“Damned well playing tag with the tree-sitter,” Tara said, and <dark in trees> was in the ambient as Guil stared off into the woods and Tara walked up beside him.
“What are they saying?” Carlo asked quietly, his arm under Spook’s neck, <skittish> as Spook.
“They think whatever I shot, whatever has the <nest by the pond,> is something—I don’t know—some of it’s hazy to me. But they think Spook and this thing have been fighting each other up here. Spook had you pegged for his. So he wasn’t leaving. The thing in the nest, it wanted this whole ridge for its territory. And Spook was hellbent he was going to get you out of the village if he couldn’t get that thing out of this territory.”
“One argumentative horse,” Guil said, paying attention when Danny thought he hadn’t been. He walked back and laid a hand on Carlo’s shoulder. “Hell to manage. Got to warn you. He’s used to a rider that picked fights.”
Tara walked back over with a tuft of fur in her gloved fingers. Falling snow lit on it and stuck; horses laid their ears back as they smelled it, but there wasn’t a thing from Burn or Flicker, just from Spook and, to Danny’s surprise, Cloud, who laid his ears flat and did that <shadow in trees> sending but nothing clearer.
Took a second for the implication to get through. And then a very anxious feeling hit the stomach.
“Never met anything Burn didn’t recognize the smell of,” Guil said.
Neither Burn, who was far-traveled, nor Flicker nor Cloud recognized it, and Spook, who’d been playing tag with it for days along the road, didn’t have a clear image of it.
“There’s a lot of unknown territory,” Tara said, “on this mountain’s backside. And beyond here—there’s just unexplored outback. With the rogue-sending taking Tarmin down, the whole mountain upset—that sending would have carried clear around the mountain flanks, clear to God knows where, so long as there were creatures to carry it. —Danny, you got anything better on it?”
He tried to image it. Wasn’t sure he succeeded.
“I’m from Shamesey,” he said by way of explaining his limitations. “From in town. I never even saw a lorrie-lie real clear. Just what Cloud knows.”
“This is nothing anybody knows,” Tara said. “It could be like a lorrie-lie, but it seems bigger. What would you say, seventy, eighty kilos?”
“I couldn’t judge,” Danny said. “I really couldn’t judge.”
“Sometimes in autumn, when things get restless, something does stray across the Divide. Never anything this big, that I’ve heard of.”
“More than that,” Guil said, staring off into the woods, and that <shadow in the trees> image was steadier and longer than Danny personally had held it. That was Guil and Burn, Danny thought, with real appreciation for seniors. <Cabin. Moving vacancy in the ambient.> “Predator. Strong one. Smart. Not enough blood. Didn’t hit it solid enough.”
“There’s the villages up here,” Tara said, and with the hair prickling on his arms Danny was entertaining the same thought. Cloud didn’t like it, and he moved to the side to lay a hand on Cloud’s neck.
“Shelter near here,” Guil said.
“So’s its nest,” Danny said. “It could be its nest, at least—near the shelter.”
“Bad business to leave anything wounded,” Tara said. “Snow’s already taking the trail, and it’s likely gone up in the trees anyway. Check the nest is my recommendation.”
“Sounds good to me,” Guil said.
It sounded good to Danny, too. And there’d be cramped quarters for four riders and horses in the shelter, but there’d be safety, too.
They’d run a hard course, as Guil and Tara were at the end of a day’s travel from somewhere below. Tara set out walking beside her horse, Guil did the same, Danny followed with Cloud, and Carlo trailed an uncertain last.
But feeling that uncertainty, Danny lagged back at Cloud’s tail and put himself near Carlo.
“Sorry about the scare,” he said. “Wasn’t your fault we ran to hell and gone. I should have been more careful coming up on you.”
“I’m all right,” Carlo said. “But what about Randy?”
“Rider camp.”
“He made it.”
“He’s fine, last I saw.”
“Danny, I didn’t kill that man.”
“I know.”
“How? Did they find who did it?”
“No. But I hear you clear. Horses carry it. Took me two years to learn to lie. And you’re under camp rules, now. Village law can’t take you without Ridley’s say-so.”
Carlo was vastly relieved at that.“Randy either.”
“Randy either. You stick with me. We’ll think of something. Randy’s safe. Ridley Vincint, he’s camp-boss. He’ll take care of him until we can arrange something ourselves. He’ll be fine.”
“I owe you. This is twice I owe you.”
“That horse was doing pretty damn well keeping you in one piece.”
“Nobody’ll shoot him if I go back?”
“Not a chance. Nothing wrong with that horse—now. Besides, I’m supposed to take you on to Mornay and get you out of trouble. On Ridley’s orders.“
“No question here,” Carlo said. “If Randy’s all right with him, I’ll go.”
“I think even Callie’s going to stand by him. I think it’s all right.”
Guil and Burn had stopped. Tara gave Guil a hand up to Burn’s back and Guil looked, in the dim light there was, fairly done in, head down, arm across his middle for a moment. <Pain> was evident, not bad, but there, and it was clear to Danny that Guil and Tara had pushed matters hard getting up here.
He wished there was something he could do to reciprocate. There wasn’t, except if he could guide them to where they could settle the problem of the lorrie-lie or whatever it was. But they weren’t fit for a chase: Burn wasn’t going beyond a walking pace, Guil not favoring any jolting right now, he was well sure, and Burn having done more carrying of his rider than a nighthorse wanted to do on a steep road. There was little chance, Danny thought, that the creature was going to put itself in their sights tonight—and he personally hoped they just got to shelter. Guil didn’t need any excitement that might set Burn to rapid moving—besides that, the daylight was going and the snow was still coming down.
Meanwhile they followed his and Carlo’s backtrail to the wide road and followed the road beside the pond, within snow-obscured view of the <tree where he’d seen the nest>—and when they reached the vantage he’d had, the nest was plain to see, covered in snow, a lump in an otherwise symmetrical tree.
They left the road and came to the very foot of it. No tracks led to it, though it stood apart from other trees. Danny looked up, searching for life in the ambient all the same, remembering how it had shifted things on him—
A shot went off. Spook went straight up and Carlo grabbed for a double-handed and desperate hold. Tara had fired, discharged her rifle up into the nest.
Nothing resulted but echoes, a spatter of snow, a fall of shattered twigs.
Bones followed, one pair with blue and white plaid still clinging. The missing man in the village, Danny thought, might have worn a shirt like that.
But that would mean a large hunting range. And a beast that traveled far in its hunting. And didn’t fear a village.
“Damn sure no leaf-eater,” Guil said, scanning the other trees around about them.
But it wasn’t in the nest. There was no blood, no sound, nothing to indicate Tara’s upward shot had hit a living creature.
<Shelter> was Danny’s thought. It found agreement from Carlo. But something else was going on with the ambient, horses and riders <listening,> transparent as the winds. Danny made himself very still and tried to slip Cloud into the effort, but Cloud was unnerved and broke it up.