forth on over his cloak. And take what else? What else, and why anything, only to run again?
After thinking for what seemed a long time — Mark lying patient on the floor — Bajazet also chose
his recurved bow and a quiver of fine broadhead shafts, shouldered them, then cautiously opened the door
to no voices from below... and only soft snoring from another chamber. He stepped into the corridor, closed
the door behind him, and walked what seemed a long way down to the familiar window… clambered out to
the familiar fire-ladder — the bow's curved upper arm knocking on the window's frame — then climbed
carefully down. More burdened now... and less.
The camp's ground, when he reached it, seemed the first thing in a while solid and real. Real as the
chase to come, that would make a poor joke of the hunt before. Now it would be the new king who pursued
— a king bereft of his son and that son's future. A king with now no dynasty possible, no continuance.
Gareth Cooper would chase, if necessary, to the Smoking Mountains... would have to, or be seen weak as
well as lacking any heir.
Bajazet, belly overfull to aching, strolled through firelit darkness — waved once to the two men still
talking a long bowshot away, standing casual guard by the lodge's entrance.
Two dead men, soon enough, when the king — pigeoned the news — came to the lodge and asked
who had stood watch while his son was murdered.... Some huntsmen, of course, some militia would
continue to cast, seeking his trace. But the full hunt would now await the king's coming — a two-days' sail
up from Island. Bajazet would have at least that advantage.
He walked on... walked out of camp, ducked into forest and was gone. Gone running into the last of
night, fleeing east and alone through dark, still, and frozen woods.
CHAPTER 2
He'd slept till near midday, when the hounds woke him, casting uncertain and far away.
Uncertain, since they must be following the scent of clothes taken from his chamber's press, then
echoed on boot-prints into the woods. Their master's scent, and never before that of prey. So, fragile and
reluctant trailing — and thank Lady Weather, or they would have him in a day's running. The foresters,
those fine trackers, were more dangerous.
Bajazet had slept on his belly like an exhausted child — the stems of winter-killed grass were printed
across his right cheek. He sat up, then stood, and shook frost-beads and dead leaves from his cloak.... He'd
certainly heard the hounds, but then had lost their yodels. They'd be Warm-time miles behind him, west,
down a small stream's valley. He'd slept the last of night and half the day beneath a budding alder — and
had had to, or stagger in circles and drop to be found as they came on behind him.
"I killed him," he said aloud, and saw Mark's eyes again, astonished as he sank down. There was
satisfaction to waking to that memory, though he supposed it would be better not to dwell on it, draw
pleasure from the killing to chew on as spotted cattle chewed to swallow their mouthfuls twice. Better not
to dwell on that with pleasure... and also not to talk aloud too often, since he had no good advice to give
himself — nor encouragement, either.
So the hounds, poor followers — but the chase was not yet in full cry. When King Gareth came, it
would be with fresh hounds, foresters, and at least a troop of the Army-United's regular Light Cavalry.
Those hunters would be difficult to lose.
Likely impossible to lose, though the chase took them days, weeks. A new king — a traitor king —
his only son murdered, could not afford to return to the river, the river lords, and other greats of the Great
Rule, without the killer's fire-dried heart dangling from the Helmet of Joy.
A long, long chase then, and an almost certain end to it. — And if not that end, then what? An
escape into deep and deeper wilderness, peopled with savages — and worse than savages, Boston's
made-creatures gone feral? And so to an even meaner death?
Bajazet kicked a shit-hole with his boot heel, swung his cloak off, unlaced his buckskins, lowered
them and under-drawers, and squatted for necessity... then used damp leaves to clean himself, and kicked
the place covered. He laced his trousers, then reached up to lift his sword-belt, pack, bow and quiver from
the low alder branches he'd hung them from the night before. He buckled the sword-belt, then drew on his
cloak, strapped his leather pack to his back, and shouldered the quiver and unstrung bow.
The hounds again. Still distant, several Warm-time miles to the west.
Bajazet walked... then jog-trotted east along the narrow stream. He didn't know its name, so as he
traveled, named it Confusion — and after a while, his night stiffness easing with the exercise, used it as
such. He sat, and took his boots and thick stockings off. Then, holding them high, ran to splash down into
the icy water... and out and up the opposite bank. Ran a little way angling north — then back the way he'd
come and into the stream again... jumping, slipping, stepping from sand to rock to shingle, forging upstream
until his legs, in soaked buckskins, ached with effort and freezing water, and his toes were bruised and
bleeding from stubbing on stones.
He climbed out the opposite bank again, trembling with cold, cloak-hem dripping, sat to dry his feet in
the cloak's hood... then put on stockings and boots to run again, angling north until the sounds of the stream
were lost behind him, and only his footfalls broke the woods' silence.
He ran while he could — when the close trees and tangled brush allowed it — then, very tired,
breathing like a Festival runner, he stopped and bent by a berry bush, hands propped on his knees, to catch
his breath.
"I should have taken a horse," he said aloud — then remembered not to do that, and was silent. He
saw himself — Mark Cooper dead — walking to the horse-lines past snoring troopers, choosing some
shifting charger (a tall hot-hided roan) amid the warmth and odor of other horses. Unclipping its halter
tether, and leading it away, stamping, snorting, to jump swinging up onto its bare back... knee it to a trot,
then kick it galloping out of camp, leaving shouts and flaring torches behind.
Bajazet imagined that so well, he looked behind him as if the horse were there, tethered to a tree
while he rested from hard riding.
Of course, hoof-marks would have been easier for pursuers to track... and stealing one would have
required passing many snoring troopers to get to the horses. Careless guard of the new king's son, perhaps,
with no danger expected. Careless guard of a regiment's mounts — never.
Bajazet thought of a bite or two of his pack's pemmican, then decided not. It was startling how empty
of game — of any food — these wild woods were. He'd seen nothing, not even a rabbit or squirrel for
reason to string his bow. And no time to set and wait out snares.... Unless many tribal hunters had come
through, the distant sounds of the hunt had been enough to frighten the game away before them. In that
way, by hunger, the chase might kill him without ever catching.
... On the royal hunts, of course, the foresters had already found game, or driven it, for the family's
pleasure. But he was no longer a person privileged. Now, he was only a person, and could even be alone
and by himself — though he'd many times been almost alone with only a whore for company... and with
other men's wives. Alone in his chambers at Island, of course, though with Terry Fitz, or Noel, or sad old
Ralph-sergeant on duty outside his door. The steward, and the maids. It was Terry he missed most, and
was surprised to be missing him. A valet... clothes-press, hot irons, and fussing over colors.
Bajazet raised his arms, stretched as well as bow, quiver, and pack allowed, and took a deep breath
of cold woods air. There was a pleasure to being only a person, and alone — though a pleasure that would
likely be short-lived.
* * *
Time to angle back to the stream. East.., east would have to be the way, at least for a while. East,
and thank Floating-Jesus — or the Forest's Jesus, now — for rising hills and deeper woods, where a troop
of Light Cavalry (certain soon to arrive and chase) would find difficult going.
Bajazet settled his gear, canted the scabbarded rapier back out of his way, and trotted — allowing
for frequent interfering trees — a long southeastern way, taking direction from a watery sun
through graying cloud. His toes hurt.... He felt he must someday
set bitter loss aside, set the last of cushioned boyhood aside as well, to become a slightly different
person, one to whom the panoply, music, and colors of the court would seem odd to remember.
Alone. The king gone, the queen gone — and Colonel Mosten drowned with them.... Newton gone.
Pedro Darry killed — and certainly others.
And who left alive, who had loved King Sam Monroe? Possibly Master Lauder, who'd seemed so
sly. Possibly he and Lord Voss — both in their fifties, now — had survived in North Map-Mexico; the
Coopers' arm might not have reached so far.... Come to a wall of ice-sheathed bramble, Bajazet had to
backtrack, go around to avoid it. — And if Howell Voss still lived, then his wife, Charmian, would be alive
as well, and she a fair and dangerous match for her husband. Lauder and the Vosses, formidable people
who'd been King Sam's officers and friends.
Bajazet had met the three of them once, come up from the Gulf for Lord Winter's festival. The
Vosses, particularly, an impressive pair, both tall and battle-scarred. They'd brought twins with them, of all
things — a little boy and girl clumsy and curious as puppies.... Lord Howell, one-eyed and seeming to
Bajazet old to have fathered young children, had been humorous, and played the banjar once in his
Second-mother's solar. His wife, not quite as old — her long black hair, streaked iron-gray worn loose
down her back as if she were a girl — had come up to the salle once, and stood watching a lesson, a
battle-melee where fifteen of the older boys (and a river lord's odd daughter) half-armored, fought with
blunted blades in confused turmoil, divided one group against the other. Lady Voss had watched for a
while... then, smiling, had left.
After the lesson, the others dismissed, the Master — a grizzled West-bank Major, still quick as a cat
— had said to Bajazet, "Be careful around the Lady Charmian Voss, Prince, now and in the future. Careful
courtesy, do you understand?"
Bajazet had understood, understood even that year before the king's painful lesson. The lady's smile,
though pleasantly amused, had seemed to conceal something grimmer. He'd heard the king, later, discussing
those two with Queen Rachel as they went hand-in-hand to dinner. "— Howell and dangerous Charmian,
together for loss and lack of other loves," he'd said. "But it seems they suit, after all."
"Suit very well," the queen had said.
... Slowed to a walk by thickets, Bajazet paged dripping foliage aside. He could hear the stream again
— to the right — returned to after his detour. Odd word; he'd read detour in some old copybook, a seventh
copy concerning people using Warm-times' bang-powder guns for robbery.
"Stranger than we can know," Ancient Peter Wilson had said of Warm-times, "— even with a
number of their books copied and in our hands. Even using those books' language as our own."
Bajazet came to Confusion's bank, and as he stood resting, heard no hounds calling over the soft
sounds of running water. He noticed his hands as if they were a stranger's. Dirty — filthy, really — and a
fingernail broken like some sweat-slave's on the Natchez docks.... Natchez — not Warm-times' town, of
course; that long drowned as the river rose in even the short summers' melt-water off the Wall. Not the
same town, though named the same, and likely more than twenty miles east of the old one. But what times
he'd had there.... Gwendolyn.
"You have slant eyes," speaking while astride him, bending down to observe. "Yes," Bajazet had said.
"All Kipchak — except Ancient Wilson says my grandmother was a capture from Bakersfield in
Map-California."
"Funny eyes," Gwendolyn had said, and leaned lower to kiss them.
Love, of course. He'd loved her, and loved no other, though fucking where he could. Some whores,
of course — and court ladies too — had smiled and passed him by. "You're a pretty boy," Lady Bennet had
said to him, "but grown men have a sadness to them that I care for. And besides, my Walter might have
you killed — adopted prince, or not."
"What am I to do?" He'd asked Newton — a seventeen-year-old's question to a wiser
sixteen-year-old. "I love her."
Newton had thought for an afternoon, then found Bajazet on the foot-ball field. "Talk to our mother."
So grotesque a suggestion, that Bajazet had gone to Ancient Lord Peter Wilson immediately for a
better notion. The old man had been napping in a library niche — woke, listened to the inquiry, and said,
"Speak to the queen about it."
So, in an agony of embarrassment, Bajazet had gone to Queen Rachel's study the next morning —
lingering outside her door while a guardsman watched, amused — then, invited in, had "spilled" as
Warm-times had had it. Had "spilled his guts."
"Ah..." Queen Rachel had held a little gray dog on her lap, stroking it. "The Up-river girl — Gwen?"
"Gwendolyn," Bajazet had said, deeply mortified. Apparently a person's life was not his own.
"I understand she's very pretty, Baj."
"...Yes."
"But isn't she... professional?"
"That makes —" Bajazet had intended to say, "makes no difference," but couldn't bring himself to do
it. He didn't care to see pity in the queen's eyes. See Poor boy there.
"Though, of course," the queen said, "— regarding love, that makes no difference."
"No."
"It's so sad, Baj, that while it makes no difference where love is concerned..." The little dog had
turned on its back to have its belly scratched. "It's so sad that it makes a great deal of difference where
happiness is concerned."
Bajazet had said nothing. He'd seen wisdom coming, and no way to avoid it.
"Would your pretty Up-river girl be happy here at court? Would she be happy as the ladies turned
their backs on her? As men stared her through the rooms?"
"We —"
"Would she be happy knowing she was hurting you? Was injuring you in your world, so you would
always be thought a fool and cock-thinker, instead of a serious man?" The little dog had grunted with
pleasure. Scratch... scratch. "Would she be happy, knowing her children would be subjects of laughter,
would come to her, weeping?"
"I don't know."
The queen had put the little dog down. "Never lie to me, Baj, for I held you in my arms as a baby,
and would die for you as I would die for Newton. Besides, lying makes men smaller. It's a coward's trick."
"I suppose... I do know."
"Of course you know — and knew before you came to me — that if you love this girl, you will of
course protect her from any sorrow that you can. Even at your own cost." The queen had stood. "Now, we
will think how best to make your pretty girl both safe, and happy in her life."
And so they had. It became a sort of delicious plot between them, and Bajazet saw the subtle powers
of the Crown, even in so small a matter. And by doing secret good for Gwendolyn behind curtain after
curtain of the queen's influence, she, who had been only a pretty and tender little whore, became at first one
thing better — a very lucky whore who won the First Melt lottery. Then a second thing better as she was
invited by the sisterhood of Lady Weather to erase the old, and write the new in good works. And finally —
when Bajazet was past eighteen — asked to become an ambitious young magistrate's wife, she ended
respectable, safe, and a mother.
"Go," the queen had said to him, summer bowling on the south lawn at Island. "Go back to visit
Who-was-your Gwendolyn, and see if your love and care for her is proved."
Bajazet had gone, seen, and found Gwen still fond of him, but gently, distantly, and very happy in her
husband, baby, and home.
He'd sailed back down to Island, climbed the North Tower's steps to the queen's solar, and knelt to
thank her.
"Mine the advice, Baj," she'd said, raising him up. "But yours the decision."
Bajazet loved the king — had always loved him. But loved the queen even more.
... Standing by the little stream Confusion, he found he'd had a few more tears to shed, after all, and
wiped them from a grimy face with grimy hands. Then turned east again, and jogged away toward distant
softly rounded hills, rising to greater hills — mountains — beyond.
* * *
Three days later, the pemmican, biscuit, and small round of cheese long since eaten, Bajazet bent
retching nothing but sourness where the course of Confusion divided — a slighter, foaming little creek come
down from eastern hills to join. He'd munched alder buds the night before, and scraped the tender inner
bark of a birch for thin sweet jelly.
One of these had knotted his stomach, so he'd walked bent as an old man all morning, making barely
a mile over tangled deadfall and windfall while keeping to the small stream's course. The little river had
become a friend to him, and Bajazet, who now had no other friend, was afraid to leave it to follow the
lesser fork that ran up into the first hills he'd come to.
He'd dreamed, last night, of the Vosses. And in the dream they'd appeared armored from a stand of
trees with crowding companies of smiling soldiers, absolutely loyal... and bringing a buttered loaf and
stove-heated blanket as well.
He tried to vomit again, wiped his mouth, and stood straight with an effort. His small pack — only the
canteen, flint and steel, and rawhide cord in it, now — still seemed to weigh his back, the bow and quiver
also heavier. The rapier, more and more, was in his way.
He knelt in leaf-mold... looked into the stream's swift shallow ice-water. He'd seen fish the day
before, had tried to hand-catch them — which he'd seen Ted Atcheson do — and failed. Then he'd thought
of a willow branch, rawhide string, a little carved-wood hook, and a dug worm for bait. But the staying
there to fish, and waiting... waiting, became impossible. Every minute would have been a gift to the
pursuing traitor-king — and now, the king pursued. Cavalry trumpets had sounded from the west the day
before.
Food... woods-meat and game. What had seemed simple, easy enjoyment — hunting with foresters,
grooms, guards and friends under the horn's music.. . galloping fields and forest edges behind coursing
hounds, when it appeared (and was true enough) that driven deer and wild boar had appointments to meet
the king's ward and Second-son — all had proved a different matter alone, on foot, and starving.
What use a fine rapier on rabbit tracks in the last of Lord Winter's snow? — or a beautiful bow
where only dubious mushrooms, birch bark, and alder buds were found.
A huntsman had once told Bajazet that a man could catch any grazing creature by steady tracking,
steady walking-after, day and night, until the beast grew so weary as to stand, head hanging, to have its
throat cut. A tale well enough, that even might be true if the man were fed good meals as he followed, and
had a savage's eye for tracking.
But no one had come to Bajazet in the forest with spotted-cow soup steaming in a panniken, a half
loaf of oat bread to soak in it. And no one had offered to show him the broken twig, the turned clod, the
tree bark touched to indicate a fat young buck — frightened by distant trumpets — had traveled just that
way, and only moments before.
Savages... These eastern woods had been home to the Redbirds — most gone, now, whittled away
摘要：

MOONRISEBookThreeoftheSnowfallTrilogyBYMITCHELLSMITHCopyright©2004byMitchellSmithISBN0-765-34059-3Version1.0MyLordlivesstill,inhisson—thechildwithstrangers,butalive.LastwordsofMichaelRazumov,KhanateChancellor,athisexecutionDotheseasonswarm?Perhapsaverylittle,thoughthewalloficestillstandsacrossthecon...

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