Текст книги "Cloud's Rider "

Автор книги: C. J. Cherryh

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 22 (всего у книги 26 страниц)

The younger Goss boy, Randy, hung about there, too, being very quiet.

And very unhappy.

“You think he’s still alive?” Randy asked finally, coming up to him as he was brushing Slip’s tail.

“Pretty sure so,” he said. “Pretty sure he’s with that horse.”

“I hope he is,” Randy said. And he heard from the kid right then and and knew that both choices came with real pain.

“A rider’s pretty damn selfish,” he said to Randy, “when it’s him andhis horse. If you can let that horse go, he’d never be yours. That’s the truth, kid.”

“If Danny finds Carlo he’ll get him to Mornay.”

“He’ll get him there if he can. Youstay here. No going back to the Mackeys.”

“I’ve got to get the house down in Tarmin. That’s Carlo’shouse.”

“If Carlo’s gone to be a rider, son, there’s nobody but the Mackeys to go with you.”

“But he wantsto be a blacksmith.”

“Not now. You hear it out there.” Couldn’t hear it now too distinctly: horse-sense said it had gone on in the general direction of Mornay, which was very good news. “You don’t ever unchoose that. Lose one horse—you’ve got to find one and some horse has got to find you, or you’re better off dead.”

There was a long silence, Randy sitting on a rail by the manger, wiped his eyes. “He won’t want meif he’s got that horse.”

“Not the same way, maybe. A horse happens along and a partner happens along both for reasons you don’t exactly choose to happen, and sometimes who happens and why just doesn’t make sense to you. Don’t say won’t. Don’t say can’t. Say—there’s something waiting for you.” It was what he’d said to himself before he met Callie. It was what he’d said to Jennie. And Jennie had proved that true, no question about it.

The boy looked up at him. “You think? You think maybe?”

“I think you better be ready if it comes. Can’t say when. Neither could your brother. Just think good thoughts about him now and most of all think about him staying on that horse. It won’t leave him. But it’s bad country to get thrown. Worry about thatif you want to worry about something.”

“He’ll show Rick Pig. He’ll come back and he’ll show him.”

“If he comes back with that horse he’ll take orders like any rider in this camp, kid. The way he’ll take orders over at Mornay if Danny can get him there.” He likedthe boy. But you never let a kid think he was on equal footing when you might have to lay the law down and make it stick. “You get one thing straight: you don’t do anything toward the village without consulting the camp-boss, including insulting the village folk. That’s the first lesson you learn, or you better clear out and stay out of my sight, right down that road you took to get up here. Danny Fisher ran that line right close, and I know why he did it; and he knows he’s on my tolerance. So you get it straight: if you stay in this camp, you do what you’re told and you do it when you’re told, and if you don’t, Slip here will tell me.”

“Yes, sir,” Randy said.

“Good you learn that.”

Chapter 20

The afternoon had gone to that strange daylight afternoons had in the woods, in the mountains, and the trail was going the same way it had—Cloud’s burst of speed flagged in a high altitude gasping for breath. Out of condition, Cloud was. Born up here, maybe, but they were both a little soft, and settled to an unheroic amble through the woods, along the road to Mornay. He walked at times, rode at times. Cloud had carried him quite a lot to start with, and he didn’t want to push Cloud to foolishness in his enthusiasm: it was possible to get a whole list of ailments from too much exertion at altitude and he’d heard them all from Ridley as well as Tara and Guil.

Miraculously, in Danny’s opinion, there hadn’t been any more Carlo-shaped holes in the snow, and the horse was traveling at a fair clip along the road, faster through the trees, which was generally a good idea, considering the habit of lorrie-lies and other such tree-dwellers that liked to fall on you from above. Cloud did much the same as he tracked Carlo and Spook.

He was resolved not to scare the horse twice. It hadn’t been the brightest move he’d made, coming up on that horse ambivalent about shooting. Now he was sure he wouldn’t. He tried, because Cloud could be a fairly loud horse when he wanted to be, to encourage Cloud to send out friendliness and goodwill to the ambient at large and an image of But no, Cloud wouldn’t. was the best he could manage, and Cloud gave a shiver and a twitch, just thinking about

There were tracks of game—though sign was rare, and totally absent along one area of the road, well-shaded and sheltered from the snow-fall, where he would have thought small tracks might have persisted. Nothing but themselves was moving about—he didn’t pick up the view of things at ground level that the little spooks sent. But the snow had fallen thick and swirled in under the trees, while the little game, undisturbed by hunters, was in burrows. The silence was deep and wide across the mountain, a kind of breathless slumber, except for the track Spook laid down and the track he laid over it.

He thought that Carlo might be heading to Mornay on his own: Carlo might never have traveled in his life, but he was well familiar with the fact of the shelters. When in his first days with Cloud, and inexperienced as he was of the Wild, he’d taken out to the open, he’d had far better weather and no such shelters in reach.

he thought,

Cloud shook his dark abundance of wooly mane and whipped his tail about.

Cloud sent into the ambient, and Danny tried to think of That didn’t make him or Cloud more comfortable. But he didn’t wantto challenge the whole ambient the way Cloud was minded to do, and he wanted When Cloud let him up he wanted just because it seemed to him—

He wasn’t sure. He couldn’t put a name or a label to it—and nighthorses weren’t the only large hunters on the mountain. He’d long since put curves of the mountain face between him and Evergreen—a lot of them. And now, just since the last sharp curve, the nape of his neck prickled as they rode, which sometimes meant something watching—and sometimes didn’t. Sometimes it was just a human’s own imagination padding along behind him, never there when the rider looked back, and never close enough to leave tracks in the rider’s sight.

Which was ridiculous. If anything had been behind them, Cloud’s vision would have spotted it, Cloud’s horse-sense would have located it, Cloud’s knowledge of the Wild would have identified it with far more surety than a human could.

He just decided, in all that silence, not to call out to Carlo aloud as he’d sometimes done, and not to send so loudly as he’d been urging Cloud to do. He rode along through a shadow that deepened as they passed into woods. But past a little wooded spot and around a little curve, he found open road ahead.

And there—he was ever so glad to see—just past those last trees, a wall of logs. The Evergreen-to-Mornay shelter was ahead. He’d sworn to himself he wouldn’t have to tell Ridley he’d missed this one in a snowstorm, and, thank God, despite the snow-fall, he hadn’t.

The road went past it. But the trail he was following didn’t go there. It veered off down a broad gap in the trees that led past the shelter, and just kept going.

Damn, he thought. A logging track, and Carlo had taken it, shying off from the cabin. He stopped Cloud, and stood looking down it. Snow-fall was thick enough the trail disappeared into white haze, along with the farther trees.

It might be stupid to follow. But hehad gear and a gun, and Carlo didn’t. Hecould stay on his horse, and he wouldn’t bet on Carlo’s chances if that trail led down to rough ground.

It was a question how hard to push Carlo, how hard to make him run. He didn’t want to create a disaster. It might be smarter to hole up for the night, use the supplies in the cabin to make a good hot supper and hope Carlo could smell it on the wind.

But when he rode up to the shelter, in which the ambient gave him no feeling of occupancy—just a wooden structure half-buried in snow—he kept thinking that with the snow coming down the way it was and a half-crazed horse under him—

God, what chance did have but him?

Cloud turned without his willing it, with the notion of too, and a feeling about the precinct that came on a gust of wind. was Cloud’s thinking at the moment; and Or it was something very like. Cloud blew steam in an explosive clearing of his nostrils and shook his mane in disgust at what he was smelling. Cloud had a notion of and and that boiled up to the top of the ambient in a scary way he’d never before felt from Cloud.

“All right,” he said, patting Cloud on the shoulder, agreeing on the trail in front of them.

The overcast had gone very gray and dim above them. They might be fools to be going away from shelter.

But he hadn’t gone too far at all before they crossed another such clearcut, and came on a bowl-shaped little nook where a big forested crag thrust out from the mountain, rock veiled in snow, bristling with evergreens. It was one of those unexpected vistas the mountain could give you, just unfolding from around a turn. A broad patch was clear of trees and brush, and the immaculate flatness of iceshowed where the wind blew the snow clear.

A mountain pool, frozen over. Tall evergreens stood about its banks.

He knew where he was: the pond Mornay and Evergreen shared for excursions.

The pond where the doctor’s daughter had drowned.

Unlucky place, he thought, scanning that scene from Cloud’s moving back like a painting on a wall—loggers hadn’t taken the trees here, only cut a trail through, about wide enough for the ox-teams that dragged the logs up to the roads: a pile of cut logs where a trail went off across the mountain awaited the teams that wouldn’t come next spring. Surprised by early winter, he thought, as Cloud pace-pace-paced along the track that a single horse had left along the side of the pond.

Cloud felt skittish, looking left and right and moving faster than his rider thought prudent. A was in the ambient, something Cloud couldn’t identify, and Danny was acquiring the same nervousness.

Another glance toward the pond showed a lump in a snow-hazed treetop.

he thought. His knowledge of the predators of the Wild was all secondhand, but it could account for Cloud’s faster pace.

Didn’t pick up anything, though. Old nest, he thought. Old and abandoned. If—

Cloud shot forward so suddenly in he almost went off. In the same moment he caught as the ambient did an uncanny ripple of and and nothing was the same as he’d seen it a moment ago.

Trick, he thought in a wash of panic. could do that. He’d never heard lorrie-lies did.

Suddenly it didn’t feel lonely out here. It felt—dangerous. It felt—occupied. Alive. And scary of a sudden. Very scary. might be an illusion some hunter got from his mind.

had that talent, too.

He didn’t quarrel with Cloud’s sudden rush. Not now.

The way ahead was a white gash through the dark of trees, a path dropping lower on the mountain, steep and almost all an inexperienced rider could do to stay on—a logging cut, Carlo thought it was. He didn’t know whythe horse had shied from the cabin and taken him in this direction, but he was scared beyond clear thinking by the situation as well as the route they were taking. He kept feeling oppressive danger in the place, not on either hand, but above them—and that worried him more than it would have if Spook’s fear had been of allthe trees.

This had direction. And it didn’t have to do with not now. Spook remembered but he didn’t carry that image continually—and wouldn’t stop, just wouldn’tstop, though by now Spook was breathing hard and his jogging pace was jarring his rider’s teeth loose as he wove back and forth down the centerline of a depression in that white gash the sides of which Carlo feared might conceal stumps or brush. The center might be a road—he didn’t know. He had no sense of what Spook was doing or how Spook avoided obstacles under the snow—just—sometimes—Spook didn’t avoid them until the last second, and threw him violently off balance.

Carlo didn’t want to fall off and find himself on the ground with that feeling of that was continually riding the edges of Spook’s awareness. He knew very well he didn’t have a rider’s skills or a rider’s knowledge of the dangers out here even on an ordinary day; and he didn’t have a rider’s sense of how to help his horse—he’d seen Danny take precautions and perform certain things with Cloud that he figured he ought to do for Spook if there was a problem.

But that would have to wait for shelter—if they could find one. He’d known a moment of hope when they’d seen the one—but Spook seemed to be rejecting any thought of it—maybe of all shelters, not knowing his rider didn’t have the skill to make a camp.

Maybe Spook had feared that could trap them there. He didn’t know.

But all of a sudden he perceived and Spook lurched downslope in a reckless run.

He stuck tighter if he clung lower, and he made himself as flat as he could on Spook’s back—Spook wasn’t a young horse, Danny had said so. Spook had been a ridden horse, a horse that could keep him safe only if he didn’t fall off in front of whatever nameless terror was above him.

Something broke through the brush. Soundadded itself to impressions piling up in the ambient of something horrific after them. he thought. He’d never seen one. But it might be. Or a They went in trees.

Then an impression of was back there. And

He didn’t know whether it was Danny. He couldn’t turn to see without risking their collective balance as Spook took a sudden series of zigzags down the road, not all-out, now, but scarily fast for so many turns.

flashed to mind.

Or the ambient was changing on him. was thick as the snow-fall that veiled the evergreens, as urgent on his heels as the image that chased him down through the woods.

Spook stumbled on something and his hindquarters dropped as he swung sideways, slid, clawed for balance and went down. He didn’t know for a moment that Spook hadfallen, but he was off to the side with his feet on the ground, and he hadn’t anything left but a double-handed grip on Spook’s mane as Spook gained his feet.

was coming. It was And hecouldn’t get up—Spook was trying to move, he couldn’t get footing to spring upward for Spook’s back, and Spook wouldn’t stand still as bore down on them.

rang out and washed through him. He couldn’t see anything but Spook’s neck as Spook struggled to turn, dragging him around as Spook went on guard against

His feet found a rock, then, beneath the snow, and Spook’s sweating body walled him off from whatever was coming down on them. Spook wanted He jumped for Spook’s back and Spook took off with him lying crosswise and barely aboard, struggling to right himself on the downhill.

was in the ambient.

“Carlo!” he heard behind him. “ Carlo!”

Spook tried to dodge opposite what he expected just as he almost righted himself, and Spooks back slid right under his leg as he went flying sideways again, still with a grip on Spook’s mane, jerked along with Spook’s sideways try at escape.

It ended with Spook down again against a snow-covered wall of brush, and him still clinging to Spook’s mane, which he began to understand in his panic was impeding Spook’s try at gaining his feet.

Two riders had come up the road on them, cutting off the downhill direction. He didn’t know them, but were still behind him, and Spook was of Danny, more afraid of and terrified of

He couldn’t get back on. He was scared to let go, scared of losing Spook or leaving Spook a target; meanwhile Spook, stumbling on objects under the snow, kept backing up, hemmed in by snow-covered brush, by and

But suddenly he knewthese riders, and knew he’d met them. He tried simultaneously to hang on to Spook’s mane and still put himself between the riders and Spook,

It was a rider’s calm-sending. It was an urge to he knew that much, and desperately wanted to believe in it.

“Don’t shoot,” he said, finding his voice. “Don’t shoot. He’s not crazy. I’m not. I didn’t kill anybody!”

“Just calm down.”

It was Guil Stuart and Tara Chang. Tara was the rider Spook was afraid of. And Guil Stuart only slightly less so.

But was insistent, washing over his vision, alternate with the white of real snow and those snow-obscured figures that had him pinned against the wall of brush.

“Carlo,” came Danny’s voice from behind him and uphill. “It’s me. Calm down. It’s all right. Quiet him down. Calm the horse down. Nobody’s going to shoot.”

He wanted things quiet. He wanted so he dared let go, because he had Spook’s mane twisted in both his hands and he thought it might be hurting Spook and compounding the problem. “Settle down,” he said, scared to let go as Spook stood shivering. “It’s all right.” was in his head. He didn’t know whether it was his idea or not. was in his head, too, and he didn’t know how, but he thought it came from Danny, by the direction-sense that quivered along his nerves, like awareness of the faintest breeze.

“Carlo,” Danny said, “I got it, I shot it. —Guil, I—don’t know what the hell it is. Lorrie-lie, maybe.”

“Back there?” Stuart asked, and he and Chang at least made a move or the intent of a move in that direction, which gave Spook a notion of but Carlo didn’t want that now. He tried to calm Spook down, and fortunately or because the others realized Spook’s inclination, they kept Burn and Flicker in the way on one side and Cloud on the other.

Carlo freed one hand and used it to pat Spook on the shoulder– heart pounding, took the risk of freeing the other, awkwardly patted Spook’s resisting neck and secured of Spook at least a trembling quiet.

Then Spook turned his head, butted it against him, was the sending, until, his doing or Spook’s or the others’, he gained awareness of the other riders, other horses, distances, minds, intentions,

“I’m here,” Danny said quietly, aloud and in the ambient. “I’m just behind you.”

“I know,” he said. “Danny, I didn’t do it. I didn’t kill anybody!”

“I can hear it. I believe you.” There was a lot of and a lot of and a lot of in the air, with not quite an easy feeling to it—rather a skittish wariness that calm-sendings didn’t stop.

“Devil meeting you here,” Stuart said. “Did you kill it?”

He was talking to Danny, Carlo thought, and what hit the ambient wasn’t comfortable—it was that sending that upset Spook. It was It was

“How did youget here?” Danny asked Guil, visualizing and from Guil and Tara, Carlo guessed, came different images,

That and something he couldn’t get, but didn’t think he wanted to, either. For a moment there were images pouring every which way, and and all, he realized suddenly, provoking memories and images from him, and and with what he knew now was a desperate and and a sense of

He tried not to contribute to the confusion. Danny had gotten mad when he’d poured too much in on Cloud, in the days when they’d climbed the mountain. But he didn’t think Danny was angry now. Danny and Cloud became

Then Danny left Cloud to come over to him, And he did reach. He kept one hand on Spook, and he felt as his gloved fingers met Danny’s.

They stood like that a moment, with and running through them like electricity through a wire. Carlo feltDanny’s awareness and calm good sense go along his nerves. He believedDanny was different from anybody he’d ever met. And if he’d damned himself in the eyes of preachers, if riding a horse would do it when his other faults had missed, he made a conscious choice now to be where he was standing, in rider company, a killer with a horse riders called crazed and a would-be killer itself—but he wanted their company, he wantedtheir acceptance among them.

He didn’t know why Danny radiated and he didn’t know how to understand the impulse in Spook until the second Spook tried to break away into the clear in complete panic; but he wouldn’t letSpook run from help, not except and he wouldn’t have it, wouldn’t allow it, had himself in the way and his hands on Spook without even knowing which one of them had moved first. He just stood there and holding his whole weight against Spook’s shoulder. was in the ambient and he had the presence of mind finally to join into it, as hard as he could think it. while he pressed with all his strength against Spook’s trembling shoulder.

“Kid’s new?” Stuart’s voice asked.

“Today,” Danny said. “Hours. Just barely hours.”

“Easy,” Chang said, and with every word the ambient grew calmer. “Easy, kid. You’re all right. You’re doing damn fine. He’s just on edge. It’s not your fault. Calm. Calm down.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said. His voice was shaking. “He’s scared of you. Spook’s especially scared of you.”

The ambient sank further toward quiet. Tara Chang was quieting things, he thought, and the world unfolded further—wider and wider so that, with his hands on Spook’s side, he was aware of Guil Stuart’s physical pain, Chang’s grief, Danny’s anxiousness—aware of two horses, Burn and Spook, that had known each other in the past, and that were and weren’t enemies; and two horses, Spook and Flicker, that had encountered each other at a point of death and change, far, far down the mountain.

Aware, then, of the mountain far and wide—and a breathless silence fallen around them.

Danny didn’t know what he would have done without Stuart. He didn’t think he could have quieted Spook orCarlo. Cloud was all right with Spook now that Spook had a rider and there wasn’t a threat to his own. Burn was protective of Flicker, that was clear to him and to Cloud, but that was the way things had been, and Spook, with a junior and uncertain rider, was at the bottom of the status list, Cloud just behind the pair Burn and Flicker made.

That meant peace, and peace came as a shakiness of the knees and a thorough relief. Danny still didn’t figure whyGuil and Tara had come up the mountain when they’d said otherwise, but the first-stage shelter was among the images he’d gotten. He guessed that Guil and Tara had ridden over to check on them and then—then they’d have found his warning about Spook.

And he was very glad they had.

“Where did you drop the thing?” Guil asked with a fleeting image of what had been Tara had gotten down, but Guil hadn’t, hurting too much, Danny had no need to ask. It had been a risky and probably a painful ride for Guil—straight up the mountain, by trails and logging roads, he guessed that by the images floating past him.

“Back in those trees,” he said to Guil’s question, and supplied the only image he had, “I don’t know what it was, but it dropped at me and I shot.”

Burn took his rider slowly and warily in that direction. He and Tara went along with Cloud and Flicker in close company, and Carlo and Spook followed uncertainly hindmost—scared, still flighty, and with Spook—he was almost certain the source was Spook—giving off images of and and

But it found echoes.

So did

Which was all they found when they rode up on the area where the thing had fallen.

“I left it there.” Lame excuse. Danny knew he should have put another bullet into it. But Carlo had already been running. He didn’t know how he’d have caught Carlo if he’d taken to firing: he’d have scared Spook and Carlo could have broken his neck, a new rider, a tired, scared horse on that slope—

“Best Icould have done,” Guil said generously, and did slide down off Burn for a closer look. Light was getting dimmer and the snow was coming down thick and fast with little wind.

Such traces as remained, a large depression in the snow, would go away very quickly. The blood was mostly obscured already. But there wasn’t, after all, that much of it.

“There’s over toward the pond,” Danny said.

It found an echo. For a moment the whole mountainside vanished in a strong sending of and and that stirred memories from another source of

It took a moment to get the ambient calmed down again.

“The horse hunted it,” Guil said, with that economy of words Danny had found among borderers. “The horse came up here tagging you, and you went into walls. The tree-climber was here first. But this horse was hunting itto get its territory, until he got what he wanted. Then he was going right down the mountain, fastest way he could.” It was true, too, that senior riders could sift a lot more out of a single image than juniors could do. And older horses both packed more information and traded it with more dispatch. There’d been just too much flying past him a moment ago for him to catch all of it—without resurrecting the fear that had gone with it. And he didn’t want to do that.

Guil walked over where Carlo was and patted Spook on the neck. “Better have a look at his feet. Been running wild till today, was it?”

Carlo didn’t seem to find it easy to talk to Guil. Not at all. “Yes,” Danny said in Carlo’s stead. “He was.”

Guil walked around Spook, hand on Spook’s back, looked at him, looked at his legs, just a fast pass around, while Carlo uneasily dodged around Spook’s neck and stayed out of the way. “Needs some seeing-to,” was Guil’s pronouncement. “Had you staked out for his for a while, did he?”

“I—don’t know. I guess. Yes, sir.” Carlo wasn’t doing well with words—not easy to talk when images were warring for your attention. And he was scared of Guil in a way Danny hadn’t seen in him, down in the cabin near Tarmin.

“Damned well playing tag with the tree-sitter,” Tara said, and was in the ambient as Guil stared off into the woods and Tara walked up beside him.

“What are they saying?” Carlo asked quietly, his arm under Spook’s neck, as Spook.

“They think whatever I shot, whatever has the is something—I don’t know—some of it’s hazy to me. But they think Spook and this thing have been fighting each other up here. Spook had youpegged for his. So he wasn’t leaving. The thing in the nest, it wanted this whole ridge for its territory. And Spook was hellbent he was going to get you out of the village if he couldn’t get that thing out of this territory.”

“One argumentative horse,” Guil said, paying attention when Danny thought he hadn’t been. He walked back and laid a hand on Carlo’s shoulder. “Hell to manage. Got to warn you. He’s used to a rider that picked fights.”

Tara walked back over with a tuft of fur in her gloved fingers. Falling snow lit on it and stuck; horses laid their ears back as they smelled it, but there wasn’t a thing from Burn or Flicker, just from Spook and, to Danny’s surprise, Cloud, who laid his ears flat and did that sending but nothing clearer.

Took a second for the implication to get through. And then a very anxious feeling hit the stomach.

“Never met anything Burn didn’t recognize the smell of,” Guil said.

Neither Burn, who was far-traveled, nor Flicker nor Cloud recognized it, and Spook, who’d been playing tag with it for days along the road, didn’t have a clear image of it.

“There’s a lot of unknown territory,” Tara said, “on this mountain’s backside. And beyond here—there’s just unexplored outback. With the rogue-sending taking Tarmin down, the whole mountain upset—that sending would have carried clear around the mountain flanks, clear to God knows where, so long as there were creatures to carry it. —Danny, you got anything better on it?”

He tried to image it. Wasn’t sure he succeeded.

“I’m from Shamesey,” he said by way of explaining his limitations. “From in town. I never even saw a lorrie-lie real clear. Just what Cloud knows.”

“This is nothing anybody knows,” Tara said. “It could be likea lorrie-lie, but it seems bigger. What would you say, seventy, eighty kilos?”

“I couldn’t judge,” Danny said. “I really couldn’t judge.”

“Sometimes in autumn, when things get restless, something does stray across the Divide. Never anything this big, that I’ve heard of.”