It wasn’t his place to talk to outsiders to the camp when the camp-boss was there to talk for him. That was the rule down in Shamesey, and it had never made so much sense—but it left him nothing to do but sit and feel guilty as hell that his—maybe manageable—problem down at first-stage had now become these men’s problem, and the village’s problem.
“Got to be dealt with,” Harris concluded. Danny figured Harris must be senior among the hunters, and probably stating the position for a lot of unhappy people including the grocer and the ordinary village folk. “We’re offering help.”
“It’s a dangerous kind of business,” Ridley said, and in the passage of a horse near the walls—probably Slip—there leaked a little bit of <Jennie> and worry into the ambient. “Jennie-cub, you have to understand, a bad horse is worse than a bear or anything. It’s dangerous. Nobody wantsto shoot it. But sometimes that’s our business to do.”
“I don’t want you to,” Jennie said.
“You hush,” Callie said, “you sit still, and you learn. Questions later.”
“Yes, ’m.” Jennie said faintly, and stared at her hands.
“Fisher,” Ridley said, “you and I better go out today.”
“Yes, sir,” Danny said. “No question.” They’d made their try at luring it in. They couldn’t let it start stalking the village. He didn’t like to think about shooting it. But he could think of worse things, including having that horse waylay a rider or a hunter.
“We’re offering backup,” Harris said. “Three of us.”
“I think,” Ridley said slowly, “that none of us have ever had to hunt a horse, and a man on foot is just too vulnerable. I’m not turning you down. I’m saying let us see whether there’s any chance at all of us getting it without taking that risk.”
“You don’t—” Harris cleared his throat. “I don’t want to talk in front of the young miss, but—is there any chance—it’s here for somebody inside?”
“Not for our daughter,” Callie said in no uncertain terms.
“It’s possible,” Ridley said.
Danny sat burning with what he ought to say, and with what heknew, and things he didn’t want to say. But the water was hot and tea-making and hospitality after a cold and spooky walk for these men was at the top of the agenda.
He thought—I have to say something.
But what in hell could his information do? If the horse was trying to link up with Brionne—it was in serious trouble. A healthy horse wouldn’t do it. He was sure of that. And thatchance was what made him sure they couldn’t take half measures in getting rid of it. Sometimes—sometimes you had to protect the non-riders who were relying on you, and sometimes you had to protect yourself and your horse, or the camp you were in. And if it meant doing something he’d ordinarily not choose—well, he saw less and less choice about it.
Sleep didn’t cure the confusion orthe anger. Carlo waked in the morning and lay in the blankets thinking that maybe, it being a new day, he would feel better and not lose his temper and maybe Randy would be his cheerful self.
But the more he tested his feelings the more he raked over thoughts he didn’t want to lie in bed with, and didn’t want to be idle with.
Fire on the glass. The rogue had sent that while it prowled Tarmin streets, while it drew people out their doors and the vermin had swarmed in.
People hadn’t died quick deaths. Maybe there were some large predators like goblin-cats or lorrie-lies with jaws that could make a quick end of someone, but mostly—mostly the end wasn’t quick.
Their mother had died that way.
Their father—
Explosion in his hands. A shock that shook the world.
Papa stopping in midstep and mama—mama’s mouth open, and maybe a sound coming out—he didn’t know.
Faces below the village hall porch. People with lamps and electric torches. Angry faces. Mouths open there, too, but he didn’t hear. He just kept hearing that sound. That explosion. Feeling that shock in his hand. Brionne was lost and their father was blaming them for every fault, every failure of ambition or expectations—
It wasn’this fault Brionne had gone outside the walls. Their father had believed they were murderers—that out of jealousy they’d shoved her outside and locked the gates.
Give me back my girl! That was what he’d been yelling. You did it, you were the one!
And he’d fired. He’d fired when their father headed at him with the intent to take the gun away from him, and after that to beat him and Randy for God knew what. He never knew why their father hated them, and why Brionne was perfect. All their lives, he never knew: that was the hell of it—until this time, their father—
For the first time in his whole scared life, he’dheld the threat, he’d toldhis father to stop. But his father wouldn’t—constitutionally couldn’t—hadn’t.
He didn’t remember firing.
There’d been the explosion.
The faces below the porch, all looking at him. Tara Chang speaking up for him. His mother damning him for a liar and a murderer— I want my Brionne, his mother had yelled.
And the jail. Himself and Randy—the bars.
All of Tarmin had heard the rogue in their streets, had opened their doors and gone out to help their neighbors.
But the marshal’s wife had taken up a shotgun and spattered herself all over the office so as not to open that door. He and Randy had sat blank with horror while the rogue and its rider had gone up and down the street, calling aloud and in the ambient—all Brionne’s anger, looking for mama, looking for papa, looking for them.
They’d sat locked in—listening—and Brionne had found them. Had screamed at them to open the door—but they couldn’t.
And she couldn’t. She’d tried. She’d tried and kicked and battered at the door in a tantrum. She’d called them names. And thingshad come through the ambient, things swarming over each other, snapping jaws, biting and feeding and tearing each other in their frenzy, and people screaming and people dying and screaming and screaming—
And when Brionne gave up and went away, the swarm had come against that door and gnawed and scratched at the wood for hours after the light went out.
They’d sat in the dark. He and Randy. For hours. Knowing that while their cell had bars to keep out the big predators it wouldn’t stop the little ones. The vermin had been working at that door just now and again, but they hadn’t been out of food yet and the jail hadn’t been the only source—yet.
Then Danny had come.
In the dark, after all those hours, they’d heardDanny calling for survivors. He’d led them out without a question of where he’d found them and guided them down a darkened street littered with the scraps of flesh that had been their mother, their neighbors, every living creature in Tarmin.
<Daylight. Storm on the mountain. Blood on the snow.>
He didn’t want to stay still with thoughts like that. He flung the blankets off, got up and got himself ready for the day before he went over to Randy, who was sleeping like a lump, and nudged him with his foot.
“Time to get up,” he said, and Randy just snarled and hauled the covers over his head.
He’d had himself calm and forgiving until Randy did that. He knew the kid was sulking. He knew the way Randy would react if he wasn’t sulking, and it was without question a sulk.
“ Come on,” he said.
“Leave me alone.”
“I said get up.”
“Go to hell.”
He was mad. Mad enough to think of pulling Randy out of those blankets and bouncing him off the wall.
But it was those same thoughts running through his mind this morning. He didn’t know what he’d dreamed about. It was those same feelings, those same memories of rage—Brionne’s, his—his father’s and his mother’s—it was all there again. He didn’t wantto be angry, he didn’t wantto raise his voice to the kid. He never wanted to have another blank spot in his life like the one that night when the anger had come over him and come over their father and he knew his father couldn’t back down, and neither could he. Don’t, he thought he’d said. Don’t grab it. Just before the gun had gone off and he’d waked up, just standing there with the smell of gunpowder in his nostrils and the shock quivering in his hands, in his arms, in his gut—