Rider at the Gate

Chapter XIX

THEY WERE THE BLACKSMITH’S SONS. THEIR NAMES WERE CARLO and Randy Goss. And beyond that it was hard to get all the story. They brought Cloud up the low porch of the grocery—the flashlight, by some wonder, still almost worked, at least so they could get an oil lantern lit, and by that light they started a fire in the ironwork stove. It had been dark when the trouble came, the store was shut—the grocer lived next door, the boys said; the door over there had been open, but this one had a keyed lock, and there was no need, Danny agreed with the boys, to open the door into the house.

The awful thing, where they’d been and what they’d seen, was having an appetite. But Cloud wasted no time—Cloud was interested immediately in the cold-locker, not an ears-down kind of notice, but was in his thoughts, and Danny held the pistol on the door while Carlo and his brother opened it.

It was hams. Hams and packets of other stuff. Cloud started imaging and Danny didn’t think he could stand it, but Cloud wanted it, and with the whole store filled with supplies, they didn’t have to save anything. There were unseasoned iron pans the store had sold. There was the makings for biscuits. Danny stirred up soda biscuits and had the boys slice up the ham and put it in the skillet so they could at least make a start on Cloud’s appetite.

And by the time the biscuits were cooking on the edge of the stove Cloud was completely occupied watching No extraneous thoughts from Cloud—Cloud dominated the ambient, Cloud wanted and that was what was in the ambient—Cloud’s stupid rider finally figured out why they were ravenously hungry and why he found himself heaving a tired sigh and why the boys had tried to nip a little scrap of ham that floated free in the pan. Cloud had no squeamishness and no remorse.

And no fondness for thieves.

“That’s Cloud’s,” Danny said. “Cloud gets peeved if you steal his supper.”

That brought a sullen look.

“You want a mad horse or a happy horse inside this little place with us?” Danny put it to them. “You cut some more ham right now. We’ll get ours.”

Carlo took a cue fast. The younger kid whined. Carlo hit him with his elbow, said, “Man’s telling you,” and sliced more ham.

Man, Danny thought. Man. Was that what he looked like to these kids?

Damn fool, if he let that reaction get into the air. He checked on the biscuits, decided with Cloud involved, he’d better make more biscuits. It wasn’t real good for Cloud to eat nothing but ham, Cloud’s ambitions to the contrary—it was a lot of what the horse doctors called foreign stuff for him. But Cloud tolerated biscuits just fine.

Cloud didn’t mind Cloud thought they were good with

So they settled down on supply sacks in a fire-warmed room and cooked panful after panful of ham, stuffed themselves, stuffed Cloud (harder task) and washed it all down with lowland draft beer, which the boys had never had. The older was smart with it and sipped.

The younger, Randy, gulped his like water and passed out on the sacks after one mug…

Carlo said, after a moment of quiet,

“Got to thank you.”

“Couldn’t leave you,” he said.

“You didn’t say your name.”

“Danny—Dan Fisher.” He’d lost that chance. Damn. And he needed authority with these kids, for their collective safety. “I felt the rogue attack. Long way off. But I couldn’t tell where it was, or even what it was, at least when it started.”

“My sister,” Carlo began, and trailed off into a long silence, something about a rider den and a stocky man and a leather-jacketed rider that looked like this Tara Chang that Carlo had already talked about.

“Your sister’s a rider.”

“No. She wanted to be. She ran off. And it was her with the rogue. I know it was her. I could feel it. I could see it, right through the walls. She was looking for papa. She kept calling and calling for papa—”

“A rogue horse is apt to want people. And they’re loud.” He was on the edge of what he knew about the subject, but the kid wanted comforting. “It could take an image right from your mind. It’d feel like somebody you knew. People paint their own images—the one they want most, the one they’re most afraid for. And a predator will pick it right up and give it back to you.”

Carlo gave a fierce shake of his head. came into the ambient.

Danny let out a slow breath, decided maybe after all Carlo knew what he was talking about.

And he didn’t know why he’d found Didn’t understand Carlo Things were getting tangled. And he’d like answers.

Carlo flinched, tucked his knee up fast, rested his chin on his hand and didn’t look at him. Lamplight glistened on Carlo’s eyes. Chin wobbled.

“You have a good reason to shoot somebody?” Danny asked.

—But you couldn’t tell what in a sending. Cloud couldn’t carry human voices yet in any way you could hear it, just the noise.

But it looked like—house and family. It felt like house and family. He knew the scene when his own papa hit him. He flinched the same as Carlo and Randy flinched—but, damn, —he’d never shoot papa, he couldn’t do that—he loved him.

Carlo got up in a hurry, scaring Cloud, who snaked out his neck and grabbed a mouthful of coat.

<“Cloud!” Letting coat go. Boy standing. Still water.>

Carlo didn’t stand. Carlo made it away into the shadows, to sit down on a coil of cable. He crouched there with his head in his hands and cried, great noisy sobs.

Cloud thought, confused, thinking but no longer mad. Cloud knew he shouldn’t have hurt the boy. Cloud was upset, and stared at the boy, wide-nostriled, remembering because, dammit, he’d soaked Cloud’s shoulder a couple of times since they’d teamed up, especially when his father had announced to the neighborhood he was going to hell.

Carlo—had done the unthinkable. No knowing why. Carlo was hurting—he was hurting all over the ambient, aching for what he’d done.

“Calm it down,” Danny said. “You’re near a horse, dammit. Calm down.”

“I shot him,” Carlo stammered. “I shot my f-f-father.”

What did you say to a statement like that? What did you follow it with? He knew Carlo didn’t want to have shot anybody. The moment was there over and over again,

<Quiet.>

He scared Carlo. Carlo looked up at him, stunned and shaken.

“Horse,” Danny said. He was all but sure of it. “The horse was sending.”

“What horse?”

“The rogue. It was spooking around out there near the village when you had your quarrel. It was there. You know it was, but you don’t know you know. I’m hearing it in your memory. Only I’m a rider. I know what a horse sounds like. I know what I’m hearing in what you’re sending me.”

Carlo wiped his face, still staring up at him out of the shadows, “I can’t send!”

“You hear me real damn good,” Danny said, knowing he was laying it on thick and knowing he was out of his depth, but he couldn’t afford a kid going off the mental edge in this place. This was a kid who’d listened to the preachers. He’d been there, once, and he knew how to make it sound better, at least. “People don’t ever really send, you know that. Not even riders. We all say we do, but really only the horses hear us and pass things back and forth. Some people can hear better, or they think images better, or maybe they’re just quicker to put things into shape. A rider’s brain just sorts pictures out better than some—something like. That’s what I’ve heard, anyway. I’m not as good at it as some. But I can talk in words. I know riders you don’t hear two words out of in days. And I know how to pick out a rogue-sending. Trust me in that.”

“My sister could hear the horses.” Carlo’s voice shook. was very strong. “She could hear them at night. She could hear spooks in the woods. Maybe it runs in the f-family.”

Carlo didn’t like this sister, this sister There was a lot of anger there. A lot. And he had a damn scared kid on his hands.

“I hate to say your sister was wrong,” Danny said. “But I don’t hear the horses all the time. If I’m far from Cloud—I don’t. She may have thought she did. If you hear one across town—that’s a real upset horse. A rogue—she’d maybe hear. But so did you, that’s the fact.”

“I didn’t hear it when she left.”

“Yeah, but you heard it later. And she was trying to hear, what I pick up from you. —Listen to me.” The kid was close to panic. His own nerves were shaky. He wanted it “Listen: that horse was hanging around. She left, right? Your family was upset. Nobody’s going to think straight when a crazy horse is pushing temper into the ambient. Listen, down in Shamesey they were shooting at people when the horses got upset, and there wasn’t any rogue, just a report of one being up here. I’m not saying there wasn’t any fault. I’m saying it went crazy like it did because you got a crazy horse sending like hell out there. It couldn’t hear you. But you could hear it, no trouble at all, and you could hear anybody who was with that horse. Sending’s the same as hearing. The same as hearing, do you hear me? You’re not going to hell.”

Carlo’s jaw worked. Hard. Carlo took another swipe at his eyes with a hand shaking like a leaf.

You couldn’t push the argument too far. For what he knew the kid was guilty as sin. But the hazard of the kid blowing up was an unease sitting like lead at the pit of his own stomach—and the ambient began to ease.

“Want another beer?” Danny asked, and got up and filled Carlo’s mug from the keg.

Carlo came and took it. Cloud came up behind him—

Cloud gave him a sniff-over, trying to figure what was the matter with him. Carlo held his beer and stood very wisely quiet.

Cloud went back to his ham-grease and biscuits.

“Cloud protects me,” Danny said. “He’s making sure you’re not sick. They don’t understand everything we do. He wouldn’t like it if you were sick.”

Carlo was shaking so he spilled beer on his hand.

“You’re all right,” Danny said. “We’ll get out of here. You and the kid each with a rifle and a sidearm and supplies and all, I’ll walk you out to somewhere.”

“There’s Verden.”

“No village up here is real safe right now. This place at least isn’t real noisy in the ambient. The rogue may go for something louder. Or easier. We’re not going to open the gates.”

“Our mother did it.”

“What?”

“Opened the village gate. She heard Brionne. She wanted Brionne.” Carlo sipped his beer, staring unblinkingly into it. Swallowed hard, as if that wasn’t all that was going down. “Brionne sure came home, didn’t she?”

God, Danny thought, and didn’t say anything. The ambient for a second was full of

Danny shoved at the ambient. “If we don’t hear anything, I figure we’ll go out tomorrow. I got a friend I’m trying to catch up with.”

“From where?”

“Shamesey.”

“That’s where you’re from? Clear from there?”

“Yeah.”

“Him, too?”

“Know it’s a him? Know it’s a rider?”

“Yeah.” Carlo looked puzzled. “I mean, I guessed.”

“What color’s his hair?”

Carlo looked entirely uneasy. “Blond,” he said.

“See?”

“I don’t want to. God!” ‘

“Yeah, I figure you don’t want to, but there isn’t any choice—if you come near a horse, you’re going to see things. You prime yourself to go toward my horse, you got it? Not away. If anything goes wrong, you don’t spook off on your own—it’ll get you sure. Same with Randy. You better listen real hard to the ambient and don’t be afraid of it. Drivers with a big truck around them, they can sort of ignore it and follow the rig in front, but on foot, you’re down there with the spooks and the vermin. —Hey. You got your brother for a responsibility. You’ll do it. You have to.”

Carlo didn’t feel sure. Carlo stayed scared. But he looked aside at the sleeping boy, and said, finally, “Yeah.”

“I got a kid brother, too,” Danny said, which was about as sentimental as he meant to get. But Carlo Goss was pulling together real well. Real well. He hoped it lasted.

“Yeah,” Carlo said again, and went and got another beer.

Couldn’t blame him. Carlo was getting wobbly on his feet with two. But there wasn’t damned much—

Cloud’s head came up. Stark, concentrated look toward the wall. Toward the outside.

Not a sending. Somebody was out there, or the wind was moving a door in all that quiet.

From up the street, not down. But nobody could be stirring out there. It felt like a presence. It kept shifting.

Shifting. A horse. A rider. Side of the camp.

Shit!

He grabbed his coat and hauled it on in feverish haste—the coat first, because you couldn’t aim worth a damn shaking your teeth out. He pulled on his gloves, he grabbed the rifle.

Carlo and Randy were <scared.>

“You got a handgun,” Danny said. He was scared himself, but he had to move too fast to think on it.

“Don’t go out there,” Carlo begged him. “Please don’t go out.”

“That’s a gate open. Somebody’s out there. If they open the big gate, we could have the damn rogue in our laps. You stay here. The kid’s passed out. You stand over him. You know what the marshal’s wife did. Just don’t be too early—or too late.”

“Yeah.” Carlo’s teeth were chattering. Danny went to the door and Cloud followed him, ears up.

It didn’t feel like Cloud was

Cloud saw in the ambient.

Danny thought, and with his heart in his throat opened their makeshift latch and went out onto the porch in the dark.

was standing in the middle of the street. Pistol levelled at The gun lowered. Slowly.

“Everybody all right?” Danny asked. He thought there might be more than one in the ambient—he wasn’t sure.

Jonas had been scared. Jonas Westman—had just been Jonas walked across the snow-covered street toward him,

“There’s ham and biscuits,” Danny said, very pleased to be able to say that to this man, coolly, in full ownership of the premises and the situation. “It’d take me about fifteen minutes, supper in hand. Or if you’d rather—”

“You left the rider gate open.”

Trust Jonas to land on the one mistake. “Hope you closed it.”

“Stuart with you?”

As if he couldn’t be where he was without senior help. “Haven’t seen him. You?”

“No luck,” Jonas said.

He hadn’t quite meant to let that insolent query hit the ambient. But there it was, edged with hostility.

Jonas didn’t take alarm.

Carlo was behind him. With that three-sixty degree, back of his head surety of multiple riders restored to him, Danny thought about About About and and Jonas walked on down the street to let his partners and Shadow in. Jonas went out of Cloud’s range and into Shadow’s, he was sure by the way Jonas vanished into there-and-not-there presence.

He hadn’t thought He resolved he wasn’t going to. He picked up Carlo’s confusion, turned and pushed Carlo back into the warmth and the light.

“That your friend?” Carlo asked.

“Did it feel like it?”

“No,” Carlo said.

“Friends of my friend. Real sons of bitches. But they’re all right sons of bitches. They’re high country riders. Borderers. We’ve got help.”

Carlo didn’t quite seem to trust it. Carlo stayed scared, and worried about

“I’m not going to tell him. It could slip—won’t guarantee that it won’t. But village law’s not rider law.” He had a thought and got Carlo’s attention with a knuckle against the arm. “These guys? Don’t let them bluff you.”

Carlo didn’t like to hear that. He cast a nervous glance as if he could still see Jonas.

“They’ll try,” Danny said. “They’re not leaving you and the kid here. Or if they do—depend on it, I’m not running. Think of if they think about it. You don’t have to say a thing. Think They’ll hate it like sin.”

They made biscuits—Carlo had never cooked in his life, but he tried; Randy waked with all the commotion and sat up bleary-eyed.

“Riders are here,” Carlo told him. “We’re going to be all right, Randy. You hear?” Randy sat there looking numb and shaky, maybe a little sick from the beer—the ambient was queasy and scared, but Cloud wouldn’t put up with it. Cloud thought and and Cloud wasn’t happy with the arrival.

Going to be all right was a little early, too. Cloud’s rider didn’t count on it, because Jonas was an argumentative son of a bitch and Cloud’s rider wasn’t going to take it.

Well, Cloud’s rider thought—maybe Danny Fisher could tuck down a little and listen to Jonas, whose disagreeable advice had kept him alive. He’d learned a bit. He’d been desperate enough to learn, and he could try being—not ducked down and quiet, but maybe not quite so touchy.

He didn’t have to feel as if Jonas was threatening him. He’d had guns aimed at him. Jonas was a lot different.

Jonas, who was coming in asking for supper and shelter in what was, Jonas could figure, his camp, which he’d set up and where Jonas was asking charity.

Cloud was first in. Boss horse. Cloud should be but the store was and if Shadow had in mind.

He’d fairly well built the picture when assorted footsteps arrived on the porch and Jonas’ bunch knocked, wanting entry.

Danny opened the door. “Pretty crowded in here. Room and food for your horses if they’re quiet.”

came back to him, from at least a couple of the horses in the street. Heads were up and nostrils working, in that veil of snow. Jonas was his sullen self, but Luke and Hawley looked exhausted.

“Come on in,” Danny said, and held the door, imaging

“Were you here when it happened?” Jonas asked, taking off his hat.

“They were.” Danny nodded toward the two boys, and made the introductions: “Jonas Westman, Luke Westman, Hawley Antrim— Carlo and Randy Goss. Only ones alive. Their sister Brionne’s on the rogue.”

That got attention. Hats that had been coming off in courtesy to the house got tucked in hand and everybody stared at Carlo and Randy for a heartbeat, then wanted

He filled in the blonde hair, the red coat, the fact it was a kid looking for dead parents.

“Shit,” Hawley said. Hawley was upset. Something about that went blurred as Hawley’s thinking skittered away to

Jonas bumped Danny’s arm. “Kid opened the gates?”

He didn’t want to think. He didn’t. He said, “Carlo, ham’s burning.” It wasn’t. But it was close. Cloud was on the far side of the room, by the cold locker door; Cloud was closest to the stove, and put his nose out, smelling The other horses were near the door, crowded in the narrow room, growing argumentative; but human presence gave them no more room.

“Kids are upset enough,” Danny said under his breath, and Jonas didn’t push it. “Bad time,” Danny amplified the image of But Jonas had seen it.

“You shouldn’t have left that side gate. The outside rider gate was standing open wide.”

Damn. But he had it coming. Jonas was telling him what he had done that was stupid. That wasn’t an unfriendly act in this country.

“Yeah,” he said. “I didn’t think. I knew it the second I knew somebody was there. Scared hell out of me.”

Jonas was standing close in the crowded quarters. Jonas laid a hand on his shoulder, squeezed it. He wasn’t sure he liked it, wasn’t sure what it meant. Jonas had turned his back and gone over to investigate the stovetop cooking, where Carlo looked to have too few hands available for too many pans and Danny still wondered what that had meant—from Jonas’ disposition. Hawley was sitting on a barrel, the source of a glum pressure in the ambient: upset with what he’d seen outside in the street and trying to keep it quiet.

Luke—Luke was sitting on pile of sacks talking to Randy, asking him questions in Luke’s quiet way. Randy sneezed, exhausted, probably sick from the beer, and stared at Luke somewhere between reassured and scared: too many horses, besides which Shadow and Cloud together weren’t an easy presence in a confined space.

But four horses, four armed riders and two village boys, well-armed and fed, holding a wide walled perimeter with a lot of fuel against the cold were much better odds than he’d hoped for against the rogue. They didn’t need another village until spring, if they had to hold out.

“Is there a phone?” Jonas asked. And it was like the business with the gate: he just hadn’t thought—they were still in the process of getting a camp in order. But he hadn’t thought.

He said, calmly, “Carlo, where’s a phone?”

“Mayor’s office,” Carlo said. Carlo didn’t want to go tonight. It was one too many dark buildings, but Carlo was willing if they had guns. “Don’t know if it’s working.”

“Do what we can,” Jonas said. “We’re all right. But villages up on the High Loop need to know.”

“Yeah,” Danny said. He was embarrassed about the phone. But he didn’t know how to use one, anyway. It wasn’t quite as bad a mistake as he’d made with the gate. “I’ll go see about it. What building and what do you do with it?”

The morning came crisp and clear, sunlight striking the tops of the evergreens—Guil put his head out of the shelter, shut the door and took his time in the warmth. He had two dry blankets, dry fire-warmed boots, everything warm from the fireside, and Burn and he had breakfast on the bacon they’d brought and on the dry supplies the villages supplied the riders that served them: biscuits and sugar syrup, firewood already cut, an assortment of small blades and cords and such that riders might need—you took out, sometimes you put in, if you had a surplus; it was just an oddments box, always on the fireside. They made the shelters so much alike on purpose—so you didn’t have to wonder. There were bandages. There were matches. You left them alone if you didn’t need them.

He sterilized his own needle in the lamp-flame and got a nasty splinter out of the heel of his hand, a few minor ones out of his fingers. He’d lantern light and firelight this morning, the room was warm—he’d had time to warm himself and his dry blanket last night and even wash off before he went to bed on a decent supper. Then he’d gone out, just out, until he waked with the fire gone to coals and staggered out to put a couple of more small logs on.

Quiet, quiet morning. He was tempted to hunker down and stay another day, at least: he had aches and pains enough to justify it— he’d do it if there weren’t so urgent a reason to move on, at least as far as Tarmin, where he could find out from the local riders what the situation was and pass the warning of the situation. Tarmin could advise the High Loop villages of the danger if the phones were working—or if very brave riders wanted to try to get through.

There was one more shelter between here and Tarmin if he needed it: he knew it from Aby, and the map painted on a board nailed over the hearth advised the same, in a system he couldn’t doubt. There were the sideways crosses for the shelters; there were the dashes for the phone lines, with a circle for where you were, at this cross, and the triangles for the villages. Reading might tell you more, he guessed, because there were some letters on the board; but you didn’t need to know so much which village was which, if you were on this road. All you needed to know was that there was a village ahead and not just a mining camp. The marks always told you that, triangles for a village, stars for towns (there weren’t any on Tarmin Height) and squares for the camps. Trails were dot and dash, roads were wide solid lines. It always made sense.

Not to Burn. Burn believed that it was where people and horses were, right down to the shingles and the walls and the horse dens, but Burn never believed that the circled cross was where he was. Burn knew where Burn was: he was, of course, in a shelter with walls this color and a fire and bins of grain. Burn wasn’t in any mark on the board, Burn was where Burn clearly saw Burn was, and the ambient was all

“No,” Guil said reluctantly.

Burn was not happy. Burn sulked.

“Come on, Burn. Cut it.” Guil gave a slap on Burn’s shoulder and got snapped at by strong nighthorse teeth.

But he packed up.

He kept packing. He put out the fire, put on his coat and hat and scarf and gloves. The shelter was fast to chill with the fire out. Much less comfortable. Much less inviting. He gathered up the two-pack and his rifle, and opened the door. Cold air wafted in.

Burn shook himself, imaging and

Burn was sulking as he came outside. Guil latched the door.

Guil started walking. Burn followed, still sulking.

But after a little Burn’s gait grew more cheerful, Burn’s nostrils worked on the cold mountain air. Breaths frosted. The snow made that sound underfoot that came of profound cold. The light sifted through the middle branches now, shafts of light on the snow-frosted boughs and spots of light on the snow.

Burn grew bored with slow moving on a cold morning. Burn was sore, but Burn wanted and couldn’t arrange a compromise between that and So Burn danced along, taking two and three steps for every one he needed.

Burn ran for silly long bursts and circled with a spray of snow and came back again. And started to cough from the dry air and the altitude.

Guil didn’t ask to ride. Burn’s back was probably sore: Burn had put some few knots in it carrying him up the mountain. He still had a headache, but not so bad this morning. His legs were sore— too much sitting about camp, he said to himself; about time he stretched the kinks out.

So he walked a good distance, until he was limping and beginning to think about

Burn had worked off his little coughing fit. But it was too bright and clear a morning to laze along. Burn was in a good humor and wanted for no particular reason Guil detected, except that Burn probably wanted warmth on his back.

There wasn’t an apparent threat in the morning—a dry powder snow scarcely supported the little spooks, making strange plowed tracks in the deep places. It flew in clouds from under nighthorse feet. The air was clean-washed and clear.

The eye that took in constant information from such tracks could say there were a lot of them, and they were all nuisance-spooks, nothing serious.

The mind—understood a threat in that pattern: there should be bigger hunters abroad, even with a local number of horses in the ambient. A horse wouldn’t drive the hunters out. Compete with them. Annoy them. Yes.

But not interfere with a hunter’s predations among so many, many small spooks—unless human riders wanted to clear the area. That would be the obvious conclusion—if this rider didn’t know there was another, more ominous possibility.

The predators gave each other as much room as they needed, unless hunger or human presence drove them into a fight that neither ordinarily would pursue: their sign and their sendings defined where that back-to-the-wall point was, so they passed with bluster and bluff; the life-and-death struggle was all with prey, and prey never lacked predators.

Never lacked predators.

It didn’t make either of them comfortable, the horse-image in his head when he thought that.

The ground showed occasional tracks, never enough of them. The ambient held the occasional spook-image from the bushes. They walked along together, or Guil rode, and walked again, as Burn pleased. They had the morning’s biscuits as bacon sandwiches, had a couple of targets if he’d wanted to hunt, but they had supplies enough and he could get a good meal at Tarmin this evening. He didn’t want to shoot off a gun and spook everything into behaviors that said everything about the gunfire and nothing at all about what he was hunting. And he might not stay in Tarmin after he got there. He might sit out and listen—if there was a place he could fortify and quiet enough near the village to sit out in the dark and listen.

Because he never forgot what the job was: he just broke it up into smaller pieces that never left him daydreaming his way across the mountain—quick way to disaster, that was; of all mistakes Aby had made, he knew it wasn’t that one—she’d been too long in too many bad places to get caught napping.

The phone lines and the clear-cut were a guide along the easy way—no need to worry about pits, rocks, and hidden holes: Burn was willing to move—Burn had and in his head, and wanted again now that Burn had caught a breath and rested his back.

Guil took a fistful of mane and was about to do that when he saw a strange growth on the mountainside above them, like slats or a curiously regular weed growing out of the rocks. That was the first blink.

Then he realized it was bone supporting a coating of snow. A rib cage, or a part of one, and large. he thought, and Burn flared his nostrils and looked, sniffing for

Guil swung up. Dead horse up there. Possibly a wild one. Hard to say how long dead, but the very fact the bones were hanging together—though they might have frozen in that state—made it worrisome.

he thought. He’d ridden all along with a shell in the chamber, not a practice he’d have recommended to juniors—but juniors weren’t riding where he was riding, with maybe a hairbreadth margin of decision between himself and something that could take a nighthorse.

A fall was always possible. A broken leg, a stone-edge gash, a death by freezing or blood loss or even old age. But that was the way you’d explain a horse death on mountains where you didn’t have other, worse, possibilities, and he listened into the ambient, in case there was a rider stranded and dug in somewhere.

It was very, very quiet in the area—which wasn’t unusual in areas of the deep woods. But it wasn’t an ordinary area, in which a nighthorse had met with something it couldn’t deal with. He could wish it was the rogue and that whatever injuries it had had just caught up with it—but he didn’t bet their lives on it.

Burn didn’t take great upset at the sight at all. were and the woods were full of them, few hanging together for any length of time—that a few did argued that the horse hadn’t died too long ago; and that made Burn prick up his ears and sharpen his other senses into the ambient, not recklessly: Burn listened, and Burn’s rider sat astride and listened, in as close a borrowing of nighthorse senses as a human being could use.

All around, just a sense of life, little life, distant life, a whisper in the ambient, the awareness he’d dropped out of only in the desolation as Anveney.

That hush, everywhere about the mountainside. The rogue, if it was within reach, was quiescent for some reason.

Sleeping, maybe.

Or involved with something near and preoccupying to it, if it shared any traits of sane horses.

Guil imaged, thinking of riders potentially in trouble. Burn made no objections to that idea. was a very good idea with in the area, but the danger was all Burn didn’t find a source of it in the ambient.

Burn picked up his pace, hit his meaning-business gait and kept at it, whuffs of breath and hoof-falls in the snow assuming one quick rhythm. Over close to an hour, the road led down across a rough spot in the mountain flank and around into a climb to a place protected by trees and the angle of the mountain.

It was a place a rider would look to find a shelter built, if he knew one was due; and Guil had no trouble spotting it among the evergreens a little above them on the mountain.

But there was a darkness about the door. It was standing wide; and when he and Burn turned off the road and went higher on the slope to investigate the place, vermin scurried madly and darted from the open doorway.

Guil thought uncomfortably, and sat astride Burn and called aloud, “Is anyone here?”

There was no answer. Not a one. A last willy-wisp racketed about the interior and ran out in desperation past Burn’s feet.

Guil thought, and Burn snorted the scent of the place out of his nostrils and turned his head without Guil asking, going and and

A restocking of the supplies in a shelter didn’t accidentally leave a door unlatched. A rider wasn’t that careless or he was dead in his first year.

Guil thought, and probably not far from the others. Opening a door under attack was the last thing a rider would do, except maybe to save a partner, maybe to get off a shot at the attacker—but, first off, there was a gun-port; and second, if you did go out, you latched that door. Leaving that door open behind one’s back was a mistake only a fatally confused rider might make, under circumstances when places of safety and places of threat might trade places—when even a rider used to sendings might not be sure what he’d done and not done, or where the enemy was.

They turned back down to the road and found, as they went, supplies strewn along the ground, a blanket hanging in a bush, a big tin of what had probably been flour, very clean, shiny, dented and scratched, and missing both flour and lid, lying in the roadway. It had snow inside the open end and a deep blanket of snow lying undisturbed on the upper surface.

That also said something about when the occupants had died.

It wasn’t the last of the debris. Rags turned up here and there, a few bones hanging together that didn’t look to be horse bones. The scavengers were quick and thorough. There’d been one at the bones only a moment ago, but it fled into the bushes.

Burn maintained a very close, very soft contact with the ambient, listening, lowering his head and smelling the bones and the vermin-tracked snow—but only briefly, obtaining nothing definite, from what Guil could detect, besides the expected blood and ani-mal smells. There were many more ways to reach that cabin than from the road, given the surefootedness of a horse.

There were more ways to die in the Wild. But none more sure than what those riders had done—under what pressure he didn’t hope to guess. He’d never met a spook he couldn’t resist. He was still alive. And he didn’t call them fools for having died. Fools didn’t get past their first season up here.

The deep snow in the tin said the deaths had happened before the snowfall quit—last night or before; and he hadn’t heard a thing in the ambient. Nothing.

Possibly it just hadn’t had the range a rogue was credited to have. Possibly that was exaggerated—he didn’t take everything he’d heard as truth. He’d never dealt with one. But granted the range of its sending wasn’t exaggerated—then it might have been as much as two days ago, before he’d arrived on the Height.

Grim as it was, his mind was working on details like that while he went, and confusing Burn, who was thinking and trying to figure the smells that came to him. Burn didn’t understand past things as relevant; Burn wanted with a vague notion of and hit a gait not kind to a sore leg and an aching head.

Guil made no complaint.

The sun had passed overhead and westward, behind the mountain wall, putting the snowy woods in the blued shadow which was the story half the day in the mountains, in any season; afternoon clouds formed above the peak—formed and drifted on with a little spit of snow, to drop rain on the lowlands.

Demi-shadows lengthened with afternoon, evergreens grown near-black against the snow. Thunder rumbled and echoed among the peaks.

That was a serious, imminent warning, not of the afternoon snow-flurries that were a daily event once autumn began, but of the truly dangerous storms that swept winter in their wake, that dumped snow nearly waist-deep to a man in a single night. The wild nighthorses fled the mountains with the coming of the first winter fronts. The spook-bears took to digging, and with their long, long claws made tunnels out again after such storms ended, retreating more and more until, when hunting grew sparse, they slept the deep sleep and waked again with spring.

There was that feeling in the air, worse than Jackson Peak, which he’d served out of Malvey—six days south and a thousand meters lower made a great deal of difference in the weather. Rogers Peak was that much farther north, Tarmin Ridge was higher than the villages on Jackson, Konig, or Darwin, and a man or a horse who disregarded that difference was in for trouble. Not a night on which he’d sit out and wait—not if a major storm was moving in.

he thought, and when Burn slowed, coughing in the bitter, thin air, he slid down and carried the packs himself.

It had taken him years and argument to get that simple sequence of events notion through Burn’s present-time attention—now, soon. But Burn understood him now: Burn walked along with him, head lowered, coughing, as Burn’s rider struck the fastest walk a two-legged creature could sustain on other than level ground. Legs burned, lungs burned, sore leg hurt like hell, but it gave Burn the interval to catch his breath.

Then it was Guil up to Burn’s back again, another stint as fast as Burn could take it; and walk again. Guil kept thinking, and

Burn understood. It wasn’t the worst or the first time they’d made time like this: it was that was all, and Burn was completely in agreement, feeling a storm wind and smelling The tops of the evergreens sighed with a breath of wind and with successive gusts—then whipped over and tossed in a sudden knife-edged gale that dropped the temperature by tens before they’d passed the next winding of the trail.

A dry wind, at first, and they could be glad of that—but Guil swung up to Burn’s back and Burn struck his staying-pace again.

Hope, Guil thought, that the rogue found similar need of shelter—or, best for everyone, that in its demented state it just stood still and froze to death.

He walked again. And in that stint at walking he came on a strange thing—a child’s coat in the snow, and not just lost— gnawed by vermin teeth.

A short time after that he found rags of cloth and leather, stiffened with ice. And vermin that, despite the weather, scampered down the mountain face below the trail.

Bones, then. Small, unidentifiable bones, recent, half-lost in the snow and the rocks beside the clear-cut and fill.

Snow was starting to fall. He thought, and took a skip and a bounce for a junior’s belly-down mount onto Burn’s weary back.

Burn was thinking and Burn moved the moment he felt his rider’s weight, and struck a desperate pace through the gathering chill.

There wasn’t a phone working. No way to warn the other villages. “Lines must be down,” Carlo had said, when Danny reported back; but Luke had had to try it, saying he must not be doing it right; and Luke had had no luck.

Luke had also seen enough by daylight to convince even a senior rider he didn’t want to go into the other buildings. Luke came back and had a beer and stayed quiet for a time. Jonas thought he might go try the phone, and asked if they’d cranked it—“Yes,” Luke said testily. “I’m not a fool, brother.”

It seemed to Danny it was time to keep his head down and argue nothing at all—argue when it mattered, yes, but if the Westmans wanted to accuse each other he had ample patience to wait in a corner of the store beside Carlo while the Westmans sorted it out.

The horses had wanted out, weary of the inside, accustomed to freedom to go where they liked as they liked, but not leaving their riders, either, in a place that smelled of and Cloud snapped at Shadow, Shadow snapped at Cloud, but all of it was horses insisting they were staying close to the store— all of it horses worried with and

Danny just sat on a heap of flour sacks and listened to the ambient through the walls.

And more than the ambient. A wind rose. Something loose was banging repeatedly, somewhere down the street—but weather be damned, the horses didn’t ask to be in again, not minding the wind—he heard Cloud’s in the ambient, and the spookiness that was Shadow. Ice and Froth were there, too, skittish, smelling and

“It’s going to storm.” Randy came and sat down with them, huddled up close against his brother’s side. There was a little silence. The weather was worsening—the night was coming. It was one more night in this place, waiting.

“She’s coming back, isn’t she?” Randy asked finally, sum of his dreads.

“We don’t need to be afraid,” Carlo said. “There’s a lot of us now.” Carlo put his arm around Randy’s shoulders. “Don’t think about it. All right?”

came from outside.

One of the horses had found a curious object. Thought it might have something edible about it. <Horses near porch,> came a severe order—specific to the horse, and Danny thought it was Jonas ordering Shadow to leave it alone. The boys were upset, and there were faces and people in the ambient, village folk Danny didn’t know.

<Still water,> Danny sent, occupying the ambient with a rude, strong effort that seniors might have slapped down, but he had help then, Ice’s rider, Hawley, thinking so that the very air seemed colder, right next to the stove.

“Stuart better make it fast,” Luke said, dealing cards to Hawley. “That’s getting mean out there.”

“Can’t have gone past,” Hawley said. “He’d at least check it over.”

Danny didn’t want to think about the wreck, but suddenly it was there, and Hawley’s glum mood: he didn’t want to think about the wreck, but it nagged the ambient, a before-snow impression of rocks and empty space under the riders’ right hand—Jonas had gotten testy with Hawley’s brooding and told him have a drink, so Hawley had had several.

Hawley and Luke resumed play with Hawley’s frayed pack of cards.

They were safe enough. Jonas had taken exactly the position that Danny hoped he would, that they shouldn’t have to move again, that Guil Stuart would come to them, because from the direction Stuart should be coming he had to pass by Tarmin gates.

So they’d get Stuart to join them, and shelter here until they’d rested up—

And wait until the rogue came to them, he supposed. That made sense. It made a vast amount of sense if you didn’t think about the other villages up on the road, higher on the mountain, or if you just took for granted the rogue would stay around the area—

He didn’t understand what Jonas planned to do besides wait for Stuart—he wasn’t altogether easy with the notion of them being fast friends. But he didn’t think they had any mischief in mind. He wished Jonas would hint what they were going to do about the coming night. Or what precautions they were going to take.

And maybe Jonas was just a son of a bitch who didn’t explain his plans, ever; and maybe Jonas had the notion he’d had—that if there was connection between the rogue and the boys, there was every chance it would come back to Tarmin rather than go to the villages up the mountain. Bait.

That kind of thing, he understood with no trouble: hard choices, greater and lesser risk, foolhardiness and courage—there was a dividing line. Papa had always said so. In that sense they were protecting the villages on the High Loop just by sitting here and protecting themselves, and he supposed that was good and he was on the right side.

But he didn’t understand the dying. Didn’t understand the bodies out there—nor why a reasonable God let it happen to people who’d, in the preachers’ economy, had no defense but not to listen, to shut their ears, inside and out. These were people who’d paid their tithes and gone to church and not been riotous and drunk too much and danced. And they were dead.

His own mother and father and Sam had bought that life for themselves. They believed in it. They believed righteousness made you safe.

But, God, it was all so fragile. It was all so terribly fragile. Five riders hadn’t been enough—the way he understood the boys’ image of the situation: five in town, two out on road repair—and none of them had stopped it.

In that thought, too, Jonas was doing absolutely right, holding them here. But the man was so damned cold. As if—

The ambient changed. Something more was out there than had been—he couldn’t define the change, he didn’t know why he was suddenly feeling the mountain more strongly, just that background noise that was always there—that now was more to the fore of his mind.

He didn’t know what else had come in, but he wasn’t alone in perceiving that something had—every rider in the room had gone still. The card game had stopped—Luke and Hawley looked toward the wall, toward the outside and the east. Jonas, who’d been cleaning and oiling his pistol, hesitated just ever so slightly, then snapped the cylinder into lock, a sound that made the boys jump, the general spookiness in the air surely having its effect on them as well.

“What is it?” Randy asked. came flooding through from both the boys. They had guns. They’d at least had Luke’s short version of how to aim and hope to hit something, and how not to empty the gun, ever, until you were down to the thing coming dead at you with no way to miss: they’d found the boys simple revolvers, single action, no rounds to lurk in the chamber and no safety to remember to take off. Pull the trigger and they went off— a danger to themselves and everything around them if they spooked.

“Could be Stuart,” Danny said. He couldn’t tell even yet what it was. It was far or it was quiet, and he suddenly suspected that if it was in fact Stuart, it could sound like that. Stuart and Burn wouldn’t necessarily be a noisy presence.

A horse had come up onto the walk outside. Cloud wanted and Cloud wasn’t alone in signaling human attention to the sudden change in the air.

Jonas went and opened the door—Jonas didn’t tell anybody what he thought and you didn’t get it even now through the ambient, not past Shadow’s blurred images—but Cloud came in, snow-blanketed, with thunderous steps on the boards.

Knocked into a stack of pails as he dodged past Jonas. They fell and rattled. Cloud spooked another couple of feet and stopped, shedding snow with a whip of his tail.

Danny found himself on his feet, not alone from the snow-shower: Carlo and Randy were beside him. Hawley’s cards had scattered on the floor. Horses outside and inside were feeling an undefined presence in the ambient, the echo of living creatures out in the woods, all reflecting what the creature in the next territory over had heard in its range.

Something large was definitely out there in the woods. Maybe more than one.

“Is it the rogue?” Randy wanted to know, picking it up himself, or reading the distress in the room.

“Hush,” Carlo said. “They know. Let them alone.”

Carlo had the right of it: they didn’t want distraction—but they didn’t know, that was the trouble. It might be any large creature— several of which had gone over the wall last night, and might have grown braver during the day: autumn brought voracious hunger, hunger that outweighed fears and better sense. The little slinks were back in the upper end of the village, around the marshal’s office, Danny was sure of it—fast-moving scavengers that would be over the wall or into the cracks before a horse got up the street. There was no good chasing them and they did no harm with the horses here.

They might well be the source of some of the alarm, although he had a strange conviction it was generally eastward—like waves rolling on the sea, one to the next, to the next hearer.

“If it’s Stuart he’s on his way here,” Jonas said. “He’ll hear us in good time.”

“Weather’s one hell of a mess out there,” Hawley said.

“Doesn’t keep this from being the safest place in the district,” Luke said. “Just sit still. He’ll hear us. He’ll want shelter tonight. You hear that out there?”

Cloud was dripping puddles onto the board floor, snow melting off his back. The view outside, beyond the porch, had been snow-veiled, enough to haze the buildings across the street. Danny wanted and Luke agreed with him. That was two.

“But we don’t know it’s Stuart,” Jonas said.

“I’m going,” Danny said. “You can do what you like. He’s close. Whatever it is—he’s close—” Because that was suddenly the feeling he had. It was Stuart.

But he got a from Jonas, so strong he did stop and look back.

“I came here by myself,” Danny said. “I make my own choices.”

“That’s fine. Use your head.”

“I am using it. He might need some help out there.”

“He could,” Luke said, redeeming himself in Danny’s sight, right there, clean and clear.

Jonas wasn’t happy. dominated the images. But Jonas thought about too, or somebody did. Jonas, still frowning, picked up his jacket. “Fisher,” Jonas said, “you stay with the village kids. It might not be him.”

“Then you need—”

“I said—stay with them. Do I need to explain? You’ve been wanting Stuart into the ambient for an hour, Fisher. Use your head.”

It wasn’t a slur, he heard that. It was even good sense, keeping the boys out of the range of trouble—he understood it; and Jonas was right; he might have given the rogue an image to use on them. He’d been stupid. He just didn’t want to be the one staying in the store.

But there wasn’t another likely choice to guard the boys. And ‘Fisher’ wasn’t ‘boy.’ He didn’t protest when the Westmans and Hawley picked up their winter gear and their guns and went out to the porch.

He went outside himself, just far enough to see it was a real blizzard developing, worse than any storm he’d ever seen come down in Shamesey district. You couldn’t see across the street in the blued twilight.

If it was Stuart out there in that whiteout, they might have to guide him in. And that was dangerous, because they didn’t know what they might be calling to in the ambient, or what might come back at them out of it.

Didn’t need a junior to go calling out into the storm wide-open, he said to himself. Jonas had been polite when he’d suggested that village kids were a liability and hadn’t included him in that number. It wasn’t safe to go bunch down there by the gate and listen into the storm for whatever happened to image back at you. Jonas had a reason to be hesitant just to go out there, that close to the wall.

A lot of reason. He went back inside, shut the door before they lost all the warm air—stamped off the snow.

“What is it?” Randy asked, and his older brother elbowed him with,

“Shut up, for God’s sake, they don’t know.”

“It’s all right,” Danny found himself saying. “These guys—if you had to be in this situation, they’re as good as you could hire anywhere. They won’t open that gate until they’re sure.”

was in the ambient. And, with an edge of anguish that turned to a darker, more desperate feeling, from at least one of the boys:

He couldn’t answer that hard problem for them—not with anything they wanted to hear. he thought before he could stop it. Because they would—without a question their survival was at stake.

Because by now if their younger sister wasn’t bones in the forest out there—she was half of the rogue. If she wasn’t dead—and the boys thought not—she rode it; she made at least half of any decision to run, to fight, to kill the village, to kill even their mother.

With her brothers in the ambient they’d have her attention, that was what he guessed. They were all the reference points the girl had now. The rogue was going to come back sooner or later. He had no question of it.

Just—if it was Stuart, if they could get Stuart in with them, along with Jonas, then the odds began to shift the other way.

The snow came down so thick there was no telling they were on the road, except the lack of trees in front of them, and that could almost as well mean a drop off the mountain if they missed a winding of the road.

It wasn’t a time to hurry, no matter how cold. It was a time to have made camp, if they’d planned to spend the night in the open.

There couldn’t be that much farther to go to Tarmin. He wasn’t completely sure of his distances, but they ought to be there by now. They hadn’t seen further signs of destruction. The snow was too thick and coming down too hard, now—but the ambient had been damned quiet. Damned quiet.

he insisted to Burn.

Burn thought, he would have expected Burn would think,

But Burn was as confused as he was by the silence, and thought instead,

And the ambient was cold. So cold and still.

Then—wasn’t, quite.

he said to himself, spirits lifting. Somebody else was out in the hills, on the trail—or maybe in Tarmin itself, where he’d promised Burn they’d come by nightfall.

But he still found himself shying off from the thought. He wasn’t sure. He couldn’t be sure. The ambient, vague and strange and silent as it generally was, began to conjure thoughts of a warm fire already made, and a company of riders. Too good to be true.

It didn’t make sense with what he’d seen, evidence of dead riders—at least of a dead horse.

But riders might well be out hunting the rogue. Riders out of Tarmin village might be looking for it—and a bunch of them, in this storm, might be sitting safe behind Tarmin walls, trying to beacon him in through the whiteout of the blizzard, sensing a sane rider and a sane horse, and not the threat the rogue posed.

Maybe Cassivey had even done what he promised and called up to Tarmin to warn the villages. Even Shamesey might have. One lowland agency surely could have had the basic common sense to phone a warning of what the villages up here faced; and if that was the case, even if there’d been trouble here, then he could hope he came welcome, at a fire he didn’t have to build, and a sane barrier between him and the dark.

He wanted that. He was in one hell of a fix if Tarmin was shut to him — or lost.

He was spooked, was all. He’d spooked badly at Shamesey gates, and he hadn’t any patience at all with himself — he couldn’t afford it in the Wild, with the snow coming down in what was unquestionably now a full-scale, high-country blizzard — and a rogue somewhere in the question. Damned sure that there was trouble on the mountain, but he’d better sound sane to Tarmin riders, or they wouldn’t let him in. They’d leave him outside till they could get sober sense out of him, and that risked Burn. Calm down, he said to himself. Calm way down.

A couple more rises and falls of the road, a bending against the flank of the mountain ridge — and he could smell wood smoke in good earnest. It wasn’t at all as noisy as he thought a village Tarmin’s size should be — but it was all right, he said to himself: the heavy fall of snow and maybe a bad night last night could have sent a lot of the village to bed early, and left the rider camp on watch.

Burn saw Burn was picking up something that came through to him as a liveliness in the otherwise silent ambient.

Burn called out suddenly, that sharp, high challenge to another horse that shook Burn’s sides, and there was a instantly in the ambient as Burn imaged

Something came back to him — a familiar echo, he wasn’t sure from where or when, but he’d known that feeling. Burn said and answered it

A shot came off the rocks near him, ricocheted and whined. Burn jumped in utter startlement and a second shot splintered bark off an evergreen.

Instant, too, the image that came back, and

Damn, he knew those horses.

Jonas. Luke.

Hawley.

He didn’t consciously think. It hit his gut and it hit Burn’s simultaneously, and Burn slid immediately into fighting mode, ready to settle accounts.

“” Guil sent, and Burn shied away from the challenge— imaged <gun!> and jumped into a run as a gunshot echoed off the mountain and shattered bark right next to them. They were at the village gates—snow-hazed, shadows of men and horses were there. It was

Burn took him past. He ducked down and hung on, trusting Burn to get them clear.

“Guil!” someone yelled, far behind him. “Guil, damn your stupid hide!”

He didn’t look back. He rode low and Burn ran hellbent for as much distance as he could put between them and ambush—raced panting and reckless through the deep white of the road.

Signal shots, had been Danny’s first thought when he heard the gunfire—

He’d run out onto the porch, and then—then heard what sounded like an exchange of fire.

he thought.

Harper. Nobody else. Harper was up here on the mountain for one reason, and he hadn’t given up his hunt—it was Stuart; and it was Harper, too.

“What’s wrong?” Carlo and Randy were on his heels, coatless as he was as he ran down the street, rifle in hand, Cloud running along with him, and past him.

But he couldn’t answer, he was hearing he was hearing taking off into the blizzard, he was hearing and while were headed for

“Damn,” he said, and spun about and yelled at Carlo: “Get your coats. Get my coat! Come on!” He could see Cloud was into it, because there was in the air, and Danny didn’t wait for coats or the boys or a second, reasoned thought. He put on a burst of speed with the cold air burning his lungs, the pistol trying to escape its holster, and the snow hitting his eyes so he couldn’t see. The street was a straight line—if he stumbled over things in the snow he didn’t want to know what they were. He ran until he was close enough for Cloud to have to recognize he was in the situation. He wanted <Cloud!> loud and clear.

Luke and Hawley were mounting up to ride out. Right in the gateway he grabbed Cloud first by the mane to stop him from going out with the other two, then got a hand against Cloud’s chest and shoved him back.

“Dammit!” he yelled at Luke and Hawley. He meant two senior fools going out into the whiteout and leaving the gates open on him and two village kids. He was mad. He wanted He wanted They had no right, dammit. Harper was out there in the whiteout. Harper was near the village for all he knew.

But he couldn’t catch them. He couldn’t leave the boys.

The two boys came running up out of breath, carrying their coats, and his, and rifles. He was too hot right now to need a coat, but he put it on anyway, put on his scarf and hat that the boys had brought, and took the rifle they handed him. Cloud was fidgeting back and forth, wanting but his rider wasn’t about to go off into the whiteout to find a pack of double-crossing sons of bitches.

Stuart—God knew what Stuart thought.

Or what kind of line he’d fallen for from Jonas.

Stuart’s friends. He couldn’t swear it wasn’t Jonas who’d fired.

“Our riders,” Carlo panted, “didn’t come back.”

“I know, I know.” He wanted

Then he had a cold, clear impression they weren’t alone. and before he could say a word, he knew it was Cloud went on guard facing that direction, projecting and

What came back was and what came shadowlike out of the blowing white right in front of them was two riders coming to the gate.

Danny sent, and the boys moved while he put a round in the chamber and lifted the rifle to his shoulder, shaking in the knees, but not in the steadiness of his aim, which was right for center of the shorter one he mentally labeled

he got back.

“The hell—shut it!” he screamed at Carlo, and kept his aim while the riders moved for the gate and two scared kids shoved the heavy gates shut and dropped the bar.

“Kid!” he heard Harper yell, the other side of the gates. “Kid, open up. Open it, or we’ll leave you for the rogue!”

“Son of a bitch! Open the gate!”

“You had your chance, Harper! You want supplies, we’ll give you supplies, right over the wall. But hell if I owe you anything but a cold bed in hell! Go find a shelter. You and Quig go tuck in for the winter and hope to hell I don’t come after you myself!”

He sent that to them. That was what he remembered. And they didn’t like it.

Stuart had been there. Stuart had been that close to the gates and spooked off. He’d felt Stuart’s presence and Stuart might not know anything right now except someone here had shot a gun off at him. Jonas and company had gone after Stuart and might not intend to come back—which left him with Harper and Quig, sitting here in the biggest, most attractive stationary target the rogue had, if the Goss kids were right about their sister.

In that light he could use Harper’s help. He could use a couple of good shots and he didn’t want to think of anybody dying out there in the Wild the way all Tarmin village had died.

But Harper wasn’t interested in anything but Harper—Harper was damn crazy, dead set on shooting Stuart, for reasons that had gotten further and further from any reasonable fear of Stuart’s going rogue. Harper wanted into Tarmin gates because if the Westmans came back Harper might shoot all of them and have the supplies, and spend all winter hunting Stuart, if Stuart didn’t get him in his gunsights first.

There was no dealing with this man.

came back through the gate.

Danny sent. Cloud added,

“Who are they?” Randy asked. Randy’s teeth were chattering and he tried not to show it. Cloud was sending into an angry ambient, and violence shivered over his skin and down into his gut. “They’re not who we’re looking for. Are they? Where did Jonas and them go?”

“These two are thieves.” Danny said. “Damned bandits, is all. They’re up here hunting Stuart for some crazy grudge. I hope to God he got away clear.” It dawned on him Jonas might have kited out like that in honest fear that Stuart or his horse might have been hit and need help out there in the storm. Luke would have gone after his brother—no fault in Luke for that, or Hawley for going to protect him. But right now he wished Tarmin had a gun-box the way Shamesey had, because, damn, he’d dust Harper and Quig right off their doorstep.

“Kid,” Harper said, from the other side of the gate.

“My name’s Dan Fisher, Harper, get it straight.”

“Look—” Harper said. “Call yourself anything you like. One horse is no match for this thing. Who’s that with you? Kids?”

“You just camp right there, Harper. We need bait.”

“You’re real damn brave on the other side of that gate!”

“You’re real damn stupid, Harper. That’s why you’re on the other side of that gate.” God, he hadn’t lost a bit from his bad-boy days and Randy thought it was wildly funny. Harper clearly didn’t. Carlo looked a shade more maturely worried.

But Cloud sent into the ambient, loud as Cloud could be.

“You damn fool!” Harper said.

“Camp out there. Be our guests.” He was thinking, And wasn’t altogether confident of that fight going the way he’d like.

“You listen to me,” Harper said. “You listen. I know what I’m talking about. My own brother—my brother went that way. You hear me?”

Shooting. Shooting until there weren’t any bullets.> “You son of a bitch, you hear me? Your friend Stuart knows about it. So damn righteous!”

“Maybe you can talk to Jonas,” Danny said. “Convince him you’re a good guy.” Give the son of a bitch at least the idea of talking it out, if it didn’t naturally occur to dim brains. “He might think you were worth it. Or he could let you camp out there. Who knows?”

“My brother, kid. His name was Gerry Harper. You hear me? Took that hit in the head, him and the horse— ‘Oh, we can make it through the pass, yeah, we can make it.’ Stuart talks a good game to the truckers, but he’s never on the end of the cable when it breaks. —Gerry Harper. You hear the name, kid?”

“That’s a real sad story, Harper, but it doesn’t get you in here.”

“You listen to me. I shot him. I shot him. Who’s going to pull the trigger on this one? You better get a man in there—you hear me? You hear me, kid? That thing’ll have you for breakfast.”

“Hasn’t yet. If you want to shoot it, shoot it from out there where it is! You don’t rough me up and threaten my horse and ask my charity, you damn jerk! —And Watt’s dead! You hear me, Harper? Watt’s dead out there. If you want to do something really useful, ride up to the High Loop villages and get some help down here!”

“Quit being an ass and <open this damn gate!>”

“No.” He was shaking. Shot his brother, it was now. He was dealing with a crazy man.

“Kid, —”

“You’re losing ground with me, Harper. I said I had a name. You keep forgetting it.”

“Fisher, then.” The ambient was wholly uneasy. There was complete lack of worry in the voice. “You can be a fool if you like.”

Damn, he thought, realized he’d gotten caught up in the images and dived into the image to mask himself, signaled the boys away from the gate, farther and farther. Cloud drew back with them, mad and still wanting

he sent, and Cloud stopped following and willingly turned back to

“I’m a fool,” he said to the boys, not trusting his ability to keep his intentions and his worries out of the ambient. But he had Cloud’s attention occupied with a nerve-jangling flare of He looked at the guard-post, where, if he climbed it, he might get a shot, but he couldn’t go thinking about it. “Rider gate, Carlo. Fast. Can you get a shot off from there?”

Carlo looked mortally scared.

“ I can’t do it,” Danny said. “Cloud and I’ll keep him talking. Scare them off. Put shots around them. Whatever. Fire fast. Spook them out away from the wall—I’ll get up there—” A cut of his eyes to the guard-post aloft—and down, as he grabbed Carlo’s arm. “Don’t for God’s sake get shot. Or let them in.”

Carlo didn’t want to. Danny jerked his arm. “They can hear me any second, dammit! Do it!”

“Yeah,” Carlo agreed then. “—Randy, stay with him.”

Carlo didn’t stop to argue: Carlo went—Randy tried to run after him, but Carlo grabbed him, jerked him hard and sent him back.

Danny wished, but Cloud wasn’t in position to carry it to Carlo—he wasn’t getting this organized; he had Randy in his charge—he had to hope Carlo remembered.

Then he thought of vermin maybe occupying the rider camp— vermin a rider took for granted would clear his path. Carlo wasn’t protected that way, Carlo was a damn brave village kid—with no horse to see what was going on before he opened that outer gate. Hell with his plan for climbing the gate-tower: if Carlo went down on any account Harper and Quig could take the rider camp and have Tarmin, with just him and Randy left.

He grabbed Randy by the coat and didn’t wait to explain—he dragged Randy with him half the distance to the rider-side gate, until they were far enough from the front gate he knew Cloud couldn’t hear—“Don’t think about Carlo!” he said. “The horse carries it! Stay here! Dammit, don’t budge!”

Randy was trying to get a breath, trying to get words out— Randy grabbed his arm and hung on and Danny swung and knocked the kid across the snow. He didn’t have words, didn’t have time—he aimed his rifle skyward and fired off two rounds and the shots echoed off the mountain above, shocking the silence.

He didn’t hear Harper and Quig now. But something else was coming through the ambient—something ominously considerable.

Damn, he thought. Damn! His heart was speeding. Now he didn’t know where Harper and Quig were. Cloud had left the front gate. Cloud was coming—but there wasn’t a damn thing Cloud could do from midvillage, and he’d not used his head, God help them.

He raced down the village street with Cloud at his heels and cut over to the camp gate—Carlo had shut it. Give the kid credit— he’d shut it. He flung the latch open and dived past the center-post, leaving a mad, frustrated horse behind him trying to get past a barrier that made that door human-only, Cloud making panic-sounds, sending out into the ambient as Cloud’s rider chased down Carlo’s rapidly filling tracks, white on white, past the horse den, breakneck through the blowing snow. He let off two more rounds at the sky to warn Carlo and Jonas at once, saw Carlo at the rider gate, just then opening it wide to the driving snow.

“Carlo!” he yelled. “Get out of the way!”

Carlo turned, confused—looked at him and started to shut it again.

In the same moment a snow-hazed figure showed up in that gateway and Danny skidded to one knee, brought the rifle up and fired without stopping to see who it was.

Stupid, wrong, his brain told him. It might have been Stuart. Jonas. God knew. He’d probably missed. He’d scared hell out of Carlo, and the gateway, after his one shocked blink, held only blowing snow. He knelt there sighting down the gun and shaking as Carlo, only belatedly realizing he wasn’t the target, had the presence of mind to grab the gate and shove it to.

A shot from past Danny’s shoulder hit the log wall by Carlo and splintered the wood.

He knew it was Randy even before Carlo yelled at the kid, “Don’t shoot, don’t shoot, dammit! God! What are you doing?”

Randy didn’t fire another round. Cloud was making a sound he’d rarely heard Cloud make, a squalling, spitting fit. The den wall thumped to Cloud’s temper as Danny used the rifle butt to get his shaky legs under him.

His lungs were burning. Carlo was yelling against the wind at his brother, something about Put the damn rifle down, it was all right. Carlo was coming toward him and Randy was spooked, he got that in the ambient along with Cloud’s temper.

He didn’t know how his knees were staying under him. He bent over, rifle and all, leaned against his knees and tried to get his breath, short of wind in the high altitude, aware of Carlo coming past him, Randy running to Carlo, betrayed and scared and hurt.

“I hit the kid,” he gasped, straightening up, and threw the situation into the ambient, because he didn’t have the wind to talk and he was hearing Cloud all too well. He went into a coughing fit and got it under control. He had a stitch in his side. “Did the man go down?” was what he wanted to know, whether the man he’d shot at had dropped, whether he’d killed somebody—whether they still had Harper to contend with—

But the pressure in the ambient, that thing he’d been feeling, was gone. The gunfire might have spooked it off.

“Did he go down, Carlo, dammit?”

“I don’t know,” Carlo said. “I think you got him.”

He couldn’t hear anything but Cloud’s panic and outrage. If there was a rider down, his horse should be doing something, feeling something. Harper’s horse should. He had a bad feeling about things out of control in every direction, and walked back where the kids were and where Cloud was, Cloud on the far side of the camp gate and mad and scared.

Carlo had Randy by the shoulder, too, saying something about “Told you to stay put, dammit!” and Randy was paper-white and on the edge: Randy had been

“Kid,” Danny said, and lost his voice again. He clapped Randy on the back. “Danger you’d leak Carlo to the bad guys. —Sorry. Sorry I hit you. They could have heard you—understand? Sorry.”

Randy had a hand to his bloodied mouth, tears freezing on his white, cold-blotched face. He still looked to be in shock, but the ambient eased.

“Did you shoot him?” Randy asked.

“Dunno.” He still couldn’t breathe. He was getting the shakes enough for them to notice. “Pretty sure I missed. Damned mess. Sorry. <Cloud, dammit, quiet.>”

Cloud was trying to shoulder the obstructing gate-post down. But there was only Cloud out there on the village side. Danny went through the gate and moved Cloud back with a push on his chest.

Cloud had blood on his shoulder where he’d tried to force the narrow gate, and his breath steamed in great puffs on the bitter wind.

Danny flung his arm about Cloud’s neck and apologized in a cheek-to-cheek way that didn’t need the kind of confused, angry force Cloud was sending out, just

Cloud had never found himself on the wrong side of a barrier like that. Cloud was so scared he was trembling, too, and he was spitting froth mixed with blood—he’d bashed his lip on the post, Danny decided, and was sorry. But he couldn’t have done anything else— he told Cloud,

Big shiver out of Cloud. The boys had come through to the camp side behind him. They could get the side gate shut and latched on this side, then, but the main gate still scared him. He wanted and walked in that direction, shaking too much to run.

He wasn’t in the least cold. He was sweating, and his chest burned from the thin winter air. He could get

Cloud didn’t disagree.

Then somebody fired a shot that rang far off across the mountainside, and they stopped still.

Second shot, from out there.

Distance made them blind and deaf to the origin—the mountain echoed it until even Cloud didn’t know where it was.

He waited for a third shot. It didn’t come. The boys were But was in Randy’s thoughts. The brothers didn’t want that. The darkness that had been around the image last night wasn’t there, this time.

was there.

“Cut it out,” Danny said sharply, “shut down. Quiet, dammit. It’s probably just Jonas signaling he’s coming back. Maybe he’s bringing Stuart.”

He fervently hoped so. More, he hoped they’d just shot the rogue, and that the boys’ blonde sister was coming back with them, and they’d find Stuart, and they’d tell Harper go to hell and take his sad stories with him.

Cloud stayed beside him as they went to the gate—closed and latched the door on the store while they were at it, because the boys had left it wide open, let all the heat out and burned up a load of wood besides endangering their supplies—“Sorry,” Carlo said. But he didn’t blame the boys, and latched it and went on.

They didn’t go into the gate house. Randy thought they should go in where it was warmer, and set up a fuss about it—but Danny said a flat no, and tried not to image what was in there. He climbed up to the tower and down again when he found he couldn’t see anything better in the blowing snow—if he’d gone up there he couldn’t have gotten a clear target anyway; so everything about his plan was stupid, and he came back down to Carlo and Randy fast, before they got to investigating anything in the gate house.

He tried not to think about while he was doing it. But there were. Bones and dead people were all up and down the street. The snow was just covering them, that was all, burying them

And he wished—he prayed to the God who didn’t hear riders— that Jonas would find Stuart and get him back here so they could all be safe and the senior riders would know what to do to save their lives.

He’d only covered his mistakes. He didn’t know who he’d shot, he didn’t know anything: he was down to admitting that, even to himself.