Rider at the Gate

by C. J. Cherryh

  The two of them trod knee deep in snow that showed no disturbance but the occasional footprint of some spook or other, delicate imprints written in white, in that strange glow a nighttime snowfall had.

  And if the little spooks had moved about in the open not so long ago then they were the biggest threat abroad. Lately they’d heard a wally-boo call out to the woods at large, soft, silly cooing that belonged to a little spook, all whiskers and ears.

  Burn wasn’t sending out his threat. But as they came down a slight decline in the road Burn suddenly lifted his head, switched his ears about and sniffed the dark with that curious feeling that went with winter winds and the chance of meetings.

  ran under that train of thought.

  Guil thought anxiously, not wanting to think about the rogue they’d come to hunt: it came to him now and again as when Burn grew too fractious, or too scattered from what they’d come to find.

  Burn worried and gazed off into the woods with misgivings, thinking of and which was sometimes a goblin-cat’s camouflage: a horse above three or four years knew that spook trick, and Burn was well aware there was danger up here. A lot of things imaged what they weren’t. Some had the knack of making you see things that had nothing to do with the ground you were walking on. The dangerous ones had worse tricks. You’d see people in the woods. You’d hear them call to you. They’d wave. A spook-bear could give you anything, any image it had ever seen.

  A horse was a lot worse than that. A horse could convince you of anything.

  Burn wasn’t sure, himself, of whatever he heard—he shook himself, started moving again, treading carefully for a space, then gradually warming again to the thought of

  Guil agreed. Granted they got to shelter before the night grew too thick or his legs gave out, there would assuredly, he promised, be

  Burn thought then.

  “Silly ass,” Guil muttered, patted Burn on the shoulder and intended to keep walking. He wasn’t willing to wear Burn down, or have him sore tomorrow.

  But Burn nudged him in the back and wanted insistently to go faster, and he couldn’t, counting a bullet-grazed leg and a bashed knee, sustain the pace Burn wanted. Burn was skittish and full of notions this evening, thinking of one moment and the next, switching his tail and wanting to move, wanting wanting

  So he arranged his gear and made the weary effort to get up— aching in the arms, and the hand he used to grip with hurt like hell: probably, he thought, he hadn’t gotten all the splinter out.

  But he was glad not to walk, truth be told. Much as he’d tried to ignore the leg—his eyes watered once he’d gotten up and gotten relief from it. Burn struck a quicker pace than he could have held, and he let himself relax while Burn moved—in such intimate contact he heard the ambient as running through his own flesh and bone. He felt Burn’s muscle and movement, saw and smelled the snow thick on the evergreen boughs, white on dark, sweet on bright; heard fat flakes changing to sleet that rattled against the branches.

  Soft, soft sounds, cold, strange smells. Winter in the High Wild. The night was home and safe when he saw with Burn’s eyes and heard with Burn’s ears—they were one creature, the human drifting on a river of nighthorse senses, the horse remembering where he was going with human tenacity. Burn had struck his staying-pace, uncommonly determined, uncommonly spooky and… the feeling crept up Guil’s backbone… suddenly, strangely focused on something in the dark.

  Then, expected and unexpected in the night, they came on a structure of logs—deserted, by the feel of it: it was the shelter they were looking for.

  Thank God, he thought, as Burn walked up to it, ears forward. was definitely in the ambient now.

  Nobody home. Burn would have known. Guil winced his way down to the ground and, rifle in hand, waded through a shallow drift to the door, stiff now that he’d been off the leg for a while. He set the rifle against the wall, seeing that the latch-cord was out as it ought to be. He drew his pistol, he pulled the cord, the bar inside came up, and he kicked snow aside and dragged the door open— outward, as the latch-doors always opened.

  The dark inside was as cold as the snow-glow outside; but it felt empty. Burn put his head in past his shoulder and gave out his warning, to scatter any sleeping vermin that might have burrowed a way in—but what they were hunting, although it could mask itself as or even couldn’t manage a shelter door without human hands.

  No occupants. No pilfered supplies. He put the gun away and felt after an electric switch beside the door in the small hope one would be there—lately lowland shelters had installed batteried lights at the entry.

  No such luck.

  But the fireplace was always on the right of the entry, and he slung his gear aside, took out his waxed matches and sacrificed one in order to see the state of things in the fireplace.

  There was indeed a fire laid, stuffed with kindling—he spotted a slow match hanging from the mantel before his wooden match could die, snatched up the tarred braid and touched his failing light to the end before the heat got to his fingers.

  He unhooked the slow match from the nail then, bent down with a wince and a grimace and touched off the tinder, which was, thank God, dry. He pulled the chain to open the flue, and the gust from the door swept in along with a moving shadow and a slow thump of nighthorse hooves as Burn ambled into the shelter. The door banged back all the way, threatening the fire. Guil sprang up to reach outside, grab his rifle, grab the door and haul it shut against the wind.

  The latch dropped. The door sealed out the wind, but the single room had taken the cold into its wood and stone from long vacancy, and every surface was frozen cold, not tempting a man to take his hands out of his pockets or risk his nose above his scarf.

  In the light of the burning kindling Burn clumped over to the nearest bin, nosed it up, already looking for

  Guil imaged back, and squatted down by the fire to warm through his gloves and his layers of leather and wool.

  Burn insisted, gulping down grain, impervious to insult.

  He stayed where he was, finally feeling a little warmth through the chill. He knew that Aby had been here a number of times—he looked up at the rider board on the wall, an old and extensive one, and there, sure enough, were Aby’s marks among the others. She hadn’t been the last to visit here—the filled triangle and the X were probably the riders who’d regularly refurbished it: they were the most regular. But she’d been familiar with this place, very definitely, even from years ago when she’d first used to come up this way, a kid escorting the small supply missions and the phone crews.

  Her earliest jobs, the years they both had scrounged what hire they could.

  Then they’d gotten downright prosperous. They could turn down jobs. All but the best.

  If her presence lingered about here, he’d wish it could talk, or that she’d once, just once unbent and told him the few important words that would have made him understand the things she’d done.

  But what in hell was she doing with Hawley and Jonas? Leave Luke out of it. Luke was whatever Jonas wanted. But why tell the bank woman that Hawley was entitled? Had to have been the wrong question they were asking her.

  Burn brought his head up, came over and nudged him hard. “What was that for?” he asked. The sound of his own voice startled him. He didn’t use it often—only as often as Burn’s behavior defied imaging.

  Burn nudged him again, decided he was going to lick his sore leg—“Hell!” he said, fending off the help. Burn left wet, sticky grain on his trousers. And wasn’t helping.

  Burn imaged to him, then. And as sloppily licked his cheek. So Burn thought he was crazy. He rested his head against Burn’s
neck, arm on his shoulders, really, really wishing he could fall into the icy-blanketed cot over there and not move for two days.

  But a man—or a woman—paid out promises, or lived a liar.

  So supper and bacon it had to be.

  The snow came down in puffs and stuck, thick on the tall trees, making precariously balanced loads on branches that dumped down on rider and horse when they brushed beneath.

  Maybe they should camp for the night, Danny thought. They couldn’t see where they were going. He didn’t know what was behind Cloud’s insistence on moving. Trust your horse, he kept telling himself—and telling himself if there were anything out here in the dark he would know it through Cloud’s senses; but the tales he’d heard around the camp firesides said there were exceptions, that horses could be tricked, too, and walk right into traps, a sending so seamless and on so many levels that even a horse couldn’t see the lie in it.

  he thought, but Cloud kept going.

  Cloud paid no attention.

  He shifted his weight then, intending to make Cloud break stride, then to slide down. But Cloud gave a pitch of his hindquarters and imaged something so strange, so disquieting an impression of multiple minds that it sent chills down Danny’s back. He lost all inclination to get off.

  he insisted, but that feeling only grew, more and more distinct, like a swarming of half-crazed animal minds, Cloud hadn’t been carrying it on a conscious level: it was out there, and Cloud had just sopped it up and not reacted to it, not passed it even to the rider on his back. Being transparent, that was what the seniors called it. The predators were good at it. And he’d startled Cloud into at least a quiet, body-touching-body sending.

  “I don’t like this, Cloud. Wait. Stop.”

 

  “Cloud, stop!” He grabbed at Cloud’s mane mid-neck and pulled up, signaled with his legs, but Cloud ducked his head, jerking the mane out of his hand, and plowed ahead.

  Danny thought, and helplessly remembered:

  But Cloud sent and and carried him willy-nilly toward the chaos in Cloud’s thoughts.

  Maybe the rogue was calling to them. Maybe Cloud was going crazy himself. He didn’t know what to do. If he got off he couldn’t hold Cloud back at all. Cloud would be helpless, prey to whatever Cloud believed he was seeing.

  he sent.

  Suddenly walls appeared through the veil of falling snow, walls at the side of the road—

  And rising from inside those walls:

  Cloud sent of a sudden. And charged the open gates so suddenly that Danny scarcely grabbed a handful of mane.

  They burst through into a street still reeking of smoke, a street where vermin by the hundreds, black against the snow, swarmed from under Cloud’s charge, snarling and spitting and squalling as they fled the street for the porches, the porches for the shadows. Vermin poured over walls, ran down the street ahead of them, a hissing recalcitrance all up and down the street.

  Something sizeable went over the porch of a house near them, a house with what looked bodies lying on the porch. Scavengers scurried across the unmoving shapes and into the dark between the houses.

  was all Cloud’s sending.

  Danny sat paralyzed on Cloud’s back as Cloud paced down the street. There was no real defiance, no coming back at them—the scavengers rolled back like a black tide in the force of Cloud’s warning, willy-wisps running for cover, lorry-lies clambering up over the walls, flitting shadows diving off porches and under them and down the spaces between the houses.

  There was no horse present. No answer to Cloud’s challenge. Charred, skeletal timbers that had been buildings. The stench of smoke. A burned building standing next to a stone one that wasn’t touched at all, its windows appearing intact.

  Bodies—thick in some places, bodies and what was left of them, sometimes just gnawed pieces, animal or human, he wasn’t sure.

  A backbone that small teeth hadn’t taken apart turned up in the snow where something had dragged it and left it. For a second he wasn’t sure what it was. He’d not thought before what pieces would resist the scavengers longest—if a human or a horse went down out here. He’d not seen anything to match this destruction, not even from the images seniors carried with their stories—nothing, nothing this complete.

  “Anyone?” he called aloud, scared to make a noise. His voice sounded thin and strange in the snowy silence that had succeeded the hissing.

  He sent into the ambient, but he feared no villager holed up in any refuge would dare put their head up until they heard a human voice. “Hello! Anyone hear me? Call out! You don’t need to come outside—just yell! I’ll find you!”

  There wasn’t any sound. Scared, he thought, if anybody was alive—he’d endured only a few minutes of the scavenger babble before Cloud had sent them running; and he’d had a horse under him.

  Any survivor would have had to hold out sane—God, since he’d seen the images of the attack. The village had cried out into the ambient for help—with only the rogue to image for them. No one had come. No one had answered. There were supposed to be riders here. And they hadn’t saved the village.

  “Anyone?” he called out, louder. “I’m a rider up from Shamesey! Do you need help?” Stupid, stupid question. “God, —can anybody hear me?”

  He thought then that he did hear something, thin and far, he couldn’t be sure, except he thought he heard it through Cloud’s ears, too, and Cloud’s ears had pricked up.

  Then Cloud quickened his pace, imaging and and as he went—Cloud went as far as a building at the end of the street, and stopped, a shiver going up his leg, his head up, his ears up— Cloud maintained.

  But something else came through: and and and all jumbled up together.

  “Who’s in there?” Danny called out. “Come out! I’m right outside. It’s safe.”

  “We can’t,” a voice cried from inside. “We’re locked in. God, oh, God, get us out of here.”

  He wasn’t sure. He had no gun, he had no advice; he only had Cloud to keep vermin from going at his legs if there was anything lurking under that wooden porch, and if the rogue should come back—God knew what they could do, at this bottled-up end of the street and with the wide-open gate and escape far, far off at the other end.

  He was scared to go up the steps—he was scared to open the door; but he was scared to linger here, either, dithering while trouble could be making up its mind and coming toward them. He leaned on Cloud’s withers and slid down, climbed the snow-blanketed steps and tried the door.

  Latched. The paint was raked off the door and the door-frame, down to bare wood, the same spreading out over the wall and the storm-shutters. Several of the claw-marks were head-high, and deep.

  “Get us out! Please, let us out!”

  He didn’t know what to do. He didn’t want to raise a lot of racket. He called out, “Can you unlock the door?”

  “No,” one voice said, and, “Break it down,” the other called out. “Please. God, please! We’re locked in!”

  Images came at him, and in the ambient—>

  It was so real, for a moment Danny’s heart
reacted. He cast a look back at Cloud and down the street to see if any other source of that feeling was out there. Cloud snorted, circled out and back, fretting; but there wasn’t anything; it was Cloud hearing it and carrying it to him from inside the building.

  “Hell,” Danny muttered between his teeth, checked which way the door hinges were set—inward opening, which was only safe inside towns; and it was the only break he’d gotten. He rammed the door with his hip and felt play in it, hit it with his shoulder and finally, holding to the rail outside, hit it with his hip again, above the doorknob, over and over.

  Wood splintered. The door flew back too fast and banged half-shut again.

  “Oh, God,” a voice said. “We’re here! We’re here!”

  It was a house, maybe. But, walking in, he couldn’t see where he was. He took a match out of his pocket and lit it—saw bars in the back, two haggard faces behind them.

  God, it was the village jail.

  He didn’t want to let loose criminals—but—

  Did you leave anyone—any living creature—in a cage like this, to be eaten alive by things small enough to swarm through the bars?

  The match burned his fingers. He dropped it—saw it burning on the wooden floor and stamped it out.

  He saw in the last impression on his eyes, the lump that was a woman’s body. The sheen of gunmetal, all in the same memory of matchlight.

  Cloud was insistently and he imaged back, teeth chattering,

  “There’s a lamp,” one of the voices said. “On the table by the door.”

  “It went out,” the other said. “It burned out.”

  “It’s probably the wick. Try the wick!”

  He was far more interested in the gun he’d seen lying on the floor. But he wanted light to see what else he might be dealing with, and where shells and maybe food might be, if the vermin hadn’t gotten into this building, and by the evidence of two people alive, they hadn’t. He stripped off his right glove, felt after the lamp and, finding it, shook it.