Rider at the Gate

But Da

<Mountains in the winter,> he thought, to please Cloud. <Snowy rocks. >

<Three snobbish nighthorses from the rear,> Cloud imaged, <with cattle tails. >

“Cloud. Behave. Dammit.” He’d not had so much trouble out of Cloud on the regular hire they’d taken. He’d worked with other riders. He didn’t know why Cloud should take so profound a dislike to horses that were going to guide them to the High Wild, that would be their protection by their experience and their riders’ guns once they reached an area they might not be able to cross safely on their own… granted anything went amiss.

<Cattle,> Cloud persisted sullenly.

Then Cloud threw his head and looked back, just the red-edged corner of a nighthorse eye, cast along their backtrail.

Nostrils widened.

<Horses,> Cloud imaged, and stopped joking.

Did we miss them? was Da

They were followingthree horses. But Cloud was looking behind them.

He thought of the horse who’d gone out the gate, following Stuart: <Burn.>

<Horses,> Cloud persisted. Cloud didn’t think it was one horse he was hearing back there.

Line riders, Da

But it wasn’t the day they usually went out, when he thought of it—unless they had a break in the line that shut down the phones, which would bring somebody much faster.

So who among the riders would go? Da

But Cloud didn’t answer his perplexity, except with this same dark image of more than one horse, on ambiguous ground, except that there was Cloud’s wind-image in it, the sweeping of the images, coming and going, distorting to many and back to a conservative two or three.

<Trucks?> Da

Cloud shifted footing, snorted to clear his nostrils of stray scents and sniffed again.

<Horses,> was all Cloud could give him, but this time they had riders, less certain an image—just the illusion of shadows atop shadows.

Not wild horses, then. Not likely, unless Cloud was getting not the scent but the desire of the horses for humans.

A wild lot wasn’t something to meet in the autumn. And they did go on the move in this season.

<Cloud ru

Da

<Dark horses streaming along the road,> was Cloud’s thought.

And Cloud picked up the pace.

<Water,> Da

Cloud didn’t think so. And maybe it was true: they were so close the scent-image came to them on the wind from their backs, and strange riders were almost certainly back there—it was too persistent to be anything Cloud just remembered. But the wind came to them treacherously as it did in the foothills, reversing its ordinary direction in places, coming almost east to west, when nearly the opposite was the rule on the road—and they could only trust the wind would shift again.

A human knew that. He wasn’t sure Cloud did. What ruled Cloud’s decision was likely the surety that he didn’t smell humans in the direction he took and he did smell them at their backs.

Trouble was what they had to reckon it. Towns were the safe zones. You didn’t trust what you ran into in the Wild—not solitary riders or groups of riders. That was the law Da

<Tracks in dust. Wavery riders on solid horses on road.>

That was what Cloud reasoned—maybe as far as the fact that nighthorses without humans didn’t use roads. And Cloud wasn’t staying around to meet them.

Chapter vi

GUIL STUART SWEATED LIGHTLY IN THE NOON SUN, WATCHED THE brown grass pass under his dangling feet and Burn’s three-toed hooves, and avoided the thoughts bobbing to the surface of a distracted, several times jolted mind. He rode northerly still, not using the road, but overland, up over the rolling, grassy hills, on the same course which he had begun to choose in their first panic flight.

Burn had other ideas, making a slow, quiet intrusion into his vision.

<Domerlane road,> Burn imaged for him, the characteristic two stones with the old rider signs, that exact view of the mountains, so for a moment Guil didn’t find himself on this road at all, but well south of Shamesey town, high in the hills where the Domerlane left the MacFarlane High Trace, the mountain ridge towering on the right.

<Winter snows,> Burn sent, and, falling enthusiastically under the spell of his own imaging: <Domerlane camp and female horses. >

<Mountains,> Guil thought, then, slipping into a moment of weakness, <mountains clean with snow in the winter, game ru

Then, abruptly: <Aby lying dead on the rocks. Aby and Moon together, > because that ugly image leapt into his mind whenever it found the chance.

He stopped it. He thought of water. He thought of bubbles on the surface.

<Aby giving sweets,> Burn recalled pleasantly. <Aby smiling. Wind blowing red hair, blowing red leaves in the woods. Aby standing on the hillside. Warm thinking. Moon wanting sweets from Aby’s pockets.>

Guil resisted the imaging at first. But he did recall that day with pleasure. He remembered Aby laughing, playing keepaway with Moon and Burn.

<Dodging on the moonlit hillside. Moon darting this way and that for pockets.>

A lump arrived in his throat.

<Guil and Aby,> Burn imaged, <holding hands. Taste of honey, smell of dew and grass and Moon and Aby and Guil. Moon and Burn mating. Guil and Aby mating, sweet smells, good feelings every where.>

The whole moonlit moment rebuilt itself, lived vividly and faded into the present sun and chill breeze, as if it were the same day.

Wind and grass, sun on autumn colors. On the left hand the mountains loomed up, the Firgeberg, the backbone of the continent. The wind came down from the foothills with a chill that shivered through the grass, cold and clean enough to wipe away the stink and madness of Shamesey camp.

<Hunting,> Burn sent him. <Heart beating quick, quick feet moving ahead of us, chasing willy-wisps through the brush. Delicious.>

Burn had no long memory for distress. Troubles came and they went. Horses died. Horses were born. As long as it wasn’t Burn, Burn didn’t stay concerned.

<Guil cooking nice meat, fat crackling in the flames, warmth in the dark.>

One more sunrise. One more su

But Burn also had no memory for money. Money ran counter to Burn’s sense of the world, and Burn forgot where bacon came from. Burn’s rider was supposed to have it, that was all.

<Guil laying down shiny coins on counter. Man taking coins, giving bacon. Anveney streets.>

<Cattle.>

<Pigs,> Guil sent.

<Bacon,> Burn thought, much more cheerfully. Burn imaged the slow rolling of hills northward.

And they argued for a while about the co