Cloud's Rider

“Kid’s got a horse giving him trouble,” she said in a level voice. “He’s taken his party out of here, he’s gone up in the theory it won’t follow him up, but it might follow him down. He wouldn’tcome back to us.” She had a dry stick in her hands, broke it and tossed the ends into the fire.

It cost him to get up or down. He didn’t want to get up and move away if he was going to need to sit down to talk to her. Trying to solve things without the horses to carry feeling and memory was like dealing blindfolded and half mute.

And he knew what he’d make up his mind to do in a second if he were in one piece. And he asked himself whether he had a chance in hell of making it on his own.

Withher help—he could. But he was in a position of asking for the help of someone he knew wasn’t happy about the situation she’d created and who was very likely going to take it as a criticism from someone who’d twice intervened to stop her from shooting Brio

“Kids could be in trouble,” was his opening bid. “They pushed it getting out of here. No question they’ve been caught in the storm.”

“In which case they froze or they made it.”

“Da

She ducked his opinions for a moment by ducking her head down, knees drawn up, elbows on knees. She was sorting things out. He knew. He waited.

And the head came up. She shook her hair back and set her jaw. “You’re saying go up there.”

He didn’t answer for his own long moment. The fire beside them grew. Tinder went red and dropped down as ashes.

“We didn’t figure on one of the horses coming thisway,” he said then. “That’s forced them out of here. That’s put them on the road.”

“Da

“A healthy horse won’t come near her. One that isn’t—”

“They’ve gone up. To Evergreen.”

There was a truck off the mountain, where Aby had died. There was a box of gold in that truck, that a company down in Anveney wanted really bad—a company that had hired him to recover it and to get it on to Anveney. But he’d stopped caring about it. He’d revised a lot of things in his head when Aby’d died, and when he’d found out what had happened up here.

A lot of death—around him and Tara both.

Meanwhile Tara had become important to him, just a constant amazement to him to see her, to look at another living being in all this isolation and see the firelight on her hands, on her face, to discover, day by day, another set of living thoughts in the void where Aby’d been—and to know that if she rode off from him—he’d feel he’d lost—hell, he didn’t know.

He thought Aby would approve of her.

And he knew he was being stupid and too cautious. He’d not felt nearly so anxious about Aby’s risks as he did about risk to Tara—Aby having been there, left hand to his right, a fact of the world since they both were kids, and capable of taking care of herself. God, yes, he’d loved her—there’d always be a hole in his world the shape and size and duration of Aby. But the matter with Tara was here and urgent, because the woman was apt to do any damn thing—and he wanted her safe, and didn’t want her to have done things she’d be sorry for, and meanwhile he had things heneeded to do and she’d be up here by herself rather than see him go—it had a very Aby-like feel, her stubbor

The way he hadn’t done with Aby.

His thinking was in a real mess, was what it was.

Horseplay outside had come near the cabin. Attention had turned to them, and they were aware of each other like a light switch going on.

“Dammit!” he said to Burn, caught, and knew it was going to be <mad Tara.>

A hand came to rest on his knee, took on weight, patted it hard.

And the ambient said that Tara wasn’t mad.

“You aren’t going up there,” she said. “ Iwill.”

“No. I’llgo.”

“I saidI’d do it. Go by yourself, hell. This is my mountain. You sit here.”

“No.” They were back to thatargument.

“There’s a short way up there. But it’s a lot of walking, a lot of climbing, and rough ground. You can’t make it.”

“The kids are on the long way. If I can’t make it, I’ll know it. I’ll stop. I can camp and stay warm.”

“Listen to me.” The hand on his knee shook at him. “You hear anything?”

“You and two horses.”

“And nothing else. Nothingelse.”

He took the point. Soberly.

“The mountain isn’t over with what happened,” Tara said. “It’s not safe out there. For someone who maybe gets sick, can’tmove—”

“Or just as well somebody that travels alone. With you or behind you, woman. Take your pick.”

“Your life. Over those kids. They can damn well take care of themselves or they’ve got no business up here.”

“The kids didn’t have much damn choice about being out of the village,” Guil said. “And can the village up there take care of itself? They could need help. We sent ourproblem up there.”

“Where there’s a lot more resources than we’ve got.”

“And a mountain that’s still in an upheaval. What do theyknow about it? I want to know where that horse went that drove them out of here.”

“Damn you, Guil.”

“Yeah, well.”

He sat there beside her at the fireside, and then—then the horses outside were mating, and they sat there bundled in their thick clothes, receiving that.

“Doesn’t help the thinking,” he said on a heavy breath.

“Not damn much,” she said.

But the horses wanted in, at that point. Having had their fling they wanted to get warm and muddy up the floor.

He made supper for the two of them plus horse-treats. He figured he could do that: she’d done everything in the day including putting him on his horse.

“They’d have gotten caught by weather at the midway shelter,” he said during supper. “They could be holed be there. Suppose we ought to try the road?”

“Windchill on those high turns is too fierce. Uphill’s easier. Longer. But easier. Theycan come back down a lot easier than they can go up. Surelythey’ve got that sense, if they’re stuck there.”

“No sign of it yet,” he said.

“Maybe they made it up before the weather. Just pushed on.”

Maybe they didn’t make it. He had to think that, too.

In that case he’d be sorrier than he could say. And he and Tara would be wintering in Evergreen.

But they had to go there anyway.

There was nothing right now in the ambient but themselves. There was that silence all around them, a mountain swept clean of life. Or life gone underground, gone into hibernation, as happened in deep, foodless winter.

But there’d been more food on Tarmin Height, grisly thought, than anywhere he’d ever heard of.

“You suppose,” he said, “everything’s eaten so much they’ve all gone to burrows?”

“Possible,” she said. “Possible, too, they remember the rogue, and they’re scaring each other, one to the next. Or possibly—that horse is out there. I don’t think it belonged to my partners. I’d know.”

“Harper’s horse,” Guil said.

“Yeah,” she said. “No question in my mind.”

And long, long after they’d settled down to sleep, tucked down by the fire, in all the blankets they’d brought and found, came a strange, spooky sending that drew an alarm from the horses.

Ghosty thing, just a shiver over the nerves. Guil lay still, but Tara sat up, and got up, and he stirred onto the side that didn’t hurt and sat up, too.

The horses were upset.

“Something’s wrong,” Tara said, with her hands on Flicker’s neck.

Burn came over and stood right over him, <hearing trouble. Nasty shapeless thing. Lot of things.>