There was a sign that said village, there was some writing—unusual on a rider board—and the slash that meant dead: the kid was giving warning in case no other message got to some of the villagers who might come down this road expecting to get help at Tarmin.
The kids could have gone on down the mountain without wasting time here—and that would have taken them on to Shamesey and the help of senior riders who in no way would allow that girl near the camp. They’d take her deep inside the town, where sendings didn’t happen. But he’d never been easy with that notion. Shamesey was just too unstable.
And sure enough that wasn’t the way they’d gone. The directional sign said they were going up the road, not down.
There was one more sign: danger coupled with bad horse.
“One of the horses came in here,” he said. “Damn.”
He didn’t know what Tara thought about it. They were getting a lot of horsey loveplay and chasing at the moment: the ambient was muddy with it and they weren’t hearing each other except with words.
But Tara just sank down by the fireplace as if the wind had gone out of her, and ducked her head against the heels of her hands.
It wasn’t a time to push. He knew clearly what he wanted. But he didn’t say it. He could at least lift the kindling from the stack. He brought that over and knelt and got a fire going, one match, with the tinder the shelter offered in a hanging box by the fire.
Light began to glow in the hearth. She’d turned her head and the light showed a dry and composed face.
“Kid’s got a horse giving him trouble,” she said in a level voice. “He’s taken his party out of here, he’s gone up in the theory it won’t follow him up, but it might follow him down. He wouldn’t come back to us.” She had a dry stick in her hands, broke it and tossed the ends into the fire.
It cost him to get up or down. He didn’t want to get up and move away if he was going to need to sit down to talk to her. Trying to solve things without the horses to carry feeling and memory was like dealing blindfolded and half mute.
And he knew what he’d make up his mind to do in a second if he were in one piece. And he asked himself whether he had a chance in hell of making it on his own.
With her help—he could. But he was in a position of asking for the help of someone he knew wasn’t happy about the situation she’d created and who was very likely going to take it as a criticism from someone who’d twice intervened to stop her from shooting Brionne Goss, for reasons about which he now felt very queasy.
“Kids could be in trouble,” was his opening bid. “They pushed it getting out of here. No question they’ve been caught in the storm.”
“In which case they froze or they made it.”
“Danny’s pretty levelheaded.”
She ducked his opinions for a moment by ducking her head down, knees drawn up, elbows on knees. She was sorting things out. He knew. He waited.
And the head came up. She shook her hair back and set her jaw. “You’re saying go up there.”
He didn’t answer for his own long moment. The fire beside them grew. Tinder went red and dropped down as ashes.
“We didn’t figure on one of the horses coming this way,” he said then. “That’s forced them out of here. That’s put them on the road.”
“Danny understood,” Tara said slowly, “that the real chance was in his waiting here. And that eventually—as kindly as possible— she’d die. But if a horse called—if she woke up—”
“A healthy horse won’t come near her. One that isn’t—”
“They’ve gone up. To Evergreen.”
There was a truck off the mountain, where Aby had died. There was a box of gold in that truck, that a company down in Anveney wanted really bad—a company that had hired him to recover it and to get it on to Anveney. But he’d stopped caring about it. He’d revised a lot of things in his head when Aby’d died, and when he’d found out what had happened up here.
A lot of death—around him and Tara both.
Meanwhile Tara had become important to him, just a constant amazement to him to see her, to look at another living being in all this isolation and see the firelight on her hands, on her face, to discover, day by day, another set of living thoughts in the void where Aby’d been—and to know that if she rode off from him—he’d feel he’d lost—hell, he didn’t know.
He thought Aby would approve of her.
And he knew he was being stupid and too cautious. He’d not felt nearly so anxious about Aby’s risks as he did about risk to Tara—Aby having been there, left hand to his right, a fact of the world since they both were kids, and capable of taking care of herself. God, yes, he’d loved her—there’d always be a hole in his world the shape and size and duration of Aby. But the matter with Tara was here and urgent, because the woman was apt to do any damn thing—and he wanted her safe, and didn’t want her to have done things she’d be sorry for, and meanwhile he had things he needed to do and she’d be up here by herself rather than see him go—it had a very Aby-like feel, her stubbornness did. And he wanted to protect her from that—
The way he hadn’t done with Aby.
His thinking was in a real mess, was what it was.
Horseplay outside had come near the cabin. Attention had turned to them, and they were aware of each other like a light switch going on.
“Dammit!” he said to Burn, caught, and knew it was going to be <mad Tara.>
A hand came to rest on his knee, took on weight, patted it hard.
And the ambient said that Tara wasn’t mad.
“You aren’t going up there,” she said. “I will.”
“No. I’ll go.”
“I said I’d do it. Go by yourself, hell. This is my mountain. You sit here.”
“No.” They were back to that argument.
“There’s a short way up there. But it’s a lot of walking, a lot of climbing, and rough ground. You can’t make it.”
“The kids are on the long way. If I can’t make it, I’ll know it. I’ll stop. I can camp and stay warm.”
“Listen to me.” The hand on his knee shook at him. “You hear anything?”
“You and two horses.”
“And nothing else. Nothing else.”
He took the point. Soberly.
“The mountain isn’t over with what happened,” Tara said. “It’s not safe out there. For someone who maybe gets sick, can’t move—”
“Or just as well somebody that travels alone. With you or behind you, woman. Take your pick.”
“Your life. Over those kids. They can damn well take care of themselves or they’ve got no business up here.”
“The kids didn’t have much damn choice about being out of the village,” Guil said. “And can the village up there take care of itself? They could need help. We sent our problem up there.”
“Where there’s a lot more resources than we’ve got.”
“And a mountain that’s still in an upheaval. What do they know about it? I want to know where that horse went that drove them out of here.”
“Damn you, Guil.”
“Yeah, well.”
He sat there beside her at the fireside, and then—then the horses outside were mating, and they sat there bundled in their thick clothes, receiving that.