Rider at the Gate

But if he’d outraged his father and embarrassed him in front of the church by showing up in rider style, he’d profoundly embarrassed his mother, who had to face the neighbors and her customers, and them of course all asking questions—like where the money came from to paint the apartment, and what went on in the camp, and she wouldn’t know, she wasn’t interested in hearing it from him—but nobody was going to believe she didn’t. That was the position he’d put his family in.

The preachers said once you started hearing the beasts of the world, you couldn’t ever stop, you couldn’t come back… because once you heard one, then you started hearing all the beasts, even the little ones. So you slipped deeper and deeper into damnation and became like a beast yourself.

That was one thing the preachers said that had turned out to be true, but not quite the way they’d said: it wasn’t like hearing words. Sometimes you’d just see things, when you were riding out and about the hills. You’d see yourself and your horse going down the road, and you’d know you were picking something up from some little creature somewhere, under the bushes or up the hill.

And it just wasn’t that bad. They were gentle images, most times, a little spooky toward dark, but you learned very quickly to tell what was sending it—and mostly the feelings they brought with them were anxiousness, or curiosity: very few wild creatures wanted to come near a nighthorse.

As for the sex his parents imagined… God, that was a joke. If you were a townbred junior, you just lay in the dark when the images came past you from somebody else, as they did, and you tried to imagine you’d found some rider girl who didn’t think you were pond scum, but there weren’t many girls among the juniors. Shamesey girls didn’t come out to the horses. They were too scared of hellfire, or no horse had ever wanted one. And there were rider girls, but they all had boys they’d grown up with. So that left a Shamesey rider on his own at night.

But, oh, there were women who came into camp, full of mysteries a sixteen-year-old couldn’t possibly deal with, women in fringed leather and carrying knives, sun-ta

The horses eavesdropped, at the same time, and sometimes spread feelings all through the den, until, if you were in the vicinity, God help you…

Cloud was a pushy horse, and devious, and Cloud flirted with all the mares. Cloud drove him crazy sometimes.

Like now.

He finally knew exactly where Cloud was: in the dark of the den by the gate, not that far out of Cloud’s range when Cloud was excited. And Cloud was sniffing after a mare who was more than interested.

He couldn’t stop it. It wasn’t even his right to stop it, the boss-man had told him that, and the boss-man could as well have left it off the list of particulars: Cloud would have made him know his rights and dues beyond any doubt at all.

The dancing was still going on, a little slower, as everybody ran out of wind, but craziness was ru

Nor did the mare.

Damnation, the preachers said. A nighthorse had no kindness. Animals had no souls.

Cloud had no shame, that was sure, and he didn’t know how to be near human beings when Cloud was doing what Cloud was doing at the moment. He’d danced enough and drunk enough; he decided he’d better stagger off to bed, which, wobbly as he was, was just too far, in a cheaper hostel clear around the circuit of the camp. He only needed a place for an hour or so where nobody would bother him, where he could suffer Cloud’s mate-courting in private, and sober up enough to walk home, and he didn’t want…

Oh, God.

He had to get up fast, dazed as he was. He couldn’t stay in the tavern yard. He stood a moment, while images came and went, to be sure of his feet.

Then he wandered through the area of the dance, walked his unsteady way down the street toward the nighthorse den next the gate, which, sense told him, was where Cloud was doing his courting.

Chapter iii

DANNY DIDN’T WANT TO GO INSIDE THE DEN. HE WENT ONLY AS far as its wooden wall, next the end where the earthworks were piled up to make its sod wall and roof. There he sat down on a pile of moldering canvas, overwhelmed by the night and the images, shoved his arms between his knees and tried to subdue an arousal so intense it didn’t let him think. He just stared blankly back at the tavern yard down the street, an island of light, like one of those other worlds the teachers talked about, men and women drinking at the tables, men and women dancing with each other under the gaslights.

He saw couples pairing up—one pair very drunk, completely distracted or as far from their own beds as he was. They didn’t wait. They just did it in the far side of the hostel, in the alley where they probably thought nobody was watching. He tried not to look, but he did, and worse… much worse… he grew angry along with watching them. He wanted to kill somebody at the same time, and that feelingwas going through the camp, back again—when it had left them alone for the last hour or so.

Stuart… was aware. He suddenly realized that Stuart was watching the camp. Stuart wanted… he wasn’t sure what. The angry feeling was coming through the wooden walls, it was coming through the ground, and his eyes were suddenly full of tears he didn’t know he had. He kept wiping them, and they kept coming, while, somewhere nearby, Stuart wanted…

Death. Sex. The red-haired woman.

He feltCloud courting the mare, felt the union, the mare’s sensations as well as Cloud’s, and he couldn’t stand it. He got up from his place by the den wall and paced the street.

The urgency and the anger grew less when he was walking. It slowly became endurable. He walked back and forth in front of the den, but the nighthorses were all disturbed, now, arousal was epidemic, and he found himself walking back down the street toward the tavern, toward company he didn’t really want, but there were human minds there, and the feeling near the walls and near the den had been dangerous and full of complex urges he didn’t understand. If it was Stuart, it was gone now. Or farther away. But he didn’t want to stay that near the horses if it started up again.

The dancing had gotten down to drunken singles, monofocussed on the intricacy of the steps, while the single remaining drumbeat had grown erratic.

He wove back through the tables, at which some slept, some sat talking in small, sober knots, saner than he was, wiser than he was. He kept getting images, maybe his own memory, he didn’t even know any longer, the feelings of a dark body, an intense misery of hurt.

Overwhelming awareness as a man brushed past him with a contact like electric shock. That man grabbed his arm, faced him about in a fit of temper. He felt the anger, he instinctively flinched from the blow—

But he felt something else flowing through the painful fingers, burning straight into his gut, and he couldn’t breathe.

“Damn kid,” the rider said, as if that meant dirt.

He jerked his arm free. The sexual feelings didn’t stop. The anger didn’t stop. The rider grabbed him a second time, hard, by the wrist.

No. Not Stuart. It was the riders who’d talked to Stuart outside.

They’dbrought the rogue-image inside with them. They’d felt it up on Tarmin Height. Theywere the source of the fear—and the image. Not Stuart. The riders at the gate had been right to try to shut them out.