Rider at the Gate

by C. J. Cherryh

  “Now, ease off, Jonas.” Luke Westman had dropped alongside, on Jonas’ other side. “I can recall the day.”

  Jonas sent him a surly look. But everybody got the image, Jonas taking a tumble right over Shadow’s neck. And Hawley had to laugh.

  Danny ducked his head and thought urgently, desperately, devout as a prayer in church, that Jonas looked important and professional and—his traitor mind added—rakish, experienced, absolutely unflappable at disasters, the way he’d like to look.

  That brought a silence from Jonas, further guffaws from Hawley and Luke, and he’d rather have died, right then, fallen right off Cloud’s back and died right on the road at their feet.

  “His horse is a damn problem,” Jonas said—and just once Danny got something of an image: he didn’t know the road. “Danger to the kid, is what that horse is. Same as the kid is a danger to him.”

  Threaten Cloud, disparage Cloud? Not to his face. He wasn’t going to put up with it. he thought, to that idea.

  “Ouch,” Hawley said, and Jonas and Luke were frowning, while Hawley shook his head and imaged

  “Damn strong, is what he is,” Luke said. “Noisy horse. Must have learned from that old sod Wesson. —But bullying your way through doesn’t serve you well out here, kid. Take a strong dose of quiet. You aren’t in town now, and strong sending like that can bring all sorts of attention. —Don’t go surly with us. That’s good advice.”

  “You want me to leave?” He was mad, he’d been insulted all he was willing to bear, he’d embarrassed himself. He couldn’t stand it.

  “Go backtrail in that kid-fit, boy,” Jonas said, “and you’ll find trouble that won’t give a damn about your sweet feelings. Throw some water on that temper of yours, first off. Your horse doesn’t need that kind of trouble. You’re no help to him. You keep him agitated. You twitch, all the time. Knees. Feet. Elbows. Let the horse for-God’s-sake alone ten minutes in an hour.”

  Damned outsider didn’t know what Cloud needed and didn’t need. He did.

  “I said, throw some water on it. You’re a fool. If you want to fight about it, you and I can get off right here and settle who’s taking orders and who’s giving them.”

  “I never said—”

  “You don’t have to say anything, town-kid. You shout it. You didn’t grow up with the horses, you never have got it through your head that full-throttle isn’t the way to take a steep, and you haven’t had anybody give a damn enough to tell you how damn noisy you are, have you?”

  flashed to mind, and mad as he was, he was embarrassed, sure the man was reading it all out of his mind, somehow.

  Which was stupid: the horses couldn’t figure human experience. The horses wouldn’t know how his father dealt with him. Horses didn’t clearly know what a father was, scarcely recognized a mother…

  God.

  Cloud jostled under him, angry at his distress, he realized, and he tried to calm Cloud with his hands. He couldn’t organize his thoughts. They were scattering every which way…

 

  “Kid. Get down. Get off.”

  “I don’t want to fight you.” He was scared of Jonas. He’d die in a knife-fight, he had no question. He didn’t know how to fight except with his fists. And Cloud didn’t want him to fight—Cloud shied off on the road toward the edge, ears flat.

  “I didn’t say fight, I said get the hell off. I want to talk to you, fool kid.”

  He wasn’t sure. It might be a trick. Probably to humiliate him. Cloud wasn’t pleased. Cloud thought and argued with him to get in range of Jonas. But the other riders were trying to calm the ambient and keep the horses apart.

  Then Jonas was sliding down. So he did, floppy baggage and all, ready to

  “Just walk with me,” Jonas Westman said, and waved his arm in the direction they were generally going.

  He still thought it still might be Jonas’ intent to drop him. But they could shoot him if they meant him real harm and not just to deal out the knocks juniors took. He tried, shakily, to calm Cloud down.

  “Kid,” Jonas said. “No trick. Talk. Come on.”

  He wasn’t sure what Jonas had to say to him was going to be better than hitting him. It was probably going to be direct and rude and it was probably going to make him mad, and he didn’t know if he could stop Cloud now that he wasn’t on Cloud’s back.

  “Easy.” Jonas put his hand on Danny’s near shoulder as he came close enough, Jonas let it rest there while they walked, the two of them, while Shadow and Cloud trailed after. Danny threw a look back to be sure Cloud was all right, but Hawley Antrim had his horse between.

  Jonas squeezed his shoulder. Hard. “Kid. Easy. You’re not the only kid in the damn world, you’ve just got to damp it down a little. It’s not hard. Be not-here. Be quiet as you can, take a breath or two. Quit moving. Keep your elbows and knees and feet for God’s sake quiet, anybody ever tell you?”

  “I don’t want to go back. I owe Stuart.”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah. That’s fine. Nobody ever showed you the finer points, did they?”

  “He did.”

  “Yeah, well, that’s well and good, too. But there’s more than that. If I send you back to town now, and I ought to, I never bargained for Harper and his night-crawlers, but you’ll be mad as hell, you’ll get in with that bunch, and you don’t want to understand, Danny-boy, just how bad it can get in bad company. They’re not good men.” Something slid like a ghosty right over his mind. He couldn’t grab it. He wasn’t even sure it wasn’t a ghosty, and he was scared, feeling the silence that Jonas Westman could muster, and knowing… knowing that this was the man who’d upended all of Shamesey camp and half the town when he’d come in looking for Stuart. This was the man with the horse that imaged itself constantly changing, shifting—you didn’t know what you had. You didn’t know what Jonas thought, not really, not ever.

  “Easy,” Jonas said, and that hand was still there, pressing hard, almost to the point of pain. “Easy. What you’ve got to learn to do, kid, is quiet down, don’t give people so much help hearing you. You can do it. Easier for you. You’re older than that horse. What is he, three, four?”

  He didn’t want to talk about Cloud. The man had insulted Cloud. Had insulted him.

  “My name’s Dan… —Dan.”

  “That’s fine. When we know each other I’ll use it. Shut up, shut down, stop being scared.”

  “I’m not—”

  “Hell you aren’t. Scared of us. That’s foolish. You ought to be scared of who’s on our tail. You ought to be scared of the job where we’re going. —You ought to be scared as hell of Stuart, if he doesn’t get himself quieted down, are you hearing me, kid? You get a damper on it or you flame out of control all the time. If you do that, you won’t have many friends, no mates… that’s Stuart. That’s Stuart, boy. That’s why he’s where he is. That’s why he’s got enemies. That’s why he’s got damn few friends, tell the truth.”

  “He’s all right.” “He never did me any harm.”

  “How long have you and that horse been together?”

  “Couple of years.” One and a half was a couple, wasn’t it? “I’m not stupid.”

  “Yeah. Fine. Easy to say, harder to prove. I’ve got a temper. We’ve all got tempers. But a horsefight doesn’t serve anybody, least of all the horse, trust me on that.”

  He didn’t want Cloud hurt. He was scared he’d gotten Cloud into—

  “Calm down.” The grip on his shoulder did hurt. “Boy.”

  “My name’s Dan.”

 
; “That’s fine. We’ve all got names. Don’t be so definite. Be smoke. Be fog. I can teach you, if you’re not like Guil. If you’ll listen. Otherwise you’d better ride back and stay safe.”

  < Riding up to the high country alone. Taking Cloud home.>

  “Damned fool,” Jonas said. “Not a choice.”

  “I told him I would,” he muttered. “Cloud wants to go. It’s where he’s from. Even Wesson says. You can’t send me back. If I leave you got no say where I go.”

  Second painful squeeze. “Town-brat. You don’t know what you’re up against. You can’t imagine the high country in winter.”

  “I know about it. I know it’s hard up there.”

  “You also know there’s a rogue up there that’s killed a rider ten years in the business. You know you’re damn bait, kid, that’s all you’ve got sense to be, the way you shout into the dark. That’s why I brought you. Wise up.”

  “So I can do one thing real well. My name’s Dan.”

  “Danny. All right. A little less pride, a little more clear thinking. Do you have to go up there being bait? Or do you think you can do better than that?”

  “Maybe.” If Jonas had something to teach him about slipping around things, he could learn it. If Jonas was just being nasty, he didn’t care. Staying with Jonas got him up there to Tarmin Ridge, up in the honest-to-God high country. Any mountain would have done. That was what he most wanted.

  “You just calm down. Calm—down. Hear?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Damn lot to learn, Danny Fisher,” Jonas said then, and dropped his hand from his shoulder, the two of them walking along in front of the horses.

  “I’d rather Dan,” Danny muttered.

  “It’s Danny. It’s kid when you foul up. You earn Dan.”

  Still made him mad. But he quieted it down. He imaged and “All right,” he said. “I can do that. When I want to.”

  “Good,” Jonas said, and didn’t seem to dismiss him. Danny didn’t know what to do with himself then—whether to go back to Cloud, fall back and leave the man alone… or what.

  “Name’s Jonas,” Jonas said. “I earned it. —You tried talking, kid?”

  “Yes, sir.” His father had pounded ‘sir’ into him. It got you off without being hit.

  “Jonas,” Jonas said. “That’s Luke, that’s Hawley. Try not to shout, damn you.”

  “I’m sorry, sir. I—”

  “Jonas. Try it.”

  “Yes, sir.” That wasn’t it, either, but it just fell out. His tongue tied up. He wanted Jonas to let him go, he wanted…

  Cloud moved up on them. So did Shadow. So did Ice and Froth with their riders. Danny imaged.

  He couldn’t keep the negatives out of his thinking. was the best he could do consistently. He felt like a fool. And knew everyone heard him. < Danny unhappy.>

  Cloud sent.

  “Kid,” Jonas said.

  Best he could do.

  he had to amend that, because his pockets were empty of sugar-lumps. < Danny sitting with men.>

  Cloud still imaged.

  “Cut it out,” Danny muttered, not looking at Cloud, but Cloud knew that tone and knew the thoughts in his head with a very clear understanding when he was getting on his rider’s nerves.

  < Cattle everywhere.>

  “Sorry,” Danny said to the men around him, and went back and patted Cloud on the shoulder, walked with his arm under Cloud’s neck, patting him under his mane. Cloud kept sulking, but that was because Cloud was getting his way. “You behave,” Danny muttered. When things got bad, he used words, mystery words, things Cloud didn’t know, and Cloud got frustrated, because Cloud knew something was going on Cloud couldn’t have, couldn’t see.

  Cloud hated the town. Cloud hated his family. Cloud hated townsmen. Cloud hated people around them. Cloud wanted just him. Alone.

  That was scary. That was real scary, when he realized that small truth.

  The sleet came down thickly now, whiting over the dark shapes of evergreens, sticking on Flicker’s black coat, dusting Flicker’s mane and up-pricked ears. Pace, pace, pace down the trail at a steady clip; the images from Flicker were still all spooky, distracted, wavery— like smell-images, but stranger than that, and Tara Chang told herself she wasn’t going to stop at the storm-shelters. They’d make it, no matter how heavy the storm grew. She wasn’t bedding down tonight alone in a log shack out in the middle of the woods. She was determined about that matter long in advance of getting there.

  But it was a serious decision. It might be a spooked, unwise decision, with the sleet having turned to honest snow by the time they passed the shelter on the trail.

  The shelter sat unoccupied, Tara knew that in the same way she knew the ambient and saw no smoke from the chimney. She had no doubt it was stocked and ready for winter—Chad and Vadim had escorted the teams out with the winter supplies the first leaf-turn: clean blankets, grain, preserved meat in strong, pilfer-proof tins, medicines, cordage, anything a storm-trapped rider might need.

  She might be foolish. The way ahead of them was turning as white as Flicker’s frantic imaging, and there was safety in those thick log walls and those heavy shutters, if one could keep the doors barred. The shelter would hold her and Flicker both, no question.

  But no shelter could help if a rider, in the grip of predator-sent illusions, chose to unbar a door or open a shutter. If you got yourself besieged indoors by a persistent predator, illusions came through walls, through shutters, through barred doors, illusions to confuse a horse and beguile a fool human into lifting a latch.

  Flicker snorted and shook herself, never slacking pace as they moved on down the road. Tara agreed by doing nothing and they both committed themselves to the try for at least the next shelter, if not for home. It was a very uneasy feeling in Tara’s several looks back, as the shelter lay farther and farther behind them, as woods closed between and the storm showed signs not of abating, but of getting worse.

  It might well have been a mistake, Tara thought. Not necessarily a fatal one, but a rider didn’t get too many such mistakes for free, not in a long life. Staying the night there might have been a mistake, too. She didn’t know. She had no way to judge now, either the weather or the uneasiness about the Wild that still crawled up and down her nerves.

  As bad as the weather was looking now, the road crew she’d just taken out to their work might indeed be coming back, all of them, scared by the same storm—so if she’d stayed at the shelter, she might not have been alone for more than the night. If the road crew did decide to winterize the equipment and break camp, Barry and Llew would push through the night if necessary, at whatever pace they could with the ox-teams. They’d offload everything, cache even the supplies, if they didn’t like the look of the weather; and the stolid-seeming oxen could move fast, if they moved unladed, not as fast as nighthorses, but they might be headed for that shelter, all the same.

  If she were in charge instead of Barry, the way it was looking now, no question they’d chuck it and leave that exposed mountain flank before the drifts built up.

  Barry, though, was a get-the-job-done man. Village-bred, not a born rider. Villagers liked to deal with him. He made sense to village-siders, and Barry had agreed with this jaunt out to flirt with the weather and been willing to sit out there freezing his fingers and toes off. Not to mention other useful parts.

  A cold gust blew up the skirts of her coat, found its way into her bones, and she buttoned the weather-bands tightly around her glove cuffs, then took her hat off to get a closer fit on the scarf that protected her ears from frostbite. She slid the chin-cord tight when she put it on again, and turned her collar up. She had a knitted hood in her inside pocket. It made her face itch an
d she hated it.

  Most of all it restricted her side vision, and she wanted to know what was around her, on the edges of her vision, even if it was misty white and the misted shapes of trees.

  But, Flicker imaged, whiting out the world except the trail in front of them, as if they were nowhere in the universe but this small patch that was real; and Flicker kept up a steady pacing gait, creating the world constantly ahead of her.

  Spooked, she said to herself. Too much thinking on disaster in this perilous season. She imaged until she realized she was doing it.

  She imaged and without running it past her thinking brain, and Flicker couldn’t tell the difference. Panic her own horse into a heart-attack, she could—like some fool first-year rider—come in with her tail tucked and the willies lurking in every tree. She knew better, and she told Flicker

  But that shelter was a long ways behind them now, and the next chance lay a good distance ahead.