The horse edged forward, leaned to smell over his gloved hands, got through his guard to smell his face, his snow-caked coat and trousers, his coat again and his face. The ambient was there. Spook-horse was <wary, excited.> Its friendliness could change in the instant it realized it wasn’t his rider.
“Stupid horse,” he said, trying to back away, knowing his thoughts were in themselves betraying him. He looked for a tree whose branches he could reach. And didn’t see one. “Stupid horse.” It was nuzzling his hands again, forcing its way closer. “What do you want?”
Then it dawned on him.
The horse following them up the mountain in the winter season. The horse persisting in harassing the village, even at risk of being shot. The horse—<wanting> and <searching> to the village walls at night—
It wanted its rider. It wanted a rider. That was what it wanted.
“Stupid horse.” He kept backing, losing ground, cast a look back to make sure there wasn’t another cliff, and it got its nose past his hands to blow breath in his ear. Which brought his head around and his chin into collision with its spooked head-toss as it backed off. He saw stars for a second, and found it coming forward again, pushing at his hands.
“Stupid horse, you’ve got the wrong one of us. It’s my brother that wants you. Not me. I’m a blacksmith. I’m not a rider. Go away! Leave me alone!”
The black nose got past his protective hands, and nudged him full in the face, desperate for something, but Danny had told him the truth—he didn’t hear everything in a horse’s sending; and he didn’t know what it was thinking—or expect it when of a sudden the damn horse licked him on the face, across the nose and bashed his lip when he flinched. He put out his hands in self-defense and it butted against them, rubbing its face on his gloved palms, with that odd sound and that feeling Danny had said was <happy.>
“Damn fool,” he said to it, but to appease it he rubbed its cheek with his hands—otherwise it was going to rub its head on him and bash his face again. That led only to a harder push and a loss of balance. He went down backward in the snow and the horse nosed him in the face, or the hands, when he pushed at it, radiating <happy> and <looking down at Carlo in the snow.> He couldn’t get up without its nose in the way. He got as far as his knees and had its head in his middle, butting him until he patted its neck and used it for a wall to lean on getting up.
<Happy horse. Delighted horse.>
“I’m not it, silly fool. I’m not.”
But it wanted. It <wanted> and he’d been with Danny long enough to know that if a horse wanted to reach his rider, he’d go through or over anything remotely possible, and this horse wanted with that kind of intensity. It wasn’t <blood-on-snow> in its mind any longer. It was something else—he didn’t know what, but it wasn’t <lost horse> any longer, either.
Neither was he <lost in the woods.> It had him, and he had it; and he couldn’t be as scared as he’d been or as desperate as he’d been or as lonely as he’d been, while the creature he’d most feared was most interested in rubbing its face against him.
<Shape in the woods,> he kept seeing, but not a threatening shape, just a fast-moving shadow through the trees, horse here, horse there—the eye couldn’t track it.
“Spook,” he said to a back-turned ear, his arm at the moment encircling its neck from below. He was there instead of the person it most wanted, whoever that was. He was there because he’d happened into its path, was all, when Randy had wanted it, when maybe his sister had, in her untouchable dreams. It might get him back close to the village, might save him, but certainly he hadn’t a right to it—
Which, he realized all of a sudden was his answer to every question of everything he’d ever had a chance for—he hadn’t a right. He was the oldest. He had the responsibilities, he always had been the responsible one. He had to learn the craft. He had to stay and work. He had to go to Evergreen. He had to see to Brionne’s life. To Randy’s future. To the forge down in Tarmin. All those things. Only thing he’d ever done right, only thing good anybody ever said about him, was he was responsible, and what could he do now? He was a stand-in for his brother with this creature. It wasn’t responsible to have notions of accepting it himself.
<Carlo and Spook> was the ambient right now. It was powerfully persuasive. It was so, so attractive to believe it could make a mistake like that, and that he might accept it and just not go back again to being responsible.
Couldn’t. Randy wouldn’t forgive him.
It could keep him safe, though, till he could deal with the charges and prove—whatever he could prove to the village.
It could—it could take him clear to Tarmin. It knew the way up and down the mountain. It could fight off predators. It could guide him, hunt for him, protect him—he didn’t need anything he didn’t have in his hands right now.
And the world around him had expanded so wide, and the smells had become so clear—he didn’t know how much he’d lost when he’d left the ambient for the Mackeys’ forge and the living he owed his brother.
If he stayed too long, he said to himself, if he let himself get used to it, he didn’t know how he’d give it up.
“God, I don’t know about horses. I don’t know how to ride. You’ve really made a mistake, horse. I swear to you I’m not it.”
Didn’t make a difference. Spook was still there. Still wanting, exploring with a curious soft nose the gloved hands he put up to save his face from being licked raw. Hands failed. The horse butted him in the chest and wanted him to <ride.>
There weren’t words. He felt presumptuous even to try what it wanted him to try. Danny if he were here would call him a fool.
But Danny wasn’t here.
And he had no notion how to do the flashy move Danny could do, grabbing the mane and swinging up: he knew where that would land him. So he tried the way Danny would when things were chancy, and just bounced up to land belly-down across the horse’s back and tried, with the horse beginning to move, to straighten himself around astride.
Too far. He made a frantic grab after a black and cloudy mane that like finest wool went almost to nothing in his hands—stayed on for maybe a hundred meters, breathless with what he’d done, was doing, could do. But when the course turned uphill he slid right off over Spook’s rump.
To his surprise he landed on his feet, in a position to look uphill as the horse reached the top and looked down at him as if to say, God, I’ve picked a fool.
He slogged up the snowy incline, panting, and tried again—got on, and fell off more slowly, still clinging to two fistfuls of mane, when Spook picked up the pace.
Definitely there was a knack of balance he didn’t have.
But he got on again.
He wanted to go back and find Danny. But Danny was <Danny with gun> and Spook didn’t want to find Danny. He suddenly had that image. He couldn’t just ride into Danny’s sights—when Danny thought Spook was a danger to the village. He couldn’t go back and get Spook killed for no reason.
He knew now as long as the village chased him, Randy had a chance to do what he’d told Randy to do if things got bad—go get Danny’s help; with Randy staying in the rider camp, the marshal at least couldn’t include a fourteen-year-old in a murder charge.
He had to talk to Danny. But on his terms. After he’d had time to think what to do, what he wanted, where he was and where he wanted to go.