Cloud's Rider

“What’s he saying? What happened, mama?”

“So what isthe story?” Ridley asked him, dead calm, as controlled as a rider needed to be. The horses couldn’t hear them here. At least, they shouldn’t be able to.

And he needn’t tell even half of it. He’d given his caution, in asking that the kids leave the camp. They hadn’t. He said only, “Somebody opened a gate. I don’t want to give the details—don’t know the range from your den—”

“Is your horse all right?” Ridley asked. The senior rider here, boss-man in this camp, had an absolute right to ask that question. He had a kid lying on his hearth stiff and gone somewhere she couldn’t get back from. He had a strange horse in the den with their horses. He had a village locked in for the winter, with all its people. He had a daughter as well as a partner to protect.

And if they themselves hadn’t been hallucinating, he had a horse out there in the woods whose distress had waked the wild things in their burrows and relayed its sending God knew how far, disturbing the mountain a second time in less than a month.

“We weren’t there when it happened,” Da

Which could change if one horse picked up a suspicion of human distress in the rider barracks—and they had a young horse out there, an unridden horse of their own, at a stage notorious for being loud and hearing even humans u

So he concentrated entirely on the cup in his hands and sipped it this time not to keep his voice from cracking, but to save his mind from wobbling from the very narrow path of information he had to hold.

“I came in after the fact. These three—they’re all that lived through it. They’re brothers and sister. We’ve been trying not to think of it near the horses. Couldn’t do anything for the girl down there. She’s caught in it, deeper and deeper. She used to react to things. She doesn’t now. I understand there’s supposed to be a doctor in the village.”

The woman pressed Je

A mind that wasn’t right wasn’t anything to leave within range of anythingof the Wild. And Brio

“Was it her,” Ridley asked, “making that spook-feeling out there?”

No, he thought: direction and location had been in the sending: that was what had made it so damn real. It had convinced Cloud.

“No,” he said aloud. “I’m pretty sure it was behind us. A horse. Rider’s died. With the sister’s condition—I didn’t want to stay where it was.”

“Go get the marshal,” Ridley said, meaning, Da

Ridley went meanwhile and warmed Carlo’s cup with tea from the pot. Randy was sleeping like the dead, on his stomach, his hand up near his face, head on his arm—he didn’t wake for anything. Poor kid, Da

Ridley came and poured tea into his cup. And in that closeness and the quiet of the ambient Da

“What have you brought us?” Ridley asked sharply, and Da

“Dammit.” Ridley dropped down on his haunches to meet him eye to eye in that privacy of the fire-crackle and the wind outside; and the ambient still stayed quiet and numb as he finished his coughing fit with a swallow of tea that still had spirits in it. “What’s going on down there?” Ridley asked. “What’s a Shameseyrider doing here, for God’s sake? What’s the real story?”

“Rescuing a friend,” Da

Brio

Feeling was coming back to his feet. They hurt. His hands did. His face did.

“The whole damn season’s felt bad,” Ridley said in a more moderate tone. It wasn’t like a <quiet water> statement. It was a peace offering he didn’t deserve, from a man he deserved worse of, in a situation he couldn’t, right now, discuss. This was, Da

“Yeah.” Agreement seemed safest, agreement with everything the local riders said at least until he could use clear-headed judgement.

Meanwhile Carlo had edged over to try to see to his brother, lifting the blanket they’d wrapped him in to look at his feet, and that movement was a distraction for the conversation. “How is he?” he asked Carlo across the intervening space.

“I don’t know.” Carlo let the blanket down. Randy didn’t stir through any of it, and Carlo made a fast swipe at his eyes. Carlo’s hand was shaking.

Ridley got up and squatted down again to take a look at Randy’s hands and feet and ears. He looked at Carlo’s, too, while he was at it.

“Better than yours,” Ridley said. “Work your fingers. Fist.”

Carlo tried. Ridley made a doubtful expression. “Horse medicine,” Ridley said, and got a small grimy pot off the shelf and squatted down and rubbed salve into Carlo’s hands. “Hands and feet. You take the pot with you, son. It’s cheap. We’ve got buckets of it for the horses. Use it. Marshal’s going to find a place for you. You think you need a doctor?”

“No.” Carlo shook his head fast, and Da

“Ours might take you on.” Ridley maintained a tight reserve. “But those hands aren’t going to be fit for smith-work for a while.” He patted Carlo gently on the leg and got up to pace the floor—another not too difficult guess, that Ridley was aching for Callie to get back safely with the marshal and a means to get his problem out of the camp.

Da