Rider at the Gate

by C. J. Cherryh

  “If there’s any chance the girl’s alive,” Luisa murmured now, breaking a long, long silence, “if she’d gotten somewhere she could hole up and stay there… and if they found it, they could have tucked in there, waited for a shot at it…”

  “A kid’s not going to resist,” Mina said. “A kid’s not going to hold out, whatever it is out there. That kid couldn’t fend off a newborn willy-wisp, let alone—”

  Mina’s voice trailed off. They weren’t thinking that thought with any clarity. Weren’t using that word.

  Luisa said: “If she just wedged herself into the rocks and stayed there, I mean, kids panic, that’s all, they’ll freeze up, go still when they’re scared. A horse can’t get through that. The kid could actually be safer than—”

  “Let’s not talk about it,” Tara said.

  “The boys aren’t fools,” Mina said. “The likelihood is, they tracked fast and found something nasty and they’re going to hunker down the night—they’re not going to come running back here for us to hold their hands. I mean—what could they do? We have to have at least two of us here all the time. How else can we sort it out?”

  “I said let’s not talk about it.”

  “Well, the kid could actually have gotten a wild horse,” Luisa said. “I mean, there’s always the chance. There’s been a herd at the water meadow…”

  “The kid’s a damned fool!” Tara snapped. “The kid’s something’s supper, if she’s wildly lucky, which I think she wasn’t; and the boys are riding around out in the dark risking their necks for a spoiled brat who’s already met what she bargained for! It’s not damn worth it! The kid batted her eyes at Vadim, the kid sneaked out of here when she damned well knew better, and they’re off being damned stupid men!”

  She didn’t need to have said that. She immediately wished she could call it back. The chill in the air after that was immune to a fever-heat fire.

  So the night wore on in interminable minutes and eternal hours, while two grown men who’d gone out to play hero because they couldn’t say no to a kid who simpered at them… were out there in mortal danger.

  The kid could hear the horses—hell, any villager could hear the horses if they stood next the wall—hear and be heard, at close enough range: that was why there were walls, for God’s sake, that was why townsmen didn’t go walking out in the woods without a rider—because they heard too damned well.

  But Brionne was so self-sure that what she heard was ever so much more than a horse’s own rider did, some flaming miracle of special sensitivity and understanding of the horses—

  God, the kid had probably been listening out into the dark for years for what she wanted to hear… and she probably hadn’t realized the defense Flicker had been sending out into the storm was even going on, because was the snow, was the storm. The blacksmiths’ house was far enough away from the camp that the kid might not even have heard Flicker at all or been within Flicker’s defense. She might have heard something beyond the other village wall.

  And then because stupid damn little girls who thought they heard the horses and didn’t even sense when one was backing up and about to trample them didn’t the hell comprehend that what precious oh-so-talented Brionne wanted didn’t damn matter to the laws of nature and the inclinations of a crazed killer—precious Brionne took a walk.

  “You know,” Mina said, “they could have gone on to the road crews and tried to find out about them.”

  “Will you the hell let it alone?” Tara said, and hadn’t meant to say that to Mina, either. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m sorry, Mina.”

  Mina shrugged, looked elsewhere, hurt—not at her, just hurting, without an ambient to carry it, that was why the rider quarters sat the measured distance it did from the horses, but, God, she could see it. Luisa and Mina were partners. They were best friends, together and with the men.

  And because she was the know-it-all newcomer, it didn’t call on her to curse at Mina—she hadn’t access to the ambient to say or and she couldn’t say what she thought aloud—words sounded stupid and lame when the ambient wasn’t behind them.

  But she was their senior in years, with Vadim out of the camp. She was supposed to lay down the laws, she was supposed to keep them from driving each other off the edge. She was supposed to keep the camp in order and the village safe—but that hadn’t meant yelling at Mina.

  “Mina,” she said, feeling the shakes nudging at her arms—“My fault. Sorry.”

  “I don’t like this,” Luisa muttered. “I don’t feel good. Nothing feels good.”

  “None of us feel good!” Mina snapped. “None of us feel good. Can we just not go for each others’ throats?”

  Tara was seeing again. She was back in the forest.

  Then an ember snapped, wood they’d carried in out of the snow-covered woodpile: it spat sparks and snapped and spat while it dried. But her nerves were raw-ended. She jumped and twitched, and couldn’t for a moment get her breath in the sickly closeness of the air.

  The main room was log-walled, chinked with mortar. The corners were refuges for shadows, places the light didn’t reach, and they’d not lit the lamps. The firelight cast their three shadows large on the walls, on the rafters, and the interlocked shadows jumped with the gusts that bested the chimney’s updraft.

  Another snap, not as loud as the first. But the nerves still jumped. She’d put off her jacket, but she was all but inclined to put it on again and go out into the yard and touch ambient one more time tonight.

  They ought to go the hell to bed. Luisa was right: the boys were surely holed up somewhere and weren’t going to stir out again until the sun came up and they could face the unpleasant job of reporting back a grisly find which had to be the story out there.

  If she hadn’t snapped at the kid when the kid had come into the den—

  Probably with wonderful, special news to tell them. And they hadn’t fallen down admiring her. If there was a bad horse out there, it was enough trouble. If a bad horse had a rider when it went, the after-midnight lore held that the rider who didn’t shoot it fast went with it, and whoever was his good friend had better shoot him equally fast.

  If the rogue snared that kid, then it could get from her what horses got from human minds—an outright addiction to the complexity of human images and an ability to remember and stick to a task until it was finished.

  Until it was finished.

  And Brionne, precious Brionne, didn’t think what anybody else wanted. When Brionne got an idea—nobody counted but what Brionne wanted. Did they?

  She had gooseflesh on her arms. She didn’t need to turn over that mental rock and examine the underside.

  She found herself on her feet and pacing again. Mina was standing, arms folded, staring at the shuttered window. Luisa was whittling something. Luisa was always making wooden animals—she had a collection of them on the mantelpiece, real ones and fanciful ones. Tara couldn’t see what Luisa was carving. Didn’t want to guess. She ought to set an example and go to bed, but the thought of going off to a separate room and lying in bed alone with her thoughts was not at all attractive.

  And maybe it was after all a good idea to check outside again before she tried to rest.

  It was something to do, at least. If she just found silence out there, it was some reassurance; and she felt steady enough to look in on Flicker. So far the ill effects added up to a little swelling and soreness in the legs, nothing rest wouldn’t cure. Flicker could lie down and get up at will now, no worry about her going down and her lungs filling; but Flicker’s rider wanted to be sure of that from hour to hour, especially when she was staying a little outside Flicker’s range.

  Surely the boys were all right. God, they weren’t a pair of juniors. They could take care of themselves. Fears spread, was all.

  Hell, she said to herself then, and got up and went for her coat.

  “Where are you going?” Mina asked.

  “Just
to take another listen,” she said. “Be right back.”

  Mina looked worried. “You don’t go out anywhere,” Luisa said. “You want me to come with you?”

  “Better just one of us. We’re too noisy tonight. I’ll check on the horses. Get a grip on my temper while I’m at it.” She shrugged into the jacket under two worried looks. She slung on her scarf and went out, not dressed for a long stay in the winter night, not even putting her gloves on.

  The first breath of cold night air was a relief. She went down the wooden steps, crunched her way across a new film of ice on the tracked and hole-riddled yard, and trekked out toward the den under a starry, cloudless sky.

  But there wasn’t peace. She felt, even at distance, a sense of unease among the horses, even before one of them came out of the den, a shadow in the low, earth-banked entry.

  The second horse that showed up was definitely Flicker. All of them were in a surly mood. The first out had been Mina’s Skip, and Luisa’s Green turned up at Flicker’s rump—Green nipped at Flicker, and Flicker returned the favor with real temper.

  she sent.

  came Flicker’s chilling echo.

  Then something got to her, a quickness of breath and a speeding heartbeat where everything around her said there was nothing wrong.

  she sent to Flicker, and the horses sent a shivery, angry impulse back, on edge about a feeling she couldn’t see in the sky or hear in the air or smell on the wind.

  she sent out into the ambient as strongly as she could.

  Then—she was being crazy. She wished she hadn’t made that noise in the ambient—in the remote case the horses together could carry it—in case the boys might hear it and do something foolish in the mistaken notion that the camp was in distress.

  she thought, and wanted Flicker to carry that idea far and wide.

  But Flicker was skittish as she walked up. Flicker kept doing a nervous sending and shifted about uncooperatively when she bent to lean against Flicker’s side and listen to her breathing.

  Just the harsh, regular breathing of an uneasy horse, heartbeat a little fast, but it kept up with the breathing, and Flicker kept shifting about with her, quarreling with her den-mates.

  Tara gave up, since Flicker was healthy enough to be difficult— ears up, nostrils working, disturbing attention outward; but she couldn’t get any sense of direction about it, just a general distress. She went from one horse to the next, patting necks, dodging shifting, restless bodies and swatting Green, who came just too close with a snap of her teeth.

  she ordered them. She got that occasional and then a grudging compliance when she seized Flicker by the mane and pulled and argued with her.

  Then the report of a gun echoed off the mountain—stark, sudden, close. Flicker jerked free of her hand. All the horses were looking toward the palisade wall, not the outer one, but the one that divided them from the village.

  A flare of light touched the tail of her vision—she turned her head briefly, saw the shelter door open, a coatless Mina and Luisa standing on the porch.

  “What was that?” Mina called to her.

  “It came from the village side,” she said. It was all she was certain of. The rogue might be across the village, next the wall—that was her first clear thought. She went for the narrow gate, the gate no horse could pass, and she began to run, her feet cracking the frozen, pitted crust.

  “Tara?” Luisa called out. And Mina: “Wait, dammit! We’re coming!”

  “Stay there,” she turned around to shout. “Stay with the horses!”

  She wasn’t the only one who’d taken alarm. The village bell began to toll the three-stroke that called Assembly.

  The village didn’t know what it was. She guessed that much before she even reached the gate. She lifted the latch, went through, aware that Flicker had followed her, aware of Flicker’s frustration at the gate Flicker couldn’t pass.

  She didn’t have her gun. She hadn’t even brought her gloves— fool, she said to herself when she checked her pockets. She was damned little use. But she found herself in a flood of villagers in nightclothes and robes and boots and carrying guns and even axes, all streaming toward the common hall, to find out what no one knew and what the ambient, even reinforced by the concerted effort of anxious horses, couldn’t tell her.

  But before she ever reached the hall she was hearing rumors— the blacksmiths’ neighbors, Vonner and Rath, came running up saying it was the blacksmiths’ house the shot had come from.

  The crowd surged in that direction then, unordered, unruly— she was uneasy, walking deaf in a group of people who didn’t read the ambient, either, unless that feeling of unease she had now was coming from elsewhere.

  One of Andy Goss’ kids was on the doorstep. The other came out with a gun dangling in his hand. And she feared she knew.

  In the next moment the village marshal came up and took the gun from the boy without resistance.

  Andy Goss’ wife, Mindy Rath, was safe. But Andy Goss wasn’t.

  Dead, the marshal’s deputy reported with a grimace, on a quick glance inside the door. Bad in there, Tara thought.

  And the marshal took the boys away, both of them. Tara caught whispers of dismay, whispers that the Goss-Raths were an upstanding family, and nobody could imagine what prompted it.

  She didn’t know what to do, what to say, how to explain to them. But half the crowd went away, shivering in the cold, and the marshal took the boys away. And she didn’t know what she could say that would make it better.

  So she went back the way she’d come, through the rider gate, and found Mina and Luisa, dressed for the cold, out in the yard with the horses.

  She told them. She said, remembering Andy Goss and the boys beside the den: “They loved him. I think they killed him.”

  She remembered from their meeting beside the den

  She added, in a feeling of utter shock: “I think that was why they did it.”

  The day came up still misting rain, a gray drizzle outside the shelter. Guil lifted his head, and pain like a knife went from one point to the other of his skull and bounced. Several times. He let his head back, eyes shut.

  He didn’t want to move after that. He just wanted to lie there and breathe until his head mended or he died.

  But Burn got up, slow shifting of a heavy body, a second imperilment of the roof supports. He heard the timbers creak.

  Then a breathing horse-smelling shadow came between him and the daylight, and Burn nosed his face, puffing warm horse-breath on him. Persisting at it. Guil pushed him away with a none too coherent

  Burn imaged, as if that cured headache.

  And nosed him in the face again.

  It took him a moment more to muster reason, and a moment after that for coherent images. Guil thought, If he could possibly sit up, which his dizziness and the pain in his head made a nauseating prospect, he was resolved that Burn should have bacon, if there were any wood to be had.

  He’d never asked Burn to do the job. It seemed worth a try.

  Burn thought. Burn didn’t believe fire made bacon. Or didn’t think wood made fire. At this point in the morning, Guil didn’t know what he believed, either.

  But he groaned, and shifted in his cocoon of blanket, slicker, sodden coat, and sodden shirt. Which reminded him he hadn’t dried out during the night, and he needed fire for more reasons than bacon.

  “Hell,” he moaned, tried to reckon in fact where he was going to get wood.
r />   Burn didn’t think so. Burn imaged and

 

  The last made his head hurt. It upset Burn, who went out imaging and and And there wasn’t a damned thing out there. Guil could see it in Burn’s images as if he was seeing it with his own eyes:

  Guil wanted him back now, and Burn came back under the roof.

  Burn imaged, imaged which was some help. He could actually halfway feel it, illusion that it was; but wood was nowhere outside, from horizon to horizon—thank you, Aby, thank you, Jonas and Luke and Hawley.

  And if he could somehow persuade Burn to go off hunting the nearest dead tree, it left him sitting alone in the Wild with a rifle and a handgun—no more than the Anveney truckers had, to be sure, and they were still fairly well in the die-off zone, but there’d been vermin last night, and he wasn’t sure he wasn’t going to fall on his face and pass out.

  Which could mean coming awake with willy-wisps swarming over you, no, God no, there were ways to go, but gnawed half to death while he was passed out wasn’t one he’d choose.

  Lying here wrapped in plastic, waiting for some sunny day to dry his trousers wasn’t a choice, either. He couldn’t depend on a sunny day corning along before snowfall, in which case, also thank you, Aby, he wanted dry clothing.

  That meant firewood.

  And since one of them couldn’t leave the other, it meant moving. He wasn’t sure he could get on Burn’s back without falling on his face, but if he did fall, Burn wouldn’t desert him.

  Which meant at least willy-wisps wouldn’t come near him. So he was safer going with Burn, if he didn’t break his neck falling off. His head ached so—he really, truly, please God, didn’t want to fall on it again.

  He made it by stages to his feet, splitting headache and all. He couldn’t see for a moment, couldn’t find his balance, caught himself against the shelter wall—which reminded him, lucky thing, that he had gear to take with him.