Cloud's Rider

And he didn’t know whether he even grieved for her.

He wantedto. But maybe that was only to prove he could, after so much death.

He wanted to get her safely to Evergreen.

But he most of all wanted to get her to the doctor in Evergreen, so that if there was a scrap of a human mind left in her that could be suffering, he’d have brought her to die in a civilized and comprehensible environment, not in some bare-boards cabin on ground too frozen to bury her—where—he didn’t want to think about it— the scavengers would leave of her… nothing more than was left in Tarmin now.

Beyond getting her to the doctor, he didn’t know. God forgive him, he wished every night since they’d gotten her back that she’d just drift peacefully deeper and not wake up the next morning. Even unconscious, she’d driven them out of every refuge they had—and when that lost horse had shown up down at first-stage, the last place where they could have been safe, he’d knownit was his sister it had come for.

He hated her—and he couldn’t let her go. There was the whole story in those two facts. Da

He didn’t remember all that he’d said, but he’d bent every argument to get them on their way before that horse found them, —the way he’d wanted them to get out of first-stage, because that horse haunting the fringes of the woods down there had come up near the cabin walls that last night, calling and calling for a hapless, foolish girl who’d, please God, passed beyond answering it or any horse.

Because what in hell did they do if Brio

And, God, he didn’t want her near a horse.

He knew, too, he shouldn’t be thinking about it. He tried to stop. He’d learned from Da

The preacher down in Tarmin had always said if you listened to the Wild you’d be attracted to thoughts of sex and blood that came and went for no reason. And he’d feltthem—but he wasn’t even sure what the preacher feared: he couldn’t have explained to anyone how noisythe world was when he was around Cloud—and how scarily quiet it was, even in the howling wind, when Cloud was out of range. He’d gotten to depend on that presence for safety—and it wasn’t just hearing some ravening Beast, as the preachers called it— it was hearing everything, it was an intensity of smells he didn’t smell, colors he didn’t see—most of all a sense of wherenessthat he couldn’t explain in words, a jumble at first that made you think you were off balance alt the time, but that just—slowly turned into a sense of where things were and how far everybody was from each other and who they were and how they felt—that in this place was an assurance you were still on the mountain and not walking off it.

Thatwas the sense you could really get hooked on, and the preachers didn’t know that one—or maybe they did and weren’t telling you that because it was just too attractive, the way Brio

That was the other side of it—you were bound to a creature that wasn’t human. And if it should die—

The world began to flatten out: Cloud had begun to pull out of range, growing more vague as the snow came between them. He knew then he’d been thinking very dangerous, scary things.

“Pull, dammit,” came from out of the fog beside him.

He pulled harder, and as they came closer to Cloud the world re-expanded. That was the way it seemed.

At the same moment came a sudden shovein what Da

Da

Foot skidded. Body reacted. Heart caught up late. He was too tired, too out of breath. He’d never walked this far in his life, never imagined what it did to feet and legs to walk up incline after incline with no letup.

The wind came at them from the side in a sudden gust. They couldn’t seeCloud, but Cloud was still there, still aware of them—

Two hours on a good day, Da

Chapter 2

Storm brought early twilight to a cabin that, on the east slope of a tall mountain, lost the sun in mid-afternoon, and it meant peaceful horses now that they’d run themselves silly in the gale—now that, moreover, they’d eaten something humans found entirely noxious, that left a faint aroma about them of bushdevil musk as they were let in for shelter.

It didn’t stop two horses from starting a little neck-nipping and tail-lifting in the middle of their two-footed partners’ supper in a very small cabin. Then there were the throaty rumbles and the explosive snorts that presaged lovemaking, which had its effect on two humans tryingto concentrate on griddle-cakes and hash, an early supper and an early bedtime, by their intentions.

Guil hadn’t been in the mood for the last several days—a hole in the side tending to discourage a man. Tara had suffered the love-making in the ambient in lonely resolution and was not resigned to do so tonight; he caught that impression quite clearly through the taste of hash, the smell of dead bushdevil and the musk two amorous nighthorses generated on their own. She had set her mind on making an advance just real soon now—limited to milder activity, it might be. Acknowledging he was doing well to be on his feet.

He was going to finish the hash. His horse could wait. Her horse could wait. Tara could wait. He’d all night.

Tara made valiant attempts to slow down with supper.

But the horses didn’t wait, and he didn’t taste the last of the hash. Neither, he thought, did she.

One thing about horses, once didn’t satisfy them. They saved it most of the year for this season, though they’d not reject a little offseason recreation. But in winter, given time and opportunity and a couple of humans to care for their essential survival, they had only one thing to do besides eat and sleep. It was the force that bound herds together for the winter. It was the social impulse that shuffled the deck for pairings, that ended by spring in pregnant mares and smaller, saner groups, four or five, that hung together for the season.

And by the time two humans had wended their way through essential and polite human processes—Burn and Flicker were through the first round and far from finished for the evening.

Long winter nights. Long season.

Tara, fortunately, was taking the same precautions the mares did in bad seasons. He didn’t know if she had the first time they’d made love: he hoped so. But bitterweed was something the shelters kept, right along with the tea, the salt, and the flour. Horses wouldn’t touch it until there was nothingelse left to eat: it prevented foals in years when there wasn’t forage and it kept riders from getting pregnant—maybe from siring as well: he’d heard it speculated on but never proved.

He’d drunk the damn tea, too, though, out of basic courtesy, because it tasted really bad, sugar didn’t half cure it, and he didn’t think anybody should have to suffer it alone.