Rider at the Gate

If their two sets of horses didn’t go for each other instead of the rogue, and this morning it wasn’t certain.

If he could only figure why that gunshot, or what Jonas was doing up here at such effort.

Jonas hadn’t expected him to go to Anveney first. Hadn’t expected him to talk to Cassivey. Yeah, Guil, go on up there, get that son of a bitch horse. Make the woods safe.

We’ll just come up a few days late—

< Coming apart.>

<Trees, black against <white-white-white.>> Burn threw his head and skipped a step. Flicker threw a kick. It was that vivid.

“Sorry,” Tara said. Her breath was shaky for a moment.

“Yeah, don’t blame you. Easy. I’m not hearing anything but you.”

“Vadim kept asking me—how close it got to me in the woods.—And I don’t know. He thought—not at all.” Her teeth were all but chattering. “I couldn’t judge.”

“He was wrong.”

“The thing was so damn loud—and it called that kid right out of the village without a one of us hearing. Granted Flicker was noisy—she was screening it out; I know now why she was as loud as she was all night. It was outthere. But we didn’t hear.”

“When the kid went?”

“Her house was across the village. Closer to the other wall, that’s all I can think.” She built the village for him in the ambient; a row of houses, a single street, a rider camp protecting the one side, but only distance from the wall protecting the far side of that single street. And there were times, Guil thought, when distance wasn’t enough.

“Damn kid claimed she heard the horses better than we did— but she couldn’t hear Flicker about to back over her.” <Kid in red coat. Snowy morning. Flicker sick, lying down in the den.> “But she damn sure heard the one horse she shouldn’t have. She came to us the next morning. I told her get out, leave my horse alone. I thought she went back home. She didn’t.”

The whole business flowed past his vision, the frustration, the bitter anger.

<Footprints leading out the gate. The man, the boys, at sunset. The gunshot, and the mob and the riders—>

He couldn’t follow all of it, it went by so fast. <Two male riders going out the gate. Tara at what looked like the village jail, the marshal’s office—rogue at the gates, Tara ru

Tara held it back then. The evergreens were around them again. The sun was shining. Tara said,

“It’s my fault, you understand me? You can tell me all the reasons in the world. You can even tell me I was right, throwing the kid out of camp that morning.” <Shaking kid. Hard. Anger, grief. A shiver through the ambient.> “But if I think I can get that kid free of that thing, I’m going for her—I’m going to save her, not shoot her. So you know.”

“That’s not what you’re saying inside.”

“No. It isn’t. But I don’t do everything I think of.” <Walking down snowy road, Tara and Flicker and the blonde girl.> “Maybe I could teach her something. I don’t know. What do you say? She’s thirteen years old. —And she’s killed my partners, dammit! Killed the whole damn village.” <Kid reaching for Flicker. Flicker jerking away.> “She wantedthings. She unsettled Flicker just being around her. Want, want, want. Push, push, push. Damn bottomless well of ‘I want.’ And temper when she didn’t get her way. Real surly temper.” Silence a moment, the ambient seething with anger that sank, sank, sank. Then: “You know what I ask myself? I ask myself— how much of the rogue is the horse, and how much is that kid? And that’s a lousy thought for a rescue.”

It wasn’t at all a pleasant thought. But a kid wasn’t i

Usually.

<Rogue prowling the streets. Fire on window-glass. Rogue huntingfor individuals. Woman. Girl. Boy. Minds going out. Guns going off. Predators and scavengers rolling through the village street like a flash flood. The girl riding through it blithe as a summer wind, searching out victims one by one—>

<Still water,> he sent. <Still water. Woods around us. Daylight.>

He wasn’t getting her back. There was only <desire to kill.>

<Fireplace,> he remembered. That was theirpotent memory. <Skin on skin. Hands touching.>

<Partner-lover. Talking with him on the porch.>

For a moment the ambient stifled breath. Then Tara backed off the anger, drove it down to quiet, quiet, quiet.

“We do what we can,” Guil said. He wasn’t good with words. He sent <meadow with flowers.> He sent <new foals.>

She’d heard her village die. He’d not been on the mountain yet, the only way he could figure it. He didn’t know how she’d stood it.

<White,> came back to him, just <white-white-white,> walling him out, all but blinding him. Burn threw his head and took small nips at Flicker’s shoulder until <white > gave way to <branches > and <mountain road.>

“Her damn choice,” Tara muttered finally, no weakening of her anger, just better control.

He rode thinking about that for a while, thinking he shouldn’t have given her the gun.

“Don’t do any heroics,” he said. “My rifle may be able to take it—drop the horse and miss the kid. If the kid survives—best we can do.”

Not damn easy, if it came at you—and it might, out of the trees at any moment. Aim low and hope you knew where the horse—

A chill went through the ambient, as if a cloud had gone over the sun. He looked left; and Burn pricked his ears up and laid them flat again.

The lump of snow among the trees—wasn’t a lump of snow. It was a roof, blown partially clear.

<Rider-shelter,> Tara sent. She knew it inside and out. He heard the soft click as Tara drew the pistol. He became acutely aware of the rifle in his hand, where its balance was. They made a winding approach, through the outflung wall of a snowdrift, on the shelter’s lower side.

Burn was smelling <female.> So was Flicker, he thought. But smelling something more, something confused, and upsetting.

Smelled it all the way to the shelter.

The door was clear. It had been opened. But there was nothing there. The place felt empty. There were tracks in the snow, both horse and rider—pointed-toed boots. Village boots. Drag of something in the snow, he wasn’t sure what.

<Checking inside,> he thought and, rifle on his arm, slid down from Burn’s back. He walked up to the door. The latch-cord was out. He pulled it, pulled the door open.

The place was a wreck. Pans on the floor, bed stripped, pottery broken. The place smelled of horse, smoke, burned food. Recent. The front of the mantel was smoked.

The kid hadn’t known to open the flue. Or hadn’t thought of it until she had a cabin full of smoke.

There were charred bones on the hearth. Small animal. He was almost certain—it was a small animal.

He shut the door fast, figuring Tara had seen what he’d seen, smell and filth and all.

Flicker shied from him. Burn was taking in scents, nostrils flared. The whole place reeked to their senses: <female horse, female human. Bad, unhealthy horse. Blood.>

He grabbed Burn’s mane, got up, and Burn wanted to go back, turned his head downhill. Burn was agitated, thinking <Aby,> for whatever crazed reason. <Aby. Dead on the rocks.> Burn resisted the pressure of his knees, kept turning with him, a fit of refusal that wasn’t like Burn, a fear and a confusion that afflicted Flicker, too, until Tara got her headed around, and moving.

Then Burn would go. <Flicker> was in Burn’s mind. And <Aby riding away from us. Red hair in the sunlight. Aby on Moon.>

“Damn fool,” Guil muttered. Burn had almost thrown him on that last fit. He’d slid far enough he’d thought he was going off into a thicket. He gave Burn a thump behind the ribs, wanted <going faster, > if Burn had so much energy to waste. They were on the road Tara imaged as <going up to the curves, past the junction, beyond the trees.>