“You all right?” The man had his arm, helping him walk.
“Yeah.”
But he kept in mind his own warning to Carlo, and on a night like this, with strangers out of a storm when no reasonable people would be out and about, he didn’t want to act like a spook. He just wanted <going to den,> wanted <rub-down for Cloud, ham for Cloud> and he imaged <Brionne and Randy in bundle of furs,> in case the riders hadn’t realized from Carlo’s mind that there were two more lives in their company than it seemed. Cloud’s welfare was absolutely foremost for him now. And he had to stay upright long enough to do that.
“I can take care of your horse,” the man said. “There’s mash cooked. We heard you coming. How are your feet?”
“No worse than the last hour,” he said. “And my horse got me here. I’ll see to him.” He didn’t want to think about his feet. He might be crippled for life. Bound to camp. Cattle-sentry. He couldn’t think of worse he could do to Cloud, including them freezing to death. “There’s a shotgun. Take it and the shells. All I can pay you. Promised ham to my horse. Got to pay him off.”
“This way.” The man didn’t argue with him or bargain for shelter. He was aware of <male horse walking with them,> knew the horse belonged to the man, and he knew the <female horse> and another <male> were ambling off instead toward the rider barracks where Carlo was going, where the woman and the kid were going, as protective of them as the stallion was of the man.
The stillness of the air, then, the dark inside the den, the mere cessation of the wind itself were like warmth as they came inside the safe, insulated stalls. It left him breathless and blind except for Cloud’s senses, lingeringly deaf from the wind, except for Cloud’s hearing, mentally lost, except for Cloud’s presence and Cloud’s sense of <evergreen smell. Evergreen boughs.> They must, Danny thought giddily, use it like straw up here where straw didn’t grow. That was a nice touch. He liked that.
And he was wandering, and staggering.
He knew when Cloud found a water pail that wasn’t frozen. He knew that Cloud drank, and then they both were blinded when the rider watching over them cut on an electric torch. In that beam of light he saw details of a smallish den, snug and warm, stalls and a sheltered heap of meadow hay that had never grown on this height: had to have been trucked up here. Had to cost as much as flour. But it meant life to the villages.
And when the rider set that light in a bracket aimed at the roof and stopped blinding him, he saw a village rider muffled up in a rider’s fringed leather coat and woolen scarf and broad-brimmed hat tied down against the wind. Could have been a mirror of him.
“Name’s Ridley,” the man said. “Callie, my partner, she’s got your partners.”
“Village kids,” he corrected that impression. “Tarmin village.” On that, he ran out of voice. He needed water. He pulled his gloves off fingers that had no feeling, dipped his hands into water that at least was above freezing, and that felt hot—and drank what Cloud had drunk, a sip or two, and a splash over his face to warm it.
But even that was too much. He thought for a moment he’d throw it up again, somewhere between the pain and the load on his stomach. He leaned on a stall post, just breathing until the waves of nausea passed.
Meanwhile the rider called Ridley had gotten warming-blankets and thrown them over Cloud, and at that he had to move, because he wouldn’t have anybody else taking care of Cloud. He thanked Ridley in his shred of a voice, took up the job himself, and rubbed and rubbed Cloud’s cold body and colder legs to get the blood moving.
The effort warmed both of them, set him panting and coughing, made his nose bleed and made him sick at his stomach. He’d been in such misery he hadn’t felt the altitude headache in the last push toward that faint sound of a bell, but now it came back, so blindingly acute he shut his eyes as he worked. Ridley gave him salve to use, and he rubbed it down Cloud’s legs and checked Cloud’s feet— Ridley helped in that, which was good, because Ridley’s fingers could feel the spots between the hooves and his still couldn’t.
“Looks pretty good for where he’s been,” Ridley said after he’d inspected all four sets of hooves. “Tarmin rider, are you?”
He didn’t want to talk details. Not tonight. He was sniffing back blood that otherwise dripped from his nose. “Kids are. I’m from Shamesey.” He rubbed salve vigorously into Cloud’s rear right pastern and down over the tri-fold hoof, which Cloud obligingly lifted and let him tuck against his knee. “Long story. Tell you inside.” Working upside down made him cough, threatened him with losing all the water he’d swallowed, and the blood was drowning him.
Cloud on the other hand was faring much better. Cloud sank down after that treatment, <cold nighthorse belly on cold nighthorse legs,> seeking warmth on the evergreen boughs that were the flooring. Cloud was feeling much better and very glad to have blankets thrown over him, then. Danny swiped a salved, horsey back of his hand across his nose and made a last assault with the salve at Cloud’s neck, where he could get warmth to the big artery, with the warming salve under Cloud’s mane and onto Cloud’s throat, which had to be as raw and dry as his.
Then from somewhere out of the dark came the girl-kid lugging a bucket too heavy for her—a heavy bucket that steamed and smelled, such as his and Cloud’s altitude-ravaged sense of smell could detect, of warm mash. Cloud gave a snort, interested, as the other horses were interested, having had one supper—but, being horses, always willing to eat. Ridley took the bucket and poured a taste into the common trough before he brought the rest to Cloud, who hadn’t gotten up. Ridley set the bucket in front of him.
Cloud sucked up a mouthful of warm mash, and on the strength of that, found it worthwhile to get to his feet and go head-down in the bucket—maybe not to eat much: Cloud wasn’t a fool, among a canny, self-preserving kind. But certainly Cloud meant to get his promised reward.
That meant that Cloud’s rider could go to the warm barracks and the fireside, and Danny started toward the door by which he’d come in, back into the snow—but the Evergreen rider pointed with the beam of the electric torch toward a second doorway, one framed by shattered boards.
Danny didn’t ask. Horses were horses, and boards suffered when the night was full of alarms. He scooped up a handful of snow blown in from the outside door and pressed the icy handful against the bridge of his nose before he went back to that door, through which Ridley and the kid led him into a night-black wooden tunnel.
“Where did you come from?” the little girl wanted to know, looking back as she walked ahead of them in their little sphere of light; but Ridley said sternly, as he shone the light down the passage: “Get on to the barracks, Jennie-cub. Leave the man alone. He’s got a nosebleed.”
Man. Man, the senior rider said. People down in Shamesey certainly hadn’t called him that. He’d been struggling all during the trip for Dan instead of Danny.
And a village rider saw him as a man, an equal, worth respect just for living to get up this mountain.
That was worth the hike up here.
Jennie-cub hadn’t gone. She looked back this time upside down, or at least with her head tilted way back as she walked ahead of them. “I had a nosebleed once. What’s your horse’s name? Mine’s name is Rain.”
“Rain isn’t your horse,” Ridley said. “You wait for Shimmer’s foal, miss. —Get to the barracks and open that door before I tan your backside for good and all.”
Young Jennie went ahead of them. Light and shadows ran on either side of the little girl, who became a shadow as she skipped ahead of them down a course grown dizzier and dizzier. The walls seemed closer as they went and the air grew more still and dank, smelling of old wood and wet stone and earth.