He and Tara had disagreed on that point. But the village down the road (or what was left of it) might not have been much safer for the boys to hole up in than the first-stage shelter.
Tarmin would have been readily accessible and closer to them, there was that.
But Tara might have been right to insist the kids move out of their vicinity altogether. Cloud was a young male. With Burn possessive of Flicker and Cloud in the mixthere was no telling. But the fact of winter and horses in rut had been only a part of the consideration: the other part was a girl who could trigger an explosion out of all three of the horses, a girl Tara for both considered and unconsidered reasons didnt want near her.
That was the part of the reasoning that weighed on his mind.
It was remotely possible that the kids hadnt gone on to first-stage, that theyd trekked on down toward Shamesey before the snows came and were down by now and making their way across the flatlands.
And that, in cold clear consideration, scared hell out of him.
Tara didnt need Flickers attention to know, not what he was thinking, but the subject he was thinking about. She frowned at him and glanced up. The next stitch pushed too hard and sent the needle through into her finger. She sucked the wound, scowling.
But she didnt ask and he didnt say anythingor intend to dwell on it in range of the horses. He wasnt usually one for recriminations. A decision was a decision was a decision, as they said down south, which was his usual range.
He didnt know as much as he wished he knew about Tara Chang or her mountain. But that was the way of winters. You ended up in some small cabin or in some encampment, pinned down and pent in for the season with whatever other rider, sane or not, known or not, was in the vicinity, and on many points of his present situation he couldnt complain, especially considering that otherwise hed have been flat on his back, wounded, and alone.
Instead he was recovering tolerably quickly, situated with plenty of supplies on the forested bottom road of Tarmin Climb, with someone willing to cut firewood and shovel the door clear till he mended enough to take his turn. Hed be here, he supposed, and fairly content, till water ran downhill again.
He could have had the kids for help. That was true. But instead of that, he was holed up with a woman whod been a good fill-in partner to him in a bad situation, a woman whod saved his life, as happened, and the only actual fault hed seen in her was an ironclad notion of what was sensible and what wasntwell, that and a slight unwillingness to change her mind.
If they stayed in that first shelter on the Climb, Tara said out of long silence, theyre fine.
I hope they did. He didnt say that Danny Fisher was a lowland kid from the biggest town in the world, and that the things Danny Fisher didnt know not only about this mountain, but about any mountain at all, were frightening. Taras instruction to the kids, her giving them a map of the way up, had been sensible. Charitable. Responsible.
And the foresight of riders whod helped make the roads up here had provided ample shelters for riders, summer and winter. If you didnt use them for as long as they were designed for, and didnt use caution in leaving them, you had yourself to blame, no one else.
Problem wasthey were kids. And kids didnt notoriously do well with waiting things out.
But stupidity wouldnt have carried Fisher as far as hed gotten, and he trusted the kids resourcefulness and common senseas far as the kids knowledge went.
That was a warm snow going on.
He decided he would sit down. With a hand on the fireplace stones he flexed his knees gingerly and did that.
The horses had just caught their prey. Theyd begun a game of tag that had everything of humor and blood and wicked behavior about it, but that was Burn for you. Burn was from the borders of inhabited land. So was he. Flicker would have killed their supper. Burn played games with it.
In that, they were different. He found he had a soft heart for some things. He didnt admit to it, exactly, but Flickers rider was a far harsher judge of humans and horses. Tara would have shot the girlin the heat of the moment, granted, and Tara hadnt in fact shot her. But she nearly had. And the day shed pitched those kids out the door with a map of the higher road hed been putting up a pretense of sanity right up to their leaving. Now he couldnt entirely reconstruct what had happened or what hed urged them to do.
Penny for your thoughts, Tara said.
They were deaf to the ambientor at least their share of it. They might be hearing the horses, but the horses werent paying any attention at all to them. Which meant two humans trying to figure each other out just went by guesswork.
Thinking Burns a son of a bitch.
Bushdevil. That was Taras guess about the prey. It might be that. It was small and dark and fast in the snowy brush, and it dug fast, but a horses tri-hooved feet dug fast, too. Even match.
There was a little silence.
Theyll have dug in, Tara said. The kids will.
Probably, he said. The kids resourceful.
Tara had bloodied her finger. Third time.
He reached out and stopped further carnage.
Give yourself a break. Easy.
Dammit, she said.
He really didnt do well at argument. He carried the hand to his mouth and nipped the finger himself.
Ow!
When maybe shed expected tender sympathy. No luck. She jerked to get loose.
Didnt work. His hand was stronger.
Ive got the needle, she said, and held it up.
And stuck it away in the mending and rose onto her knees and gently against him as he tugged her other hand.
Theyd been lovers.
They might be again, testing the extent of his healing, except Flicker caught the bushdevil and there was the distinct taste of blood in their mouths.
Burn caught the prize then and threw it with a toss of his head.
Ugh, Tara said.
Horse mood was contagious. Outrageous play was one thing. Carnivorous mischief was a difficult but not impossible background for lovemaking.
Next thing, the two would want to be let in from the storm.
It seemed to Carlo Goss that it had taken more than an hour for them just to make the next switchback on the road, walking mostly on ice. He couldnt always figure out whether they were turning or going straighthe couldnt see Cloud right nowcouldnt see a black nighthorse, the whiteout was so total in the patch of roadway they were climbing. He couldnt see Danny next to him or even the ground under his own feet until the gray shadow of a crag on their left side hove up between them and the wind.
Then he could make out Clouds rump, snow-spattered shadow horse, tail sprinkled with honest snowflakes, materializing slowly in front of them in a world otherwise white. He could feel Cloud all along. But except for Danny on the other pole of the travois and Randy atop it, and the ends bumping heavily along the roadway, he couldnt have sworn where the ground was.
Get off, he said to his brother, then, because the wind wouldnt catch the travois during the transaction here and his knees were growing rubbery with fighting both the slope and the constant slippage.
Randy slowly took his weight off the rig, so the load was lighter by him, at least.
Breath, Carlo requested, then.
Minute, Danny said.
The grade was too steep to do other than stand, but he needed the rest. His legs were shaking under him, and he tried to ease the strain on them as they stopped and stood on an icy steep where if they once entirely let go of the travois where it was, it and his sister would toboggan down a giddy stretch of rubble and ice and soar high and wide on the winds before it fell.
But in all this trek Brionne had never waked.
Never would wake, in his guilt-ridden thoughts and guiltier hope. His sister had been a rider for a brief number of daysshed been a rider on
a horse the whole district and clear down to Shamesey had known had to diethe horse Guil Stuart and others had come up here to get before it took a village out.
They hadnt been in time.
His sister had ridden a rogue horse home; shed gotten it through the gates that defended Tarmin from the Wild. And in the confusion of that horses maddened sending, sane villagers had opened doors, rushed to the aid of stricken children, dying neighbors abandoning their only defenses in the process. In the confusion and the threat the rogue sent into the ambient, the best and the bravest impulses that humans owned had sent neighbors running, blinded by things they thought they saw and cries they already heardrunning, some in panic, some to save otherswhile a swarm of vermin, coming through those opened gates and those doors no one had the sanity left to shut, gnawed them down to bone. The swarm had made the whole village prey; the virtuous, and the fools, and the innocent. Brionne had ridden through it, immune to the swarm, on the deadliest killer of allwanting them, wanting revenge, wantingGod knew what
And after the carnage, after the horse was gone, his sister had just started slipping away, not eating, not speaking, eventually not reacting to the world at all. For a few days down at first-stage, theyd been able to make her drinkbut last night at midway she hadnt even done that for them. The horses down below wouldnt tolerate her. Cloud wouldnt. They imaged whenever they had to deal with her, and it was nothingnothinga sane mind wanted to feel again.
Right now his sister didnt move, didnt think, didnt know and probably wouldnt care if she went off that edge. Not only would she not drink since last night, she wouldnt blink this morning to save her eyes from the cold. That was how fast she was sinking. Theyd tied a bandage around her face to keep her eyes from freezing Dannys ideaand a scarf around that, and then folded the skins around her with the fur side in. He could sense Danny and Randy through Clouds sendings plain as plain, constant and alivebut his sister wasnt there. Just wasnt there.
And he didnt know whether he even grieved for her.
He wanted to. But maybe that was only to prove he could, after so much death.
He wanted to get her safely to Evergreen.
But he most of all wanted to get her to the doctor in Evergreen, so that if there was a scrap of a human mind left in her that could be suffering, hed have brought her to die in a civilized and comprehensible environment, not in some bare-boards cabin on ground too frozen to bury herwherehe didnt want to think about it the scavengers would leave of her nothing more than was left in Tarmin now.
Beyond getting her to the doctor, he didnt know. God forgive him, he wished every night since theyd gotten her back that shed just drift peacefully deeper and not wake up the next morning. Even unconscious, shed driven them out of every refuge they hadand when that lost horse had shown up down at first-stage, the last place where they could have been safe, hed known it was his sister it had come for.
He hated herand he couldnt let her go. There was the whole story in those two facts. Danny was probably asking himself how hed ever gotten them for his responsibility. This morning Danny had been uncertain about setting out, and hed argued with him
He didnt remember all that hed said, but hed bent every argument to get them on their way before that horse found them, the way hed wanted them to get out of first-stage, because that horse haunting the fringes of the woods down there had come up near the cabin walls that last night, calling and calling for a hapless, foolish girl whod, please God, passed beyond answering it or any horse.
Because what in hell did they do if Brionne came to and they were in that little cabin with a horse whoDanny tried to keep the lid on that feeling, but he knewmight kill her and maybe him and Randy in spite of everything they could do to stop it? He couldnt blame Cloud for protecting his rider. And he didnt want Brionne to wake and answer that lost horse down there, either. Hed felt her stirring, down at first-stage, that last night.
And, God, he didnt want her near a horse.
He knew, too, he shouldnt be thinking about it. He tried to stop. Hed learned from Danny how to listen to Cloud and see not just flashes of damning illusion but clear pictures in his head.
The preacher down in Tarmin had always said if you listened to the Wild youd be attracted to thoughts of sex and blood that came and went for no reason. And hed felt thembut he wasnt even sure what the preacher feared: he couldnt have explained to anyone how noisy the world was when he was around Cloudand how scarily quiet it was, even in the howling wind, when Cloud was out of range. Hed gotten to depend on that presence for safetyand it wasnt just hearing some ravening Beast, as the preachers called it it was hearing everything, it was an intensity of smells he didnt smell, colors he didnt seemost of all a sense of whereness that he couldnt explain in words, a jumble at first that made you think you were off balance alt the time, but that justslowly turned into a sense of where things were and how far everybody was from each other and who they were and how they feltthat in this place was an assurance you were still on the mountain and not walking off it.
That was the sense you could really get hooked on, and the preachers didnt know that oneor maybe they did and werent telling you that because it was just too attractive, the way Brionne had gone off into it and gotten herself into a place she couldnt maybe didnt want toget out of.
That was the other side of ityou were bound to a creature that wasnt human. And if it should die
The world began to flatten out: Cloud had begun to pull out of range, growing more vague as the snow came between them. He knew then hed been thinking very dangerous, scary things.
Pull, dammit, came from out of the fog beside him.
He pulled harder, and as they came closer to Cloud the world re-expanded. That was the way it seemed.
At the same moment came a sudden shove in what Danny called the ambient, a flash of and an awareness of
Danny wanted him quiet. Danny didnt want him interfering with his horse. Danny was
Foot skidded. Body reacted. Heart caught up late. He was too tired, too out of breath. Hed never walked this far in his life, never imagined what it did to feet and legs to walk up incline after incline with no letup.
The wind came at them from the side in a sudden gust. They couldnt see Cloud, but Cloud was still there, still aware of them
Two hours on a good day, Danny had said. He couldnt be that wrong.
* * *
Chapter 2
Ť ^ ť
Storm brought early twilight to a cabin that, on the east slope of a tall mountain, lost the sun in mid-afternoon, and it meant peaceful horses now that theyd run themselves silly in the galenow that, moreover, theyd eaten something humans found entirely noxious, that left a faint aroma about them of bushdevil musk as they were let in for shelter.
It didnt stop two horses from starting a little neck-nipping and tail-lifting in the middle of their two-footed partners supper in a very small cabin. Then there were the throaty rumbles and the explosive snorts that presaged lovemaking, which had its effect on two humans trying to concentrate on griddle-cakes and hash, an early supper and an early bedtime, by their intentions.
Guil hadnt been in the mood for the last several daysa hole in the side tending to discourage a man. Tara had suffered the love-making in the ambient in lonely resolution and was not resigned to do so tonight; he caught that impression quite clearly through the taste of hash, the smell of dead bushdevil and the musk two amorous nighthorses generated on their own. She had set her mind on making an advance just real soon nowlimited to milder activity, it might be. Acknowledging he was doing well to be on his feet.
He was going to finish the hash. His horse could wait. Her horse could wait. Tara could wait. Hed all night.
Tara made valiant attempts to slow down with supper.
But the horses didnt wait, and
he didnt taste the last of the hash. Neither, he thought, did she.
One thing about horses, once didnt satisfy them. They saved it most of the year for this season, though theyd not reject a little offseason recreation. But in winter, given time and opportunity and a couple of humans to care for their essential survival, they had only one thing to do besides eat and sleep. It was the force that bound herds together for the winter. It was the social impulse that shuffled the deck for pairings, that ended by spring in pregnant mares and smaller, saner groups, four or five, that hung together for the season.
And by the time two humans had wended their way through essential and polite human processesBurn and Flicker were through the first round and far from finished for the evening.
Long winter nights. Long season.
Tara, fortunately, was taking the same precautions the mares did in bad seasons. He didnt know if she had the first time theyd made love: he hoped so. But bitterweed was something the shelters kept, right along with the tea, the salt, and the flour. Horses wouldnt touch it until there was nothing else left to eat: it prevented foals in years when there wasnt forage and it kept riders from getting pregnantmaybe from siring as well: hed heard it speculated on but never proved.
Hed drunk the damn tea, too, though, out of basic courtesy, because it tasted really bad, sugar didnt half cure it, and he didnt think anybody should have to suffer it alone.
Fact was, he liked this woman. He hadnt said too much yet and some things the horses didnt carry in quite the human way or the human sense: nuances of emotion were real chancy. But he felt safe with her, felt as though if things went wrong hed have solid, clear-thinking backup, and that on good days itd be good just to know she existed in the world.
Wished shed felt differently about the kids, that was the only thing. He was really, really disturbed about that, and hadnt, in the dose of painkiller Tara had shoved down him, had his wits thoroughly about him when shed taken a wide decision in the matter of their own welfare for the winter. Tara didnt hesitate on a threat. Just didnt. Shed been a Darwin rider before shed come to Tarmin, a hell of a lot rougher life than this mountain had been, and there were a lot of shadow-spots like that with her.
Cloud's Rider Page 3
