“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. <Pain> 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 <tree where he’d seen the nest>—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. Tarahad 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 largehunting 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.
<Shelter> was Danny’s thought. It found agreement from Carlo. But something else was going on with the ambient, horses and riders <listening,> 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.” <Sending in the woods. Land rippling in his perception. Carlo—>
He tried not to spill beyond his intention to inform them. But Guil <wanted.>
“Rest of it,” Guil said.
<Rippling sending. Carlo and Spook.>
“It blotted things out,” Tara said. “Damned strong.” Danny was <frustrated.> He didn’t understand what it had done. And he’dexperienced it.
“It can blot out another sending,” Guil said. “Take another sending outof 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. <Shadow against the stars. Anger. Ripples and shadows in the ambient. Shadows moving. Running. Blood—and hunting, down a wooded road.>
“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— hewas 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—
<Brionne,> the image came, a command, a question, he thought from Tara; and it was Carlo’s image that came back, <house with fine furniture, Brionne in bed, awake and talking to him—>
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, <danger to the villages and to rider camps.> He’d had the chance to prevent it. Hecould have stopped and made sure of his target. If he’d known it wasn’t a lorrie-lie. Ifhe’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 himlast 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. <Vacant shelter> was how it seemed. But the smell was there despite the snow, beyond human noses, maybe, to detect.