Rider at the Gate

The latch dropped. The door sealed out the wind, but the single room had taken the cold into its wood and stone from long vacancy, and every surface was frozen cold, not tempting a man to take his hands out of his pockets or risk his nose above his scarf.

In the light of the burning kindling Burn clumped over to the nearest bin, nosed it up, already looking for <grain.>

<Burn swelled up like three-day carcass,> Guil imaged back, and squatted down by the fire to warm through his gloves and his layers of leather and wool.

<Bacon,> Burn insisted, gulping down grain, impervious to insult.

He stayed where he was, finally feeling a little warmth through the chill. He knew that Aby had been here a number of times—he looked up at the rider board on the wall, an old and extensive one, and there, sure enough, were Aby’s marks among the others. She hadn’t been the last to visit here—the filled triangle and the X were probably the riders who’d regularly refurbished it: they were the most regular. But she’d been familiar with this place, very definitely, even from years ago when she’d first used to come up this way, a kid escorting the small supply missions and the phone crews.

Her earliest jobs, the years they both had scrounged what hire they could.

Then they’d gotten downright prosperous. They could turn down jobs. All but the best.

If her presence lingered about here, he’d wish it could talk, or that she’d once, just once unbent and told him the few important words that would have made him understand the things she’d done.

But what in hellwas she doing with Hawley and Jonas? Leave Luke out of it. Luke was whatever Jonas wanted. But why tell the bank woman that Hawley was entitled? Had to have been the wrong question they were asking her.

Burn brought his head up, came over and nudged him hard. “What was that for?” he asked. The sound of his own voice startled him. He didn’t use it often—only as often as Burn’s behavior defied imaging.

Burn nudged him again, decided he was going to lick his sore leg—“Hell!” he said, fending off the help. Burn left wet, sticky grain on his trousers. And wasn’t helping.

<Guil and Aby,> Burn imaged to him, then. And as sloppily licked his cheek. So Burn thought he was crazy. He rested his head against Burn’s neck, arm on his shoulders, really, really wishing he could fall into the icy-blanketed cot over there and not move for two days.

But a man—or a woman—paid out promises, or lived a liar.

So supper and bacon it had to be.

The snow came down in puffs and stuck, thick on the tall trees, making precariously balanced loads on branches that dumped down on rider and horse when they brushed beneath.

Maybe they should camp for the night, Da

<Cloud stopping,> he thought, but Cloud kept going.

<Cloud stopping. Da

He shifted his weight then, intending to make Cloud break stride, then to slide down. But Cloud gave a pitch of his hindquarters and imaged something so strange, so disquieting an impression of multiple minds that it sent chills down Da

<Cloud stopping,> he insisted, but that feeling only grew, more and more distinct, like a swarming of half-crazed animal minds, <food, fight, gnaw.> Cloud hadn’t been carrying it on a conscious level: it was out there, and Cloud had just sopped it up and not reacted to it, not passed it even to the rider on his back. Being transparent, that was what the seniors called it. The predators were good at it. And he’d startled Cloud into at least a quiet, body-touching-body sending.

“I don’t like this, Cloud. Wait. Stop.”

<Tumbling over one another. Logs. Jumble of logs. Big, little images, high and low. Smell of smoke. Logs. Gnawing at wall. Taste of flour. Taste of blood. Tugging at human hand.>

“Cloud, stop!” He grabbed at Cloud’s mane mid-neck and pulled up, signaled <back up> with his legs, but Cloud ducked his head, jerking the mane out of his hand, and plowed ahead.

<Rogue,> Da

But Cloud sent <blood > and <fight > and carried him willy-nilly toward the chaos in Cloud’s thoughts.

Maybe the rogue was calling to them. Maybe Cloud was going crazy himself. He didn’t know what to do. If he got off he couldn’t hold Cloud back at all. Cloud would be helpless, prey to whatever Cloud believed he was seeing.

<Men taking Da

Suddenly walls appeared through the veil of falling snow, walls at the side of the road—<log walls, a bell-arch, standing hazed in falling snow. Gates wide open to the night—the main gate standing wide.>

And rising from inside those walls: <eat and gnaw. Blood and flesh. Sugar and salt.>

<Nighthorse,> Cloud sent of a sudden. <Angry nighthorse.> And charged the open gates so suddenly that Da

They burst through into a street still reeking of smoke, a street where vermin by the hundreds, black against the snow, swarmed from under Cloud’s charge, snarling and spitting and squalling as they fled the street for the porches, the porches for the shadows. Vermin poured over walls, ran down the street ahead of them, a hissing recalcitrance all up and down the street.

Something sizeable went over the porch of a house near them, a house with what looked bodies lying on the porch. Scavengers scurried across the unmoving shapes and into the dark between the houses.

<Nighthorse,> was all Cloud’s sending. <Angry horse. Dark and blood. Clouds and lightning.>

Da

There was no horse present. No answer to Cloud’s challenge. Charred, skeletal timbers that had been buildings. The stench of smoke. A burned building standing next to a stone one that wasn’t touched at all, its windows appearing intact.

Bodies—thick in some places, bodies and what was left of them, sometimes just gnawed pieces, animal or human, he wasn’t sure.

A backbone that small teeth hadn’t taken apart turned up in the snow where something had dragged it and left it. For a second he wasn’t sure what it was. He’d not thought before what pieces would resist the scavengers longest—if a human or a horse went down out here. He’d not seen anything to match this destruction, not even from the images seniors carried with their stories—nothing, nothing this complete.

“Anyone?” he called aloud, scared to make a noise. His voice sounded thin and strange in the snowy silence that had succeeded the hissing.

He sent <horse and rider> into the ambient, but he feared no villager holed up in any refuge would dare put their head up until they heard a human voice. “Hello! Anyone hear me? Call out! You don’t need to come outside—just yell! I’ll find you!”