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Cloud’s Rider
C. J. Cherryh
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Chapter 1
The sleet arrived on the wind that howled out of the Firgeberg, gray particles that abraded skin, stung eyes. Solid crystals sucked by a chance breath over the edge of the woolen scarf went down a throat already raw with altitude and exertion.
Heart hammered.
Knees ached.
To sweat into clothing that would hold moisture was to freeze. To sweat into what carried it away too efficiently was to give up vital moisture to the airand one layered the clothing and gave up nothing, because a human in the High Wild couldnt afford to give up any resource, not the warmth in his face, not the moisture in his breath, not the days ration of food he kept next his body, and not the nighthorse moving ahead of them on this upward road, breaking through the shallow drifts.
Especially not the horse.
You didnt rely on anything in this world of ice and sudden slips but what you carried on your own person. That was what an experienced high-country rider had told him, and it was advice Danny Fisher now believed as an article of faith. What hed learned and what hed heard in a fast outpouring of detail from a senior rider in a rider shelter at the bottom of this road was going to bring him through this. It was going to get his horse through this. It was going to get the three kids behind him through this
Or at least two of them. The hundred kilos of ironwood travois and supplies the boys were pulling up this icy road (his horse had better sense) was definitely not all resource. He personally didnt give a cold damn for the thirteen-year-old girl constituting most of that weight, lying bundled and unconscious among their supplies: but he was fighting like hell for her brothers.
And what he knew to do to get them all to safety now was to climb at a steady pace, trying to track passing time and changing conditions on this winding road hung on the edge of the sky, in a reasoned, planned progress from the shelter theyd left this morning to the shelter theyd reach sometime before dark.
But with the wind getting up and the sleet continuing to come down, when the reasoned, calculated world slowly disappeared in a veil of sleet and when the posts that told truck drivers that used this road where the edge was were only lumps of white in a boil of sleet and old snow, he relied solely on that snow-veiled darkness, that living sense of shape, life, and that was moving ahead of all of them, to know where to set his feet. The most valuable asset he ordinarily had from Cloud was that inner sense of the mountains shapethe land-sense that a nighthorse rider gained from his horse at any distance under three meters.
But all the shape he could perceive right now was the location of himself relative to Cloud and the two boys, and that stretch of sleeted rubble between him and his horse and slightly ahead of them. The wildlife from which Cloud drew his location-sense was all hidden away in burrows, as anything of common sense was dug in and asleep for the duration of the storm. It took human beings to choose to trek up here.
Then in the blindness of a sudden gust his horse doubted for an instant where the road was. Cloud imaged, giddily, and as he shied back from what was or was not the edge.
It was enough to make a snow-blinded human who valued that horse above all human company want to sit down, grab onto the rocks and not budge for an hour.
But he was still standing. And it wasnt white emptiness beneath Clouds three-toed hoofbut solid, sleeted rock. Dannys heart was pounding, and that might be Clouds heart or his own or the boys, but it was Clouds four feet that began walking first, driven by and impatience to be out of this cold. The boys with the travois hadnt kept their footing through the scare: they had to pick themselves up off the ground to get moving, shaken, not wanting to be where they were any longer, that was for very damn certain.
But they couldnt stop short of that shelter, not in this wind. Dont try to camp on the high end of the Climb: more advice he took on faith from the rider whod told him the route. It was autumn. The temperatures, bitter as they were in this gale-force wind, hadnt fallen enough to create a dry coldand if you ever let damp form around you in the day, if you sat down where you could pick it up from the ground or the rocks, or just dressed in such a way that dampness built up, the windchill would kill you, without argument or excuse.
Tonights stopping place, the shelter they were aiming for, could sustain them all winter if there werent the recourse of villages and civilization in front of them, a string of five such tucked against the mountains east face. But there was nothing in reach behind them but a small shelter that definitely couldnt sustain them, not reliably so beyond a few days, and hed felt compelled this morning to make a calculated bet on the weathertaking them on a climb that on a good summer day and with no wind he understood from that same rider as a couple of hours ride.
It hadnt been just a couple of hours. He was sure of thatand it was a long, weary hike. Cloud wouldntcouldntcarry him up this steep grade in this kind of weather. The boys had the travois to pull, and from them he felt numbness and cold right now, along with a lingering flutter of fear. Clouds near-disaster had called up a rush of adrenaline, and the boys were using too much of their strength pulling the travois to endure many surprises like that.
Bloody hellhe was scared and shaky. He hadnt fallen down because he was used to horse-images in all degrees of urgency and most times reflexively walled the confusion out. The boys werent used to a horses sending being that close to them, and they couldnt sort it out or keep their feet under them in the crisis.
Or stop themselves from reliving the slip again and again. Clouds four-footed gait had confused their balance and they wouldnt let the moment go: theyd confuse Clouds balance if they kept it up.
Quiet, he had to tell them out loud and in no uncertain terms. After a week together they knew he didnt mean any audible noise.
They tried to be quiet and calm down after thatas quiet as two boys could be whod thought they were falling off a mountain.
The road they were on, by what he knew of it, followed the folds and bends of the mountain upward supposedly a kilometer and a half vertical distance from their initial start on the east face of Rogers Peakbut hed come to appreciate how a kilometer and a half vertical translated to walking distance on a mountain. Hed thought it a pretty straightforward climb. Theyd come from the first-stage shelter across a portion of the south face to reach the midway shelter last night, and now they were east and up toward the settlements high on the forested slopes.
But it didnt do it by logic of what would get there fastest. It did it, hed discovered, by the logic of where the builders could hang a road and make it stay and not slide. It was a road built solely to get the logging trucks and oxcarts up and down, and the road builders had patched in rubble fill and timber shorings wherever its precarious thread crossed a gap narrow enough for them to bridge over a split in the mountain instead of following the contour all the way back into a recess. Places like that were wind zones. And where the builders hadnt found a bridgeable gaphe and his small party had to walk all the in and out contour of the mountain, sometimes a considerable distance, until the builders had found a place to make the road turn back the direction they actually wanted to go.
A couple of hours on a good dayhell. From the midway shelter theyd left at dawn this morning they could make solid walls again before they sleptthat was what he intended: rest there a couple of days, and beyond that
Beyond that, day after tomorrow, theyd start across the mountain toward the villages on a calm day when they could do it without struggle. There was a doctor in Evergreen, the first and largest of the five settlements. Theyd get advice
what to do about thirteen-year-old Brionne, ideally deliver Brionne into a doctors hands within the village proper, which would do as much for her as ever could be done; after that the boys could find work in Evergreen or one of the other villages and start their lives over, good luck to them and God help them if their sister lived.
That would mean hed done all his conscience told him he had to do, and he would have carried out a job that had set Tara Chang free to take care of a friend of his who was wintering down in that cabin before this road. Guil wasnt well enough to make this triphaving a hole through his side. While Tara
Tara hadnt wanted to have them snowed in with her and Guil. Dannyd been available to run escort to the next cabin over, which meant Tara didnt have to do it. Hed saved her from that situation and gotten on her good side, in his fondest hopes, by taking the kids onbecause if the kids were going to survive to reach the villages aboveif the kids were going to leave that cabin for anywhere in the worlda rider had to escort them: no one, even experienced in the Wild and armed to the teeth, could get from one shelter to another without a rider to guard himand village kids wouldnt be safe even inside a shelter and with a gun if one of the larger, cleverer hunters got the notion there was food inside.
A horse was the protection. A gun was for the mental comfort of the gun owner, so far as hed seen.
And guns were, unfortunately, also for human quarrels, in which horses were best off if they didnt participate.
And that was the other half of the reason they were on this road in this weather: thanks to a human quarrel some days before their reaching the place, and not uninvolved with Guil and Tara, the situation at the first-stage cabin hadnt been safeand matters had combined to say that up the mountain might not only be their eventual intention, but their immediate necessity.
Because at first-stage a problem had moved in on thema horse whose rider had died, a horse attempting to attach itself to any horseless humans in its reach. It wasnt unnatural that a grief-stricken horse should do thatbut the only horseless humans in reach happened to be the two boys he was escorting and, in his worst nightmares, their sister Brionne.
That had clinched his decision to move on. To hold that cabin otherwise hed have had to shoot the horse, which wasnt an easy choice for a rider. Or he could have run the gauntlet of its presence and taken them all back to Tara and Guil for help.
But the last thing in the world he wanted was to come running back for help as soon as a problem came up with a job Tara clearly, emotionally, didnt want back on their doorstep. Next spring he had a rendezvous with her and Guil for a salvage joba truck that hadnt been lucky on these same curves. Guil had as good as hired him already, there was considerable pay involved from some company down in Anveney town, and for a junior rider with no working partner, no references, and no prospects of hire this spring, that was an incredibly good offer, one which he didnt intend to foul up by destroying their confidence in him.
So with the weather seeming likely to hold fair, theyd moved for the next shelter, higher up the mountain, a barren, hard-rock place where the horse that had been haunting their vicinity would have no forage and to which it wouldnt follow them.
Theyd moved again this morningbecause of the weather turning foul, on a choice in which he had less confidence he was right; though thank God theyd shaken the horse off their trail somewhere between first-stage and midway. It was lost and desperatebut not that desperate; and it might go back to harass Guil and Tara, whose two horses would drive it off, or it might finally find the other strayed horses on the lower skirts of the mountain and find safety with them. So that part of the problem hed handled.
That left getting them to the top of this road.
Truth was, this job of escorting the Goss kids, through all the complications that had so far set in, was the first job hed ever done completely on his own, and he didnt know whether hed ever actually told Tara so. Guil, who knew, hadnt been tracking too well on anything for the time theyd been there, so the matter of his prior experience hadnt actually, well, exactly come up. Tara, who knew this mountain, had been concentrating her efforts on giving him a mental map of the landmarks and problems involved.
So he didnt think hed made the fact of his inexperience quite clearbut he damn sure wasnt going to meet two senior riders next spring to confess hed let these kids die on the mountain. Hed do the job. He might know a great deal by now that he didnt want to know about the Goss familybut hed do it.
Then Guil and Tara would trust him next spring and give him the responsibility that would make him hireable by convoys that were only a distant, hard-won hope for a rider born to a town. Hed lived through enough up here to know he wanted the high country and that with several good tries it hadnt killed him. He was high on his own survival, he saw a freedom for him and for Cloud hed never known, never imagined, in town, and he saw a set of teachers he could otherwise only dream ofif he could deserve their confidence in him.
Wind blasted into their faces of a sudden. Hed been able to see the rocks on the right just a second ago and he felt Cloud walking ahead of them, so he wasnt disoriented; but suddenly it was justwhite, with an abrading blast of sleet that made him duck his head and shut his eyes.
So had Cloud. That didnt help his orientation.
God, he heard from Carlo, a voice half-drowned in the wind.
Its getting worse! Randy cried.
The boys had stopped walking. Cloud hadnt. Keep going! Danny shouted at the boys. Its probably just this stretch! Snow coming off the height up there!
I think its coming out of the sky! Randy cried. Randy was fourteen, two years younger than Carlo, a year older than Brionne, and the kid had been gutsy and all right until nowbut now was loud and clear in the ambient of emotions and images that came at them relayed from Cloud.
was suddenly feeding on its own substance, upsetting Cloud, upsetting Randy as his own panic flooded back at him. Danny clamped down on the accelerating distress with calm images:
And: Move! Danny yelled in a ragged voice that didnt come out of his throat half so fierce or so low as he intended. He pushed at Carlo, who was on the right-hand pole of the travois as Randy was pulling the left, and they struggled into motionthey were starting across one of those rubble-and-shorings sections, by the disorganized way the wind was coming at them.
And soon enough the wind was battering their right sides with a vengeance, pushing them toward the left, where there wasnt anything but empty air.
Cloud was Cloud had Cloud was not pleased with humans lagging back and distracting him with their stupid arguments in a cold wind. Cloud wasnt panicked about the situation, but he was definitely struggling for footing now, sending more strongly than usual, feeling his way through the whiteout and using senses that even his rider wasnt used to having at the top of the broth of thoughts that was the ambient. Cloud was feeling and getting a vague from it somehow, Cloud was , and knowing with a range of discriminations the human brain might not even have categories for. Humans being sky-fallen strangers to the world and horses being native to it, sometimes a rider just had to take the little information he could get in his own peculiar way of understanding and otherwise cast himself on his horses sense of direction and his horses four-footed stability.
Sink too deep into Clouds sending and he could look out of Clouds side-set eyes and see the tilt and pitch of his head and end up with two feet too few for the catch of balance Cloud made in the gusts. Randy slipped and fell, or lost his balance in Clouds noisy sending, Danny didnt know. He grabbed the kids coat and got the kid on his feet again, travois and all, still letting the brothers do the physical labor.
A nighthorse didnt wear harness or carry cargo. Neither did a rider. It was his job to know where they wereand not to be distracted by a travois bumping along and resisting. He had no possessions in the world but his guns,
his emergency supplies, the life-and-death stuff like waterproof matches, knife, hatchet, pans, a little food, cord, bandages, most of which made a very compact tin-cased package, his last kit having proven unmanageable; and hell, no, he didnt trust his personal kit to their damn travois. Carlo had the shotgun and a pistol but the ammunition, which was heavy, Danny had most of, plus the rifle.
And when this morning the boys had wanted to pile everything including his kit on the travois, theyd had sharp and angry words about it.
Oh, but they were pulling it anyway for Brionne, Carlo and Randy had protested. And it was easier to pull their supplies on it than carry them on their backs. It only made sense.
Listen to me, hed said, and laid the law down as best he could.
Theyd ignored his advice at least as regarded their personal supplies. Hed heard the maxim down in Shamesey, Dont ever get friendly with the convoy. Dont make friends of anybody you have to guide. And he knew why, now. He was close to friendship with Carlo, as close as a rider and a villager could comeand having clearly and in front of both brothers gotten his orders from Guil and Tara, he didnt seem to have the credible authority to tell Carlo no. Carlo was on a mission. Carlo was doing a Good Thing. That meant God was with them in getting up this mountain and getting away from that stray horse that wanted his sister.
That was the villager mentality. God was with them and gravity didnt count.
Maybe a lot of things else didnt count in Carlos head either. Damn sure some of them didnt add. Danny had a good idea what was driving Carlo, and it wasnt love for his sister.
Guilt, maybe. Atonement. There had been a village called Tarmin at the bottom of the road. It wasnt there now. Every man, woman, child and sleeping baby in that town had died the worst death imaginable on Carlos sisters account.
That was the news they carried toward the villages above, and the girl responsible for it all was the burden theyd lugged up this road.
Cloud's Rider Page 1
