Cloud's Rider

Sink too deep into Cloud’s sending and he could look out of Cloud’s side-set eyes and see the tilt and pitch of his head and end up with two feet too few for the catch of balance Cloud made in the gusts. Randy slipped and fell, or lost his balance in Cloud’s noisy sending, Da

A nighthorse didn’t wear harness or carry cargo. Neither did a rider. It was his job to know where they were—and not to be distracted by a travois bumping along and resisting. He had no possessions in the world but his guns, his emergency supplies, the life-and-death stuff like waterproof matches, knife, hatchet, pans, a little food, cord, bandages, most of which made a very compact tin-cased package, his last kit having proven unmanageable; and hell, no, he didn’t trust his personal kit to their damn travois. Carlo had the shotgun and a pistol— but the ammunition, which was heavy, Da

And when this morning the boys had wanted to pile everything including his kit on the travois, they’d had sharp and angry words about it.

Oh, but they were pulling it anyway for Brio

Listen to me, he’d said, and laid the law down as best he could.

They’d ignored his advice at least as regarded their personal supplies. He’d heard the maxim down in Shamesey, Don’t ever get friendly with the convoy. Don’t make friends of anybody you have to guide. And he knew why, now. He was close to friendship with Carlo, as close as a rider and a villager couldcome—and having clearly and in front of both brothers gotten his orders from Guil and Tara, he didn’t seem to have the credible authority to tell Carlo no. Carlo was on a mission. Carlo was doing a Good Thing. That meant God was with them in getting up this mountain and getting away from that stray horse that wanted his sister.

That was the villager mentality. God was with them and gravity didn’t count.

Maybe a lot of things else didn’t count in Carlo’s head either. Damn sure some of them didn’t add. Da

Guilt, maybe. Atonement. There hadbeen a village called Tarmin at the bottom of the road. It wasn’t there now. Every man, woman, child and sleeping baby in that town had died the worst death imaginable on Carlo’s sister’s account.

Thatwas the news they carried toward the villages above, and the girl responsible for it all was the burden they’d lugged up this road.

For what? Da

And three human lives and a good horse were damn sure more valuable than a self-willed girl with only a remote chance of recovering—but here they were, and they tried, and they hung on.

The light had gone to that murky gray that heralded a thick spot in the clouds directly overhead. Sleet scoured off the rubble surface of the road in the windy zones and piled up in banks where the wind gave it up. Where it lay thick it afforded traction—but yesterday’s sun had created melt off a previous fall that had already frozen. Worse—there’d been high humidity this morning and the temperature had fluctuated. They were dealing with patches of ice, and those patches were growing more frequent on this stretch of the road.

Then—then by the pitch of a twenty-percent grade and a sudden shift in what Cloud felt and smelled of the wind, he knewa picture he’d gotten from Tara, that right-angled turn in the road that led around flat before it climbed—that point where if they walked straight ahead and didn’tbend very abruptly to the right, they’d go over the rim and into white nowhere, straight down, no barriers, no warning.

Truckers’ hell, the sharp turn and the abrupt up or down grade that led to it. That was where the truck had gone off that Guil and Tara meant to salvage. That was where Guil’s partner had lost her life—Tara had warned him of it, and, God, it had to be. A lot of the landmarks Tara had imaged to him he couldn’t find with the sleet coming down like this, but she’d dwelt heavily on this one image, and the hell of it was—the thing that made him suddenly sick at his stomach—

He’d thought they’d passed thisessential landmark turn a long time back.

So they weren’t as far up the mountain as he’d thought they were. The whole scale of the problem shifted on him. They weren’t making the time he’d thought. And that affected—

Everything. Every estimate. Every hope.

Midway was hoursbehind them. If this was in fact the infamous turn—that meant everything he’d been sure he knew the position of was completely off.

And if his reckoning where they were on the mountain was off— he wasn’t sure of the elapsed time, either, and he couldn’t findthe sun: it could have passed behind the mountain into afternoon, for all he could tell. Light spread through the storm with no distinction.

He caught <scared> from the boys, who’d surely picked up his distress. He caught <white and cold.> A lot of that. He caught <cold nighthorse,> and <white> and <cold, sore feet> from up ahead, where Cloud negotiated that dreadful turn—and the damned travois, that had cost them so much time, bucked and bumped over the uneven surface beside him.

Two hoursfor this damn trek in high summer.

Dammit, he didn’t know how he could be that far wrong—except if midway wasn’t at all mid-way from first-stage—and, he recollected with a sinking feeling, he’d learned already that the road crews put things not where they’d like to have them but where they couldput them. One set of expectations was skewed by processes he hadn’t thought about, and other expectations could be, reason told him in this thunderstruck moment, thrown off by the same logic. He’d assumedby the name of midway—where he had no business to assume.

But panic didn’t serve anybody. They’d make the shelter. Just—maybe—not before dark.

A little beyond that turn a fold of the mountain came between them and the worst gusts. Cloud stopped and turned his tail to the wind that did reach them, taking a breather on his own schedule and at his opportunity, which Cloud did when his needs exceeded the rests they took.

At such moments Da

Then he squatted down, and fell the last bit onto his rump, his knees beyond pain and refusing such delicate adjustments. He got up into a crouch his legs didn’t want to hold, but did, as Carlo had sat down after much the same fashion—he’d taken to heart the lesson about not sitting on the ground, but Randy just collapsed helplessly downward and stayed.

Blacksmith’s kids, both, and Carlo had the height and the arms Randy had yet to grow to. Carlo shoved his brother, said simply, “Squat,” and Randy managed to get up off the ground and hold the position, with Carlos strong arm around him.

After that no one had the energy to talk, just sat huddled up against the wind, the boys probably with the same sick headache, Da