Cloud's Rider

Ridley shook his head. “No. No taking one of them out of their winter plans if we’re not finding anything. Winter has yet to set in hard and fast, but it’ll get bitter cold when it does. It has to get down the mountain to survive. It may have begun to think in that direction.”

“Nothing says to me it’s gone. And what are the hunters going to do?”

“See if we can bag something,” Ridley said. There hadn’t been a sign of game, not a track above the size of a flitter. “That’s what would make these men feel better. Circle out ahead. See if that young horse of yours can scare something up.”

“I’ll try.” Cloud had caught the notion of <them going ahead> and there was no holding him once he understood they were <going alone> for a space, however so small. Cloud gave a whip of his tail and broke into a jog to get good distance between them and the rest.

It wasn’t long before Cloud, ca

The hunters shot it. They were happy. The less affluent of the village had meat and the hunters had a hide that would make a couple of good winter coats, not a bit of it idle luxury.

They took a while to skin and dress it. The blood drew vermin, several, two of which they bagged.

Bushdevil. He felt a lot better about that. Argumentative, chew your arm off, no saving graces.

They packed up, then.

He asked Ridley if he should come back or go on, and Ridley said to come back to Evergreen. That there was no evidence of anything but bad weather. Nothing of the horse they feared was out there.

Open air camp. Wasn’t too bad. They’d gotten their deep cold last night, which had frozen beyond the chance of a melt turning the rocks slick or a fog soaking their blankets, and, Guil thought, he’d just rather move on, now that the weather had settled. Tara agreed. So they’d moved not toward a camp Tara wasn’t sure of finding, but straight on toward Evergreen, as Tara had it set in her direction-sense. At least there were shelters around the town that they could reach tonight.

Tonight, in the bitter cold Tara had cut evergreen boughs for the horses and for themselves, and the horses were bedded down, and they were, on Flicker’s side. Even amorous horses weren’t going to stir in this cold, with the snow coming down as it was. There were limits to any reasonable desire to expose warm spots to the cold, and Guil was quite glad, with the considerable generation of heat the mare provided, just to be warm tonight.

They had rifles by them, sidearms, food and all in their nest in the snowstorm, and if anything came up on them they’d blow it to hell.

“Quiet out there tonight, too,” Tara said. “I wish that meant anything.”

“Yeah,” he said. “Listening for what’s not is pretty tricky.”

“If it’s a horse it’s the damn spookiest one I ever met.”

“Yeah,” Guil said.

“Once in a great while in these woods,” Tara said, “you get something really strange, being on the edge of the deep Wild. Have you ever been out there?”

She meant into the territory where settlements weren’t. Where human settlements werewas a pretty tiny patch, whether you reckoned it locally or against the world as wide as he’d seen from the high mountains.

“Been into it,” he said, and painted her a <view from the side of MacFarlane Height, mountains as far as the eye could see.> He painted her <deep woods.> He painted her <far plains, rolling grass.>

She came back with <view from the high turns, mountains forever> and from somewhere he’d never been <deep forest.> He guessed it was on <Darwin.>

“Yeah,” she said, warm against his side, drinking in all the things he thought were prettiest.

He’d never met a woman but his mother and Aby who’d been able to show him the vast deeper Wild in their minds. He’d never met any woman but them who wanted those sights, wanted to hold them steady, like holding something up to the sun to see it plain.

Border woman. He’d found her as a villager. But he knew now what she was—like himself, one who rode the edges of the world. Who was, except the question of those kids, as intrigued by the oddness out there as he was. It was something neither of them had seen. And they weren’t spooked, either of them: neither were their horses, who had seen oddness in other places across the wide edge.

Respectful, oh, yes. But Burn wanted a closer look at it. If they were on a convoy job, he’d have said, No, fool. And this was almost that case: but the kids they were trying to match courses with and thisthing were in the same direction.

So was Evergreen village.

Real, real quiet out there. No game. Nothing with any sense about it that wasn’t also, like the other dedicated predators, lying very still tonight and measuring the threat against the threat they posed.

Exactly what they were doing.

Carlo was very glad when quitting time came, and gladder still that Van went off to wash up and didn’t invite him to a beer in the house or in the tavern.

He wasn’t glad at the prospect of Rick Mackey being in the tavern. But that was where they had to eat.

“You stick close to me,” he said to Randy, and put a length of iron chain into his coat pocket.

“You going to fight him?” Randy asked hopefully, and he restrained himself from shaking the kid till his teeth rattled.

“No,” he said quietly, and shepherded the kid out the door, down the street, up the steps and into The Evergreen.

“Hey, Carlo!” came the voice he didn’t want to hear. “Come sit over here! Tell us about your sister!”

“That’s Rick!” Randy said, with the disposition to go that direction; Carlo in a sudden panic grabbed Randy by the arm and went instead to the bar, where the bartender was maintaining a watch on the outburst. “Need a beer, a tea, and two suppers. Usual tab.”

“I’ll shut him up,” the bartender said. “I don’t recommend you go over there.”

“No such intention.”

“Beer and tea,” the bartender said, and drew one off tap and poured the other from the pot. “If you beat hell out of him, do it in the street.”

“See?” Randy said. “He thinks you should.”

“I’ll talk with you about it,” Carlo said, picked a table farfrom Rick Mackey and set the beer and the tea down. “If you’ll listen. I’m telling you—”

“I know what you’ll say. Get along with everybody. He’s going to do something.”

“Fine. He’ll be sorry if he does. Just you stay out of his way. All right?”

They went and picked up a good-smelling stew, and sat down.

He truly hoped for Da

The noise in the other end of the room subsided. He guessed the bartender had made the point about starting fights. He thought he should be particularly careful going home tonight. He debated about another beer, and had it anyway, since the only trouble in his world was having another, and another.

Three was his limit, and he stuck to it, and shared a sip now and again with his brother. The bar didn’t allow gambling in the establishment, but they provided cards for people who wanted to play for drink chips or toothpicks or whatever.

He sent Randy after cards and since Rick was the guy he was wanting to keep an eye on, he sipped beer and he and Randy played for toothpicks. The place grew empty of families.

Rick, also on the Mackey’s tab, was still in the tavern when he and Randy left for the evening. Rick, having started earlier, was alone, passed out at the table, harmless or close to it, and as they went out onto the street, the snow was coming down thick and fast beyond the edge of the porch.