Rider at the Gate

by C. J. Cherryh

  “Rider gate,” Tara said, and ran the steps, struck out past Goss and his sons, down across the snowy yard and toward the den, Vadim hurrying to catch up, the blacksmith and his boys close behind.

  The snow between the village wall and the exposed side of the nighthorse den hadn’t melted that much during the day. They didn’t go to that side of the den unless they were going to the outside gate and nobody’d been out, none of the horses had been stirring out—truth to tell, they and the horses had slept the whole afternoon.

  But somebody in small-sized boots had gone past the corner of the den and along the wall, and not come back. The pointed-toed footprints led up to the camp’s outside gate, and the gate had been dragged open and shut again—enough, one was sure, for the owner of those boots.

  “Those your daughter’s tracks?” Tara asked, indicating the prints, but the horses were near enough she was already feeling the father’s rising panic.

  The father didn’t know the half of it.

  “Chad and I had better go look,” Vadim said.

  “The hell,” she said, imaged imaged And which was the reality out there. It was close to evening.

  “You’re not up to it,” Vadim said. “Flicker damn sure isn’t. We’ll look as far as we can follow those tracks.”

  She didn’t want to stay and wait. She knew the search wasn’t going to turn up a live and happy girl, and that conviction in her mind might have been what agitated the blacksmith: they were next the den wall.

  “What in hell’d she do it for?” the man asked as Vadim went off quickly around the corner, and the ambient flared with her distress, her resentment of villager stupidity, villager demands. The blacksmith caught her arm, hard. “I’m talking to you, damn it, Tara Chang! Why in hell didn’t one of you put her back out the proper gate? What in bloody hell was she doing here in the first place?”

  “It was a dare,” one of the boys muttered, and an image flashed into Tara’s mind: “They dared her do it.”

  “Who dared her?”

  “The kids. But she was always coming here. She said she could hear the horses.”

  But it wasn’t anywhere Tara had ever seen. And dammit, Brionne didn’t hear the horses. she remembered, precisely because the girl didn’t hear—or hearing, refused to believe that any horse refused her insistent attentions.

  But she was seeing and it wasn’t her doing it, it was the blacksmith and his sons too near the horses.

  “My girl’s been coming here?” the blacksmith cried, as if it were her fault. “She’s been in and out of here and you didn’t report it? Damn you!”

  They were townsmen unused to the images that came thick and fast next the den—< Brionne with biscuits, Brionne running out the door of the den>—and Tara felt panic rising in the ambient. “She came here. I told her go home. We all told her go home. It didn’t take. She—”

  She couldn’t focus on it. She was seeing

  The argument had broken out on that score before Vadim had exchanged words with Chad inside the den. Hell, Tara thought in the eyeblink give and take of the ambient, and caught a breath on:

 

  —and glared in startlement as the blacksmith for a second time caught her sleeve. < Scared. Wanting daughter.> Then images from some other near source boiled up:

 

  God, She couldn’t get a breath past the hate in the spiraling ascension of tempers, and the blacksmith rounded on the kid with his fist cocked. The boys were on the retreat along the wall, the shorter dragging the taller, whose fists were also clenched. Hate flooded the ambient. Anger. Pain.

  Tara couldn’t find her faculty of speech. She threw force into the image, shoved at the blacksmith, wanting

  “Don’t you push me!” the blacksmith yelled.

  Flicker’s temper hit the ambient. Flicker was on her way outside.

  “Get out of here!” She found the words, scarcely the breath, and hit the man with her fist. “You’re upsetting my horse! We’ll find your daughter, man, just

  She shoved him as Flicker came around the corner of the den, a shape of anger and night. It was a cul-de-sac between the den, the palisade wall and the camp’s outside gate, with a mad horse occupying the only way out, sending as Tara ran and physically pushed at Flicker’s chest to restrain her from a charge.

  “Get past!” she shouted over her shoulder, leaning all her weight and will against Flicker, making her wanting her to calm down. “Get past, dammit!”

  It was an eternity measured in breaths. Goss and his sons eased past them. Her arm shook against Flicker’s strength, Flicker’s anger—but then Goss and his sons, Goss shouting recriminations at the boys, headed back along the wall. Goss opened the Little Gate and went back to the village side of the palisade, mad, scared, with something maybe broken forever between him and his sons.

  The Goss boys had let loose more truth at their father than they’d ever intended. The boys hated Brionne: the father was overwhelmed with panic and the boys with hatred of their sister. The images as they faded in distance from the wall were of rage and outrage, and a rider couldn’t judge what the right of it was, or who was justified.

  Brionne was the youngest, Brionne was a pampered, headstrong brat. Given, she didn’t like the kid, but she’d never in her life shared a moment of such hatred among strangers—sendings going wild, sendings of a frankness that villagers weren’t used to, minds cycling wildly over thoughts, darting after known soft spots and old faults as unerringly as willy-wisps to ripe carrion, horse and human tempers flaring completely out of bounds.

  Shaking, she leaned on Flicker’s shoulder and tried to calm Flicker down, telling herself she didn’t remotely know why Brionne had gone out this morning, or what Brionne thought she was doing—but if she had to lay a bet on it, the young fool had thought she’d heard a horse.

  She didn’t like that thought. God, she didn’t like it. And she hadn’t handled Brionne’s father well. She was painfully aware she’d set up the encounter, not remotely suspecting more than concern on their side until they got near the horses.

  She stood, still shuddery, with her hands on Flicker, whose mind she did understand, and kept imaging and patting Flicker’s neck to quiet the violence she still felt in the ambient.

  She told herself that Flicker was still on edge from a brush with disaster; or Flicker was reacting to villager hysteria—Flicker shivered and snorted and worked her jaws, —she was still trying to haul Flicker down from her fighting mood when Vadim and Chad came riding around the corner with the kits they always kept ready against a sudden call—outbound.

  Bound outside into danger she’d ridden through last night, for a damned spoiled brat who’d killed herself in one willful push of a latch.

  she imaged, and felt Flicker jump under her hands. She had a leaden weight of apprehension in her gut. There was no use in what they were doing, this late in the day. Vadim was having a crisis of guilt, Chad was going because Vadim was dead set on it; and she was mad, dammit. They were running a risk and they knew it, bu
t they weren’t listening to her.

  Mina and Luisa arrived from around the same corner, their horses trailing behind them—but being nearer the outside wall than they were, Tara found it her job to walk along in the men’s tracks, unlatch the gate for them and fight it wide against the snow piled up inside.

  “Back before dark,” Vadim said, from Quickfoot’s back, “unless we do find her trail. We might have to make a camp. I don’t think she got far.”

  “She couldn’t,” she said, and clapped a hand to Vadim’s leg, trying to still the ambient. “Don’t be a fool, God, don’t either of you be fools. You know what’s out there, the damn kid’s gone to it—”

  “I’ll turn him around before dark,” Chad said, meaning Vadim. “Don’t you open that gate, Tara, don’t open that gate, unless you know it’s us or it’s Barry and Llew.”

  “Get back before dark!” Mina said from behind her. Vadim was Mina’s lover and hers, from time to time, as Chad was Luisa’s—or hers, from time to time, but not so often as Vadim. She caught the imaging from Mina and from Luisa, both her own most-times partners—and for a moment it was an intimacy rider with rider and horse with horse that took the breath and scared hell out of her. It was love, it was friendship, and the boys were about to ride out the gate.

  “You’re senior,” Vadim said, and Chad’s Jumper passed by her with a whip of a well-groomed tail.

  “Latch down tight,” Chad said.

  Then Vadim and Chad passed the gate with a pelting of trodden snow from their horses’ heels, and rode away on a trail of young girl’s footprints.

  They wouldn’t find the hope the blacksmith wanted to find, she was well sure of that.

  Worse, the first hint of sunset color was already in the sky: light didn’t last long in autumn, on this eastern face of the mountains— they had a treacherously short while they could ride, to find what an uncompromising Wild might have left of Brionne Goss, and to get back again safely.

  She dragged the gate shut. Mina helped. Luisa dropped the latch and shoved it down hard, to be sure.

  Guil remembered. But Burn remembered not. The accompanying rider-shelter as Burn had it in his thoughts had not even brush around it, with precious little grass at all, a desolate place with

  And when, as they rounded a bend of the road around a long hill, Guil saw the rider-stone with his eyes, not his mind—he rubbed them to be sure.

  Indeed the image, wrapped in the murk of rain and twilight, did stop when he pressed his fingers against his eyes.

  Burn was right. There was no pasturage worth considering. The stone stood in a widening mud-puddle filling a slight depression— a sight that afflicted Guil with a shiver of some kind, be it chill of weather or doubt of the future he’d bargained for, listening to Cassivey, committing himself to the man’s employ.

  Anveney was death. He didn’t know how he could have forgotten it, talking to the rich man, taking his hire. It didn’t matter if Cassivey was affable and convenient and talked an extravagantly good deal—Anveney was still death.

  And when they reached the stone and he chanced to glance at the signs scratched on it, old marks and new—the first thing his eye fell on was a plain circle with a crescent.

  Aby and Moon.

  he urged Burn, unreasoning, spooked. He wanted nowhere near this place. He wanted no part of this trail, this direction, this chain of events.

  But Burn thought, and carried him willy-nilly along an eroded rising trail until the dark, rain-dripping shadow of the log shelter was in front of them.

  Guil thought, and ducked reflexively as Burn passed under the roof edge, into almost-night, into an east-facing recess where the wind had to come clear around three walls to enter, and where the rain had to ride those gusts or seep weakly through cracks in the roof in order to fall on them.

  Something small skittered past Burn’s feet, out into the rain. Burn stamped at it, imaging and until whatever it was vacated the place glad to be alive.

  All the same, the jolt of that move hit Guil’s nerves and sent him light-headed. He had to lean on Burn’s neck until he could muster the strength to slide off under the weight of the rifle and pistol and the rest that he carried.

  He committed himself finally, leaned and swung. His feet hit the ground at the same moment he shed the rifle strap into his hand. He stood very precariously for a moment, sight and hearing fading.

  Then he saw and heard the rain falling in a night-lit curtain outside—felt random drops dripping through the absolute black of the chinked logs onto their heads, and breathed the mist gusted in from the open side, but the air inside the shelter felt breathlessly warm and strange to his cold-numbed skin, all the same, after the rush of wind-borne water outside.

  He dragged the pack down from Burn’s shoulders and wobbled over to the wall, wet below the knees and around the cuffs of the sleeves. He couldn’t just sit down and wait to dry out, when rain could easily turn to sleet or snow and temperatures could drop below freezing with no more warning than that mountain wind out there already gave him.

  He felt along the wall and leaned the rifle in the corner, then dropped the pack in what he hoped was a reasonably dry spot. Then he unbuckled and shed the weight of the sidearm to pegs he felt, some rider’s thoughtful addition to the accommodation.

  Lastly, light-headed, he sat down on the damp earthen floor on the spot to strip off the wet boots and the trousers, wrapped himself below the waist in a dry blanket from the canvas pack, still wearing sweater, coat, slicker and all, because the plastic was holding in his body heat and he needed everything he had that was remotely dry to keep that heat around him.

  He knew one thing for dead certain: he wasn’t moving on in the morning. If a man got soaked at the edge of winter, a man already possibly concussed, to judge by the hellish headache he carried behind his eyes, then that man if he wasn’t a total fool didn’t travel out of shelter till fire or sun had dried his clothes.

  And Burn’s better night vision, in the black inside of the shelter, told him that a fire wasn’t an option. He sent Burn out into the rain, but Burn didn’t find one, came in wet and shook himself.

  Nobody’d restocked the shelter. Wood wasn’t available in the land any longer.

  No wood. Aby’d been the culprit, maybe Hawley and Jonas. Couldn’t blame them, damn their lazy hides. But if it had been woodless when they used it they’d sure not ridden after any, either. He’d have restocked the damn shelter unless there was a life-and-death hurry about getting out, and he didn’t think there had been. If it were anybody but Aby he’d have said careless.

  But maybe with the weather changing, and a need to go on a schedule that couldn’t, by Cassivey’s whim, and needn’t, by Aby’s judgment, wait for spring—he could forgive her.

  Still, —damn—

  He began to shiver. He huddled there shaking his teeth out, took his hat off, put the blanket over his wet hair, wrapped his arms about himself under the blanket and slicker and tucked his feet up—he couldn’t feel his toes, but he didn’t think he’d been out there long enough for frostbite, thanks to Burn, all thanks to Burn.

  he promised Burn, clenching his teeth to still the shivers.

  Burn lapped it up like cream; and Burn began to think of which wasn’t as good as edible supper, but it was far better than the drip of rain in the real world outside.

  Guil thought, there being very little convenient way to image a complete lack of any given thing—and Burn wasn’t much on the technicalities of fire-making. Burn knew it was raining, of course, and Burn hadn’t found a woodpile, or any trees, but Burn
was hungry. There were three slabs of bacon in the supplies Burn’s rider had lugged an agonizing long way from Anveney—and that of course changed all logic. Bacon was here. happened in Burn’s mind when Burn thought of it.

  So Burn thought of Burn did his part. Burn expected it to happen.

  Well, so the one of them with fingers bestirred himself, teeth chattering, and, for a peace offering, took some beef jerky out of the pack, only then and shakily remembering that food hadn’t crossed his path at all today, either.

  So it wasn’t bacon, and it couldn’t be bacon until the rain stopped, until he dried off, or unless a woodpile miraculously appeared, but Burn took the jerky as the best he could do under difficult circumstances, and simply thought Burn chewed the first piece, then heaved a gusty sigh, circled, Burn’s habit when he was tired, and sank down, precarious process in the cramped space between him and the storm, narrowly missing a vertical support pole, arranging himself so that Burn’s rider, who insisted on sitting, could feed him bits of jerky, two, of course, to the human’s own one, considering Burn had a far bigger appetite.

  Burn was, overall, mollified.

  Guil cut his thumb, he was shivering so, but, hell, there were worse fates. He had something to keep his stomach quiet, he was reasonably sure after a few bites that the food was going to stay down, which he hadn’t been sure of when the first bite went past his teeth, and his situation tonight, give or take the blinding headache and a slight nausea, was improving. He gave Burn less than Burn wanted, of course, but then, Burn was bottomless, and the supplies had to last a lot farther than Anveney Stone.

  he said to Burn,

  Burn agreed.

 

  But he didn’t want to think where they were going first, or why, or searching for what. He shied away from that.

  He thought of instead. Aby had slept in this place. He’d suffered that one crazed impulse to bolt, before Burn had brought him here and come inside, all the same, leaving him no escape.