Cloud's Rider

But it found echoes.

So did <blood on snow.>

Which was all they found when they rode up on the area where the thing had fallen.

“I left it there.” Lame excuse. Da

“Best Icould have done,” Guil said generously, and did slide down off Burn for a closer look. Light was getting dimmer and the snow was coming down thick and fast with little wind.

Such traces as remained, a large depression in the snow, would go away very quickly. The blood was mostly obscured already. But there wasn’t, after all, that much of it.

“There’s <a nest> over toward the pond,” Da

It found an echo. For a moment the whole mountainside vanished in a strong sending of <black shape> and <danger in woods> and <Spook-horse going to fight> that stirred memories from another source of <cabin, moving darkness on the mountain, fear and disturbance.>

It took a moment to get the ambient calmed down again.

“The horse hunted it,” Guil said, with that economy of words Da

Guil walked over where Carlo was and patted Spook on the neck. “Better have a look at his feet. Been ru

Carlo didn’t seem to find it easy to talk to Guil. Not at all. “Yes,” Da

Guil walked around Spook, hand on Spook’s back, looked at him, looked at his legs, just a fast pass around, while Carlo uneasily dodged around Spook’s neck and stayed out of the way. “Needs some seeing-to,” was Guil’s pronouncement. “Had you staked out for his for a while, did he?”

“I—don’t know. I guess. Yes, sir.” Carlo wasn’t doing well with words—not easy to talk when images were warring for your attention. And he was scared of Guil in a way Da

“Damned well playing tag with the tree-sitter,” Tara said, and <dark in trees> was in the ambient as Guil stared off into the woods and Tara walked up beside him.

“What are they saying?” Carlo asked quietly, his arm under Spook’s neck, <skittish> as Spook.

“They think whatever I shot, whatever has the <nest by the pond,> is something—I don’t know—some of it’s hazy to me. But they think Spook and this thing have been fighting each other up here. Spook had youpegged for his. So he wasn’t leaving. The thing in the nest, it wanted this whole ridge for its territory. And Spook was hellbent he was going to get you out of the village if he couldn’t get that thing out of this territory.”

“One argumentative horse,” Guil said, paying attention when Da

Tara walked back over with a tuft of fur in her gloved fingers. Falling snow lit on it and stuck; horses laid their ears back as they smelled it, but there wasn’t a thing from Burn or Flicker, just from Spook and, to Da

Took a second for the implication to get through. And then a very anxious feeling hit the stomach.

“Never met anything Burn didn’t recognize the smell of,” Guil said.

Neither Burn, who was far-traveled, nor Flicker nor Cloud recognized it, and Spook, who’d been playing tag with it for days along the road, didn’t have a clear image of it.

“There’s a lot of unknown territory,” Tara said, “on this mountain’s backside. And beyond here—there’s just unexplored outback. With the rogue-sending taking Tarmin down, the whole mountain upset—that sending would have carried clear around the mountain flanks, clear to God knows where, so long as there were creatures to carry it. —Da

He tried to image it. Wasn’t sure he succeeded.

“I’m from Shamesey,” he said by way of explaining his limitations. “From in town. I never even saw a lorrie-lie real clear. Just what Cloud knows.”

“This is nothing anybody knows,” Tara said. “It could be likea lorrie-lie, but it seems bigger. What would you say, seventy, eighty kilos?”

“I couldn’t judge,” Da

“Sometimes in autumn, when things get restless, something does stray across the Divide. Never anything this big, that I’ve heard of.”

“More than that,” Guil said, staring off into the woods, and that <shadow in the trees> image was steadier and longer than Da

“There’s the villages up here,” Tara said, and with the hair prickling on his arms Da

“Shelter near here,” Guil said.

“So’s its nest,” Da

“Bad business to leave anything wounded,” Tara said. “Snow’s already taking the trail, and it’s likely gone up in the trees anyway. Check the nest is my recommendation.”

“Sounds good to me,” Guil said.

It sounded good to Da

They’d run a hard course, as Guil and Tara were at the end of a day’s travel from somewhere below. Tara set out walking beside her horse, Guil did the same, Da

But feeling that uncertainty, Da

“Sorry about the scare,” he said. “Wasn’t your fault we ran to hell and gone. I should have been more careful coming up on you.”

“I’m all right,” Carlo said. “But what about Randy?”

“Rider camp.”

“He made it.”

“He’s fine, last I saw.”

“Da

“I know.”

“ How? Did they find who did it?”

“No. But I hear you clear. Horses carry it. Took me two years to learn to lie. And you’re under camp rules, now. Village law can’t take you without Ridley’s say-so.”

Carlo was vastly relieved at that.“Randy either.”

“Randy either. You stick with me. We’ll think of something. Randy’s safe. Ridley Vincint, he’s camp-boss. He’ll take care of him until we can arrange something ourselves. He’ll be fine.”

“I owe you. This is twice I owe you.”

“That horse was doing pretty damn well keeping you in one piece.”

“Nobody’ll shoot him if I go back?”

“Not a chance. Nothing wrong with that horse—now. Besides, I’m supposed to take you on to Mornay and get you out of trouble. On Ridley’s orders.“

“No question here,” Carlo said. “If Randy’s all right with him, I’ll go.”

“I think even Callie’s going to stand by him. I think it’s all right.”

Guil and Burn had stopped. Tara gave Guil a hand up to Burn’s back and Guil looked, in the dim light there was, fairly done in, head down, arm across his middle for a moment. <Pain> was evident, not bad, but there, and it was clear to Da