Rider at the Gate

by C. J. Cherryh

  If the sleet spooked them, the crew they’d just delivered safely would be insisting that Barry and Llew take them right back home, and the whole crew would be chasing her heels all the way back to Tarmin, after yesterday’s trek getting foot-dragging fools in an oxcart out there…

  But she didn’t blame them: one didn’t take chances once the weather began to turn, and the road crews had one of the nastier jobs, crawling out and around slide zones, shoring up the road with timbers they had to drag by ox-power out of the woods—they managed with oxen, because they couldn’t waste fuel for trucks up here, where it didn’t come by nature—or at all cheaply. The village tanks, since the last convoy out of Anveney, were full-up, and they’d stay that way until they needed the emergency heaters in the village common hall for days when the ice closed in and the wood ran low. Tarmin year-round burned wood for its stoves, and by autumn had barns full of hay that kept the goats alive and the oxen strong for such winter-hauling as the weather demanded.

  And they never waited until the last minute to see to those stores. Tarmin always remembered the story of Parman Springs, which they’d been telling as long as Tara had heard stories: a rider coming into Parman Springs one winter had turned up with every last building taken down and burned but one—and the wall breached. Not a living human being was ever found, just a little scatter of bones.

  That had been back in the boom days, when every lowland fool with a notion of instant riches had flooded up into the mountains, and the disasters had come yearly, when new-made camps either set themselves with no regard to the avalanche traces on the slopes, or never asked themselves why several big boulders sat on the flat they’d chosen; when stubborn lowland-bred miners had used transmitters for non-emergencies and thought that rifles could deal with the consequences.

  The survivors had stayed to log and do the little winter mining that paid off, winter being the heaviest mining time because the temperature in the shafts was constant and bearable in months when logging, which sometimes paid better, was all but impossible. Verden, the other side of Verden Ridge, on the High Loop, was all underground, the whole settlement having discovered what its digging was really good for. They piped fresh air in and vented smoke out—precariously, to her mind—up a complex arrangement of flimsy tin pipes.

  Spooky place, and dirty. It depressed even miners, from what she heard in Tarmin. Riders didn’t like it and wouldn’t go inside. She had, once, out of curiosity, and come out again anxious for sun-warmed air, having no desire to do it twice.

  She wanted the sky over her head. Truth be known, she liked the snow, she liked the quiet months of isolation that the weather enforced in the High Wild, when there was precious little work for riders but hunting and trading off the take to the town butchers and the tannery for the nasty end of it. She’d no steady partner, but she’d two lovers and no shortage of intelligent company, and a couple of junior female partners who weren’t permanent, but who might become so. The juniors were partnered with each other, were in more than autumn lust with the boys—the boys, as they called the senior riders—and whatever they called them, ‘the boys’ damn sure beat their competition over on Darwin.

  So she’d shared-in and found herself as happy as she’d been in her life, settling in with a group of riders, all of whom, senior or junior, she could count on in any pinch. She’d gone hungry and she’d slept alone in her junior years, completely on her own since her mother died—and after five years of hell, first as a junior and then as a senior riding Darwin Ridge, she’d ridden into a camp on Rogers Peak too easy to live in and too hard to leave. She’d become pinned down. Tied. Permanent, in a way she’d once, in her footloose youth, sworn she’d never be.

  Flicker was definitely interested in camp and food and nighthorse company, out of the skitter and scatter of her thoughts. Flicker was also glad enough to know where such things always resided—glad, too, to be going back to civilization all in one long push today, and not minding the long walk. Flicker never liked road guard and Tara had had her own fill of it this fall. It was boring, and this late in the year it meant standing around in windy places in the sleet where there was nothing to eat, and nothing to do but shift from one cold foot to the other and try to keep the wind from blowing up at your underside.

  Until even a rider might hope, after a few weeks on duty, for a goblin cat or some such to make a meal of the crew, so she could go home.

  But a rider didn’t make such jokes around nervous villagers. A rider just sat and watched the ambient with nighthorse senses, trying to keep a restive horse from equally bored and very vivid amusement.

  So, having served their time in purgatory on the last trip to Verden, and Llew and Barry having gotten the short end of the draw, she and Flicker were homeward bound through the spitting sleet.

  Flicker was putting on her winter coat early this year—had been at it for a month, and the sleet stuck to the longer hairs of her body, and to her ears and mane. Flicker had voluntarily picked up the pace since that fleeting thought of pork roast: she was enthusiastically bound for Tarmin, and way-stopping at one of the two lonely storm shelters on their way, then having the next day to turn around and ride out through the snow to restock it (there being no rest for a Tarmin rider when a shelter wanted stocking) was not in Tara’s plans, either.

  If they traveled late, they could make it on in with no real need of a way-stop. It was the first winter squall of the season lurking up there about the peak, but not a serious one, she had the skill to bet knowledgeably on that outcome—and the skill to cover that bet and save them both if things went wrong. No mere storm was going to stop them for more than a nasty cold night in the open if they misjudged, and they’d winter-camped many a night out in her starving junior years over on Darwin, where the weather was, if only in her memory, very much worse.

  But there’d been a spooky feeling on Tarmin Climb—the worse with the wind howling about the rocks. The road crew there had found an accident, a wrecked truck, logs strewn all to hell and gone up and down the rocks at that hairpin that started the only 20 percent grade on the Climb, a notorious turn, and not the first truck that had ever lost it all on the curve. That section was old road, hard to improve because of where it was located, and often as crews from Tarmin and the higher Ridge villages shored the slip zone up with timbers and fill, it eroded. It was a battle with the weather and the wear of the trucks’ brakes on a grade the road crews couldn’t improve without blasting a whole lot of mountain down and maybe, by what she’d heard, making matters much worse.

  So it was one more load of timber and rock to go up there to stabilize that roadbed before winter snows and spring melt made little runnels into major slips. The crew was running a race with the winter and it looked like they might lose this one, though they damn sure could get cut timbers in plenty from the wreck down there.

  Dead truckers, for sure—that there had been fatalities was evident both from the condition of the truck and the fact of scavengers numerous about the vicinity. It was possibly as much as a month old, or maybe more recent, part of the last convoy Tarmin had handled, which had joined its High Loop segment coming off that downhill and turned on down to the lowlands, outrunning the winter. Of the driver and his backup they’d not even find the bones intact by now. Unless somehow they’d jumped clear or been rescued the day it had happened, they were gone. The scavengers that night would have made quick work even of personal effects, and the convoy boss doubtless knew the names and next of kin of the dead truckers, so there was no point risking necks. The road crew had hallooed and banged on pans when they’d discovered the wreck, making absolutely sure that there wasn’t some survivor holed up in the truck cab—occasionally such miracles happened; but you didn’t really expect them.

  There hadn’t been any response, and she heartily agreed with Barry and Llew: it was just too dangerous, for no real hope of survivors after so long a time, and considering that silence, for a ri
der to go climbing down that slide where no horse could defend him against what else might be interested in the wreck. Death drew predators as well as scavengers, or one became the other very quickly when they found themselves a nice soft-skinned prey that didn’t image back. Next spring when the weather was better and all of nature was calmer, they’d salvage it for metal.

  Flicker imaged slinky little shadows. Flicker didn’t like the roadwork or the carrion-eaters. was Flicker’s thought. Flicker hated little things that ran out under her feet on narrow trails.

  Then Flicker stopped cold in her tracks, so suddenly Tara jolted a little forward and caught herself with her hands against Flicker’s suddenly rigid neck, wondering what in the world Flicker had heard besides the sleet rattling among the evergreens. Immediately the ambient had gone unpleasant. That was Flicker’s opinion: she felt that tingling along her nerves, but there might be something more specific she couldn’t sort out of Flicker’s nervousness.

  “Damn,” she muttered—she didn’t like things she couldn’t figure from Flicker. She thought, urgently, with authority,

  Flicker wasn’t budging. Tara kicked her gently in the ribs, but Flicker just stood.

  Second kick. Harder. Something was in the area. Something was sending in a way she couldn’t quite pick up, maybe just a ghosty, doing its I’m-not-here. Maybe Flicker was just spooky with the weather.

  “Come on.” Third kick. Flicker came unstuck from her momentary paralysis and started on her way, step and step, one, two, three, four, her hoof-toed feet scuffing the leaves louder than the sound of the sleet in the branches. Flicker was imaging something that just whited out.

  Tara didn’t understand. She’d never known Flicker to do that before. Not her usual soft flutter of light, but a glaring as Flicker traveled with that about-to-move floating feeling that advised a rider to keep alert for a sudden jump or a shift of direction.

  If it was a beast sending that unease she’d felt for a moment, it was one she didn’t know. And she’d thought she knew everything in the woods of Darwin and Rogers both.

  she imaged. But she couldn’t get through that sending. Flicker kept her steady pace. Tara kicked her lightly, once, twice; and Flicker moved up to that traveling shuffle nighthorses could keep for hours.

  That got them out of the area faster, at least, assuming it was something that laired nearby, not tracking them. Tara slipped the tie-down off her pistol and thumbed the safety off, riding with a fistful of Flicker’s mane in the uneasy, constant feeling that Flicker might dive right out from under her.

  It was a long while later the feeling slowly localized, as some danger—she was reasonlessly, absolutely certain—lying behind them, which meant they had finally gotten far enough ahead they had achieved that separation; but Flicker forged ahead for a time longer as if she was nose into some heavy wind.

  Then the feeling just lifted. Flicker shook herself as she walked, snorted, kept going at a slightly slower pace.

  Tara suggested. She loved the High Wild and the woods. She enjoyed riding alone… but now and again came one of those small, cold moments when the woods seemed foreign and lonely, when the sounds all seemed right, but muffled and faint, and when before and after seemed to change places.

  Flicker didn’t agree with her image. She couldn’t tell what Flicker thought.

  she thought then, shakily, telling herself it was only some particularly clever small creature—a spook, a fast-moving one, maybe not a kind she was used to.

  But she couldn’t convince herself of that. Maybe she’d gotten scared at something and scared Flicker with her own human imagination.

  That could happen up here, especially in the woods, especially with the snow flying and whiting out the details of things. Humans had to have edges. Humans had to know the connections of things, and human minds made them up if they didn’t get them. There were stories about riders who’d spooked themselves and their horses into serious trouble, losing track of the land and where the drop-offs were; but she wasn’t a scatterbrain, she wasn’t inexperienced, and neither was Flicker.

  She just didn’t like what she’d felt back there, she still didn’t get a clear image out of Flicker—and she’d never in her life felt Flicker do what she’d done.

  It was a cold, cold morning, overcast about the mountain ridge above them, as the road wound in slow, gentle ascent toward the rising wall of Rogers Peak.

  It was a mountain Danny had grown up seeing from his third-story window, a peak drifting disconnected from the earth in misty distance above Shamesey walls—a place a town kid had regarded as remote as the stars the preachers talked about. He’d never imagined himself in those days as a rider—certainly never thought he’d be traveling to that mountain, hunting rogue horses, or rescuing villagers. But the closer they’d traveled, the more solid the mountain became, not a daydream now but an environment of stone and gravel and grass, under a high dark wall of evergreen.

  The more solid the mountain became, the more the business they’d come to do seemed both too close and too unreal to him. He heard nothing wrong. He felt nothing besides themselves and the occasional spook, the impression of being watched that was just the Wild, that was all. It went on all the time, nothing threatening— even reassuring, a sign that large predators weren’t in the area.

  It was definitely colder, a knife-edged wind where the road wound into the open, the sort that made one’s ears ache, and Danny, like the others, rode with a lap of his scarf over his head and his hat on tight.

  He looked back now and again as the road offered a downward view of the land, wondering anxiously if he might see any trace of the riders Cloud had heard lower down—which didn’t at all seem to worry Cloud now. Cloud was feeling energetic, snorting, flaring his nostrils and watching every flutter of leaves and wind-wave across the grass—grass which was giving way to an advance guard of scattered evergreen, not just occasional stands of trees, but the edge of real forest, at which Danny had looked all his life, seeing it only as a darkness on the mountains. Cloud moved here and there on the track, generally annoying the three other horses, while Jonas and the others pointedly ignored his presence. The other horses were trying to be peaceful, Danny thought: they seemed to realize that Cloud was excited about the mountains and were forgiving of his behavior.

  He wanted no more trouble. He’d had a go at the land alone, it was damned spooky out there even without the remotest hint of whatever might be on their backtrail, and he hoped Cloud would be content finally, now that they were headed upland.

  He’d at least calmed himself enough he could be sure he wasn’t sending out a constant broadcast of his concerns, and he was sure that made Cloud calmer.

  But he couldn’t but look over his shoulder from time to time.

  “They’re not going to be that careless,” Jonas said finally.

  “Yes, sir,” he said meekly. Yes, sir, after being left on his own in the wild seemed the best answer to anything and everything Jonas or any of the others said to him. He was not going to get into trouble again. He was not going to afford these men an excuse to look down on him.

  Cloud had to try to bite Shadow just then. Had to, though Cloud deliberately pulled the nip short of Shadow’s flank—deliberate provocation, status-battle, and nighthorse tempers flared for a jolting moment.

  “Boy,” Jonas said.

  “Yes, sir,” he said, embarrassed, taking Cloud’s rebellion for his fault, which only made Cloud madder.

  “You have a problem, boy. Do you think you can fix it, or do you want to ride home now?”

  was his immediate and mortified thought. “He’s just never worked with a group. I’ll pull back some.”

  “You going to spend your life pulling back some, or what, boy?”

  “My name’s Dan, sir.” It had to be Cloud’s influence. His face was
burning. His heart was beating hard. He might pull back from making a direct and personal challenge of Jonas’ authority—that was farthest from his mind; but he wasn’t going to tuck down and take it from all of them for the rest of the trip, either, and that was one boy too many for Karl Fisher’s son. “You asked me to come along to help find Stuart, and I take that for a promise. But I don’t pick up anything right now. So I’ll ride back behind till I do, thanks.”

  “Got you,” Hawley said dryly. “Kid’s got you, Jonas. It was your idea to bring him. I told you.”

  Jonas wasn’t happy. Or didn’t look it. Danny started to signal behind Cloud’s ribs with his heels. Cloud fell back on his own, sullenly imaging

  But < fight > wasn’t what came from Jonas or from Shadow. Some impression slid past him, something nebulous and fast and without edges, a piece of something he didn’t understand, and Jonas dropped back, too, in clear intention to speak with him, as Cloud and Shadow went unwillingly side by side.

  “Kid,” Jonas said. It was an improvement on ‘boy.’ And Danny caught an impression, now, of a meeting among the three men after he’d left them last night—that and talk on the trail, yesterday evening. “I didn’t figure the complications, a kid getting into this. Maybe you’d better go back.”

  “I don’t want to, sir.” The juniors would know—he broadcast the fear of that humiliation without in the least wanting to. He tried to image himself on convoy, instead, riding guard with senior riders. He’d done that: it was the truth. “I can pull my own weight, I’ve no question.”

  “I have. You can’t stay on your horse. That’s bad news up there.”