Carlo’s hand was under Spook’s mane. Spook was nosing his rider in the ribs.
They were in that lost-in-each-other stage that Danny had grown up thinking was a boy-girl folly. Then he’d learned what that horse and rider tie felt like—and he understood. Whatever Guil said was lost on Carlo right now. And Guil shook his head, knowing the same truth, beyond a doubt.
Quiet night, Ridley thought, listening to the silence about camp—silence in the woods, in the barracks, at the fireside. They’d risked going off-watch at the den and gone inside, enjoyed a quiet supper, and had no alarms. Jennie played by the fire, and Randy Goss, cheered by his promise, perhaps, that having no news out of the ambient was a sign Carlo wason horseback and traveling far and fast, got down on the floor and taught Jennie a game of squares and crosses with a piece of charcoal on the stones.
It was a new game for Jennie, who after a terrible day and a worried evening was laughing and giggling with the first human being even remotely near her age who’d sheltered in the rider camp.
It was good to hear. It made Callie laugh. Callie was on her way to accepting the boy, no matter his relatives: the plain truth was, Callie likedkids, and the plainer truth was, he himself was an easy mark for a youngster needing help.
When the games wore down and eyes grew heavy they put the Goss boy to bed in Fisher’s room, figuring Dan wouldn’t mind, and of the several rooms, it was clean, dusted, and they’d opened the door vents to let the heat in from the main room.
He put Jennie to bed, with Callie waiting in the doorway.
“Is Randy going to stay here?” Jennie wanted to know.
“Seems likely,” Callie said. “He might. If he’s good and minds what I say.”
“I hope he is,” Jennie said, and snuggled down into the pillows.
Ridley pulled the covers up and kissed his daughter good night. He and Callie went to bed, and he and Callie made love for the first time since Fisher had come to the barracks. The ambient was that quiet.
For the first time since Dan Fisher had arrived at their gate there was peace in the camp.
Chapter 21
Cloud twitched and brought his head up, an earthquake at Danny’s back, and Danny came straight out of a dream of endless grass and open skies to see, in the dark of night, Tara Chang leaning toward the fire, adding another stick to the small blaze.
“Too quiet,” Tara remarked to Guil, on whose face the firelight cast a slight light. “Yeah,” Danny heard Guil say. Guil’s eyes were half-open.
And having gotten maybe an hour or so of sleep, and considering they were dealing with a beast that could manipulate latches and camouflage itself in the ambient, Danny found himself wider awake.
“I’ll stay on watch a while,” he said to Tara.
“Trust the horses,” Tara said. “They don’t get surprised. No need to lose sleep.”
“We don’t know this thing.” If he hadn’t been waked on the sudden he wouldn’t have argued with a senior rider, but Tara just frowned and looked off into the dark. Guil had shut his eyes, but he wasn’t asleep: the ambient was too live with his thoughts: <Tara and Danny across the fire.>
“Understand,” Tara said. “Sending you on. I’d no idea about the horse. Or anything wrong.”
He couldn’t come back with what he thought was Tara’s real reason, <Guil lying sick>and <Tara wanting Guil.> He tried to keep his thoughts out of the ambient and had no luck at all. “I knew that,” he said. “Figured it out, anyway. I shouldn’t have moved from the shelter. Hell, I should have shoved Carlo there out the door and we’d have been fine.”
“Except what’s moved in on the mountain.”
“Yes, ma’am. That’s for sure.”
Tara gave a short laugh. “I’m no villager.”
“No—” Ma’am was his mother’s manners. “No,” he said, unadorned.
“Get some rest. We’ll fix things tomorrow.”
“Right,” he said, having presumed as far as he wanted to on senior riders’ patience, and he leaned back against Cloud’s side.
Tara settled down against Flicker. Carlo was out cold, in the ambient just barely, in that very faint way you could pick up someone sound asleep, at very close range.
Carlo andSpook were out, Danny judged, Carlo exhausted from nights of worry, and Spook from nights of exhausting Carlo and the rest of Evergreen village.
Fighting a solitary war with whatever-it-was. Keeping it penned up here, near the lake, because it wasn’tgoing to drive him off the mountain and away from the rider he’d gone through frozen hell and climbed a mountain to choose.
Stubborn horse. Very stubborn, canny horse.
So was the horse he was leaning against, the one keeping him warm in the icy cold air. He pillowed his head against Cloud and, patting a muscled shoulder, received a rumbling contentment-sound in return.
Jennie had a very scary kind of nightmare. There was a girl, a very angry girl, who wanteda horse to come to her. And she, Jennie, was in the camp on the other side of the wall when a sending came wanting Rain, but shewouldn’t let this girl have Rain. Papa said—papa said you didn’t own horses. Horses just were. You got along with horses.
She was in this girl’s house and she told her that. She told her so very firmly, and told her she couldn’t have Rain and she was sorry, but that was the way it was. And the girl was very angry and told her to get out.
So she flew back over the camp wall and told Rain he shouldn’t listen to this girl.
But something listened. Something came close, and it might be a horse. But she didn’t think so. And she flew back to that girl in the doctor’s house and stood in the middle of the room and wanted to warn her this wasn’t a good idea, and she shouldn’t call out beyond the wall like that.
Then something waked her up and she was in her own bed and mama was in the doorway and so was papa.
“Jennie,” mama said. “Jennie, —what’s going on?”
“I don’t know,” she said, and papa said, “It’s that damned girl. The horse must be back.”
“Is Dan back?”
“No,” mama said, and sat down on the side of her bed and set a hand on the other side of her. “You stay out of the ambient, Jennie. Something’s going on out there.”
“It’s really real?”
“It’s real. You don’t go out there.”
“But she wants Rain!”
“Rain won’t go to her,” papa said. “The ambient’s just really loud tonight. The horses are upset. I’ll go out and calm things down.”
“Probably both of us should,” mama said. And Randy had shown up in her bedroom doorway, dressed, but with his shirt half on. “You stay inside and see Jennie stays inside,” mama told Randy.
“It’s my sister,” Randy said. He sounded scared. “It’s my sister. I know what she sounds like.”
Then the bell was ringing again. Jennie thought confusedly, Serge didn’t tie the bell again. Then another bell was going. And another. The ambient went terribly <upset,> then, her mama and papa and Randy all scared at once.
“That’s the breakthrough alarm,” papa said, and she remembered papa and mama had always told her if she ever heard all the bells, the gate’s big and little ones and the church tower and the fire bell all at once, then she should lock everything down tight and get the box of shells and set them on the table.
And never, never, never go out to the horses.
But Rainwas out there.
Rain neededher.
“You stay put!” papa said in his harshest tone. “Randy, can you do anything with your sister?”
“I don’t know.”
“Yellowflower,” mama said. And papa:
“Jennie, put your clothes on. Get dressed. Right now.”
“Everybody’s in my room!”
“We’re going over to the village.”
“What about the horses?” She wasn’tleaving Rain. She’d never been so scared in her life.