Rider at the Gate

by C. J. Cherryh

  And on the mundanely practical side—without a word of her intentions, or any need to do anything but laze in the blankets until he had the door clear, there being only one shovel in the shelter— he’d found when he’d finished his own job that the woman had their packs put together and a dozen flatcakes cooked, so when they’d set out onto the road, they had decent food in their packs that didn’t use emergency supplies.

  She’d also asked for a pocket-full of shells for the pistol—so, she said, if he lent it to her in a hurry she had a reload without needing the belt.

  This was no stupid woman. He decided he’d have liked her immensely if they’d met on a trail or a camp commons or, one had to think of it, in Aby’s company: someone Aby had dealt with came with recommendations, so far as he was concerned.

  More, the business about the shells had made him ashamed of his reserve of all the weapons, and he hadn’t just given her the shells; he’d given her the pistol outright, belt and all, hers with no debt, in the hope she was going to be at his back—because with her to back him up, with her knowing the territory as she did, he wasn’t obliged to stay and wait for Jonas’ doubtful help.

  Possibly his skittishness toward Jonas was autumn-thinking, too. Burn and Shadow were a bad pair. And with occupying the ambient, the thought of dealing with Hawley had edges of very bad feeling, very violent feeling, that didn’t make it a good idea for Hawley, for him, or for Jonas right now, to be sorting out what they thought about each other.

  He and the woman, on the other hand, could be as noisy as they wanted to be, since they were looking for trouble. They didn’t, either of them, they well agreed, want to spend another night waiting for the rogue on its terms, they were reasonably sure it wasn’t behind them, and they meant to push on up the road, the only sane way up the mountain, until they attracted its attention.

  They could agree on that. But it didn’t mean he’d know the rest of her signals: working with a stranger, sensible as she was, meant they couldn’t predict each other’s moves if the ambient went as crazy on them as he was afraid it would.

  Another reason she needed one of the guns.

  It was likely she had her own doubts about him. She was mostly thinking about her partners, with that skittish, spooky skipping-about of thoughts she had—or Flicker had. Hard to pin down. Hard to understand, sometimes. Skittish as Shadow, and that was going some. But bright, not dark; she blinded you with sunglare when you came too close to her. She whited out your vision.

  And he wanted—

  Hell, he didn’t know. Flicker’s change-abouts were contagious. Confusing.

  Just—Aby was dead. And he wasn’t. He’d discovered that unsettling fact last night, felt guilty, and angry, and distracted, and glad—none of which he could afford right now.

  Autumn promises. He needed his mind on present business. He needed his mind on the ambient, not pouring problems into it.

  So he wanted the rogue to show, dammit—he saw no reason for them to freeze chasing it. He it into the ambient, until Burn began to be disturbed with him and laid back his ears and nipped at his leg. Something ghosted at him in that second, drifted through the ambient—and stopped.

  “Tell you something,” Tara said to him then, in that moment that the air was still a little spooky and strange. “I was through this stretch of woods a few days ago with the rogue on my tail. I didn’t know what it was at the time—but it’s hard to be back here and not think about it. Sorry if I do it. Just so you know. It’s a memory.”

  “Yeah,” he said. He’d just had a momentary sending, just for a moment as if the blizzard had come back. Scary. Something in the trees.

  He’d provoked it, he thought.

  Begging trouble. With a shell in the chamber. Driving his partner crazy. Making her doubt what she heard and saw. A help. A real help, he was being.

  That was what scared hell out of him. Tara’s image of that damnfool kid. It wasn’t neat, it wasn’t clean— they had a townbred junior to separate out of the problem.

  A kid who, if she hadn’t frozen to death, might not be sane.

  Or might not want to be sane, if they did get her back.

  “Kid opened a gate,” Tara said sharply. “She went out where she knew she wasn’t supposed to go.”

  “Not the only village kid who ever did it,” Guil said. Her anger with the girl bothered him. There wasn’t compassion. Maybe it was because it was a girl, and Tara made demands she’d have made of herself. He didn’t know.

  It was her village that was dead. It was her partners that were dead, the way Aby had been his. Her dead—her whole village, old people, kids and all—were because a kid who knew the rules had wanted what she wanted and to hell with the consequences. She was angry. And he couldn’t argue with it.

  It would have been a beautiful sight, all that untracked snow, blanketed thick around the trees, the rider shelter snowed-under up to its roof on the side; but the door was all shoveled out, there was no smoke from the chimney; and the single track of a horse went right up to that area, and lost itself in the general churning up of the snow, where at least one horse had broken through the drifts.

  It wasn’t what they hoped they’d find: they’d arrived too late to catch Stuart.

  “Third set of tracks,” Luke said in apparent surprise. “Somebody was with him.”

  Harper, Danny thought, was following. But when he caught the Luke was looking down at, he saw the footprints of a third horse overlay two outbound horses—how old, that second horse-track, or whether the last was Stuart following the other two, wasn’t clear in his inexperience. Cloud was imaging and

  Harper was Spook’s rider. But—Quig? he asked himself. Quig’s horse wasn’t a mare.

  The rogue was.

  “Suppose the first is the rogue?” Hawley asked. “Suppose Stuart went after it this morning? Or it’s after him?”

  “Check the board,” Jonas said, basic common sense, and Luke went and pulled the latch-cord, carrying his gun, even though the horses imaged no other presence, and warily checked inside.

  Luke shut the door again. “Stuart. And Tara Chang, of all people.”

  “Tara’s alive!” Randy said, Carlo was excited, too, all but moved to tears—because, Danny suddenly thought, they weren’t the only survivors any more. There was somebody else they knew in the world. They remembered remembered and there wasn’t a doubt in their minds that that was why their rider had come here. On that, their hopes sprang up to a wild possibility—he felt it, even Jonas felt it, the whole ambient disturbed, but Hawley remarked, sourly,

  “That son of a bitch was real comfortable last night, wasn’t he? Didn’t wait till Aby was a month gone.”

  That made Carlo It took Randy, on the far side and away from Hawley, a moment to catch what Hawley meant, and then Randy was But Jonas told everybody to get back on their horses and get the hell back on the road.

  Danny swung up, nudged Cloud with knee and heel until he caught up with Shadow, on the edge of the road, urgent with the only answer he saw. “Harper’s out to kill Stuart,” he said to Jonas, fast, because horses were moving. “That’s all he wants. He knows who he’s tracking now—he’ll have seen that board, too. He’s going to break his neck getting caught up and they’re not hurrying— they’re not going to know he’s stalking them.” “Don’t lag back for us. I’ll take care of the boys. Just for God’s sake get Harper before he gets Stuart.”

  Jonas didn’t take to orders. Or suggestions. You never told him a thing and expected him to do it—for sheer stubbornness, if nothing else.

  “Stuart’s your friend, isn’t he?” he flung at Jonas. “Isn’t he why you came?”

  hit the ambien
t. Something about a Jonas was as upset as he’d ever felt the man, spilling things that didn’t make sense to him. And thinking with an edge of anger.

  But Jonas gave a jerk of his head, said, <“Come on,”> to his partners, and hit a traveling pace, hard and fast, with the fading image in the thinning ambient.

  Danny wanted, and Cloud dropped out of a half-hearted run.

  “Where are they going?” Carlo asked, panting, as he reached Cloud’s side. “Danny?”

  “Just stay with me.” God, he wanted

  Cloud was exploding with the instinct to stay up with the rest, Cloud wanted and

  Cloud wanted—something that shivered in the air. There was everywhere the

  But catching Stuart and Chang wasn’t the job they had. It was doing what riders generally did, getting villagers safely from one point to the other. Getting Carlo and Randy somewhere they wouldn’t die.

  Right now he wasn’t sure where that was—whether to drop back altogether and lock themselves into the shelter, or to go on where he wasn’t damned much use.

  “They’re going to shoot Brionne,” Randy said, distressed, wanting to go faster. But a human body couldn’t. They’d been going since before dawn and they couldn’t go any faster, try as they would. “Tara wouldn’t. —But they might.”

  “Stuart won’t shoot any kid,” he said. He believed that, the way he’d judged Stuart from the start. “He’ll get the rogue. It’s just—”

  “Harper?” Carlo panted, struggling to stay with him, while he fought Cloud’s tendency to pick the pace up. Because he was moving, Carlo and Randy with him; he didn’t know about Harper. He didn’t trust Jonas. He didn’t like that business. Jonas had been mad about and about the brakes. But Jonas hadn’t come here purely for Stuart’s sake. Something else was going on, to bring Jonas away from Shamesey and onto this trail. He remembered the camp meeting, remembered Jonas arguing for Stuart—remembered Jonas dissuading any hunt going out after Stuart himself; Jonas was that much of a friend to Stuart.

  But not—he was convinced—not to the exclusion of other motives. There was something besides what Jonas had said was his reason.

  He couldn’t leave the boys. He couldn’t go faster. But they were three guns if they weren’t too late to matter; and they were witnesses if witnesses were any restraint to Jonas Westman, whatever the man was about.

  They’d passed the small cut-off that Tara said led off toward the main road, on the downhill; and they were traveling an uphill now, a place where the wind had scoured the ground all but clear of snow despite the trees. Brush held drifts. But stone showed through on the roadway.

  The horses had settled out of some of their foolishness—were breathing hard on the climb, at work again after the day cooped up close indoors, and beginning to think of thirst, snatching a lick at the snow as they moved.

  And human minds had settled into businesslike purpose. Guil knew he’d bothered Tara—and he’d not pushed at her personal borders, not on a morning when reason wasn’t working and the horses were doing their own pushing at each other. He felt under him the give and take of a body as entirely distracted as he was, as dangerously astray from their business as he was. He found himself gazing off up the mountain, where nothing was but snow and rock.

  Not helpful, in a landscape where they weren’t seeing the animal traces they were accustomed to see. Possibly something was laired up there. He didn’t think it was a horse—not up in that tumbled rock.

  Burn gave a surly kick in his stride, thinking about

  He thumped Burn in the ribs, and Burn flattened his ears, threw off and slogged along with his mind on business, Flicker likewise, watching the mountain slopes and the trees with each swing of her head. Trees were still thick on the left hand and patchy clumps of forest were on the right, trees clinging among steep rock.

  “No tracks,” Tara said, watching the snow they alone were scarring.

  “Noticed that.” No animals. No life stirring across or down this road.

  “We’re not that far from the shelter,” Tara said. “It’s right around here.”

  “Last one, isn’t it?”

  “Only place left she could hole up, only chance that kid’s alive.”

  “If that’s a wild horse—indoors isn’t real likely.”

  “Yeah,” Tara said.

  And was thinking thoughts of horse-shooting that sobered Flicker and Burn.

  So was he thinking those thoughts, carrying the rifle balanced on his leg, hoping he’d see it or hear it at a distance and not—not close up in the trees; hoping he could get a clear shot at it in the woods; hoping he could get a bead on it and not hit the kid.

  Tell that to the gate-guards at Shamesey, who’d missed a charging nighthorse much closer to them and hit him—Burn having that clever trick of imaging where Burn wasn’t.

  If it was a wild one gone bad, it might not know about guns.

  But what had happened at Tarmin said the gate-guards hadn’t had any luck aiming at it.

  was in Tara Chang’s thoughts.

  Maybe, he thought—one of those cold second thoughts that came only when they were past the point to do anything about it— maybe he should have waited for Jonas to show up.

  Maybe he could have ridden side by side with Jonas and Hawley without wanting to beat hell out of them. Five were a lot stronger than two, if it came to an argument of sendings.

  If their two sets of horses didn’t go for each other instead of the rogue, and this morning it wasn’t certain.

  If he could only figure why that gunshot, or what Jonas was doing up here at such effort.

  Jonas hadn’t expected him to go to Anveney first. Hadn’t expected him to talk to Cassivey. Yeah, Guil, go on up there, get that son of a bitch horse. Make the woods safe.

  We’ll just come up a few days late—

 

  > Burn threw his head and skipped a step. Flicker threw a kick. It was that vivid.

  “Sorry,” Tara said. Her breath was shaky for a moment.

  “Yeah, don’t blame you. Easy. I’m not hearing anything but you.”

  “Vadim kept asking me—how close it got to me in the woods.—And I don’t know. He thought—not at all.” Her teeth were all but chattering. “I couldn’t judge.”

  “He was wrong.”

  “The thing was so damn loud—and it called that kid right out of the village without a one of us hearing. Granted Flicker was noisy—she was screening it out; I know now why she was as loud as she was all night. It was out there. But we didn’t hear.”

  “When the kid went?”

  “Her house was across the village. Closer to the other wall, that’s all I can think.” She built the village for him in the ambient; a row of houses, a single street, a rider camp protecting the one side, but only distance from the wall protecting the far side of that single street. And there were times, Guil thought, when distance wasn’t enough.

  “Damn kid claimed she heard the horses better than we did— but she couldn’t hear Flicker about to back over her.” “But she damn sure heard the one horse she shouldn’t have. She came to us the next morning. I told her get out, leave my horse alone. I thought she went back home. She didn’t.”

  The whole business flowed past his vision, the frustration, the bitter anger.

 

  He couldn’t follow all of it, it went by so fast. riders going out the gate. Tara at what looked like the village jail, the marshal’s office—rogue at the gates, Tara running—running for her partners, empty camp, open gate— rushing down on her, under her, carrying her away—>

  Tara held it back then. The evergreens were around them again. The sun was shining. Tara said,

  “It’s my fault, you understand me? You can tell me all the reasons in the world. You can even tell me I was right, throwing the kid out of camp that morning.” “But if I think I can get that kid free of that thing, I’m going for her—I’m going to save her, not shoot her. So you know.”

  “That’s not what you’re saying inside.”

  “No. It isn’t. But I don’t do everything I think of.” “Maybe I could teach her something. I don’t know. What do you say? She’s thirteen years old. —And she’s killed my partners, dammit! Killed the whole damn village.” “She wanted things. She unsettled Flicker just being around her. Want, want, want. Push, push, push. Damn bottomless well of ‘I want.’ And temper when she didn’t get her way. Real surly temper.” Silence a moment, the ambient seething with anger that sank, sank, sank. Then: “You know what I ask myself? I ask myself— how much of the rogue is the horse, and how much is that kid? And that’s a lousy thought for a rescue.”

  It wasn’t at all a pleasant thought. But a kid wasn’t innocent in the ambient. Just not as strong.

  Usually.

 

  he sent.

  He wasn’t getting her back. There was only

  he remembered. That was their potent memory.