Cloud's Rider

Danger of losing their way.

Danger of freezing to death.

He found himself with a lump in his throat, vision blurred in tears that just—spilled over and ran down his face. He wiped at them with a hand shaking so he almost couldn’t find his face.

Randy hadn’t wakened at that sending. Thank God. But he wasn’t sure—wasn’t at allsure about Brio

He’d thought he’d been able to hear Da

God! he didn’t want that.

Spook-horse was gone, Da

Meanwhile nobody at the village gate had fired a shot. Da

Cloud and Slip and Rain came near them, <wanting fight ,>and pregnant Shimmer kept sending <blood> until the nerves shivered with it.

“Too late,” Ridley said in distress.

“Listen,” Da

“Yes. But you’d be a fool to go out there on foot.”

“Been one before this. My horse will back me up from inside the camp, with a wall between us so hecan’t get out—and he’ll keep my head clear. Damn if I’ll shoot that horse without a try to bring him in—if it’s the horse I think it is, he knows me. I might have a chance to get him to come to me—”

Ridley caught his arm. “No.” And when he made an effort to break that hold: “Don’t take what Callie says as against you. She’s worried about Je

Ridleywas worried about Je

“Just let me go. I knowwhat I’m doing! I know that horse, I knewhis rider. He may just be coming to Cloud, to a horse he knows— or to me. I don’t want that horse shot if there’s a chance otherwise—”

“Neither do I!” Ridley yelled at him, but he let go his hold, and Da

A wall of darkness darted in front of him, came up on hind legs and plunged aside with <stormclouds and lightning.> Cloud was beyond upset, and more so when he dodged and ran from Cloud’s intervention. Cloud chased him clear to the rider gate, close enough to breathe on him as he ducked through where Cloud couldn’t go, and Cloud let out an indignant squeal and hit the post.

<Cloud beside the wall at the rider gate. Da

He didn’t know if Cloud understood that he wanted Cloud to go toward the rider camp’s outside gate—he heard a nighthorse squall of outright rage and a sending that burned out into the dark full of <threat > and <fight> against any horse that harmed his rider.

Da

“Here!” the gate-guard exclaimed, ru

“Need outside!” Da

The guard didn’t look wholly convinced—but he maintained a defensive position against any unexpected inrush of vermin as, fully sure vermin weren’t there, Da

But there was no horse.

No vermin, either, just a gate-sheered wall of waist-deep snow blocking his path. He had to hold his rifle up and fight his way through it to get out, half climbing, half kneeling, until in calf-deep snow he could go along the outside wall toward the rider camp’s outer gate.

The snow beyond, the forest, the road that had brought him—all of that was at his left and in front of him, deep in night and falling snow. He could see the deep snow disturbed on an approach and retreat that the horse had used. It went off into the trees and it wasn’t a place to go afoot. He had to trust the guard for his back and proceed with no time to attend to self-defense, aware of Cloud’s loud sending now, aware of Cloud’s outrage at the camp wall separating two who weren’t madeto be separated.

But Cloud’s sending was what he relied on for safety as he took a stance facing the woods and called out <Spook-horse!> in his mind, letting Cloud carry it—

“Spook!” he yelled aloud, hoping it was still in range. He never had known its real name. Harper had never said.

It was a lonely voice, going out over all of a mountainside on the very edge of human habitation, and searching into a deep evergreen woods.

“Spook!” he called—telling himself if a sane horse did answer him Cloud would know whereit was with a nighthorse sense that wasn’t as easily confused as a human mind.

And he wantedit to come to him. He had the rifle against everything else that might answer a hail into the snowy dark, but he wanted that lost, lonely horse to know he was a rider from the low plains, that it was Da

He’d see it fed, warmed, treated if it was hurt—he’d make a place for it outside the camp, and bring hay and biscuits—

<Bite and kick> was Cloud’s indignant sending. <Male horse. Strong male horse here, defending rider.>

Thataspect of his plan wouldn’t help attract a stray male, and if he went further away from the wall to entice it to trust him, Cloud would go absolutely frantic to reach him—with good cause. Wade around out here with no protection but a rifle and put a foot down into some burrow, and a nest of willy-wisps would eat his foot off to the knee before Ridley’s help could reach him.

Bang! Cloud hit the gate, wanting out.

“Get back in here!” That was a human voice. Ridley’s. Urgent and angry. “You’ve done enough! It’s not going to listen to you! Get in here!”

“Fisher!” Another one, higher-pitched, which could only be Callie. “Dammit! You don’t have to prove anything! Get back inside!”

“It’s no problem,” he began to say—and stepped into a hole.

Damn near jumped out of it, scrambled on hands and knees—the gate-guard was witness, and Callie and Ridley and Je

“I’m all right,” he yelled back. “I’m all right—it’s only a hole! Don’t open the gate! I’m all right.”

He turned toward the track he’d floundered and waded across, finding it the course of least resistance back to the village gate, and not at all wanting Ridley to open the camp gate, for fear Cloud would be out it in an instant.

Then anything could happen if that horse was here, lurking, and ca