Rider at the Gate

by C. J. Cherryh

  There was a little slosh left, a very little. He shook it and tipped it to get oil up onto the wick—took the chimney off and, blind, turned the key to raise the unburned wick—a lot of it.

  He spent a match. The dry, charred end of the wick went in a tall, extravagant flame, and the oiled part stayed lit as the rest fell away in ash.

  He looked across the room—saw a woman’s body, grisly damage to the jaw from a gunshot, blood and bits of flesh spattering the walls.

  Rifle on the floor, under her.

  Not men. Two scared kids behind the bars—kids maybe not as old as he was, no coats, clothes blood-spattered, faces gaunt and eyes bruised from want of sleep—

  “There’s a key!” one told him, teeth chattering, and pointed through the bars. “In the drawer. In the desk drawer, get the key—”

  “We told her come in with us, we begged her lock the door and get behind the bars, but they were all over the porch—”

  The kid lost his voice. The other babbled out: “They kept jumping at the door, trying to get in—”

 

 

  They began babbling, trying to tell him something, he couldn’t even track what it was, except desperation to be out of there. He searched the drawer, and the key they claimed was there—wasn’t. He found a box of shells, and set that on the desk. He kept looking, disarranged the desktop clutter, and found it.

  “That’s it, that’s it!” the boys cried, and the younger-looking started sobbing—then yelped as a heavy body trod the steps outside and stopped as the steps creaked.

  was Cloud’s opinion of the porch. Cloud didn’t want to risk it, and Danny didn’t want him trying: he thought; and with a shudder he bent to take up the rifle from under the dead woman. He had to tug the stock from under her leg.

  “Who was she?”

  “Peggy Wallace,” one answer came hoarsely. And: “The marshal’s wife,” the older boy said. “Tara Chang—one of the riders—she came. She wanted the marshal. Then—there were shots outside. There went on being shots—”

  “It was a rogue,” the younger said, between chattering teeth. “Rogue horse.”

  He was increasingly uneasy with every passing moment he was out of Cloud’s immediate reach. He had a gun in one hand. He picked up the box of shells, checked the caliber, found they matched and stuffed them in his pocket.

  “You’ve got to let us out!” the younger said.

  And the other: “Look, look, —I’m the one who belongs in here, my brother doesn’t. He didn’t do anything. I did. God, he’s only fourteen. Get him out of here.”

  “You’re both going,” Danny said, before the younger could set up a howl. “Wouldn’t leave a dead pig for the spooks. But you listen to me, do exactly what I say, and if I say move, you move, and if I say shut up, you shut up, and you don’t mess with my horse. He’ll kill you quicker than you can see it coming, you hear me? He’s not used to strangers. So you be real quiet and real fast to do what I say. Or you’re spook-bait. You got that clear?”

  “Yes,” the answer was, both of them shaking-scared and throwing off that didn’t have a source or a point—it washed out their thoughts in a jumble of images and the and

  His hand shook shamefully just getting the key in the lock. He shoved it in, turned it, and as he pulled the door open, the boys came pushing each other out—neither of them having a coat against the winter around them, no sweaters, no gloves, no light or heat. They’d had two blankets and each other, that was the only reason they hadn’t frozen when the heat died. Their shuddery breath frosted in the air.

  “You get those blankets,” Danny said. “You’ll need everything we can find. I’ll get you out of here.”

  “The rogue’s out there!”

  “It’s not out there—but the gate’s open. It could have come in here any time it wanted. We’ve got my horse with us. We’re all right so long you do what I tell you and do it fast.”

  “We got to find mama,” the younger said. “Carlo, we’ve got to find mama—”

  “No chance,” Danny said brutally, but there wasn’t any faking it. He thought about the street and it probably carried. The kids reflected something back so scared, so full of blood and terror and sense of being stalked that he couldn’t get an image through it and didn’t have time to try. “Everyone’s gone or dead. We can probably find things the spooks didn’t get, but it’s not safe out there. I don’t want to get boxed in this far down the street. I want nearer that gate—if we can find anything left.”

  “It couldn’t get in,” the older—Carlo—said. “It went all around the place—”

  “It’s Brionne,” the younger broke in. “It was Brionne.”

 
 
 

  “Don’t tell him!” the younger cried, shaking at Carlo’s arm. “Don’t tell him, don’t think it, don’t think about it! He can hear you!”

  “Kid’s right,” Danny muttered. He didn’t like Cloud outside alone right now the way he didn’t like the idea that Carlo’d shot a man. “What you did to get locked up—I don’t give a damn. We got to get a place we can hold out.” There had to be a lot of supplies and equipment in the village that the vermin hadn’t gotten. Guns. Shells. Knives. All the resources a village had inside it were still here. Had to be. He didn’t like taking stuff from dead people—but he wasn’t riding away from guns and shells and food that could make a difference in their survival, either.

  And if they could find a hidey-hole he liked the look of, they could tuck into it until he could get sorted out. The village gate out there hadn’t looked to be damaged—just standing open.

  Spooks could go over a wall. A horse couldn’t. A horse could trick you and spooks calling to you could make you open a door— but the rogue for all its strength couldn’t get in and it couldn’t for all its power make these kids open the bars without a key. That was why they were alive.

  “Woman saved your lives,” he said to them, searching the cabinet for shells. And found another box. “She could’ve been a fool and opened that front door. Bars wouldn’t stop the little ones. They’d have got you. She knew she was going to do it and she shot herself instead. You don’t ever forget that woman’s name, you. Hear me?“

  The older one held onto the younger. The younger kid was crying. He guessed by that he’d scared them enough—but she’d been a woman with the guts to stop it all when she started going under its influence. The only better thing she could have done was come in with them, shut the doors and throw the key out, if she’d had her head clear.

  But no question, once the spooks started clawing at that door, she was lucky to have found the trigger once.

  With the time the spooks had had to do their work, not likely that the marshal or anybody else in this village was going to turn up out of some similar hidey-hole—the luck to have a door you couldn’t open yourself wasn’t going to be general. He didn’t know about this Tara Chang the kid talked about, Senior rider, if he had to guess. No sign of her or the rest of the riders—no help from that quarter. Not if that gate was standing open.

  He brought the kids outside—they balked when they saw Cloud waiting, and Cloud snorted and laid down his ears.

  “You be polite,” Danny said in as stern a tone as he had. “He’s not used to village kids. His name is Cloud. You let him smell yo
u over. You think nice thoughts about him and me, you hear? Hold out your hands, let him smell them. That way he won’t mistake you for spooks.”

  They were scared to death. They thought but they came down the steps and, the older boy first, held out their bare hands. Cloud sniffed and snorted, threw his head away from them, and wanted

  He wanted But he didn’t think, on a second, queasy thought, that he wanted to let Cloud do the guiding— Cloud having no fastidiousness about some things, and there being pieces of human beings in the streets. He thought instead about and hoping the vermin hadn’t gotten everything, and a thought came into his head—he was sure it was the boys—telling him exactly which building would have that kind of thing.

  Most urgent of everything— Once they did that, inside, they could get some distance from the walls, at least, with Cloud’s help, enough to keep from mental confusion coming at them from the spooks outside.

  He didn’t know, as tired and sore as he was, if he could get up to Cloud’s back on one try, with the rifle and all. But he wasn’t giving the only gun to two jailed kids to hold. He wanted and he cheated a mount off the bottom step—made a fairly senior-style landing on Cloud’s back, rifle in hand and all.

  Then he told Cloud and Cloud set out at a fair pace down the street. The boys hurried after, wrapped in their blankets, having to run to keep up—and by the time they’d reached the gate and he’d slid down again to heave the huge door shut, the boys were still halfway back along the street.

  He shoved the gate, the truck-sized door needing no small push against the accumulation of snow. He brought it to, and the bar dropped, comforting thump.

  They were in sole possession, he supposed. He had a look about the gates, checked the latch—felt Cloud bristle up with warning as the boys came running up, gasping and terrified.

  “We’re all right,” he said to them. “Gate’s shut. If we don’t open it, nothing can. We just stay far from the walls. What village is this, anyway?”

  “Tarmin,” Carlo gasped shakily. “This is Tarmin village.”

  The biggest. The most people. The place you’d run to for help. All dead.

  But maybe not all dead. Other, awful possibilities came to him as he looked back along the snowy, devastated street.

  “Can you think of any other places where somebody couldn’t get out?” Worse and worse thoughts. “Any sick folk? Any old people, crippled people—any babies?”

  There were. There had been. The boys were well aware who and where—they were worried, they were sickened at what they saw, and scared, not feeling like outlaws and killers at all; he, God help him, didn’t want to do this. He really didn’t. But when they started telling him where people lived, and thinking of houses, it was clear they knew their village: came to him in confused fashion, an aching fear for specific faces they knew and feared were

  At least it wasn’t hard to find a sidearm—he could take his pick, once he began to walk about among the remains. People had come out with guns, they’d died with guns in their hands, all up and down the street. He kept his rifle in the crook of his arm, and walked back along the street with the boys in tow, Cloud following close. He scavenged a pistol and holster just lying in a bloody jacket.

  He gave the jacket to the older boy. He kept the pistol. They found scarves, hats, a lot of them chewed. A coat for the younger kid—and a gun. The older boy hesitated at it, afraid to make the move. Danny took it, checked to see it was loaded, and gave it to him.

  “Don’t make a mistake. Hear? I’ll nail you.”

  The kid didn’t say anything. But the boy wasn’t thinking hostility, either. He was thinking mostly about his kid brother, and

  They went from house to house, after that, and they called out at every house. Danny imaged as loud as Cloud could make him; but Cloud didn’t smell anything he liked in those houses.

  Danny imaged, but he didn’t get answers.

  They’d done all they could, he told himself. They forced the door to the village store open, and it wasn’t touched. He got a flashlight and some batteries, and he kept thinking about and the couple of places they’d tried the hardest.

  So he went out again, took the boys with him for backup, and with the boys staying on the porches, he went into open doors with his torch in one hand, and a pistol in the other, went into upstairs halls while Cloud was sending his image downstairs. He looked in the shut rooms—in one house where the boys said there was a sick old man who couldn’t get out of his bed.

  That was bad. That was really bad.

  And inside one after the other of the houses where they said there were babies—he saw enough to last him. Parents had run to hold their kids when the panic hit. They’d opened the doors to help their neighbors. That was all they needed to do.

  You learned to damp things down when you worked with the horses. You learned just—see colors. Patterns. No emotional stuff. You could see anything. It didn’t kill you. Blood was blood, you had it, they had it, bone was bone, everybody was made of it.

  He went down the steps, of the last one, the one he’d had to talk himself into—cold, numb. Cloud wanted Cloud wanted because Cloud’s rider was upset; but there was nothing available to fight.

  A support post got in his way as he came out onto the porch. He swung on it with the flashlight hard enough he bent the barrel at an angle and killed the light. The boys didn’t ask what he’d found.

  He walked. He didn’t want contact with Cloud for a while. Cloud walked near him, mad and snappish. The boys must have sensed it, because they trailed along out of reach.

  They went back to the store. That was the best place. The only one with no bodies and no blood.

  * * *

  Chapter xix

  « ^ »

  THEY WERE THE BLACKSMITH’S SONS. THEIR NAMES WERE CARLO and Randy Goss. And beyond that it was hard to get all the story. They brought Cloud up the low porch of the grocery—the flashlight, by some wonder, still almost worked, at least so they could get an oil lantern lit, and by that light they started a fire in the ironwork stove. It had been dark when the trouble came, the store was shut—the grocer lived next door, the boys said; the door over there had been open, but this one had a keyed lock, and there was no need, Danny agreed with the boys, to open the door into the house.

  The awful thing, where they’d been and what they’d seen, was having an appetite. But Cloud wasted no time—Cloud was interested immediately in the cold-locker, not an ears-down kind of notice, but was in his thoughts, and Danny held the pistol on the door while Carlo and his brother opened it.

  It was hams. Hams and packets of other stuff. Cloud started imaging and Danny didn’t think he could stand it, but Cloud wanted it, and with the whole store filled with supplies, they didn’t have to save anything. There were unseasoned iron pans the store had sold. There was the makings for biscuits. Danny stirred up soda biscuits and had the boys slice up the ham and put it in the skillet so they could at least make a start on Cloud’s appetite.

  And by the time the biscuits were cooking on the edge of the stove Cloud was completely occupied watching No extraneous thoughts from Cloud—Cloud dominated the ambient, Cloud wanted and that was what was in the ambient—Cloud’s stupid rider finally figured out why they were ravenously hungry and why he found himself heaving a tired sigh and why the boys had tried to nip a little scrap of ham that floated free in the pan. Cloud had no squeamishness and no remorse.

  And no fondness for thieves.

  “That’s Cloud’s,” Danny said. “Cloud gets peeved if you steal his supper.”

  That bro
ught a sullen look.

  “You want a mad horse or a happy horse inside this little place with us?” Danny put it to them. “You cut some more ham right now. We’ll get ours.”

  Carlo took a cue fast. The younger kid whined. Carlo hit him with his elbow, said, “Man’s telling you,” and sliced more ham.

  Man, Danny thought. Man. Was that what he looked like to these kids?

  Damn fool, if he let that reaction get into the air. He checked on the biscuits, decided with Cloud involved, he’d better make more biscuits. It wasn’t real good for Cloud to eat nothing but ham, Cloud’s ambitions to the contrary—it was a lot of what the horse doctors called foreign stuff for him. But Cloud tolerated biscuits just fine.

  Cloud didn’t mind Cloud thought they were good with

  So they settled down on supply sacks in a fire-warmed room and cooked panful after panful of ham, stuffed themselves, stuffed Cloud (harder task) and washed it all down with lowland draft beer, which the boys had never had. The older was smart with it and sipped.

  The younger, Randy, gulped his like water and passed out on the sacks after one mug…

  Carlo said, after a moment of quiet,

  “Got to thank you.”

  “Couldn’t leave you,” he said.

  “You didn’t say your name.”

  “Danny—Dan Fisher.” He’d lost that chance. Damn. And he needed authority with these kids, for their collective safety. “I felt the rogue attack. Long way off. But I couldn’t tell where it was, or even what it was, at least when it started.”

  “My sister,” Carlo began, and trailed off into a long silence, something about a rider den and a stocky man and a leather-jacketed rider that looked like this Tara Chang that Carlo had already talked about.

  “Your sister’s a rider.”

  “No. She wanted to be. She ran off. And it was her with the rogue. I know it was her. I could feel it. I could see it, right through the walls. She was looking for papa. She kept calling and calling for papa—”