“Good night,” he said calmly, aware that Callie was vastly upset at that inclusion. “Pleasant dreams.”
“Night,” Jennie said, and flitted off with Callie hot on her track.
Ridley didn’t say a thing. And Callie might have, to Jennie, but when the door shut and Callie came back, things were quiet—give or take horses out at the wall, bickering with something in the dark. Wasn’t unusual, Ridley had said on an earlier night. It kept the horses from being bored.
“Might do some hunting tomorrow,” Ridley commented. “Feels more normal out there tonight.”
“Normal’s come and gone all season,” Callie said. “Everything on the mountain still feels upset.” Callie was pouring vodka, two glasses, and a third one ready.
“None for me, thanks,” Danny said. “Had my limit tonight over at the tavern.”
Callie frowned a little, and didn’t pour the third. She and Ridley had theirs.
So Callie couldn’t doubt, now, that he knew very well why he’d gone out so thoroughly the moment he went to bed every night. But he tried to act oblivious to any hard feelings over it. He didn’t look in Callie’s direction.
“So how are the boys doing?” Ridley asked cheerfully—Ridley was very much the peace-maker in the house, and if he’d headed at the matter of the yellowflower in the drink every night he was sure Ridley would have a perfectly cheerful way of putting it that they’d feared he might slip around the barracks at night and threaten sleeping children.
“Mackey’s found out there’s money to be had,” Danny said, and added with not quite double meaning regarding his own situation in theircompany, with drugs dropped nightly—but politely—in his drink: “and Mackey’s being real nice to them.”
“Man’s not to trust,” Ridley said, as if there wasn’t a double meaning in the village, and as if they trusted him implicitly. “Between you and us.”
They talked a while, mostly about hunting. And Callie was quiet.
Callie certainly wasn’t happy he hadn’t drunk the vodka, Callie wasn’t happy about him being included in Jennie’s good night. He didn’t know what to do about it, except to make sure he didn’t have wicked dreams strayed horses could carry and that whatever Callie’s fears he didn’t walk in his sleep and shoot up the barracks tonight.
He wished Callie trusted him. It was very hard to keep Ridley’s kind of cheerfulness when he knew all the while Callie was probably planning to know right where her gun was from her side of the bed tonight.
And maybe a little of his thinking leaked out, the horses being stirred up. He wasn’t sure. But Callie frowned the darker and Ridley talked on about last year and the hunting.
It was the craziest kind of conversation he’d ever tried to navigate.
Go at Callie’s distrust head-on? Say, —Callie, I swear to you, I won’t murder people in their beds?
Not if he didn’t want a confrontation. And he didn’t.
Thatgot around to serious wondering—like—what had he missed while he was out cold, and hadthat horse been hanging around, and was there a solid reason for Callie to hate him and Ridley to be nice to him?
“Going to bed,” he said. “Ridley, if you want to go hunting, I’d sure like to exercise Cloud, before he takes to digging under the wall.”
“Hope it stays quiet out there,” Ridley said. “Yeah, hunting would be a relief.”
“Yeah.” On the thought that there was still more being said while things were being said than any sane person could track, Danny got up and quietly left for his own barracks room, shut the door and started undressing in the dark by the light that came down the hall and under the door.
He’d likeddealing with Carlo. He’d liked being where he was appreciated. Didn’t any human being?
He was getting out of his shirt when he heard <dark. And fire.>
A cold sweat came over him. He reached after his gun—he’d disposed his pistol on the bench beside the head of the bed when he came back from the yard, as he usually did, and he caught it up the instant he’d gotten his shirt back on. His rifle was over in the corner next the shelves—and he knew at the same time his brain was handling those locations that Cloud was <by the fence,> that it was a sending <from outside> and that it wasn’tone of their horses.
“Mama? Papa?”
Scared kid, in another room. He didn’t blame her. He heard a door opened and bare feet running down the passage—Jennie was ahead of him as, mostly into his shirt and carrying his gunbelt in one hand and his rifle in the crook of the same arm, he opened the door onto the hall and followed the kid to the main room.
“It’s not Cloud,” he said as he found Ridley and Callie putting on coats.
“That damn horse is back!” Callie picked up the shotgun. “It didn’t go downhill! I told you it never went downhill!”
“Let me see if I can deal with it,” Danny said. “Maybe I can get its attention.”
“Don’t you dare open that gate!” Callie said.
He didn’t say, I’m not a total fool. Or, What do you think? I won’t risk my horse.
He just went for his sweaters and his coat, against the cold out there.
“Funny damn thing,” he heard Callie say to Ridley, “that it shows up the night he’swide awake.”
He was stunned. He tried to cover it, but he knew he’d stopped moving for a heartbeat.
Then he flung open the main door and went out onto the porch, beset with a <blood on snow> image.
Hiswaking wasn’t the question on his mind: Brionne’s was.
Carlo sat in the glow of a banked fire, blanket hugged about him. His teeth were chattering and he couldn’t find the presence of mind to get back under the covers.
It might have been a particularly vivid nightmare—except it was still going on.
<Blood on the snow.>
As if it was its name, for God’s sake. As if that was what it called itself. The way Cloud was storms, or summer puffs of white. <Shot echoing off the high rocks. Snow and a man lying dead.>
As if in the reaches of a shocked and grieved mind, it had been born anew there, in that place, at that moment.
<Snowy woods. Snowy woods with the glow of winter nights. All the mountains
<Something in the shadows, among the trees.>
<Wariness. Movement behind walls.>
The world wasn’t flat anymore. He could seeand hear—the way he had on the Climb, and he sat there and shook—
Then it was gone. Just gone.
And the world flattened out again—crashed into flatness and dullness that left his heart beating hard. He sat there thinking of the journey up the mountain, thinking how that sensehad been their guide in such desperate, blind moments—recalling how Cloud had beaconed them up that road and they’d known there was mortal danger every time that sense went out.
Danger of losing their way.
Danger of freezing to death.
He found himself with a lump in his throat, vision blurred in tears that just—spilled over and ran down his face. He wiped at them with a hand shaking so he almost couldn’t find his face.
Randy hadn’t wakened at that sending. Thank God. But he wasn’t sure—wasn’t at allsure about Brionne.
He’d thought he’d been able to hear Danny and Cloud, and maybe others they were near. It was that loud. It went that far. Danny said there was a limit and you couldn’t hear that far, but if it reached him it might reach Brionne.
God! he didn’t want that.
Spook-horse was gone, Danny was all but sure—headed away from the village before he and Ridley ever got out to the walls. The horses were all out in the yard, upset, lifting their heads with nostrils flared, sending <challenge> into the night.
Meanwhile nobody at the village gate had fired a shot. Danny had his rifle. Ridley had his. But they’d had no target. Danny knew he had to shoot it if he couldn’t get it to come to hand and become part of the herd—and he had a sense, with Rain as much disturbance as he already was, that it wasn’t going to be practical to do that.