Rider at the Gate

by C. J. Cherryh

  <“Calm down!”> cut through the anger: Jonas; and Shadow. It was Froth that had gotten singed, not bad, but it hurt, and Luke was trying to get Froth quieted, while Danny got his hands on Cloud and tried to keep Cloud from going for Ice.

  “It’s that damn kid,” Hawley yelled. “It’s that kid making the trouble, it’s been him since Shamesey. We’re leaving him. Him and the village kids. We don’t need him.”

  Cloud wanted Hawley’s coat was all that had saved him as it was.

  “I didn’t do anything,” Danny said. “I’m sorry if you think I did, but I didn’t. I don’t want any trouble.”

 

  “Hawley,” Jonas said. “Hawley, what’s the picture? What’s going on?”

  It had become a quiet, all but breathless night—the wind, Danny suddenly realized, was quiet. He had his hands on Cloud,

  “Fisher?” Jonas said coldly.

  “I didn’t say anything. I didn’t think anything.” The boys were thinking of Carlo was holding on to Randy, wanting

  “Hawley,” Luke said. “What did you do? What did you do, Hawley?”

  “I didn’t do a damn thing. I was watching them when we stopped, that was all, the line was that was all.”

  “Line was leaking,” Jonas said. “What line was leaking?”

  Hawley didn’t say. But Danny didn’t think Hawley needed to say.

  “Hawley,” Jonas said, and Shadow was a flickering, smothering loud, God, he was loud. “I want the truth, Hawley. Once this trip, I want the truth.”

  “They thought we were thieves! Piss on ’em, I said, you want I should stop us here, and no, they said—”

  “Hawley,” Jonas said.

  “Hell, it’s him making it up! I didn’t take any damn money!”

  “Hawley. Aby’s dead. Aby’s you son of a bitch. What happened?”

  Ice was on the verge of attack. Shadow was. Froth was on edge with pain. Danny wanted with all the strength Cloud had; joined Shadow’s fight for the ambient, and Ice backed up, shook his head, snorted in confusion.

  “They gave him money,” Luke said, “they didn’t want to stall up there, they’d been spooks all during the trip. They didn’t want us to put a hold on that truck and leave it in the village, and they gave him money. Didn’t they, Hawley?”

  “I said I thought they ought to tarp that truck and leave it there, but they didn’t like it, we knew what they had in that cab, they were being damn spooks about it. Aby was giving off like crazy she didn’t trust anybody, all trip long—it wasn’t my damn fault, Luke, the whole damn trip was screwed—I mean, Aby was boss, she was going to see that truck rolled right then, and they give me money, what was I going to do?”

  “And they wanted to go on down. Right then.”

  “I was going to tell Aby. But they put the chocks off and they rolled, Jonas, I was going to tell her about the brakes.”

  “And not us. Why not tell us, Hawley?”

 

  “You damned fool.”

  “Well, they give it to me. I didn’t see any reason not to take it.”

  “Yeah,” Jonas said. “Hawley, I want to talk to you. Outside.”

  “I don’t want to talk.”

  “Then maybe you better come across with all of it. Here.”

  “None of their business.”

  Meaning him and the boys, Danny thought, and wasn’t happy about hearing whatever Hawley had done wrong, either. But Luke said,

  “Pretty clear, isn’t it? Hawley. We’re not blaming you. You took the money. They gave it to you. So what did you do?”

  Hawley took a while about it. “I was going to tell you. But I shouldn’t’ve took the money. Aby’d be mad. I was going to give it back next stop.”

  Jonas was intensely frustrated. Angry. And trying to hold it. Danny stood patting Cloud’s neck, wanting Carlo moved up by him, full of questions Carlo didn’t dare ask.

  Jonas said, finally, “Storm’s stopped. We’d better see if we can catch Stuart. Tell him what happened.”

  “Man’s like to shoot us,” Hawley protested. “We got the rogue out there—we got—”

  “One hell of a mess,” Jonas said. “One hell of a mess is what we’ve got. Dammit, Hawley.”

  “I didn’t think it’d hurt. They said it’d hold. They was driving it, I mean they was willing to drive it…”

  “Yeah. They were stupid, Hawley, does ‘stupid’ make sense to you?”

  Danny let go a breath. Luke said,

  “Froth’s got a burn. If we’re going out there, I want to grease it down good—it’s going to hurt like hell.”

  “Yeah,” Jonas said. “Do that.”

  “So what happened?” Carlo whispered, at Danny’s shoulder. “What did Hawley do?”

  “I think the truckers bribed him, something about bad brakes.”

  But that wasn’t the only question in his own mind. Bad brakes on a bad road. Truckers not wanting to stop, where they probably couldn’t turn around.

  Why?

  Luke had found the salve. Jonas was putting his pack together. So was Hawley.

  “Are we going?” Randy asked.

  Danny said, “Not staying here. Pack up. Now.”

  * * *

  Chapter xxi

  « ^ »

  THE RISING SUN CAST THE ROAD IN SHADOW, A BLANKET OF SNOW earlier trafficked by the ordinary dawn scurriers-about. Since they’d left Tarmin gate in the dark and in all the haste they could manage with two of their party afoot, the horses had been on edge, putting out hostile impulses, Shadow earliest and most assertive to warn a spook out of his path.

  But they were clear of the attraction Tarmin posed to vermin. Cloud lazed along, thinking and not unhappy to have a separate place at the rear, the boys walking along on either side as Danny rode.

  Everything was business, up front. Jonas wasn’t pleased with Hawley, that was clear any time they came close; but Danny stayed out of it; and not wanting to push anybody including Hawley, with thoughts that Hawley could take for accusations, Danny thought sometimes, and sometimes and sometimes told for the Goss boys what creatures had made the various tracks, imagined them, little mental ghosts, that occupied the road-as-it-had-been in the boys’ imaging.

  So they could know what made them. So they’d learn what they watched for, and what was dangerous and what wasn’t. Senior riders and a horse with a good nose had taught him. And he didn’t know but what at some moment the seniors were going to take off at the speed they could use if they had to.

  Hawley rode point. It hadn’t been his habit earlier. Luke and Jonas rode to the center and back a little, but one in the track of the other, all in light snow that taxed the horses very little.

  Danny thought, on the edge of notions he didn’t want to think. He thought of which they had a great number—but he didn’t want to fuss with getting food out of his pack, and he didn’t want his hands encumbered. He preferred to wait for the sun and the greater surety they wouldn’t have a sudden alarm.

  So he began to talk idly to the boys about growing up in Shamesey town, about about

 

  But the boys were distracted, out of breath, thinking about what would happen if Jonas and the rest did decide to increase the pace as he began to feel they were doing.

  “It’s all right,” Danny said. “They don’t go long at a run. Horses won’t take it. Sun’s up, horses are wanting to move—they’ll settle down.”

  “What if we meet something?” Randy asked.

  “Hey, I’m not leaving you. I’m not moving with them, all
right?”

  So they slogged along at the best pace they could with their breath frosting in the morning light, Randy walking beside Cloud’s shoulder, putting a hand on Cloud when the going got uneven. And the gap widened, as they followed the trail the three ahead broke through the snow.

  Cloud wouldn’t carry the kid. He’d remotely suggested it and Cloud was indignant. Cloud wouldn’t carry Randy—Cloud wouldn’t carry baggage.

  But Cloud didn’t mind being touched. He didn’t mind by him. He liked the boy’s hands. Was easily seduced by brushing and combing.

  Easier if Cloud would agree to Danny thought. Carlo had both guns—Randy was wearing out carrying what he’d brought, and they’d redistributed and divided the supplies, so that the kid had the lighter stuff.

  Carlo was struggling. It was probably the farthest they’d walked in their lives; Carlo was strong, he’d grown up hauling iron about in the shop, Danny had gotten that from him and, warned what kind of walk they were facing, Carlo had picked a sturdier pair of boots out of the store supplies. So had Randy—but they were new boots, however designed for walking and padded with double socks, and Danny didn’t want to think what was happening to unaccustomed feet.

  “If I,” Randy gasped, at one point, at knee level with him, and knocking into him on the tracked and thick-lying snow, “if I someday wanted a horse—do you suppose—one would want me?”

  “Might,” Danny said, figuring that brutal long walking had something to do with the thought. But he gave it an honest answer. “You can’t say for sure. Even rider kids can wait for years. But, yeah, one might.”

  Randy wanted at that thought—like letting something escape into the light; he wanted so much Cloud snorted and moved away.

  “You’ll spook him,” Danny said, imaging and assuring the silly fool under him that he wasn’t going to let Randy bother him.

  “Why’s he scared?” Randy was upset. “I didn’t do anything.”

  “They’re like that. You want him. He doesn’t like that.”

  “That’s stupid,” Randy said.

  “No, it isn’t,” Carlo said, out of breath. “He’s got his own ideas. You do what the man says, brat. You be polite.”

  “To the horse?”

  “Damned right,” Danny said.

  Randy thought about it. He thought about and And the ambient grew better and easier while he did it. So Randy found what worked with horses, and it wasn’t what Randy’d thought it would be.

  Randy did a lot of thinking after that. The air grew cluttered with it.

  But up ahead Jonas’ group had finally gone to walking, and they were catching up slowly. “We better close it up,” Danny said, because he wasn’t entirely easy with the gap they’d let develop. The boys were gasping with the effort they were already making; they looked at him as if he’d asked them to fly. But he got down and took Carlo’s pack and Randy’s, and that made a difference, the three of them slogging along in the track the horses had already broken through the knee-high snow.

  Then to their vast relief Jonas pulled a full stop and waited—the only grace they’d gotten from Jonas since they’d started out.

  And by the time they did catch up, Jonas and the rest had broken out food for them and for the horses—having breakfast standing, because there wasn’t a warm place to sit except on horseback. Besides snow for water, they had a bottle of vodka to pass around, the only thing that wasn’t frozen: the sandwiches were, and took effort.

  But the borderers had known better than they had and kept one sandwich inside their coats—flattened, but not frozen; and they learned.

  “You stay tighter,” Jonas said to him, when he borrowed the bottle. “You’re cat-bait back there.”

  “I’m trying,” he said. “I know we’re pushing hard, but those kids—”

  <“Come here,”> Jonas said, led him up past the horses and pointed at their feet.

  Horse track. He looked off down the clear-cut, and far as he could see, there was an unmistakable disturbance, a track clearly made since the snow had stopped last night, on ground not yet churned up by their own horses. They’d been riding down that trail and he, lagging back, hadn’t even seen it.

  It might be the rogue. It might be Harper. It might even be Stuart. The trail was clearly going Stuart’s direction, and moving ahead of them.

  Jonas said. Or didn’t say. “Harper’s on his trail. His smell’s clear.”

  He’d been going along dealing with the boys. He could have ridden right into ambush. He looked in the direction the trail led, down the clear-cut of the road, mountain on one side and a forested drop on the other.

  “There’s a shelter halfway to the junction,” Jonas said. “Stuart’s got no reason not to stay there. He doesn’t know Harper’s after him. But Harper can figure where to find him. We’re going to have to make time.”

  “Yeah,” Danny said. “Quig with him?”

  He didn’t know about Quig. What he saw underfoot was one track. There was no second rider, no second horse. Maybe he had hit someone when he fired.

  “If Quig’s got sense,” Jonas said, “he folded last night and got the hell to cover. Depends on how much he likes Harper. Or how much he hates Stuart. That’s only Harper going this direction. Nobody else.”

  It was a clear, glaring bright morning. Burn and Flicker, let loose from the shelter, went immediately to roll in the snow, working the kinks out of building-cramped nighthorse backs and looking the total fools. Burn turned silly and luxurious, not a care in the world, wallowed upside down, feet tucked, belly to the morning sun, then righted himself and surged to his feet for a few running kicks.

  They came back to the snow-door with snow caked to their hides and knotted in their manes—Burn had a great lump of ice started in his mane, where warm horse had met new snow. Flicker was starting a number of snowballs in her tail.

  “God,” Guil sighed, and went in and bolted the snow-door shut, the last thing of all before they went out the main door and left the latch-cord out.

  They started out walking, he and Tara, the horses free to work their sore spots out—and break the way for them unencumbered, through an area drifted deep across the clear-cut of the road. The horses threw snow with abandon, kicked and plunged their way through the drift like yearlings.

  They called the horses back after not too long, anxious for the hazards of the area. And Burn and Flicker came back to walk with them, sulking at first, but happier when they understood

  The skittishness of the season still had Burn and the mare flighty and spooked—Guil hoped that was all they were reacting to. And there seemed nothing more sinister than lust in the air when they finally coaxed the rascals to take them up to ride for the next while: a silly, giddy heat that made two humans feel awkward with each other in the memory of last night.

  Guil at least felt awkward this morning—asking himself ever since they waked what he’d done and what he’d been thinking of, and where he’d lost his common sense in the blankets last night.

  He hoped it had been Tara’s idea. He hoped he hadn’t dragged her into anything she didn’t want; but he couldn’t sort his thoughts from hers, the ambient was so confused and full of foolish horses this morning, who’d no damn thought of any serious business two minutes running. Autumn heat was no foundation to build on. You wished each other well, you vowed most times you’d not do that again—you rode off in the morning or stayed a few days as the mood took you or the weather required, and if need be that you stayed together a while longer than that, you didn’t take it for anything permanent.

  You didn’t, after a night in the blankets, try to work together as if you’d known each other in any reasonable way or as if you’d any clear idea what your cabin-mate’s abilities were, or her capabilities, or her strengths and weak spots.

  And it wasn’t—perhaps�
�that dizzy-brained a pair-up they’d almost formed. He began to believe that was a part of the disturbance he was feeling. They were out on the trail together, they were on business as serious to them separately as it was desperately vital to villages up on the High Loop. He felt the determination in the woman, a spooky, dead-earnest concentration interspersed with skittishness directed at him, and he didn’t know why. They got up on horseback and rode for a time on a level part of the road, and he kept feeling it tugging at his attention—doubt of him, anxiety— he wasn’t sure.

  Both of them were facing as nasty a hunt as they’d made in their lives, they had two horses in desperate lust, and, worse, the rogue was a mare: Tara believed it and he had no reason to doubt. Much better a male that would provoke Burn to anger and defense. One more female—that was no natural enemy. God, lust was all over the ambient, and they were risking their necks, all of them were—only they hadn’t their enamored horses’ attention to get it through their skulls, and he couldn’t tell whether the nonsense running through Burn’s brain and down Burn’s spine at any given instant was Flicker… or a deadly dangerous scent coming at them on the wind.

  He’d have been terrified if he hadn’t, along with that feeling running down Burn’s spine and up his own, been sensing the levelheadedness in the woman beside him, a common sense for which he was entirely grateful—and it was no autumn lust that conjured that feeling of companionship. This woman, however skittish toward him, wasn’t going to fold on him in the hunt; she was no town rider and might be a damned good backup in a pinch—her attention patterns to the road and the brush and the hillside weren’t the patterns of a townbred rider or a scatter-wit and he knew in what he’d learned the fast way, in the ambient, that she hadn’t any intention of spooking out on him. She’d nearly lost herself to the rogue at Tarmin, but she’d had no damn help from her partners.

  More to the point—she was alive after a night with no gun and no supplies in a winter storm—and in her mind was a grief and a certainty that her partners weren’t.