But Burn nudged him in the back and wanted insistently to go faster, and he couldn’t, counting a bullet-grazed leg and a bashed knee, sustain the pace Burn wanted. Burn was skittish and full of notions this evening, thinking of <nightmares> one moment and <lorry-lies> the next, switching his tail and wanting to move, wanting <fight,> wanting <us on road.>
So he arranged his gear and made the weary effort to get up— aching in the arms, and the hand he used to grip with hurt like helclass="underline" probably, he thought, he hadn’t gotten all the splinter out.
But he was glad not to walk, truth be told. Much as he’d tried to ignore the leg—his eyes watered once he’d gotten up and gotten relief from it. Burn struck a quicker pace than he could have held, and he let himself relax while Burn moved—in such intimate contact he heard the ambient as running through his own flesh and bone. He felt Burn’s muscle and movement, saw and smelled the snow thick on the evergreen boughs, white on dark, sweet on bright; heard fat flakes changing to sleet that rattled against the branches.
Soft, soft sounds, cold, strange smells. Winter in the High Wild. The night was home and safe when he saw with Burn’s eyes and heard with Burn’s ears—they were one creature, the human drifting on a river of nighthorse senses, the horse remembering where he was going with human tenacity. Burn had struck his staying-pace, uncommonly determined, uncommonly spooky and… the feeling crept up Guil’s backbone… suddenly, strangely focused on something in the dark.
Then, expected and unexpected in the night, they came on a structure of logs—deserted, by the feel of it: it was the shelter they were looking for.
Thank God, he thought, as Burn walked up to it, ears forward. <Bacon,> was definitely in the ambient now.
Nobody home. Burn would have known. Guil winced his way down to the ground and, rifle in hand, waded through a shallow drift to the door, stiff now that he’d been off the leg for a while. He set the rifle against the wall, seeing that the latch-cord was out as it ought to be. He drew his pistol, he pulled the cord, the bar inside came up, and he kicked snow aside and dragged the door open— outward, as the latch-doors always opened.
The dark inside was as cold as the snow-glow outside; but it feltempty. Burn put his head in past his shoulder and gave out his <nighthorse> warning, to scatter any sleeping vermin that might have burrowed a way in—but what they were hunting, although it could mask itself as <deep shadow > or even <human occupant, > couldn’t manage a shelter door without human hands.
No occupants. No pilfered supplies. He put the gun away and felt after an electric switch beside the door in the small hope one would be there—lately lowland shelters had installed batteried lights at the entry.
No such luck.
But the fireplace was always on the right of the entry, and he slung his gear aside, took out his waxed matches and sacrificed one in order to see the state of things in the fireplace.
There was indeed a fire laid, stuffed with kindling—he spotted a slow match hanging from the mantel before his wooden match could die, snatched up the tarred braid and touched his failing light to the end before the heat got to his fingers.
He unhooked the slow match from the nail then, bent down with a wince and a grimace and touched off the tinder, which was, thank God, dry. He pulled the chain to open the flue, and the gust from the door swept in along with a moving shadow and a slow thump of nighthorse hooves as Burn ambled into the shelter. The door banged back all the way, threatening the fire. Guil sprang up to reach outside, grab his rifle, grab the door and haul it shut against the wind.
The latch dropped. The door sealed out the wind, but the single room had taken the cold into its wood and stone from long vacancy, and every surface was frozen cold, not tempting a man to take his hands out of his pockets or risk his nose above his scarf.
In the light of the burning kindling Burn clumped over to the nearest bin, nosed it up, already looking for <grain.>
<Burn swelled up like three-day carcass,> Guil imaged back, and squatted down by the fire to warm through his gloves and his layers of leather and wool.
<Bacon,> Burn insisted, gulping down grain, impervious to insult.
He stayed where he was, finally feeling a little warmth through the chill. He knew that Aby had been here a number of times—he looked up at the rider board on the wall, an old and extensive one, and there, sure enough, were Aby’s marks among the others. She hadn’t been the last to visit here—the filled triangle and the X were probably the riders who’d regularly refurbished it: they were the most regular. But she’d been familiar with this place, very definitely, even from years ago when she’d first used to come up this way, a kid escorting the small supply missions and the phone crews.
Her earliest jobs, the years they both had scrounged what hire they could.
Then they’d gotten downright prosperous. They could turn down jobs. All but the best.
If her presence lingered about here, he’d wish it could talk, or that she’d once, just once unbent and told him the few important words that would have made him understand the things she’d done.
But what in hellwas she doing with Hawley and Jonas? Leave Luke out of it. Luke was whatever Jonas wanted. But why tell the bank woman that Hawley was entitled? Had to have been the wrong question they were asking her.
Burn brought his head up, came over and nudged him hard. “What was that for?” he asked. The sound of his own voice startled him. He didn’t use it often—only as often as Burn’s behavior defied imaging.
Burn nudged him again, decided he was going to lick his sore leg—“Hell!” he said, fending off the help. Burn left wet, sticky grain on his trousers. And wasn’t helping.
<Guil and Aby,> Burn imaged to him, then. And as sloppily licked his cheek. So Burn thought he was crazy. He rested his head against Burn’s neck, arm on his shoulders, really, really wishing he could fall into the icy-blanketed cot over there and not move for two days.
But a man—or a woman—paid out promises, or lived a liar.
So supper and bacon it had to be.
The snow came down in puffs and stuck, thick on the tall trees, making precariously balanced loads on branches that dumped down on rider and horse when they brushed beneath.
Maybe they should camp for the night, Danny thought. They couldn’t see where they were going. He didn’t know what was behind Cloud’s insistence on moving. Trust your horse, he kept telling himself—and telling himself if there were anything out here in the dark he would know it through Cloud’s senses; but the tales he’d heard around the camp firesides said there were exceptions, that horses could be tricked, too, and walk right into traps, a sending so seamless and on so many levels that even a horse couldn’t see the lie in it.
<Cloud stopping,> he thought, but Cloud kept going.
<Cloud stopping. Danny getting off.> Cloud paid no attention.
He shifted his weight then, intending to make Cloud break stride, then to slide down. But Cloud gave a pitch of his hindquarters and imaged something so strange, so disquieting an impression of multiple minds that it sent chills down Danny’s back. He lost all inclination to get off.
<Cloud stopping,> he insisted, but that feeling only grew, more and more distinct, like a swarming of half-crazed animal minds, <food, fight, gnaw.> Cloud hadn’t been carrying it on a conscious leveclass="underline" it was out there, and Cloud had just sopped it up and not reacted to it, not passed it even to the rider on his back. Being transparent, that was what the seniors called it. The predators were good at it. And he’d startled Cloud into at least a quiet, body-touching-body sending.
“I don’t like this, Cloud. Wait. Stop.”
<Tumbling over one another. Logs. Jumble of logs. Big, little images, high and low. Smell of smoke. Logs. Gnawing at wall. Taste of flour. Taste of blood. Tugging at human hand.>