Cloud's Rider

But the deputy had gotten his hand against the door, and without saying anything about why they’d walked up from Tarmin, said something about the tavern and the miners and young boys not being safe in there. Details blurred. The passage doorway had. Carlo had been thinking he hadn’t the strength to go through another round of where to lodge them.

But Mackey had said then that they weren’t firing up the forge in this blizzard anyway and they could stay there till he could talk to the marshal in person. After which Mackey slammed the door.

They hadn’t mentioned the details about Tarmin. The marshal had said not to tell Mackey anything but the absolute least they could say. They didn’t want that public yet, because, the deputy had said, the village had so much stake in Tarmin, and there were people who might take advantage of the situation.

The deputy had brought them through the side door over there, into the forge, this vast shed with stone walls, a blackened timber roof, a stone floor that looked like a solid piece of the mountain itself. The forge was banked and almost dark, but even so the warmth in the air here was considerable.

His greatest desire in the whole universe had been to sit down and peel out of his coat and sweaters and the knee-wraps and all of it, and he’d done the same service for Randy, then covered Randy in his coat, thinking he might need it. At some point—he didn’t even remember—the deputy had left. With the lantern. He’d thanked him. He thought. His thinking wasn’t clear at all.

Randy made a sudden sound in his sleep and flailed an arm from under the coat Carlo had settled over him. His eyes came wide open. “Where are we?” Randy asked in panic. “Where are we?”

“Warmest place there is,” Carlo said. “It’s all right. Nothing to do but sleep.” He didn’t know even whether it was day or night. He thought it might be daylight, but he hadn’t been able to tell in the passages. Mackey might have been asleep, or sleeping late—but if people had come in after risking their necks on that road he thought the man could have been civil about a knock on his door. “Storm’s still blowing,” he said to Randy. “Hear it?” He sat down as close to Randy as he could, while the wind kept on howling like devils outside and thumping at the flue.

“We aren’t home, are we?”

“We’re in Evergreen,” he assured Randy, and chafed Randy’s shoulder. It did look like home, mostly. The place was put together a lot the same, except the forge faced differently. It smelled the same. Cindery heat. Hot metal. Fire. The stone walls and floor of the place accepted and gave up heat slowly and it wouldn’t chill too much despite the uninsulated roof above soot-blackened timbers. There was a metal tank that sat elevated on a masonry wall, probably taking rainfall and snow-melt from the roof. He got up, hobbled over and got a forge-warmed drink of water for Randy in a cup he’d found sitting near the tap.

Then he threw on a couple of logs he didn’t think the smith would miss, less for the heat than to have brighter light until Randy could get his wits about him and know for sure where they were.

But Randy quickly faded out again, exhausted. And, so tired himself he could fall on his face, and completely unable to sleep, Carlo paced. Then drew off water in a quenching bucket and set it beside the fire to get warmer.

Pain brought tears to his eyes even yet when he dipped his hands in that lukewarm water; he pulled his boots off and endured the heat in the stone pavings just off the hearth of the forge. He waked Randy again and put him through the same routine, warm water and warm stones, though Randy broke down and cried and complained.

Randy was due that. He’d been hard on Randy on their way up the mountain. He’d done what their father would have done and said the words their father would have said because those were the things Randy was used to. It took that, to get Randy’s attention and put the fear of God into him.

His father would tell him, the same way he’dtold Randy: The weak die, kid.

Theyhadn’t died. Their father was dead.

And they were where they’d stay—maybe for the rest of their lives, if things worked out to get them a job in this forge. Riders came and riders went when they decided to leave, and he knew Da

The wind found a plaintive note, on a loose shingle, maybe. It was a lonely sound. He didn’t hear the bell that had called them in, and hadn’t in a long while. He guessed someone must finally have secured it so it didn’t ring.

He’d never hear it after this without remembering that thin, wonderful sound that had given them the strength and the direction to keep trying.

Now there were walls, the world was ordered again, and they were back inside a zone of safety the riders with their horses, in their camp, maintained for a village that sustained them—

Only now he knew how fragile that zone was. He knew now that the riders’ protection could be broken, and he didn’t know if he could ever feel quite so safe here as he’d been before in his ignorance of the Wild.

He’d heardthe sendings as the rogue prowled the darkened street, looking for mama, looking for papa—and the whole town died, house by house, swarmed over by vermin and larger predators that had held the village for hours. He and Randy had clung to each other, tried not to hear, tried not to think—

It hadn’t gotten in. It had tried the door. But it couldn’t get in.

And they couldn’t get out. Thatwas what had saved them.

<Gunshot. Blood on the snow.>

His heart jumped.

It was there again, that vision, that one, time-stopped moment. That overwhelming confusion. It had nothingto do with Tarmin. The horse belonged to a dead man—but Da

What if the smithy was up against the village wall? He had no sense of location, having come here through the tu

<Lonely. Snow and branches.>

<High in the branches, looking down.>

He pressed his fingers against his eyes. But that didn’t work. It wasn’t inyour eyes. It was in your brain, inside, where you couldn’t run, couldn’t ignore it.

<Fear.>

Go away, he wished it. Go away, you can’t get in here.

Randy stirred in his sleep. But went on sleeping. And the world got quiet again.

The preachers said once you started listening to the Beast you couldn’t ever really stop, and if you came near horses or anything native to the world, they’d talk to you and you’d have to hear—they’d haunt you, and you’d dream wicked, godless, animal dreams.

Was it really out there, that horse? Or was it his remembering it? Sendings were likememories, some vivid enough to wash right over your vision and make you see and smell and hear something else. And horses thought. Horses reasoned. Da