It was hams. Hams and packets of other stuff. Cloud started imaging <ham frying,> and Danny didn’t think he could stand it, but Cloud wanted it, and with the whole store filled with supplies, they didn’t have to save anything. There were unseasoned iron pans the store had sold. There was the makings for biscuits. Danny stirred up soda biscuits and had the boys slice up the ham and put it in the skillet so they could at least make a start on Cloud’s appetite.
And by the time the biscuits were cooking on the edge of the stove Cloud was completely occupied watching <ham frying.> No extraneous thoughts from Cloud—Cloud dominated the ambient, Cloud wanted <ham, food, warmth> and that was what was inthe ambient—Cloud’s stupid rider finally figured out why they were ravenously hungry and why he found himself heaving a tired sigh and why the boys had tried to nip a little scrap of ham that floated free in the pan. Cloudhad no squeamishness and no remorse.
And no fondness for thieves.
“That’s Cloud’s,” Danny said. “Cloud gets peeved if you steal his supper.”
That brought a sullen look.
“You want a mad horse or a happy horse inside this little place with us?” Danny put it to them. “You cut some more ham right now. We’ll get ours.”
Carlo took a cue fast. The younger kid whined. Carlo hit him with his elbow, said, “Man’s telling you,” and sliced more ham.
Man, Danny thought. Man. Was that what he looked like to these kids?
Damn fool, if he let that reaction get into the air. He checked on the biscuits, decided with Cloud involved, he’d better make more biscuits. It wasn’t real good for Cloud to eat nothing but ham, Cloud’s ambitions to the contrary—it was a lot of what the horse doctors called foreign stuff for him. But Cloud tolerated biscuits just fine.
Cloud didn’t mind <biscuits.> Cloud thought they were good with <ham.>
So they settled down on supply sacks in a fire-warmed room and cooked panful after panful of ham, stuffed themselves, stuffed Cloud (harder task) and washed it all down with lowland draft beer, which the boys had never had. The older was smart with it and sipped.
The younger, Randy, gulped his like water and passed out on the sacks after one mug…
Carlo said, after a moment of quiet,
“Got to thank you.”
“Couldn’t leave you,” he said.
“You didn’t say your name.”
“Danny—Dan Fisher.” He’d lost thatchance. Damn. And he needed authority with these kids, for their collective safety. “I felt the rogue attack. Long way off. But I couldn’t tell where it was, or even what it was, at least when it started.”
“My sister,” Carlo began, and trailed off into a long silence, something about a rider den and a stocky man and a leather-jacketed rider that looked like this Tara Chang that Carlo had already talked about.
“Your sister’s a rider.”
“No. She wantedto be. She ran off. And it was her with the rogue. I know it was her. I could feel it. I could see it, right through the walls. She was looking for papa. She kept calling and calling for papa—”
“A rogue horse is apt to wantpeople. And they’re loud.” He was on the edge of what he knew about the subject, but the kid wanted comforting. “It could take an image right from your mind. It’d feel like somebody you knew. People paint their own images—the one they want most, the one they’re most afraid for. And a predator will pick it right up and give it back to you.”
Carlo gave a fierce shake of his head. <Girl> came into the ambient. <Tracks leading along the snow. Gate with fan-trace in the snow.>
Danny let out a slow breath, decided maybe after all Carlo knew what he was talking about.
And he didn’t know why he’d found <Carlo in jail.> Didn’t understand Carlo <shooting man.> Things were getting tangled. And he’d like answers.
Carlo flinched, tucked his knee up fast, rested his chin on his hand and didn’t look at him. Lamplight glistened on Carlo’s eyes. Chin wobbled.
“You have a good reason to shoot somebody?” Danny asked.
<Man with stick raised—headed at him and his brother. Woman screaming. Hate, wanting, fear. Shouting >—But you couldn’t tell what in a sending. Cloud couldn’t carry human voices yet in any way you could hear it, just the noise.
But it looked like—house and family. It feltlike house and family. He knew the scene when his own papa hit him. He flinched the same as Carlo and Randy flinched—but, damn, —he’d never shoot papa, he couldn’t do that—he loved him.
Carlo got up in a hurry, scaring Cloud, who snaked out his neck and grabbed a mouthful of coat.
< “Cloud!” Letting coat go. Boy standing. Still water.>
Carlo didn’t stand. Carlo made it away into the shadows, to sit down on a coil of cable. He crouched there with his head in his hands and cried, great noisy sobs.
<Blood,> Cloud thought, confused, thinking <fight,> but no longer mad. Cloud knew he shouldn’t have hurt the boy. Cloud was upset, and stared at the boy, wide-nostriled, remembering <Danny making that sound,> because, dammit, he’d soaked Cloud’s shoulder a couple of times since they’d teamed up, especially when his father had announced to the neighborhood he was going to hell.
Carlo—had done the unthinkable. No knowing why. Carlo was hurting—he was hurting all over the ambient, aching for what he’d done.
“Calm it down,” Danny said. “You’re near a horse, dammit. Calm down.”
“I shot him,” Carlo stammered. “I shot my f-f-father.”
What did you say to a statement like that? What did you follow it with? He knew Carlo didn’t want to have shot anybody. The moment was there over and over again, <the fireplace, the man, Carlo with the gun.
<Two-sided anger. Flying every directions
< Quiet.>
He scared Carlo. Carlo looked up at him, stunned and shaken.
“Horse,” Danny said. He was all but sure of it. “The horse was sending.”
“What horse?”
“The rogue. It was spooking around out there near the village when you had your quarrel. It was there. You knowit was, but you don’t know you know. I’m hearing it in your memory. Only I’ma rider. I know what a horse sounds like. Iknow what I’m hearing in what you’re sending me.”
Carlo wiped his face, still staring up at him out of the shadows, <wanting, listening, pleading with him.> “I can’t send!”
“You hear me real damn good,” Danny said, knowing he was laying it on thick and knowing he was out of his depth, but he couldn’t afford a kid going off the mental edge in this place. This was a kid who’d listened to the preachers. He’d been there, once, and he knew how to make it sound better, at least. “People don’t ever really send, you know that. Not even riders. We all say we do, but really only the horses hear us and pass things back and forth. Some people can hear better, or they think images better, or maybe they’re just quicker to put things into shape. A rider’s brain just sorts pictures out better than some—something like. That’s what I’ve heard, anyway. I’m not as good at it as some. But Ican talk in words. I know riders you don’t hear two words out of in days. And I know how to pick out a rogue-sending. Trust me in that.”
“My sister could hear the horses.” Carlo’s voice shook. <Fear> was very strong. “She could hear them at night. She could hear spooks in the woods. Maybe it runs in the f-family.”
Carlo didn’t likethis sister, this sister <wanting horse.> There was a lot of anger there. A lot. And he had a damn scared kid on his hands.