But that would have to wait for shelter—if they could find one. He’d known a moment of hope when they’d seen the one—but Spook seemed to be rejecting any thought of it—maybe of all shelters, not knowing his rider didn’t have the skill to make a camp.
Maybe Spook had feared that <Danny following them> could trap them there. He didn’t know.
But all of a sudden he perceived <shadow in the treetops, blackness against the sky,> and Spook lurched downslope in a reckless run.
He stuck tighter if he clung lower, and he made himself as flat as he could on Spook’s back—Spook wasn’t a young horse, Danny had said so. Spook had been a ridden horse, a horse that could keep him safe only if he didn’t fall off in front of whatever nameless terror was above him.
Something broke through the brush. Sound added itself to impressions piling up in the ambient of something horrific after them. <Goblin-cat,> he thought. He’d never seen one. But it might be. Or a <lorrie-lie.> They went in trees.
Then an impression of <horse> was back there. And <rider.>
He didn’t know whether it was Danny. He couldn’t turn to see without risking their collective balance as Spook took a sudden series of zigzags down the road, not all-out, now, but scarily fast for so many turns.
<Horse ahead> flashed to mind.
Or the ambient was changing on him. <Fear> was thick as the snow-fall that veiled the evergreens, as urgent on his heels as the <rider> image that chased him down through the woods.
Spook stumbled on something and his hindquarters dropped as he swung sideways, slid, clawed for balance and went down. He didn’t know for a moment that Spook had fallen, but he was off to the side with his feet on the ground, and he hadn’t anything left but a double-handed grip on Spook’s mane as Spook gained his feet.
<Darkness in the trees> was coming. It was <there.> And he couldn’t get up—Spook was trying to move, he couldn’t get footing to spring upward for Spook’s back, and Spook wouldn’t stand still as <darkness in the trees> bore down on them.
<Gunshot> rang out and <pain and anger> washed through him. He couldn’t see anything but Spook’s neck as Spook struggled to turn, dragging him around as Spook went on guard against <rider coming at them.>
His feet found a rock, then, beneath the snow, and Spook’s sweating body walled him off from whatever was coming down on them. Spook wanted <running.> He jumped for Spook’s back and Spook took off with him lying crosswise and barely aboard, struggling to right himself on the downhill.
<Danny> was in the ambient.
“Carlo!” he heard behind him. “Carlo!”
<Riders in front of him.> Spook tried to dodge opposite what he expected just as he almost righted himself, and Spooks back slid right under his leg as he went flying sideways again, still with a grip on Spook’s mane, jerked along with Spook’s sideways try at escape.
It ended with Spook down again against a snow-covered wall of brush, and him still clinging to Spook’s mane, which he began to understand in his panic was impeding Spook’s try at gaining his feet.
Two riders had come up the road on them, cutting off the downhill direction. He didn’t know them, but <Danny and Cloud> were still behind him, and Spook was <afraid> of Danny, more afraid of <shadow in the trees> and terrified of <rider on the right. Gunfire echoing off mountain, rider sliding—blood on snow—>
He couldn’t get back on. He was scared to let go, scared of losing Spook or leaving Spook a target; meanwhile Spook, stumbling on objects under the snow, kept backing up, hemmed in by snow-covered brush, by <rider behind> and <danger in trees.>
But suddenly he knew these riders, and knew he’d met them. He tried simultaneously to hang on to Spook’s mane and still put himself between the riders and Spook, <terrified of riders shooting.>
<Water running over stones. Light through leaves.>
It was a rider’s calm-sending. It was an urge to <quiet,> he knew that much, and desperately wanted to believe in it.
“Don’t shoot,” he said, finding his voice. “Don’t shoot. He’s not crazy. I’m not. I didn’t kill anybody!”
“Just calm down.”
It was Guil Stuart and Tara Chang. Tara was the rider Spook was afraid of. And Guil Stuart only slightly less so.
But <still water,> was insistent, washing over his vision, alternate with the white of real snow and those snow-obscured figures that had him pinned against the wall of brush.
“Carlo,” came Danny’s voice from behind him and uphill. “It’s me. Calm down. It’s all right. Quiet him down. Calm the horse down. Nobody’s going to shoot.”
He wanted things quiet. He wanted <Spook standing still,> so he dared let go, because he had Spook’s mane twisted in both his hands and he thought it might be hurting Spook and compounding the problem. “Settle down,” he said, scared to let go as Spook stood shivering. “It’s all right.” <Carlo and Danny> was in his head. He didn’t know whether it was his idea or not. <Horrid black thing in snow> was in his head, too, and he didn’t know how, but he thought it came from Danny, by the direction-sense that quivered along his nerves, like awareness of the faintest breeze.
“Carlo,” Danny said, “I got it, I shot it. —Guil, I—don’t know what the hell it is. Lorrie-lie, maybe.”
“Back there?” Stuart asked, and he and Chang at least made a move or the intent of a move in that direction, which gave Spook a notion of <running,> but Carlo didn’t want that now. He tried to calm Spook down, and fortunately or because the others realized Spook’s inclination, they kept Burn and Flicker in the way on one side and Cloud on the other.
Carlo freed one hand and used it to pat Spook on the shoulder— heart pounding, took the risk of freeing the other, awkwardly patted Spook’s resisting neck and secured of Spook at least a trembling quiet.
Then Spook turned his head, butted it against him, <Blood on snow. Spook and Carlo, Spook and Carlo> was the sending, until, his doing or Spook’s or the others’, he gained awareness of the other riders, other horses, distances, minds, intentions, <strong, not moving, quiet water running over brown stones.>
“I’m here,” Danny said quietly, aloud and in the ambient. “I’m just behind you.”
“I know,” he said. “Danny, I didn’t do it. I didn’t kill anybody!”
“I can hear it. I believe you.” There was a lot of <wanting> and a lot of <anxiousness> and a lot of <Stuart and Chang> in the air, with not quite an easy feeling to it—rather a skittish wariness that calm-sendings didn’t stop.
“Devil meeting you here,” Stuart said. “Did you kill it?”
He was talking to Danny, Carlo thought, and what hit the ambient wasn’t comfortable—it was that <shadow> sending that upset Spook. It was <nest in tree beside the water.> It was <Danny and Cloud in the woods, following his trail, under shadow in the trees.>
“How did you get here?” Danny asked Guil, visualizing <road and ice,> and from Guil and Tara, Carlo guessed, came different images, <cabin in the woods, steep snowy climb through the forest.>