Cloud's Rider

While the ambient rang with loneliness and terror.

“Get the Goss kid on to Mornay if you reach halfway,” he told Fisher, as Fisher swung up on Cloud’s back, and the rest of them headed around end of the den to help open the gate. “In Mornay he’s out of reach and out of trouble. Sort it out in the spring.” They reached the gate and he flung the bar up. Callie and Randy and Je

“Yes, sir,” Fisher said.

“Go fast! If you catch him before halfway come back and we’ll organize a trek over. If it’s a long run—good luck to you! Come back when you see a chance and bring us word how you are!” He gave a slap to Cloud’s rump and Fisher was off.

That left him with one rider fewer. And one scared kid more.

Breath wouldn’t come any longer. Legs wouldn’t run anymore. Carlo sprawled downslope, plunged through snow and into snow until the mountainside finally gave him up again, just casually tumbled him out of a snowy embrace and into the snow-drifting air.

He lay on his back, facing the light—a light coming through the branches of evergreens, out in the deep woods, alone, with the snow coming down on his eyes, and himself with no inclination even to blink. He’d been lucky so far. Luck wouldn’t last. Wild things didn’t go on the move much while the snow was coming down. That was why he’d lived this long. He thought he was afraid. He was too numb, now, to know what he thought.

He couldn’t let the accusations go the way they had the last time, with Randy swept up and jailed with him. Couldn’t go to the rider camp gate. The mob would have piled up there and trapped Randy—God hope that he’d run there. He’d led them off from that, and then he’d seen the outside gate, and meant to go to the camp from the outside, and get Da

But he’d forgotten that when he got there. With all the woods in front of him, he’d just run and run and run, free of all of them, drunk on it, not using his brain—

He wasn’t hurt. He wasn’t being chased anymore. He was back in the snow, in the woods out of which he’d come to Evergreen village, as if it closed a circle, somehow, and set things back at the point of change.

Foolish thought. Delirious thought. He was in dreadful danger, having run out here unarmed and alone—he’d done something self-destructive and stupid, and he didn’t understand himself.

Except he was back on the road. When the day of the climb up here, despite the pain, proved the best day he’d lived, what could he say about himself? He knew the rest of the life ahead of him, shut in the forge, working with and for the Mackeys, wasn’t alluring. The only time he’d ever felt free and doing something for himself was the association he’d had with Da

Now his future didn’t even look to be going back to Tarmin, to live his life down there. It looked to be jail. Again. Locked up. With Rick Mackey to lie and swear he was guilty. Give Rick credit for brains. Not much. But enough to get everything he wanted.

Maybe that was why he’d gone crazy for a moment—until he went off a cliff. The fall and the landing was a sobering thing, that could persuade him he ought to go back and face the charges and try to prove he was i

If he lived to get there. If—God—if Randy hadn’t followed him.

If Randy had followed instructions for once in his life and gone to Da

Then something made a sound. A horse sound.

And his world—expanded.

<Cloud,> he thought with relief, and had that sense of wherethat told him <horse was behind him> as a sound came to him, of something moving. He lay still, asking himself wildly how he was going to explain things to Da

<Horse-presence> came treading softly up to him, and it appeared to him incongruously upside down as he lay on his back. It— he—lowered its head and blew warm horse breath over his face—spooked up when he moved and turned and scrambled backward on his hands and knees.

<Blood-on-snow> was its name.

He saw <Carlo looking up at <horse looking down.>> It was inside out—or outside in.

<Blood-on-snow and Carlo.>

And if Da

He got up very slowly, trying not to startle it. Da

The horse edged forward, leaned to smell over his gloved hands, got through his guard to smell his face, his snow-caked coat and trousers, his coat again and his face. The ambient was there. Spook-horse was <wary, excited.> Its friendliness could change in the instant it realized it wasn’t his rider.

“Stupid horse,” he said, trying to back away, knowing his thoughts were in themselves betraying him. He looked for a tree whose branches he could reach. And didn’t see one. “Stupid horse.” It was nuzzling his hands again, forcing its way closer. “What do you want?”

Then it dawned on him.

The horse following them up the mountain in the winter season. The horse persisting in harassing the village, even at risk of being shot. The horse—<wanting> and <searching> to the village walls at night—

It wanted its rider. It wanted arider. Thatwas what it wanted.

“Stupid horse.” He kept backing, losing ground, cast a look back to make sure there wasn’t another cliff, and it got its nose past his hands to blow breath in his ear. Which brought his head around and his chin into collision with its spooked head-toss as it backed off. He saw stars for a second, and found it coming forward again, pushing at his hands.

“Stupid horse, you’ve got the wrong one of us. It’s my brother that wants you. Not me. I’m a blacksmith. I’m not a rider. Go away! Leave me alone!”

The black nose got past his protective hands, and nudged him full in the face, desperate for something, but Da

“Damn fool,” he said to it, but to appease it he rubbed its cheek with his hands—otherwise it was going to rub its head on himand bash his face again. Thatled only to a harder push and a loss of balance. He went down backward in the snow and the horse nosed him in the face, or the hands, when he pushed at it, radiating <happy> and <looking down at Carlo in the snow.> He couldn’t get up without its nose in the way. He got as far as his knees and had its head in his middle, butting him until he patted its neck and used it for a wall to lean on getting up.

<Happy horse. Delighted horse.>

“I’m not it, silly fool. I’m not.”

But it wanted. It <wanted> and he’d been with Da

Neither was he <lost in the woods.> It had him, and he had it; and he couldn’t be as scared as he’d been or as desperate as he’d been or as lonely as he’d been, while the creature he’d most feared was most interested in rubbing its face against him.