It wasn’t. Burn sucked down his dessert and resumed his proper watchful duty, protecting the two of them from goblin cats, feral nighthorse pairs in autumn lust, and other potential hazards, while idly nipping the tops off tasslegrass, eating only the seed-bearing part, the extravagance of autumn.
Meanwhile Guil limped about, cutting soft-needled branches along the wooded streambank. He heaped up a fragrant pile of them in a sheltered spot, and when he had a large enough pile, Burn helpfully sat down in the middle, rolling out a nesting spot.
“Get up, dammit! My bed, Burn.”
<Sweet smell. Warm nighthorse belly. Guil in sunlight.>
“Oh, hell,” Guil muttered, and went on cutting branches, to make their bed wider.
Danny lay down to sleep tucked in blankets, near the coals. There never yet had been a whisper from the riders he was sure were following him, and now he asked himself whether the Westmans believed him that such riders had ever been there.
But of course they had to. Riders couldn’t lie to each other.
At least, juniors couldn’t lie very well. To anyone.
He hadn’t picked up on everything that was going on, that was sure.
He wasn’t wholly surprised when Cloud came over and settled down on the ground next to him, sharing the fire warmth, sharing his own warmth, sharing his muddled, half-asleep nighthorse thoughts with him, that ran mostly along the general content of the ambient.
A ghosty was in the brush watching them, not a specific thing, just one of three very different creatures that townsmen gave the same name to, and he didn’t know much better. Cloud knew what it was, Cloud wasn’t spooked by it, and no cattle-guard needed be, except sometimes the little creatures would spook the cattle just to have them away from their territory.
The ghosty wanted them to go away, too, probably. But it was scared of Cloud.
Danny just wished other things were. And he was glad that Cloud spent the night close to him. They were clearly on the uphill now, headed into the foothills of the Firgeberg. They were committed to the mountains. To all else it meant.
He really, really wished to keep his mind quiet and let the senior riders rest. Hawley was on watch, he was aware of that. So was Ice, and he didn’t think much would get past that horse.
He didn’t think the senior riders believed that Harper, if that was who it was, intended to do them harm. Harm to Stuart was another matter. But as long as they stayed their pace, the common thought he picked up was <them staying in one group, ahead,> and <Harper’s party in the other, behind, neither meeting.>
It wouldn’t help for him and Cloud to have another argument. He wanted Cloud to know that. He wanted Cloud to agree to stay with him.
He wasn’t sure what Cloud’s answer was. He shut his eyes, but that made pictures behind them, of the hillside and the dark, fluttery smell-shapes following them. He stared into the dying coals and that was better.
At least the shapes the burning edges made were all random and without motive.
Chapter VII
SLEET BEGAN TO COME DOWN IN EARNEST, WHITE DUST RATTLING against the evergreens—not an unusual occurrence if it were midsummer on Tarmin Height: the Firgeberg spawned occasional sleet year-round.
But when a flurry came on an autumn morning after quakesilver leaf-fall, a rider, however well prepared, looked anxiously to the sky above the woods and the mountain for a hint of what might be rolling in.
<Cold, frosty breaths, feet crunching snow.> That was Flicker’s thought, but Flicker’s rider thought snow would not come yet.
<Melting drops on green needles, sun shining,> Tara Chang sent back, riding along the wooded road. <Road free and clear, white lines of sleet blowing across the dirt, sticking in the autumn leaves.>
Flicker tossed her shaggy head, shook her mane and still thought differently, sending unease out into the air. They’d intended hunting if they had the chance: they’d escorted the road crew out to their camp yesterday, they’d turned them over to Barry and Llew, who were stuck out there shooting dice for penny stakes, their horses equally bored, making sure nothing ate the road crew, who were all Tarmin folk, and who’d generally, but not universally among the riders, be missed.
If the sleet spooked them, the crew they’d just delivered safely would be insisting that Barry and Llew take them right back home, and the whole crew would be chasing her heels all the way back to Tarmin, after yesterday’s trek getting foot-dragging fools in an oxcart out there…
But she didn’t blame them: one didn’t take chances once the weather began to turn, and the road crews had one of the nastier jobs, crawling out and around slide zones, shoring up the road with timbers they had to drag by ox-power out of the woods—they managed with oxen, because they couldn’t waste fuel for trucks up here, where it didn’t come by nature—or at all cheaply. The village tanks, since the last convoy out of Anveney, were full-up, and they’d stay that way until they needed the emergency heaters in the village common hall for days when the ice closed in and the wood ran low. Tarmin year-round burned wood for its stoves, and by autumn had barns full of hay that kept the goats alive and the oxen strong for such winter-hauling as the weather demanded.
And they never waited until the last minute to see to those stores. Tarmin always remembered the story of Parman Springs, which they’d been telling as long as Tara had heard stories: a rider coming into Parman Springs one winter had turned up with every last building taken down and burned but one—and the wall breached. Not a living human being was ever found, just a little scatter of bones.
That had been back in the boom days, when every lowland fool with a notion of instant riches had flooded up into the mountains, and the disasters had come yearly, when new-made camps either set themselves with no regard to the avalanche traces on the slopes, or never asked themselves why several big boulders sat on the flat they’d chosen; when stubborn lowland-bred miners had used transmitters for non-emergencies and thought that rifles could deal with the consequences.
The survivors had stayed to log and do the little winter mining that paid off, winter being the heaviest mining time because the temperature in the shafts was constant and bearable in months when logging, which sometimes paid better, was all but impossible. Verden, the other side of Verden Ridge, on the High Loop, was all underground, the whole settlement having discovered what its digging was really good for. They piped fresh air in and vented smoke out—precariously, to her mind—up a complex arrangement of flimsy tin pipes.
Spooky place, and dirty. It depressed even miners, from what she heard in Tarmin. Riders didn’t like it and wouldn’t go inside. She had, once, out of curiosity, and come out again anxious for sun-warmed air, having no desire to do it twice.
She wanted the sky over her head. Truth be known, she liked the snow, she liked the quiet months of isolation that the weather enforced in the High Wild, when there was precious little work for riders but hunting and trading off the take to the town butchers and the tannery for the nasty end of it. She’d no steady partner, but she’d two lovers and no shortage of intelligent company, and a couple of junior female partners who weren’t permanent, but who might become so. The juniors were partnered with each other, were in more than autumn lust with the boys—the boys, as they called the senior riders—and whatever they called them, ‘the boys’ damn sure beat their competition over on Darwin.