Rider at the Gate

by C. J. Cherryh

  “A rogue horse is apt to want people. And they’re loud.” He was on the edge of what he knew about the subject, but the kid wanted comforting. “It could take an image right from your mind. It’d feel like somebody you knew. People paint their own images—the one they want most, the one they’re most afraid for. And a predator will pick it right up and give it back to you.”

  Carlo gave a fierce shake of his head. came into the ambient.

  Danny let out a slow breath, decided maybe after all Carlo knew what he was talking about.

  And he didn’t know why he’d found Didn’t understand Carlo Things were getting tangled. And he’d like answers.

  Carlo flinched, tucked his knee up fast, rested his chin on his hand and didn’t look at him. Lamplight glistened on Carlo’s eyes. Chin wobbled.

  “You have a good reason to shoot somebody?” Danny asked.

  —But you couldn’t tell what in a sending. Cloud couldn’t carry human voices yet in any way you could hear it, just the noise.

  But it looked like—house and family. It felt like house and family. He knew the scene when his own papa hit him. He flinched the same as Carlo and Randy flinched—but, damn, —he’d never shoot papa, he couldn’t do that—he loved him.

  Carlo got up in a hurry, scaring Cloud, who snaked out his neck and grabbed a mouthful of coat.

  <“Cloud!” Letting coat go. Boy standing. Still water.>

  Carlo didn’t stand. Carlo made it away into the shadows, to sit down on a coil of cable. He crouched there with his head in his hands and cried, great noisy sobs.

  Cloud thought, confused, thinking but no longer mad. Cloud knew he shouldn’t have hurt the boy. Cloud was upset, and stared at the boy, wide-nostriled, remembering because, dammit, he’d soaked Cloud’s shoulder a couple of times since they’d teamed up, especially when his father had announced to the neighborhood he was going to hell.

  Carlo—had done the unthinkable. No knowing why. Carlo was hurting—he was hurting all over the ambient, aching for what he’d done.

  “Calm it down,” Danny said. “You’re near a horse, dammit. Calm down.”

  “I shot him,” Carlo stammered. “I shot my f-f-father.”

  What did you say to a statement like that? What did you follow it with? He knew Carlo didn’t want to have shot anybody. The moment was there over and over again,
 
 

  He scared Carlo. Carlo looked up at him, stunned and shaken.

  “Horse,” Danny said. He was all but sure of it. “The horse was sending.”

  “What horse?”

  “The rogue. It was spooking around out there near the village when you had your quarrel. It was there. You know it was, but you don’t know you know. I’m hearing it in your memory. Only I’m a rider. I know what a horse sounds like. I know what I’m hearing in what you’re sending me.”

  Carlo wiped his face, still staring up at him out of the shadows, “I can’t send!”

  “You hear me real damn good,” Danny said, knowing he was laying it on thick and knowing he was out of his depth, but he couldn’t afford a kid going off the mental edge in this place. This was a kid who’d listened to the preachers. He’d been there, once, and he knew how to make it sound better, at least. “People don’t ever really send, you know that. Not even riders. We all say we do, but really only the horses hear us and pass things back and forth. Some people can hear better, or they think images better, or maybe they’re just quicker to put things into shape. A rider’s brain just sorts pictures out better than some—something like. That’s what I’ve heard, anyway. I’m not as good at it as some. But I can talk in words. I know riders you don’t hear two words out of in days. And I know how to pick out a rogue-sending. Trust me in that.”

  “My sister could hear the horses.” Carlo’s voice shook. was very strong. “She could hear them at night. She could hear spooks in the woods. Maybe it runs in the f-family.”

  Carlo didn’t like this sister, this sister There was a lot of anger there. A lot. And he had a damn scared kid on his hands.

  “I hate to say your sister was wrong,” Danny said. “But I don’t hear the horses all the time. If I’m far from Cloud—I don’t. She may have thought she did. If you hear one across town—that’s a real upset horse. A rogue—she’d maybe hear. But so did you, that’s the fact.”

  “I didn’t hear it when she left.”

  “Yeah, but you heard it later. And she was trying to hear, what I pick up from you. —Listen to me.” The kid was close to panic. His own nerves were shaky. He wanted it “Listen: that horse was hanging around. She left, right? Your family was upset. Nobody’s going to think straight when a crazy horse is pushing temper into the ambient. Listen, down in Shamesey they were shooting at people when the horses got upset, and there wasn’t any rogue, just a report of one being up here. I’m not saying there wasn’t any fault. I’m saying it went crazy like it did because you got a crazy horse sending like hell out there. It couldn’t hear you. But you could hear it, no trouble at all, and you could hear anybody who was with that horse. Sending’s the same as hearing. The same as hearing, do you hear me? You’re not going to hell.”

  Carlo’s jaw worked. Hard. Carlo took another swipe at his eyes with a hand shaking like a leaf.

  You couldn’t push the argument too far. For what he knew the kid was guilty as sin. But the hazard of the kid blowing up was an unease sitting like lead at the pit of his own stomach—and the ambient began to ease.

  “Want another beer?” Danny asked, and got up and filled Carlo’s mug from the keg.

  Carlo came and took it. Cloud came up behind him—

  Cloud gave him a sniff-over, trying to figure what was the matter with him. Carlo held his beer and stood very wisely quiet.

  Cloud went back to his ham-grease and biscuits.

  “Cloud protects me,” Danny said. “He’s making sure you’re not sick. They don’t understand everything we do. He wouldn’t like it if you were sick.”

  Carlo was shaking so he spilled beer on his hand.

  “You’re all right,” Danny said. “We’ll get out of here. You and the kid each with a rifle and a sidearm and supplies and all, I’ll walk you out to somewhere.”

  “There’s Verden.”

  “No village up here is real safe right now. This place at least isn’t real noisy in the ambient. The rogue may go for something louder. Or easier. We’re not going to open the gates.”

  “Our mother did it.”

  “What?”

  “Opened the village gate. She heard Brionne. She wanted Brionne.” Carlo sipped his beer, staring unblinkingly into it. Swallowed hard, as if that wasn’t all that was going down. “Brionne sure came home, didn’t she?”

  God, Danny thought, and didn’t say anything. The ambient for a second was full of

  Danny shoved at the ambient. “If we don’t hear anything, I figure we’ll go out tomorrow. I got a friend I’m trying to catch up with.”

  “From where?”

  “Shamesey.”

  “That’s where you’re from? Clear from there?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Him, too?”

  “Know it’s a him? Know it’s a rider?”

  “Yeah.” Carlo looked puzzled. “I mean, I guessed.”

  “What color’s his hair?”

  Carlo looked enti
rely uneasy. “Blond,” he said.

  “See?”

  “I don’t want to. God!” ‘

  “Yeah, I figure you don’t want to, but there isn’t any choice—if you come near a horse, you’re going to see things. You prime yourself to go toward my horse, you got it? Not away. If anything goes wrong, you don’t spook off on your own—it’ll get you sure. Same with Randy. You better listen real hard to the ambient and don’t be afraid of it. Drivers with a big truck around them, they can sort of ignore it and follow the rig in front, but on foot, you’re down there with the spooks and the vermin. —Hey. You got your brother for a responsibility. You’ll do it. You have to.”

  Carlo didn’t feel sure. Carlo stayed scared. But he looked aside at the sleeping boy, and said, finally, “Yeah.”

  “I got a kid brother, too,” Danny said, which was about as sentimental as he meant to get. But Carlo Goss was pulling together real well. Real well. He hoped it lasted.

  “Yeah,” Carlo said again, and went and got another beer.

  Couldn’t blame him. Carlo was getting wobbly on his feet with two. But there wasn’t damned much—

  Cloud’s head came up. Stark, concentrated look toward the wall. Toward the outside.

  Not a sending. Somebody was out there, or the wind was moving a door in all that quiet.

  From up the street, not down. But nobody could be stirring out there. It felt like a presence. It kept shifting.

  Shifting. A horse. A rider. Side of the camp.

 

  Shit!

  He grabbed his coat and hauled it on in feverish haste—the coat first, because you couldn’t aim worth a damn shaking your teeth out. He pulled on his gloves, he grabbed the rifle.

  Carlo and Randy were

  “You got a handgun,” Danny said. He was scared himself, but he had to move too fast to think on it.

  “Don’t go out there,” Carlo begged him. “Please don’t go out.”

  “That’s a gate open. Somebody’s out there. If they open the big gate, we could have the damn rogue in our laps. You stay here. The kid’s passed out. You stand over him. You know what the marshal’s wife did. Just don’t be too early—or too late.”

  “Yeah.” Carlo’s teeth were chattering. Danny went to the door and Cloud followed him, ears up.

  It didn’t feel like Cloud was

  Cloud saw in the ambient.

  Danny thought, and with his heart in his throat opened their makeshift latch and went out onto the porch in the dark.

  was standing in the middle of the street. Pistol levelled at The gun lowered. Slowly.

  “Everybody all right?” Danny asked. He thought there might be more than one in the ambient—he wasn’t sure.

  Jonas had been scared. Jonas Westman—had just been Jonas walked across the snow-covered street toward him,

  “There’s ham and biscuits,” Danny said, very pleased to be able to say that to this man, coolly, in full ownership of the premises and the situation. “It’d take me about fifteen minutes, supper in hand. Or if you’d rather—”

  “You left the rider gate open.”

  Trust Jonas to land on the one mistake. “Hope you closed it.”

  “Stuart with you?”

  As if he couldn’t be where he was without senior help. “Haven’t seen him. You?”

  “No luck,” Jonas said.

  He hadn’t quite meant to let that insolent query hit the ambient. But there it was, edged with hostility.

  Jonas didn’t take alarm.

  Carlo was behind him. With that three-sixty degree, back of his head surety of multiple riders restored to him, Danny thought about About About and and Jonas walked on down the street to let his partners and Shadow in. Jonas went out of Cloud’s range and into Shadow’s, he was sure by the way Jonas vanished into there-and-not-there presence.

  He hadn’t thought He resolved he wasn’t going to. He picked up Carlo’s confusion, turned and pushed Carlo back into the warmth and the light.

  “That your friend?” Carlo asked.

  “Did it feel like it?”

  “No,” Carlo said.

  “Friends of my friend. Real sons of bitches. But they’re all right sons of bitches. They’re high country riders. Borderers. We’ve got help.”

  Carlo didn’t quite seem to trust it. Carlo stayed scared, and worried about

  “I’m not going to tell him. It could slip—won’t guarantee that it won’t. But village law’s not rider law.” He had a thought and got Carlo’s attention with a knuckle against the arm. “These guys? Don’t let them bluff you.”

  Carlo didn’t like to hear that. He cast a nervous glance as if he could still see Jonas.

  “They’ll try,” Danny said. “They’re not leaving you and the kid here. Or if they do—depend on it, I’m not running. Think of if they think about it. You don’t have to say a thing. Think They’ll hate it like sin.”

  They made biscuits—Carlo had never cooked in his life, but he tried; Randy waked with all the commotion and sat up bleary-eyed.

  “Riders are here,” Carlo told him. “We’re going to be all right, Randy. You hear?” Randy sat there looking numb and shaky, maybe a little sick from the beer—the ambient was queasy and scared, but Cloud wouldn’t put up with it. Cloud thought and and Cloud wasn’t happy with the arrival.

  Going to be all right was a little early, too. Cloud’s rider didn’t count on it, because Jonas was an argumentative son of a bitch and Cloud’s rider wasn’t going to take it.

  Well, Cloud’s rider thought—maybe Danny Fisher could tuck down a little and listen to Jonas, whose disagreeable advice had kept him alive. He’d learned a bit. He’d been desperate enough to learn, and he could try being—not ducked down and quiet, but maybe not quite so touchy.

  He didn’t have to feel as if Jonas was threatening him. He’d had guns aimed at him. Jonas was a lot different.

  Jonas, who was coming in asking for supper and shelter in what was, Jonas could figure, his camp, which he’d set up and where Jonas was asking charity.

  Cloud was first in. Boss horse. Cloud should be but the store was and if Shadow had in mind.

  He’d fairly well built the picture when assorted footsteps arrived on the porch and Jonas’ bunch knocked, wanting entry.

  Danny opened the door. “Pretty crowded in here. Room and food for your horses if they’re quiet.”

  came back to him, from at least a couple of the horses in the street. Heads were up and nostrils working, in that veil of snow. Jonas was his sullen self, but Luke and Hawley looked exhausted.

  “Come on in,” Danny said, and held the door, imaging

  “Were you here when it happened?” Jonas asked, taking off his hat.

  “They were.” Danny nodded toward the two boys, and made the introductions: “Jonas Westman, Luke Westman, Hawley Antrim— Carlo and Randy Goss. Only ones alive. Their sister Brionne’s on the rogue.”

  That got attention. Hats that had been coming off in courtesy to the house got tucked in hand and everybody stared at Carlo and Randy for a heartbeat, then wanted

  He filled in the blonde hair, the red coat, the fact it was a kid looking for dead parents.

  “Shit,” Hawley said. Hawley was upset. Something ab
out that went blurred as Hawley’s thinking skittered away to

  Jonas bumped Danny’s arm. “Kid opened the gates?”

  He didn’t want to think. He didn’t. He said, “Carlo, ham’s burning.” It wasn’t. But it was close. Cloud was on the far side of the room, by the cold locker door; Cloud was closest to the stove, and put his nose out, smelling The other horses were near the door, crowded in the narrow room, growing argumentative; but human presence gave them no more room.

  “Kids are upset enough,” Danny said under his breath, and Jonas didn’t push it. “Bad time,” Danny amplified the image of But Jonas had seen it.

  “You shouldn’t have left that side gate. The outside rider gate was standing open wide.”

  Damn. But he had it coming. Jonas was telling him what he had done that was stupid. That wasn’t an unfriendly act in this country.

  “Yeah,” he said. “I didn’t think. I knew it the second I knew somebody was there. Scared hell out of me.”

  Jonas was standing close in the crowded quarters. Jonas laid a hand on his shoulder, squeezed it. He wasn’t sure he liked it, wasn’t sure what it meant. Jonas had turned his back and gone over to investigate the stovetop cooking, where Carlo looked to have too few hands available for too many pans and Danny still wondered what that had meant—from Jonas’ disposition. Hawley was sitting on a barrel, the source of a glum pressure in the ambient: upset with what he’d seen outside in the street and trying to keep it quiet.

  Luke—Luke was sitting on pile of sacks talking to Randy, asking him questions in Luke’s quiet way. Randy sneezed, exhausted, probably sick from the beer, and stared at Luke somewhere between reassured and scared: too many horses, besides which Shadow and Cloud together weren’t an easy presence in a confined space.

  But four horses, four armed riders and two village boys, well-armed and fed, holding a wide walled perimeter with a lot of fuel against the cold were much better odds than he’d hoped for against the rogue. They didn’t need another village until spring, if they had to hold out.