Cloud's Rider

by C. J. Cherryh

  Danny nodded soberly, with a quiet in the room so deep there was just the fire-sound and the howl of the wind across the roof.

  “Lord have mercy,” was the preacher’s reaction, that and a shake of his head.

  “Don’t want to talk here,” Danny said. His voice had deepened with hoarseness, and he was having to force it as was. But it made him sound older. “Tomorrow. I’ll come over villageside. Tell you all you want to know.”

  “The Lord was surely with these boys,” the preacher said.

  Danny remarked to himself that of course the man carefully didn’t say that God could ever possibly be with a rider—just with the village-bred Goss kids. But he was a polite preacher. He’d come into a rider barracks without fuss and didn’t outright insult the roof he was under.

  And maybe it was true that God had gotten the Goss boys up the mountain and just had to do it with the help of a damned-to-hell rider because, thanks to original sin, that was the way God regularly did things in the world beyond town walls. Or something like that.

  Truth, he’d been halfway religious before he became a rider. He was still trying to figure the ins and outs of the preachers’ religion as it applied to him now that he’d heard the Beast and damned himself—because right and wrong just didn’t work out with neat edges any more when you saw beyond the neighborhood you grew up in, and from what he saw on the outside looking in, it never really had. Not even in the old neighborhood, once you started seeing the rights and the wrongs you’d learned to ignore.

  “Nothing left down there?” the second deputy asked—not able to believe the extent of the disaster down there, Danny thought, and didn’t blame him.

  “Just the three got out,” Danny said, “them and one Tarmin rider. One border rider camped with her, in the last shelter between first-stage and Tarmin. The two of them’ll come up here, come spring. I—I brought them up.” He didn’t want to go into question and answer. He wanted Brionne away from the horses, behind the solid division of a village wall. “The girl needs a doctor, pretty quick.”

  “We’ll see to it,” the marshal said. “Carlo, can you walk, son?”

  Sounded like a decent man. Sounded kind. He approved, then.

  “Yeah,” Carlo said. “Randy can’t.”

  “Might put ’em with Van,” Ridley suggested. “If he’ll take ’em. Under threat of God he might. They’re the smith’s kids, from down in Tarmin. Van needs competition, doesn’t he?”

  “We’ll talk to him,” the marshal said.

  “We’ll lay the fear of the Lord on him,” the preacher added.

  Carlo was meanwhile trying to pull his socks and boots back onto sore and swollen feet—his boots laced with cord, and he had a chance of making it in fairly short order. Randy didn’t even wake

  “You want a tea and a shot?” Callie asked the official delegation.

  “Thank you, no,” the marshal said. “Better we get these kids settled. This the girl?” The marshal turned back the furs.

  There followed that small silence that Brionne’s pretty, doll-like face could well engender.

  “Are her eyes affected?”

  “She won’t shut them without the bandage,” Danny muttered, tucked down in his spot. “She’s been like that. Beast-struck.” That was what the town preachers called it if someone went out like that and wouldn’t come back. It happened, legendarily, to townfolk who either got stranded out in an area with beasts, or who, in the safety of town, had started hearing them. He’d never known a case but this one. Legendarily, it happened to the innocent faced with the beast-mind. Practically—it happened to truckers and such that got caught out and survived. So he’d heard. Most didn’t survive.

  He watched the preacher sign God’s mercy over her. But they were finally leaving. With Carlo managing to lever himself up by way of the wall behind him and to carry himself; the marshal’s deputies picked up Randy.

  The marshal himself picked up Brionne, furs and all, like a father carrying a baby.

  She was thirteen. She was blond. Blue-eyed. Even with her hair tangled and the scratches on her arms she looked like a saint in a painting.

  Danny tried not to pay attention to any of it after that, just praying to God for them to get her the other side of that wall with nothing whatsoever happening while they were carrying her like that. Carlo asked for Randy’s boots and socks, and Danny just shut his eyes and ducked his head, wishing them to get moving, telling himself there wasn’t any good saying good-bye to Carlo and Randy— he’d be here all winter if Ridley didn’t order him out into the snow, and they weren’t his business now. He wasn’t in their acceptable social class, and once the desperation wore off he didn’t expect Carlo or Randy to have much more than a polite word for him when and if they next met.

  The door shut.

  So he didn’t have to be responsible for them anymore. He’d meet Guil and Tara up here when the thaw came—whenever a thaw came to the High Loop, which was probably well toward summer in the lowlands. He’d do the job they’d hired him for and then he’d go down to Shamesey and let his family know he was alive.

  And—give it about an hour into Sunday dinner before his father started preaching at him about hell and his horse and he wanted out of there.

  In that light, maybe stuck on a mountaintop for several months wasn’t so bad.

  But he missed his father anyway. He thought now it wouldn’t matter if his father yelled at him. He’d had guns pointed at him— which sort of put his father’s well-meant yelling in perspective. He missed his younger brother Denis. He even missed his other brother, Sam, and that was how lonesome he was.

  Definitely he missed his mother. He’d like one of her suppers right now.

  He’d like her making tea (mama’d never, ever put spirits in it, though) and stirring up biscuits and bringing him his supper in his bed with the flowered quilt and the dingy plaster and the cracks, three of them, that had used to run across the ceiling. He could really appreciate the old apartment tonight.

  The cracks were fixed now. The place didn’t look like the home he always remembered when he was far absent from it.

  But that was fine. His family did right well on the money a rider son gave them. As long as they didn’t exactly take him back to their bosom God wouldn’t damn them for dealing with him and their neighbors would go on associating with them.

  He believed, well, a mishmash of things that didn’t fit. But there wasn’t anything he could do about being what he was, not since the night he’d started hearing Cloud in his dreams, and the day he’d gone down to the rider camp to ask the riders to do something about the wild horse that (not at all his fault, of course) he was hearing night after night while the Shamesey gate-guards were shooting at it—and not having a bit of luck: a threatened horse was real good at imaging he was where he wasn’t.

  A horse was good at snagging a fool, too. Helluva lot of chance he’d had. Cloud had come looking for human company and he was what answered. He’d been—

  —happy. Happy, dammit, since that day. Most times.

  All the attractive commotion was gone, now. Young Jennie was running out of energy—whining at her mother.

  He thought then—he thought—he really didn’t feel too energetic, himself, and that the room was getting much too hot. He was getting a little sick at his stomach, to go with the blinding headache that had never yet left him. So he thought he’d get up from where he was sitting and see if he could get an answer out of Ridley, whether he could sleep here the night—that was all he was interested in right now, a place to lie down.

  He drew his bare feet up, braced a hand on the fireplace rock, got up—

  Felt his center of balance off and went down backward, stupid thing to do. He knew he was going to hit his head on the fireplace.

  And did. Hard.

  Embarrassing move. He was blind for an instant, and then knew he’d fallen so his neck was bent forward and his legs were tucked and sort of crossed, so not only had he added to the headache, it wasn’t easy to find anything with his hands to help him up again—just— couldn’t find up from down. He heard t
he to-do he’d made in the room as he set a hand on the hearth stones, trying to figure out the position he’d gotten into.

  Strong hands pulled him away from the fire before he put his hand quite in it. That had to be Ridley, who hauled him up onto his knees and got him on his feet.

  “Is he hurt?” the kid asked, all concerned, and the woman said they’d better put him to bed.

  “Is he going to die?” little girl sounded worried. Or excited. But Ridley said,

  “He’ll be all right. Out of the way. Out of the way!”

  Ridley provided balance. All he had to do was get up and sort out his right foot from his left, the way he’d done on the mountainside, just one step after another, all the way to what he hoped was a clean and empty bed.

  * * *

  Chapter 7

  Ť ^ ť

  Darcy Schaffer didn’t know how long she’d heard the wind. The heavy storm shutters were locked tight on the windows, and didn’t admit but a hint of light or dark—shutters that could keep out a blizzard or an intruder, or the world in general.

  She was heating water for breakfast tea when she heard that distant kind of thump in the snow-passage that meant someone was running around at this hour of the morning—before dawn—and if it was those damned teenaged Durant kids again, out and annoying the neighbors before their parents were awake, she was going to call the marshal and let him talk to their parents.

  But it was measured, heavier steps she began to discern headed for the passageway and directly for her door, and more than one of them. Her heart unwillingly picked up the sense of panic she felt when, first, she was sure someone was going to call at her door, and second, that someone had come with a cogent need for her to deal with them. She didn’t want to deal with the outside. She dealt with it only on emergencies—and that was when they came to her, someone with a pain or a hurt that sweet oil from the grocer wouldn’t cure. She was Evergreen’s only doctor.

  Well, dammit, she thought, wiped her hands and left the kettle on to boil as she walked down the three steps from the kitchen that led to the snow-door. She reached the door from her side exactly at the moment the visitors knocked on it and the preacher’s voice called out, “Darcy, it’s John, open up!”

  John Quarles and at least one other set of footsteps in a hurry. Definitely an emergency—and John didn’t usually come unless it was serious. She lifted the bar, shot the bolt back and opened the door wide.

  She was, being the village doctor, prepared for blood and disaster of every kind. John’s involvement usually meant somebody was dying or damned close to it—and she saw marshal Peterson and deputy Jeff Burani further back in the dark passage, the marshal carrying a fur-wrapped body.

  John was saying, “Darcy, there’s a case—”

  But she wasn’t just seeing the marshal. She was seeing her daughter Faye in the marshal’s arms, wrapped in those furs. It was Then. It was That Day, the preacher was at the door, and Eli Peterson and his deputy were coming toward her down the passage, bringing Faye, who was dead; and soon then Mark was

  dead.

  But they were both in the mountain, where the village buried its dead. That Day was sealed away and she couldn’t relive it, couldn’t say, to Faye, No, you can’t go

  “Darcy.” The preacher had her arm, trying to move her back from the door and its cold draft. The teakettle on the stove reached a boil and screamed a steady, maddening note.

  Distracted, she gave ground and let them in: marshal Peterson, Jeff Burani, preacher John Quarles, and a hurt kid—whose kid, she wasn’t sure, and her thoughts went flying distractedly down a list of kids that size and that weight. Above all else she didn’t like treating kids or dealing with anxious parents. But there was no one else for the hard cases and the broken bones and the appendectomies and such.

  “Sorry, Darcy, sorry to bring this in on you—” Marshal Peterson turned the body to pass her and the preacher in the threshold. His heavy boots clumped loudly on the hollow wood and the kettle was still screaming fit to drive a body mad. The first thing she did when she reached the level of the kitchen was to go and lift the kettle off the fire.

  The scream went on in her head. She hadn’t screamed aloud, Then. She’d shut in, shut down. She didn’t panic, now. She put on a professional face and calmed her heart, listening without giving a damn to what they were saying about a rider coming in, which didn’t make any sense with a storm raging out there, and that rider bringing three kids up the road from Tarmin, which made much less sense.

  “We took the boys on to Van Mackey’s,” John said. “Figured it was asking enough for you to take on the girl, Darcy, but the Lord has set a particular task on you. The Lord has had His hand on this child of His in a special way, and maybe in His good providence He’s given you this precious charge. She’s been in the passage of the Beast. Her mind’s gone to sleep.”

  John said other things. She didn’t believe in his God but she believed in John. They were partners in life and death, John doing the breaking of news and dealing with the next of kin, and that was a very useful thing to her. The marshal she had far less to do with and didn’t give a damn for most of the cases he brought her—miners and loggers who’d gotten drunk and bashed each other senseless or tried to shoot up the barracks.

  But then they folded back the furs and showed her the girl, and it was Faye. It was Faye’s blond curls, it was Faye’s pale face, just that age.

  Her eyes were open. Faye’s hadn’t been. Hadn’t ever been again. Faye’s eyes in this child looked through her, blue as the sky in summer.

  “What’s your name, sweetheart?” Darcy asked, and brushed her hand across the girl’s forehead. But the girl didn’t blink.

  “They’re reporting Tarmin’s entirely wiped out,” the marshal said.

  She listened to it. It wouldn’t come into focus. Tarmin—gone?

  “The girl didn’t come out so well as the brothers,” the marshal said. “They were swarmed. Kids holed up. She’s the youngest. Her mind’s affected. They say she’s getting steadily worse, don’t know how many days.”

  Not my field, Darcy would have said. She’d dealt with a couple of shock cases—miners, generally, who in their profession had to get along without riders to do more than check on their camps now and again, and just made do with guns and dugouts. The miners were tough. One had come around. The other hadn’t.

  “Her brothers and one rider got her up here, storm and all. They’ve been through hell. I know it’s cruel, Darcy, but I honestly didn’t know who else to take her to. Mackey’s going to take the two boys in or I’ll break his neck. I just don’t know what else to do with the girl. I know you got one guy over this. If you could just take a look at her—”

  “Take her upstairs,” she said. Downstairs was the clinic. Upstairs was where she lived. “Warmer up there, most-times.”

  “All right,” Peterson said, and furs and all, carried the girl out of her kitchen, around the corner to the stairs. Darcy followed with the lamp and got in front for the ascent. Peterson carried the girl up, and the preacher came behind her, with the deputy clumping after them, up, up where there was a small landing and a choice of rooms.

  The whole upstairs wasn’t warm yet: the kitchen stove was only just getting going. Their breath almost frosted, and the storm had torn something loose outside that banged and thumped. But Mark had planned for stormy days. Mark had set prism glasses in the steeps of the windward side of the roof where snow didn’t stick when the wind blew. The light came down four mirrored tubes, and it didn’t need kerosene to keep the upstairs lit even when the shutters were closed.

  Faye’s room had one. She opened the door. Dawn must be starting, because there was a faint glow coming in above the lamplight. She hadn’t noticed how much dust there had gotten to be. But the sheets were clean under the coverlet, and she had the marshal lay the girl down there.

  “You sure you’re all right?” the marshal asked her then, and she knew damned well what he was thinking and asking of her.

  “Fine.” She wasn’t angry, just ready for them to get out of her way and
let her find out what the girl’s chances were. She wasn’t sentimental about Faye’s things. She could use this room when it was practical. And it was practical now, a matter of light that didn’t risk fire or cost money.

  Such a pale, cold face. She couldn’t keep her hand from the blond curls. She knew it wasn’t Faye, but it was something to deceive her eyes and her hands and, at least for a while, the blank spot in her heart. “Oh, honey, can you blink for me? Can you do that?”

  “Let us pray,” John said, and launched into something about the Lord and lost sheep.

  “Yeah,” she said, instead of amen—she said things like that habitually and John kept his mouth shut and winced: John could have the souls on their way to the next world, but she wanted this one alive.

  So she herded the three men downstairs, as of no use, and had no time to spare for tea or cordialities: she shoved them out the door, with them promising to check this afternoon, and John Quarles promising to bring groceries if she needed them.

  “I have everything I need,” she said, maybe foolishly, because it wasn’t the truth, and she shut the door on them, then shot the bolt and dropped the bar.

  Faye, all done up in furs and softness. It was a beautiful dead child the marshal had brought her, That Day, and she began to cry.

  But old thoughts came to her and prompted her to stop sniveling and get something done. She found the dusty warming bricks in the downstairs closet and set them on the kitchen stove top, and stoked it up with another few sticks of wood.

  She took the hot kettle upstairs, moving faster than she had moved about her business in long, long months. She knew it wasn’t her daughter—she knew better; but she didn’t choose to know: that was the real difference between sane and crazy.

  In the thoughts she chose to think, Faye was home, the marshal had brought her, and she had a chance this time to fight death, hands on and by her effort—slim, but at least this time, a chance.

  The smith, Mackey, hadn’t been exactly hospitable.

  But Carlo thought now, sitting in a warm nook in Van Mackey’s forge, with the faint glow of embers for light as well as heat, that he was very willing to put up with pain in his fingers and feet. He was grateful that Danny Fisher hadn’t let them quit—even if Danny had missed the shelters in the whiteout.