At least the bells had stopped, one by one. She hoped it meant all clear.
There’d been nervous fingers on triggers toward the forest wall— that had proved nothing, after they’d ridden breakneck to the site: the Jorgensons, opening their front door and shouting at them there’d been something trying their downstairs back window, but whether they’d fired first in a set of three houses claiming disturbance, was impossible to say. No one was killed and, in Ridley’s earnest hopes, the nervous trigger fingers had scared the intruder back over the wall.
But their initial search had turned up nothing, and they’d been all the way back up to the marshal’s office and, leaving Randy with the marshal’s wife, picked up the marshal, the deputy, and the hunters, all armed with shotguns and rifles, to go on a house-by-house patrol.
In Ridley’s hopes, too, no one would mistake themfor intruders as they made their slow pass down the street, knocking on doors and giving out verbal warnings building by building and house by house—at least Peterson and Burani did that duty, the hunters escorting them with rifles and watching the perimeters of the porches while the three of them stayed on horseback in the middle of the street and watched the roof edges. He was aware of <fear> in the houses. He knew the horses made themselves felt when they went near a building—and he was glad to have two of the town guards and the marshal’s wife and daughter, all with guns, to keep watch in the upper end of the village, near the Schaffer house, where he didn’twant to take the horses.
<Girl> kept entering the ambient. It kept Jennie spooked, though Jennie was doing amazingly well at holding herself calm and not talking. Rain, between Slip and Shimmer, was behaving with more sense than he’d have believed, part of that to Jennie’s credit, as he meant to tell her at some moment on the other side of this.
But the snow-fall was the creature’s friend if it was still in the village. Now and again the horses caught a whisper of something in the ambient that made all three of them in direct contact with the horses entirely uneasy, it was impossible to see what might be more than three buildings away, and hard to focus up into falling snow to check the roofs.
“Papa,” Jennie said once, in a very quiet voice—a kid asking for reassurance; but with good reason.
“Hush,” Callie said. “We know. We—”
Shots went off down the street. A flurry of them. Glass broke. He wanted—and Slip was off, Shimmer and Rain close behind, leaving the marshal and the hunters and the others to hold the middle of the street in mid-village as he and his went down the street, Jennie clinging like a burr to Rain’s mane and staying up with them all the way to the black clot of scared men grouped in front of The Evergreen.
Those men, some with guns, were screaming in panic at others still inside to get down as sounds of breakage resounded in the building. The shattered glass still in the doors showed dark spatter against the light, more dark spatter showed on the walls and a chaotic wreckage of overturned tables lay inside—<blood> was in the ambient, <blood and anger> and something else. Alive. Hurt.
And <predatory.>
“Stay <here!”> he said to Callie and Jennie, and rode Slip for the side of the building, the <back of the tavern> and the <warehouses.>
He saw what looked and felt like <man hurt and running across the alley,> and in that split second too long knew it wasn’ta man as it swarmed up an evergreen in the back of the tavern and up to the roof in a cloud of dislodged snow.
He let off a shot, and knew from <Callie and Jennie in front of the tavern> that they were aware of him, and aware of danger, <Callie’s gun aiming for the roof edge.> His own shot hadn’t hit anything—the ambient held nothingof the thing he’d seen, and that was something he’d never had happen to him or to Slip.
He rode Slip breakneck back around the building, fearing that at any moment the thing might come <plunging down on top of him> or onto <Callie and Jennie out front> where the ambient from the miners was awash with <alarm> and the air was confused with shouting voices.
He reached Callie and Jennie, and shouted for order among the miners who, the worse for drink and the scare of their lives, were all trying to report and debate what had happened. Hell, he knewwhat had happened—broken glass and <something large and black and deadly crashing right through the damn tavern,> was what had happened, with carnage left and right.
Laughingat them. Eludingthem.
Slip wanted <fight.> So did Shimmer, now. Shimmer’s peace had been challenged, the vicinity of her winter den disturbed.
But something else had flared into the ambient: <girl> and <wanting> and <anger.> Jennie was outraged, <fighting bad girl> for Rain, for the ambient and her own place in it. It was Jenniefirst and foremost that that sending challenged, not them. It was his daughter who flung that challenge back, and the threat of Brionne Goss calling out and welcoming that thing that had come into hisvillage, the threat of Brionne Goss challenging hisdaughter for whatever was at issue between them diminished the miners and their bloody calamity to a distant concern in his world.
“Dammit,” he said to the clatter of miners shouting appeals and drunken orders at him, “get <inside! ”>
< Jennie and Rain>was the defiance at that instant blazing out into the snowy dark, a challenge to all comers, flung out with all the force a young fool horse could throw into a sending. Rain wanted <fight for his rider.> Rain wanted <territory around his rider for his territory.> Rain’s rider wanted <bad girl going away! from her village and knew no sensible fear of the threat: < Jennie and Rain>were in possession of the street and the village that was their world, and nothing could come into it and take it from them.
“Stay with us!” he ordered Jennie, and fought Jennie and Rain for the lead as they bolted up the street. He was just barely able to cut Rain off short and prevent a charge right to the Schaffer house as they reached the marshal’s position. “Hold him, dammit, or get down!”
He’d never sworn at Jennie. He’d told her from earliest time that the way to stop a horse that wouldn’t otherwise stop was to slide off, and she didn’t do that—she wanted <stopping> and somehow made it stick, clinging to Rain and holding on, because she wouldn’t lethim go across that street toward the <bad girl wanting him.>
Neither was Slip going to lose one of his own herd, young male or not: Slip was sending a strong <Slip to the fore,> boss horse, and Shimmer came in with < mama> fit to chill the spine of an intruder.
They’d stopped in the midst of the marshal’s group, guns all around them, guns aimed toward roof edges—when all of a sudden <challenge > rushed right underthem and up the street.
“God!” Peterson cried.
Callie said, “It’s found the passages.”
Chapter 22
Run and run and run down the dark of the road, carrying only the rifle and a dozen shells—Danny ran by Cloud’s side as Tara ran by Flicker’s, the two of them, alone in the dark, ran and ran until the horses had caught their wind in this high altitude. It was swing up and ride until the horses were tiring under their weight, then run, then walk a distance, at last resort rest a moment, humans and horses alike, heads down, trying to warm the air they breathed. A rider knewthe state of his horse’s body as a horse knew his rider’s. He knew what they could possibly do. He discovered reserves in both of them. And Guil had told them, go, run and ride, get there as fast as they could, stripped down to the absolute minimum they had to have in the Wild if something stranded one of them: a knife and a burning-glass, matches, Tara and him with rifles, the very least they could survive on and the lightest weight they could carry and make speed.