That and something he couldn’t get, but didn’t think he wanted to, either. For a moment there were images pouring every which way, <Evergreen village> and <Brionne in furs,> and <rider-shelter with the local riders,> all, he realized suddenly, provoking memories and images from him, <doctor’s house, Brionne in bed, awake> and <Rick Mackey shouting at him in the street> and <him running, running for the gates> with what he knew now was a desperate <fear of jail> and <fear of the mob> and a sense of <safety in the Wild.>
He tried not to contribute to the confusion. Danny had gotten mad when he’d poured too much in on Cloud, in the days when they’d climbed the mountain. But he didn’t think Danny was angry now. Danny and Cloud became <quiet cloud. Cloud on a sunny day.>
Then Danny left Cloud to come over to him, <wanting him to reach out his hand.> And he did reach. He kept one hand on Spook, and he felt <anxiety> as his gloved fingers met Danny’s.
They stood like that a moment, with <fear> and <wanting> running through them like electricity through a wire. Carlo felt Danny’s awareness and calm good sense go along his nerves. He believed Danny was different from anybody he’d ever met. And if he’d damned himself in the eyes of preachers, if riding a horse would do it when his other faults had missed, he made a conscious choice now to be where he was standing, in rider company, a killer with a horse riders called crazed and a would-be killer itself—but he wanted their company, he wanted their acceptance among them.
He didn’t know why Danny radiated <wanting contact> and he didn’t know how to understand the <flight> impulse in Spook until the second Spook tried to break away into the clear in complete panic; but he wouldn’t let Spook run from help, not except <running over him,> and he wouldn’t have it, wouldn’t allow it, had himself in the way and his hands on Spook without even knowing which one of them had moved first. He just stood there <wanting quiet> and holding his whole weight against Spook’s shoulder. <Carlo and Danny> was in the ambient and he had the presence of mind finally to join into it, <Carlo and Danny> as hard as he could think it. <Carlo and Danny and Spook and Cloud> while he pressed with all his strength against Spook’s trembling shoulder.
“Kid’s new?” Stuart’s voice asked.
“Today,” Danny said. “Hours. Just barely hours.”
“Easy,” Chang said, and with every word the ambient grew calmer. “Easy, kid. You’re all right. You’re doing damn fine. He’s just on edge. It’s not your fault. Calm. Calm down.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said. His voice was shaking. “He’s scared of you. Spook’s especially scared of you.”
The ambient sank further toward quiet. Tara Chang was quieting things, he thought, and the world unfolded further—wider and wider so that, with his hands on Spook’s side, he was aware of Guil Stuart’s physical pain, Chang’s grief, Danny’s anxiousness—aware of two horses, Burn and Spook, that had known each other in the past, and that were and weren’t enemies; and two horses, Spook and Flicker, that had encountered each other at a point of death and change, far, far down the mountain.
Aware, then, of the mountain far and wide—and a breathless silence fallen around them.
Danny didn’t know what he would have done without Stuart. He didn’t think he could have quieted Spook or Carlo. Cloud was all right with Spook now that Spook had a rider and there wasn’t a threat to his own. Burn was protective of Flicker, that was clear to him and to Cloud, but that was the way things had been, and Spook, with a junior and uncertain rider, was at the bottom of the status list, Cloud just behind the pair Burn and Flicker made.
That meant peace, and peace came as a shakiness of the knees and a thorough relief. Danny still didn’t figure why Guil and Tara had come up the mountain when they’d said otherwise, but the first-stage shelter was among the images he’d gotten. He guessed that Guil and Tara had ridden over to check on them and then—then they’d have found his warning about Spook.
And he was very glad they had.
“Where did you drop the thing?” Guil asked with a fleeting image of what had been <chasing them.> Tara had gotten down, but Guil hadn’t, hurting too much, Danny had no need to ask. It had been a risky and probably a painful ride for Guil—straight up the mountain, by trails and logging roads, he guessed that by the images floating past him.
“Back in those trees,” he said to Guil’s question, and supplied the only image he had, <black shape, total surprise as it crashed down through the limbs.> “I don’t know what it was, but it dropped at me and I shot.”
Burn took his rider slowly and warily in that direction. He and Tara went along with Cloud and Flicker in close company, and Carlo and Spook followed uncertainly hindmost—scared, still flighty, and with Spook—he was almost certain the source was Spook—giving off images of <dark> and <vacant mountain> and <shadow in the treetops.>
But it found echoes.
So did <blood on snow.>
Which was all they found when they rode up on the area where the thing had fallen.
“I left it there.” Lame excuse. Danny knew he should have put another bullet into it. But Carlo had already been running. He didn’t know how he’d have caught Carlo if he’d taken to firing: he’d have scared Spook and Carlo could have broken his neck, a new rider, a tired, scared horse on that slope—
“Best I could have done,” Guil said generously, and did slide down off Burn for a closer look. Light was getting dimmer and the snow was coming down thick and fast with little wind.
Such traces as remained, a large depression in the snow, would go away very quickly. The blood was mostly obscured already. But there wasn’t, after all, that much of it.
“There’s <a nest> over toward the pond,” Danny said.
It found an echo. For a moment the whole mountainside vanished in a strong sending of <black shape> and <danger in woods> and <Spook-horse going to fight> that stirred memories from another source of <cabin, moving darkness on the mountain, fear and disturbance.>
It took a moment to get the ambient calmed down again.
“The horse hunted it,” Guil said, with that economy of words Danny had found among borderers. “The horse came up here tagging you, and you went into walls. The tree-climber was here first. But this horse was hunting it to get its territory, until he got what he wanted. Then he was going right down the mountain, fastest way he could.” It was true, too, that senior riders could sift a lot more out of a single image than juniors could do. And older horses both packed more information and traded it with more dispatch. There’d been just too much flying past him a moment ago for him to catch all of it—without resurrecting the fear that had gone with it. And he didn’t want to do that.
Guil walked over where Carlo was and patted Spook on the neck. “Better have a look at his feet. Been running wild till today, was it?”
Carlo didn’t seem to find it easy to talk to Guil. Not at all. “Yes,” Danny said in Carlo’s stead. “He was.”
Guil walked around Spook, hand on Spook’s back, looked at him, looked at his legs, just a fast pass around, while Carlo uneasily dodged around Spook’s neck and stayed out of the way. “Needs some seeing-to,” was Guil’s pronouncement. “Had you staked out for his for a while, did he?”
“I—don’t know. I guess. Yes, sir.” Carlo wasn’t doing well with words—not easy to talk when images were warring for your attention. And he was scared of Guil in a way Danny hadn’t seen in him, down in the cabin near Tarmin.