Cloud's Rider

Fact was, he likedthis woman. He hadn’t said too much yet and some things the horses didn’t carry in quite the human way or the human sense: nuances of emotion were real chancy. But he felt safe with her, felt as though if things went wrong he’d have solid, clear-thinking backup, and that on good days it’d be good just to know she existed in the world.

Wished she’d felt differently about the kids, that was the only thing. He was really, really disturbed about that, and hadn’t, in the dose of painkiller Tara had shoved down him, had his wits thoroughly about him when she’d taken a wide decision in the matter of their own welfare for the winter. Tara didn’t hesitate on a threat. Just didn’t. She’d been a Darwin rider before she’d come to Tarmin, a hell of a lot rougher life than this mountain had been, and there were a lot of shadow-spots like that with her.

There would be for her with him—he knewhe had a lot. His partner wouldn’t have died if he’d had the capacity to follow blindly where she’d wanted him to be.

When the horses carried sex in the ambient, winter-long, thinking stopped in a rider shelter. Partnershipand springtime partings were where thinking took up again—and as recent as Aby’s death was, and as recent as her partners’ deaths were, he thought it possible he’d ride with Tara at least for the summer to come.

Soft lips ran down his neck, gentle hands down his back.

—If there weren’t the question about the kids.

—If she weren’t so hard-minded.

Hands stopped. The mood crashed.

“The girl’s a killer,” Tara said.

That was true. The girl was responsible for everything that had happened at Tarmin—for Tara’s partners gnawed down to bone, still alive. That last was Tara’s image, not his, because Tara didn’t buckle and she didn’t give the kid any slack, not for the loss or the memory of it. She was damntough.

And maybe, having lost a partner himself, he needed Tata’s unforgiving mind the way he needed the winter cold to come between him and what he’d lost.

She came around him, wrapped him tight, held him close.

Said, into his ear, “The mountain doesn’t forgive, Guil, and I don’t. I wasn’t made that way. ” Lips brushed his, gentle and kind, belying the words that passed them. “I told Da

The girl was still a danger, in Tara’s mind. It was possible in his experience that the girl would pull out of it—but it was equally possible she wouldn’t, and worse, that she’d go on living and that she’d be a problem around horses that might get worse instead of better. Tara could be entirely right.

But if they just got through the winter they could ship the girl down to Anveney—if they had to, with the first truck convoy that came up here—where there weren’thorses, where there wasn’t anything alive, including grass, for that matter. It was hell on earth for a rider. But there the girl couldn’t affect anything. There she’d have no power. No means to draw another horse to its death.

He thought when the storm passed and it looked like a good day he’d ride up the road as far as the first-stage shelter and see if the kids were there, as he hoped to God they’d stayed put. The weather certainly hadn’t invited them moving on.

But, God, if they had decided to move, he hoped they’d taken straight out. Most of all he hoped that they weren’t up at midway when this hit.

She punched him gently with her fist.

“Dammit, Guil. ” She propped herself on one elbow in the furs. Her shirt was open. The firelight glowed on her skin. “Told him every damn thing I could, Guil. I swear to you. —Better than anybody ever did for me! Don’t look at me like that. ”

“Somebody,” he said, tracing the line down the middle of her chest with a gentle finger, “should have done better for you. ”

She stared at him. Stared as if she were really mad.

But the surface of her eyes glistened in the firelight. “My partners in Tarmin did everything they needed to do for me. I don’t needpeople to do things for me. ”

“I know you don’t,” he said.

“All right, I’ll ride up and check on the next shelter. I’ll do it. I’ll go tonight!”

“When the weather clears,” he said, “ we’llgo. ”

“I don’t need you to go. It was my doing. I’ll handle it. ”

“When the weather clears,” he said. If Tara said a thing she meant it. Tarmin’s fall had done some brutal things to Tara Chang. Stripped away the veneer of camp life and cast her back to thoughts of her own growing up, in dealing with those kids. She hadn’t admitted that to him.

But Darwin was a lot in her thoughts tonight when she thought about Tarmin orthe kids.

A hard life. Growing up alone in a world of miners and loggers with no advice, no one to trust.

He’d been luckier. He’d had a partner from very, very young.

Then lost her. And almost lost himself.

Tara had pulled him back from that. But it was off the edge of one cliff and facing Tara’s own drop into darkness. She was maybe a couple of years younger than Aby or than he was—but she was harder than Aby, she was colder. She both anchored him from a slide he could have taken and bid fair to take him down another of her own.

But he wasn’t going to becomeTara Chang. He wasn’t going to shove Aby into the past and take on the hardened self-sufficiency that was Tara’s answer to loss. He’d rather bleed. And she was scared to. That was what it came down to.

He drew her close, into his arms. He made love to her, personally, carefully, notthe hard fast way that was Tara’s own urging. She was going to feelbefore he was done, and she could do what she liked about it later, but he wouldn’t be ignorable, he wouldn’t be someone whose name she’d forget if she rode away. Fact was, he wouldn’t forget hers, and he felt for her, and it seemed only fair.

And whether she thought so or not he was going up there to the first-stage shelter to find those kids. He’d been flat on his back on painkiller and too damned compliant when vital decisions were being made on his behalf, and her patched-together notion of going up there now to check was only to satisfy him, and protect himfrom the situation she’d protected him from knowing about when it was in the cabin with them.

That was the impression he got—though he could be wrong about her intentions. He’d see about that, too.

His own way of grieving hadn’t been quiet or safe. He’d inspired a man to shoot him. Hers seemed to be ignoring the loss of her partners except for a burst of occasional anger. Seemed. That was the word.

And he didn’t think so: having just been through what she was going through he didn’t believe it. It wasn’t easy to love him—and God knew Aby’d been patient of his faults. It might not be real damn easy to get through the barriers Tara Chang threw up.

As now he felt the panic under him. He felt the sensations she was feeling the way she felt his—and most of all she wanted haste and satisfaction he wasn’t going to give her that fast or that cheaply. Not between the blankets. Not in letting her seal that shell around herself for the rest of her life.

Liar, he said to her in his mind. And she bucked and screamed and hit him hard with her fist, forgetting he was the wounded one. She was instantly sorry and didn’t object to what he was doing, just— wanted him to hurry; but he didn’t give her up.

He wasn’t her partner. But you knew a rider by certain things: he knew the woman that had taken care of that mare of hers when her own hands were hurting so badly from the cold she’d had tears in her eyes. How she’d interrupted grieving over her own hurts to stand in as his partner when many men of good sense would have hung back or turned and run.