“I hate to say your sister was wrong,” Danny said. “But Idon’t hear the horses all the time. If I’m far from Cloud—I don’t. She may have thought she did. If you hear one across town—that’s a real upset horse. A rogue—she’d maybe hear. But so did you, that’s the fact.”
“I didn’t hear it when she left.”
“Yeah, but you heard it later. And she was tryingto hear, what I pick up from you. —Listen to me.” The kid was close to panic. His own nerves were shaky. He wanted it <quiet.> “Listen: that horse was hanging around. She left, right? Your family was upset. Nobody’sgoing to think straight when a crazy horse is pushing temper into the ambient. Listen, down in Shamesey they were shooting at people when the horses got upset, and there wasn’tany rogue, just a report of one being up here. I’m not saying there wasn’t any fault. I’m saying it went crazy like it did because you got a crazy horse sending like hell out there. It couldn’t hear you. But you could hear it, no trouble at all, and you could hear anybody who was withthat horse. Sending’s the same as hearing. The sameas hearing, do you hear me? You’re not going to hell.”
Carlo’s jaw worked. Hard. Carlo took another swipe at his eyes with a hand shaking like a leaf. <Listening. Cautious. Wary.>
You couldn’t push the argument too far. For what he knew the kid was guilty as sin. But the hazard of the kid blowing up was an unease sitting like lead at the pit of his own stomach—and the ambient began to ease.
“Want another beer?” Danny asked, and got up and filled Carlo’s mug from the keg.
Carlo came and took it. Cloud came up behind him—<close behind him. Boy turning quietly. Quiet water.>
Cloud gave him a sniff-over, trying to figure what was the matter with him. Carlo held his beer and stood very wisely quiet.
Cloud went back to his ham-grease and biscuits.
“Cloud protects me,” Danny said. “He’s making sure you’re not sick. They don’t understand everything we do. He wouldn’t like it if you were sick.”
Carlo was shaking so he spilled beer on his hand.
“You’re all right,” Danny said. “We’ll get out of here. You and the kid each with a rifle and a sidearm and supplies and all, I’ll walk you out to somewhere.”
“There’s Verden.”
“No village up here is real safe right now. This place at least isn’t real noisy in the ambient. The rogue may go for something louder. Or easier. We’re not going to open the gates.”
“Our mother did it.”
“What?”
“Opened the village gate. She heard Brionne. She wanted Brionne.” Carlo sipped his beer, staring unblinkingly into it. Swallowed hard, as if that wasn’t all that was going down. “Brionne sure came home, didn’t she?”
God, Danny thought, and didn’t say anything. The ambient for a second was full of <Brionne at the breakfast table. Papa at the forge. Kids playing in the blacksmith’s shop. Throwing snowballs. Laughing.>
Danny shoved at the ambient. <Boys walking, Danny riding on Cloud down a sunny, snow-covered road. Blue sky.> “If we don’t hear anything, I figure we’ll go out tomorrow. I got a friend I’m trying to catch up with.”
“From where?”
“Shamesey.”
“That’s where you’re from? Clear from there?”
“Yeah.”
“Him, too?”
“Know it’s a him? Know it’s a rider?”
“Yeah.” Carlo looked puzzled. “I mean, I guessed.”
“What color’s his hair?”
Carlo looked entirely uneasy. “Blond,” he said.
“See?”
“I don’t want to. God!” ‘
“Yeah, I figure you don’t want to, but there isn’t any choice—if you come near a horse, you’re going to see things. You prime yourself to go towardmy horse, you got it? Not away. If anything goes wrong, you don’t spook off on your own—it’ll get you sure. Same with Randy. You better listen real hard to the ambient and don’t be afraid of it. Drivers with a big truck around them, they can sort of ignore it and follow the rig in front, but on foot, you’re down there with the spooks and the vermin. —Hey. You got your brother for a responsibility. You’ll do it. You haveto.”
Carlo didn’t feel sure. Carlo stayed scared. But he looked aside at the sleeping boy, and said, finally, “Yeah.”
“I got a kid brother, too,” Danny said, which was about as sentimental as he meant to get. But Carlo Goss was pulling together real well. Real well. He hoped it lasted.
“Yeah,” Carlo said again, and went and got another beer.
Couldn’t blame him. Carlo was getting wobbly on his feet with two. But there wasn’t damned much—
Cloud’s head came up. Stark, concentrated look toward the wall. Toward the outside.
Not a sending. <Creak of hinges.> Somebody was out there, or the wind was moving a door in all that quiet.
From upthe street, not down. But nobody could be stirring out there. It feltlike a presence. It kept shifting.
Shifting. A horse. A rider. Side of the camp.
<Rider gate, human coming through where the horse couldn’t—>
Shit!
He grabbed his coat and hauled it on in feverish haste—the coat first, because you couldn’t aim worth a damn shaking your teeth out. He pulled on his gloves, he grabbed the rifle.
Carlo and Randy were < scared.>
“You got a handgun,” Danny said. He was scared himself, but he had to move too fast to think on it.
“Don’t go out there,” Carlo begged him. “Please don’t go out.”
“That’s a gate open. Somebody’s out there. If they open the big gate, we could have the damn rogue in our laps. You stay here. The kid’s passed out. You stand over him. You know what the marshal’s wife did. Just don’t be too early—or too late.”
“Yeah.” Carlo’s teeth were chattering. Danny went to the door and Cloud followed him, ears up.
It didn’t feel like <Cloud being mad.> Cloud was <hearing the intruder and wary.>
<Man,> Cloud saw in the ambient. <Man in the dark street. Man with gun.>
<Stuart,> Danny thought, and with his heart in his throat opened their makeshift latch and went out onto the porch in the dark.
<Jonas> was standing in the middle of the street. Pistol levelled at <Cloud and Danny.> The gun lowered. Slowly.
“Everybody all right?” Danny asked. He thought there might be more <horses> than one in the ambient—he wasn’t sure.
Jonas had been scared. Jonas Westman—had just been <surprised and scared.> Jonas walked across the snow-covered street toward him, <mad and madder.>
“There’s ham and biscuits,” Danny said, very pleased to be able to say that to this man, coolly, in full ownership of the premises and the situation. “It’d take me about fifteen minutes, supper in hand. Or if you’d rather—”
“You left the rider gate open.”
Trust Jonas to land on the one mistake. “Hope you closed it.”
“Stuart with you?”
As if he couldn’t be where he was without senior help. “Haven’t seen him. You?” <Harper’s camp. Men scattering. Rogue in the ambient.>
“No luck,” Jonas said. <Partners at the main gate. Cold, worried partners. Jonas opening gate.>
<Jonas latching gate.> He hadn’t quite meant to let that insolent query hit the ambient. But there it was, edged with hostility.
<Man in doorway.> Jonas didn’t take alarm. <Man with gun.>
Carlo was behind him. With that three-sixty degree, back of his head surety of multiple riders restored to him, Danny thought about <drinking beer.> About <sleeping kid.> About <stove > and <cold-locker full of hams,> and Jonas walked on down the street to let his partners and Shadow in. Jonas went out of Cloud’s range and into Shadow’s, he was sure by the way Jonas vanished into there-and-not-there presence.