Cloud's Rider

“The bell’s loose, papa,” Je

“Noticed that,” he said.

“Is it going to ring all night?”

“I wouldn’t doubt. But I’m not going to climb up after it. Are you?”

“No.” Je

“So is Serge going to get it?” Thoughts had skittered back to the bell.

“I don’t think so,” Ridley said to his offspring. “Serge doesn’t want to go climb the ladder, either, does he?”

Supper was cooking. They had a winter deal, he and his partner Callie, the mother of the Offspring: meals cooked versus trips out to break the ice on the den’s water barrel—plus cleanup of said meal. He’d done the ice-breaking twice today, once at dawn before the blow had started, once before they tucked in for the evening, and Je

Je

Gruesome child. Ridley kept putting the whipstitch border on what was going to be a jacket in another three weeks of spare-time work. Winter evenings were good for that, and a fancy jacket traded to a trucker come snowmelt was going to be worth, oh, maybe a tenth what that trucker was going to sell it for down in Anveney or Shamesey, and by the time it got to Carlisle, twice that. But, then, that increase in cost was the life the trucker risked going there, and the lives the riders risked getting him there in one piece, and they were all in the same business. He’d get store money for it: the village supplied their riders with very generous basics, but shirting and such, and shoes for Je

“They’re going to use the radio,” Je

“That’s really stupid,” Ridley said sympathetically. “Are the riders going to tell them that’s stupid?‘

“No, this guy is sneaking and doing it.”

“He must be new on the job.”

“Here comes a spook-bear!” Je

There were snarls and pow-pow-pows.

“The bear got him,” Je

“Too bad,” Callie said. “But they’re going to have to wait. Di

“The bear’s having di

“Oh, what a nice thought,” Ridley said. “Wash.”

“I’m not—”

“If there’s water available, you wash, youngster. Feet go in the den. Feet go on this floor. Hands go on this floor. Hands get washed.” The bell had assumed a steady cadence. A strong gust of wind caught the flashing and made it sing.

“Nasty wind,” Callie said, setting down bowls.

“ We’renot in it,” Ridley said, and got up and helped with the ladling-out. It was stew, good, thick bear-meat stew. They had a fair bit in the smoke-shed. They had the hides at the ta

There wasn’t a thing wrong with the world this evening.

“I washed!” Je

He snatched Je

Je

“Supper,” Callie said, unimpressed. “The bear better get the spoons.”

“If I let you go,” Ridley said, with his arms full of daughter, “will you get the spoons?”

“All right,” Je

Je

Sleet had given way to snow, drifting puffs on a gentler, darker wind as light faded in what Da

Or nightmares—as he slumped down onto his knees and then onto his face: <Brio

They reached him. Carlo knelt down and turned the kid and held him.

“Back on the travois,” Da

“Can’t,” Carlo said. There was panic in his voice. “He’ll go to sleep. He’s too tired. He’s got to get up, that’s all. Come on, kid. Dammit, on your feet! Hear me?”

Randy wouldn’t wake up. Not even when Carlo hit him.

“He’s cold,” Carlo said. <Fear> was thick in the ambient. “He’s gotten cold. —Can’t Cloud carry him? Can’t you get him to?”

“He can’t,” Da

“He’ll die!”

“He’ll die if you scare hell out of him—the kid’s doing all he can.” He jerked ties undone and opened the furs, in which Brio

Carlo wasn’t saying anything now about being tired. There was just fear. Randy didn’t want the cords tied down. “No!” he said— scared, Da

“We won’t let you go,” he said. “It’s almost flat here.” He tied a couple of rumbling knots, securing the kid in the only real warmth there was, and got up.

<Blood on the snow> still came to them, a flash of white, daylight vision. It hadn’tstopped for their supplies.

“Best we can do,” Da

“I don’t think it’ll hurt us,” Randy said from beneath muffling furs. “I could talk to it. It’s lonely. I could try—”

“Forget it! We don’t need a horsefight on top of everything else!” He was growing short-fused himself. And scared. Randy wanted a horse, Randy, like his sister, wanteda horse to such a degree that Cloud didn’t like to be in closed spaces with him, and that lost horse out there wasn’t in any sense one for any green villager kid to take on. When creatures in the Wild started doing the unusual they were usually sick—and for a horse to follow them up a mountain through the wintry hell they’d been through? Damn sure it wasn’t behaving like a normal horse.

“It wouldn’t fight Cloud,” Randy said. “I know. If you could just bring it in— Icould talk to it. That’s what it wants, doesn’t it?”

“It’s not sane, if it tracked us up here, and it willfight Cloud.”

“It won’t.” Fourteen-year-old logic. “If it thought I was its rider it’d come for me, wouldn’t it? I can do it—”

“Shut up and listen to the rider, you hear me?” Carlo’s voice cracked and broke as he stood up. “We’re in trouble, we’re in real serious trouble, here, kid. Don’t beg trouble. Keep quiet. Think at it and I’ll hit you. I mean it!”

“Let’s move,” Da

Worse, Cloud had his mind on the road behind them, and kept looking that way, ready for a horsefight, sending out the impression of <male horse> and <wanting mating> all over the mountainside.