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So it was one more load of timber and rock to go up there to stabilize that roadbed before winter snows and spring melt made little ru
Dead truckers, for sure—that there had been fatalities was evident both from the condition of the truck and the fact of scavengers numerous about the vicinity. It was possibly as much as a month old, or maybe more recent, part of the last convoy Tarmin had handled, which had joined its High Loop segment coming off that downhill and turned on down to the lowlands, outru
There hadn’t been any response, and she heartily agreed with Barry and Llew: it was just too dangerous, for no real hope of survivors after so long a time, and considering that silence, for a rider to go climbing down that slide where no horse could defend him against what else might be interested in the wreck. Death drew predators as well as scavengers, or one became the other very quickly when they found themselves a nice soft-ski
Flicker imaged slinky little shadows. Flicker didn’t like the roadwork or the carrion-eaters. <Bite and kick,> was Flicker’s thought. <Trample.> Flicker hatedlittle things that ran out under her feet on narrow trails.
Then Flicker stopped cold in her tracks, so suddenly Tara jolted a little forward and caught herself with her hands against Flicker’s suddenly rigid neck, wondering what in the world Flicker had heard besides the sleet rattling among the evergreens. Immediately the ambient had gone unpleasant. That was Flicker’s opinion: she felt that tingling along her nerves, but there might be something more specific she couldn’t sort out of Flicker’s nervousness.
“Damn,” she muttered—she didn’t like things she couldn’t figure from Flicker. She thought, urgently, with authority, <us going on now. Staying on road.>
Flicker wasn’t budging. Tara kicked her gently in the ribs, but Flicker just stood.
Second kick. Harder. Something was in the area. Something was sending in a way she couldn’t quite pick up, maybe just a ghosty, doing its I’m-not-here. Maybe Flicker was just spooky with the weather.
“Come on.” Third kick. Flicker came unstuck from her momentary paralysis and started on her way, step and step, one, two, three, four, her hoof-toed feet scuffing the leaves louder than the sound of the sleet in the branches. Flicker was imaging something that just whited out.
Tara didn’t understand. She’d never known Flicker to do that before. Not her usual soft flutter of light, but a glaring <white-white-white,> as Flicker traveled with that about-to-move floating feeling that advised a rider to keep alert for a sudden jump or a shift of direction.
If it was a beast sending that unease she’d felt for a moment, it was one she didn’t know. And she’d thought she knew everything in the woods of Darwin and Rogers both.
<Going faster,> she imaged. But she couldn’t get through that <white-white-white> sending. Flicker kept her steady pace. Tara kicked her lightly, once, twice; and Flicker moved up to that traveling shuffle nighthorses could keep for hours.
That got them out of the area faster, at least, assuming it was something that laired nearby, not tracking them. Tara slipped the tie-down off her pistol and thumbed the safety off, riding with a fistful of Flicker’s mane in the uneasy, constant feeling that Flicker might dive right out from under her.
It was a long while later the feeling slowly localized, as some danger—she was reasonlessly, absolutely certain—lying behind them, which meant they had finally gotten far enough ahead they had achieved that separation; but Flicker forged ahead for a time longer as if she was nose into some heavy wind.
Then the feeling just lifted. Flicker shook herself as she walked, snorted, kept going at a slightly slower pace.
<Goblin cat,> Tara suggested. She loved the High Wild and the woods. She enjoyed riding alone… but now and again came one of those small, cold moments when the woods seemed foreign and lonely, when the sounds all seemed right, but muffled and faint, and when before and after seemed to change places.
Flicker didn’t agree with her image. She couldn’t tell what Flicker thought.
<Ghosty in the bushes, > she thought then, shakily, telling herself it was only some particularly clever small creature—a spook, a fast-moving one, maybe not a kind she was used to.
But she couldn’t convince herself of that. Maybe she’d gotten scared at something and scared Flicker with her own human imagination.
That could happen up here, especially in the woods, especially with the snow flying and whiting out the details of things. Humans had to have edges. Humans had to know the co
She just didn’t like what she’d felt back there, she still didn’t get a clear image out of Flicker—and she’d never in her life felt Flicker do what she’d done.
It was a cold, cold morning, overcast about the mountain ridge above them, as the road wound in slow, gentle ascent toward the rising wall of Rogers Peak.
It was a mountain Da
The more solid the mountain became, the more the business they’d come to do seemed both too close and too unreal to him. He heard nothing wrong. He felt nothing besides themselves and the occasional spook, the impression of being watched that was just the Wild, that was all. It went on all the time, nothing threatening— even reassuring, a sign that large predators weren’t in the area.
It was definitely colder, a knife-edged wind where the road wound into the open, the sort that made one’s ears ache, and Da
He looked back now and again as the road offered a downward view of the land, wondering anxiously if he might see any trace of the riders Cloud had heard lower down—which didn’t at all seem to worry Cloud now. Cloud was feeling energetic, snorting, flaring his nostrils and watching every flutter of leaves and wind-wave across the grass—grass which was giving way to an advance guard of scattered evergreen, not just occasional stands of trees, but the edge of real forest, at which Da