Cloud's Rider

It found an echo. For a moment the whole mountainside vanished in a strong sending of and and that stirred memories from another source of

It took a moment to get the ambient calmed down again.

“The horse hunted it,” Guil said, with that economy of words Danny had found among borderers. “The horse came up here tagging you, and you went into walls. The tree-climber was here first. But this horse was hunting it to get its territory, until he got what he wanted. Then he was going right down the mountain, fastest way he could.” It was true, too, that senior riders could sift a lot more out of a single image than juniors could do. And older horses both packed more information and traded it with more dispatch. There’d been just too much flying past him a moment ago for him to catch all of it—without resurrecting the fear that had gone with it. And he didn’t want to do that.

Guil walked over where Carlo was and patted Spook on the neck. “Better have a look at his feet. Been running wild till today, was it?”

Carlo didn’t seem to find it easy to talk to Guil. Not at all. “Yes,” Danny said in Carlo’s stead. “He was.”

Guil walked around Spook, hand on Spook’s back, looked at him, looked at his legs, just a fast pass around, while Carlo uneasily dodged around Spook’s neck and stayed out of the way. “Needs some seeing-to,” was Guil’s pronouncement. “Had you staked out for his for a while, did he?”

“I—don’t know. I guess. Yes, sir.” Carlo wasn’t doing well with words—not easy to talk when images were warring for your attention. And he was scared of Guil in a way Danny hadn’t seen in him, down in the cabin near Tarmin.

“Damned well playing tag with the tree-sitter,” Tara said, and was in the ambient as Guil stared off into the woods and Tara walked up beside him.

“What are they saying?” Carlo asked quietly, his arm under Spook’s neck, as Spook.

“They think whatever I shot, whatever has the is something—I don’t know—some of it’s hazy to me. But they think Spook and this thing have been fighting each other up here. Spook had you pegged for his. So he wasn’t leaving. The thing in the nest, it wanted this whole ridge for its territory. And Spook was hellbent he was going to get you out of the village if he couldn’t get that thing out of this territory.”

“One argumentative horse,” Guil said, paying attention when Danny thought he hadn’t been. He walked back and laid a hand on Carlo’s shoulder. “Hell to manage. Got to warn you. He’s used to a rider that picked fights.”

Tara walked back over with a tuft of fur in her gloved fingers. Falling snow lit on it and stuck; horses laid their ears back as they smelled it, but there wasn’t a thing from Burn or Flicker, just from Spook and, to Danny’s surprise, Cloud, who laid his ears flat and did that sending but nothing clearer.

Took a second for the implication to get through. And then a very anxious feeling hit the stomach.

“Never met anything Burn didn’t recognize the smell of,” Guil said.

Neither Burn, who was far-traveled, nor Flicker nor Cloud recognized it, and Spook, who’d been playing tag with it for days along the road, didn’t have a clear image of it.

“There’s a lot of unknown territory,” Tara said, “on this mountain’s backside. And beyond here—there’s just unexplored outback. With the rogue-sending taking Tarmin down, the whole mountain upset—that sending would have carried clear around the mountain flanks, clear to God knows where, so long as there were creatures to carry it. —Danny, you got anything better on it?”

He tried to image it. Wasn’t sure he succeeded.

“I’m from Shamesey,” he said by way of explaining his limitations. “From in town. I never even saw a lorrie-lie real clear. Just what Cloud knows.”

“This is nothing anybody knows,” Tara said. “It could be like a lorrie-lie, but it seems bigger. What would you say, seventy, eighty kilos?”

“I couldn’t judge,” Danny said. “I really couldn’t judge.”

“Sometimes in autumn, when things get restless, something does stray across the Divide. Never anything this big, that I’ve heard of.”

“More than that,” Guil said, staring off into the woods, and that image was steadier and longer than Danny personally had held it. That was Guil and Burn, Danny thought, with real appreciation for seniors. “Predator. Strong one. Smart. Not enough blood. Didn’t hit it solid enough.”

“There’s the villages up here,” Tara said, and with the hair prickling on his arms Danny was entertaining the same thought. Cloud didn’t like it, and he moved to the side to lay a hand on Cloud’s neck.

“Shelter near here,” Guil said.

“So’s its nest,” Danny said. “It could be its nest, at least—near the shelter.”

“Bad business to leave anything wounded,” Tara said. “Snow’s already taking the trail, and it’s likely gone up in the trees anyway. Check the nest is my recommendation.”

“Sounds good to me,” Guil said.

It sounded good to Danny, too. And there’d be cramped quarters for four riders and horses in the shelter, but there’d be safety, too.

They’d run a hard course, as Guil and Tara were at the end of a day’s travel from somewhere below. Tara set out walking beside her horse, Guil did the same, Danny followed with Cloud, and Carlo trailed an uncertain last.

But feeling that uncertainty, Danny lagged back at Cloud’s tail and put himself near Carlo.

“Sorry about the scare,” he said. “Wasn’t your fault we ran to hell and gone. I should have been more careful coming up on you.”

“I’m all right,” Carlo said. “But what about Randy?”

“Rider camp.”

“He made it.”

“He’s fine, last I saw.”

“Danny, I didn’t kill that man.”

“I know.”

“How? Did they find who did it?”

“No. But I hear you clear. Horses carry it. Took me two years to learn to lie. And you’re under camp rules, now. Village law can’t take you without Ridley’s say-so.”

Carlo was vastly relieved at that.“Randy either.”

“Randy either. You stick with me. We’ll think of something. Randy’s safe. Ridley Vincint, he’s camp-boss. He’ll take care of him until we can arrange something ourselves. He’ll be fine.”

“I owe you. This is twice I owe you.”

“That horse was doing pretty damn well keeping you in one piece.”

“Nobody’ll shoot him if I go back?”

“Not a chance. Nothing wrong with that horse—now. Besides, I’m supposed to take you on to Mornay and get you out of trouble. On Ridley’s orders.“

“No question here,” Carlo said. “If Randy’s all right with him, I’ll go.”

“I think even Callie’s going to stand by him. I think it’s all right.”

Guil and Burn had stopped. Tara gave Guil a hand up to Burn’s back and Guil looked, in the dim light there was, fairly done in, head down, arm across his middle for a moment. was evident, not bad, but there, and it was clear to Danny that Guil and Tara had pushed matters hard getting up here.

He wished there was something he could do to reciprocate. There wasn’t, except if he could guide them to where they could settle the problem of the lorrie-lie or whatever it was. But they weren’t fit for a chase: Burn wasn’t going beyond a walking pace, Guil not favoring any jolting right now, he was well sure, and Burn having done more carrying of his rider than a nighthorse wanted to do on a steep road. There was little chance, Danny thought, that the creature was going to put itself in their sights tonight—and he personally hoped they just got to shelter. Guil didn’t need any excitement that might set Burn to rapid moving—besides that, the daylight was going and the snow was still coming down.

Meanwhile they followed his and Carlo’s backtrail to the wide road and followed the road beside the pond, within snow-obscured view of the —and when they reached the vantage he’d had, the nest was plain to see, covered in snow, a lump in an otherwise symmetrical tree.

They left the road and came to the very foot of it. No tracks led to it, though it stood apart from other trees. Danny looked up, searching for life in the ambient all the same, remembering how it had shifted things on him—

A shot went off. Spook went straight up and Carlo grabbed for a double-handed and desperate hold. Tara had fired, discharged her rifle up into the nest.

Nothing resulted but echoes, a spatter of snow, a fall of shattered twigs.

Bones followed, one pair with blue and white plaid still clinging. The missing man in the village, Danny thought, might have worn a shirt like that.

But that would mean a large hunting range. And a beast that traveled far in its hunting. And didn’t fear a village.

“Damn sure no leaf-eater,” Guil said, scanning the other trees around about them.

But it wasn’t in the nest. There was no blood, no sound, nothing to indicate Tara’s upward shot had hit a living creature.

was Danny’s thought. It found agreement from Carlo. But something else was going on with the ambient, horses and riders transparent as the winds. Danny made himself very still and tried to slip Cloud into the effort, but Cloud was unnerved and broke it up.

“Sorry,” Danny said.

“It’s all right,” Guil said.

“It’s hard to get an image of.”

He tried not to spill beyond his intention to inform them. But Guil

“Rest of it,” Guil said.

“It blotted things out,” Tara said. “Damned strong.” Danny was He didn’t understand what it had done. And he’d experienced it.

“It can blot out another sending,” Guil said. “Take another sending out of the ambient it passes on. A horse can do it.”

“But a horse has to learn,” Tara said. “This thing’s got tricks. Complicated tricks. Like Guil says, it’s smart, it’s a predator, and I hope to hell there’s just one of them. Last thing we need is a colony going.”

Thoughts hitting the ambient were stirring real apprehension now from Spook.

“Get ourselves settled in tonight,” Tara said, and they left the place, through a snow-fall that stuck to eyelashes and piled up on clothing and horses’ backs. Tracks were filling in, even the ones they’d made. But there was a trace where something large had crossed the snow, a depression too snowed-over to read much of it.

But the horses didn’t like it, and there were unpleasant images, horses taking information from each other, Danny thought, fast and furious—he was learning, too, of a feud, horse and beast, that had gone on for days around Evergreen, out in the woods.

The seniors were learning from him and Carlo, the same fast, disjointed and sometimes exceedingly accurate way, about the village, the camp, the blacksmith shop—

the image came, a command, a question, he thought from Tara; and it was Carlo’s image that came back,

The ambient wasn’t happy about that. Not at all.

“We’d better get over there,” Tara said. “Soon as we can.”

“The camp-boss told me to get Carlo on to Mornay,” Danny said. “I’m not so sure.”

“Not a good idea right now,” Guil said.

“More riders at Mornay than Evergreen,” Tara said. “Fewer further on.”

Danny wished to himself he’d aimed better. They weren’t good thoughts that were populating the ambient right now, He’d had the chance to prevent it. He could have stopped and made sure of his target. If he’d known it wasn’t a lorrie-lie. If he’d known what to do first and what second in Carlo’s likelihood of rushing off a cliff or whatever other danger he could find out there.

“My fault,” Carlo said, “isn’t it?”

“The pair of us,” Danny said honestly. “You don’t rush around out here. You just don’t hurry.” He became excruciatingly conscious he was repeating Guil’s advice to him last summer, and thought Guil might remember it, as he hadn’t clearly remembered the green kid who’d asked him how to get good jobs.

The green kid who’d survived up here as far as he had, all on Guil’s advice.

The green kid who didn’t need a senior’s advice to feel the hazard as they came up that logging road and passed beside the shelter.

“Don’t like this,” Carlo said to him quietly. “I really don’t think Spook likes it.”

“They know,” Danny said, smelling something he’d never smelled, a scent heightened by the horse’s sense of it as they came up along the logging road.

“It’s gotten in,” Tara said, as they passed by the blind wall. “Too big for the chimney.”

“Seems so,” Guil said.

They rounded the corner toward the door itself. The horses weren’t advising them of any presence there. was how it seemed. But the smell was there despite the snow, beyond human noses, maybe, to detect.

The shelter looked normal. The latch-string was out, which would pull the inner latch up and let a traveler inside.

“Guil,” Tara said, “you get out of the way. —Danny, you open it.”

He didn’t object, though Cloud wasn’t happy. It was just a case of taking no unnecessary chances, putting someone who could move fast in the right spot, and having Tara standing behind him with a rifle that packed a high-caliber punch—in case the beast had dug in under a wall and gained the place for a den, and in case it was capable of lying in wait. He stepped up to the door, wanting and pulled the latch-string and pulled the door open.

The place, he could see even in the gathering dusk, was a shambles.

“It’s gotten in,” he said. He had no trouble at all smelling the creature at this range. Bedding was all over the floor. He hoped that accounted for all the scraps and rags of cloth. “Shall I see if the supplies survived?”

“Got a match?” Guil asked him from the doorway.

He had. He went in as Tara took up a position to the inside of the doorway and Cloud came all the way in, smelling both and and on the defensive.

A fire ready to use, the ordinary and courteous condition in which one left a shelter’s fireplace, had been scattered around the hearth. A tin of cooking oil had popped its metal stopper and spilled, and in the expediency of getting a fire going, he opened the flue, stuffed a few pieces of oil-soaked wood and an oil-soaked blanket in and touched a match to it.

It lit the room. The damage was thorough, flour thrown about the walls and ceiling—cots broken, absolute wreckage.

“Hell of a mess.” That was from Tara. “This isn’t vermin damage. They’d have gotten the oil and the flour. Vermin have never been in here.”

Cloud sniffed a torn mattress and jerked his head up with a snort of disapproval. Guil and Carlo were both in the doorway against a backdrop of dusk near darkness.

“Vermin were supper for this thing,” Guil said. “Search the edges. Look for an entry hole. And be careful.”

Danny started looking along the edges of the fireplace. Tara made a faster circuit, kicking bedding aside, shoving the broken cots out of the way, making Cloud dodge her path. Flicker came in and helped all around the edges of the cabin.

“No entryway,” Tara said. “That thing came in the way we did and left the same way; the flue was still shut, and something that size wouldn’t fit up there, anyway.”

“Damn, damn, damn,” Guil said. Carlo said nothing at all. And Danny was putting together a scene he didn’t at all like.

“You think it just pulled the latch-string to get in?”

“Curiosity might have pulled that string,” Tara said, and in the dying light of the blaze he’d made in the fireplace she ran a gloved hand over dents and scratches around the doorframe. There were others, Danny saw, by pulling the door back, on the inside of the door surface. “That door,” Tara said, “took some abuse. Must have been shut, at some point—can’t figure why else the dents inside. Maybe spooked it. Till it figured out to shove the latch up. By accident, maybe.”

Bad news, Danny was thinking. Cabins were safe with latch-strings out. No creature on the planet knew how to pull the cord and simultaneously handle the door while the latch was up. Complicated operation. A ridden nighthorse knew somewhat how to do it, but didn’t have the right equipment to make it work. Lorrie-lies had fingers, but didn’t have the brain.

“Camp outside tonight,” Tara said. “It’s foul in there. Let the wind blow through it.”

He didn’t want to stay in the shelter with the stench, either. He shooed Cloud out to clean air and made a fast search for supplies, found a blanket, some cord, a metal drop-lid bin of the size to store grain, which should have resisted pilferage—though there was grain on the floor.

“Spring lock’s been opened.” He used a stick of the scattered firewood to pry the lid up and had his pistol in hand when he lifted it. There was grain inside that hadn’t been spoiled: the drop lid had caught a lot of blows, but the bin, while the lock was open, seemed to have frustrated the creature both in its wood-reinforced weight and in its uninteresting, vegetable contents. He threw another couple of sticks on the fading fire to maintain enough light to see by and began to carry grain out on two battered metal plates that he found in the tangled bedding.

The horses in the main were fastidious enough to smell over the grain he put down on the snow, but Spook had far less hesitation to go nose-down: Spook’s ribs were in evidence under his winter coat— he’d been eating small catches, Danny guessed, but nothing but berries and lichen, else, and precious little to keep his gut full. The other horses were in good shape and might skip a meal, but Spook was willing to shove higher-status horses for his share of the grain, and the other horses weren’t driving him off for his manners, sensing a horse more desperate than challenging for status.

Meanwhile Carlo had brought firewood from the rick outside and, with Guil advising him, was doing the one necessary thing he could tolerably well manage. Tara began unpacking her kit—and they were in business as a camp, just that fast, with a fire about to get going, snow for melting, a blanket for Carlo and enough guns and horses to make sure the beast that had devastated the cabin was their quarry and not the other way around tonight.

“Shut the door when you’ve finished,” Tara said. “No sense drawing visitors tonight, and we could need it tomorrow. When we leave, we’ll put the pots in the drop bin and leave the door open wide. Fastest way I know to clean up the mess.”

Courting vermin was the damnedest way he could think of to do housecleaning. But it made a certain sense, and this junior rider didn’t want to have to scrub it down. He put Carlo to helping him cut evergreen boughs for beds for them and the horses—peculiar thing to be doing, using a perfectly intact rider-shelter for a windbreak, but with the green boughs underneath them, and with the blankets over them and their horses next to them, they’d do all right.

He assured Carlo so, catching anxiousness on Carlo’s part. It was a lot of changes for a kid in one day. But he knew how that was.

And he knew, after he’d had a chance to sit down at supper with the senior riders and get their view of matters, that Spook had had no choice but the course he’d run—trying to get his rider down the mountain, down the only gap in what was otherwise a rocky face opposite Evergreen, once the truck route had iced and drifted shut.

Same way Guil and Tara had come up, by way of a series of logging cuts and a set of trails Tara knew—they’d come when they’d gotten his message about Spook, and realized they were in trouble. So he forgave Tara if there was anything at all to forgive. And he wasn’t consulted, exactly, about their plan to hunt the beast he’d wounded, but he thoroughly agreed that they should try at first light to account for it here, and that if they couldn’t, he and Guil should get immediately to Evergreen and advise Ridley of the danger.

“The other two of us will go on to Mornay,” Tara said, “and advise them down the road to relay on the warning. We’ve got to find this thing.”

The horses settled in a close ring about them, winter though it was, and although Burn and Flicker made a close-knit pair: it was safety at issue, and and

Carlo didn’t show a disposition to sleep immediately, but he didn’t seem to track a great deal, either. Carlo leaned against Spook’s shoulder and the ambient grew warm and strange with a new rider’s amazement at the creature settled next to him, at the and the sense of

“Harper never used to call that horse a name,” Guil mused when the evening was winding down toward sleep. “Used to say it wasn’t anybody’s business. Damn-you-horse was the closest to a name I heard him use. Spook’s a good name. Horse that can’t be caught.”

Carlo’s hand was under Spook’s mane. Spook was nosing his rider in the ribs.

They were in that lost-in-each-other stage that Danny had grown up thinking was a boy-girl folly. Then he’d learned what that horse and rider tie felt like—and he understood. Whatever Guil said was lost on Carlo right now. And Guil shook his head, knowing the same truth, beyond a doubt.

Quiet night, Ridley thought, listening to the silence about camp—silence in the woods, in the barracks, at the fireside. They’d risked going off-watch at the den and gone inside, enjoyed a quiet supper, and had no alarms. Jennie played by the fire, and Randy Goss, cheered by his promise, perhaps, that having no news out of the ambient was a sign Carlo was on horseback and traveling far and fast, got down on the floor and taught Jennie a game of squares and crosses with a piece of charcoal on the stones.

It was a new game for Jennie, who after a terrible day and a worried evening was laughing and giggling with the first human being even remotely near her age who’d sheltered in the rider camp.

It was good to hear. It made Callie laugh. Callie was on her way to accepting the boy, no matter his relatives: the plain truth was, Callie liked kids, and the plainer truth was, he himself was an easy mark for a youngster needing help.

When the games wore down and eyes grew heavy they put the Goss boy to bed in Fisher’s room, figuring Dan wouldn’t mind, and of the several rooms, it was clean, dusted, and they’d opened the door vents to let the heat in from the main room.

He put Jennie to bed, with Callie waiting in the doorway.

“Is Randy going to stay here?” Jennie wanted to know.

“Seems likely,” Callie said. “He might. If he’s good and minds what I say.”

“I hope he is,” Jennie said, and snuggled down into the pillows.

Ridley pulled the covers up and kissed his daughter good night. He and Callie went to bed, and he and Callie made love for the first time since Fisher had come to the barracks. The ambient was that quiet.

For the first time since Dan Fisher had arrived at their gate there was peace in the camp.