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Rider at the Gate
  • Текст добавлен: 9 октября 2016, 11:23

Текст книги "Rider at the Gate"


Автор книги: C. J. Cherryh



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Текущая страница: 21 (всего у книги 29 страниц)

But no question, once the spooks started clawing at that door, she was lucky to have found the trigger once.

With the time the spooks had had to do their work, not likely that the marshal or anybody else in this village was going to turn up out of some similar hidey-hole—the luck to have a door you couldn’t open yourself wasn’t going to be general. He didn’t know about this Tara Chang the kid talked about, Senior rider, if he had to guess. No sign of her or the rest of the riders—no help from that quarter. Not if that gate was standing open.

He brought the kids outside—they balked when they saw Cloud waiting, and Cloud snorted and laid down his ears.

“You be polite,” Danny said in as stern a tone as he had. “He’s not used to village kids. His name is Cloud. You let him smell you over. You think nicethoughts about him and me, you hear? Hold out your hands, let him smell them. That way he won’t mistake you for spooks.”

They were scared to death. They thought but they came down the steps and, the older boy first, held out their bare hands. Cloud sniffed and snorted, threw his head away from them, and wanted

He wanted But he didn’t think, on a second, queasy thought, that he wanted to let Cloud do the guiding– Cloud having no fastidiousness about some things, and there being pieces of human beings in the streets. He thought instead about and hoping the vermin hadn’t gotten everything, and a thought came into his head—he was sure it was the boys—telling him exactly which building would have that kind of thing.

Most urgent of everything— Once they did that, inside, they could get some distance from the walls, at least, with Cloud’s help, enough to keep from mental confusion coming at them from the spooks outside.

He didn’t know, as tired and sore as he was, if he could get up to Cloud’s back on one try, with the rifle and all. But he wasn’t giving the only gun to two jailed kids to hold. He wanted and he cheated a mount off the bottom step—made a fairly senior-style landing on Cloud’s back, rifle in hand and all.

Then he told Cloud and Cloud set out at a fair pace down the street. The boys hurried after, wrapped in their blankets, having to run to keep up—and by the time they’d reached the gate and he’d slid down again to heave the huge door shut, the boys were still halfway back along the street.

He shoved the gate, the truck-sized door needing no small push against the accumulation of snow. He brought it to, and the bar dropped, comforting thump.

They were in sole possession, he supposed. He had a look about the gates, checked the latch—felt Cloud bristle up with warning as the boys came running up, gasping and terrified.

“We’re all right,” he said to them. “Gate’s shut. If we don’t open it, nothing can. We just stay far from the walls. What village is this, anyway?”

“Tarmin,” Carlo gasped shakily. “This is Tarmin village.”

The biggest. The most people. The place you’d run to for help. All dead.

But maybe notall dead. Other, awful possibilities came to him as he looked back along the snowy, devastated street.

“Can you think of any other places where somebody couldn’t get out?” Worse and worse thoughts. “Any sick folk? Any old people, crippled people—any babies?”

There were. There had been. The boys were well aware who and where—they were worried, they were sickened at what they saw, and scared, not feeling like outlaws and killers at all; he, God help him, didn’t want to do this. He really didn’t. But when they started telling him where people lived, and thinking of houses, it was clear they knew their village: came to him in confused fashion, an aching fear for specific faces they knew and feared were

At least it wasn’t hard to find a sidearm—he could take his pick, once he began to walk about among the remains. People had come out with guns, they’d died with guns in their hands, all up and down the street. He kept his rifle in the crook of his arm, and walked back along the street with the boys in tow, Cloud following close. He scavenged a pistol and holster just lying in a bloody jacket.

He gave the jacket to the older boy. He kept the pistol. They found scarves, hats, a lot of them chewed. A coat for the younger kid—and a gun. The older boy hesitated at it, afraid to make the move. Danny took it, checked to see it was loaded, and gave it to him.

“Don’t make a mistake. Hear? I’ll nail you.”

The kid didn’t say anything. But the boy wasn’t thinking hostility, either. He was thinking mostly about his kid brother, and

They went from house to house, after that, and they called out at every house. Danny imaged as loud as Cloud could make him; but Cloud didn’t smell anything he liked in those houses.

Danny imaged, but he didn’t get answers.

They’d done all they could, he told himself. They forced the door to the village store open, and it wasn’t touched. He got a flashlight and some batteries, and he kept thinking about and the couple of places they’d tried the hardest.

So he went out again, took the boys with him for backup, and with the boys staying on the porches, he went into open doors with his torch in one hand, and a pistol in the other, went into upstairs halls while Cloud was sending his image downstairs. He looked in the shut rooms—in one house where the boys said there was a sick old man who couldn’t get out of his bed.

That was bad. That was really bad.

And inside one after the other of the houses where they said there were babies—he saw enough to last him. Parents had run to hold their kids when the panic hit. They’d opened the doors to help their neighbors. That was all they needed to do.

You learned to damp things down when you worked with the horses. You learned just—see colors. Patterns. No emotional stuff. You could see anything. It didn’t kill you. Blood was blood, you had it, they had it, bone was bone, everybody was made of it.

He went down the steps, of the last one, the one he’d had to talk himself into—cold, numb. Cloud wanted Cloud wanted because Cloud’s rider was upset; but there was nothing available to fight.

A support post got in his way as he came out onto the porch. He swung on it with the flashlight hard enough he bent the barrel at an angle and killed the light. The boys didn’t ask what he’d found.

He walked. He didn’t want contact with Cloud for a while. Cloud walked near him, mad and snappish. The boys must have sensed it, because they trailed along out of reach.

They went back to the store. That was the best place. The only one with no bodies and no blood.

Chapter xix

THEY WERE THE BLACKSMITH’S SONS. THEIR NAMES WERE CARLO and Randy Goss. And beyond that it was hard to get all the story. They brought Cloud up the low porch of the grocery—the flashlight, by some wonder, still almost worked, at least so they could get an oil lantern lit, and by that light they started a fire in the ironwork stove. It had been dark when the trouble came, the store was shut—the grocer lived next door, the boys said; the door over there had been open, but this one had a keyed lock, and there was no need, Danny agreed with the boys, to open the door into the house.

The awful thing, where they’d been and what they’d seen, was having an appetite. But Cloud wasted no time—Cloud was interested immediately in the cold-locker, not an ears-down kind of notice, but was in his thoughts, and Danny held the pistol on the door while Carlo and his brother opened it.

It was hams. Hams and packets of other stuff. Cloud started imaging 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 No extraneous thoughts from Cloud—Cloud dominated the ambient, Cloud wanted 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 Cloud thought they were good with

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. came into the ambient.

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 Didn’t understand Carlo 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.

—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.

Cloud thought, confused, thinking but no longer mad. Cloud knew he shouldn’t have hurt the boy. Cloud was upset, and stared at the boy, wide-nostriled, remembering 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,

< 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, “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. 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 There was a lot of anger there. A lot. And he had a damn scared kid on his hands.

“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 “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.

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—

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

Danny shoved at the ambient. “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. 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.

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 was

Cloud saw in the ambient.

Danny thought, and with his heart in his throat opened their makeshift latch and went out onto the porch in the dark.

was standing in the middle of the street. Pistol levelled at The gun lowered. Slowly.

“Everybody all right?” Danny asked. He thought there might be more than one in the ambient—he wasn’t sure.

Jonas had been scared. Jonas Westman—had just been Jonas walked across the snow-covered street toward him,

“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?”

“No luck,” Jonas said.

He hadn’t quite meant to let that insolent query hit the ambient. But there it was, edged with hostility.

Jonas didn’t take alarm.

Carlo was behind him. With that three-sixty degree, back of his head surety of multiple riders restored to him, Danny thought about About About and 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.

He hadn’t thought He resolved he wasn’t going to. He picked up Carlo’s confusion, turned and pushed Carlo back into the warmth and the light.

“That your friend?” Carlo asked.

“Did it feel like it?”

“No,” Carlo said.

“Friends of my friend. Real sons of bitches. But they’re all right sons of bitches. They’re high country riders. Borderers. We’ve got help.”

Carlo didn’t quite seem to trust it. Carlo stayed scared, and worried about

“I’m not going to tell him. It could slip—won’t guarantee that it won’t. But village law’s not rider law.” He had a thought and got Carlo’s attention with a knuckle against the arm. “These guys? Don’t let them bluff you.”

Carlo didn’t like to hear that. He cast a nervous glance as if he could still see Jonas.

“They’ll try,” Danny said. “They’re not leaving you and the kid here. Or if they do—depend on it, I’mnot running. Think of if they think about it. You don’t have to say a thing. Think They’ll hate it like sin.”

They made biscuits—Carlo had never cooked in his life, but he tried; Randy waked with all the commotion and sat up bleary-eyed.

“Riders are here,” Carlo told him. “We’re going to be all right, Randy. You hear?” Randy sat there looking numb and shaky, maybe a little sick from the beer—the ambient was queasy and scared, but Cloud wouldn’t put up with it. Cloud thought and and Cloud wasn’t happy with the arrival.

Going to be all right was a little early, too. Cloud’s rider didn’t count on it, because Jonas was an argumentative son of a bitch and Cloud’s rider wasn’t going to take it.

Well, Cloud’s rider thought—maybe Danny Fisher could tuck down a little and listen to Jonas, whose disagreeable advice had kept him alive. He’d learned a bit. He’d been desperate enough to learn, and he could try being—not ducked down and quiet, but maybe not quite so touchy.

He didn’t have to feel as if Jonas was threatening him. He’d had guns aimed at him. Jonas was a lot different.

Jonas, who was coming in asking for supper and shelter in what was, Jonas could figure, hiscamp, which he’d set up and where Jonas was asking charity.

Cloud was first in. Boss horse. Cloud should be but the store was and if Shadow had in mind.

He’d fairly well built the picture when assorted footsteps arrived on the porch and Jonas’ bunch knocked, wanting entry.

Danny opened the door. “Pretty crowded in here. Room and food for your horses if they’re quiet.”

came back to him, from at least a couple of the horses in the street. Heads were up and nostrils working, in that veil of snow. Jonas was his sullen self, but Luke and Hawley looked exhausted.

“Come on in,” Danny said, and held the door, imaging

“Were you here when it happened?” Jonas asked, taking off his hat.

“They were.” Danny nodded toward the two boys, and made the introductions: “Jonas Westman, Luke Westman, Hawley Antrim– Carlo and Randy Goss. Only ones alive. Their sister Brionne’s on the rogue.”

That got attention. Hats that had been coming off in courtesy to the house got tucked in hand and everybody stared at Carlo and Randy for a heartbeat, then wanted

He filled in the blonde hair, the red coat, the fact it was a kid looking for dead parents.

“Shit,” Hawley said. Hawley was upset. Something about that went blurred as Hawley’s thinking skittered away to

Jonas bumped Danny’s arm. “Kid opened the gates?”

He didn’t want to think. He didn’t. He said, “Carlo, ham’s burning.” It wasn’t. But it was close. Cloud was on the far side of the room, by the cold locker door; Cloud was closest to the stove, and put his nose out, smelling The other horses were near the door, crowded in the narrow room, growing argumentative; but human presence gave them no more room.

“Kids are upset enough,” Danny said under his breath, and Jonas didn’t push it. “Bad time,” Danny amplified the image of But Jonas had seen it.

“You shouldn’t have left that side gate. The outside rider gate was standing open wide.”

Damn. But he had it coming. Jonas was telling him what he had done that was stupid. That wasn’t an unfriendly act in this country.

“Yeah,” he said. “I didn’t think. I knew it the second I knew somebody was there. Scared hell out of me.”

Jonas was standing close in the crowded quarters. Jonas laid a hand on his shoulder, squeezed it. He wasn’t sure he liked it, wasn’t sure what it meant. Jonas had turned his back and gone over to investigate the stovetop cooking, where Carlo looked to have too few hands available for too many pans and Danny still wondered what that had meant—from Jonas’ disposition. Hawley was sitting on a barrel, the source of a glum pressure in the ambient: upset with what he’d seen outside in the street and trying to keep it quiet.

Luke—Luke was sitting on pile of sacks talking to Randy, asking him questions in Luke’s quiet way. Randy sneezed, exhausted, probably sick from the beer, and stared at Luke somewhere between reassured and scared: too many horses, besides which Shadow and Cloud together weren’t an easy presence in a confined space.

But four horses, four armed riders and two village boys, well-armed and fed, holding a wide walled perimeter with a lot of fuel against the cold were much better odds than he’d hoped for against the rogue. They didn’t needanother village until spring, if they had to hold out.

“Is there a phone?” Jonas asked. And it was like the business with the gate: he just hadn’t thought—they were still in the process of getting a camp in order. But he hadn’t thought.

He said, calmly, “Carlo, where’s a phone?”

“Mayor’s office,” Carlo said. Carlo didn’t want to go tonight. It was one too many dark buildings, but Carlo was willing if they had guns. “Don’t know if it’s working.”

“Do what we can,” Jonas said. “We’re all right. But villages up on the High Loop need to know.”

“Yeah,” Danny said. He was embarrassed about the phone. But he didn’t know how to use one, anyway. It wasn’t quite as bad a mistake as he’d made with the gate. “I’ll go see about it. What building and what do you do with it?”

The morning came crisp and clear, sunlight striking the tops of the evergreens—Guil put his head out of the shelter, shut the door and took his time in the warmth. He had two dry blankets, dry fire-warmed boots, everything warm from the fireside, and Burn and he had breakfast on the bacon they’d brought and on the dry supplies the villages supplied the riders that served them: biscuits and sugar syrup, firewood already cut, an assortment of small blades and cords and such that riders might need—you took out, sometimes you put in, if you had a surplus; it was just an oddments box, always on the fireside. They made the shelters so much alike on purpose—so you didn’t have to wonder. There were bandages. There were matches. You left them alone if you didn’t need them.

He sterilized his own needle in the lamp-flame and got a nasty splinter out of the heel of his hand, a few minor ones out of his fingers. He’d lantern light and firelight this morning, the room was warm—he’d had time to warm himself and his dry blanket last night and even wash off before he went to bed on a decent supper. Then he’d gone out, just out, until he waked with the fire gone to coals and staggered out to put a couple of more small logs on.


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