Rider at the Gate

by C. J. Cherryh

  Cloud didn’t disagree.

  Then somebody fired a shot that rang far off across the mountainside, and they stopped still.

  Second shot, from out there.

  Distance made them blind and deaf to the origin—the mountain echoed it until even Cloud didn’t know where it was.

  He waited for a third shot. It didn’t come. The boys were But was in Randy’s thoughts. The brothers didn’t want that. The darkness that had been around the image last night wasn’t there, this time.

  was there.

  “Cut it out,” Danny said sharply, “shut down. Quiet, dammit. It’s probably just Jonas signaling he’s coming back. Maybe he’s bringing Stuart.”

  He fervently hoped so. More, he hoped they’d just shot the rogue, and that the boys’ blonde sister was coming back with them, and they’d find Stuart, and they’d tell Harper go to hell and take his sad stories with him.

  Cloud stayed beside him as they went to the gate—closed and latched the door on the store while they were at it, because the boys had left it wide open, let all the heat out and burned up a load of wood besides endangering their supplies—“Sorry,” Carlo said. But he didn’t blame the boys, and latched it and went on.

  They didn’t go into the gate house. Randy thought they should go in where it was warmer, and set up a fuss about it—but Danny said a flat no, and tried not to image what was in there. He climbed up to the tower and down again when he found he couldn’t see anything better in the blowing snow—if he’d gone up there he couldn’t have gotten a clear target anyway; so everything about his plan was stupid, and he came back down to Carlo and Randy fast, before they got to investigating anything in the gate house.

  He tried not to think about while he was doing it. But there were. Bones and dead people were all up and down the street. The snow was just covering them, that was all, burying them

  And he wished—he prayed to the God who didn’t hear riders— that Jonas would find Stuart and get him back here so they could all be safe and the senior riders would know what to do to save their lives.

  He’d only covered his mistakes. He didn’t know who he’d shot, he didn’t know anything: he was down to admitting that, even to himself.

  * * *

  Chapter xx

  « ^ »

  THE AMBIENT WAS CLEAN NOW. THE SNOW AND THE TREES WERE A silence no other presence breached.

  Guil thought. He’d long since slid down from Burn’s back and walked beside Burn, Burn with head hanging, still coughing occasionally from the cold air. Moisture from Burn’s jaws, frozen on his chest, glistened in the blued grey of the snowfall. Burn still kept expecting his rider’s expectation to the contrary.

  But there wasn’t any safety in lingering. Guil kept a hand on Burn’s side, he imaged. and he tried not to think beyond that, or to wonder about human motives, because Burn was taking in everything and he couldn’t stop it.

  They’d gone off the road. They came down to it again, both still walking. It didn’t take hard guessing—just careful footwork on the steeps, and down again in the same direction. No knowing whether Jonas was following them or not.

  But he’d heard faint shots back in the direction of the walls, and another couple closer, that he thought might be the searchers signaling each other—they weren’t close enough to be firing at him, but that didn’t mean safety.

  Jonas had yelled at him to come back, called him a fool.

  And maybe he was. Maybe there was a real good explanation—like a nervous guard. But shooting at him wasn’t confidence-inspiring.

  Most of all, he didn’t know what in hell Jonas was doing sitting in a village surrounded by tattered scavengings, after he’d shown no sign of coming up here.

  He damn sure wasn’t going to risk Burn going back to give them another try. And considering things Jonas hadn’t told him about Aby’s dealings back at Shamesey gate, he wasn’t at all sure what had made Jonas take another trip up the mountain.

  Jonas had gotten his convoy to Shamesey. He was free to go back with no one knowing—or giving him specific orders, unless he’d also gotten them from Cassivey; and he didn’t think so.

  Jonas was much more distinguished by what he hadn’t done: Jonas hadn’t come out that night to bring him what was his at Shamesey gate.

  Jonas hadn’t said—I’ll go with you up the mountain, Guil.

  Jonas hadn’t said, in sum, anything about his gear, the bank account, Hawley, the gold shipment, or his own intentions to be here.

  Jonas had wanted around him, and not given him damned much at Shamesey—just walled himself off and tried to bottle up the rogue-feeling so it didn’t spread: that was a service, but it was, as they said in the hills, a real cold supper. He didn’t say he’d have been more in control of himself at Shamesey if Jonas had given him even an I’m sorry; but Jonas hadn’t buffered anything he gave him: just—flung it at him. “Aby’s dead, Guil.”

  Now did Jonas come to help?

  Hell.

  Jonas knew about the gold, was one good bet.

  But—that came back to the same question: what in hell did a rider do with that kind of money? A village could steal that much. A village could loot the truck. A rider couldn’t find anything to do with it, couldn’t be safe if he had that kind of stash, couldn’t keep from rousing curiosity if he didn’t work—and had the better things that money could buy. There was no damn way he could use the pure metal for one thing. He’d have to fake nuggets or corrupt an assayer, —or somebody he’d forever be vulnerable to. It wasn’t something a rider would do.

  Get himself in good with Cassivey? Get Aby’s job? That was much more likely.

  That was a rider motive.

  He checked Burn over head to hoof and head to tail once they reached the level ground of the roadway, in case Burn should have been hit or cut in their mad dash away from Tarmin and neither of them know it. Burn was his only worry. Burn’s welfare and the quiet of the mountainside was the only thing that occupied his brain: they were all that had to make sense at the moment.

  Burn was wanting but Burn was running on fragile strength right now, too, having carried him much more than Burn ordinarily would. They’d gone since dawn; they’d had one real night of rest since the climb up; somebody, most likely Aby’s summer’s-end partners and the cousin who’d raided their bank account, had shot at them for reasons he still didn’t figure; and until things made better sense to an aching head and a tired body, he figured to stay ahead of the questions and just take care of the business he’d come to do: get the rogue that was surely responsible for the scavenged remains and dead horse he’d seen back there at the rider-shelter, and then figure whether or not to talk to Jonas.

  Then let Jonas keep Hawley Antrim out of his reach. And let him explain the situation at Tarmin village.

  There were, in his mental map of the lower side of the Tarmin road, two shelters available, one midway, one just short of the Climb that went up the steep to the High Loop. The middle one they could make. They could do it, just hit a staying pace and keep moving.

  Meanwhile the snow was coming down thick. It melted on Burn’s overheated back as fast as it fell, sticking on Burn’s mane and making a fair blanket on his black hide in only the time he’d stood still being checked over. The track they’d plowed downhill was fast vanishing under new snowfall.

  He walked, Burn beside him.

 
 
 

  th his edges crimped in real tight, same with Luke, and Hawley a lump of grief behind him.> Hawley was the one who’d felt something when they broke the news. Hawley at least had cared.

  Hawley hadn’t said about the money. Though, granted, Hawley wasn’t damned bright: Aby’s mother’s half-sister must’ve screwed a post to get Hawley—he’d maintained that for years. Aby’d argued he wasn’t that dim, but, damn, he’d far undershot it. Hawley pulling what he’d pulled at the bank—God, what did you do with a man like that?

  He wanted to pound Hawley’s head in right now, if only because Hawley was the easiest problem to puzzle out, and probably the one of the three with no malice: Hawley got ideas and got himself in trouble, not thinking things through, not remotely adding it up why he was going to make people mad. You wanted to beat his head in, but you didn’t somehow ever get around to doing it, because to make it worth a human being’s time, Hawley had to understand why you were mad at him—and, dammit, you had a better chance explaining morals to a lorry-lie.

  At least you knew where Hawley was on an issue. You could even call him honest, he was so stupid about his pilfering.

  Jonas, on the other hand—if Jonas was coming up here with honest intentions, meaning nothing else on his mind than paying debts to Aby, it needed more reasons than he’d ever pried out of the man. Shadow was a spooky, chancy horse, and Jonas was that kind of a man—you had to get Luke alone and a few beers along if you wanted the truth. Jonas and that horse were both spooks. In a minute and twice on a weekday, yes, Jonas would opt to keep the truth to himself. Jonas, even to his partners, especially to outsiders to that threesome, parted with information the way a townsman parted with cash money, piece at a time, and always, always to Jonas’ advantage.

  Jonas always did his job. Letter of the contract. Depend on it.

  Jonas come up here out of belated remorse? Loyalty? —Friendship? Not to him.

  And where was Hawley, if Jonas was involved?

  Hell, ask Jonas what Hawley thought. Hawley always did.

  crept up into Cloud’s awareness, first, a noisy presence through the palisade walls and the gate.

  Danny imaged hard, the instant he picked up Jonas’ party at all.
 
 

  appeared almost immediately after had to be that disturbance around them. Cloud snorted and wasn’t sure he wanted them back, but the boys were glad enough to realize they weren’t on their own any longer. And—which he had trouble admitting—he was.

  “Is that the riders?” Carlo wanted to know without his saying anything. “Is that Jonas? Are you warning them?”

  “Yeah,” he said, trying to steady down his images and his nerves before he had to deal with Jonas.

  “Are they coming back?” Randy wanted to know—Randy had a sore cheek, but Randy wasn’t hurt otherwise, and Randy had maybe learned to stay away from a horse when there was something you didn’t want shouted to minds all over the area. Randy had figured a number of things out, maybe, and at least wasn’t mad at him anymore.

  “Yeah, they’re coming in. I don’t think Harper’s stayed around in range, or he’s real quiet out there.” He put a hand on Randy’s shoulder and squeezed, feeling the shivery excitement in Randy’s mind. “Just calm down. If you want to go around horses you have to keep it down all the time, all right?”

  “Yeah,” Randy said; and took a deep breath. “Are they going to shoot? Are they going to find this Harper guy?”

  “Just be ready to open the gate,” Danny said to the boys; he kept thinking of and ambush. “Fast.”

  But was gone from the ambient and had been since the gunshot at the gate, spooked out, elusive as any four-footed ghosty.

  “Have they found the man?” Randy asked. “The man Harper was shooting at?”

  “Stuart?” he said. “No, the blurry one’s probably Jonas. He’s not real noisy. They’re coming up on the gates. Be ready. They’ll come in and we shut it behind them fast as we can. Harper’s a coward. He’ll lie low if he’s outnumbered. But he could try shooting at them.” He was sending as clearly as he could—he couldn’t put any time sense with it, he couldn’t tell Jonas it was now and not then he was worried about.

  Randy handled the latch, and he and Carlo hauled at the door, moving a blanket of snow along with it. They hauled hard, making a horse-wide fan of it as Luke and then Hawley rode in, their faces stung red with cold above their scarves, snow thick on them and their horses. Then Jonas came in last and

  “Harper was here!” Danny said. “Harper and Quig. We shot at them.”

  “Explains the gunshot,” Jonas said, and slid down.

  “What about Stuart?”

  “Man’s a damn spook,” Jonas said. “Couldn’t stop him. Wouldn’t listen.”

  “He thinks we were shooting at him,” Luke said. “Lit out up and over a slope somewhere—couldn’t track him in this stew.”

  came through. So did the fear of

  And from Hawley, Danny thought, the more pleasant image of

  Jonas asked.

 

  He didn’t want to confess how entirely stupid he’d been, but was something Jonas needed to know.

  “Hit him?”

  “Could have. Could have hit Quig. That’s the other guy. But I’m not sure.”

  “You’d know,” Jonas said matter of factly, and the ambient went queasy with while Jonas’ personal shell around it was cold as ice. Jonas took his hat off and dusted it against his leg. “Get us inside. Damn near frozen.”

  was Burn’s judgment on the situation, and Guil patted Burn on the neck as he walked beside him, too numb and too sore to be coherent.

  Snowed on. Shot at. Chased. Yelled at for a spooky fool. His feet were numb. His head hurt.

 
  Burn snorted, shook his neck, throwing off a warning to the neighborhood — a dangerously loud sending out into the ambient, considering the danger they knew was on the loose up here.

  But Burn always thought he owned the territory. Guil caught a fistful of mane in the middle of Burn’s neck and yanked it to distract him from challenging everything in reach.

  He was still damned mad.

  Wouldn’t really have thought it of Jonas — wouldn’t have thought that Jonas would miss, for one thing, but the snow had been blowing hard. Gust of wind, snow in the eyes… nobody was perfect.

  Or it could have been an overexcited villager, thinking that he was the rogue: spooked villagers could shoot at any damn thing they thought they saw.

  Could have, could have. The fact was Aby was dead and he didn’t know he was in any sense justified in his increasingly dark suspicions of Jonas — but somewhere between the headache and the ache in his leg, he was on the irrational edge of very damned mad.

  Give Jonas credit—he’d lay odds Hawley hadn’t run straight to inform his partners about the bank. On a day in town with the horses a long way off, even dimbrain Hawley could conceivably have done something Jonas and Luke didn’t know about.

  And ask where Hawley put the funds—maybe the cold air was waking his brain up—but he bet to hell there was another bank account. Hawley Antrim could have one. The bank women didn’t ask about brains, just if you had money. Hawley could have put most of it right back in his account, right there in
Anveney.

  And ask why Aby had used a bank at Anveney—and why Hawley knew it.

  She hadn’t been able to level with her partner—that was what. She’d hammered home to her partner that the account existed and he should use it. He hadn’t known—God!—that it was in event of something happening to her, as if she’d known she ran risks more than the ordinary. Just so casual—Use the bank, Guil. It’s safe.

  In the absence of her partner on her end-of-season run, she’d had to get a crew she could trust not only not to make off with the cargo but not to spill every damn thing they knew in village camps; granted there wasn’t anybody closer-mouthed or closer-minded than Jonas and Luke. Hawley—Hawley was moderately discreet because he didn’t have two thoughts a day—but he supposed, hell, he’d probably have picked Jonas and his lot himself, given Aby’s situation and Jonas showing up.

  Jonas in breaking the news to him had told him about the rogue, imaging just That was how he’d gotten it. The he’d gotten from Luke, but no real chain of events from Jonas. No side information—and that was typical Jonas: you got things through that horse of his that flitted, that shifted, that you just couldn’t quite focus on. A nest of willy-wisps wasn’t as echoey as Jonas when he and that horse shaped you something out of memory. Clear and crisp-edged—Shadow wasn’t. Shadow enjoyed Shadow enjoyed You didn’t want to linger in Shadow’s ambient in a situation like that with Burn in striking range.

  Two damn dominant males, Burn and Shadow.

  Burn took high offense at the mere comparison with Shadow.

  “Easy.” He gave a tug at Burn’s mane, set his hand on the back of Burn’s neck and shook it as Burn sucked winter air into his nostrils,

  God.

  Burn imaged happily, sniffing the wind and looking for mates while the wind blasted at them cold as the floors of hell. He was trying to figure who’d just tried to kill them, and Burn skittered off onto