

 ALSO BY C.J. CHERRYH

    C YTEEN:*
    The Betrayal
    The Rebirth
   The Vindication

   RIMR UNNERS
   HEAVY TIME
   HELLB URNER
   TRIPOINT

Published by Warner Books

*Winner of the Hugo Award for Best Novel




[fiEBRYfi




ASPECT



A Time Warner Company


        Copyright c 1995 by C.J. Cherryh
        All rights reserved.

Warner Books, Inc., 1271 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020

OA Time Warner Company

Aspect is a trademark of Warner Books, Inc.

 Printed in the United States of America
 First Printing: August 1995
 10987654321

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Cherryh, C. J.
  Rider at the gate / C.J. Cherryh.
   p. cm.
 ISBN 0-446-51781-X
 1. Title.
 PS3563. H358R53 1995
 81Y.54~-dc20

Book design by L & G McRee

95-7591
  CIP


    FOR JANE
SINE QUA NON
Especially the beginning--




INLAND

W

E

SEA

N



RII~IER






Chapter
1

THE FIRST OF THE TRUCK CONVOY HAD SCARCELY TOPPED THE RISE
that would lead them down to Shamesey town when three riders
broke free of its line and raced up on a gust of autumn wind, past
the bell-arch of Shamesey camp and through the open gates behind
which over a thousand riders and nighthorses were encamped.
    These three, strangers all to Shamesey, swept into the camp com-
mons without any more warning than that, borderers by their dress
and manner, atop nighthorses out of the High Wild. Two of them
stopped just inside the gate while the third rode down the main
street of the camp, searching.
    They were a grayness to nighthorse minds, these three from the
convoy, two out of range, the third a shifting flutter of images
passed to nearby horses and from them to the Shamesey riders'
minds, an uneasy sending that masked that pair's intent from the
nighthorses, who held no secrets one from the other.
    But it required no nighthorse sense to know that these three
wanted something; more specifically, they wanted someone.


2     --~'--~ C.J. Cherryh

    A scattered few Shamesey riders, camp-boss Lyle Wesson among
them, hearing the disturbance among the horses, deserted their ta-
bles in the Gate Tavern and gathered on the encircling porch. Lyle
Wesson walked alone down the wooden steps and stood in the
dusty tavern yard to meet that third rider, this guide and guard (he
perceived so on the whisper of information coming to him from the
horses) to a line of trucks now rolling unescorted toward Shamesey.
    Unwise to leave a convoy unattended even within sight of
Shamesey, largest and most secure of all the Finisterre towns; if
they had done that, it was a breach of procedures for which these
three might pay dearly in subsequent hires.
    But as the rider from the convoy drew up near them in the tav-
ern yard, Lyle Wesson and all the nearby riders saw--imaged in
their own minds through the stranger's horse--the blond young
man the convoy's guide had come looking for.
    More, the Shamesey riders felt a terror closely held under the
stranger's fa5ade of calm: terror and a gnawing insanity under
which these three riders had labored for days.
    "Stuart is the name you want," the camp-boss said aloud, more
than uneasy at the prospect of that unsettled sending set loose
through his camp. "He's somewhere about. Get down. We'll stand
you and your mates a drink. Someone will find him."
    The stranger shook his head. "Not here," he said, scantly con-
trolled, and leaned heavily on his horse's withers. "Tell him. Out-
side." The nighthorse under him threw its head, shook out its
black, cloudy mane, and with no more decision of the rider (those
around him were in a position to know) it spun and fled back to-
ward the two riders who waited at the gate. Those two turned be-
forehand and dashed beneath the bell-arch and out onto the road.
  The third followed them at no less speed.
    The riders and the camp-boss, who had most immediately felt
the fear unraveling the peace, breathed a collective sigh of relief at
having that much space between Shamesey and the madness those
stranger-riders carried with them.
    "Find Gull Stuart," the word went out: the boss spoke aloud to
the riders he sent on that job, a message without nighthorse image:
it was a human attempt to contain that madness.


RIDER AT THE GATE              ~       3

,!

    But a solitary nighthorse, in the hostile, curious way of its kind,
had come near enough to skim the image-rich surface of human
thoughts, and gone off, unknown to the camp-boss, to carry what it
learned to its den-mates.
  So the contagion spread, inevitably, through the encampment.
    It took a man a considerable walk to accomplish the circuit of
Shamesey camp, that protective circle of riders and horses who
lived between the double palisade walls of Shamesey town's perime-
ter, riders who slept in hostels near the horse dens, met in taverns
similar to the Gate Tavern, and lived in their separate settlements
within that ring. But that image had made the rounds of the bell-
gate section of the rider camp and was traveling down the ringroad
to the next station before the camp-boss had even climbed the steps
to the Gate Tavern.
    The image had reached the fourth tavern and cluster of hostels
long before the bell rang that signaled the arrival of the convoy at
Shamesey town gates. It was a smallish, blond man the stranger
wanted, a young man, a borderer, the rider of the horse that imaged
himself as fire, pain and dark: those who knew Stuart called the
creature Burn.
    The image mutated and acquired opinion as it sped further: a
solitary young man, a sullen, prankish horse, both prone to fights; a
pair that roused dislike in some quarters of the camp, respect in
others--disdain among the Shamesey riders, which image held
more of Shamesey opinion of borderers in general than of Stuart in
particular.
    As a result of those acquired opinions, it might have been four
and five different men the message sought before the image was
halfway through the fifth cluster of brown plank buildings.
Nighthorse sendings were like that when they flew through a
camp: they were images and emotions, no words. Sometimes a rider
or a horse mistook the individual in the message and shaped the
image to something more like someone he did know--an image
that also passed on, confounding the search: sometimes it found no
names in human minds, and sometimes it acquired other, mistaken
names as it met the leading edge of the spoken rumor.
  But the main thread, camp-boss Lyle Wesson's order, running by


4     ~       Cd. Cherryh

human word of mouth at various distances behind the nighthorse
sendings, held no doubt at all: Gull Stuart and the nighthorse Burn
were the rider and the horse the strangers wanted at the bell-gate.
They were present in camp; there was danger in the high hills; and,
arriving with a truck convoy, some business had come to the gate
that strangers who knew Stuart had feared to bring inside the
walls---only prudent hesitation, where so many nighthorses were
gathered.
    Bad business. Bad news. A contagion that no one in his right
mind would want to receive.

In the better part of Shamesey town, the very core of Shamesey--
where wealthy wooden houses were bright with painted flowers and
red and blue eaves, where gaslights glowed wanton waste on the
street corners even at early twilight--no one even noticed the
event, except that the bell had rung which signaled a convoy com-
ing in.
    Merchants left their dinner tables and headed out for the market-
place, as late as it was, to spy out what goods had come in and with
what prices. Well-dressed children ran out to see the trucks and
annoy the drivers. Others in the town center turned out for curios-
ity, if nothing else.
    The better part of Shamesey town would never feel the fear and
the distress that ran the circuit of the rider camp, but that was,
after all, why the rich built their houses so far from the palisade
walls, so that the riders and the world over the hills would never
intrude into their peaceful lives. That insulation was the privilege
of their wealth, which they gathered from their labor and their
trade, and which they planned to enjoy forever, nothing changing,
preferring to build atop each other rather than crowd closer to the
camp.
    But in Shamesey slums, the insulating ring of human squalor
lying between Shamesey town and Shamesey camp--where the bell
meant little but rich merchants getting richer--the residents
sensed that nighthorse rumor like a presentiment of storm. It was a
sensation so convincing that some stopped their business on the


RIDER AT THE GATE              ~       5

streets and others flung up their windows to search the skies in the
west, the ordinary direction of bad weather.
    But when the western heavens showed clear in the final glow of
sunset, the slum-folk directed their anxiousness instead down their
streets of ramshackle, unpainted board buildings toward the encir-
cling walls of the rider camp; and, with the helplessness of the poor
who had to live nearest the camp and the images that seeped
through those wooden walls, they cursed and spat for fear of night-
mares.
    The Fisher household felt that storm-feeling in their drafty
third-floor flat, a flat which lately had new stoppage for those drafts
and smelled of fresh paint and plaster. The Fishers paused in their
supper and looked toward the window--as Danny Fisher's fork hit
the plate and flung beans in an arc across the table.
    "Hell!" Danny cried, which one didn't ever say under his parents'
roof. He wasn't thinking clearly as he began to get up. He only re-
alized his intention as he cleared his chair and it scraped on the
floor.
  "Where do you think you're going?" his father demanded.
    His mother said, "Danny, sit down, finish your supper. The bell's
none of your concern."
    But he couldn't sit down. The feeling was dreadful, as if his
mind were going every direction at once, and he had to wonder,
didn't his family feel anything?
    His youngest brother, Denis, shook at his arm, saying, "Danny,
Danny, sit down, what's the matter with you?"
    His mother was upset now, and his father was angry, ordering
him to take his seat with the rest of the family and act like a sane
human being.
    But he had to get to the camp. He had to find Cloud. He headed
for the door.
    His father shoved his chair back, too, yelling at him to come
back and do as he was told. His father crossed the room in two
strides and grabbed his arm hard enough to bruise it. Then his
mother was on her feet, and grabbed his father's arm.
  "Let him alone!" his mother yelled.


6     ~:      C.J. Cherryh

    "The boy can act like he's sane! The boy can sit down and finish
his supper!"
  "We have neighbors!"
    "Fine, we have neighbors! They all know our son's crazy! It's no
news to them!"
    "Don't you yell at me! Sit down! Everybody sit down and eat
your dinner! I'll throw it out if nobody's going to eat it!"
    Danny didn't feel anything but that dissociation, that terrible
coming-apart. He jerked at his father's arm. "Let me go, dammit,
I've got to go!"
    His father's hand cracked across his face. His father started
yelling at him, something about God and religion, devils and hell.
    But devils and hell weren't here. Something else was, something
as frightening and far more imminent.
    Danny freed himself, not because his father couldn't have held
him, even lately, but because his father had let go in seeming
shock--while his mother pounded on his father's arm with her fist,
screaming about 'that creature' and how it would come into town
and they'd all die if he didn't let Danny go to it. Denis was bawl-
ing, screaming at them to stop fighting. His older brother, Sam,
stared at all of them from the table--Sam didn't argue with their
father, Sam wanted the machine shop when their father was gone,
nothing more, nothing less, so Sam just shoveled down another
spoonful of beans.
    Danny grabbed his coat, his scarf, his hat from the pegs beside
the door.
    "You don't have to come back, you!" his father yelled. "You're
damned to hell, dealing with that beast, you know that? You're
going straight to hell!"
    "Shut up!" his mother yelled. "You don't mean that! --Danny,
he doesn't mean that!"
    "Yes, I mean it!" his father shouted, and the fight was in full cry
when Danny shot the bolt back, banged the door open and raced
down the rickety stairs.
    He was halfway to the bottom, two steps at a time, before Denis
overtook him. Denis got a grip on his coat, screaming at him to
stop, he didn't want him to go, papa didn't mean it, he couldn't go


RIDER AT THE GATE              ~       7

out there, the devil would get him and drag him and that horse
down to hell if he went back there.
    Danny wasn't even aware of shaking Denis off. "You just go!" he
heard Denis screaming after him. "You just go ahead! God's going
to send you to hell! Papa says God's going to send you to hell and I
don't care!"
    It was meaningless noise to him. He ran the stairs, rushed out
the door and down the street, breathless.
    People everywhere were stopped, gathered along the walks, look-
ing toward the wooden walls of the camp. He'd never felt anything
the like: it was bad, it promised the town worse dreams, and people
shied away from him in the streets, seeing not a kid who'd grown
up in their neighborhood, but a rider's fringed leather, a rider's
clear purpose in the midst of the stifling storm-feeling.
    Trucks jammed Gate Street, which led down to the bell-arch,
trucks crowding one another, engines growling in their uphill
climb toward the market and the warehouses buried deep beneath
the town center: protection for the material wealth--and the vital
food supplies that were life to everyone, merchant and slum dweller
alike.
    Only the riders could survive without. Riders could survive
without the town; the town could never survive without the riders.
    Tanker trucks lumbered in the midst of the canvas-covered cargo
trucks, huge, long rigs the drivers ordinarily chose to park outside
the walls. Tonight they were in the line, seeking shelter from the
coming dark.
    Danny wove past the gawkers at the corner. It was a big convoy,
maybe the last before the winter closed the passes.
    "Don't listen!" a street preacher was shouting. "Heed not the
beasts! Death and damnation to the followers of the beasts! Pray!
Shut your hearts against the creatures of this world and pray to God
for deliverance!"
    The feeling on Gate Street was overwhelming. Maybe part of it
was the exhaust from the trucks: fumes welled up in the narrow
street, under a dilapidated overhang of buildings so old and so close
that at the gentle imprecisions of the uphill road the tankers ran



8     ~       C.J. Cherryh

their tires up over the low curbs and threatened the eaves and peo-
ple on the sidewalks.
    Danny wanted to run. He felt as if he couldn't get enough
breath. Diesel stung his eyes and his throat as he walked double-
time.
    Terrible thump. Some driver rear-ended the truck in front. Sec-
ond collision, then, as somebody else stopped too short. Panic was
contagious. The truckers felt it.
  "Pray for your children, that they follow not the beasts!"
  He was strangling in it.

Fear raced through the camp, provoking a general surveillance over
the main street from the doors of rider hostels and nighthorse dens
alike. The camp-boss and the several riders who had first come out
to meet the arrivals had set up their own watch over the situation
from the vantage of the Gate Tavern porch. Nighthorses who had
drifted into their vicinity had shied off into the twilight, spreading
the message that the camp-boss was not pleased.
    The tide of disturbance had rolled all the way through the camp
and back again. Consistently now it imaged a thin, smallish man
with fair hair, recognizable to some, not to others; it imaged
strangers at the gate, and horror in their company.
    That image stirred hate in some quarters, and that hate roused
other angers waiting to explode, tempers set off by nothing more
than the darkness of the feeling. Fights broke out that had nothing
remotely to do with Gull Stuart.
    But it was hate for Gull Stuart that had sent Ancel Harper in
particular searching after his cousins; and anger and fear flowed
through their meeting at Hami's Tavern, a bar mostly claimed by
the riders of Hallanslake district. Nighthorses wandered through
the open portico of the tavern, and the feeling in that precinct was
not good.
  Hallanslakers, Harper included, knew Stuart.
    And unlike most of the riders in Shamesey camp, Ancel Harper
recognized the threat lurking about the edges of the message. He,
unlike most riders, had felt it before and never wanted to feel it
again.


RIDER AT THE GATE              ~       9

    He knew, and controlled that knowledge: a man who dealt with
nighthorses learned to keep his past from infecting the present.
Nighthorses didn't thipk easily in terms of past or future: a careless
rider's own imagination could all too easily become real for his
horse, and come from the horse back to him.
    Stuart hadn't caused what had happenedmnot directly--as Stu-
art hadn't caused this newest disaster--directly. But that hardly
mattered: Gull Stuart was the kind of man trouble always hap-
pened next to, and there wasn't a friend Stuart had in this Hal-
lanslaker tavern ... not now and not before some poor sod out
there had died with the horror this death had about it.
    Because that was what lurked at the core and around the edges of
the stranger's message: death come singing to as many as wanted to
listen. Harper and his associates knocked back two rounds of drinks
in quick succession, not the only patrons trying to drown the feel-
ing that pulled at old feuds and seethed up through old matters
long settled, even among themselves.
    "Damned fool," Harper said, as the horse-borne image made yet
one more round of the camp, but what he imaged in his own mind
was, in particular, a young fool, quick to offense, too quick to pull a
knife--
    Drunk at the time, as Harper himself had been, night camp on
the road, hard decisions to be made; and Stuart in no good mood.
But neither had Harper or his brother been in a charitable mind to-
ward a sullen outsider.
    Gerry had died years later, of something Stuart hadn't had a
thing to do with, just the breaks as they happened in the High
Wild. Gerry was dead and Stuart was alive.., nothing to do with
each other, those sets of facts, those events that left one man alive,
one dead; but it wasn't damned fair, in Harper's thinking, and
Harper didn't want to see the f~ce that kept intruding into his
mind in constant image, preoccupying his attention like an unwel-
come, waking dream.
    Most of all, he didn't want to feel what he was feeling in the air.
He didn't want that sending that was rubbing in the fact of Stuart's
presence in the camp like salt into a wound: Stuart, Stuart, Stuart.
  Damn his trouble-prone, arrogant, son-of-a-bitch ways that



I0      ~        C.J. Cherryh

plowed ahead into a situation when smarter men said stop, don't
go. Men and horses had breaking points, and the High Wild, when
a man or a horse grew careless, always won. Minds snapped. Illu-
sions became fact. A man wandered right into his death, blithe and
believing, until madness sucked his companions down into that
delusionary hell with him.
      So somebody else had died. On Stuart's side, this time. One of
Stuart's friends, most likely.  Good riddance.
    Harper carried a scar across his ribs. Stuart had one to match. So
had Gerry. Draw, it had been, then--thanks to a trucker's interfer-
ence. Hallanslakers had said no go, and maintained a convoy wasn't
safe on the mountain. Hallanslakers had had damned good reasons
for saying so, including the higher fees they ought to have gotten
for doing it; but Stuart, the only outside rider the convoy had hired
on, he'd pushed, claimed of course they could make it, and he'd
bring them through--for no extra charge, as if money didn't
matter.
    And Stuart, of course, had gotten his way, his way being far more
palatable to the trucker boss, so it was go on up the road at the
same fee despite the risk or lose their reputation and look like cow-
ards to the clients.
    Two Hallanslakers had died on that haul, swept away down the
mountain, thanks to a snapped cable and toppling truck that had
nearly taken Gerry out as well. Knocked cold, he'd been, by that
free-flying cable that had taken Gerry's partner down.
    Stuart in the number of the dead? The man whose stupid-stubborn
fault it was they were there with that faulty cable? that unstable
truck?
  No such luck.
    And Gerry hadn't fought Stuart again. Gerry hadn't fought
much of anything after that trip, not even after his cracked head
healed. Gerry was never the same after that. Gerry had taken hires
he shouldn't have taken, loned it across the mountains in a season
he shouldn't have. Gerry's sense was gone, thanks to that cable, and
Gerry's heart had gone, swept down the mountainside with his
partner, and that was that.


RIDER AT THE GATE              ~       11

    A brother couldn'~t hold him. A brother couldn't stop the change
in him. Gerry'd been on his own when he died. He'd chosen that,
as others who lost partners chose to die. He'd ridden out to his
death. His horse.., they'd had to shoot it when it came to camp
without him. They'd had no choice. They'd been lucky: for a mo-
ment, it had been sane.
    The feeling in the camp grew darker, and more angry:
nighthorse politics, sexual politics, that shivered on the autumn
wind.
Death. Sex and death and a rider Stuart knew and slept with.
Harper had his knife with him. He knew where Stuart was now,
disquieting feeling. He knew that the ripple of query had just got-
ten to Stuart.
    Stuart knew and the ripple came racing back again, through
nighthorse minds and human, a feeling like the pause between the
l. ightning and the thunder.

The camp-boss watched from the Gate Tavern porch as Guil Stuart
came walking toward the camp gate, following that reverse tide of
rumor. Slight, smallish, dressed in brown fringed leathers: the real-
ity behind the image. Stuart's long blond hair was loose, a border-
er's vanity--and he carried knives, one in the boot and one on the
hip.
    That was a manner, as the saying had it. A definite manner
which gave not a damn about the rules of no-conflict that prevailed
in a camp this size.., a manner that flatly challenged the camp-
boss to call him on it.
    But say that Stuart wasn't the only one, and that Stuart carried at
least two of his in the open: a clear warning. Say that the camp
couldn't enforce the rule: there were riders--especially borderers
like Stuart--who had specific reason to guard their backs, generally
against other borderers.
    Borderers, the rider-guides born to the High Wild, were the
ones who knew the routes at the extreme points of settled land.
They were a necessary fact of rider society--they stayed in Shame-
sey camp only during the winters, when the routes were closed to
trucks and riders alike; and Shamesey locals, the guards over cattle


12      ~        C.J. Cherryh

and town edges, hadn't the knowledge the borderers had of each
other. No one local knew who was right and who was wrong in
their quarrels, out in the far land where civilized law didn't apply
and where those knives settled grievances.
    So Lyle Wesson, sipping a slow, speculative pint on the porch of
the Gate Tavern, kept entirely out of it, not seeing anything in his
venue in question.
    Borderer business. Borderers looking for each other, carrying bad
news, was what Wesson picked up. He couldn't identify some of
the other feelings he was getting on the backwash out of the farther
camp--he didn't like much of what he could identify, so he kept a
purely human ear to the matter, awaiting human specifics.
    More than an ear: Dart, old himself, limping a little (it was
arthritis in the hindquarters, an affliction they shared, with the
winter nip in the air) left the comfort of the nighthorse den nearest
the tavern to stand watch over the commons, too.
    And as Stuart approached, on foot, Dart imaged <dark,> --and
something so unquiet it shivered along the nerves.
    "Man's walking," Ndele said, moving out of the doorway to
stand at Wesson's elbow.
  "He's being followed."
  "A man can't help that," Ndele said.
    Truth. That Stuart chose to walk and not ride gave Wesson, who
disliked and distrusted borderers in general, a better opinion of
him: Stuart, for his part, had meant to keep it a human matter.
    But a living darkness trailed Stuart as he passed them without a
word, headed for the three strangers waiting for him just outside
the gate. It trailed Stuart through the gathering dusk, regardless of
Stuart's intentions, a head-down, angry darkness with which no
rider would be willing to argue.
  Stuart's horse. Defensive. Outraged.
    Dart flung out a feeling of ill and warning, protecting the porch
from that outrage, and trotted across the street, positioning himself
between his rider and the source of that dark anger.
     Opinion all along the street solidified around that pair as they
 passed through the gates and the strangers' message reached its
 target.


RIDER AT THE GATE              ~       13

    No question now: rogue was the word on the wind. That was
how humans called it. What nighthorses imaged was something
roiling and dark, and that was what Wesson perceived in Dart's
image.
    Rogue horse at least: that impression came through the horses,
and maybe--far worse news--rogue rider, somewhere out in the
bush.
    He didn't know where, now, that image was coming from. It had
no direction, but it was spreading like wildfire, and even the image
was deadly dangerous. It was more than imagination nighthorses
shared with human interlopers. Insanity came quite, quite naturally
in this season of mating and rivalry. So did death.
    There began now to be another presence in the uneasy flux of
images: a young red-haired woman, a borderer, on a nighthorse that
imaged itself as, no qualifier, just the bright and largest Moon.
    "Aby Dale," Ndele whispered, and Dart's presence carried a gut-
deep certainty of the woman's death, and a landscape so real, so par-
ticular in detail, that Wesson would swear he'd been there. "She's
dead," Ndele said. "A fall. On the rocks. She was with the convoy.
She died."
    More riders gathered, soft movement on the boards of the porch.
Images proliferated, rocks running with blood.
    On that instant young Danny Fisher came skiting in, shied off
from the man at the gate, and darted, distracted, along the palisade
wall, looking for his horse, Wesson could guess, among the
nighthorses that maintained an uneasy vigil at the den near the
gate. Wesson caught an& held his breath until the fool kid was
clear of the situation.
    Town kid. Shamesey kid. If the boy had fallen afoul of Stuart, it
would have been his business. And Wesson was, personally, very
glad it wasn't.


Chapter

11

DANNY FISHER CAUGHT THE RUMORS IN FULL FORCE AS HE CAME
through the gate, in a flood of images both true and half-true.
    And, stopping along the gate wall in a shiver of shock, he dis-
covered the general focus of the trouble was the man who had just
walked past him.
    In that time-stretched moment he realized he knew Stuart--
knew him for a fair man, a borderer, true, but never the bullying
sort: far from it, Stuart had sat on a rainy spring evening on Gate
Tavern's porch, sharing three drinks with a kid who, at that time,
could only pay for one, and telling a towner brat who'd dared--
dared come to a borderer to ask, how he could ever hope get the
long-distance convoy jobs he dreamed of.
    Trips the like of which Stuart was clearly born to--born on,
Danny had caught that in the way you knew some things even
when the nighthorses weren't near, things that just echoed to
you--a muddle-headed junior had trouble distinguishing the
sources of what he'd gathered out of that moment. Maybe he'd


RIDER AT THE GATE              ~       15

heard them from Stuart himself; maybe he'd recalled small details
from casual remarks Stuart had made earlier at the bar--he didn't
know, now.
    But Stuart hadn't grudged information to him. He'd come to
Stuart half expecting ridicule--or worse, an indecent proposition,
borderers having no good repute among lowland riders. He'd been
mortally scared, and desperate, walking up to that table, offering to
buy Stuart a drink in return for his question, and Stuart must have
picked up on that fear. Stuart had laughed, given him an amused
and immediate Calm down, he was spoken for.
    And because Stuart's Burn and his own Cloud had both been
nearby, he'd caught the image of the rider who'd laid personal
claim to Gull Stuart ... beautiful, beautiful rider, beautiful seat,
maybe glossed by Stuart's memory, he didn't know that either, but
he'd been instantly set off his balance and mortified with embar-
rassment, because, of course, he'd realized Stuart had read his suspi-
cions of him through and through.
    But now, watching the man walk out the gate alone to face some
kind of bad news--news that Danny suddenly, illogically, felt cen-
tered on that woman so important to Stuart--he shivered in the
unmistakable darkness and skittishness in the horses' minds, and
wished he could do something. He felt outraged when someone
muttered, 'borderer' in that tone that implied Stuart and trouble
deserved each other.
    It wasn't fair. He almost blurted out something to that effect, ju-
nior that he was, but talking out of turn could start what he by no
means could finish: it was a group of Shamesey men, six of them,
years senior to him, and you didn't contradict the seniors.
    Then he first heard, aloud, from the same group, the word rogue
horse, and almost lost his supper, because it at once echoed off every-
thing that had brought him running out of town. Rogue was that
going-apart. He'd heard a rider tell about it, a man who didn't
need to say he'd talked to somebody who'd personally seen it, be-
cause the images had carried a detail and a feeling that haunted a
junior's sleep for nights after.
    But rogue couldn't have anything to do with Stuart, or Burn, or
Stuart's beautiful border woman. It couldn't. That awful word didn't


16      ~'       C.J. Cherryh

happen down in Shamesey lowlands. It was campfire stories, it was
ghost tales around the hostel fires in deep winter: other riders had
objected just to the telling of the story with the horses at hand.
They'd said it was irresponsible to pass that image at night, when
things were spookier, a word that belonged up in the highlands, in
the extremes of dangers riders and horses faced up there and you al-
ways hoped they exaggerated--some creature, a horse or a bear usu-
ally, got brain-injured and started doing things a sane one just
wouldn't do, sending at a range a sane one couldn't, coming right
into encampments to kill, playing canny games with trackers while
it hunted its hunters. It didn't for God's sake come down to Shame-
sey gates and civilized territory to trouble a town of Shamesey's
size.
    It didn't touch someone he knew in real life, or disturb his fam-
ily at their own dinner table.
    The tail-end of the convoy had just filed by the open camp gate,
on its way into the city gates, headlights shining in the twilight,
and behind that last truck, he could see Stuart cross the road to
meet with the riders waiting there, all mounted, all waiting.
    He had the most terrible feeling then, like chill, like forewarn-
ing.., he suddenly realized he was picking up expectations out of
the ambient. Every horse around them was disturbed by what they
picked up from human minds, like a buzz of gossip, everyone antic-
ipating/dreading/wanting calamity to the man they were watching.
The feeling around the gate grew stiflingly close, charged and irra-
tional.
    Rogue, rogue, rogue, kept circling through his mind and maybe
others', that dark, nasty feeling that clicked into place with a clear
impression of a twilight mountainside, a memory so specific he
could have recognized that place if he'd ever been there; different
than he'd felt with the man who'd told a story and given impres-
sions into the ambient secondhand, right now he felt something...
so powerful, so horrible.., so present with them...
  <Body on the rocks, limbs broken, blood everywhere.>
    "Dead," he kept hearing, words, as humans talked. Dead, dead,
dead.., while Stuart stood on the other side of the road and out of


it was
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RIDER AT THE GATE              ~       17

earshot, arms folded, head down, mostly, so one couldn't read his
face as he talked with the mounted riders.
    Then a sudden crisis hit the ambient. Danny held his breath as
Stuart abruptly strode away from the meeting and turned upslope
on the grassy hill, heading away from the camp.
    The three riders who had spoken with Stuart held their horses
still, and Danny felt a terrible, smothering fear, so vivid it became
his own, and made his heart race.
  <Autumn leaves. Rocks. Blood. >
    He put out a hand to find something solid. His fingers met
rough bark.., his eyes told him it was a tree trunk on the moun-
tainside, along that perilous road; but his brain knew it was only
the palisade wall.
    <Blue eyes, pale face, a thread of blood down from the nostril.
Autumn hair on sunset stone. >
    Sight dimmed, senses drowning. Some other rider jostled him,
likewise on the retreat. Everyone was clearing the area.
    Then a wild squeal erupted out of the dark behind the gates, a
heart-stopping squalling.
    "Let him go!" someone shouted aloud.., shouted, in the camp.
The sound shocked the air as a nighthorse broke through the thin
screen of bystanders, not bolting uncontrolled into the dusk, but
treading catfooted, shaking his mane and throwing off such a cold
feeling of ill that senior riders crowded each other to get out of its
path.
    <Burn,> it imaged itself, in a violence that raced over raw nerves
and ran red. It whipped its tail then, crossed the road and spooked
the messengers' horses as it launched itself uphill toward Stuart,
running full out.
    He scarcely saw Stuart catch its mane as it cut across his path on
the hill. Stuart swung up and astride, a solid piece with the dark-
ness that raced along the shadowy grass of the hillside.., they ran
and ran, until Danny couldn't see them any longer with his eyes.
Only the feeling of <loss> and <harm> remained, shivering down
his arms and disturbing his heart.
    Meanwhile the three riders who'd met with Stuart crossed the
road, coming quietly toward the camp gates--a darkness them-


"~                Cherryh
8 --'         c.j

selves, mind and body, they and their horses. The men nearest the
gates began to push them shut as if they could wall that menace
out.

    For an instant the feeling in the air was horrid, full of death. The
gate-closers gave back, mission not accomplished, and the riders
came through.
    Danny shrank back against the wall, breath dammed up, his
head swimming with visions of blood and rocks as those riders
passed, and his nerves feeling, far worse, the separation, the taking-
apart that he hadn't recognized when he'd first felt it in the town.
The anguish and the anger of a rider's death rippled and echoed
through the area around Shamesey gates like a stone tossed into a
quiet pond.
    Something warm breathed on his neck then, a presence that had
slipped up on him quiet as a breeze, a frightened, spooky mind that
didn't like what it smelled/saw/felt from the strangers and meant to
safeguard his rider from them.
    He didn't need to ask, and he tried not to image.., which did
no good at all: he turned and reached for the refuge of Cloud's mid-
night neck, tangled his fist in Cloud's mane, stood there in the
shelter of Cloud's warmth, only then beginning to shiver.
    <Dead horse,> Cloud was imaging. <Blood everywhere. Dead
rider.> It was the same image he had seen, the same image the
strangers had brought with them through Shamesey camp gates,
and the face of the dead rider was, he was increasingly sure, Stuart's
border woman.
    Stuart's grief came shivering through him then, as if it were
washing off the hills. The iron bell that tolled for inbound and out-
bound convoys began to ring again, distraction to horse and rider
senses. They would drink, tonight. They would dance, make love,
anything to numb the night. That, in Danny's young experience,
was a proper rider funeral.
    But there was no joy, no celebration of life. Violence boded
everywhere about. Murder raced out into the hills and echoed off
the slopes, into the streets of the camp. He'd only heard the faint
stirrings of that anger, that bitter, killing rage, let loose in the
town--disturbing the streets, maybe reaching his family, maybe


RIDER AT THE GATE              ~       19

prompting the anger at the table. But here it rang through his
bones and stirred the pain of his jaw where his father had hit him.
Here it prompted him to rage next to tears. The violence, the con-
fusion that had broken forth in the camp, now, in force, threatened
all of them. He felt it tugging at his reason.
    He saw it in the eyes of the small boy who wove his way past the
leather-fringed elbows of the rider crowd. He recognized that thin,
white face as someone familiar to him and didn't even realize for a
heartbeat that he was looking at his own brother Denis. In that
moment he saw Denis as he'd never seen his brother before, a thin,
scraggy, amount-to-nothing kid. He saw how fear and hard work
were setting a mark on Denis that was on their father, on their
mother, on Sam. It was death happening, it was the damned,
doomed mark of the masses who huddled in walled towns, the sons
and daughters of starfarers, as the preachers constantly reminded
them, afraid of the world they lived in.
    Denis came running and grabbed him around the middle, terri-
fied, wanting him. Danny shoved back as Cloud's fright hit his
nerves. He struck out instinctively just to get Denis away from
Cloud, screaming: "Get out of here! Get out of here! Go home, you
brainless little fool!"
    In the next instant he felt the sting in his hand and saw Denis
sitting on the ground with a hand pressed to his cheek, all shock
and hurt, tears in his eyes.
    The shock he felt was what stopped Cloud. That was all that
stopped Cloud until he turned and shoved desperately at Cloud's
muscular shoulder, trying to image to Cloud that this wasn't an
enemy, this was a part of him . . . he ordered Cloud to go away, and
Cloud surged against his push in a fit of jealous anger.
    "No!" he said, shoving back, and imaged <Danny hugging
Cloud. Danny wanting Cloud. Danny wanting the boy. Quiet
water. Pebbles under quiet water.>
<Dark,> Cloud sent back. <Lightning. Thunder. Cold rain.>
"Behave yourself!" Nighthorses understood some words, more
than a few words, when they wanted to; Danny was mad, now, and
Cloud was mad, but he was madder, and scared: it was his brother's
life at stake.


20  ~ C.J. Cherryh

  <Lightning. >
    "Denis." <Boy at table in house. Boy following him through
Shamesey streets, past trucks, crying, upset. Angry people in the
house. > --That did no good. Cloud was angry at the people, angry
at the boy, and Cloud didn't want to know who Denis was: the
complexities of human family relations were beyond Cloud's imag-
ining. Danny shoved hard at Cloud's shoulder. "Go away if you
can't behave. Cloud, go away. Now!"
    Cloud shook his neck, an obscuring flurry and flutter of mane,
then backed a step and whirled with a stinging lash of his tail. But
he sulked a little distance away from them, ternperous and snap-
ping at an equally surly horse in his immediate path.
    Danny turned toward Denis then, not wanting to deal with the
boy, still trembling as he was with Cloud's fighting anger.
      But Denis wasn't there. He'd not felt him go. Cloud hadn't told
him. It wasn't important to Cloud.  Dammit!
    There would be murders by morning. When the camp shook to
nighthorse dreams, the slum of Shamesey caught the fever. Old
feuds, old angers, old resentments, would boil up in the taverns and
the houses tonight. The rich sat safely insulated in town center. But
no one in or near the camp palisade could be immune from the
madness that had broken loosemwhen all the camp swarmed with
images, when all the riders had the same dread of their own dark
imaginings.
    Clearly a Shamesey kid who'd left the common path had no place
in his own home tonight. He couldn't face his father or his mother
or his brothers----especially not Denis... a realization which settled
and occupied a numb, vaguely angry spot in his heart.
    He thought he ought to feel overwhelming remorse, loss, some-
thing. He knew in his head why his father had hit him. He even
forgave his father in his heart, the way the preachers said he had to
do. He knew the desperation his father felt in the face of his middle
son's sure damnation, and his middle son's tempting Sam and
Denis and their mother to go down that same hellbound road.
    But that road was his breath of life. What he held dearest and
most vital violated everything his father held rational or sacred. He


RIDER AT THE GATE              ~       21

couldn't possibly explain to his brothers what he felt when he
touched Cloud--his father called it proselytizing for the Devil,
leading his brothers into temptation.
    So he'd personally rejected God. He hadn't meant to. But once
he'd begun to hear the beasts, he'd begun to hear the whole world
as it spieled down to winter and licentious riot. He'd felt in it the
urgency of all life.., even of townsmen and the placid cattle that
had come down from the stars with them: delicious feelings, for-
bidden feelings his parents didn't talk about and he could only hint
at with his friends because they weren't, he'd understood, the feel-
ings his friends had. They were constant, they were preoccupying:
pictures in his mind and feelings that charged those pictures with
sensations that ran over his skin and roused desires he had to seek
privacy to deal with. He'd prayed, and the pictures came into his
prayers. He'd worked until he sweated, and he felt his own skin
alive to the air.
    He lived now in the flux of beast-sent images that invaded his
mind moment by moment. He shivered in the feelings of lust and
anger that alternately took his body, the outpourings of disturbed
minds, when he should be repenting for hitting Denis and defying
his father.
    Except no matter what his father believed, riders did have feel-
ings the preachers would call good. Even the horses had them--a
thing no rider could explain to the preacher-men, a thing riders
couldn't even tell each other, it just was. When you got a number
of horses together and enough riders to pin their thoughts obses-
sively on a set of images, they said you could hear beyond the
stone's-toss that was a horse's ordinary range. Shamesey regularly
proved it. And the pain people felt tonight was because riders
couldn't ignore each other.
    He couldn't ignore the rider alone out there. He couldn't forget
the pain that had rung through Shamesey camp, that still rang, in
the iron tolling of the bell. The images tumbled one over the other
in his skull, the woman, the rocks, the blood. He didn't easily dis-
tinguish (they said a rider's ability to judge such things got better,
over time) what was his memory of what he'd just seen imaged and
what he might be hearing from riders in the camp, or at this very


22     ~        C.J. Cherryh

moment, even from Stuart, at a range no nighthorse was supposed
to attain. Horses in pain reached inexplicable distances, did things
they weren't supposed to know how to do--junior riders said so,
around their own fires. He'd never heard a senior rider say it.
    But that horse's pain, which he thought he'd felt when he'd had
his hand directly on Cloud, had gone straight to his nerves in a
transferred disturbance of a nature and subtlety he'd never felt be-
fore--if that was the source of it. The pain and the anger running
the hills out there could be why he'd hit Denis--recoiling from
Denis' emotional outburst as he ran to him. Cloud could only see
that wild emotion as an attack on his rider--and Denis didn't
know: Denis couldn't feel the air around him. A boy who under-
stood only Shamesey slum couldn't begin to believe that things in
the outside world didn't feel or react the way he did. And Denis
was his own world, being twelve-going-on-thirteen, and in that
world of all things he believed as so, Denis could only know his
older brother had gone crazy with his horse and slapped him to the
ground. So much for Danny, Denis would think, go on and go to
hell, Denis didn't need him, anyway--he could hear it as if Denis
had yelled it at him, without Cloud's help.
    So, --that was well enough, he couldn't make Denis see it, and
Denis had some major adjustments to the world-as-it-was yet to
make, some edges yet to be worn off his hellbent sense of right and
proper. Denis had it in him. Denis could learn. Denis wasn't Sam.
    But, God, he didn't need to have hit the kid that hard, no matter
that Denis was being an ass.
    The way his father, equally scared, equally angry, seeing him in
danger, had hit him.
    The camp gates shut, the bar dropped. Cloud, venturing close to
him again, spooked off with an angry whuff of breath, the wildness
Cloud had before storms, deserting him as the other nighthorses,
gathering here and there among the riders, shifted and snorted in
the gathering dark. A group of them spooked off the same way
Cloud had, a muted thunder down the street toward the farther
reaches of the camp.
    The riders around him turned up their collars against the night
wind, thrust their hands into their pockets and, shying from their


RIDER AT THE GATE              ~       23

 own horses, went back into the commons, onto the street, to go
 back to their own precincts, or into the tavern to drink and to
 numb the feeling.
     To kill the anger, as all strong feelings had to die, quickly, in the
 huge, unstable assemblage of Shamesey camp. It was the rule.
     Danny joined the general drift down to the commons, trying to
 subdue his own bit of that prickling storm-sense, trying to forget
 the set-to with Denis, trying to forget his father shouting at him
 and telling him go to hell. Everyone was on edge--his father had,
 he was increasingly convinced, been feeling the rogue-sending
 when he'd hit him. His own nerves had certainly been at the snapping-
 point when he'd hit Denis; and Denis had been on the raw edge, to
 run at him in fear, risking Cloud's vicinity, when ordinarily Cloud
 scared Denis out of reach.
     He'd never seen mind-to-mind panic in action--although the
 boss-man, Lyle Wesson, had had the universal Talk with him, when
 first he and Cloud had come into the camp, novices, confused and
 hostile and scared of everyone and everything. The camp-boss had
 told him in plain words that, being young, he was bound to be stu-
 pid with his feelings at least several times, and that he had better
 get control of his emotions, fast, or find himself out on solitary cat-
 tle watch for the next three moon-chases.
    He remembered that brush of Stuart's presence at the gates, now,
when his own insides had been in turmoil and his brain hadn't been
thinking, just.., he'd wanted, ached for company, the way Stuart
ached for company in these precarious autumn days.., and Stuart's
border woman was for some reason the image that kept coming at
him as if it were his own loss, the unattainable substance of his
wishes, a beautiful, fringe-jacketed rider in the High Wild... copper-
haired woman with the red leaves on all the hills, the object of
more than one of his furtive midnight fantasies.
    He was disgusted with himself, finding his own juvenile priva-
tions echoing off Stuart's earnest grief. It wasn't remotely even for-
givable, God! The rider Stuart loved was a mangled corpse in the
images running horribly under the surface of the minds around
him, Stuart's private pain was echoing at him out of the night and
he had thoughts like that. No wonder even Cloud wouldn't stay by


24  ~:    C.]. Cherryh

him, in the confusion of mating urges he was feeling in his blood--
it was too painful and drove Cloud too crazy, when there was
enough craziness natural in the edge-of-winter ambient.
    He didn't know why he should ache after a woman he'd never
even met, a borderer who wouldn't have given a junior a passing
glance on his best day.
    But Stuart had passed that close to him, with horses nearby--
and a human mind, he suspected by now, was a fiittery, fragile
thing, very much unsure what belonged to it by experience and
what came to it from elsewhere.
    Or--shuddery thought--if it was Stuart he was still hearing, if
it was Stuart's thought coming at them from the hills across the
road--by all he knew, by all he'd heard, also at a winter fireside,
only rogues could send like that. But Stuart wasn't. His horse wasn't.
He wouldn't believe it. Chains of such misfortune were legendary,
one rogue triggering the next--but it was stupid ghost stories, that
was all. Horses and sometimes bears and cats did legitimately go
rogue, that part was real--horses got kicked in the head in some
mating-fight, or got a high fever that damaged the brain, and a
rogue horse--probably a wild one: there were wild herds on Rogers
Peak--had spooked that convoy up in the mountains and sent a
rider and her horse off the edge of the road. All that was true.
    But now, and for no sane reason, all of a sudden rogue rider was
echoing around the ambient, fear spreading out to attack Aby
Dale's partner--as if Stuart had just gone unstable, just like the
ghost stories, only because he'd run from the camp and gone out
alone. But wasn't that what you were supposed to do if you couldn't
hold something in: get away from the horses, get calm, get quiet?
Stuart wasn't crazy. Stuart wasn't any rogue. It wasn't fair or reason-
able for people to think so.  Was it?
    <Cloud?> he questioned the dark, but Cloud didn't answer him.
Either Cloud had gotten out of range, or Cloud was refusing all
dealing with him until he'd gotten himself in hand.
    <Quiet water,> he thought, trying to calm his rattled nerves. He
very much wanted Cloud's comfort right now. He wanted Cloud to


RIDER AT THE GATE              ~       25

 be near him--<soft, beautiful nose, inquisitive black nose, ears up,
 Cloud walking with Danny. >
     But nothing came back but <rocks, and blood.> Constant, now,
 came the erotic urges of horses heading into winter rut: sex and ri-
 valry and anger. So much anger, no focus, and so much fear of insta-
 bility...
    He couldn't even image <still water,> as disturbed as he was. He
looked at the ground as he walked, at the dust, gaslit from the
poles in the tavern yard, determined to notice detail. That was the
last mindless defense against an invading image. He strove to see
individual grains of dust, in the half-colored texture the gaslights
and the lantern light gave to the ground. He noticed how the foot-
prints in that dust were different, the town-made boots, and the
ones more individual, borderers, the sharp, tri-partite hoofprints of
the horses under and over them.
    In that preoccupation he came up among the tables where the
commons gave way to Gate Tavern territory, under the gaslights,
where old Mastraian had his hands full. Mastraian's town help were
bringing out ale by the pitcher-full: nervous kids, slum kids glad to
have any job, even one the preachers said risked their souls, and,
working along with them, rider kids, as yet horseless, and a few
riders so new or so young they welcomed a tavern job to keep
themselves and their horses fed--forage being no viable choice in
Shamesey's civilized lowland, where even open pasture had owners.
    He was a second-year junior. He was far richer than that. He had
his winter account with the camp-boss, money for camp store, the
hostel he stayed in, and another account with Mastraian, beyond
what he'd given his family in Shamesey--he even carried a little
cash in his belt-purse; and the tavern would thank a customer for
cash tonight, he was sure, from anyone who carried it--there were
just too many customers, over half the camp having followed the
disturbance to the gates, for the harried staff to keep tabs.
    So he laid down a five on the porchside counter, in exchange for
which the counter help handed him an empty mug. He found him~
self an empty place at a table, shoulder to shoulder at the end of a
long bench with other juniors and a couple who didn't look at all to
be juniors, man and woman, maybe even borderers, he wasn't sure.


26    ~         C.J. Cherryh

    A mug and five meant you could sit at a table, pour from the
pitchers the servers set out, and drink yourself gradually stupid,
which he was determined to, tonight, for the first time in his life.
His father would be furious if he knew, and quote the preachers
about ale and riot. His mother would be disgusted, and say he was
a stupid kid in bad company, squandering money. Of course.
Squandering was his mother's word. It didn't matter if it was your
money. If you spent money or time on something she didn't like,
you were squandering it.
    He was never so conscious of the wall dividing the camp from
the town, and him from his family. He'd never had a hangover. He
wondered was it as bad as seniors said. He'd spent more money
plastering his family's walls than he'd ever squandered in the Gate
Tavern. He'd bought clothes and gear he had to have, nothing ex-
travagant. He'd bought sweets fce Cloud... who didn't at least cry
over how wonderful the money was and call him a sinner damned
to hell in the same evening.
    The high, reedy sound of a flute had started up, another joined
in oscillating discord, and then the drummers started a wild and
noisy rhythm.
    Nobody could be planning sleep in the surrounding hostels
tonight. A flood of riders left their tables and started dancing in
the commons, some with drinks in hand, men and women in a
mingled line.
    His table mostly cleared in that first wave, and he refilled his
mug and joined what was getting to be a rowdy first-dance line. A
handful of borderers had started a contest of sorts, the show-outs
holding forth inside the meandering lines--lowland riders didn't
do the borderers' steps, didn't do the single-dances like that: he
wouldn't dare go out with them, but he watched, asking himself if
he could keep his balance, if he could do those steps, and trying a
couple of them in the line-dance.
    He found a couple of juniors, both male and girl-less, when the
line broke up into sets. They danced through one mug and a re-
fill--he didn't know one of them except as Lane, a kid from the far
side of Shamesey slum himself. He didn't like Lane much, but that


RIDER AT THE GATE              ~       27

 was no requisite for sets. They danced themselves breathless and
 drank half the refill down.
     Then a couple of borderers, already way too many ales down,
 were spinning past each other with knives flashing, coat-fringes fly-
 ing. The sets line bowed out for fear of mishaps, while the drum-
 mers went crazy, and the hired-help dodged down the line, filling
 outheld mugs and spilling astonishingly little.
     (Follow not the beasts, the preachers said. Avoid ale and riot.
 Dance is the Devil's enticement.)
     He had his mug refilled without asking--without noticing it
 was about to happen; and, out of breath, tried a few of the steps
 he'd seen ....
     Arms hooked his of a sudden, and he found himself snatched and
 spun into another set, arms snagged by two sweating men he didn't
 know, both drunker than he was, and as suddenly found himself
 spun out onto a dance circle, where two borderers beckoned him in,
 wanting him, he feared, to play the female third--
    "No knives!" he panted, and the two, holding each other up,
roared with laughter, grabbed his free arm, and snatched him into a
dizzy circle-dance. Then he just concentrated on footwork to the
drum, round and round and round, with gulps from the mug in be-
tween, matching their consumption the way he matched their
steps.
    Sweat was pouring down his face, despite the chill. He'd picked
up the step, and thought he was doing damned well at it. The beat
became the whole night, the whole universe, so long as his balance
lasted.
    But after two rounds he'd no breath for anything but to take the
good-natured, hard slaps of high country riders on his shoulders
and to weave away, thank God, still able to find his way to a table
and sit down before he made a public staggering fool of himself.
    A server filled his mug. He'd lost count of how many he'd had
out there. Assured of a stable bench under his backside, he sipped
the ale, not because he wanted the alcohol, but to ease a throat raw
and dry from panting.
    Most of the dancers were still going, but the two borderers, after
deriding the junior for flagging, had fallen down at other tables.


28    ~         C.J. Cherryh

The sounds he heard now were all of drums and flutes, the sights
all whirling bodies, recollections of gaslights spinning past.
    Human images, human company ... humans couldn't image to
each other without the horses close, and with the horses absent,
human minds could grow quiet, exhausted, blind, deaf, and voice-
less. The rogue-presence was gone, its burden lifted. Funerals ought
to be loud and raucous, and one could hope the dead woman could
somehow know they'd thrown a good one--borderer that she was,
the camp she'd been intending for her winter-over at least knew she
was gone, and, in that, acknowledged they all were mortal. They
wished the dead rider a good hereafter, if there was one, or at least
wished themselves drink and dance and noise enough to make the
dead hear the party.
    It might ease Stuart's mind if he heard the drums out there in
the dark. He hoped Stuart did know he and the red-haired woman
had friends in camp. He hoped Stuart might come in and have a
drink and sit and mourn in sanity, giving the lie to the fools who,
in their stupid, idle speculation, put the rogue business on the man
who'd only loved that rider--because he'd made them 2%l it; he'd
shoved it at them hard, and their nerves were jangled.
    God, he wanted his family to be safe tonight. He wanted to
know Denis had made it home to bed before the craziness started in
the town, as he very much feared it could. It would be better in
town once the dancing had started and angers fell in camp. It
would be better for the town if, in the Shamesey taverns, there
could be dancing, too, or prayers in the churches, or whatever
calmed hearts and tempers--since the preachers said dancing was
the Devil's way.
    No question that the slum could hear the drums: many the
nights of his life he'd heard the like from that third-floor fiat, lying
in his bed, scared of devils. His family would hear the drums and
flutes tonight and know there was dancing going on. His mother
would be angry and his father would be praying to God to forgive
their wayward Danny for dancing and for drinking and for being
with low minds, that was what his father called it, words he'd
surely gotten from the preachers.
  Low minds, consorters with the beasts.


RIDER AT THE GATE              ~       29

     He'd not asked to be a rider. But nobody, not even the boss-man
 (and he had asked that among the first agonized questions he'd ever
 dared ask the boss) nobody knew why horses picked somebody, or
 why, as the boss said, they'd sometimes travel unaccountably long
 distances in search of someone, the way Cloud had done for him.
     Cloud had just, in the autumn of his second year, wandered
 down to Shamesey looking for someone of a description that some-
 how he guessed he happened to fit.
    Maybe Cloud had found no prospects in the high villages. Maybe
he'd been so persnickety he'd decided to search a really big town,
because there were just more to choose from. Cloud had been per-
sistent about it once he'd arrived. Cloud had hung around Shame-
sey hills, coming down to the town gate at night, scaring hell out
of the gate-guards. The whole town had heard that the night-watch
had been shooting at a horse, which so far they'd been lucky
enough to miss, and the town council had been recipient of an
angry ultimatum from the riders, who took strong exception to the
firing.
    At the time, he'd been solidly on the gate-guards' side, fright-
ened for his town, believing absolutely in his father's hell, and
night after night suffering strange dreams nobody else--he'd tried
to figure if he was the only current case--admitted to.
    He'd been steadily losing sleep and having nightmares about the
gates and the gunfire ever since what the kids called the devil-horse
had shown up. His dreams had finally grown so vivid and his mind
so sleep-cheated and frantic that, after a day of agonizing over the
prospect of another night of such dreams, he'd marched down to
the camp to protest to any rider he could find that he was a good
God-fearing kid, to state that riders were clearly responsible for
protecting townfolk, and to ask that rider how to stop hearing it.
    The rider he'd asked at the safe limit of the gate had taken him,
in his extreme reluctance, right inside the camp where he'd never
been and straight to the camp-boss, whereupon the boss had looked
him up and down for the scrawny, unlikely kid that he was, and
drawled, as if there was certainly no accounting for tastes, "The
horse wants you, that's all."
  Then the boss-man had asked him his name, and said he'd be


30    ~         C.J. Cherryh

living in the camp, soon--told him plainly that he really didn't
have any choice about it, that when a wild horse was sending like
that and you started feeling it as that personal, then pretty soon
you were going to start hearing everything that came along, every
little burrower at meadow's-edge, every bird that perched on the
roof-trees.., the world would never be quiet to you, ever after.
    The boss-man had said that if you got a Call and lost that horse,
you'd never, ever sleep again, and probably you'd go crazy.., so he
might as well take a hike into the hills and let the horse find him.
    The boss-man had lied to him, he'd found out. He'd actually had
a choice. But in the conviction that he hadn't, he'd walked out of
the Gate Tavern and lost his breakfast, right at the camp gate, he'd
been so scared of hellfire.
    Then he'd heard the horse in broad daylight. He'd seen it wait-
ing for him in the hills across the road, hills he couldn't even see
with his eyes from inside the gate: he'd been getting images that
strongly, from that far away. He'd never realized it.
    Clouds across the stars, that was the way Cloud called himself.
Clouds scudding fast, before a storm wind. You couldn't say all of it
aloud, with the rain smell and the shivery chill and all, and he'd
been completely, helplessly swallowed up in it--he'd seen nothing
but that starry sky when he'd begun to climb that same grassy
slope that Stuart had run, and met, past that hilltop and another
one, a horse that decided, finally, it had found a fool who satisfied
its juvenile itches.
    Found a fool that knew where to scratch, of course. Cloud was a
glutton for human fingers.
    Found a town-bred fool who'd fall off and near break his neck
half a dozen times before he quit insisting he was going one way
when Cloud knew very well he was going another.
    It hadn't been easy for a young fool in any sense. Bruised and
skinned on various parts of his body, he'd been, when he'd written
down a message to his family and sent it by a town kid.
    He'd thought a lot about hell in the two days he'd waited for an
answer from his family.
    He'd said, in that message: I can make more money being a
rider, --because his father arid his mother understood money.


RIDER AT THE GATE              ~       31

    He'd said, --We can get the apartment fixed. We can buy a new
drill, one of those electrics--we can bring in a line. He knew his fa-
ther lusted after that, most of all.
    His mother had written back--he still kept the letter, folded up,
in the lining of his coat: Your father hasn't accepted it yet. But he
says you can come in. He doesn't want to hear about the horse.
Come to supper Sunday. We won't talk about the camp.
    That had been the agreement, the condition under which he was
acceptable at his family's dinner table. That and the money he
brought. His evident prosperity. As things were now...
    A lump started gathering in his throat, and he washed it down
with forbidden ale. Now it might be a while before mama could
talk papa into Sunday dinners again. Maybe papa's anger would
stretch into winter--there wasn't much time left in the year.
    You couldn't get hire in winter, to speak of, but there was spring
when all the goods had to move at once, and if he could somehow
come back next spring with a lot of money, papa would be happier.
    And they might have worried about him, a little, if they didn't
hear from him. He could sit in camp all winter and not write. Just
let them worry. Let them wonder if he was mad at them. Or if he
was all right.
    Papa just didn't like to think about the drums and the drinking
and the fornication, that was what papa called it. He hadn't ever
had any chance to fornicate, himself, but it wasn't something you
could argue with papa. In papa's mind fornication and wickedness
was what went on in the camp, all the time, and after the work of
summer and fall, winter was one long misbehavior, that was what
papa called it when papa was being delicate in front of Denis.
    When papa was mad, however, he found that papa had other
words, some of which he hadn't heard even from his friends in
Shamesey streets, words that made him mad, and made him ask
what you learned in church when you got to be his father's age--
he'd never had that in his lessons.
    But if he'd outraged his father and embarrassed him in front of
the church by showing up in rider style, he'd profoundly embar-
rassed his mother, who had to face the neighbors and her cus-
tomers, and them of course all asking questions--like where the


32    ~         C.J. Cherryh

money came from to paint the apartment, and what went on in the
camp, and she wouldn't know, she wasn't interested in hearing it
from him--but nobody was going to believe she didn't. That was
the position he'd put his family in.
    The preachers said once you started hearing the beasts of the
world, you couldn't ever stop, you couldn't come back.., because
once you heard one, then you started hearing all the beasts, even
the little ones. So you slipped deeper and deeper into damnation
and became like a beast yourself.
    That was one thing the preachers said that had turned out to be
true, but not quite the way they'd said: it wasn't like hearing
words. Sometimes you'd just see things, when you were riding out
and about the hills. You'd see yourself and your horse going down
the road, and you'd know you were picking something up from
some little creature somewhere, under the bushes or up the hill.
    And it just wasn't that bad. They were gentle images, most
times, a little spooky toward dark, but you learned very quickly to
tell what was sending it--and mostly the feelings they brought
with them were anxiousness, or curiosity: very few wild creatures
wanted to come near a nighthorse.
    As for the sex his parents imagined ... God, that was a joke. If
you were a townbred junior, you just lay in the dark when the im-
ages came past you from somebody else, as they did, and you tried
to imagine you'd found some rider girl who didn't think you were
pond scum, but there weren't many girls among the juniors.
Shamesey girls didn't come out to the horses. They were too scared
of hellfire, or no horse had ever wanted one. And there were rider
girls, but they all had boys they'd grown up with. So that left a
Shamesey rider on his own at night.
    But, oh, there were women who came into camp, full of myster-
ies a sixteen-year-old couldn't possibly deal with, women in fringed
leather and carrying knives, sun-tanned and wonderful, women
who bunked down mostly with senior riders they personally knew...
a lot richer than he was, and not needing a junior to tell them his
sweaty-palmed aspirations.
  The horses eavesdropped, at the same time, and sometimes


RIDER AT THE GATE    ~:    33

spread feelings all through the den, until, if you were in the vicin-
ity, God help you ....
      Cloud was a pushy horse, and devious, and Cloud flirted with all
the mares. Cloud drove him crazy sometimes.  Like now.
    He finally knew exactly where Cloud was: in the dark of the den
by the gate, not that far out of Cloud's range when Cloud was ex-
cited. And Cloud was sniffing after a mare who was more than in-
terested.
    He couldn't stop it. It wasn't even his right to stop it, the boss-
man had told him that, and the boss-man could as well have left it
off the list of particulars: Cloud would have made him know his
rights and dues beyond any doubt at all.
    The dancing was still going on, a little slower, as everybody ran
out of wind, but craziness was running the camp, with the autumn
cold in the air. So, of course, when he was so buzzed he staggered,
Cloud, with the images of blood and dead females in his head, had
to think, tonight, of sex. God, Cloud had no sense of moderation.
  Nor did the mare.
    Damnation, the preachers said. A nighthorse had no kindness.
Animals had no souls.
    Cloud had no shame, that was sure, and he didn't know how to
be near human beings when Cloud was doing what Cloud was
doing at the moment. He'd danced enough and drunk enough; he
decided he'd better stagger off to bed, which, wobbly as he was,
was just too far, in a cheaper hostel clear around the circuit of the
camp. He only needed a place for an hour or so where nobody
would bother him, where he could suffer Cloud's mate-courting in
private, and sober up enough to walk home, and he didn't want...
  Oh, God.
    He had to get up fast, dazed as he was. He couldn't stay in the
tavern yard. He stood a moment, while images came and went, to
be sure of his feet.
    Then he wandered through the area of the dance, walked his un-
steady way down the street toward the nighthorse den next the
gate, which, sense told him, was where Cloud was doing his court-
ing.


Chapter

  111

DANNY DIDN'T WANT TO GO INSIDE THE DEN. HE WENT ONLY AS
far as its wooden wall, next the end where the earthworks were
piled up to make its sod wall and roof. There he sat down on a pile
of moldering canvas, overwhelmed by the night and the images,
shoved his arms between his knees and tried to subdue an arousal so
intense it didn't let him think. He just stared blankly back at the
tavern yard down the street, an island of light, like one of those
other worlds the teachers talked about, men and women drinking
at the tables, men and women dancing with each other under the
gaslights.
    He saw couples pairing up--one pair very drunk, completely
distracted or as far from their own beds as he was. They didn't wait.
They just did it in the far side of the hostel, in the alley where they
probably thought nobody was watching. He tried not to look, but
he did, and worse.., much worse.., he grew angry along with
watching them. He wanted to kill somebody at the same time, and



RIDER AT THE GATE              ~       35

that j~eling was going through the camp, back again--when it had
left them alone for the last hour or so.
    Stuart... was aware. He suddenly realized that Stuart was
watching the camp. Stuart wanted ... he wasn't sure what. The
angry feeling was coming through the wooden walls, it was coming
through the ground, and his eyes were suddenly full of tears he
didn't know he had. He kept wiping them, and they kept coming,
while, somewhere nearby, Stuart wanted...  Death. Sex. The red-haired woman.
    He~lt Cloud courting the mare, felt the union, the mare's sensa-
tions as well as Cloud's, and he couldn't stand it. He got up from
his place by the den wall and paced the street.
    The urgency and the anger grew less when he was walking. It
slowly became endurable. He walked back and forth in front of the
den, but the nighthorses were all disturbed, now, arousal was epi-
demic, and he found himself walking back down the street toward
the tavern, toward company he didn't really want, but there were
human minds there, and the feeling near the walls and near the den
had been dangerous and full of complex urges he didn't understand.
If it was Stuart, it was gone now. Or farther away. But he didn't
want to stay that near the horses if it started up again.
    The dancing had gotten down to drunken singles, monofocussed
on the intricacy of the steps, while the single remaining drumbeat
had grown erratic.
    He wove back through the tables, at which some slept, some sat
talking in small, sober knots, saner than he was, wiser than he was.
He kept getting images, maybe his own memory, he didn't even
know any longer, the feelings of a dark body, an intense misery of
hurt.
    Overwhelming awareness as a man brushed past him with a con-
tact like electric shock. That man grabbed his arm, faced him about
in a fit of temper. He felt the anger, he instinctively flinched from
the blow--
     But he felt something else flowing through the painful fingers,
burning straight into his gut, and he couldn't breathe. "Damn kid," the rider said, as if that meant dirt.
 He jerked his arm free. The sexual feelings didn't stop. The


36    ~         C.J. Cherryh

anger didn't stop. The rider grabbed him a second time, hard, by
the wrist.
No. Not Stuart. It was the riders who'd talked to Stuart outside.
They'd brought the rogue-image inside with them. They'd felt it
up on Tarmin Height. They were the source of the fear--and the
image. Not Stuart. The riders at the gate had been right to try to
shut them out.
    But you didn't start a fight with anyone with the horses in-
volved, not if you could help it, not for anything. Not for your life,
if you had the least chance of saving it yourself. The men at the
gate had let those three riders in, and the whole camp was in rut
and anger and fear.
    "Easy," the man said. The grip on his wrist hurt, and he was
scared, but Cloud wasn't there to rescue him right now, Cloud was
deep in the sensations of a den gone mad with mating.  "Kid! Dammit/"
    He tried to get free, tried to draw a breath. The rider wasn't the
dark body he felt. He tried to see where he was, ignoring Cloud's
presence, ignoring what Cloud was doing.
    "Friend of Stuart's," the man said. "Friend of his. Get a breath,
kid. Get two." The stranger popped him across the face, back-
handed, enough to sting. A bench came up against the back of his
knees and he fell down onto it. "Dammit, kid, come down. You're
sending it, d' you feel it, do you taste it, are you deaf?"
    The stranger had his attention, now, holding his wrist, trying to
pull him out of the fog, but nothing human or sane got through
the ambient. There was sex, there was anger, there was grief...
they were both caught up in it. A vast, shapeless anger rolled out of
the town streets toward the gates. He felt its frustration and its
fear; he heard the sounds of voices, heard that sound of human be-
ings in a mass, disturbed and angry, outside the camp walls.
    A shot went off from the gates, from the town, from inside the
camp, he couldn't tell--the report rang off walls and echoed off the
hills.
    The rider let him go, turned to shout at people at the tables,
yelling to get the boss, to get somebody to stop it.


RIDER AT THE GATE              ~       3 7

     He didn't know Stop what? except for that anger rolling past the
 camp, toward the road.
     <Rogue-feeling. Trucks racing on a road too steep. The lead
 truck going over, the whole convoy going too fast, the truck miss-
 ing the turn, falling and falling.., like the copper-haired rider...
 falling down and down among the rocks... >
     He didn't want any more. He didn't want to hear it gone over
 and over, and see that woman die and die again. It was Stuart's
 message. It was Stuart's dead. He wanted Cloud. He wanted
 <Cloud,> calling in a night gone mad.  Second burst of gunfire.
    The night exploded. He lurched to his feet, he cried out to his
horse, "Run!" and he was <sliding down off Burn's back,> he saw
<dry grass blurring under them in the dark .... >
    <Horse running,> he thought. <Horse running, running, run-
ning in the dark. >
    He heard Cloud answer, somewhere near, he heard <someone
shouting ....
  < "Open the gates/">
  <Gunshot. >
    Close, quivering echo. Pain hit his right leg and it folded. He
fell on one knee, and a mass of riders broke around him, followed
the man who'd grabbed him, all running toward the shut gates.
Bullets were still flying outside, a ringing, erratic volley of shots.
The echoes came back off the hills--he'd heard hunters' rifles echo
in that strange, hollow way. All his life he'd heard it. He'd heard it
the nights they'd shot at Cloud.
    "Hold it!" the call went out from somewhere down the street.
"Hold those gates! --Dammit, stop where you are!"
    The order went out not only from the camp-boss, it went out
from Dart, too, who was never far from the boss-man, and it shot
straight to the nerves.
      <Gates open. Riders mixing with angry townsmen, men with ri-
ties, nighthorses sending anger, anger, anger-->  <Still water. Instant ice.>
    The old man who walked past him and down to the gates was
crippled. A stick supported him. The nighthorse that came up near


38''-'-'       C.J. Cherryh

him was one-eyed and scarred, but Dart was one loud horse, a force,
with Lyle Wesson to back it, that made nerves twitch and ears
prick up. Danny stood still. Movement had stopped, stopped in the
image, stopped in reality, out beyond the gate.
    But the horse out there on the hill went running, running, and
the rider staggered up, pain shooting through his leg. Danny sat
down on the bench and shivered in the dying mental echoes of the
gunfire.
    <Rider ahorse,> was the image that came to him, to everyone,
he believed, up and down the street. <Horse running into the
dark. >
    Stuart had grabbed that mane and was away. The mob that had
poured out of the town--an irrational, hating thing, as crazed as
the rogue-sending couldn't take Stuart now.
    His leg still ached, telling him that Stuart hadn't escaped un-
scathed. He didn't know why he shared it, but he felt the pain
acutely as he got up, and limped, alone in his area of the street, to-
ward the gates.
    <Danny.> He saw himself, his hand clasped to the hurt on the
side of his thigh. He felt the condemnation he was due, anger at a
junior who had, he realized it now, been dangerously sending out
into the ambient.
    "I'm sorry," he whispered when he got to where Lyle Wesson
stood, hands clenched on his walking-stick.
  "Damned fool," the boss said. "Did I tell you, or not?"
    He tried to image Stuart's helping him. The image went askew. It
was just Stuart, the way he'd been that day on the porch, a stiff,
rain-smelling breeze stirring his hair and the fringes of his jacket. A
downpour grayed the commons. He'd thought even then that it was
no bad thing to be a borderer, free of towns and free of family...
     . . free of a father who, however he excused it, hit him and con-
signed him to hell.
    He didn't want the whole camp to know that, but, humiliated,
he feared they'd all heard. He thought of <wind in the grass, wind
bending the stalks>: that was the earliest image the boss had
taught him to send, to be invisible.
  But he wasn't the only area of disturbance. He heard shouting


RIDER AT THE GATE              ~       39

out in the dark beyond the gates, he heard voices raised in de-
mands. The town wanted the riders to do something. To hunt the
rider down. The town came to the camp with its fears for its safety,
its peaceful sleep---the rich feared for their right to go on as they
always did, oblivious to the Wild beyond their walls, and they de-
manded
    The town could go to hell, he thought, with a lump in his
throat. The town didn't know. The town didn't remotely know
what he was, or what he saw, every day. He lived in a wider, more
vivid, more connected world than he could make his father or his
mother or even Denis understand.
    Danny Fisher damned sure didn't belong in this town any
longer; he'd felt it, in the echoes of the gunfire that still echoed in
his brain.
    The lump in his throat grew larger. The leg ached. He wasn't
aware of Cloud, now, but that was the way it ought to be--the
camp was settling, minds were growing quieter, the pain in his leg
was diminishing...
    He was terribly scared when he thought about what had hap-
pened, how the whole camp, the whole town had been on the edge
of crazy. Everybody was scared now. Even the camp-boss was scared
of the craziness that had almost driven them to do things and feel
things in one mind.
    Mass-hallucinations happened, the borderers reported, in
snowed-in winter camps. They didn't happen in the biggest city in
the world, in a gathering so large, so precarious in its size the riders
themselves argued whether they ought to put limits on their num-
bers and draw lots for who stayed.
    "Break it up!" the boss yelled out across the commons, and
rounded on sobered, scared riders. "Quiet, dammit!"
    Himself, in Wesson's near vicinity, in Dart's, able to feel the
brunt of Wesson's anger, he wished he were far, far elsewhere.
    "Damn you all!" the boss said. "Do you know what you did, yet?
Have you come to your senses? Quieten down! All of you, quiet!"
    He tried, obediently, not to think at all, and the feeling around
him grew measurably less raw, less miserable. The ambient turn-


40        ~ C.J Ch ryh
                         .     er

bled around him with images of <still water> and <quiet sky> and
<gently waving grass. >
    But he'd seen Shamesey tonight in a way he'd never seen it.
Everything he hated about town and everything he feared about the
sheer power of so many minds pushing and pulling at him had
crystallized tonight.
    Maybe it was Stuart's feeling he still had: it could be. He didn't
know, but walls had come down tonight--walls between people,
walls between townsmen and their precious self-deceptions about
safety. His family was so glad of the fresh plaster, so glad of reliable
food on the table.
    But know a thing else about him? They didn't even want to
wonder. They didn't want to understand their hellbound son.
    The preachers said they'd come in ships down from the heav-
ens, the preachers said they'd begun as glorious beings with a
God-given mission to subdue the land and make the fields safe
for humankind and their cattle ... which meant to go out and
make towns and fields and roads as many and as fast as they
could.
    But, doing that, you had to deal with the world as it was, and
you had to have the riders, and somebody had to deal with the crea-
tures of the sinful world, which the preachers said were a tempta-
tion and evil.
    So how did you work it out, that God arranged it so some people
had to sin so the rest could go to Heaven?
    Because if not for the riders, no town would stand, and human
beings wouldn't ever have survived their first winter against the
predators and the nighthorses that loved human minds, loved
human senses, and lusted after their company.
    And how did you work it out that the whole wide world was out
there full of food, and his mother and his father worked so hard to
buy what they could take for free if they just went outside the
walls.
  He wasn't sure. Just... there had to be riders.
  Hear not the beasts, the street preachers said.
    And, while the boss-man called the riders fools, and while others
said they couldn't just let Stuart go off as crazy as he was acting,


                 RIDER AT THE GATE    ~    41

and they had to do something to stop him before he killed some-
body, his own heart was still aching from what he'd learned and his
leg still throbbed with a gunshot that hadn't come near him.
 Wages of sin, the preachers would say.


Chapter

IV

NO SHOT HAD TOUCHED BURN, THE TWO OF THEM RUNNING AND
running on Burn's strong legs. Burn flung off such a dire warning
it became total, mind-absorbing thought for both of them ....
    But came a mortal, moral weariness, finally, on the grassy brow
of a hill well and away and above Shamesey town.
    Burn's sides and gut were aching. Burn's legs shook with exhaus-
tion as he slowed and wandered at a slower pace on the dark and
dangerous slopes.
    Burn stopped, then, with a shake of his neck and a snort of
disgust.
    Guil Stuart looked down from the height on the cluster of
Shamesey lights, lonesome island in the dark of the Wild... and
wished it no good, not Shamesey and not the other coward towns.
Burn would run farther if Burn could. Burn's anger and Burn's de-
sire for blood was no less because he was exhausted. Neither was
his.
  But Burn was a self-saving creature, sane for both of them. Burn


RIDER AT THE GATE    ~    43

would never destroy himself in some mad desire to escape what a
human brain, in its own weighing of priorities, had begun to real-
ize was no immediate threat to them.
    Exhaustion was the enemy. Cold was, in this edge of lowland au-
tumn. He began to realize Burn's aching lungs and wobbling legs
as a distress separate from his own crazed pain, and he slid down
from Burn's bare back to give Burn relief from his weight. He man-
aged, gingerly, leaning on Burn's sweating side, to take his weight
on the wounded leg, which proved to him that at least the bone
wasn't broken.
    A bullet-trace, he decided, feeling it over with his fingers;
leather breeches had split on a nasty raw gouge across the side of
his leg, above the knee. He walked a little distance across the steep,
grassy slope of the hill. It was to test the leg, that was what he said
to himself.
    But he couldn't rest yet. He couldn't stop moving. He wasn't
tired enough to sit down and try to absorb the shock in plain sight
of those smug, safe, lights. He'd start thinking if the pain stopped,
and he wasn't ready to think. He couldn't realize anything yet but
bits and pieces.
  <Aby dead. Lying on the horse. In the rocks.)
    Jonas... Luke ... Hawley... they'd carried on and gotten the
convoy through. Aby'd ridden point at Tarmin High Loop, coming
down Tarmin Climb.
    <High, steep, winding road. Lead truck following Aby, rolling
down to the fatal turn, where the woods came near the road. Rogue
horse--coming from somewhere on the mountain--crazed, sick
from injury--spooking the truckers--trucks going faster and
faster-->
    Images came at him. He wanted not, not, not, to see. He walked
harder and faster, until the pain was affecting his balance, blurring
the city lights and the stars and his recollections alike.
    He slipped on the grass. <Gull falling down,> he saw in his
head. And did, sideways, hard, on one hip.
    He grabbed a fistful of grass and ripped it up. Flung the resul-
tant clod at Burn, wanting no images, no thinking.


44      ~:       C.J. Cherryh

    But the images assailed him anyway, out of his own brain, out of
Burn's, he wasn't sure.
    <Tarmin Climb. Sunlight. Omen and death in every rustling
leaf. The riders going in a group, behind the trucks, not suspect-
ing. Aby alone in front. >
    He thrust himself up to his feet, wide-legged, staggered further,
wanting the pain, cold wind on tracks on his face...
    <Road in the sunlight. Trucks winding down the mountain,
slow, heavy-loaded with rough-cut lumber, with bales of furs, with
broken machinery, craftworks, and such, out of the villages of
Rogers Peak, with the mid-sized tankers supplying the convoy as
well as the villages.
    <Jonas preoccupied with the tankers, that pushed the limit of
length that could get up and down that eroded roadway, bringing
them up last, so if there was bad road and trouble they'd not take
out the road in front of most of the trucks, and not stall the whole
convoy on the steep downhill grade.., now the long straightaway
before the turn-->
  That was the instant, the very instant--
  He didn't want to see it.
    <The road--no idea and no warning that there was a danger
ahead of them. Horse on the mountain--rogue-sending-->
    Jonas, he had no doubt, would have been up there riding point
with Aby if he'd known any danger in the area. But Jonas and Haw-
ley and Luke had been riding tail-guard, all of them worrying about
the trucks, some of the driver-apprentices riding on the running-
boards to watch the treacherous edge, to call out warning where the
tires were--he'd seen that road himself, in Aby's mind, at night,
when they lay close and safe and warm--
    "The horse went with her?" he'd asked Jonas, when he'd talked
with Jonas and his partners outside the camp gates, because he'd
known, he'd known all of it he could possibly face in Jonas' first
thought, and believed in that first heartbeat that Aby had died in a
slide, not uncommon on the road.
    "It wasn't a slide," Jonas had said, then, grimly, arms folded, eyes
downcast to the withers of his horse, and he saw <Aby lying next
dead horse. Blood. Aby's red hair. >


RIDER AT THE GATE              i~      45

    And immediately--maybe not Jonas' intentionmhe'd gotten all
that the nighthorses had seen, all that the riders knew. He'd felt for
himself the disintegrated horror of the sending that riders and
truckers and horses had picked up at the edge of that woods on
Tarmin Height.
    <Something in the woods. Something deadly, at the forest edge,
something disjointed, dissolute.., distant, then. Calling for them.
Wanting them. Wanting them all. >
    Riders never used loud voices. Sometimes you got almost out of
the habit of speaking aloud or parceling out thoughts in human
words. Sometimes you forgot you had a voice, or what to do with
it.
    He'd have screamed at Jonas to shut up, let him alone. He'd for-
gotten how to make such sounds at need. Or, rider-born, never
learned how at all.
    "Stuart?" Jonas Westman had said, maybe wanting to tell him
more than he had already said, but he couldn't bear it. And Jonas
had known, and thought <Snow. Cold, white, trackless snow,> as
Jonas would, when things went wrong. "Guil. We'll hunt it. We'll
get it .... "
    But he'd already started to run--run and run to clear the vicin-
ity, run until his lungs hurt, until pain and lack of wind had wiped
his mind clear.
    Run until Burn had caught him, and carried him away up the
steep hill.
    He'd had no idea even where he rode, after that. And he'd
thought ... his first sane thought ... that he had, for numerous
reasons, to go up to Tarmin before the snows closed the passes.
That had made sudden, necessary sense to him. Kill the rogue that
had killed Aby and haunted the convoy down the mountain. Jonas
didn't want to go back. Jonas had enough bad dreams.
    And he'd known, when he'd thought that far, in the carefully
guarded, piece-by-piece way he dared let conclusions form in his
mind now, that he needed his rifle, that he'd left in his hostel room.
All he owned was there.
  <Gates in the darkness. Bell-arch of Shamesey camp. >


46    ~         C..J. Cherryh

    (Main gates opening, to Shamesey town itself. The night-guard
with their long rifles... >
    The gun and the gear he needed was all he'd asked, his own be-
longings, when he'd gone toward the gates. He thought, at least
now, that he'd only wanted that, and that he'd never harbored any
darker intentions against the camp.
But the town had come out to resist him--for no reason.
<Death. Hate. Dissolution and open space, rider and horse swept
away in front of tons of metal, at the turn. The truck going off the
edge in dreadful slowness, the driver trying to clear the truck, door
open, as it slides off the edge.., but the rider and the horse go
quickly and together. >
    <Dead. Dissolved. Blood on the rocks. But the riders can't go
down to her, can't reach her, where she'd fallen, without risking
lives. Boss trucker is angry. The riders, spooked and uncertain,
leave her for the slinking carrion-eaters. Damn them. Damn the lot
of them. >
    The night-watch had shot at him out of fear. The riders of
Shamesey camp had kept within their gates--for fear of him.
    That should tell him something of what sane people felt in his
anger and his intentions, and maybe the townsmen had been right.
He didn't trust himself to try another approach to the town, least of
all to talk to Jonas, whose decisions had been coldly, professionally
correct. Save the convoy. Get it safe. The dead could wait for the
scavengers. Even Aby.
    The hazard of autumn was in the wind and the grass, in the cold
which seeped from the air into the bones, like solitude, like chill,
like foreknowledge of luck turning brutal and foul. And his anger
was too profound, too broad, too unreasoning to be only his anger.
Other resentments had gotten loose in Shamesey camp. Other rea-
sons had risen up and taken on life in the town. It was no place for
an angry man to stay.
    He wiped at his face. The ache in his leg so long as he walked
absorbed all his logical thinking, a cherished, protective pain. He
wasn't thinking at all clearly in such weather. Nighthorse instincts
were in the way, coloring everything, making everything raw emo-


RIDER AT THE GATE              ~       47

tion ... even before the rifle shot had resounded off the walls, even
before the blinding red and the pain had washed across his mind.
    Just... he couldn't think clearly now what to do. He was think-
ing Burn's thoughts, and they were all anger; all selfish.., bit-
ter.., anger.., at the town that wasn't at fault for wanting lum-
ber and comforts for the winter.
    He wanted someone to die, he wanted to see it, he wanted to do
it with his own hands...
    He wanted Shamesey town to know a woman had died so that
they could have light and heat and repair for their walls, and they
could go to hell for it.
    But she was only a rider, only a damned-to-hell rider, it didn't
matter to them, they didn't need to care. Shoot the horse if a rider
went like that. Make sure it was dead. That was all they'd want to
know.
    He could take to the hills, go south, not north, and he and Burn
could forget what they couldn't mend--they didn't need to avenge
Aby's death. It just was. What had killed Aby and Moon had no re-
lation to anything, no grudge, no personal reason. It just was. And
if in winter snows it came down the mountain, if it haunted the
road next season, if it killed villagers or townsmen, what did he
care?
    If Shamesey went without lumber or tin next year, what should
he care ?
    That more riders could die by the thing that killed Aby, all
right, he did care, little that it deserved. He didn't owe any of
them, didn't get any damn help from them, not even from Jonas.
He didn't know why he shouldn't let someone else hunt the thing.
He could live elsewhere. He could find other hire. No place and no
person mattered to him with Aby gone. She had brought him into
towns. She'd always been the go-between for him with people.
    But his dreams wouldn't change until the rogue was dead. And
he would dream about it. He'd wonder every night whether it was
still out there, still surviving, still sending out the images that lied
to horse and rider about what was friend and foe, or where the edge
of the road was ....
  Walk and walk, and walk, and he found himself walking north


48    '~:       C.J. Cherryh

across the slope. He found Burn trailing him, aching-tired himself,
waiting for a foolish rider to fall down again.  <Guil sitting down. Legs ache. >
    <Town lights,> he imaged in his own turn, not consciously
thinking. Town was just too close, too dangerous, too loud, too
evocative of anger.
    <Hills and grass in the moonlight,> Burn answered him. <Hills
and grass. Hills and grass.> Burn shook himself, and snorted. An
image of blood and raw meat. <Kill cattle. >
    Burn didn't forgive. Burn might lose his train of thought and
forget. But Burn didn't know how to forgive.
  It was why he kept walking.

"Hunt him down," was Ancel Harper's word in hastily convoked
Meeting, in the tavern yard under the gaslights, in the small hours
of the morning. "He's Shamesey's problem."
    No, Danny Fisher wanted to say, and half-choked on the impulse
to rise and protest.
    But other, senior, riders stood up from the benches without hesi-
tation and said no, there was no call for such drastic measures.
    "He wanted what's his," one of that number said. "His belong-
ings are all in camp. He has a right to ask for them."
    "He has no right, after what he's caused," somebody else
shouted, and a dozen riders from Hallanslake got up and added
their voices.
    "We come down here to the lowlands for a quiet, safe camp," the
Hallanslake leader said. "I knd~ what I'm talking about. A man
running up in the hills is one thing. Coming down to town is an-
other. Stuart's gotten riders killed. He's a spook. He's always been a
loner and that horse of his is another. He's got a grudge and he's
not going to let it go. I tell you, you stop it now! You hunt Stuart
out of the district, or you shoot him and his horse!"
    "No," the general murmur rose in rebuttal; Danny said so, too,
under cover of the others, but the Hallanslake rider didn't give an
inch.
    "That's what you do, that's what you have to have the guts to do.
That's a borderer up there hovering over this town. He knows what


RIDER AT THE GATE    ~    49

he's asking for, staying around here, spooking the town into riot.
You got fifty, seventy thousand people in town here, a lot of them
not liking each other. You want to think, boss-man, about what
could happen in the streets the other side of that wall if he panics
this town? Stuart's as crazy as what killed that woman up in the
hills--that's how they go, one to the next--the sickness spreads.
You got to shoot both of them, fast, so they don't know one's dead!
It spreads, boss-man! I've been there! I know?
No! Danny Fisher thought, and before thoughts could get far:
"No," the camp-boss growled, and hammered the table with his
fist. Crippled in a fall, and survivor of one horse already, Lyle Wes-
son might ride when he had to go any distance and he might use a
stick when he had to cross between two tables in the tavern, but
the strength in the man and the force of mind in old Dart made the
skittery, jittery feelings in the air subside instantly, and let a scared
junior sink gladly back into his seat with his objection unmade, at
the same time the Hallanslakers sat down, sullen-minded and
angry and not giving in.
    A junior hadn't any right to speak ahead of the seniors, except he
was Shamesey-born, and they were Shamesey townsfolk who'd shot
Gull Stuart tonight, calling Stuart a threat, which wasn't at all the
truth, the way Stuart's horse wasn't a rogue. He knew it wasn't, but
more surely, Cloud knew, the rest of the horses knew, and the boss-
man knew, so the whole camp had to know. They were here to talk
about the rogue that had spooked a convoy off the road on Rogers
Peak, and here were Harper and his friends talking as if Stuart was
the real threat, right here in Shamesey. The whole camp had lost
their minds. Or it was the spooked riders, the ones that had come
in with the news. They were here, and maybe the source of what
Harper thought he felt~ Fear of a rogue had gotten loose in the
camp, and after that, it came from everywhere. But a junior couldn't
stand up and say his seniors were all being fooled.
    Fact was, half the riders in the meeting weren't wholly sober,
some were surly--a couple were unconscious, face down on the ta-
bles, though a whole lot had sobered when the gunfire went off,
and more when the boss-man had said there was Meeting, now,
fast.


50  ~ C.J. Cherryh

    He was one who had sobered mightily, even before Wesson's
call--and he'd tried, well knowing that he wasn't at his sharpest,
and far from experienced in a situation like this, to do exactly what
the boss had said, namely to keep his mind quiet, because even
with the whole Gate Tavern yard and the open commons for the
Meeting, even with all the horses except Dart requested out of the
gate area so that humans had to say things aloud to each other and
not image at all, he wasn't sure things didn't leak out and get back
and forth to horses and humans anyway, the way they'd certainly
done a couple of hours ago, when the horses had all caught the
same image at once.
    Ancel Harper said he'd seen a rogue once. He said he'd seen a
dozen riders go with it. He said it was like what they'd just felt,
only a hundred times worse.., he said a rogue could send over an
entire valley, and trick you into seeing things where they weren't,
and make you want it bad until it killed you, because that was
what it would do when you got close to it.
  Harper said there was one cure, an ounce of lead.
    Harper and the Hallanslakers--Danny had never met anybody
like them in camp, riders who just didn't listen to what people
said, who, when they got an image and a horse was near, turned it
inside out, to what they wanted. In his mind, they were crazy as the
rogue, but he tried not to think that: they also carried knives, and
he didn't think they were an empty threat.
    But by the time he'd figured out what Harper and his lot stood
for, there were more moderate voices, older riders, to stand up one
by one and severally and demand that the camp-boss should deal
with Shamesey town and negotiate Stuart's right to come back
when he was indisputably sane, as riders could clearly judge better
than townsmen.
    "Now wait," another rider stood up to say, now, Yeats, a senior
Shamesey rider. "Now, I don't agree with the Hallanslakers, that we
need go shooting at shadows--but I don't hold we should take Stu-
art's side against the town, either. It sets a bad precedent, a bad
precedent, backing a rider who breaks the major rules."  "Now, wait a minute," a woman said.
  "Rules," Yeats said, raising his voice, "as seem clear enough to


RIDER AT THE GATE              ~       51

us. Stuart stayed on in the area, Stuart came near the wails. The
watch hadn't a right to shoot, but they were skittish, they had a
crowd out there--"
  "Damn right, they haven't a right!" came from the back.
    "It was Stuart's doing that a crowd gathered," Yeats shouted,
"and it was Stuart's fault! If Stuart had a sane thought left, he
should have got the hell all the way out of Shamesey fields when he
knew he was losing his hold. But he doesn't want out of Shamesey
district, does he? That's why he's stayed out there!"
    "God's sake, Yeats!" A borderer stood up, wobbly on his feet.
"You got his gear and you got his gun--he come back after his
gear, you damn fool!"
    "I got the floor! I'm saying we got excitable townsmen all over,
we got horses upset, we got riders upset--it shows clear enough
what we've been saying for three years, now: boss-man, you got to
thin the camp down--"
  Riders hooted, from all over the assembly.
    "Yeah, you go first, Yeats!" somebody yelled from back in the
crowd, then the drunk borderer was yelling something, not sitting
down, and Wesson banged on the porch with his cane. Dart started
imaging (Still water. Still grass,, until at last Yeats and the bor-
derer sat down, and the silence was thick enough you could breathe
it.
    Yeats was off on a different issue: the number of riders gathered
at Shamesey--and Shamesey riders had argued before against let-
ting the camp get as large, and consequently as unstable, as it
was--but the riders that came from outside said it was just Shame-
sey riders wanting exclusivity on the best jobs and the comforts of
the biggest town there was.
  "Jim," Wesson said, "keep to the Stuart business."
    "It is the Stuart business," Yeats said. "This is what we're going
to get more of if we don't thin down the winter-camp and put some
restrictions on how many out-of-district riders we're going to camp
here! Shamesey valley's big enough--build a camp down at the end
of the valley! Build it up on the foothills! There's no way the snows
are going to cut offvalley roads!"


52    ~         C.J. Cherryh

    "Yeah, on whose land?" somebody yelled. "The town council
isn't going to give up a foot of pasture!"
  Yeats was right, in Danny's estimation.
    Unfortunately so was the rider right when he yelled out about
the council not giving up any land: rich people decided everything,
and the rich people in Shamesey didn't feel the dreams that came
through the camp walls on an uneasy, stormy night, didn't lose
sleep the night through with the autumn urges only people like
his family did, old and young alike, and girls got pregnant and
godly folk prayed and sweated and prayed to send the devils away.
It was the lowtown folk who'd come out with guns. People like his
family. It was people like his father and his mother and his brothers
who'd gone stark crazy and shot at Stuart.
    People of the same town-bound, mind-blind sort that he'd used
to be, before Cloud called him in his dreams.
    He hoped Denis hadn't gotten swept up in the crowd that was
shooting; he desperately wanted to know where his family was and
that they were safe. But he couldn't go into town tonight. Maybe
not for a lot of nights. Couldn't--a lump formed in his throat--so
much as offer his help to his father to keep him safe, when he could
do as much for any trucker in the outback.
    "All that's beside the point," a borderer stood up to say. "What
Shamesey is, Shamesey chose to be. It can't ever go back to being a
small town. We get your trucks through and we got our right to
camp here. And the whole damn valley had better get off Stuart's
back. This town had better hope Stuart goes up to Tarmin and
finds what's up there before winter falls, or you're losing Anveney
province, Shamesey boss. That thing that got Aby Dale won't stay
away from the villages up there. And maybe if it gets a village or
two, it might come down to Shamesey to hunt around spring melt.
When a horse goes bad, it wants human company, and there's noth-
ing but a bullet through the brain can stop it. So you better quit
arguing about how many riders we have in this camp and Stuart
and your piddlin' rules--and start worrying about that rogue horse
up there!"
  "That's saying Stuart's going to do a damn thing he ought!"


RIDER AT THE GATE              -~--    53

Ancel Harper stood up to say. "He's not going to stay away from
Shamesey. He'll be back."
    "That's tomorrow's trouble!" a borderer shouted, and stood up.
"And it isn't proved, Hallanslaker! There's never been a rogue come
into this district!"
    "You'll see it proved when you've seen a man and a horse go
bad--and I have, Reney, I've seen it, don't you tell me what's not
proved! I've felt it, don't you tell me what's like and not like! You
want to~el it, Reney? Come outside camp and I'll show you!"
  "That's no call to go after Stuart!"
    "I'm telling you he's a danger. He's already spooked the town--
and he's not going to let go and go away. You got people out with
guns in the town streets, Wesson. You're going to have people
killed over there if you don't get Stuart shut down--"
    "Hold it, hold it, hold it!" Lyle Wesson yelled, pounding the
table. But people had started shouting at one another, and got to
their feet, and started yelling at each other about hazards to the
camp, about outsiders, which Stuart was, and which the Hal-
lanslakers also were, but the Hallanslakers seemed to have forgotten
that point, or Harper had. Harper started yelling at Lyle Wesson
that they had to hunt Stuart and his horse, and Lyle Wesson banged
his stick down on the table.
    "Shut the hell up!" Wesson shouted. "And let's talk about the
trouble in Tarmin Height. Let's talk about clearing that road of a
hazard, and keeping the thing away from the villages up there on
the Loop this winter. That's our business, if you'd shut the hell up
and quit stirring things up, Harper!"
    Tarmin was where Stuart was going, Danny Fisher thought, cer-
tain as sure. The skin on his arms stood up in gooseflesh. His legs
just moved--and he was standing, and the boss was looking at
him. Everyone was.
    "Stuart's going up there," he said, too quietly, he thought, but a
leaf-fall would have made a sound in that silence. He sat down
again, hugged his arms about him and wanted not to make another
sound.
 Lyle Wesson said, "Going up where, Danny Fisher?"


54        "--' c.J Ch ryh
                         .     er

    "To find what killed her and that truck driver. He's going up to
Tarmin to stop it, just like you said."
    "He's shown no sign of leaving, yet," a Hallanslaker shouted.
"What's the kid got? A phone line to God? Stuart's a danger to the
whole camp! Shoot him and the horse before he comes back! The
town may not have a second chance!"  "No!"
    It was a voice he'd heard before this night---one of the strangers,
the one who'd accosted him, the one who'd called him seriously to
task for giving way to his panic. "The kid's right. He's going up
there. Absolutely that's where he's going."
    "So you say!" the Hallanslaker shouted. "We got this town at
risk! You're not going to get any help out of Stuart!"
    And another of his lot: "The Shamesey riders already say the
camp's too large, the town's too large--you let a rider run amok
around Shamesey fields, what do you look to have? Murders in the
streets? Bodies stacking up like cordwood? You don't trust Stuart'U
do any damn thing he ought to. Hell with him handling the
Tarmin rogue--he spooked the whole damn town! Shoot him, I
say! Then we'll handle the Tarmin problem!"
    The ambient was miserable. The rider next to Danny got up and
left.
    He stayed. He said, standing up again and forcing the words
through a throat that seemed too small, "He's wrong."
    "Who's he?" a Hallanslaker asked. "Who is this kid, some kin of
Stuart's?"
    His voice stalled. He cleared his throat with an effort and prayed
it wouldn't crack. "I'm not any kin of his. But he's already left. He's
not crazy. He's done what you say and left the town the way he's
supposed to. He just wants quiet for a while."
    "How do you know?" one of the Shamesey riders asked him, and
he retorted,
  "I heard him go."
    "Heard him go. Sit down, junior, till you know what you hear
and don't hear."
    He was standing alone against a senior, mad, uncertain of his
facts, his face gone hot.


RIDER AT THE GATE ~ 55

  But another man stood up, Stuart's friend. "Kid's right."
    "Then that's you and the kid," Harper yelled, on his feet again,
"against all of us!"
    "Four of us," one of the other strangers said, on his feet, and the
other man stood up. People started yelling again, and more and
more people were getting up, Hallanslakers and other borderers in
a shouting match.
    "All right, all right," Wesson shouted, banging his stick on the
boards. "So shut up! If he goes to Tarmin and deals with it, our
problem's solved, if everybody just calms down. Just shut up and
let a man breathe."
    "Somebody better go," a Shamesey woman said, "somebody bet-
ter track him to be sure he clears the area."
    "Somebody better be sure what's up on Tarmin gets dead," a
Shamesey senior said. "Somebody should have taken care of it when
the thing showed. Convoy or not, you had your best chance--"
    "We had three of us left!" the foremost stranger said. "Aby Dale
was our convoy boss! We were short-handed as was. We had trucks
to get down off that road! You ever been outside a pasture, Shame-
sey man?"
    <Ice, > hit the ambient. A winter's day. And the crack of Wes-
son's cane. "Shut it down!" Wesson said. "Enough damn should-
haves! They didn't have that option so long as they had the convoy
in their charge!"
  "So.>"

    Debate started again. Riders swore, and more of them got up
and stayed on their feet.
    Wesson banged his stick on the porch rail. "Stuart's Dale's part-
ner. He has a right--first natural right to deal with that thing on
Tarmin Ridge. But so have the villagers on Rogers Peak a right to
their safety. And so have townsmen down here in the plains a right,
and us in their camp, we've got rights! If Stuart has gone up there,
well and good. But if he can't do it..."
    "It's not our responsibility!" the Shamesey rider yelled. "I'm not
risking my neck up there!"
  "Yeah, go guard cattle! Nobody asked you!"
  Shouting started again. Danny sat down and sat still, trying not


56    ~         C.J. Cherryh

to shiver, trying not to think. Horses had strayed near enough,
called by the disturbance of their riders. They made the very air
electric with disturbance. But Dart was nearest of all of them, and
Dart was damned angry.
    "Shut up!" Wesson yelled. Danny's fingers were clenched so tight
on his seat they ached, and for a moment he couldn't breathe.
    But the lead stranger, unlike others, hadn't sat down. "Boss-
man." He held the center of attention, his arms folded, face grim
and downcast. "Friends should go after him. If he goes over the
edge.., friends should make sure of him and do what has to be
done. Or help him get that thing. We're ready to go up there."
  "You naming yourselves?" Wesson asked.
    "Three of us," the man said. "Jonas and Luke Westman, Hawley
Antrim, all out of the MacFarlane. We'll take his belongings to
him, we'll catch up with him and we'll bring him back sane. We'll
have that thing out of the heights. Aby Dale was a close cousin of
Hawley's."
  "Settled, then," Lyle Wesson said.
    Discontent prickled through the air, a quiet muttering, no one
satisfied.., or someone utterly dissatisfied.
    "Beds and quiet," Lyle Wesson said, levered himself up with his
cane, and abandoned the porch for the inside of the tavern, where
the powers in the camp repaired to talk about things juniors didn't
need to know--Danny knew that much about the politics of
Shamesey camp.
    And he supposed it would happen now the way the boss said. He
hoped it would. He looked askance at various individuals of the re-
treating crowd, hoping he hadn't made a permanent and grievous
mistake by speaking out like that and setting himself up to argue
with his seniors. He didn't know why he'd done it, except his fa-
ther always said he never could keep his mouth shut.
    He walked away across the yard, onto the commons and the
street, wanting Cloud, wanting the steadiness and the quiet Cloud
could give him. He intended to take Cloud back to the den far
around at the hostel where he stayed.
  But he felt a restraining hand on his arm--and looked around in


RIDER AT THE GATE              ~       5 7

 panic. He'd not heard the rider who, soft-footed and shadowless in
 the dark, had overtaken him.
      "Why'd you speak up for him?" It was the leader of the
 strangers. The one who'd spoken most.
   "I don't know. Stupid, maybe."
   "You know him."
    "He helped me once. We talked. He didn't have to. He gave me
good advice."
  "The leg hurt?"
    He didn't know how the man knew. He wasn't limping. He
started away into the shadows of the street without another word,
but he didn't see the den, he saw (rider on the hill.~ He heard
~gunfire echoing off town walls,v and flinched from the shot so
badly he almost fell.
    The rider wanted his attention. And got it, with that transmit-
ted memory.
      "Jonas is my name," the stranger said. "Jonas Westman. You
heard him louder than we did. Why?"  "I don't know!"
    "Kids do sometimes. Kids don't know to stop. Don't know to
wall things out. Don't know when they're hearing and when they're
making it up."
  "I didn't make it up. It hurt."
    "You could be a help to us. You could be a real help. Stuart
knows you. You can hear Stuart. You want the high country. We
can take you there."
    He didn't know how the man knew what he wanted--or
whether Cloud, who longed for the High Wild, had betrayed
him.., because when the man offered, he suddenly wasn't think-
ing only about helping Stuart, he was thinking about why he'd
gone to Stuart with his question in the first place, he was remem-
bering that longing he had that wasn't logic, just a condition--like
dreaming about the unattainable stars. And Cloud wanted to go.
Cloud wanted to take him up to the High Wild where Cloud had
come from--Cloud hated Shamesey, hated the cattle, hated the
town and hated the smell and the crowding; and that town was all
his very junior, townbred rider could give him.


'""                      ryh
58    ~         C.J. C her

    He wasn't sure Cloud wasn't listening now. He felt that all-over
tingle of longing that wiped out every clear consideration to the
contrary.
    "You have a partner in camp?" Jonas Westman asked. "You got
leave to take? Anybody to go with you?"
    Rider conversations ran like that, when the horses were too close,
mediating half of it. He didn't know he'd agreed. It played hob
with negotiations. And Jonas Westman knew his answer: he caught
the echo back from Westman, a kind of confused imaging, <the
house, Denis ... in the streets, with the gunfire going off.> The
kid would have been scared.
  No. He'd have run to see, the stupid kid.
    "No kin in camp," he said, reasoning that Denis was beyond his
reach. Or his harm. "In town, yeah, family, --but I could drop
dead. I'm nothing to them."
    The borderer had to know the ambivalence in the anger. The
hurt. The offended pride. He'd not made friends in camp. The ju-
niors from Shamesey district, even the rider kids, were all too
touchy, too protective. Everything in juniors felt raw, exposed, feel-
ings left open to every passing opinion--and he was, right now,
scared of this Jonas Westman in the same way he'd been scared
going to Stuart with his questions.
    And as careful as he'd been, Stuart had had to slap him down,
and remind him to mind his own edges, just the same as this man
was telling him--this man who'd learned everything about the
aching ambition of his young, debt-plagued life in two short sec-
onds, while he still knew nothing whatsoever about Jonas Westman
except that he called Guil Stuart a friend and was, if things went
wrong up there, willing to shoot Stuart and Stuart's horse both.
But this wasn't a bad man. He didn't think so. They'd been
spooked. But they'd tried to keep the terror bottled up and not to
let it loose: they'd certainly helped settle things down at the
meeting.
  "You going?" Jonas asked.
     "Yessir," he said, feeling he'd just stepped off a cliff. Pride didn't
 let him go back on that, not even when the agreement was just a
 second out of his mouth. "Depending on my horse."


RIDER AT THE GATE              -----~  59

    "Always depending," the senior rider said. "That's a given. Come
on. Let's talk."
    It was harder and harder to back out, when he found himself
trekking along with the stranger through the edge of the gaslight,
knowing he'd talked himself into something Cloud wouldn't let
him back out of. He was sure now that Cloud knew and wasn't say-
ing no, not to the proposition nor to the company he was in.
    <Mountains. Snow,> he kept seeing, and <gray, scudding clouds
around the peaks. >
  Cloud's name, in its endless variations.
  Cloud's freedom from Shamesey smokes and the minds of cattle.
  How could Cloud's rider say no to that?


Chapter
V

THE SUN WAS COMING. THAT WAS THE SURE PROOF THAT THE
world had rolled on without much giving a damn. Something died,
something became something else's supper, something brand new
saw the dawn, and the world was still here.
    Guil Stuart became aware of that fact, sitting, blanketed in
grass, against Burn's warm and breathing side, and watching the
stars go out above the plains that began at Shamesey town--watch-
ing what, in the mountains, you couldn't see: the edge of the
world, where the illusory daylight began, unraveling the night
along a long seam of light.
  Almost cloudless morning.
  Nice day.
    His leg hurt. Damn stupid, walking on it. It didn't want to bend
now. He supposed it would, once he warmed up: his legs were
numb and his backside was feeling the chill seeping up through the
grass mat from the ground beneath. His hands were icy cold...
he'd come away with no hat, no scarf, no gloves, and he'd waked


RIDER AT THE GATE              ~       61

with a pale rime of frost on the ground, on the leaves of knifegrass
he'd cut for a lap-robe, and on the toes of his boots. If he moved, he
might lose the grass he'd so meticulously arranged, which would
expose his arm and shoulder to the icy cold, while the other arm,
the one against Burn's body, was comfortably warm, so he chose not
to move, and not to disturb Burn's sleep.
    It seemed not but an hour or so ago that they'd settled to rest,
unable to go on, Burn aching from the effort and unwilling to take
another step. Burn had settled on the ground to sleep, not Burn's
habit when the ground was this cold, but Burn's legs were tired.
    So, having been so bright as to have left his pocket matches and
his glass with his guns and his trail gear (God, it was slovenly camp
habits he'd fallen into lately, having no glass and no matches on
him; but, hell, he hadn't expected to be on his own in the Wild in
what he stood in, either) he'd done the best he could. He'd cut the
tall plains grass for a mat to keep Burn's belly warm and for a cover
for himself. He'd been too tired to weave strip-and-tie mats--the
cold hadn't been that bad, and his eyes had kept shutting while he
worked.
    But he'd worked up a sweat doing it. And hurt the leg, like a
fool. But it was numb with the morning cold, not too bad. The side
of him next to Burn was downright warm.  If he didn't move, Burn wouldn't.
    Aby died, and the morning after, the uncaring sun came up, and
the man who, alone in the world, ought to be broken-hearted, was
busy preserving his own warm spot in the frosty dawn, moving his
toes in his boots to be sure they would move.., first small venture
of his mind out of its deliberate search for pain and distraction, and
it wasn't so bad, the world wasn't, the cold wasn't, the sun wasn't.
It was incredible it all went on, but it did, and he found he did,
miraculously sitting on the other side of a black pit he just couldn't
look into yet.
    He wasn't interested to look. Aby was gone and there wasn't
anything profitable in that dark, crazed night past, the night he
could remember only because some fool townsmen had tried to
blow his leg off.
  Fool rider, far more to the point. He'd risked Burn, going down


62    ~         C.J. Cherryh

there in the mood he was in, and he was bitterly angry with himself
for that. He'd lost all his gear but the knives he carried, but, hell,
he deserved to lose it for what he'd done, and Shamesey could keep
it for good, before he'd go whimpering back to Shamesey camp
gates, saying he was all right now and could he have his guns back?
He knew why the gate-guards had fired at him--it wasn't a justi-
fied fear: he hadn't been beyond controlling himself until they'd
shot at him, but that didn't matter in townsman accounts They
just wanted what they wanted, thought what they wanted to think,
and they could go to hell and keep what they wanted.
    His frame of mind didn't matter much to the camp-boss either,
who just wanted peace in his camp, and no troubles. Wesson might
even agree to take him back into camp, but there'd be somebody
tagging him the entire winter, and there'd be quarrels lurking.
He'd been surprised to find Harper and his cronies in camp when
he'd gotten there. He hadn't liked it, and he wasn't limping back
there to try to restrain his temper in Harper's case, not this season.
Figure that Harper would push until he got something There was
too much between them.
    Death happened. Riders died. Mostly they died young and by
surprise, a nasty quick accident in storm or slide or some hole in a
river-bottom. Moon had gone along with Aby, which was the best
way, rider and horse at once, nothing untidy, a minimum of
pain... Aby couldn't leave Moon. That pair couldn't be split.
    He could take to the road and go on down toward the coast, to
Malvey town. He knew riders who might winter there, and he
liked them better than he knew or liked folk in huge Shamesey
camp.
  Ava Cassey might be at Malvey, freckled Ava, who...
     . . who wasn't Aby, dammit, who was far short of Aby's mea-
sure, and who, good-natured as she was, didn't deserve to put up
with a man constantly moping about that fact. The horses didn't
leave you much illusion. No polite lies. No self-deceit, for that
matter.

     A lump gathered in his throat. The stinging in his eyes wasn't
 the cold. The rime-ice showed white crystals on the grass as the sun
 slowly widened its eye--showed white on his boot-seams, on his


RIDER AT THE GATE              ~       63

 toes, but Burn was a warm lump against him, and under Burn's
 mane he had a warm place for his fingers.
     He sat there watching the sun come up, watching the sky be-
 come pinkly opaque, and the autumn grass go to golds and pale
 browns, with here and there the dark brown seed-spikes of what
 was, in summer, gold and red-flowering fireweed.
     The frosts came steadily now. Most mornings like this one
 showed rime. Green and gold-green died. The browns and the reds
 came into their own season, on the foothills first, then on the
 rolling plains.
    So very few times anybody could count on seeing that change.
You thought you'd see it forever. You thought you were immortal.
But what had Aby gotten? Twenty-six times the seasons turned,
twenty-six autumns, twenty-six times to see the fireweed die and
the snows fall, and three and four and five of those times being a
clingy brat kid who didn't pay attention.
    You got only so many nights to see the stars. You got only so
many sunrises. Shouldn't a man go out from under roofs and look at
them?
    Maybe that was the poison in towns like Shamesey, or grim, gray
Malvey, where factories smoked the pristine sky.
    Only so many times to make love. Only so many frosty morn-
ings.
    A man should wake up and know he couldn't buy one, not for all
the townsmen's money. The days came to you and you didn't know
how many you'd get.
    He couldn't know, for instance, if he'd ever see the seeds of those
brown spikes grow up gold again, or the flowers flaming red. He
should have looked more carefully at the summer fields.
    He should pay attention to the frost this morning. He should
look at the wispy pink of the clouds and know he was using up his
ration of them.
  <Bacon frying. >
    That was the happiest thing Burn knew. By which he knew that
Burn was awake and pigs were in danger.
  <Fat bacon. Smoky taste. Warm on a winter morning. >
  "Haven't got any bacon," Guil muttered, and moved a hand to


                     Cherryh
64 .0. c.J

scratch beneath Burn's abundant mane. "Wish I had." He could
taste it. He began to ask himself was it fair to Burn to go up to the
privations of the highlands for the winter, and not to go back to
Shamesey town, to comfort he could, at cost to his pride, bargain
for.
    <Snow falling,> Burn imaged. <Deep and thick and clean. Bliz-
zard in the High Wild. Us in a snug warm cabin. Bacon frying. >
    Burn had such faith in him. He didn't know where to procure
the death of pigs.
    Except... there was a place on the way to the upland, the high
passes. There was a factor Aby'd taken hire with; and there was, in
the way of towns, a bank in Anveney.
    They said if you put funds in at Shamesey you could get them
out at Anveney; or down in Malvey; or clear to Darwin.
    He'd never tested that idea before. He'd always carried all he
owned, until he got to camp, put funds in with the camp he'd win-
ter in--and had this year; but there was an account he and Aby
held, Aby's idea; and he'd put his carrying-cash in it, the way Aby
had said. He'd been relatively sure he could get that out again at
Shamesey, if he walked into that Shamesey office and said hand it
over.., now. The Shamesey camp-boss had said it was as good as
having it on account with him, and as safe.
 He'd doubted it. But he'd done it, the way Aby asked him to.
 He was less sure about Anveney, and this business of getting
 money out where he hadn't put money in. But maybe what Aby be-
 lieved was true. Shamesey had phone lines up to Anveney. Wher-
 ever the phones worked--and they worked, intermittently, at least,
 in the lowlands, until the first ice-storm of the winter--the money
 was supposed to be available. Merchants certainly seemed to do
 it . . . although townsmen looked out for each other and cheated
 riders when they could.
     Well, he could see. He could try. There was that man in Anveney
 whose shipping business Aby had worked for on a regular basis--it
 had been Cassivey goods in that inbound convoy, he'd seen the
 flags.
     And knowing that was the job Aby had taken, he wanted to ask
 Cassivey some questions, too, like what in hell had been so last-


RIDER AT THE GATE              ii~     65

rush important a convoy had to go up there, risking the weather,
risking the movement of creatures who always became more active
and more dangerous when winter was threatening and the urge to
mate and feed up fat took prey and predators alike.
    But that led to darker thoughts he didn't want to think, and to
anger he didn't want to entertain.
    Burn just thought of bacon and wheat-cakes frying, in abundant
grease.

Danny didn't own a rifle. He had a pistol, fifty years old, a good
one, though the ammunition was of a large caliber that was hard to
come by. He'd paid for it what you'd pay for a good rifle, but a
high country rider didn't encumber himself with much else, and
he'd thought it would be a good idea to have the firepower, for his
sake and Cloud's. He'd bought that before he'd promised anything
on the replastering and the paint for his family.
    In the same way he'd gotten a good flat-brimmed hat to keep
himself from sunburn, and a good, heavy coat, with a lining gone
to rags and the elbows patched, and with a new patch and some
stain on the side, of which the second-hander didn't know the cause
... but it was far better than the new ones he could have afforded.
It was beautiful, buttery-beige cowhide and had fringes as long as
his hand. He'd bought new, bullhide boots to fend off the brush,
boots made for his feet, and fit for walking, when Cloud decided
that he'd had enough of carrying a healthy young man.
    He owned, besides that, one truly good knife; and, of course, his
trail kit, with fold-up pans for eating and cooking.
    Plus a couple of second-hand blankets, with frayed edges, but
he'd hemmed those up, which had given him a lot of practice with
his stitches.., you could see a considerable difference between
where he'd started and where he'd finished.
    And he couldn't, especially on this cold dawn, forget the where-
from of all of it, because Guil Stuart had given him a list, once
upon that rainy afternoon, of the gear he most urgently had to
have, and told him besides how to get the best quality and who to
deal with, and when to take second-hand and when not.
  Because, Stuart had said, that's a high country horse you've got,


66      ~        C.J. Cherryh

and if you really want to go, he'll take you there someday. Likely
he'll take you there even if you don't want it. Count on it, if you
take my advice.
    Count on it just as surely, too, as he'd discovered his very first
long convoy trip, that Cloud wasn't any pack-animal. He'd stowed
his stuff, except his pistol and a single reload of ammo, in the sup-
ply truck, and kept on good terms with the drivers, because Cloud
wasn't the one of the two of them that was going to carry any
packs, thank you: Cloud didn't like anything but his rider on his
back, and Cloud didn't tolerate loads of gear on his rider.
    His gear right now was adding up to a fair weight, when he in-
cluded in the makings for biscuits and a slab of cured bacon and
the jerky. He'd gone to the suppliers first thing as their doors
opened, and asked outright for what a traveler would most need in
the High Wild. Jerky was lightweight. A couple of slabs of bacon
of course solved the oil problem for the biscuits, so he didn't have
to have a container of that, but there were six kilos of flour and
soda to carry for a long stay in the high country, as would be, if the
roads became impassable.
    Cloud would hunt, when weather and time permitted; but what
Cloud caught, he might not want, so he took fishhooks, line and
cord. The extra rounds for the pistol, which he couldn't count on
getting in the high country, weighed like sin, but that could pro-
vide meat he'd otherwise have to carry up there. He began to ask
himself what the balance was between weight he could carry him-
self and how willing he was to go a little hungrier. Flour weighed
more than jerky, value for value. But jerky cost more.
    You traded with your traveling companions. But you didn't ever,
Stuart had warned him, want to get down to needing to trade. You
never came out ahead.
Spare blade. Razor, for more than shaving, and a good oilstone.
Clean rolled bandages, sewing kit that was for your clothes or
you if you needed it; awl and a piece of leather to wrap it in that
could become ties if you needed them. Burning glass. Waxed
matches. Spare shirt, spare socks, and heavy underwear. You could
literally die of a soaking rain and a strong wind up in the hills.
He'd heard too many stories about freezing to death after a slip in a


RIDER AT THE GATE              ~       67

mountain stream, or going hypothermic in a rainstorm that wasn't
even cold enough to make snow, because the wind always blew up
there, strong and cold, especially when the sun was going down.
    He'd heard every horror story in camp, and a lot of it encom-
passed good advice, he was sure. But he didn't want to look, either,
like the novice that he was, and he'd tried to get his load down to
as small and as light a set of packs as he could possibly make,
counting he'd maybe been extravagant in food. He didn't own a
proper pack-kit for it, but he'd had enough of canvas sacks that got
soaked, last time he'd gone out, and he'd stitched together a real
oiled-leather kit--with a great deal of swearing, his fingers repeat-
edly bloodied by the awl and the needle-butt; no fancy seams, ei-
ther---oiled twine and thongs instead of proper leatherworking and
buckles to connect the bags together. He'd thought he'd save
money. But it didn't, when he loaded it, hang quite the way he'd
planned. Worst of all--it was new, raw leather that hadn't even
been rained on.
    The Westmans and their cousin Hawley, who'd blazed through
the supplier's before him with definite knowledge of what they
needed, had gathered at the den exit, at the main camp gate. They
were lean and tanned, they and their gear were weathered alike to a
general impression of browns and blacks and tans against the solid
black of their horses. They were the sort of experienced-looking
riders that convoy bosses probably never even dared ask how many
times they'd been to any destination.
    But, unexpected and unwelcome witnesses, a cluster of idle
younger riders had gathered in the vicinity of the gates, standing
with backs against the hostel wall, and Danny found himself far
more public than he had ever planned to be as he walked toward
the rendezvous by the gates. His private obligation had gotten him
a reputation-making hire, he suddenly realized, and he was the cen-
ter of his age-mates' attention and gossip--maybe even the object
of their envy. He tried not to think that: the horses might betray
anything he thought, though he got none of the expected catcalls
and heckling from the junior bystanders. He was only aware of the
senior riders' impatience in waiting for him.
  "Ready?" Jonas asked and, not waiting for his answer, Jonas


68    i~        C.J. Cherryh

vaulted up onto his horse's back--a flashy move, a show-out move,
one Danny hadn't perfected and Cloud didn't much like.
    Cloud wasn't even out of the den yet. He wanted Cloud to hurry
up. Please. < Riders leaving. >
    And true to habit Cloud came sauntering leisurely and calmly
out of [he log-and-earth den and into the morning sun. Cloud
shook himself all over as he reached the daylight, making a haze of
dust, Cloud having (depend on it) rolled in it; and for a moment as
horse met horse the ambient was full of images, all uneasy.
    Cloud moved into the vicinity, refusing to take any orders from
Jonas' horse, flatly, no. Every horse in the trail party was male and
older, autumn was nippish in the air, and the Westmans might be a
working partnership in which a new horse and rider weren't neces-
sarily welcome--but that didn't daunt Cloud in the least--Cloud
was <young, strong male horse.>
    Teeth clacked, snap, just short of a nighthorse rump, as Cloud
passed Jonas' horse to the rear. A foot cocked and slyly kicked back,
again a miss, all calculated, all narrowly short of mayhem--just a
trial of personalities.
    Jonas swatted his own horse across the withers, and the meeting
last night flashed across Danny's mind, <himself, from Jonas'
view,> skinnier and plainer and more junior than he thought he
was. He'd learned their names last night, when he'd agreed to come
with them: Jonas and Luke Westman and Hawley Antrim, who was
somehow a cousin of theirs and related to Aby Dale. Their horses...
they imaged themselves, and no rider could totally figure a strange
horse's name on meeting: but in their riders' word-names, they
were Shadow and Froth and Ice respectively, a chilly set of impres-
sions in the ambient.
    <Cloud by calm water. Quiet, pebbles under the surface.> He
laid a hand on Cloud's neck. <Danny riding. > Shadow had annoyed
Cloud, and Danny really, desperately hoped that Cloud wasn't
going to make him start out the trip walking, in the company of
senior riders, with all the juniors lined up at the gate to watch.
    He made a solid try at getting up on Cloud's back, determined
to do it on the first attempt, and determined that Cloud not move
away from under him.


RIDER AT THE GATE                      69

To his relief he landed square on, and immediately Cloud took a
snap at Froth's rump, moving closer, momentary jolt.
    But Jonas had started riding toward the gates, and the others fol-
lowed, the horse called Froth not without a snap back at Cloud in
retaliation.
    <Still water,> Danny kept thinking, as he followed the three out
the gates of Shamesey camp. Nobody got thrown, nobody bit any-
body: he let the three senior riders go well ahead as they rode in
leisurely fashion past the gates of Shamesey town.
    He thought then--he was suddenly sure that he should have sent
a note to town, telling his parents where he was and what he was
doing. For one thing, it would make his parents worry about him
for a satisfactory several months.
    --Off hunting a rogue horse. Don't worry. Back before summer.
Love, Your Son.
    He really, truly wished he'd done that. They deserved it. His fa-
ther deserved it.
    And, thinking that, he lagged farther and farther back, away
from the casual images the three seniors let flow back and forth, be-
cause he didn't want to think about his family in their range, or
eavesdrop on their business, either, feeling himself on scant enough
tolerance.
    He'd be on trial with them for the first while, he was sure: they
thought he was useful because he could hear Guil Stuart farther
than he was supposed to. They said it was because he was a snot-
nosed junior who couldn't control what he thought, and in spite of
the fact that that was his use, he didn't intend to broadcast every-
thing in his head all the way to catching Stuart, or annoy them
with his junior-rider insecurities spilling over at them.
    So, first to keep from thinking of home, and then to keep from
thinking about the trip ahead and the chances of trouble, he looked
at the grass moving in the breeze. He noted the footprints of a
timid scavenger that had crossed the road last night. Field-rats, he
thought. Somebody had been careless with the garbage. Probably
the garbage-wagons had spilled over when they went out yesterday
to the dump. Out there--the province of truly junior riders--you
got vermin so thick the ground moved.


'-"                  Cherryh
70 ~            C.J

    Cloud's skin twitched. Garbage-guard was a job he'd never done
but a week. He'd have starved first. Cloud didn't want to think
about it, and switched his tail energetically, thinking instead of
<mountains. Evergreens. Looking down on the plains> until his
head was crowded with those thoughts.
    He'd meant to look back at least once while they were near
enough, but he'd decided not: the juniors might be watching from
the gate. He did only when they rode past the shoulder of the hill,
when the road wound around it and he knew it was his last chance
before it cut off sight of Shamesey town.
    But all he could see from there was the wooden wall, the pas-
tures, the fences out across the valley.
    He saw the cattle-keepers taking the cattle out for their daily
pasturage, far in the distance. The junior cattle-guards were the lit-
tle moving dots of darkness far in the lead. The herds of cattle and
sheep and pigs went out like that every day, rain or shine, until the
snow fell.
    He might be doing that all winter, instead, earning a few coins,
or, at best, riding winter watch on the phone lines that ran along
the road to Anveney and down the coast to Malvey, watching for
breaks and guarding the crews that kept them working.,
    The lines ran beside them as they traveled, following the road.
They were all that let you believe that human civilization stretched
out into the Wild. The shadows of them went on and on across the
land, a convenient perch for birds that preyed on vermin in the
grass. He saw them, dots along the wire, as the sun grew higher.
He heard their buzzing cries. He sometimes had that strange out-
of-body notion that he was watching himself ride along with three
other riders; but that wasn't a bird sending that impression: that
was some creature a little closer to the earth and with a bigger
brain than any bird had. It was watching them from the rocks that
cropped out of the grass on the west side of the road. The cattle-
guards might need to look sharp, later in the day.
     The riders ahead of him didn't speak. He had other, less spooky
 images, sometimes: Cloud's, of the High Wild, he was sure that
 was what he was seeing, <sun shafting down through tall trees.>
  <Pastures ringed by those same trees, and rocks covered with


RIDER AT THE GATE              ~       71

 snow.> Cloud switched his tail as he walked, quite certain where he
 was going now, quite content with the direction, but not--not
 communicative or sociable with the horses ahead of them.
     Cloud was uneasy, Danny thought, and saw the twitch of Cloud's
 ears, the backward slant of them that accompanied a thought of
 <clouds gathering gray and dark. Clouds flashing with light-
 nings. >
  <Cloud in the den last night, Cloud with images of high hills.>
  <Lighmings flashing. Wind blowing. >
    Danny shivered. He slapped Cloud with his hand to distract
him. "Don't be like that. They're older, is all, you silly sheep. Don't
pick a fight. There's three of them."
  <Rain falling on the riders ahead. Soaking rain. >
    Cloud wasn't happy with the riders or their horses. He wasn't
sure Cloud understood what they were after, coming out here, ex-
cept the chance to go into the highlands--which Cloud did ap-
prove.
    Cloud, he thought on the instant, didn't see any real reason to be
following the tails of three other horses. Cloud could take him
where he wanted to go. Cloud didn't need a guide.
    And in that thought, also, he suffered a clear, cold realization
where he was, on the dusty road far from Shamesey town and
Shamesey camp, headed north into territory he knew was dangerous
for the weather alone--to be stuck there probably for the whole
winter, in company with three strangers he'd only just met, of a
class of people reputed for wildness and strange manner, and whose
only recommendation was being friends of a man, also a borderer,
whom he only remotely knew.  < Rider dead in the rocks. >
    "No," he muttered, disquieted. He toed Cloud in the ribs. Cloud
tossed his head, threw a cow-kick to jolt his rider.
    He couldn't ask why Cloud thought that way. He couldn't find
an image to argue with, nothing but the same dead-rider image
that Cloud threw him. <Burn going out the gate,> he tried to in-
form Cloud. <Stuart on the porch. Bacon and gear. Lots of bacon.
Biscuits. Stuart in the High Wild, on Burn. >


72      ~       C.J. Cherryh

    Cloud threw his head and sulked. <Rain. Rain. Rain and thun-
der. >
    So Cloud was just generally disappointed in their company, dis-
approving of anything but <quitting the group and going off by
themselves. >
  <Sunlight through clouds. >
    "We can't," Danny said. "We promised. And maybe Stuart can't
get this thing by himself. This thing's bad, it's real bad, Cloud."
He didn't want to think about it, but he wondered if Cloud had
any real idea what they were chasing up into the hills, or how it
connected to the dead rider. And the wondering alone connected it.
    <Dark woods,> Cloud imaged, so vividly, so threateningly for a
moment he couldn't see the riders ahead of him or the hills or any-
thing. <Spooky feelings. Shivery.>
    "Somebody's got to get rid of it." <Dead horse. Gray clouds
breaking to sunlight. Us, in a green meadow. Mountains. >
    Cloud's ears came up. <Mountains. Danny and Cloud in moun-
tains. Valleys below us.> With a kick and a toss of his head, Cloud
dived uphill off the road, jolted slantwise across the hill as Danny
grabbed a double fistful of mane.  "Stop it!" Danny yelled.
    But Cloud didn't stop it. Cloud had the mountains in his mind,
and that was all he wanted to see.
      "Dammit!" Danny yelled. <Danny falling off. Danny hurt.>
"Cut it out, Cloud! Stop!"  Cloud didn't stop.
    <Mad,> Danny imaged, and began to figure where he and Cloud
could part company without his breaking an ankle. He slid to one
side, displaced their center of weight, and hung on to Cloud's
mane, put his feet down a couple of times, sliding on the grass, be-
fore Cloud sulked to a slower pace.
  <Cloud and Danny on the road.>
  <Rain. Thunder. Soaked road. >
    Danny planted his feet hard, on the grass, and skidded, holding
on to Cloud's mane, his packs swinging around him as he jolted
over a series of uneven spots on the hill.
  Cloud just kept plowing ahead, dragging him with him, imag-


RIDER AT THE GATE              ~       73

 ing <mountains,> while he returned raw anger, that was most of it,
 and, <road,> when he wasn't fighting for footing. He was deter-
 mined to win the fight, determined he wasn't going to give in with
 the seniors watching from below, not if he had to walk for the next
 three days.
     But Cloud was mad, too. Cloud took out on a particularly steep
 uphill and Danny braced his feet the harder--until his feet hit a
 rock. His grip on Cloud's mane jerked Cloud's forequarters around,
 threatening to bring them both down.
    At once he gave up his grip on the mane, which put the down-
hill under him--he fell through empty space, curled to protect his
head, landed with his baggage under his back and skidded down-
hill over the slick, dusty grass.
    He fetched up finally on a small grassy hump, momentarily out
of slope to slide on, with the laughter of the strangers ringing out
from below the hill. His feet were pointed upslope--between
which he saw Cloud standing staring down at him.
    He rolled over, struggled against the downhill slant to get his
feet under him, and got up, with the thong-tied packets banging
about his arms, without the weight of the pistol in its holster. He
saw it downslope, beyond him, and he slouched down the hill in a
fit of temper, recovered it to its holster and sulked on down to the
road, walking aslant on the hill, because the Westmans and Haw-
ley, having had their laugh, were going on, leaving him to sort it
out, and he had to overtake them, afoot or ahorse, they clearly
didn't care.
    He was mortified. He didn't look back to find out where Cloud
was. He limped on down toward the road, intending to intercept
them, still finding bits of dry grass to pick out of leather seams and
brush out of his hair.
    Cloud couldn't resist making him look the fool. It was one thing
when he dumped him in front of the juniors. It was another, when
he was working, when matters were serious and he was out on the
road. He was furious with Cloud. The seniors were clearly dis-
gusted with him. Their riding on meant they were testing him,
whether he could get himself together and catch up.
  And then he either misjudged where he should intercept the


74    ~         C.J. Cherryh

others, or misjudged how fast he had to follow, because by the time
he reached sight of the road, having crossed over the shoulder of the
hill--they were nowhere in sight.
    He went downslope, not believing that they would have left the
road and turned off cross-country, but not sure of that until he saw
their tracks in the dirt of the roadway.
    So he followed them, having no suppositions whatsoever that
Cloud was going to leave him. Cloud was up there in the hills, not
far, probably watching him, but he wasn't going to acknowledge
that fact.
    So Cloud wouldn't carry him. Then Cloud could trail him along
the heights of the hills, playing his little games while he fell farther
and farther behind the Westmans, and while the Westmans
laughed at Cloud's foolish junior rider, that was all Cloud had
gained.
    Meanwhile he was hurt. He'd bruised his backside, his shoulders,
and all but knocked the wind out of himself. He had itchy grass
down his collar that he couldn't reach. He'd hurt his ankle when he
hit the rock that caused his fall, and it was probably swelling. He
might be lame for life. He hoped Cloud was satisfied, making him
look like a fool, which Cloud had to do every damned time it was
really important to convince somebody that he knew what he was
doing, and he hoped Cloud really enjoyed his temper tantrum.
Cloud's rider was humiliated, and bruised, and ready to guard cat-
tle for the rest of their lives.
    Which would probably happen to them. He'd fall so far behind
the other riders he'd never catch up. He and Cloud would have to
limp back to Shamesey camp alone, their reputation would be
ruined, all the high country riders would know he wasn't to be re-
lied upon, the juniors would laugh at them, and they'd never, ever,
ever make it to the mountains.
    He wasn't sure Cloud heard him that far up the hill. He was too
mad to care. The other riders were out so far ahead now he no
longer tried to overtake them. He could only hope they stayed on
the road, and didn't put him to tracking them across open country,
at which he wasn't as good as he needed to be.


RIDER AT THE GATE              ~       75

      He could lose them if they got off the road and he'd be out in
 the dark alone with the goblin cats and the willy-wisps.
   He was damned mad.
   <Rain> came to his mind.
   Maybe that was his thought.
    Fine, he said to himself, and sulked along, limping with his sore
ankle on the rutted road, a mere track the trucks maintained, drag-
ging chain on the undercarriages to keep the weeds down. It was a
fine road for trucks. It was perfectly fine for nighthorses.  It was a damned sorry mess for human feet.
    It was a damned long walk, measured in telephone poles and sore
joints, and in the tracks of the riders in front of him, riders doubt-
less laughing at him. And he was more and more sure that Cloud
was up there on the heights, as steep as the hills had risen above
this section of road.
    Maybe the other riders could stop for noon break, but he didn't
dare stop, for fear of not overtaking them before dark. He kept
thinking, irritably, (Rain falling.> Cloud understood that. (Rain
falling on hills. Rain falling on rocks and grass. Rain falling on
Cloud. >
    And eventually, when his steps were growing shorter and shorter,
and his tailbone decidedly hurt with every step, he saw a dim
image of (boy with a silly lot of baggage swinging about him, far,
far below the hilltop. >
  <Rain,> he sent. He'd learned stubbornness from Cloud.
    (Danny getting down from Cloud. Danny falling down the
hill.)
    (Danny going off over Cloud's shoulder, > he sent back, the maddest
he'd ever been at Cloud.
  (Danny getting down.>
    The argument kept up, until he changed tactics, thought about
pain and sore feet and bruises, thought (snow, > and (still water. )
    Then he was aware of Cloud's presence closer than had been.
Cloud met him as the road took a bend and a climb, Cloud stand-
ing on the hillside, and then walking along, head down and ears
flat. Danny threw him only the most casual of glances, and limped,
badly, thinking about <woods and rocks and the dead rider.>


76    ~         C.J. Cherryh

  Dirty trick.
    He heard Cloud behind him, then. He didn't have to look. He
could see himself, ahead of Cloud, limping along with the stupid
baggage.
    He heard Cloud closer, a whispering in the grass, a soft breath-
ing.
  <Rain,> Cloud imaged.
    <Raindrops on still water,> he thought, and Cloud shoved him
between the shoulders.
  <Cattle,> Cloud thought.
  <Water still, reflecting Danny and Cloud. >
    Unfair, of course. Humans couldn't image on their own, but hu-
mans were tricky and inventive when they got the knack of it.
    Cloud peevishly dashed raindrops onto their still reflection.
Cloud understood his tactic.
    But Cloud couldn't drown the reflection. Cloud wasn't as mad as
the human in question was determined--and the human in ques-
tion wasn't stopping or getting into details. Danny just kept limp-
ing ahead, in the tracks of horses nice enough to carry their riders.
    <Cattle,> Cloud thought. <Cattle. Cattle. Cattle in Shamesey
camp. Cattle dropping manure in the street. >
    Cloud could combine images when two thoughts crossed in his
head.
  And they clearly had.
    Cloud came up beside him and slumped along pace for pace.
They walked along maybe half an hour before Danny thought
<Danny riding,> and Cloud stopped and waited for him to climb
up.
    He didn't do so well getting up this time. He hadn't the
strength for a swing on Cloud's mane, he just planted his arms
across Cloud's back, jumped up and landed belly-down, tangled
in the strings of his baggage, to work his way across Cloud's back
in a maneuver he would be humiliated to do in front of the
strangers he was trying to overtake, while, annoyed by a knee in
his kidneys, Cloud began to amble on his way, giving him no
grace whatsoever.
  But Danny didn't argue. Cloud was going his direction.


RIDER AT THE GATE              ~       77

    <Mountains in the winter,> he thought, to please Cloud.
<Snowy rocks. >
    <Three snobbish nighthorses from the rear,> Cloud imaged,
<with cattle tails. >
    "Cloud. Behave. Dammit." He'd not had so much trouble out of
Cloud on the regular hire they'd taken. He'd worked with other
riders. He didn't know why Cloud should take so profound a dis-
like to horses that were going to guide them to the High Wild,
that would be their protection by their experience and their riders'
guns once they reached an area they might not be able to cross
safely on their own.., granted anything went amiss.  <Cattle,> Cloud persisted sullenly.
      Then Cloud threw his head and looked back, just the red-edged
corner of a nighthorse eye, cast along their backtrail.  Nostrils widened.
  <Horses,> Cloud imaged, and stopped joking.
    Did we miss them? was Danny's first thought--stupid thought.
There were multiple nighthorse tracks under Cloud's feet at the
moment.

    They were following three horses. But Cloud was looking behind
them.
    He thought of the horse who'd gone out the gate, following Stu-
art: <Burn.>
    <Horses,> Cloud persisted. Cloud didn't think it was one horse
he was hearing back there.
  Line riders, Danny thought. Inspecting the phone lines.
    But it wasn't the day they usually went out, when he thought of
it--unless they had a break in the line that shut down the phones,
which would bring somebody much faster.
    So who among the riders would go? Danny asked himself and
Cloud, trying to see if Cloud could recognize the horses.
    But Cloud didn't answer his perplexity, except with this same
dark image of more than one horse, on ambiguous ground, except
that there was Cloud's wind-image in it, the sweeping of the im-
ages, coming and going, distorting to many and back to a conserva-
tive two or three.
  <Trucks? > Danny asked.


78    ~         C.J. Cherryh

    Cloud shifted footing, snorted to clear his nostrils of stray scents
and sniffed again.
    <Horses,> was all Cloud could give him, but this time they had
riders, less certain an image--just the illusion of shadows atop
shadows.
    Not wild horses, then. Not likely, unless Cloud was getting not
the scent but the desire of the horses for humans.
    A wild lot wasn't something to meet in the autumn. And they
did go on the move in this season.
    <Cloud running,> Danny suggested. But Cloud didn't, Cloud
only started uphill and off the road, where Danny didn't want to
go.
    Danny swatted Cloud's shoulder, wanting <going on road. Us in
bushes with bad horses. >
  <Dark horses streaming along the road,> was Cloud's thought.
  And Cloud picked up the pace.
    <Water,> Danny thought, not the still-water of silence, but
<Cloud wading. Cloud-wavery-scent image running away in
water. >

    Cloud didn't think so. And maybe it was true: they were so close
the scent-image came to them on the wind from their backs, and
strange riders were almost certainly back there--it was too persis-
tent to be anything Cloud just remembered. But the wind came to
them treacherously as it did in the foothills, reversing its ordinary
direction in places, coming almost east to west, when nearly the
opposite was the rule on the road--and they could only trust the
wind would shift again.
    A human knew that. He wasn't sure Cloud did. What ruled
Cloud's decision was likely the surety that he didn't smell humans
in the direction he took and he did smell them at their backs.
    Trouble was what they had to reckon it. Towns were the safe
zones. You didn't trust what you ran into in the Wild--not solitary
riders or groups of riders. That was the law Danny Fisher knew.
Maybe it was a townsman way of thinking, but Cloud lit out at
that fast-traveling pace Cloud could hold for long, long runs--
Cloud had learned that humans didn't put their noses down and


RIDER AT THE GATE              ~       79

smell tracks, but they saw them and they understood them by
processes that had never occurred to Cloud.
  <Tracks in dust. Wavery riders on solid horses on road.>
    That was what Cloud reasoned--maybe as far as the fact that
nighthorses without humans didn't use roads.
  And Cloud wasn't staying around to meet them.


Chapter

V1

GUIL STUART SWEATED LIGHTLY IN THE NOON SUN, WATCHED THE
brown grass pass under his dangling feet and Burn's three-toed
hooves, and avoided the thoughts bobbing to the surface of a dis-
tracted, several times jolted mind. He rode northerly still, not
using the road, but overland, up over the rolling, grassy hills, on
the same course which he had begun to choose in their first panic
flight.
    Burn had other ideas, making a slow, quiet intrusion into his
vision.
    <Domerlane road,> Burn imaged for him, the characteristic two
stones with the old rider signs, that exact view of the mountains, so
for a moment Guil didn't find himself on this road at all, but well
south of Shamesey town, high in the hills where the Domerlane left
the MacFarlane High Trace, the mountain ridge towering on the
right.
  <Winter snows,> Burn sent, and, falling enthusiastically under


RIDER AT THE GATE              ~       81

the spell of his own imaging: <Domerlane camp and female
horses. >
    (Mountains,> Guil thought, then, slipping into a moment of
weakness, (mountains clean with snow in the winter, game run-
ning on the slopes. Mountains above the MacFarlane. Kantung
Peak. >
    Then, abruptly: <Aby lying dead on the rocks. Aby and Moon
together,> because that ugly image leapt into his mind whenever it
found the chance.
    He stopped it. He thought of water. He thought of bubbles on
the surface.
    <Aby giving sweets,> Burn recalled pleasantly. <Aby smiling.
Wind blowing red hair, blowing red leaves in the woods. Aby
standing on the hillside. Warm thinking. Moon wanting sweets
from Aby's pockets. >
    Guil resisted the imaging at first. But he did recall that day with
pleasure. He remembered Aby laughing, playing keepaway with
Moon and Burn.
    (Dodging on the moonlit hillside. Moon darting this way and
that for pockets. >
  A lump arrived in his throat.
    <Guil and Aby,> Burn imaged, (holding hands. Taste of honey,
smell of dew and grass and Moon and Aby and Guil. Moon and
Burn mating. Guil and Aby mating, sweet smells, good feelings
everywhere. >
    The whole moonlit moment rebuilt itself, lived vividly and
faded into the present sun and chill breeze, as if it were the same
day.
    Wind and grass, sun on autumn colors. On the left hand the
mountains loomed up, the Firgeberg, the backbone of the conti-
nent. The wind came down from the foothills with a chill that
shivered through the grass, cold and clean enough to wipe away the
stink and madness of Shamesey camp.
    (Hunting,> Burn sent him. (Heart beating quick, quick feet
moving ahead of us, chasing willy-wisps through the brush. Deli-
cious. >
  Burn had no long memory for distress. Troubles came and they


82  ~    C.J. Cherryh

went. Horses died. Horses were born. As long as it wasn't Burn,
Burn didn't stay concerned.
    <Guil cooking nice meat, fat crackling in the flames, warmth in
the dark. >
    One more sunrise. One more sunny afternoon on the hills. A ra-
tioned number of them.
    But Burn also had no memory for money. Money ran counter to
Burn's sense of the world, and Burn forgot where bacon came from.
Burn's rider was supposed to have it, that was all.
      <Guil laying down shiny coins on counter. Man taking coins,
giving bacon. Anveney streets. >  < Cattle. >
  <Pigs,> Guil sent.
    <Bacon,> Burn thought, much more cheerfully. Burn imaged
the slow rolling of hills northward.
    And they argued for a while about the connections of Anveney
town, banks (a concept Burn refused to deal with, as a repository
for things worth bacon: naturally one would immediately get what
was worth something, and not leave it anywhere) and humans (not
high in Burn's thinking right now, since humans had lately had ri-
fles shooting at them). Burn was vastly put out by humans and
would be put out so long as Guil's leg hurt, because it made Burn's
leg hurt. Almost. Well, close enough.
    When they rode alone Guil could sink into trains of almost-
thought and exist in Burn's realm of sun-on-back, humans-at-dis-
tance, food-the-day's-necessity and sex-on-opportunity. Sometimes
in the high hills you ran into a partnership like that, one where you
couldn't talk to the man except through the horse; and Guil sup-
posed in the long run they were happy enough--never work, never
come into a town, they'd barter sometimes, food and skins for
clothes or a knife. Usually when you met them, the human half
wanted to trade, the horse was skittish--and the rest of the time
you just got a spooky feeling in the brush, the intimation of some-
thing that might have been there for a moment, might have looked
you over in a slightly predatory or slightly fearful way .... wild
things did that sometimes, before they ran.
  He was glad enough to sink into that kind of nowhere at least


RIDER AT THE GATE              ~       83

for the day. The leg ached when he didn't. The stomach complained
it was empty when he didn't, and he didn't care he was hungry, re-
ally--he hadn't energy left to care.
    But somewhere toward evening Burn found the stream that
crossed the road well north of Shamesey, a smallish stream--Guil
was relatively sure it was the same one--cold in this season; and
Burn wanted to cool his legs and drink and--definitely--find
something to eat.
    So Guil sat down there and tended the wound he had gotten, the
ugly rip that by now was somewhat scabbed and not wholly clean.
He took off the breeches and sat on the bank, dipping up water to
wash the wound and numb the pain, which was so miserable once
he'd worked the pants off that Burn took himself from the vicinity,
went a distance down the stream and slammed his three-toed foot
down on something that wriggled.
    Burn ate it then, alternately washing it in the stream. It was not
particularly nice; it was not the sort of thing Burn saved for cook-
ing, and Burn had the grace to keep his tidbit out of range of a
queasy stomach to eat it.
    "I don't suppose you could catch a fish," Guil said aloud, and
thought < fish. >
    Burn snorted, and wandered off along the stream, nosing into
this and that, sampling the water. Burn came back to him with,
<mudcrawler, mossy big shell. >
  He wasn't that desperate.
  < Plate-fungus. >
  No.
  <Scraggy pucker-berries. >
    He was disgusted. <Guil riding,> he imaged, and got up to put
his pants on. Burn came back to him, took him up again, uncom-
monly patient still with this carrying business.
    <Valley,> Burn imaged, having settled on that goal, imaging a
good winter and enough to eat. <Mountain meadows. Meandering
stream. >

    He dreamed in that still sunlit but nippish ride, of the valley
where he had been a boy, in the first spring he remembered. He


84      ~        C.J. Cherryh

wondered where it was, and whether it was what he remembered.
He thought of it, in bad times.
    And perhaps he did gloss it a bit, being light-headed with pain
and hunger, with the meadows spangled with starflowers and the
delirious yellow spikes of mollyfingers, in green lush grass; but that
was the way he liked to remember it--which was probably, he'd
long said to himself, why he'd never found it.
    Burn took up his dream readily enough, embellished it with the
restless longings of his own kind: a valley, a far, far different place
from the safe, smoky dens of Shamesey hostels, where riders and
horses lived in such muddy, smelly, close quarters.
    A clean winter, a wide winter, with all the white valley to hunt.
Tarmin. Then this place.
  "Promise," Guil said. "I promise."
  Burn twitched his ears back and forth.
"Don't know 'promise,' do you? Probably it's good you don't."
<"You don't,"v echoed back to him. Burn could image sounds
he didn't know, so far as his horsey brain could remember them. Or
cared to remember them. Then a visual image. (Mollyfingers and
green grass. >
    Mollyfingers didn't grow in the lowlands. They wouldn't grow
where factories sent up smoke, or in places like Anveney, where
men ripped copper and lead out of the earth and made beautiful,
poisoned pools, bright blue and milky white.
    ~Cattle,3 Burn thought, sulking, and then again, quite cheer-
fully, the sunlight in his thoughts belying the evening--(mol-
lyfingers and clean new grass. 3

Twilight was getting scarily deep scarily fast in the folds of the
hills, with the sun already over the mountain rim.
    Maybe the riders Cloud had smelled behind them had stopped
for camp by now. Danny hoped that the Westmans had.
    They'd come back to the road finally. He'd found their tracks
where the dust was thick, and where a horse's toe had scored the oc-
casional rock. He could track at least that well: from an old rider on
his one long trip he'd picked up enough of the art at least to read
whether a horse or a man was running or walking, how loaded his


RIDER AT THE GATE ~ 85

 quarry was, and--if a human was involved--how tall that human
 was and maybe what the gender was.
    But he knew precisely the riders he was tracking; and he was
scared, to tell the truth, not alone now of the riders they'd feared
behind them, but of a night alone out where he'd never been alone
before if they didn't catch up before they ran out of daylight. He
caught little strange vignettes of himself and Cloud seen from low
to the earth or high on the hill or out of the brush, so he knew that
small hunter eyes were watching them, nothing big, nothing that
would bother a horse--yet. He had his pistol by him and he de-
cided, considering having fallen on the hill and having had it slide
free, that a tie-down would be a very good idea, but he wasn't
going to tie it in the holster now, thank you, he wanted to be able
to draw it very quickly, and not shoot himself or Cloud, if an emer-
gency happened. He was afraid his hands would shake if he had to
aim. He was afraid of shooting in panic and hitting the men he was
tracking. A townbred junior rider had no business alone out here,
he was increasingly convinced--he'd never been alone in the dark
in the Wild before, and he didn't know what was watching them
from the brush.
    The Westmans might have slowed down just a little, he said to
himself. They might have helped, damn them, when he'd fallen, in-
stead of laughing and riding on.
    They'd asked him to come with them out here. Jonas had said
he'd improve their chances of finding what they were looking for--
so why had they let Cloud dump him? Damned funny joke, maybe.
But he didn't think so.
    Neither did Cloud. Cloud sent an uncomfortable hostility, dar-
ing the Westmans or their horses to stop anything Cloud wanted.
    "You embarrassed me," Danny muttered to the darkness under
him, blacker than that gathering around them. He couldn't make
Cloud understand ideas like that, he didn't think so, at least. Senior
riders said that horses did come to understand, eventually, about
human thinking--but a young horse was full of horse notions, and
it wasn't until they were ten or fifteen or so that they began to take
up on fine points like embarrassment.
  Or the politics of humans with each other.


86      ~       C.J. Cherryh

    Well, so maybe young humans didn't pick up on things like
human politics too well either, the way he didn't understand why
older and wiser riders would have left him. Why boys his own age
would have done it, he could figure just fine: plain stupidity. But
he didn't think that was the case with the Westmans, who were
borderers like Stuart, who understood what the dangers were.
    So borderers played rough jokes on each other, and expected ju-
niors to take more than they dared hand back, the way every other
senior did.., but they were friends of Stuart, and Stuart hadn't
laughed at him.
    He tried to think it was some sign of trust that they did leave
him, and figured he'd catch up, and figured he'd take care of him-
self. Maybe it was a sign of respect, or an expectation of him---or
something.
    <Cattle,> Cloud thought. <Jonas Westman hitting Shadow, at
the gate.> Cloud hadn't missed that. Cloud didn't like it in the
least. Cloud didn't like Jonas Westman or his horse. <Shadow-horse
pitching Westman in road. Cattle tail on Shadow. >
    Cloud vehemently didn't like the Westmans. Cloud certainly
hadn't indicated anything about that when Cloud had nudged him
into going. Maybe it had always been Cloud's notion that they
could kite up to the High Wild and desert the Westmans to their
business with Stuart, but that wasn't the way Danny Fisher under-
stood an agreement, thank you. Humans made promises and hu-
mans had to do what they said they'd do, and that was that. Maybe
he hadn't made Cloud understand that point, or maybe Cloud
didn't want to understand.
    Or maybe, with somebody following them, it was time for Cloud
to use his nose and his horse-sense and get them out of danger.
    Whoever was following them could be somebody who didn't like
the Westmans. It could also be somebody who didn't like Stuart,
like that bunch in the meeting ... and they'd cut your throat soon
as look at you: Danny had that feeling, and Cloud didn't disagree.
    Whatever went on among riders, there was usually--and always
before in his experience--a convoy and a lot of riders, or at least a
boss of some kind, to buffer the feud, and if nothing else, to give
one rider or a group of riders excuse to ride apart from one another


RIDER AT THE GATE              ~       87

 and keep out of each others' thoughts. But here there wasn't any
 convoy boss to provide a young rider fearful of being put upon by
 his seniors the least small contact with town law.
     He was off with people where there just wasn't law at all...
 where seniors ran off and left you at a pace faster than any convoy
 was ever going to travel. He'd thought of helping somebody, their
 friend, no less, and this was the pay he got. The preachers said, Do
 unto others. And it wasn't working that way.
     It was darker and darker. There were singers in the grass he
 couldn't identify, there were images that could come from a goblin
 cat pretending to be something small and harmless for all he
 knew ....
  Cloud snorted suddenly, and <horse> flashed into mind.
    Danny took a fistful of mane and a deathgrip on his pistol butt.
Cloud was imaging the smell, that kind of fluttery darkness a horse
made on the landscape ahead of them, which was growing more fre-
quently wooded than he liked, and generally uphill for a long while
now. <Nighthorse,>the image was, in Cloud's better nightsight: a
shape against the brush.
    But Cloud didn't act disturbed, just disgusted, and jolted for-
ward into a trot.
    <Cloud stopping!> Danny sent, or thought he was sending: he
was holding on with his grip on Cloud's mane and his knees tight
on Cloud's sides, so nervously tight that Cloud shook his mane and
snorted the scent out of his nose.
  <Cattle,> was Cloud's comment. <Rear end of cattle. >
    Then they went jolting right off the road and through brush that
made Danny have to duck his head and hold onto his hat with the
hand that was supposed to be holding the pistol in its holster.
    <Smell of smoke,> Cloud sent then, even Danny could smell it;
and he could see the nighthorse as a blackness going quickly
through the stand of trees in front of them. Danny had a terrified
thought that it might be the rogue come downland...
    But smoke led to fire and the gleam of fire through the brush to
the stray nighthorse who had clearly come out to look them over as
they approached; and the nighthorsemhe was sure now it was
Froth--led to three riders seated at a campfire and cooking supper.



88    ~         C.J. Cherryh

"Well," Jonas said, hardly looking up. "Made it, did you?"
<Cattle,> was his own quick thought, no more pleasant than
Cloud's. But you didn't do that with a senior, you said, meekly get-
ting down,
    "My horse and I worked it out." He wasn't sure he wanted now
to say anything about people following them. He wasn't sure he
wholly trusted present company to be friends of his, any more than
the people behind them, but the thought that he might say some-
thing was enough, with the horses all about.
  "What riders?" Jonas asked, with no levity whatsoever.
    "I don't know," Danny said. "I didn't stay to ask. We were down-
wind as we caught scent of them..."
  "But you don't know whether they got wind of you."
    "Possible they did, sir. I don't know." They thought he was stu-
pid. He wouldn't exaggerate what he did know: it was too serious a
matter. "We kept the wind with us and got out of there, cross-
country. Cloud thinks there were more than two, less than ten,
that's all we could tell."
    Hawley was stirring the coals with a stick. He flung it into the
fire. There was silence, and a confused group image of the meeting,
of the principal rider who kept arguing to shoot Stuart.  "Harper," Jonas said. "Damn him."
    It was undeniably the right image. Danny recognized the face.
He didn't know what more than the business at the meeting lay be-
hind Jonas' knowledge of this Harper, but he got a confused image
of a fight, blades flashing, fringes flying--imprecise target in a
knife fight, that was what the fringes were good for, he'd heard
that. Borderers.
    And he wondered if they were going to put out the fire at the
news and run for it, maybe higher into the hills, and off the trail. It
was what he might do if he were Jonas and he thought Harper and
several of his friends were behind him with hostile intent.  "Sit down," Jonas muttered. "We're not budging."
    "Yes, sir," he said, and sat down and shed his baggage on the
ground beside him. It was dirtier and more scuffed than it had been
in the morning. Maybe it looked a little less like a novice's gear. By
some miracle he still had the gun in its holster and it made sitting


RIDER AT THE GATE              ~       89

uncomfortable. He took it off, and decided, in the smell of bacon
and sausage starting to cook, and the sight of tea on to boil, that he
was very glad they weren't going to budge.
  But he thought he should figure out what the rules were.
  "Do I put in, or cook my own, or what, sir?"
  "What're you carrying's the question."
  "Bacon and biscuit-makings mostly."
"You can put in tomorrow. We made enough. You got jam?"
"Yessir," he said, thinking then that he'd been too judgmental,
and they'd figured all along that he'd make it. "Got jerky, too. Fair
deal of it."
    "Save it. You mix up the breakfast dough, leave it set the night.
There's clean water. You wash up."
    "Yes, sir." That was Luke Westman who gave him that order, and
it was fair. "So what about this Harper, sir?"
    "There's time," Hawley said. "There's plenty of time to settle
with that one."
      How? he wanted to ask. Did they mean have a fight, or wait in
ambush and shoot them, or what?  "Scared ?" Jonas asked.
    He hadn't planned to shoot anybody. Jonas had talked about it in
meeting as something they'd do if there wasn't a choice ... but it
hadn't seemed what they had any intention of doing.
    And now there was this Harper following them, who might,
Danny thought with a lump in his throat, shoot them as easy as
thinking about it. Harper had been all too eager to go shooting at
people and horses right up near Shamesey walls, which was un-
thinkable and dangerous as hell to the camp and the whole town. It
didn't encourage him to think that Harper was any more reasonable
out of reach of those walls.
    No camp-boss out here and nobody to tell town law what had
happened between a group of stray borderers with feud on their
minds.
    There was a real chance he might not get home next spring.
Things could happen out here, very final things, he began to take
that into truly serious account--things nobody would ever know
about except the ones that pulled the triggers.



90      ~        C.J. Cherryh

    He just didn't know right now why these men had ever needed a
junior in their midst, or what good he really was to anybody. He
wished he hadn't come. He wished he'd asked somebody like Lyle
Wesson what his mature judgment was of his going off like this,
somebody who might have said Don't do it, kid, you don't count
for anything out there.
    He got a dark, chilly feeling then. There was one of the horses he
couldn't pin down--Froth was easy to identify, agitated most of the
time and full of temper; and Ice just didn't communicate much.
    And that left the horse named Shadow, just the faintest thought,
just the skitteriest images, a hostility you couldn't get hold of.
    Shadow didn't like him and didn't like Cloud, that much he
picked up, and Shadow was always there, behind the other two,
lurking behind Froth's jittery everywhere images and Ice's un-
friendly quiet... Shadow didn't swear like Cloud did, Shadow just
sent hostility slipping out around the edges of what was going on,
so maybe it was easier to feel unwanted, and easier to feel danger in
the night.
  <Cattle tails. Kick and bite. Lightning flash and rain.>
  That last was surely Cloud, and Shadow didn't like it.
    "Keep it down," Jonas Westman said, while their supper cooked.
"We've no need for that, boy. Calm that horse of yours."
    "Yes, sir," he said, asking himself what about the situation de-
served calm, and how, the same as at home, everything got down to
being his fault.
    They didn't have any preachers here to say so. But it seemed a re-
liable commodity, guilt. You could get it here cheap, handed out
like come-ons to a sale.
    "Not my damn fault," Danny muttered. "Cloud and I can go by
ourselves if you don't need us."
  "Did I say that?" Jonas asked. And Hawley Antrim, Ice's rider:
    "Nobody said that. Just calm down. Horsefights feed off quar-
rels. And we don't need that kind of trouble."
    "Yes, sir," he said. Everybody was sir, being senior. And they
weren't telling him in any sense what they were doing waiting
here, or whether they'd found any sign of Guil Stuart. He knew he


RIDER AT THE GATE              ~       91

hadn't come across any tracks but the ones he'd been following. But
he'd been up in the hills a good deal of the time.
    "Gone overland," Luke Westman said. "Same's we could, but we
know where he's going."
    "We don't need to hurry." Jonas said, put another stick on the
fire, and adjusted the frying pan. "Stuart won't appreciate interfer-
ence. He's an independent type. We let him handle the business
up-country, if he can."
    It seemed dangerous to him, and not too helpful to Stuart. He
wanted not to have an opinion, but they kept coming up. He kept
his eyes on the fire and tried to keep his mouth shut.  "Don't trust us?" Hawley asked.
    Nosy question. It scared him just thinking about it. There were
a lot of ways a junior could get into trouble with men like this, as
rough as this. He didn't want trouble. They had Stuart's gear in
those extra packs they shared out, everything he owned. Hawley
carried Stuart's rifle, having none of his own. At least he thought
they meant to deliver it all to Stuart.
    "Easy on the kid," Jonas said. "He's noisy enough. Quiet mind,
kid. Quiet. Think about supper. You'll be fine."

You could get fiber from knifegrass. You stripped off both the
edges with your fingernails and you braided the strands you got.
You could braid as many strands together as you had the skill for,
and Guil just round-braided it as he rode, with a little wrap of
nighthorse hair when a piece quit and the end wouldn't quite stay
tucked on the splice.
    The result was a tough cord. You wouldn't break it by pulling
on it--it'd cut right through the skin of your hands.
    It was also fine-gauge enough that it made a fair fishing line; a
notched large thorn, carefully scored about for the cord to tie on,
made a decent small hook, a dry twig tied into the line a convenient
float, while he was sitting on the bank of a fair-sized stream. He
dropped a rock into a shallow to trap a handful of minnows, baited
his hook, cast near a low branch that touched the water, and waited.
  <Burn eating fish,> Burn thought.
  "Pest! You had yours. This is my fish."



92  ~ C.J. Cherryh

  <Delicious fish frying in fragrant bacon grease. >
      "Do you see bacon? Do you see a frying pan?" <Rider hostel in
Shamesey. Gull's gear in corner of room. >  Burn sulked.
    Effectively enough Burn got the next fish. Gull filleted it while
he was waiting for another to bite. Burn couldn't manage the
bones, but he so loved the taste, almost as much as Burn loved
sugar-cured bacon.
    Fish wasn't bad, raw. He drew the line at other things. He hadn't
the makings for fire, hadn't the energy for fire-making, even given
that he did, now, have the cord for a bow-drill; raw fish was good
enough.
    And he found a number of spotty-neck shellfish along a rocky
edge, which were also fine eaten raw. Burn got a couple of them,
which pleased Burn mightily--a knife left them in ever so much
nicer condition than cracking them open under nighthorse feet, and
Burn liked for his to be washed in water before eating--in beer, if
it was available.
    It wasn't. Burn sucked down his dessert and resumed his proper
watchful duty, protecting the two of them from goblin cats, feral
nighthorse pairs in autumn lust, and other potential hazards, while
idly nipping the tops off tasslegrass, eating only the seed-bearing
part, the extravagance of autumn.
    Meanwhile Gull limped about, cutting soft-needled branches
along the wooded streambank. He heaped up a fragrant pile of
them in a sheltered spot, and when he had a large enough pile,
Burn helpfully sat down in the middle, rolling out a nesting spot.
  "Get up, dammit! My bed, Burn."
  <Sweet smell. Warm nighthorse belly. Gull in sunlight.>
    "Oh, hell," Gull muttered, and went on cutting branches, to
make their bed wider.

Danny lay down to sleep tucked in blankets, near the coals. There
never yet had been a whisper from the riders he was sure were fol-
lowing him, and now he asked himself whether the Westmans be-
lieved him that such riders had ever been there.
  But of course they had to. Riders couldn't lie to each other.


RIDER AT THE GATE              ~       93

  At least, juniors couldn't lie very well. To anyone.
    He hadn't picked up on everything that was going on, that was
sure.
    He wasn't wholly surprised when Cloud came over and settled
down on the ground next to him, sharing the fire warmth, sharing
his own warmth, sharing his muddled, half-asleep nighthorse
thoughts with him, that ran mostly along the general content of
the ambient.
    A ghosty was in the brush watching them, not a specific thing,
just one of three very different creatures that townsmen gave the
same name to, and he didn't know much better. Cloud knew what
it was, Cloud wasn't spooked by it, and no cattle-guard needed be,
except sometimes the little creatures would spook the cattle just to
have them away from their territory.
    The ghosty wanted them to go away, too, probably. But it was
scared of Cloud.
    Danny just wished other things were. And he was glad that
Cloud spent the night close to him. They were clearly on the uphill
now, headed into the foothills of the Firgeberg. They were commit-
ted to the mountains. To all else it meant.
    He really, really wished to keep his mind quiet and let the senior
riders rest. Hawley was on watch, he was aware of that. So was Ice,
and he didn't think much would get past that horse.
    He didn't think the senior riders believed that Harper, if that
was who it was, intended to do them harm. Harm to Stuart was an-
other matter. But as long as they stayed their pace, the common
thought he picked up was <them staying in one group, ahead,>
and <Harper's party in the other, behind, neither meeting.>
    It wouldn't help for him and Cloud to have another argument.
He wanted Cloud to know that. He wanted Cloud to agree to stay
with him.
    He wasn't sure what Cloud's answer was. He shut his eyes, but
that made pictures behind them, of the hillside and the dark, flut-
tery smell-shapes following them. He stared into the dying coals
and that was better.
    At least the shapes the burning edges made were all random and
without motive.


Chapter

 Vll

SLEET BEGAN TO COME DOWN IN EARNEST, WHITE DUST RATTLING
against the evergreens--not an unusual occurrence if it were mid-
summer on Tarmin Height: the Firgeberg spawned occasional sleet
year-round.
    But when a flurry came on an autumn morning after quakesilver
leaf-fall, a rider, however well prepared, looked anxiously to the sky
above the woods and the mountain for a hint of what might be
rolling in.
    <Cold, frosty breaths, feet crunching snow.> That was Flicker's
thought, but Flicker's rider thought snow would not come yet.
    <Melting drops on green needles, sun shining,> Tara Chang sent
back, riding along the wooded road. <Road free and clear, white
lines of sleet blowing across the dirt, sticking in the autumn
leaves. >
    Flicker tossed her shaggy head, shook her mane and still thought
differently, sending unease out into the air. They'd intended hunt-
ing if they had the chance: they'd escorted the road crew out to


RIDER AT THE GATE              ~       95

their camp yesterday, they'd turned them over to Barry and Llew,
who were stuck out there shooting dice for penny stakes, their
horses equally bored, making sure nothing ate the road crew, who
were all Tarmin folk, and who'd generally, but not universally
among the riders, be missed.
    If the sleet spooked them, the crew they'd just delivered safely
would be insisting that Barry and Llew take them right back home,
and the whole crew would be chasing her heels all the way back to
Tarmin, after yesterday's trek getting foot-dragging fools in an ox-
cart out there ....
    But she didn't blame them: one didn't take chances once the
weather began to turn, and the road crews had one of the nastier
jobs, crawling out and around slide zones, shoring up the road with
timbers they had to drag by ox-power out of the woods--they
managed with oxen, because they couldn't waste fuel for trucks up
here, where it didn't come by nature--or at all cheaply. The village
tanks, since the last convoy out of Anveney, were full-up, and
they'd stay that way until they needed the emergency heaters in the
village common hall for days when the ice closed in and the wood
ran low. Tarmin year-round burned wood for its stoves, and by au-
tumn had barns full of hay that kept the goats alive and the oxen
strong for such winter-hauling as the weather demanded.
    And they never waited until the last minute to see to those
stores. Tarmin always remembered the story of Parman Springs,
which they'd been telling as long as Tara had heard stories: a rider
coming into Parman Springs one winter had turned up with every
last building taken down and burned but one--and the wall
breached. Not a living human being was ever found, just a little
scatter of bones.
    That had been back in the boom days, when every lowland fool
with a notion of instant riches had flooded up into the mountains,
and the disasters had come yearly, when new-made camps either set
themselves with no regard to the avalanche traces on the slopes, or
never asked themselves why several big boulders sat on the fiat
they'd chosen; when stubborn lowland-bred miners had used trans-
mitters for non-emergencies and thought that rifles could deal with
the consequences.


96    ~         C.J. Cherryh

    The survivors had stayed to log and do the little winter mining
that paid off, winter being the heaviest mining time because the
temperature in the shafts was constant and bearable in months
when logging, which sometimes paid better, was all but impossi-
ble. Verden, the other side of Verden Ridge, on the High Loop, was
all underground, the whole settlement having discovered what its
digging was really good for. They piped fresh air in and vented
smoke out--precariously, to her mind--up a complex arrangement
of flimsy tin pipes.
    Spooky place, and dirty. It depressed even miners, from what she
heard in Tarmin. Riders didn't like it and wouldn't go inside. She
had, once, out of curiosity, and come out again anxious for sun-
warmed air, having no desire to do it twice.
    She wanted the sky over her head. Truth be known, she liked the
snow, she liked the quiet months of isolation that the weather en-
forced in the High Wild, when there was precious little work for
riders but hunting and trading off the take to the town butchers
and the tannery for the nasty end of it. She'd no steady partner, but
she'd two lovers and no shortage of intelligent company, and a cou-
ple of junior female partners who weren't permanent, but who
might become so. The juniors were partnered with each other, were
in more than autumn lust with the boys--the boys, as they called
the senior riders--and whatever they called them, 'the boys' damn
sure beat their competition over on Darwin.
    So she'd shared-in and found herself as happy as she'd been in her
life, settling in with a group of riders, all of whom, senior or junior,
she could count on in any pinch. She'd gone hungry and she'd slept
alone in her junior years, completely on her own since her mother
died--and after five years of hell, first as a junior and then as a se-
nior riding Darwin Ridge, she'd ridden into a camp on Rogers
Peak too easy to live in and too hard to leave. She'd become pinned
down. Tied. Permanent, in a way she'd once, in her footloose youth,
sworn she'd never be.
    <Steak cooking.> Flicker was definitely interested in camp and
food and nighthorse company, out of the skitter and scatter of her
thoughts. <Tarmin camp, fires and ham roast.> Flicker was also
glad enough to know where such things always resided--glad, too,


RIDER AT THE GATE              ~       97

to be going back to civilization all in one long push today, and not
minding the long walk. Flicker never liked road guard and Tara
had had her own fill of it this fall. It was boring, and this late in
the year it meant standing around in windy places in the sleet
where there was nothing to eat, and nothing to do but shift from
one cold foot to the other and try to keep the wind from blowing
up at your underside.
    Until even a rider might hope, after a few weeks on duty, for a
goblin cat or some such to make a meal of the crew, so she could go
home.
    But a rider didn't make such jokes around nervous villagers. A
rider just sat and watched the ambient with nighthorse senses, try-
ing to keep a restive horse from equally bored and very vivid
amusement.

    So, having served their time in purgatory on the last trip to Ver-
den, and Llew and Barry having gotten the short end of the draw,
she and Flicker were homeward bound through the spitting sleet.
    Flicker was putting on her winter coat early this year--had been
at it for a month, and the sleet stuck to the longer hairs of her body,
and to her ears and mane. Flicker had voluntarily picked up the
pace since that fleeting thought of pork roast: she was enthusiasti-
cally bound for Tarmin, and way-stopping at one of the two lonely
storm shelters on their way, then having the next day to turn
around and ride out through the snow to restock it (there being no
rest for a Tarmin rider when a shelter wanted stocking) was not in
Tara's plans, either.
    If they traveled late, they could make it on in with no real need
of a way-stop. It was the first winter squall of the season lurking up
there about the peak, but not a serious one, she had the skill to bet
knowledgeably on that outcome--and the skill to cover that bet
and save them both if things went wrong. No mere storm was
going to stop them for more than a nasty cold night in the open if
they misjudged, and they'd winter-camped many a night out in her
starving junior years over on Darwin, where the weather was, if
only in her memory, very much worse.
    But there'd been a spooky feeling on Tarmin Climb--the worse
with the wind howling about the rocks. The road crew there had


98    ~         C.J. Cherryh

found an accident, a wrecked truck, logs strewn all to hell and gone
up and down the rocks at that hairpin that started the only 20 per-
cent grade on the Climb, a notorious turn, and not the first truck
that had ever lost it all on the curve. That section was old road,
hard to improve because of where it was located, and often as crews
from Tarmin and the higher Ridge villages shored the slip zone up
with timbers and fill, it eroded. It was a battle with the weather
and the wear of the trucks' brakes on a grade the road crews couldn't
improve without blasting a whole lot of mountain down and
maybe, by what she'd heard, making matters much worse.
    So it was one more load of timber and rock to go up there to sta-
bilize that roadbed before winter snows and spring melt made little
runnels into major slips. The crew was running a race with the
winter and it looked like they might lose this one, though they
damn sure could get cut timbers in plenty from the wreck down
there.
    Dead truckers, for sure--that there had been fatalities was evi-
dent both from the condition of the truck and the fact of scavengers
numerous about the vicinity. It was possibly as much as a month
old, or maybe more recent, part of the last convoy Tarmin had han-
dled, which had joined its High Loop segment coming off that
downhill and turned on down to the lowlands, outrunning the win-
ter. Of the driver and his backup they'd not even find the bones in-
tact by now. Unless somehow they'd jumped clear or b%en rescued
the day it had happened, they were gone. The scavengers that night
would have made quick work even of personal effects, and the con-
voy boss doubtless knew the names and next of kin of the dead
truckers, so there was no point risking necks. The road crew had
hallooed and banged on pans when they'd discovered the wreck,
making absolutely sure that there wasn't some survivor holed up in
the truck cab---occasionally such miracles happened; but you didn't
really expect them.
    There hadn't been any response, and she heartily agreed with
Barry and Llew: it was just too dangerous, for no real hope of sur-
vivors after so long a time, and considering that silence, for a rider
to go climbing down that slide where no horse could defend him
against what else might be interested in the wreck. Death drew


RIDER AT THE GATE              ----"'- 99

predators as well as scavengers, or one became the other very
quickly when they found themselves a nice soft-skinned prey that
didn't image back. Next spring when the weather was better and
all of nature was calmer, they'd salvage it for metal.
    Flicker imaged slinky little shadows. Flicker didn't like rhe
roadwork or the carrion-eaters. <Bite and kick,> was Flicker's
thought. <Trample.> Flicker hated little things that ran out under
her feet on narrow trails.
    Then Flicker stopped cold in her tracks, so suddenly Tara jolted
a little forward and caught herself with her hands against Flicker's
suddenly rigid neck, wondering what in the world Flicker had
heard besides the sleet rattling among the evergreens. Immediately
the ambient had gone unpleasant. That was Flicker's opinion: she
felt that tingling along her nerves, but there might be something
more specific she couldn't sort out of Flicker's nervousness.
    "Damn," she muttered--she didn't like things she couldn't fig-
ure from Flicker. She thought, urgently, with authority, <us going
on now. Staying on road.>
    Flicker wasn't budging. Tara kicked her gently in the ribs, but
Flicker just stood.
    Second kick. Harder. Something was in the area. Something was
sending in a way she couldn't quite pick up, maybe just a ghosty,
doing its I'm-not-here. Maybe Flicker was just spooky with the
weather.
    "Come on." Third kick. Flicker came unstuck from her momen-
tary paralysis and started on her way, step and step, one, two, three,
four, her hoof-toed feet scuffing the leaves louder than the sound of
the sleet in the branches. Flicker was imaging something that just
whited out.
    Tara didn't understand. She'd never known Flicker to do that be-
fore. Not her usual soft flutter of light, but a glaring <white-
white-white,> as Flicker traveled with that about-to-move floating
feeling that advised a rider to keep alert for a sudden jump or a
shift of direction.
    If it was a beast sending that unease she'd felt for a moment, it
was one she didn't know. And she'd thought she knew everything
in the woods of Darwin and Rogers both.


100 ~             C.J. Cherryh

    <Going faster,> she imaged. But she couldn't get through that
<white-white-white> sending. Flicker kept her steady pace. Tara
kicked her lightly, once, twice; and Flicker moved up to that trav-
eling shuffle nighthorses could keep for hours.
    That got them out of the area faster, at least, assuming it was
something that laired nearby, not tracking them. Tara slipped the
tie-down off her pistol and thumbed the safety off, riding with a
fistful of Flicker's mane in the uneasy, constant feeling that Flicker
might dive right out from under her.
    It was a long while later the feeling slowly localized, as some
danger--she was reasonlessly, absolutely certain--lying behind
them, which meant they had finally gotten far enough ahead they
had achieved that separation; but Flicker forged ahead for a time
longer as if she was nose into some heavy wind.
    Then the feeling just lifted. Flicker shook herself as she walked,
snorted, kept going at a slightly slower pace.
    <Goblin cat,> Tara suggested. She loved the High Wild and the
woods. She enjoyed riding alone . . . but now and again came one of
those small, cold moments when the woods seemed foreign and
lonely, when the sounds all seemed right, but muffled and faint,
and when before and after seemed to change places.
    Flicker didn't agree with her image. She couldn't tell what
Flicker thought.
    <Ghosty in the bushes,> she thought then, shakily, telling her-
self it was only some particularly clever small creature--a spook, a
fast-moving one, maybe not a kind she was used to.
    But she couldn't convince herself of that. Maybe she'd gotten
scared at something and scared Flicker with her own human imagi-
nation.
    That could happen up here, especially in the woods, especially
with the snow flying and whiting out the details of things. Hu-
mans had to have edges. Humans had to know the connections of
things, and human minds made them up if they didn't get them.
There were stories about riders who'd spooked themselves and their
horses into serious trouble, losing track of the land and where the
drop-offs were; but she wasn't a scatterbrain, she wasn't inexperi-
enced, and neither was Flicker.


RIDER AT THE GATE               :~'    101

    She just didn't like what she'd felt back there, she still didn't get
a clear image out of Flicker--and she'd never in her life felt Flicker
do what she'd done.

It was a cold, cold morning, overcast about the mountain ridge
above them, as the road wound in slow, gentle ascent toward the
rising wall of Rogers Peak.
    It was a mountain Danny had grown up seeing from his third-
story window, a peak drifting disconnected from the earth in misty
distance above Shamesey walls--a place a town kid had regarded as
remote as the stars the preachers talked about. He'd never imagined
himself in those days as a rider---certainly never thought he'd be
traveling to that mountain, hunting rogue horses, or rescuing vil-
lagers. But the closer they'd traveled, the more solid the mountain
became, not a daydream now but an environment of stone and
gravel and grass, under a high dark wall of evergreen.
    The more solid the mountain became, the more the business
they'd come to do seemed both too close and too unreal to him. He
heard nothing wrong. He felt nothing besides themselves and the
occasional spook, the impression of being watched that was just the
Wild, that was all. It went on all the time, nothing threatening--
even reassuring, a sign that large predators weren't in the area.
    It was definitely colder, a knife-edged wind where the road
wound into the open, the sort that made one's ears ache, and
Danny, like the others, rode with a lap of his scarf over his head and
his hat on tight.
    He looked back now and again as the road offered a downward
view of the land, wondering anxiously if he might see any trace of
the riders Cloud had heard lower down--which didn't at all seem
to worry Cloud now. Cloud was feeling energetic, snorting, flaring
his nostrils and watching every flutter of leaves and wind-wave
across the grass--grass which was giving way to an advance guard
of scattered evergreen, not just occasional stands of trees, but the
edge of real forest, at which Danny had looked all his life, seeing it
only as a darkness on the mountains. Cloud moved here and there
on the track, generally annoying the three other horses, while Jonas
and the others pointedly ignored his presence. The other horses


102 ~             C.J. Cherryh

were trying to be peaceful, Danny thought: they seemed to realize
that Cloud was excited about the mountains and were forgiving of
his behavior.
    He wanted no more trouble. He'd had a go at the land alone, it
was damned spooky out there even without the remotest hint of
whatever might be on their backtrail, and he hoped Cloud would
be content finally, now that they were headed upland.
    He'd at least calmed himself enough he could be sure he wasn't
sending out a constant broadcast of his concerns, and he was sure
that made Cloud calmer.
  But he couldn't but look over his shoulder from time to time.
  "They're not going to be that careless," Jonas said finally.
    "Yes, sir," he said meekly. Yes, sir, after being left on his own in
the wild seemed the best answer to anything and everything Jonas
or any of the others said to him. He was not going to get into trou-
ble again. He was not going to afford these men an excuse to look
down on him.
    Cloud had to try to bite Shadow just then. Had to, though
Cloud deliberately pulled the nip short of Shadow's flank---deliber-
ate provocation, status-battle, and nighthorse tempers flared for a
jolting moment.
  "Boy," Jonas said.
    "Yes, sir," he said, embarrassed, taking Cloud's rebellion for his
fault, which only made Cloud madder.
    "You have a problem, boy. Do you think you can fix it, or do you
want to ride home now?"
    <Juniors laughing,> was his immediate and mortified thought.
"He's just never worked with a group. I'll pull back some."
"You going to spend your life pulling back some, or what, boy?"
"My name's Dan, sir." It had to be Cloud's influence. His face
was burning. His heart was beating hard. He might pull back from
making a direct and personal challenge of Jonas' authority--that
was farthest from his mind; but he wasn't going to tuck down and
take it from all of them for the rest of the trip, either, and that was
one boy too many for Karl Fisher's son. "You asked me to come
along to help find Stuart, and I take that for a promise. But I don't



RIDER AT THE GATE               it~    103

pick up anything right now. So I'll ride back behind till I do,
thanks."
    "Got you," Hawley said dryly. "Kid's got you, Jonas. It was your
idea to bring him. I told you."
    Jonas wasn't happy. Or didn't look it. Danny started to signal
behind Cloud's ribs with his heels. Cloud fell back on his own, sul-
lenly imaging (fight. >
    But <fight> wasn't what came from Jonas or from Shadow. Some
impression slid past him, something nebulous and fast and without
edges, a piece of something he didn't understand, and Jonas
dropped back, too, in clear intention to speak with him, as Cloud
and Shadow went unwillingly side by side.
    "Kid," Jonas said. It was an improvement on 'boy.' And Danny
caught an impression, now, of a meeting among the three men after
he'd left them last night--that and talk on the trail, yesterday
evening. "I didn't figure the complications, a kid getting into this.
Maybe you'd better go back."
    "I don't want to, sir." The juniors would know--he broadcast
the fear of that humiliation without in the least wanting to. He
tried to image himself on convoy, instead, riding guard with senior
riders. He'd done that: it was the truth. "I can pull my own weight,
I've no question."
  "I have. You can't stay on your horse. That's bad news up there."
    "Now, ease off, Jonas." Luke Westman had dropped alongside,
on Jonas' other side. "I can recall the day."
    Jonas sent him a surly look. But everybody got the image, Jonas
taking a tumble right over Shadow's neck. And Hawley had to
laugh.
    Danny ducked his head and thought urgently, desperately, de-
vout as a prayer in church, that Jonas looked important and profes-
sional and--his traitor mind added--rakish, experienced,
absolutely unflappable at disasters, the way he'd like to look.
    That brought a silence from Jonas, further guffaws from Hawley
and Luke, and he'd rather have died, right then, fallen right off
Cloud's back and died right on the road at their feet.
    "His horse is a damn problem," Jonas said--and just once Danny
got something of an image: <convoy, somewhere,> he didn't know


104e.~    C.J. Cherryh

the road. <Lot of trucks. Trouble.> "Danger to the kid, is what
that horse is. Same as the kid is a danger to him."
    Threaten Cloud, disparage Cloud? Not to his face. He wasn't
going to put up with it. <Cattle, > he thought, to that idea.
    "Ouch," Hawley said, and Jonas and Luke were frowning, while
Hawley shook his head and imaged <Quiet grass. Quiet water.>
    "Damn strong, is what he is," Luke said. "Noisy horse. Must
have learned from that old sod Wesson. --But bullying your way
through doesn't serve you well out here, kid. Take a strong dose of
quiet. You aren't in town now, and strong sending like that can
bring all sorts of attention. --Don't go surly with us. That's good
advice."
    "You want me to leave?" He was mad, he'd been insulted all he
was willing to bear, he'd embarrassed himself. He couldn't stand it.
    "Go backtrail in that kid-fit, boy," Jonas said, "and you'll find
trouble that won't give a damn about your sweet feelings. Throw
some water on that temper of yours, first off. Your horse doesn't
need that kind of trouble. You're no help to him. You keep him agi-
tated. You twitch, all the time. Knees. Feet. Elbows. Let the horse
for-God's-sake alone ten minutes in an hour."
    Damned outsider didn't know what Cloud needed and didn't
need. He did.
    "I said, throw some water on it. You're a fool. If you want to
fight about it, you and I can get off right here and settle who's tak-
ing orders and who's giving them."  "I never said--"
    "You don't have to say anything, town-kid. You shout it. You
didn't grow up with the horses, you never have got it through your
head that full-throttle isn't the way to take a steep, and you haven't
had anybody give a damn enough to tell you how damn noisy you
are, have you?"
    <Stuart,> flashed to mind, and mad as he was, he was embar-
rassed, sure the man was reading it all out of his mind, somehow.
    Which was stupid: the horses couldn't figure human experience.
The horses wouldn't know how his father dealt with him. Horses
didn't clearly know what a father was, scarcely recognized a
mother...


RIDER AT THE GATE               ~      105

  God.
    Cloud jostled under him, angry at his distress, he realized, and
he tried to calm Cloud with his hands. He couldn't organize his
thoughts. They were scattering every which way... <beads hitting
a floor. Mama's necklace. Mama and papa yelling at each other. >
      <Mama and Denis and Sam and a roof over his head most of his
life, and the drafts coming through until there was plaster-->
  "Kid. Get down. Get off."
    "I don't want to fight you." <Knives. Fringes flying. Blood hit-
ting the dirt. > He was scared of Jonas. He'd die in a knife-fight, he
had no question. He didn't know how to fight except with his fists.
And Cloud didn't want him to fight--Cloud shied off on the road
toward the edge, ears flat.
    "I didn't say fight, I said get the hell off. I want to talk to you,
fool kid."
    He wasn't sure. It might be a trick. Probably to humiliate him.
Cloud wasn't pleased. Cloud thought <Bite and kick,> and argued
with him to get in range of Jonas. But the other riders were trying
to calm the ambient and keep the horses apart.
    Then Jonas was sliding down. So he did, floppy baggage and all,
ready to <fight.>
    "Just walk with me," Jonas Westman said, and waved his arm in
the direction they were generally going.
    He still thought it still might be Jonas' intent to drop him. But
they could shoot him if they meant him real harm and not just to
deal out the knocks juniors took. He tried, shakily, to calm Cloud
down.
  "Kid," Jonas said. "No trick. Talk. Come on."
    He wasn't sure what Jonas had to say to him was going to be
better than hitting him. It was probably going to be direct and
rude and it was probably going to make him mad, and he didn't
know if he could stop Cloud now that he wasn't on Cloud's back.
    "Easy." Jonas put his hand on Danny's near shoulder as he came
close enough, Jonas let it rest there while they walked, the two of
them, while Shadow and Cloud trailed after. Danny threw a look
back to be sure Cloud was all right, but Hawley Antrim had his
horse between.


                       Cherryh
106 "-"    c.J


    Jonas squeezed his shoulder. Hard. "Kid. Easy. You're not the
only kid in the damn world, you've just got to damp it down a lit-
tle. It's not hard. Be not-here. Be quiet as you can, take a breath or
two. Quit moving. Keep your elbows and knees and feet for God's
sake quiet, anybody ever tell you?"
  "I don't want to go back. I owe Stuart."
    "Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's fine. Nobody ever showed you the finer
points, did they?"
    "He did." <Rainy day. Stuart telling him about the outfitters,
who to trust. >
    "Yeah, well, that's well and good, too. But there's more than
that. If I send you back to town now, and I ought to, I never bar-
gained for Harper and his night-crawlers, but you'll be mad as hell,
you'll get in with that bunch, and you don't want to understand,
Danny-boy, just how bad it can get in bad company. They're not
good men." Something slid like a ghosty right over his mind. He
couldn't grab it. He wasn't even sure it wasn't a ghosty, and he was
scared, feeling the silence that Jonas Westman could muster, and
knowing ... knowing that this was the man who'd upended all of
Shamesey camp and half the town when he'd come in looking for
Stuart. This was the man with the horse that imaged itself con-
stantly changing, shifting--you didn't know what you had. You
didn't know what Jonas thought, not really, not ever.
    "Easy," Jonas said, and that hand was still there, pressing hard,
almost to the point of pain. "Easy. What you've got to learn to do,
kid, is quiet down, don't give people so much help hearing you.
You can do it. Easier for you. You're older than that horse. What is
he, three, four?"
    He didn't want to talk about Cloud. The man had insulted
Cloud. Had insulted him.
  "My name's Dan... --Dan."
      "That's fine. When we know each other I'll use it. Shut up, shut
down, stop being scared."  "I'm not--"
     "Hell you aren't. Scared of us. That's foolish. You ought to be
 scared of who's on our tail. You ought to be scared of the job where
 we're going. You ought to be scared as hell of Stuart, if he doesn't


RIDER AT THE GATE               ~      I07

get himself quieted down, are you hearing me, kid? You get a
damper on it or you flame out of control all the time. If you do
that, you won't have many friends, no mates.., that's Stuart.
That's Stuart, boy. That's why he's where he is. That's why he's got
enemies. That's why he's got damn few friends, tell the truth."
      "He's all right." <Stuart on the porch. Rain coming down.
 Telling him who to trust. > "He never did me any harm."  "How long have you and that horse been together?"
     "Couple of years." One and a half was a couple, wasn't it? "I'm
 not stupid."
     "Yeah. Fine. Easy to say, harder to prove. I've got a temper.
 We've all got tempers. But a horsefight doesn't serve anybody, least
 of all the horse, trust me on that."
    He didn't want Cloud hurt. He was scared he'd gotten Cloud
"into---
  "Calm down." The grip on his shoulder did hurt. "Boy."
  "My name's Dan."
     "That's fine. We've all got names. Don't be so definite. Be
 smoke. Be fog. I can teach you, if you're not like Guil. If you'll lis-
 ten. Otherwise you'd better ride back and stay safe."
  <Riding up to the high country alone. Taking Cloud home. >
  "Damned fool," Jonas said. "Not a choice."
     "I told him I would," he muttered. "Cloud wants to go. It's
 where he's from. Even Wesson says. You can't send me back. If I
 leave you got no say where I go."
      Second painful squeeze. "Town-brat. You don't know what you're
 up against. You can't imagine the high country in winter."  "I know about it. I know it's hard up there."
     "You also know there's a rogue up there that's killed a rider ten
 years in the business. You know you're damn bait, kid, that's all
 you've got sense to be, the way you shout into the dark. That's why
 I brought you. Wise up."
  "So I can do one thing real well. My name's Dan."
     "Danny. All right. A little less pride, a little more clear think-
 ing. Do you have to go up there being bait? Or do you think you
 can do better than that?"
   "Maybe." If Jonas had something to teach him about slipping
108 ~             C.J. Cherryh

around things, he could learn it. If Jonas was just being nasty, he
didn't care. Staying with Jonas got him up there to Tarmin Ridge,
up in the honest-to-God high country. Any mountain would have
done. That was what he most wanted.
  "You just calm down. Calm--down. Hear?"
  "Yes, sir."
    "Damn lot to learn, Danny Fisher," Jonas said then, and dropped
his hand from his shoulder, the two of them walking along in front
of the horses.
  "I'd rather Dan," Danny muttered.
  "It's Danny. It's kid when you foul up. You earn Dan."
    Still made him mad. But he quieted it down. He imaged
<peaceful clouds> and <clouds over mountains.> "All right," he
said. "I can do that. When I want to."
    "Good," Jonas said, and didn't seem to dismiss him. Danny didn't
know what to do with himself then--whether to go back to Cloud,
fall back and leave the man alone.., or what.
    "Name's Jonas," Jonas said. "I earned it. --You tried talking,
kid?"
    "Yes, sir." His father had pounded 'sir' into him. It got you off
without being hit.
    "Jonas," Jonas said. "That's Luke, that's Hawley. Try not to
shout, damn you."
  "I'm sorry, sir. I--"
  "Jonas. Try it."
    "Yes, sir." That wasn't it, either, but it just fell out. His tongue
tied up. He wanted Jonas to let him go, he wanted . . .
    Cloud moved up on them. So did Shadow. So did Ice and Froth
with their riders. <Calm water,> Danny imaged. <Still water.
Danny walking quietly with this man. Danny upset-->
    He couldn't keep the negatives out of his thinking. <Still water,>
was the best he could do consistently. <Clouds over mountains,
sunset.> He felt like a fool. And knew everyone heard him.
<Danny unhappy. >
  <Cattle,> Cloud sent.
  "Kid," Jonas said.
  <Quiet water. Cloud standing in quiet water.> Best he could do.


RIDER AT THE GATE               ~      109

~Danny giving Cloud sugar-lumps. In camp,~ he had to amend
that, because his pockets were empty of sugar-lumps. (Danny sit-
ting with men.
  eCattle,~ Cloud still imaged. (Cattle rear ends.)
    "Cut it out," Danny muttered, not looking at Cloud, but Cloud
knew that tone and knew the thoughts in his head with a very clear
understanding when he was getting on his rider's nerves.
  Cattle everywhere.
    "Sorry," Danny said to the men around him, and went back and
patted Cloud on the shoulder, walked with his arm under Cloud's
neck, patting him under his mane. Cloud kept sulking, but that
was because Cloud was getting his way. "You behave," Danny mut-
tered. When things got bad, he used words, mystery words, things
Cloud didn't know, and Cloud got frustrated, because Cloud knew
something was going on Cloud couldn't have, couldn't see.
    Cloud hated the town. Cloud hated his family. Cloud hated
townsmen. Cloud hated people around them. Cloud wanted just
him. Alone.
    That was scary. That was real scary, when he realized that small
truth.

The sleet came down thickly now, whiting over the dark shapes of
evergreens, sticking on Flicker's black coat, dusting Flicker's mane
and up-pricked ears. Pace, pace, pace down the trail at a steady clip;
the images from Flicker were still all spooky, distracted, wavery--
like smell-images, but stranger than that, and Tara Chang told her-
self she wasn't going to stop at the storm-shelters. They'd make it,
no matter how heavy the storm grew. She wasn't bedding down
tonight alone in a log shack out in the middle of the woods. She
was determined about that matter long in advance of getting there.
    But it was a serious decision. It might be a spooked, unwise de-
cision, with the sleet having turned to honest snow by the time
they passed the shelter on the trail.
    The shelter sat unoccupied, Tara knew that in the same way she
knew the ambient and saw no smoke from the chimney. She had no
doubt it was stocked and ready for winter--Chad and Vadim had
escorted the teams out with the winter supplies the first leaf-turn:



110 ~             C.J. Cherryh


clean blankets, grain, preserved meat in strong, pilfer-proof tins,
medicines, cordage, anything a storm-trapped rider might need.
    She might be foolish. The way ahead of them was turning as
white as Flicker's frantic imaging, and there was safety in those
thick log walls and those heavy shutters, if one could keep the
doors barred. The shelter would hold her and Flicker both, no
question.
    But no shelter could help if a rider, in the grip of predator-sent
illusions, chose to unbar a door or open a shutter. If you got your-
self besieged indoors by a persistent predator, illusions came
through walls, through shutters, through barred doors, illusions to
confuse a horse and beguile a fool human into lifting a latch.
    Flicker snorted and shook herself, never slacking pace as they
moved on down the road. Tara agreed by doing nothing and they
both committed themselves to the try for at least the next shelter, if
not for home. It was a very uneasy feeling in Tara's several looks
back, as the shelter lay farther and farther behind them, as woods
closed between and the storm showed signs not of abating, but of
getting worse.
    It might well have been a mistake, Tara thought. Not necessarily
a fatal one, but a rider didn't get too many such mistakes for free,
not in a long life. Staying the night there might have been a mis-
take, too. She didn't know. She had no way to judge now, either the
weather or the uneasiness about the Wild that still crawled up and
down her nerves.
    As bad as the weather was looking now, the road crew she'd just
taken out to their work might indeed be coming back, all of them,
scared by the same storm--so if she'd stayed at the shelter, she
might not have been alone for more than the night. If the road crew
did decide to winterize the equipment and break camp, Barry and
Llew would push through the night if necessary, at whatever pace
they could with the ox-teams. They'd offload everything, cache
even the supplies, if they didn't like the look of the weather; and
the stolid-seeming oxen could move fast, if they moved unladed,
not as fast as nighthorses, bur they might be headed for that shel-
ter, all the same.
  If she were in charge instead of Barry, the way it was looking


RIDER AT THE GATE               ~      I I I

 now, no question they'd chuck it and leave that exposed mountain
 flank before the drifts built up.
    Barry, though, was a get-the-job-done man. Village-bred, not a
born rider. Villagers liked to deal with him. He made sense to vil-
lage-siders, and Barry had agreed with this jaunt out to flirt with
the weather and been willing to sit out there freezing his fingers
and toes off. Not to mention other useful parts.
    A cold gust blew up the skirts of her coat, found its way into her
bones, and she buttoned the weather-bands tightly around her
glove cuffs, then took her hat off to get a closer fit on the scarf that
protected her ears from frostbite. She slid the chin-cord tight when
she put it on again, and turned her collar up. She had a knitted
hood in her inside pocket. It made her face itch and she hated it.
    Most of all it restricted her side vision, and she wanted to know
what was around her, on the edges of her vision, even if it was
misty white and the misted shapes of trees.
    But, <white,> Flicker imaged, whiting out the world except the
trail in front of them, as if they were nowhere in the universe but
this small patch that was real; and Flicker kept up a steady pacing
gait, creating the world constantly ahead of her.
    Spooked, she said to herself. Too much thinking on disaster in
this perilous season. She imaged <scavengers in the rocks, wrecked
truck> until she realized she was doing it.
    She imaged <winter storm on the mountain> and <frozen bod-
ies> without running it past her thinking brain, and Flicker
couldn't tell the difference. Panic her own horse into a heart-attack,
she could--like some fool first-year rider----come in with her tail
tucked and the willies lurking in every tree. She knew better, and
she told Flicker <calming down, slowing down.>
    But that shelter was a long ways behind them now, and the next
chance lay a good distance ahead.
    <Death on the rocks. Hidden ledges.> Dammit! She couldn't
stop thinking about it.
    They knew the trail. Despite the whiteout, she was sure they
hadn't left the road. She could see the markers on the trees arriving
out of oblivion and passing by in Flicker's constant, even strides.
  Possible that some new creature had moved into the woods. Hu-




112 ~:    C.J. Cherryh

mans weren't native to these mountains--not even native to the
world they lived in, the seniors said so: now and again something
did show up that nobody'd seen, pushed by the storm winds, dri-
ven by fiercer predators or by some unguessable notion of prey to
be had this side of the mountain divide, she didn't know. Some-
times a wild horse would show up with an image you didn't want
to know about. Nobody claimed to have met everything there was
to meet in the woods; Flicker was all the opinion she trusted now,
Flicker felt something she didn't like.., void and the smell of
death, that was what began to come through the ambient, some-
thing that crawled with scavengers and came out of the storm, nei-
ther dark nor light. It was everything. It was nothing at all.  But it was prickling at the edges of her attention.
    Flicker jolted forward into a sudden, neck-snapping run. (Rocks
and logs,> Tara imaged in alarm. She had a fistful of mane, and
took a second one, closer to Flicker's head, jerking on it. But in the
next instant her own panic overwhelmed her. She believed some-
thing was behind them--she threw a look over her shoulder, as
Flicker hadn't, and saw nothing but white light and the ghostly
trees jolting and blurring past with Flicker's reckless strides.
<Run!> she thought in fright, looked back, looked to the sides and
forward, and again she looked back, and then she thought, an in-
stant's amazed chagrin--and absolute conviction: it's not there. It's
not there now.
    Flicker slowed, breathing through her mouth in great, cold
gasps--and kept making a little forward progress, just a little, a
walk on a wider-open stretch of road. There was still one more shel-
ter ahead, the last between them and the village, but Flicker's reac-
tion to that image, too, was a spooky, wordless no, Flicker wouldn't
stay there. Flicker kept walking, picked up speed on the downhills
and trudged up the climbs, an ox-road and as level as the road-
builders could make it. The place felt safer now, and if Flicker
wanted to rest, Tara was for it.
    But she didn't get off, because if that sending came down again,
she didn't rely on Flicker staying sane or remembering that she was
leaving her rider stranded. There was a limit, even to their long


RIDER AT THE GATE               ~      113

partnership, and a goblin-cat confused even a nighthorse, if that
was what it was.
    Hours on, well into afternoon, they came to that second shelter.
Flicker's legs and chest were spattered with ice now. Flicker's
breath huffed in great heavy pulses. <Rest,> Tara wanted, afraid
Flicker would run herself into a heart attack. <Dark behind us. >
    Flicker imaged only <cold> and <white> and retook her beat,
pace, pace, pace, pace, steady and scared.

The falling snow slowly took on a kind of dim gold haze that
passed to a hint of blue, heralding night, one of those snowy, moon-
up nights that might have no boundary from the day. The second
shelter was no-return now. It was farther back than it was on to
Tarmin, and the night was blued and pale.
    <Camp walls,> Tara imaged, and swore that if they just made it
to Tarmin camp there'd be warm blankets and whatever Flicker
wanted. Ham. Eggs. A rub-down as long as Flicker wanted.
    Flicker wasn't taking bribes. Flicker wasn't listening at all.
Flicker just kept going, in a fear that wasn't at all panic, a fear that
just didn't let go, didn't allow rest.
    Until between one stride and the next.., the fear dropped away
from them, different than its prior comings and goings--it just all
of a sudden didn't exist, might never have existed, leaving a
nighthorse running and forgetting why and a rider who never had
clearly known the cause.
    Flicker slowed to a shuddery walk, snorting and blowing and
slavering onto a chest spattered with ice--walked, with wobbly
steps, and Tara slid down, her fears of phantoms in the dark re-
placed by a real and present fear of Flicker collapsing under her rid-
er's weight.
    <Warmth,> she imaged. <Camp and light and warm air, Flicker
walking, Flicker just walking, safe now, safe... >
    Flicker wasn't sure. Flicker was confused where she was, but in
that confusion she kept listening to her rider, and Tara kept walk-
ing, holding a fistful of Flicker's mane to be sure they stayed to-
gether. She cast through the haze of snow and blued night, picking




1 14 ~    C.J. Cherryh

out what the markers told her was the trail, despite the trackless
blanketing of snow.
    She smelled the smoke of cookfires, then. She imaged <camp
walls,> and <rest,> and shoved at Flicker's shoulder, terrified of the
ordinary dark for the first time in her adult life. She imaged it
without intending to, and that got Flicker moving, a last shaky ef-
fort uphill and onto the flat road outside the gates.
    <Gates opening,> she imaged, before she reached the bell. But it
was a snowy, sleepy night, and she had to grasp the rope with a
numb, gloved hand, rouse the sleeping horses inside, and ring fit to
wake the whole town, telling them there was a rider in from a dark
that seemed deeper and more threatening at their backs now that
they had the gate in front of them than it had a moment ago out in
the midst of the storm.
    "Come on," she muttered to the insensate wood, and hammered
on it with her fist. <Tara and Flicker, freezing, snow on both of us.
Vadim. Chad. Sleepy, lazy riders. Gate opening. Gate opening. Dan-
ger in the woods. >
    The spyhole opened. They were being careful tonight. An eye re-
garded her before someone lifted the bar.
    "Need help," she said. It was Vadim who had answered the gate-
bell, and Vadim who shut the gate behind her as she led Flicker in,
heading for the nighthorse den where warm bodies kept the air a
constant temperature--where other horses, other minds, were solid,
friendly, ordinary.
    Images flashed back and forth as she met that warmth, Flicker's
<white-white-white>, the other horses' queasy, unsettling fright at
the dark outside.
    She couldn't stop it--she couldn't get Flicker to stop--couldn't
come out---couldn't escape--couldn't stop the light--
  "God," Vadim said quietly, coming into that flood of panic.
    She was lost in it, trying to shut it down. She felt smothered
when Vadim put his arms around her, hugged her against him-
<fright and love and warmth.> Vadim was sending <danger> and
<horse> but it was remote from her, lost as she was in cold, lost as
she was in her desperation to ger air, to breathe, to move. She
writhed free without meaning rejection. She felt Vadim's consterna-


RIDER AT THE GATE              ~        115

 tion at that fleeting contact, felt it in the ambient, the horses all
 waked to fear and malady.., they didn't know, at first, what had
 come among them: <Cold,> Flicker sent. And <white.> no ordi-
 nary calm-sending. Flicker was lost, too. White was a veil of snow
 and light behind which they'd both taken refuge, and now in its
 shifting substance, Flicker couldn't find the exit.
     "Tara!" Vadim shook her till her head snapped back. Till she
 could see the dark around them. He hugged her till her joints
 cracked, kissed her, breathed warmth on her.
    "Get help." She'd been too cold to shiver. In the still warmth of
the den, in Vadim's attempts to warm her, his sending that she
couldn't take in--she found the ability. "Water. Cold water. Need
more hands."
    When you were this cold you started with cold water com-
presses, and you kept increasing the heat in the water little by lit-
tle. If she and Flicker were alone she'd do it herself, but there was
help. Chad and Luisa and Mina were in the barracks, and with a
<Tara sitting, Tara waiting in the den> Vadim went running out
into the snow, running, scared for her, when nothing she'd ever met
could scare Vadim.
    Vadim hadn't been where the danger was. He hadn't felt it stalk-
ing behind him. He only had the echoes. And by that shapeless,
dark fear of his, she knew how desperate it had been--still was, in
her mind.
    "We're all right," she said to Flicker, pressing close against
Flicker's shoulder, thinking <den, camp, riders and horses, all
around us .... >
    In not very long at all, her partners came running, Mina and
young Luisa, all appalled, saying there was a rogue, they'd had a
phone call clear from Shamesey, they'd wanted to come after her,
but Vadim and Chad had held out against their going outside the
walls--<wanting> (young fools that they were) <coming out into
the woods to find her; town gates were all guarded; they were both
angry-->
    <Safety,> Tara kept saying, half-aware of them, shuddering at
the thought of them going out into the woods unprotected. But it
was constantly Flicker uppermost in her thoughts, it was Flicker


iii~i:




116 ~ C..J. Cherryh

she desperately tried to make aware of the camp, the den--the
horses Flicker knew as her den-mates, as close to her as her human
partners were to her rider.
    Flicker just kept imaging <white,> only <white,> as if, even in
safety, she still couldn't come back from that place,


Chapter

 Vlll

MAN'S A DAMN GHOST," HAWLEY SAID, AT THEIR WIND-BLOWN
campfire that night, high on the road, in a clump of evergreens that
gave them a little shelter. There was no sign of passage but the ruts
the trucks had made in the road. The prints of horses on the dust
were old, hardened mud; the tracks of game were newer. They hadn't
turned up tracks or sight or scent of Guil Stuart or, for that matter,
any sight at all of whoever they'd sensed following them.
    Maybe we imagined it, Danny thought against his day-long in-
clination. He was, by now, willing to doubt his perceptions and
Cloud's.
  Maybe I misled everybody.
    "It's sure a steep climb if he's gone straight up the ridge," Luke
said, meaning <Stuart.~ "Question is, how bad was he hit? He
could have gone to ground somewhere, if he was bleeding heavy."
    The question turned unexpectedly to Danny then, when his
mind was half-elsewhere; but Jonas was next to him, looking at
him, so that a crawling-feeling went up and down Danny's skin.





118    ~          C.J. Cherryh

    Jonas wanted, Jonas was impatient, that came through, and Dan-
ny's wits went scattered. <Gawky kid sitting on ground,> also
came through to him, along with a feeling of irritation.
    "Boy," Jonas said. "You'd tell us if you had a thought of Stuart's
whereabouts. That so?"
  "Yeah, but I don't. Sorry."
    Jonas kept pushing at him. Friendly in the morning. Jonas' back
to him all afternoon. Everybody talking. Except him. <Cloud in-
creasingly unhappy-->
    He rolled to his knees, intending to leave the fireside and go
over to Cloud's vicinity, where he was comfortable and welcome.
    "Kid," Luke said, not half so harshly. Luke was the friendlier,
youngest one, the one he didn't want a fight with--Luke maybe
knew it. He couldn't tell what got through to other people. "Sit
down. Sit down, all right? Just a question."
    It wasn't just a question, he thought, with upset still roiling in
his stomach. The question he was asking himself was about his own
competency, a question so wide and general through his life he
didn't want to consider it except piece at a time, and most of all he
didn't want to consider it with them.
    But he didn't want a fight with Luke, so he sat back down, arm
around one knee, and found a dead seedpod to break up into dry
pieces.
  "Ought to have stayed with mama," Jonas muttered.
    "Yeah, fine," he said back. "You want an answer, Jonas, sir? I
don't know where he is. I'm not hMing him."
  < Cattle. > He was unhappy, Cloud was unhappy.
  "You're being loud, kid," Jonas said.
    "Yeah, well, get off me. Doing the best I can." He didn't look at
Jonas or the rest of them. The seedpod was far more interesting. It
had four inside chambers, with hard, round seeds, brown in the
firelight. Crunch. Four, six, a handful. He tossed them at the fire,
one, two, three, trying to land one where it would burn visibly.
Two hit, off, the third landed under the glowing archway of
branches at the edge. Achievement.
    "Kid." That was Hawley. He didn't dislike Hawley. He really, re-
ally wasn't sure about Jonas.


RIDER AT THE GATE              ~iE      I 19

  "Kid's adjusting," Jonas said. "And he doesn't know."
    Truth. Jonas always talked nicer about him than Jonas talked to
him. He didn't know why Jonas couldn't do a little adjusting
himself.
    Didn't know why Jonas had wanted him if nobody was going to
believe him, except that remark Jonas had made about him being
bait, and he didn't take that altogether as fluffery. They might have
intentions like that, using him that way, to draw Stuart in; and no
reason they shouldn't tell him so.
    They probably thought he was lying about people following
him, trying to make himself important, trying to cover his trailing
in late the way he had, as if there was some big, awful danger out
there and he'd escaped it on his own.
    Serve them right if somebody did come up on them. And he'd
warn them, of course, but they wouldn't listen. They were seniors,
and knew everything.
    "Kid," Jonas said. "Calm down for two minutes, have you got it?
We can send the horses off a ways so you and I can have a discus-
sion, if you want."
    "No, sir," he muttered. Nobody was sending Cloud anywhere he
didn't want Cloud to go. But it wasn't smart to quarrel with men
who carried knives for more than fire-making. It didn't even take a
junior's intelligence to figure that out.
  "Guns are quicker," Jonas remarked dryly.
  He was sending, again. Dammit.
    "The kid's just upset," Luke said. "Lay off, Jonas. You're pushing
him too hard."
    "Damn right I'm pushing him. We leave him at Tarmin village
first chance we get. The rogue'd have him for breakfast. Go right
for him, it would. I don't plan to get him killed."
    Madder and madder. Insult and concern. He couldn't read Jonas'
signals and he couldn't say whether Jonas was right or wrong. He
wanted to go to Cloud the way he'd started to and not have to lis-
ten to them. He'd no need of lectures. But he'd been told to sit
down, by the only one of them who was civil to him, and if Luke
got mad at him the trip was going to be hell.
  Cloud ambled up into the firelight, snuffing at the ground, in-



120----~          C.J. Cherryh

sinuated his big head over Danny's shoulder and rested it there,
imaging <grass in the sunlight. Sweet-smelling.>
    Danny patted Cloud's cheek, and Cloud's soft nose investigated
his pockets, wanting <sugar-lumps> he was sure his rider ought to
have.
  Cloud didn't do things totally unselfishly.
  "What I still can't figure," Hawley said, "is what he's doing."
  He meant Stuart.
"Maybe he thinks the camp's sent out hunters," Luke said.
"They have, of course," Jonas said, and it took Danny a second
and more to realize Jonas meant themselves, that that was what
they were. It didn't even count whoever was following them. He
told himself what he'd perceived was real, no matter what Jonas
thought. It was a damned stupid mess, over a rider who hadn't
done anything--anything but go to the gate trying to get his be-
longings back.
    Which they had brought with them. Supposedly to give Stuart's
belongings back to him when they found him.
  But he wasn't so sure what Jonas' personal motives were.
    He was probably sending again, but Jonas ignored it, just kicked
the cook pan into the fire for the fire to clean. There wasn't much
grease. It made a flare, and the flare died quickly. He'd have to
wipe it down in the morning, with a twist of grass, nasty job. But
the youngest rider always got those jobs, it was a law of the uni-
verse.
  "Suppose he did get hit worse than we thought?" Luke asked.
    "I don't think so," Danny muttered without even thinking about
it, and wished he hadn't opened his mouth on any of their business,
but Luke asking was different from Jonas asking, in his estimation,
and by that comment, he'd committed himself. He found his hand
resting on his leg above the knee, remembered the pain of the gun-
shot across the skin, the shock to the knee bones and tendons, vivid
memory--he'd played it out a dozen times in his head and he did it
for them, the whole image, to answer Luke's question.
    "Didn't go through," Hawley judged with a grimace. "Went
past. Burned him good, knocked him down, is all."
  "Good," Jonas said, not meaning about knocking Stuart down,


RIDER AT THE GATE              ~        121

meaning him: he suddenly figured he'd just done exactly what
Jonas had been trying to get out of him, exactly the way that Jonas
expected, and he hated Jonas for the satisfied look Jonas cast in his
direction. But he held onto Cloud's forelock long enough to dis-
tract Cloud when Cloud jerked his head up. Cloud's hair burned
through his hand. And Jonas won. Jonas was used to winning.
    "Kid's damned good when he wants to be," Hawley said, which
doubly confused him, about whether Hawley was serious or sarcas-
tic, as Hawley, immediately off on another tangent, imaged <steep
mountains, rider on dangerous slope. > It looked like Guil.
    "Maybe not," Luke said, not about him being good when he
wanted to be: it was the rider-image Luke shook apart, in favor of
<level trail>; a definite place, it seemed to be, but it could be any
place. They knew what they were imaging. He didn't. He sat there
with places he'd never seen flying back and forth through his vision
and no knowledge what the question was.
    From out of nowhere Jonas put his hand on Danny's knee--
scared hell out of him, that too personal, powerful touch--shook
him right out of his thoughts. "Gone across to Anveney?" Jonas
asked without paying further attention to him, and the image of
town and smokestacks Danny had never seen in person was cer-
tainly Anveney the way he'd seen it before, in his head. It was a
place, he'd learned, that riders didn't like, except Anveney paid
well.., and it was the only place of all the places in the world be-
sides Shamesey he could have identified without their help.
    Jonas hit his knee, meaning Shut up, Danny thought; stop
thinking into the ambient.
  "Man's got no supplies," Luke said.
  "Question is if he's got money," Jonas said.
    "I wouldn't leave my stash under any hostel mattress," Hawley
said. "Not in Shamesey town."
  Insult his town, while he was at it. There were limits.
    Another pat of Jonas' unwelcome hand, and Jonas wasn't even
talking to him. Jonas was thinking about a building somewhere
else, a place with bars on the windows, a jail, Danny thought at
first, and then thought not, it was a business. "Has he," Jonas
asked, "got a draw on Aby's account?"



122      ~        C.J. Cherryh


    The question surprised Hawley, angered Hawley. Danny didn't
know why. Then it seemed to perplex Hawley, who scratched his
stubbled chin. "Hell. She never said."
  Jonas asked: "How much was in there?"
  "Healthy amount," Hawley said sullenly. "It's not his."
    What did they do? Danny wondered. It sounded like an account
at a bank, and money the dead rider had had there--that they
thought Stuart might have gone to get.
      There was an uneasiness in the air, Hawley's Ice, Cloud, Jonas'
Shadow all suddenly on edge. Jonas wasn't at all happy.  Hawley wasn't.
    Hawley had gotten the money the dead rider owned, out of a
bank, somewhere not in Shamesey--which was maybe Anveney.
Danny didn't know about banks or how you got money out of
them. He'd never been inside one. Papa kept his money on him, or
in the hiding-place under the floor, which he didn't want to think
about with these men seeing it ....
    "Kid," Jonas said sharply, and laid a hard hand on his knee.
Shook at him.
    "Sorry." He knew he'd slipped this time, and dangerous men
were close to anger with each other all around him, a long lonely
way from anywhere.
    "No," Jonas said. "We're not angry, boy. Hawley has a right to
the money. He's her kin. He evidently proved it to the bank."
<Jonas and Hawley at a counter, or something like, a woman talk-
ing to them.> "Just, it's a damn complication." <Stuart with his
back turned, Stuart walking somewhere in town streets. Stuart
with this same bank employee woman. >
    <Aby Dale,> another sending imaged. <Red-haired little girl,
big black horse.> But the sending stopped in anger.
  "Everybody calm down," Luke said. "Just calm down."
  "The damn kid's a distraction," Hawley muttered.
  "You went in there," Jonas said, "you took that money out."
  "I had a right!"
  "You could have by-damn said, Hawley!"
  "I'm on that account. Look, I'm her cousin."
  "Dammit, Hawley!"


RIDER AT THE GATE              ~        123

    "If you had a word you could have said it, Jonas. You knew I was
going to the bank. What did you think I was going to do? I got the
card. She give me the card."
    "Calm down," Luke said. "Hawley, it's all right. You did all
right."
    "Yeah, all right," Jonas said. "If he goes there, if he knows about
the money--"
  "I had a right!" Hawley said.
    "You had a right," Luke said. "There's no question you had a
right. --Danny, you want to get up and move the horses back? Do
us a favor?"
    "Yes, sir," Danny said, and got up--the horses were crowding in,
snappish and pushy with the argument. He gave a shove at Cloud.
<Cloud in the dark, away from the fire. Danny, too. > That was easy,
another, harder push on Cloud's shoulder, Cloud's understanding
that they were both to leave the fireside, but dealing with the other
horses was a scary matter. The seniors' horses didn't want any town
kid pushing them around, didn't want to take orders from him--
    He walked in among them and suddenly a queasy darkness flit-
tered through his mind, shapes and shadows and a violence that
sent him a step back, disoriented. <Bite. Kick> was in the ambi-
ent, from two sides. "Cloud!" he said, and made a futile grab at
Cloud's mane as horses squealed and heads darted past him, teeth
bared, big bodies swinging about perilously close to him as shoul-
der hit shoulder.
      Another spin. Cloud and Shadow. Heels flew past him and he
jumped back barely in time.  "Shadow!" Jonas shouted.
    It just stopped, horses jogged past each other in abortive attack.
Shadow's teeth snapped on empty air. Cloud's heels kicked up and
managed to miss.
    He was shaking. <Cloud and Danny walking,> he insisted, furi-
ously, and <quiet horses grazing,> but he couldn't call their true
names in his head, not with the knowledge their riders had; and
meanwhile their riders were having an argument at the fireside.
They wanted him out of the way because he was loud--and the
horses were on edge, with each other and with Cloud on general


124      ~        C.J. Cherryh

principle. He tried to calm tempers all around, imaging <quiet
grass,> but he couldn't call the silent names, not the way their rid-
ers could.
    He'd seen Shadow's name when the fight started, that fluttering
succession of treacherous shadow-shapes. It was a dreadful name--
he truly didn't mean to think in that hostile way of Jonas' horse,
but it wasn't a name that slid easily past the nerves. He'd mis-
trusted that horse from the first moment he'd dealt with it, and he
didn't turn his back on it--he was scared of that horse in a way
he'd never had to be scared of a horse.
    And in the aftermath of the encounter he'd just had, when he re-
called Shadow's heels flying past his head, he was twice afraid. He
didn't want to think of what could have happened to him if he'd
not moved fast enough or if the fight had gotten serious with him
in the midst of the horses.
    Which wasn't the way to deal with horses at all. He fought his
townbred nerves. He tried to separate them out, put Cloud to one
side and keep the other three from snapping at each other or him,
and they kept getting around him to make another sniping attack.
    "Here." Luke Westman came to help him, clapped him on the
shoulder, which did nothing to help his knees, and shoved Shadow
out of a not-entirely-inquisitive approach with the back of his
fist--swatted Shadow hard on the rump when he didn't retreat.
<Danny swatting Shadow,> came into Danny's head--he for God's
sake hadn't thought it, he was scared even to think of hitting that
horse---Luke had launched that threat into the ambient on his be-
half, Behave or the kid will hit you.
    He didn't think it a help. But Luke waved Froth away from him
and came close up on Cloud.
     "What's his name?" Luke asked, meaning the inside name, the
 real name Cloud called himself---but he wasn't sure that Cloud
 wanted Luke to know that name. Cloud was laying his ears back
 and wrinkling his nose as was, and he didn't answer Luke. He just
 shoved at Cloud's chest and wanted him apart from the seniors and
 their horses.
  "Be careful of him," Danny said. "Cloud, behave. Don't bite."
  "He won't bite," Luke said, taking something from his pocket.


RIDER AT THE GATE              ~--      125

He held it out. Froth muscled in and got the treat. Candy. Cloud
wanted it. But Ice sneaked his head in and got the next one Luke
magicked out of his pocket.
    <Cattle,> Cloud sulked, and then Shadow intruded, slipped up
behind Froth and Ice so slyly and so smoothly Danny didn't see
him until Shadow's neck snaked out and Shadow nipped the third
candy Luke's pocket produced. Cloud was outraged.
    But immediately Luke's other hand was out, offering one to
Cloud... <sweet, delicious sweet> was the image in the ambient,
from Luke and the horses, Danny realized, and felt Cloud wanting
it, inching toward it. Sugar-candy was what he'd promised Cloud
for good behavior, when he hadn't had one, and there it was, not
from his hand, but from Luke's.
    Cloud's mouth was watering, <Cloud sneaking it right off that
hand, hating that cattle horse licking the man's other fingers, ugly
shifty horse... >
  Cloud was going to---
    "Fingers!" Danny said, earliest manners-lesson Cloud had had to
learn, where treats stopped and a rider's fingers began.
    But Luke had curled his hand around to hide the treat for a sec-
ond, then showed it again, just halfway, teasing, did it twice, blink
of an eye, had something else out of his other pocket, in his other
hand, that Shadow got before Shadow created a fuss.
    Cloud's head darted out, Luke's hand wasn't there, and Cloud
jerked.., except there was the candy again, quick as a blink, right
there, <sugar-smelling, fruit-smelling, sweet-->
    Cloud nabbed it, jerked away, and backed off, jaws working on
his prize. Hostile. Enjoying the sweet. Thinking he'd gotten away
with it.
    "He's fine," Luke said. "You ought to let that horse of yours
around people more. It's good for him."
    <Mad.> Danny didn't know what he felt: he was glad Luke
hadn't lost a finger, glad it hadn't sparked a horse-fight--<mad>
that Cloud had fallen for it...
  "Kid," Luke said. "What is your grief?"
  "Nothing." He couldn't own to what he felt. He didn't know



126    ~          C.J. Cherryh

why he was mad, except Luke knew he'd promised Cloud that
candy and Luke had no right.
    "Nothing," Luke echoed him, and (ready was in the ambient
now, horses milling about, Luke growing irritated with him,
Danny felt it. "Kid, --why'd you take up for Stuart?"
    That came from out of nowhere, when he was ready for an accu-
sation. "I don't know."
    "Man did you a petty little favor. You're traipsing clear to hell
paying him. Why? What's it to you?"
    (High country. Papa hitting him. Mama yelling. Snow and trees
in Cloud's mind. Stuart on the tavern porch talking to him as if he
was really somebody.
  "Who hit you? A relative?"
  "None of your damn business."
    "Yeah, none of our business. Till you screw up and need some-
body to come after you, none of our business."
    (Stuart. Surly and mad. Him, Danny Fisher, same expression,
exactly the same stance.
    "Like Stuart?" Danny retorted. "Me? I don't even know him, all
right? I don't see where he screwed up. He was doing fine till you
came along with your lousy news." (Stuart talking to him.
--Luke, standing there in the dark blaming him for being mad.
Giving candy to Cloud.3 A lump came into his throat. So he found
one man who'd talk to him like a human being, one man in the
whole universe who helped him who didn't have to. He'd thought a
couple of nights ago he'd found another in Jonas. He'd thought
he'd found somebody else who stood by his friends. Which was a
joke. (Stuart running up the hill, away from the three of them.
    That didn't sound like friends to him. And he'd had friends, one
or two, no matter what Jonas said--well, at least the boys he'd
hung around with in town, until he'd gone and taken up with
Cloud.
    They'd even tried to get past that, his town friends had. At least
they'd tried. Gone on seeing him and hanging about with him,
when he came back into town, maybe to shock their other friends,
but, hell, it was more than he could say for Jonas and the rest of


RIDER AT THE GATE              ~        127


 them, sitting smug on their horses, watching Stuart lose his grip
 on sanity in the upset they'd brought him.
     <Stuart running up the hill. Them sitting watching. Rogue-feeling
 spreading like poison in the camp. >
    Suddenly it was a resolve and a certainty to him: he couldn't
stand any more of their company. He stalked back to the fireside,
grabbed up his gear and started hanging thongs from his shoulder
and stuffing gloves in his pocket as he walked back to Cloud--<us
leaving this place. >
    "Can't take it?" Jonas sniped at him, from the fireside. "This the
way you honor contracts? Is this what you do to drivers you're hired
tO?"
    It was an attack the same way his mother attacked him. He was
used to it. He jammed his hat on, reached for Cloud's mane, the
lump in his throat grown to painful size.
    "Kid!" Different voice, Hawley's. It made him flinch out of the
flashy swing up he intended, but it wasn't going to stop him: he
chose the steadier, belly-down mount he knew he wouldn't fail.
    So he wasn't good. So he got up like a kid. He was on Cloud's
back, and Cloud turned away from the fire.
  "Kid. Use your damn head. Where are you going?"
    "What do you care?" <Us downhill,> he thought, and Luke
came and tried to get into his path. <Luke riding to stop him,>
was in the ambient; but Jonas said,
    "We don't need him. If he wants to tag us he can follow. That's
all."
    He'd expected more interference. He'd frankly expected more
concern. He sat there on Cloud's back staring down at Jonas, mad,
damned mad, and Jonas stared back at him.
    "You're a magnet for that thing, kid," Jonas said. "You know
that? You and that horse--making all that noise. You care about
that horse? No?"
    "Go to hell," he said. He wished he hadn't. But he'd said it. Now
he couldn't slink back to the fire. He stared down at all of them
from Cloud's back, then wanted <downhill,> and <empty road,>
not <going back to Shamesey.> Just <empty road.>



!i


128    ~          C.J. Cherryh

"Doesn't solve your problem, kid," Jonas' voice pursued him into
the dark.
    But Cloud took him onto the road and upped the pace to a trot,
downhill into the dark of a clouded night, with a wind cold and
keen as a knife.
    He already wanted to go back to the fire. He knew he wasn't fool
enough to ride straight uphill to Tarmin Height, first and alone,
taking Cloud into what an experienced rider like Aby Dale hadn't
been wary enough to survive.
    But he couldn't find a way to go back and duck his head and
take it anymore--he couldn't see getting Cloud hurt in a horse-
fight, either, and he saw it coming if he didn't give in: Jonas was
pushing for it, because Jonas intended to run him the way he
bossed Luke and Hawley, and once you started taking Jonas' orders,
he had the strong suspicion, it got harder and harder to break away
from what Jonas wanted. A small group riding together wasn't at
all like Shamesey camp, where there was a whole thought-deaf
town to escape to when you felt thoughts crowding in on you; and
when the town got too bad to tolerate, which usually took a few
hours, there was Cloud to come back to.
    And if everybody in the world pushed them too far they could go
out to the hills and hunt for three and four days and not need any-
body. He'd managed to stay out of trouble. He'd never gotten
Cloud into a fight. He wasn't about to. Not three on one. Jonas
knew it. Jonas kept pushing.
    Bad decision maybe, that had made J6nas drag him along; so
Jonas had thought better of it, and maybe Jonas had found out he
wasn't going to knuckle under easily--but was Jonas going to say
he was wrong and manage the situation as civilly as possible until
they went their separate ways? Hell if he was. Jonas couldn't take
somebody who didn't think Jonas had done right by Stuart. Maybe
that was Jonas' conscience talking to him. Maybe it was just that
Jonas was born a son of a bitch. It didn't matter.
    He had to wonder how Stuart's partner had gotten along with
the man. Why Aby Dale was lying dead up there on the ridge and
they'd gotten away safe.
  Then they'd gone over to Anveney to draw Aby Dale's money


RIDER AT THE GATE              ~        129

out of the bank before they broke the news to Stuart at Shamesey.
That was two, three days to make that detour, with some trucks
that had to go that direction, he was sure--riders had to take their
charges where they were hired to go, and that had to be the case.
Hawley hadn't told Jonas about taking the money. That was a point
in Jonas' favor. But hell, it hadn't been exactly a straight line they
blazed with their bad news, had it? And there were telephones. If
they were running a race with the weather getting up there, they
could have phoned. They could have told Stuart without the rogue-
image in the ambient with him at the time. Maybe he thought of
that because he was a town-kid. But they knew there were tele-
phones. Now Stuart's friends had his money the way they had his
gear, to give to him, of course. And Stuart was out there with noth-
ing, and going all the way up to Anveney, to the bank, he sup-
posed, to find it out.
    His throat ached. His chest hurt. Cloud slowed to a walk, mad,
too, thinking <kick men, bite horses> until Danny reached down
and patted his neck.
    <Men by quiet water, three men at the table, with mama and
papa and Denis and Sam... >
    Sometimes the images that came up were outright stupid. He
didn't know why he put those three men in the apartment with his
family. They didn't belong there.
    He was mad at them and mad at his family. Luke asked who'd
hit him, which was none of Luke's business.
    So what if he was mad that papa had hit him: he knew why papa
had hit him, which Luke didn't understand: papa hit him when
papa couldn't talk, the same reason he'd hit Denis--it was just
something men in his family did, and it never meant you didn't
love somebody, it just meant you'd gotten to that point your throat
wouldn't work and the words weren't there, which was when you
loved somebody a whole lot and they did things you didn't under-
stand.
    Sometimes thoughts came up that didn't make sense, as if they'd
always lived in different spots in his brain and suddenly, because
some nosy fool went asking into things he'd no right to ask, these
separate things got together in scary combination, notifying you


!! i

130    ~          C.J. Cherryh

things didn't match up right, they couldn't make sense, and maybe
the only safe way to deal with thoughts like that was to send them
apart from each other before they messed up something in your life
you couldn't put back the way it was.
    Same way he'd found he was at odds with what the preachers
said, once there was Cloud. And he was going to hell, but he still
thought about God.
    Same way he loved his family, and got madder at them than he
ever could at Luke and Jonas, and Luke and Jonas made him mad at
his family all over again. Luke and Jonas were messing with what
he thought, messing with what he was, that was what they were
doing--trying to bend his mind around to directions he couldn't
figure. Luke thought he was like Stuart. Luke didn't think Stuart
was a good thing to be. Neither did Jonas. Probably Hawley didn't.
    He was Aby Dale's cousin, which he guessed explained why Aby
Dale had been with them this trip and not with her partner, Stuart.
But it didn't explain the other things. Hawley hadn't said about
the money. He'd kept that even from Jonas. It wasn't easy to keep
secrets with the horses around. He couldn't do it. But some senior
riders had that reputation--he'd run into them, and you didn't
know that they were different from other people, you just wouldn't
know, that was the problem--but word got around about some,
that they lied really well. He just wished it had gotten around
about Jonas and Hawley before he'd been so gullible.
    And hell if he or Cloud would come and eat out of Luke's hand.
He was mad that he'd almost liked Luke. He wouldn't give in to
Luke's tricks.
    Cloud hadn't either, not really. Cloud had just gotten his candy
and backed off, still mad, still free of debts. Cloud just always knew
things. Cloud was smarter than people sometimes. Cloud wanted to
kick the men to the moon, was all, end of problem.
    <Kicking men,> Cloud thought, pleased with the thought,
going along quite energetically--but he wanted Cloud to slow
down on the road. They'd gone far enough they wouldn't hear him,
no matter how loud he was.
    Not far enough down the road to run into trouble, either, if there
was anybody back there.


RIDER AT THE GATE              ~:       131

    Jonas, damn him, knew he'd be following them tomorrow--
Jonas had flatly said so. There was just one way up from here, he
was on it, and they thought they could have him back any time
they wanted to slow down and let him overtake them.
     The hell with that, he thought. Jonas could get used to not get-
 ting what he wanted.
    Cloud was quite happy with <going away from Jonas> and
<looking for place to stop and be warm.> But when, on his
thought of <daylight,> Cloud began thinking <going uphill in
daylight, us alone, up through evergreens,> then Cloud formed a
queasy sort of area <ahead of them, on high mountain, something
bad, something shapeless.> Cloud switched his tail and laid back
his ears at that, rethinking in Cloud's way, what to do about that
<danger on the mountain. >
    Cloud had gotten the rogue-image the same as all the riders and
horses had, and, Danny well knew, gotten it from time to time
from Jonas' bunch, but Cloud wasn't necessarily going to under-
stand it the way a human would--a horse had to know all the sides
of something before it didn't at any random moment surprise him;
and the notion of the rogue they might have to deal with--now
that Cloud had remembered that danger--still was going spooky-
strange on Cloud. They said horses didn't think in future-time, but
Cloud did. The rogue was just kind of a dark blurry spot in the fu-
ture, dead center in that funny edge-of-vision blind spot horses had
right in the middle and top of what humans saw, out of which most
scary things came, because of the way a horse's eyes were set. There
was a bad horse in that danger-spot--Cloud didn't like <shooting
horses> but Cloud didn't like that shivery spot, either.
    Cloud also knew (thanks to the dogged tracking of human
thoughts, far less skittery than horses' thinking) about the three
men they'd ridden out with being a problem and about men they'd
smelled behind them who might become a problem. That was an-
other hazy spot in Cloud's geography.
    In his own way, Cloud even seemed to know about Stuart--a
human mind could keep Cloud thinking on a subject and going
over and over it and not forgetting any of the pieces of it: that was
what Cloud got from human thoughts, the sheer dogged stubborn-


132    ~          C.J. Cherryh

ness to hold on and put pieces together. And Stuart had been a lot
in various human thoughts on this trip.
    So Cloud had begun, in the mostly-now way Cloud thought, to
decide tonight was more complicated than yesterday--and Cloud
wasn't, consequently, acting up on him. Cloud was being dis-
turbingly sensible and doing exactly what he asked, in spite of the
fact Cloud had a jittery feel to his slow gait.
  <Looking for a sheltered spot. Looking for a place in the trees. >
    <Finding Stuart up on the mountain. Riding with Stuart under
evergreens. >
    That ambition had danced at the edge of his mind for the last
couple of days--he'd not dared think it when Jonas was belittling
him all the time, but now that he was alone with Cloud he could
haul things out of the dark spots of his probably immoral mind and
at least look at them and try to sort out the stupid notions from the
really stupid ones, and the embarrassing things and all the rest he'd
die before he dragged out in front of Jonas.
    That <Danny and Stuart> picture was just too stupid, too im-
possible, too indecent a wish, counting Stuart was grieving over a
woman who was, in Stuart's mind, at least as much a wife to him as
his mother was to his father.
    More, he hadn't even thought about partnering yet--hadn't
planned to find anybody until he was older. The juniors he could
partner up with were all desperately busy looking out for them-
selves and handling the horse problem, which didn't seem to come
easily even for kids born to the camp. It was just a hell of a lot of
cheek for a junior even to think about Stuart taking him on under
any circumstances.
    But that day on the porch, with the rain flinging a gray sheet
across all the world else, Stuart had trampled right over the de-
fenses of a scared junior's inmost thoughts and learned more about
him in five minutes than his parents or his brothers had figured out
about him in a lifetime. Stuart had looked straight into him in one
terrifying moment, calmed him down and maintained that calm
contact through what remained at once the most devastating and
the most exhilarating exchange of his life--Stuart had told him,
one after the other, the answers to questions he didn't remotely


RIDER AT THE GATE              ~        133

know how to ask, questions he didn't even know he should ask, and
in parting, Stuart had wished him luck, honestly wished him luck
in his life and even given him a lead on the first real convoy job
he'd ever had.
    He hadn't had that feeling figured out when he'd started offwith
Jonas--that night, with the drink and the craziness running
through the camp, he'd been so in awe of Jonas he'd believed he
was dealing with Stuart again--but he'd gotten smarter fast on this
trip. He'd felt somebody else trying to do with him unwilling what
Stuart had done to him in that one shocked moment--the way Stu-
art had just blazed right on through his normal tongue-tied stam-
mering, faced him at a level of need nobody in his whole life had
ever gotten into--and not criticized, not carped at him, not lec-
tured him, just seemed to take him as he was, in spite of his
spilling the deepest, most embarrassing secrets of his life into Stu-
art's view.
    Stuart had thrown advice back at him that had echoed right off
his longings and drawn more and more of his secret hopes into the
ambient. It gave him to this very moment a sense of disbelief when
he reconstructed that hour or so--so vivid it was like meeting God,
that was what it had felt like. So vivid it had scared him out of
sleep for a week. So accepting of a kid's stupid ideas and stupid
questions he couldn't believe it had ever really happened, and in a
certain sense he'd been scared to death to go near Stuart again, be-
cause he didn't want to find out it wasn't real--or wasn't the way
he remembered it. He hadn't gone back to him. He'd wanted to
come back wiser and be able to talk to Stuart with some sense in his
head.
    Then Stuart had disappeared from camp--gone off wherever Stu-
art normally worked, the summer long.
    But all Stuart's advice had been true. And he'd not even known
the man was back in camp this fall until Stuart had brushed by him
at the gate.
    So, God, yes, he was going up that road. He didn't need Jonas
for a preacher to tell him where right and wrong was. His father,
never mind his faults, had taught him what was fair--<papa work-
ing late in the shop, papa fixing Koz's wheezing old sewing ma-


134 ~    C.J. Cherryh


chine and not charging his time, because that machine was Koz's
whole living, and they knew the old man couldn't afford it; papa
saying, yeah, well, and not answering Sam's question about the
bill.>
      But mama knew. Damn right. Mama who kept the accounts,
mama knew. <Mama saying, Shut up, Sam.  Sam never had figured it out.
    There were moments he was damned proud of his parents. They
might all fight, except Sam. Papa might be sure he was going to
hell, and they might be cheating, dishonest townsmen to rider
eyes, but that was the riders' mistake, to lump everybody together.
His father didn't ever cheat; and he didn't need moral lessons from
a man who let his friend go off alone and hurt into the dark.
    And he didn't need Luke's tricking Cloud into taking any damn
candy, either, not at the price Luke wanted to sell it for. If he
wanted to give Cloud candy, he gave it with no conditions, and he
didn't want more than Cloud was willing to give him back.
    He picked his spot among the trees at roadside--he rode in
among the trees, the branches brushing him with the gentle force
of Cloud's moving. He slid down as Cloud stopped, rubbed Cloud's
nose with gloved fingers, then flung down his packs and set about
cutting evergreen boughs to go under their blankets.
    He didn't need Jonas to survive in the Wild, either. He was de-
termined now to show them. He hadn't had to have their help.
He'd turn up not when Jonas decided to collect a terrified kid but
whenever he decided to, whenever they really, really needed to
know what he could tell them, yes, he might be there, and he
might tell them what they asked--if they minded their manners
and dealt with him like a human being.
    Or he'd find Stuart himself and ask Stuart whether he wanted to
be found.
    Then to hell with Stuart's not-quite-best friends in the entire
universe. A winter in the high country, him and a senior rider, and
(even if Stuart wasn't interested in another partner) he could learn
from Stuart God-knew how many things. He had his gear, he had a
clear notion where Stuart had gone, given they'd named Anveney
and a reason Stuart would go there, and he had an absolutely clear



RIDER AT THE GATE              ~        135

idea where Stuart would ultimately go. The main road he and
Cloud were on led near Tarmin to another ascent, up to a loop all
around to the villages of Rogers Peak--he knew that for certain.
    That was where Aby Dale had died, up on that high road, as the
convoy was coming down. He even knew the names of most of the
villages on the mountain; and he knew that there was another old
road to Tarmin up directly from Anveney--an old, tight-turned
road almost unused these days except by line-riders.
    They'd passed the Anveney lowland turn-off when they'd gone
only half a day from Shamesey gates, about the place where Cloud
had thrown him and he'd hiked over the shoulder of the hill. But if
Stuart had gone down that other way, and over to Anveney the way
they thought, then there was no reason for Stuart to ride all the way
back to pick up the road they were on--Stuart would get up to
Tarmin the old way. Trucks might not use it now, but a horse
could.
    So he didn't need to wonder where Stuart was or where he'd
come in and pick up the road to the accident--the Anveney-
Tarmin road would join theirs before it went on up to the other vil-
lages on the High Loop of the Tarmin road. Stuart would go past
Tarmin and up to that same road where the wreck was.  So he knew where he had to go.
    And in his wildest dream, counting Hawley had made off with
Stuart's money, Stuart could be real glad to see a kid with a gun
and ammunition and winter supplies.
    Favor paid. He'd like that. He really would. Stuart's respect of
him--God, what wouldn't he do to feel he'd won that?
    That occupied his thoughts as he made their bed of evergreen
fronds, and as he settled down to rest in his wind-shadowed nook
and Cloud settled down by him, providing him his body heat.
    In Cloud's mind everything was right again, after all this (mad~
and (not mad~ at the men, and most of all the money-thing,
which Cloud never had gotten straight, whether it was a kind of
food or guns or whatever.
    (Cattle,~ was Cloud's assessment of Jonas and his crew, utter
disgust.


136    ~          C.J. Cherryh

    But Danny didn't think of cattle--he thought instead of slink-
ing predators. Shadow-horse still gave him the shivers.
    And when, momentarily, he recalled Shadow's self-image,
Cloud's skin twitched under his back as if something were crawling
on it.

Fire warmed the den from the old fireplace they only used for the
horses in the bitterest cold. Water was heating, and cloths went
into it.
    <White, white, white,> was the ambient, <white> so Tara
couldn't see the den except through a veil, <white> so she burned
her hands on the kettle and the hot rags, and bit her lip and kept at
sponging Flicker down. "Rest," Vadim begged her. "Lie down at
least, Tara, you've done enough. Let us take care of her."
    But she wouldn't. She hardly heard until Chad seized her arm
with painful force and made her face him. "You're contributing to
it. Tara. You're falling into it, same as she is. Pull out."
    Chad hit her across the ear hard enough to make her eyes water.
Flicker threw her head and kicked out, lost her balance and all but
had her feet go out from under her... Flicker was exhausted,
hardly able to stand, and wouldn't lie down, wouldn't rest. Tara
knew that. She was in the same condition, no different, legs shaking.
    Rogue horse, they'd said: the marshal had had that warning in a
phone call up from Shamesey--while she was on the trail.
    "It's you," Chad said, and shook her and slammed her back into a
post. "Sit down, Tara, sit! You hear me? You're upsetting her!"
    She jerked away. "Her lungs will fill," she said, imaging a
death she'd seen, long ago, on Darwin. She wasn't a horse-doctor,
she didn't know how to get Flicker out of this and neither did
Vadim or Chad or Mina, or, God save them, young Luisa. She just
kept working, kept agitating, for fear that Flicker would give up.
She warmed Flicker's legs and flanks and chest. She brought oil-
fragrant smoke and made Flicker breathe as much as she could in
the drafty den.
    And Vadim and the rest, her own sometime partners Mina and
Luisa no mean force in the attempt, kept visiting their own horses,


RIDER AT THE GATE              ~        13 7

imaging good things, imaging treats and food and the warm den,
fearing contagion, but not letting that to the front of their minds.
    They curried and rubbed and bathed and combed--with Vadim's
and Chad's steady good sense, they dragged any thoughts of the
snow back to the warm, safe dark. They dragged any reckoning of
the howling wind back to the crackle of fire in the fireplace. They
kept fighting for their sanity and their lives, not entertaining for
two seconds running the fear and the anger that wailed and roiled
out there in the storm, and not bolstering, either, the defense
Flicker still raised.., they wouldn't echo it, wouldn't stand for it,
wouldn't give way to it.
    Tara knew that they were keeping her sane as well, keeping out
the storm, keeping away the white that threatened their collective
reason. They were her friends, her refuge, her safety. She tried to
tell Flicker that. She imaged their faces for Flicker. She imaged
light and warmth and a den and horses Flicker knew. She began to
fight for warmth against the white, to image ~ice melting, fire on
the ice, snowflakes melting on nighthorse back, sun coming up,
bright, bright sun.
    It was all that they could do: outlast the storm and look for the
sun to rise. The night and the howling white were all about them,
a thunderous snow that echoed off the mountains and shook the
nerves.
    And the white remained a veil, and the dark was too ready to
seep into the image, as if the sun would never, ever rise.


Chapter

IX

SOMETHING WANTED, THAT WAS THE FEELING. SOMETHING CALLED
and called, lonely and desperate, and it wasn't scary at all, just so
terribly sad that Brionne ached for it in her heart. In her dream she
stood in the middle of the woods where the snow had just fallen,
the soft kind of snow that made soft sparkles under a golden sun,
the kind that sat thick on the evergreen branches and fell in wet
spattery clumps when the least breeze disturbed them. Otherwise
the ground was all smooth rolling lumps and tiny hills, a beautiful,
shining surface that no track had yet disturbed, since only she had
come there.
    In her dream she stood looking toward the dawn, where gold and
rose sifted through the evergreens. She stood knowing that she was
the only person in the wide world, herself, Brionne, the black-
smiths' daughter, who could see this sight and hear the singing
presence that made all the forest magical.
    In her dream a nighthorse came out of the woods and across that
smooth, gold-glistening snow, a black horse with a midnight mane


RIDER AT THE GATE              ~        13 9

that all but floated on the dawn winds, a tail that drifted like a
cloud of blackest smoke. The horse made the only other tracks in
the world. Its neck arched as it regarded her with a wary eye, its
mane and its night-black coat glistening with the golden light.
    It called to her aloud with that soft, strange sound a nighthorse
could make when it chose. It called to her in the silence with un-
bearable longing, with all the power of a nighthorse mind.
    She wasn't just the blacksmiths' daughter. She knew that. She in-
stinctively hated the smoke and the soot that lived about her par-
ents' shop and her parents' house and about her brothers. She knew
that someday somebody magical would come and lift her out of the
ordinary and workaday. She had an artist's hands, too fine ever to
wield a hammer, her father said. She had fair skin, and a face that--
her mother said it--would break hearts, and she should never scar
it with the sparks from the anvil, or let the soot get into her skin.
    Papa called her their own angel, pretty and fragile, but gifted,
everyone said so. Mama said her face, if she took care of it, could be
her fortune, and theirs, and she'd go down to the valley to marry
and live with a rich merchant, in a fine carpeted house with linen
closets and a fine brass-grilled furnace, the sort of house Tarmin vil-
lage only heard about.
    But most of all she knew.., she knew in her heart she wasn't
like the rest of Tarmin village. She was never meant for the soot
and smoke of her family's trade that was irrevocably to her the
preachers' very hellfire.
    Sometimes she'd dreamed that the ships from the stars would
come back, that they'd look over all Tarmin village, and take just
her, because she was special, and the star-folk would see it.
    She talked to the little, harmless creatures that came at forest
edge, a small wickedness, by what the preachers said, but she'd
learned she could hear them. She could hear them, and her two
older brothers couldn't--it was her special gift, and she kept it se-
cret. She tamed them to her hand. She had names for them all and
fed them with scraps, and they fought with the cat, dreadful
squalling at night, but the cat always won.
  And sometimes she went to the rider camp and talked to the rid-


140    ~          C.J. Cherryh

ers, who admitted to her how, for reasons no one knew, sometimes
horses came for people who weren't born riders.
    So maybe the ships wouldn't come--she was older and wiser
now, all of thirteen. The ships hadn't come, not just in her thirteen
years, but in hundreds of years, and the preachers said they never
would, that the wickedness of humanity had surely destroyed the
star-folk. But if that was so, there were the horses.
    The riders' horses whispered secrets to her. The wild things ate
from her hand. She clung to that gift of hers as something of
promise, that if there weren't to be ships (which she began to de-
cide now was, after all, unlikely) still--something had to account for
the feeling of difference she had, something had to come of her spe-
cial gifts. Something had to offer her an escape from the humdrum of
Tarmin village. And escape that meant going down to some strange
town in the valley was no good, if she couldn't have her mother and
her father and the neighbors see her fine things.
    So in her dream of dreams the escape should come to her, the
very way the wild things came. It was a sign, she decided, the sort
that the preachers talked about, and it wasn't wicked, her talking
to wild things, it was never the wicked wild creatures she talked to,
it was only the pure little nibblers at grain and the little teases that
skipped about at forest edge: they weren't what the preachers called
creatures of lust and blood. They didn't think such thoughts.
    Most of all, the nighthorses ate from her hands, and she could
image to them in her mind, and hear them, too: she imaged to
them that they should tell all the wild nighthorses they saw, and
particularly the stallion of the herds, that there was a very deserv-
ing rider to find in Tarmin village.
    Because that was her dream. Some wild one would come search-
ing for her, a wild horse, maybe the king horse, more beautiful than
any horse had ever been, and that wild horse would know immedi-
ately that she had qualities no one in town, no one even among the
riders remotely imagined she had. Neizher of her brothers, and no
Tarmin rider, not her mother or her father, no one in all the world
knew what she imagined and what she imaged, otherwise--because
she told secrets to the horses in her mind, the way the riders did.
She saw their images from farther away than her brothers, or any-


RIDER AT THE GATE              ~        141

one, and she didn't run away scared the way they did just of the
shallow ideas they could pick up: she could talk to the riders'
horses--she could talk even to strangers' horses that came with the
truck convoys. Oh, the riders who didn't know her were always
anxious about her walking about inside their gates, but she imme-
diately made friends with the horses. She brought them sugar-
treats and sat and talked for hours to them in the way horses liked
humans to talk. They imaged her in their minds as <sun-hair> and
<sugar> because they loved her.
    And in this dream she had, that wild horse came, not an ordinary
horse, like Flicker and the others that served the riders, but the
most beautiful, the most special horse came treading softly over the
snow, eyeing her sidelong from under its long forelock, and saying
its secret name in her mind, which she could just almost hear ....
    But she waked, for no reason, with that Name still just echoing
at the edge of her sight.
    It wasn't just a dream. It wasn't. She lay awake in her parents'
house in which you could always smell the soot and the stench of
hot iron, and even with her eyes open she could feel a strange, wild
stirring in her mind. She lay still, afraid that the dream would es-
cape her, and she wanted very much to hold the textures of it, the
feeling of it in her heart.
    The vividness of it stayed a long, long time. She could shut her
eyes and have it back, that place, that moment, that vision.
    She hugged the feeling to her, knowing now it was real, un-
doubtedly outside the walls, one of the wild ones. She heard it call-
ing and calling to her.
    The preacher man said if she said her prayers every night God
wouldn't let the beasts talk to her, and she wouldn't have to worry
about anything in the world if God was taking care of her. The
preacher man said she could tell God if she was afraid and God
would blast the beasts that wanted to talk to her.
    But if she willfully talked to the beasts, they told her in church,
if she did begin to seek them out, she'd surely go to hell.
    But the smell of hell was in papa's forge, and the substance of her
heart's desires were out there, with the snow, the beautiful clean

snow.


142      ~        C.J. Cherryh

    Mama certainly wasn't going to be happy if she ran away to be-
come a rider. Mama had much rather she marry a rich lowland mer-
chant. Mama would be worried about her ruining her skin and her
hands.
    Papa would call her his pretty angel and ask the traveling
preachers to pray for her soul and hope for the horse to run awayw
but she grew so willful she knew she'd pray against papa, because
she wanted to be a rider, and papa couldn't stop her from anything
she wanted, he never had. She'd do as she pleased, and mama would
be mad and papa would be worried, but in the end she'd have her
way, and they'd accept her--or if they stayed mad, she'd run away
for good and not come back except occasionally, remote and grand
in her fringed leathers, with the look of distant places about her.
    And she'd talk to mama and papa if they were nice, but her
brothers and their friends would stare daggers at her and she'd look
right back and scare them with the images she could send. The
neighbors would all be envious about the money she would make.
And the Tarmin riders who said stay away from the horses, they'd
respect her, they'd be sorry they'd ever scolded her, and her horse
would be finer than theirs, the convoy bosses would pick her be-
cause she'd look better than all the rest, and she'd have a reputation
far and wide over the mountains--go with Brionne, they'd say,
Brionne's the best. She'd ride out the gates of Tarmin camp with
the convoys and she'd wear a knife with a white shell handle like
one she'd seen, with a beaded fringed jacket, black as her horse, and
bright blue beads: she liked blue beads--and it was all true, it was
all possible, because a wild one had come, exactly the way she'd
known it would.
    She couldn't get up yet. It was still dark between the shutters
and mama would wake up instantly if she heard her moving about.
So she lay abed savoring the feeling and the planning--she lay lis-
tening for a long time, longing for daylight to shine through the
seam of the shutters, so she could go out and look for the horse she
knew was waiting for her---oh, it couldn't go away with the dawn. It
had to wait.
    Mama and papa wouldn't just let her go. But mama and papa
wouldn't of course hear the horse that was calling so loudly out


RIDER AT THE GATE              ~        143

there, and if they heard it they would never suspect it came for
their daughter. Her brothers were a little cleverer, mostly because
they spied on her all the time, and they'd surely tell, so she couldn't
let on she was going anywhere special--most of all she couldn't let
on she was excited, even if she could hardly contain it. She'd say she
was going to the shop, that was all, and if she was clever and fast,
they wouldn't know when she slipped away from them.  It was forever until that first faint light came.
    Then, impatient, her breath hissing in the cold of her room, she
slipped out from the covers, dressed quickly in warm ordinary
clothes, struggled into two of everything, one too small and one a
little too large, watching in the mirror so she didn't look as bun-
dled up as she knew she needed to be to face the outside cold.
    And, secretly dressed for blizzards, she sweltered through break-
fast in the crowded, overheated kitchen, where mama had been
baking biscuits: it was bacon and of course the biscuits, and she
saved both pieces of bacon and stole a couple of whole biscuits for
the horses--some of it, she thought then, hugging the thought to
her.., for her horse. She took two more, when nobody was looking,
because she might be out all night.
    "Brionne! Done your lessons?" mama asked when she snatched
her new red coat and her scarf and hat to follow papa out the door.
    She stopped in the clutter of boys and noisy footsteps. She was
momentarily at a loss. Mama insisted she learn accounts and ex-
cused ~ler brothers to be rowdy. And mama couldn't keep her in. Not
today.
    "I'll have it all this afternoon," she said, very quickly, and was
fast enough to shut the door so that she didn't hear mama's scold-
ing; and, not hearing, of course wasn't obliged to do what mama
wanted.
    But it was not to papa's forge she was bound, putting on her hat
and her coat while she hurried in her brothers' wake through the
new-fallen snow. She veered out of their track at the corner of the
house, and, still buttoning buttons, went running a zigzag course
down the tracked public walk, then across the street and along the
front of the bakery.
  She couldn't hear the horse calling now, but the wild ones came


144 ~    CJ. Cherryh

mostly at night. They gave a village bad dreams; but the people
they favored to hear them clearly would begin to waste away with
longing to go after them, that was what all the stories said. Even
people who were afraid of them had to go out to them when the
Calling came, and if they didn't find their horse soon, they might
perish in the snow and the cold.
    But she wasn't afraid. She'd waited for her Calling. She wel-
comed it with all her heart.
    She turned the corner at the baker's, where the water tanks were,
and ran from there to the Little Gate, which let riders come from
the camp into the town, though on purpose it was too small to let
the horses pass it.
    The Little Gate had no lock, only a pull-latch, and she came and
went there as she pleased, always a little careful that the watchman
down at the big main gate didn't look this way and see her, because
he'd surely take her straight to her parents.
    But Tuck at the main gate would be having his breakfast, she
was confident of that, besides that the Little Gate wasn't really
Tuck's business at all, least of all one to make him come out in the
morning cold. She slid the latch aside, slipped over to the rider
camp, and pulled the gate silently to behind her.
    Once when she was seven the other kids had dared her to slip
through the Little Gate. She'd told them she was scared, and of
course never let on to them the secret that she'd done it already a
hundred times. She'd never once let on that she could talk to the
horses, either, because if she did, then her brothers would have told
their parents everything she did forever. Then they'd have had the
preacher to pray over her, and they'd have watched her ever so much
closer.
    Now that she was older, her parents knew that she occasionally
went to the camp and that occasionally she talked to the riders, es-
pecially when her father had some work to do and she delivered
some message to or from, as she loved to do.
    But her mother lectured her severely about rider men and im-
moral thoughts, which embarrassed her, and would have mortified
her if the riders had ever, ever heard her mother talk like that. Rid-
ers weren't at all the way mama said. They never hurt her nor even


RIDER AT THE GATE              ~        145

 said an indelicate word nor thought an indelicate thought in her
 presence. They treated her like their sister. They talked far nicer
 than her brothers, and the men especially would talk to her and tell
 her stories.
     Which made the women, like Tara and Mina, mad. They were
 probably jealous, or at least they protected what they had, namely
 the men, from her influence. She didn't mind. She took it for a
 kind of compliment that they were so worried. And Vadim and
 Chad were the handsomest men she knew, just ever so nice to
 watch, and now--
    Right now she most wanted to find Vadim. He was usually up
and about early, and she knew Barry and Llew and Tara were away
working on the road: she always knew what went on in the camp.
    But she was equally sure that Vadim and Chad and Mina and
Luisa were in camp, and with any reasonable luck, Vadim or Chad
might be outside working, so she wouldn't have to deal with Mina.
    She wanted to ask Vadim if they'd heard anything last night. She
was bubbling over with excitement about her dream, and she knew,
she just knew that he'd be happy for her and tell her if there were
any secret things she should do or say to call the wild one in.
    If just Vadim and Chad were there, she could ask their advice
and know they'd listen and tell her what to do, whether her horse
was waiting out beyond the walls and she should go to it, or
whether her horse might have gone away by now. She might have
to wait until night, and she might have to stay in the rider camp--
they might hide her, so her parents couldn't keep her in.
    Because now she belonged--and as she came toward the den, she
tried to feel what the riders called the ambient: that meant the im-
ages that were going on. But she could only get an impression of
snow, and of course snow was the weather--it was snow lying
everywhere, snow thick on the roofs, a blanket of almost untracked
white across the yard from the shelter to the horse den this morn-
ing, and the sun coming up in a golden glow above the palisade
wall--so, so like her dream.
    By the tracks she expected just Vadim, but, just by something odd
in the ambient, perhaps by her newly quickened senses, she suspected
something strange even before she slipped into the entry of the horse



146    ~--        C.J. Cherryh

 den--walking carefully, carefully between the shoulder-level entry
 walls, because they'd cautioned her about startling the horses.
     She was astonished and dismayed to see Tara back, Tara, looking ex-
 hausred, with her arm over Flicker's back, and Chad and Luisa sleeping
 in a stall, on pallets on the wood-chip bedding the horses used.
     Odd, she thought. It was very odd, them sleeping in the den.
 She was completely unprepared for Tara to glare at her out of the
 deep shadow and equally unprepared for a sudden wash from some-
 where across her vision, like a veil of blinding white.
     "What in hell are you doing here?" Tara snapped out of that
 whiteness.
     Brionne was so shocked she stood stark still until Tara and dark
 flashed back on her.
  "Get out, go home. Dammit, get out of here!"
    Flicker had waked up, and again all Brionne saw for the instant
was <snow.> She couldn't orient herself in the world. She couldn't
find a backward step. She was trying to do what she was told, and
felt behind her to see whether there was a post in the way. She only
saw <dark> fighting with the <white> imaging, she saw Vadim
through the <white,> and the other horses . . . then Chad and Luisa
and gloomy, sullen Mina.
    "Flicker's sick," Vadim said. The haze of white was thick and
cold, very much like snowfall. But where Vadim stood was dark,
and solid ground. "This isn't a good place for kids right now. Do
what she says, go on home."
    "I brought biscuits and some bacon." She decided to be gener-
ous. It was important to her to have the riders like her. Even Tara.
"Would Flicker like it?"
    "No," Flicker's rider said sharply. Tara was purely jealous,
Brionne thought angrily; that was why Tara was mad. Tara was al-
ways stand-offish, and protective of Flicker--and of Vadim and
Chad, too. She'd always had an inkling there was something going
on between Tara and Vadim and his partner which her mother
would call very immoral, and Vadim and Chad both hung about
with Mina and Luisa, too---she suspected things she felt very un-
easy about in the ways of the camp.


RIDER AT THE GATE              ~        147

    But Flicker did truly look not to be well, and the feeling in the
air ran up and down Brionne's nerves--so maybe Tara was just mad
and distracted and yelling at everybody. Brionne backed away,
bumped a post and felt her way around it.
    "Go home, Brionne," Chad said gently. "It's not a good time to
be here."
  She was hurt, all the same.
    Angry. It was all Flicker in their attention. They were supposed
to be so sensitive to the horses, and they didn't even know that she
had special news, they didn't know why she'd come--
    But then, maybe Flicker was occupying all their attention. They
looked as if they'd not gotten much sleep last night. Even Vadim
seemed cross with her. It was a dreadful disappointment.
    So she retreated outside into the dawn and scuffed her way across
the snow-carpeted yard, wondering what she was to do if she didn't
have their help.
    And what if, because Flicker happened to be sick and the riders
were being surly and Tara was jealous of her, her horse got discour-
aged and heard Tara's nasty temper and didn't come back? It was
Tara who was against her: she knew it was Tara's fault. Tara was al-
ways telling her get out and leave the horses alone, and she wouldn't
even put it past Tara to pretend Flicker was sick just so she could
get everybody's attention on her.
    Clearly Tara was having things her way right now. The riders
were all out there in the horse den or out on the road fixing
washouts, and Tara had the center of attention right now in
camp.
    But just then, just when she was thinking that, she felt that
strange prickly feeling the horses sometimes made on your skin
when they were trying to get your attention.
      Maybe, she thought, feeling that strangeness running up and
down her arms, maybe it's still out there.
  Maybe it didn't go away last night.
  Maybe it's still waiting.
    And nobody at all guarded the main rider gate, that, with a sim-
ple inside drop-latch, led to the outside and the snow.
                                                8<         8          g<


148 ~ C.J. Cherryh

< Horses with riders, daylight on the road. >
    Danny woke with that vivid impression, different from a dream,
as Cloud moved to gain his feet. He scrambled to his feet, too,
struggling with the blanket and the springy mat of evergreens
under them.
    Cloud didn't recognize the horses--didn't know who he heard,
but Danny felt direction as Cloud did, and looked toward the road
beyond the screen of evergreens.
    The Westmans were in the other direction, and the riders com-
ing from the downhill of the road were near enough to have waked
Cloud--nighthorses wouldn't miss them in the ambient if they got
any closer at all: the group of horses was louder in the ambient than
one horse was, but there was no way they could stay hidden as those
riders went past, and they had a steep wooded hill at their backs, a
sheer drop across the road...
    <Memory of the riders at dusk, smell-shapes spooking them
lower down the mountain. Men following us up the road. >
    Cloud bet on <us running,> but <guns,> Danny thought then,
and patted Cloud's shoulder, because Cloud was on the edge of
spooking out into the open to argue with the intruders. <Guns!>
Danny insisted, frantic with apprehension, and took a firm grip on
Cloud's mane, a grip which unexpectedly he needed, because Cloud
took that hold for him mounting up, and ducked into it and bolted
for the road.
    "Cloud!" Danny gasped, trying to stop him, but Cloud plowed
ahead.
    Danny's feet were sliding. He was about to lose Cloud. He took a
bounce on the uneven, root-crossed ground and made it to Cloud's
back in a single move, to his own astonishment, as Cloud burst
through the buffeting screen of branches and onto the roadway, up-
hill.
    He was leaving his blanket and all his baggage behind. He'd at
least slept with his gun, scared of the isolation, but he couldn't
stop; he clung desperately as Cloud headed uphill, with the sheer
drop off the road on their right hand. He tried to get Cloud to go
<off the road, into the woods,> thinking that he could take the


RIDER AT THE GATE              ~       149

 steep, wooded way over the rise of the hill and come down again
 after the oncoming trouble had passed them.
     Cloud was willing. Cloud bolted through a battering of ever-
 green branches, took the uncertain footing of laddered roots and
 rock, and wove among the trees, headed aslant up the rise.
    A shot splintered bark off a trunk beside them: Cloud veered up-
hill, and he slewed entirely off Cloud's back on the downhill side,
still hanging onto Cloud's mane, trying to get footing to swing up
again.
    "You!" somebody yelled, and he looked downslope as Cloud
backed and tried to maneuver on the hill. A man came riding up on
him, the horse imaging <gun firing.> Danny dragged his pistol
out of its holster, maintaining his grip on a fistful of mane on a
horse that didn't know which direction to face.
    "Hold it, hold it!" the other rider said. "No need." But that rider
had a pistol in hand, aimed generally toward him and Cloud. "Just
come back here. Need a word with you."
    He wasn't sure. Maybe the man had simply been trying to get
his attention after he spooked--but shooting at people wasn't how
he wanted a word with them. The man wasn't alone. Another rode
up through the woods, weaving among the trees.
    He was still on foot and downhill from Cloud, where he couldn't
mount up without maneuvering. <Cloud standing,> Danny im-
aged desperately. Riders wouldn't ever shoot a horse except as an
absolutely last resort, he believed that, but he'd believed in Jonas
yesterday morning. Now he stood with a sweaty fistful of Cloud's
mane, willing Cloud not to spook, his knees quaking under him.
    That man came up with the first. He'd thought he might have
detected a south-hills, Hallanslake accent, and he saw now for cer-
tain it was Ancel Harper. Harper was holding a pistol aimed at him
while one more rider was closing in.
    He was scared half to death. He'd never in his life dealt with a
gun aimed at him. He saw very clearly now that it wasn't just a
misunderstanding, and he didn't want to face these three men
trembling like a fool kid, but he didn't know what to do about his
situation, he didn't know what he should have done to escape it,
and Cloud didn't know, either. Guns had shot at Cloud before, but


150    i~E        C.J. Cherryh

Cloud hadn't had a rider who fell off, the last time guns had fired at
him, and nobody had wanted Cloud to come toward them under
that circumstance, either, the way these men wanted him to do.
Cloud was mad, and confused, and the ambient was thick with
nighthorse threats, the Hallanslake horses' and Cloud's.
    "So what do you want?" Danny asked, trying to sound madder
and more confident than he was scared--but it didn't work at all.
His voice wobbled.
    "Sitting out here all alone," Harper said, and the gun in Harper's
hand never wavered. "No place for a kid. Where are the West-
mans?"
    "I don't know. Tell the truth, I don't care. I'm tired of being
bossed."
  "Are you?" Harper said flatly.
    "I'm tired of people acting crazy. What's the matter with every-
body, anyway?" He managed high indignation, and told himself
that Harper wasn't 'sir.' Nobody who pointed guns at him was ever
voluntarily 'sir.' He made up his mind to that right then, as scared
as he was.
  "Friend of Stuart's, are you?"
    "No." He managed to be surprised and mad. "I know the man,
that's all. I never dealt with him."
    "Not what I picked up in Meeting. Not what anybody in Shame-
sey camp picked up. What's your name, kid?"
  "Dan--" He almost said Danny. "Dan Fisher. Yours is Harper."
  "We know each other?"
    "Same place as you know me." Thoroughly bad odds, Danny
thought. He fell back on his bad-boy days, his town days, old
friends and a habitual insolence to seniors--before papa had jerked
him sideways. "I've got no personal stake in this. Jonas tried to hire
me, but he didn't pay me and I got tired of being told when to
breathe. I'm going home."
    Harper slid his pistol back into the holster, threw a leg over and
slipped easily down from his horse's back. "So he hired you, did he?
For what?"
  You didn't lie, near a horse. "I heard Stuart the night they were


RIDER AT THE GATE              ~       151

shooting. Jonas thought I could hear him loud enough on the trail
to help out. I couldn't. So I left."
  "Maybe you'd like to travel with us."
  "You paying?"
    "Yeah," Harper said. "Your neck, if you follow orders. And
maybe a junior's share of the bounty, if ever happens they put one
on the rogue. Not unlikely they will. So you could go back with
pocket money."
    What was smart to do? Say go to hell, to three borderers with
guns? Danny shoved his hands in his belt. "I keep my gun, collect
my gear back there.., yeah, I'll go for a junior's share."
    "Gun's not part of it," Harper said. "Kid like you, a cannon like
that? You ever fired that thing?"
  'Tm not going up there with no gun!"
    "Kid, you haven't figured it yet. You're going up there stark
naked if you want to argue with us, but you are going. No gun.
You want a strip search while we're at it? Or you want to hand the
gun over? You don't need it. Blow you right off your horse, the
kick it's got. Guy like Watt, here, that's his size gun."
      The man named Watt grinned. Big as a boulder and built like
one. Horse as big as any Danny had ever seen.  And Cloud thought (fight.>
    Danny snatched a handful of Cloud's mane, patted his shoulder,
bodily pressing against him for a moment, imaging <gun in hol-
ster, man talking with Danny,> trying the forced calm-down from
Jonas he'd resented yesterday. (Quiet water,> he insisted, sweating,
trying to lower the force in the ambient. (Clouds reflecting in
water. >

  Cloud's ears were flat to his skull.
    "Yeah," Danny said quietly, quickly, and started unbuckling the
gun before Cloud got himself killed. "I've got my gear and supplies
back there." He concentrated on the quiet. It kept his mind busy,
kept his knees from shaking and wobbling. He imaged his camp
downhill. Cloud nipped at his knee, caught a lipful of leather, still
wanting <fight> and arguing about it.
  But he let the gun and holster fall to the ground.


152      ~       C.J. Cherryh

    Harper motioned back the way they'd come. "Quig, get his
stuff."
    "Yeah," the other man said, and turned his horse about on the
hill and went after the stuff while the big guy, Watt, got off and
collected the gun he'd dropped.
    In the deepest well of his thoughts he was sorry now he hadn't
stuck tight to Jonas and said yes, sir, no matter what. Harper left
no doubt who gave the orders with this bunch, and who was
meaner, or smarter, or whatever it took to get that obedience out of
men both bigger and stronger than Harper was.
      "Get on your horse," Harper said, and Danny turned Cloud
around on the hill to put his preferred side uphill.  Cloud moved as he was about to get up.
    "Cloud!" he hissed, scared, because he wasn't all that steady in
his knees, and wasn't sure his nerves weren't most of the reason for
the upset he felt in Cloud. "Stand still, all right? Just stand still."
    Cloud's ears were still flat. <Bite,> Cloud imaged, a shivery,
angry sort of image, and Danny took a double fistful of mane,
wanting him quiet, quiet, quiet. Please God. <Going to moun-
tains. Harper and these men and us going to mountains up the
road. >
    He made it onto Cloud's back, and Harper and the others led the
way to the site downhill, where the man called Quig was putting
his blanket rolls together and gathering up his supplies.
    They stopped there. Quig handed him up his packets and his
blankets. He sat there between Watt and Harper until Quig had
finished and gotten back on his horse.
Harper brushed close to him. "You ride alongside me, hear?"
Cloud didn't want be close to Harper or his horse, Cloud was
consistently thinking <bite,> but Danny gave Cloud a mild kick to
get him moving. <Quiet water,> he thought. The kick made
Cloud mad. Everything did. But they went out into the morning
sun and onto the road.
  Following Jonas and company.
    Not on Stuart's trail, he was relieved to think, Stuart having
gone--


RIDER AT THE GATE              ~        153

    Shit! he thought, remembering the look of that town--heart
sinking.
  "...Anveney, is it?" Harper asked him.
    "Yeah, well, that's what Jonas Westman thinks. That's all I
know."
  "Why does Westman think that?"
    Try not to think of something. <Hawley patting his pocket,
image of < money. >
 He truly didn't know what more he could do to foul things up.



IN THE BUSY DAYS OF SUMMER, BEFORE HARVEST AND AFTER SPRING
and open market, riders took hires as many as they could and went
wherever along the roads their commissions took them, traveling
with steady partners if they could, but if that wasn't possible, and a
convoy had only so many berths, you took the job, that was all--
because you always had a winter to get through, three dead-white
months when nothing moved, when only the juniors made any
money at all, and that was paltry change. If you were a high coun-
try rider, you made very good money during the summer itself,
often the highest paying convoy right at the risky edge of autumn,
when some last moment situation or late-realized shortage man-
dated that goods move somewhere fast.
    The reliable riders got those offers--the shippers gave priority to
the riders who gave them priority over other shippers, and if you
had such a regular hire, depend on it--rather than risk losing a
customer, you arranged a place to meet your partner for wintering-
over, and you satisfied that special customer. Aby and he had end-


RIDER AT THE GATE              ~        155

season requests enough, usually separately, and they'd always
arranged a place...
    The MacFarlane, most times. He wished to God Aby had agreed
to the MacFarl~~e with him this year, which would have put Aby
far to the south ,.~tead of on that road.
    But one of those last-moment commissions had come through,
and as he guessed it, the high-pay end of it had been from Anveney
up to Tarmin and the mining and logging towns.
    Which meant Aby must have gotten a call from her Anveney
shipper.
    He still wanted to talk to that man, once he'd settled his own es-
sential business on the mountain.
    Anveney was a town riders avoided if they could. The spur over
to Anveney was not so well-maintained since the townsman ambi-
ent had gotten tense between Shamesey and Anveney districts.
Cargo still went, but the two districts quarreled about everything
including responsibility for road maintenance, and the area where
each claimed it was the other's responsibility held potholes big
enough to take a truck tire.
    Anveney was northernmost of the towns--and the branch road
out of Anveney east could take you downland and east to Carlisle,
on the Inland Sea, if you stayed with it long enough, a trek through
tedious days of barren fiat and sandy ground, fit to make you and
your horse see mirages. And once he'd finished his business, the
Anveney west road was a way up to Tarmin, at least for riders in a
hurry--not the way Jonas had come down, he was sure: modern
trucks couldn't take the steep grade.
    What had come into Shamesey in that convoy with Jonas had
been mostly lumber, logical enough for a cargo coming down from
Tarmin district on the main road. Then the Anveney-based trucks
and (the riders being short-handed) probably the whole convoy
would have detoured over to Anveney (you never, for any reason, left
trucks sitting unprotected in the Wild) before taking the Anveney
spur road home to Shamesey: fuel was expensive, but it cost less
than trucks.
    Anveney copper sheet and Shamesey flour and beans and canned
goods had undoubtedly been the upbound load, a before-winter



shipment of supplies or equipment, on which Tarmin had elected
to defray cost by shipping lumber down to Anveney and Shamesey.
He knew the reasons and the directions things moved at the edge of
winter. His job was to know; and he reckoned possibilities now in
scatter-witted preoccupation, reconstructing without overmuch dif-
ficulty the reason Aby had been with Hawley and Jonas. The West-
mans came north only rarely, but not so improbably: jobs had been
slow in the south hills, a lot of rain this summer, as he well knew,
and Aby was a good bet to be in this district come fall; they'd have
come to ask her to get them hire. Which she could do: better to
convoy with riders you knew than ones the truckers picked, and
Aby was an experienced senior guide whose recommendation
counted.
    She wouldn't, he decided, have anticipated any danger yet in the
weather: Aby was a good weather-doctor, rarely missed a predic-
tion. She'd have held her favorite client up for a hefty fee, having a
better knack than some for making a run sound risky (no lie, if
your chief guide made mistakes with the weather) for making her-
self sound knowledgeable (she was) and for generally convincing
the shipper that they'd lose the best rider in the region if they
didn't keep Aby Dale satisfied with her situation. In part what they
paid for was the expertise Aby had to say no if she didn't like the
feel of it and the guts she had to go ahead if she knew she could
make it.
    You only needed to be wrong once. And nobody could have pre-
dicted what had happened.
    But damn the discussion they'd had at mid-summer, a discussion
that had drifted to the dancing and the music and the electric
lights of Shamesey camp. She liked it. She'd gotten snowed in last
winter and left him stranded in Shamesey. She'd wanted him to
come back north two winters running to the damn town, which
was smoky, overcrowded, with an ambient that never let you rest.
She called it excitement. He called it enough to give you a
headache. He'd been stuck there last lonely winter waiting for her
while she was snowed in.
  But she wanted it. Wanted--
  His rebel mind suddenly, as it would, conjured corpses.


RIDER AT THE GATE              ~        157

    And worse, worse, the)~eling, the going-apart, the lost, dreadful
disintegration that occupied that place high on the road, where the
evergreens came close to the unstable ground of that bad turn, and
the outward view was empty air.
    He shook. He pressed his hand against his eyes, blotting out the
light around him. He remembered Aby living, Aby on Moon,
blithe and beautiful, coming down the road in the safe lowlands.
    Burn shivered under him, ripple of skin up his shoulders. Whuff
of confusion. (Aby dead,~ Burn imaged, vivid, brutal, necessary
question.
    He confused Burn, and Burn dragged him back to what was.
Burn couldn't help it--and he couldn't. He'd dragged Burn into
thinking Aby might be waiting there, when Burn knew Aby was
dead, and what was Burn to think?
    That was one difference between horse-mind and human: once
Burn had realized death, regretted it, disposed of the matter, Burn
wouldn't go raking it over and over at the turn of a breeze. And
where did what-wasn't-real lead a horse or a rider, anyway?
    He had to get the thing that had killed Aby. Had to get it. It
didn't know any better than it did, its story was probably as sad as
Aby's, but it had destroyed Aby's life and gotten a piece of his he
couldn't get back from it until he settled the question. For hours at
a time he'd be all right, and then for a few minutes confusion
would close in on him so he couldn't breathe, and he'd lose his
thoughts between past and present in a way Burn couldn't handle.
    (Maybe death, maybe lifev was one thing. ~When winter
comes~ was one thing. (When Aby's alivev couldn't make sense at
all.
    (Dead,) he imaged now to Burn, hurt as it did, in order to
straighten the matter out and assure Burn the truth he remembered

was SO.

    And, equally confused, once in an hour he might think, To hell
with it, ride south and forget it. You can't bring back the dead.
Aby won most times; she didn't, once; she lost, is all. Fall of the
dice. The riders up at Tarmin can handle their own trouble.
    Then something would nag him saying, But all those people up
there--riders not necessarily aware what's moved in, unless the


15 8    ~         C.J. Cherryh

thing's gotten noisier in the ambient. More deaths, after it got
away with Aby's.
    And the way he understood the affliction, rogues didn't always
make a lot of noise. Some were very quiet. Very canny. A mountain
village, unlike a lowland town, had only a few riders, and they'd
have to divide themselves between hunting the horse and defend-
ing the village.
    But: Damn stupid villagers, he'd think then, and hate them all;
and ask himself who cared, or why he should care if they couldn't
take care of themselves. If they couldn't take care of themselves
they had no business living where they did and least of all crossing
his path. He wasn't a town rider. He stayed generally to the High
Wild, dealt with the convoys, got their precious lumber and fuel
oil to them, and minded his own business otherwise. He'd had a
bullet burn across his skin, thanks to townsmen.
    And then, on a breath, the painful lump in his throat would
come back, a stinging in his eyes, a desire, villagers or no villagers
at stake, to blow that thing to bloody hell.
    The average was anger, and hurt, which couldn't lead him to sit
safe and secure down in Malvey, ignoring the situation, even if at
moments he wanted to.
    It didn't lead him straight up to Tarmin bare-handed, mad, and
stupid, either. It led him steadily toward Anveney, because he
needed a gun. If he could reach their money at the bank in An-
veney, he couldn't think of a better use for what he and Aby had
saved for the winter than to buy something to blow so many large-
caliber holes in that thing daylight shone through.
    Give it a chance at him, the best bait and somehow, in his mind,
justice in the offering.
    Give it the one chance that thing would have had at him if he'd
been with Aby the time she most needed him--and give him the
chance he would have had if he'd been there, kill or be killed. Jonas
had been all prudence. Get the convoy down, leave the rider for the
scavengers. No damn way he would have left Aby lying at the foot
of that slide and not gone down after her, convoy or no convoy; and
hell if he wouldn't have gone into the woods after that thing. Haw-
ley he'd have thought would have had the loyalty to her to leave a


RIDER AT THE GATE              ~        159

safe, well-armed, downward-bound convoy, solo, to track Aby's
killer down. He hadn't done it. He'd run. Aby had died with no-
body near her with the guts to have gone after her killer.
    Nighthorses caught the contagion of anger very readily, and be-
lieved human images very easily. Sometimes Burn likewise wanted
to go (south> and forget it, too, in search of (females.> But more
and more as the hours passed and they came steadily northward to-
ward Anveney, Burn's images became (the mountains in the west,
and the high forest gone dark and dangerous >--that was Burn's
image for what Burn himself didn't like to shape in his thoughts.
    (Gun,> Burn thought now, at least Burn's image of a gun:
(flash of fire, smell of smoke. > Burn was very much in favor of
guns when they were on Burn's side of an argument, Burn whose
name was (fire> and (dark,> and whose temper climbed to the
top of the ambient so, so quickly. If Burn's rider wanted to kill
something, then Burn was ready. Burn would enjoy a hunt.
    But (gun> was all that could settle a rogue, a good rifle best of
all. And if one had to go shopping for death, Anveney was a fit
place for it--any caliber, any proof, any strength, in Anveney of the
poison pools and the poisoned earth.
    And when they reached the cut-off where a horse-trail went west
to the rider-stone that sat at the cross-country crossroads, Guil slid
down and wished Burn gone to that stone, a route that wouldn't
take him into Anveney itself.
    <Guil walking. Burn going overland. Meeting on the road to the
mountains. Big rider-stone. Marks like so.>
    Burn heard his (stone> just fine--and imaged instead (bad-
smelling smoke,> and (machines> and (dead cattle. Dead grass.
Dead trees. Dead willy-wisps. Gull and Burn walking on road to
mountains side by side. >
    <Gun in Anveney,> Gull reminded him, and added: (bacon,>
followed by (Burn going on the road alone, Burn waiting at the
stone. >

    Burn snorted and ambled off the road, nosing the grass without
eating it. Burn left no doubt. Burn didn't think there were pigs in
Anveney.
  <Trucks in town,> Guil argued. <Bringing pigs. Bacon. Guns.


160    ~          C.J. Cherryh

! r

Sides and sides of bacon. Hams. Guil bringing packages to Burn at
the stone. >
    <Poison blue pools,> Burn remembered, not quite out of range.
<Dead grass.> Burn had seen the zone around Anveney once, and
that was enough.
    <Us meeting at stone,> Gull insisted. "Go, Burn, dammit. Get
moving. Don't give me trouble. I don't want you breathing the
stuff."
    Burn sulked off a distance, in no hurry. But Burn wouldn't at all
like it once Burn had to smell the smoke.
    Burn's rider, on the other hand, had to breathe the smell from
the moment he walked over the rise and caught the wind.
    Burn's rider had to look on a barren land, the smokestacks and
the ruin they made, a dusty, barren land oppressive to any sane
man's heart, but clearly some liked it that way.
    And utterly silent--a silence that came of leaving not only
Burn's range, but leaving the range of every living creature, because
nothing flourished in this land of metal-laden air and dying grass.
Walking down the last grassy hill was like walking down into a
lake of silence, no easier to tolerate because he'd been here twice be-
fore. He experienced the same increasing desolation, the same little
catch of breath when he'd had enough and wanted to go back.
    No holding of breath would stop the stench or bring the world-
sense back. No life. Nothing to hear--not the l, ittle creatures of the
world that talked constantly to him and Burn; not the noise of a
camp, the constant presence-sense that he was used to, in camp and
outside one.
  It didn't exist here.
     Six huge smokestacks sat on the shoulder of a low hill and a
 huge town, rivalling Shamesey's size, sprawled off onto other
 hills--with little hillocks of tailings around the pits that sur-
 rounded Anveney, out across a barren landscape as far as the hori-
 zon.
     Lakes of incredible poison hues. Smokestacks that lifted the
 worst and deadliest of the airborne ash above the town, so they
 said--but only humans, it seemed, could live near those tailings
 piles, or the run-off basins where the water collected in those pools:


RIDER AT THE GATE              ~        16I

white and brilliant blue and bright green, beautiful, if you didn't
know you were looking at death.
    Copper-mining, chemical-making ... if it was poison and other
towns wouldn't touch it, Anveney would. Let the smoke blow and
the water run and seep into the river and run to the sea: Anveney
didn't care.
    Anveney supplied all the world with copper, tin, gold, silver, and
lead--iron for trucks and guns came from over the Inland Sea,
ported in at Carlisle, moved along Limitation River by barge. He'd
never been that far east, himself, but he knew coal came inbound
there. A handful of lowland riders shepherded those barges along
the shorelines and guarded their contracts equally jealously, as their
right--but they based themselves at Carlisle, and went only as far
as the zone of die-off, so he'd heard. Coal likewise came from across
the Inland Sea, smoky stuff to feed the furnaces of the big foundries
and refineries and to supply the lights of Anveney, likewise
freighted in by barge--while Malvey sat on natural gas and oil, a
source of fuel on this side of the sea, a mere six days ride to the
south of Shamesey.
    But it wasn't distance that kept Malvey oil out of Anveney, or
made them buy their fuel from middlemen in Shamesey. It was
townsmen politics. Malvey's oil heated Shamesey as well as Malvey
houses, as it did Tarmin villages, in winter emergency. It ran the
generators that ran the electric lights, smoky stuff, too, but its
smoke didn't seem to kill the ground.
    Anveney smoke did. Anveney smoke ruined the ground in a
wider and wider desolation made, as Shamesey claimed and any fool
could see, by smoke and downfalling pollution out of Anveney,
smoke that didn't always blow toward the vacant lands, Anveney's
pious claims to the contrary.
    Shamesey, lying southeast, had protested and demanded that An-
veney shut down its furnaces on those days when the wind was
blowing toward Shamesey and its farmlands--but Anveney consis-
tently refused, first on the grounds that it wasn't possible, the fur-
naces couldn't shut down entirely on a given day; and then
demanding that Shamesey pay exorbitantly in grain and fuel for
any days the refineries were out of operation.


162    ~          C.J. Cherryh


    So the two regions quarreled and counterclaimed--it was news
the rider camps cared about, since the fools held trade and rider pay
and villages' winter supply hostage to their ongoing dispute. An-
veney didn't need riders to guard their town at all, Anveney said,
because their walls and their guards defended them, even out in the
remote mining pits.
    The stink and the poison defended Anveney, that was the truth
all riders knew, and even townsmen in Shamesey had an inkling.
The plain fact was that no creature in its right mind would come
near Anveney, first for the stink that clung to everything, in that
zone where the smoke spilled its most odoriferous content to
earth--and second, for the more alarming effects: a stranger to An-
veney felt he had contamination on his skin. He'd been here once,
himself, and his skin had itched until he'd bathed in clean water,
which argued to him and surely to any creature with a brain that it
couldn't be good. It was why he wouldn't allow Burn close enough
to eat the grass on the edge of this place.
    But humans somehow survived here. Humans mined and refined
the metals, and when Anveney shipped its ingots and sheet metal
outside the envelope of its poison, it still needed riders to guard the
shipments.
    Anveney both needed what its poisoned soil wouldn't grow or
graze, and held its own goods back if it didn't get the price it
wanted. Other towns wanted copper to make the wires for the
phone system, which never worked when you needed it--but at
least it didn't draw predators like the radio did; townsmen wanted
the phones enough to keep paying riders to fix the lines and guard
the crews that put up poles that fell down in the ice storms all
winter.
    Lately Anveney and its little network of high-country mining
camps with their copper and such had all made one union, and
wouldn't sell except at their prices. This was the next escalation of
the smoke wars.
    So now Shamesey, latest he'd heard, was trying to arrange some
kind of terms with Malvey, since Anveney was as desperate for food
as Shamesey was for electrics and copper sheet for rich families'
roofs. Shamesey reasoned that if Anveney got hungry enough it


RIDER AT THE GATE              ~        163

might shut down its smoke when the winds blew southerly. Shame-
sey had made alliance not only with Malvey and its union, but with
other, smaller towns in the grain belt, which dealt with Shamesey
markets, and began to hold back grain and to create stockpiles of
copper against Anveney's price-fixing and smoke-dumping, saying
that Shamesey could do without copper longer than Anveney could
do without bread.
    It was a damned stupid situation. Guil had heard both sides of
the argument all his life, at varying degrees of immediacy, and
didn't comment, as riders didn't generally voice opinions on town
politics to their employers or to the truck drivers, whose trade was
gossip as well as cargo. Talk like which side was right confused the
horses and worried riders, when towns got to quarreling--nobody
needed more ill feeling near the horses than they naturally had
coming at them, but when the smoke wars heated up, things gen-
erally grew uncomfortable; and the smell of Anveney, both the
stench and the town-wide atmosphere of fear and grievance, made
it hard for a rider not to have opinions. Bad enough the refinery
jobs at Malvey, including the chance of blowing sky-high in a truck
accident.
    But... Aby had argued, in her dealings with Anveney, the pay's
good and I can camp out till they arrange the papers and get the
trucks to the gate. I don't have to go into town but once a trip.
    Well for her, he supposed, wondering once, in Aby's near com-
pany, how good in the blankets this Anveney shipper might be.
    Gotten his ear boxed, he had---deserved it, he was sure; Aby'd
been only half joking when she immediately after pushed him into
the blankets and never did answer the question.
    Come with me, she'd urged him again, last spring. Talk Burn
into it. You've got to see the country up there.
I do see it, he'd said. She'd imaged him her route again and

again.
    And
You've
  But

she'd said, pleading with him: With your own eyes, Guil.
got to feel it. You've got to be there.
he'd refused. He'd made his commitment to Malvey; he'd
elected to run his risks with the fuel tankers up to Darwin. He had
his hard-won customers down south that he didn't want to let into


164 ~    C..J. Cherryh

the hands of anybody else, for fear they might call on that some-
body else next time.
  And truth be told--he'd grown a little tired of her evasions.
    So now he was walking to Anveney town alone, his eyes feeling
the sting of the smoke when the wind gusted a fickle current
down-valley.
    Anveney's Garden, riders called the place, the area all around and
northeast of Anveney, where the soil lay completely bare and prone
to erosion, gullies leading to gullies leading to a wash that ran
down to a river that ran through barren banks a long, long way be-
fore the inpouring of other streams began to put more life into
Limitation River than death could take out. Even that far, neither
riders or horses would eat the freshwater fish, which grew strange
lumps on their bodies.
    No riders wintered over in the district, that he knew of, either.
During the summer if you looked over from the Tarmin main road,
you could generally find a plume of smoke in the hills, a handful of
riders resting up for a day or two, waiting for some convoy to orga-
nize; they'd wait in that still-green zone, always outside the dead
fields.
  Only a few weeks ago, Aby had been among them.


Chapter

X1

BRIONNE'S FEET WERE COLD, HER FINGERS WERE COLD. SHE TUCKED
her hands in her pockets and kept walking, brushed by evergreens
which dumped the burden of their boughs and spattered wet snow
onto the melting crust.
    It was a beautiful morning. It wasn't golden anymore. She'd
walked through that angle of the sun. But it was a shining morn-
ing, still. Glistening white, the sun gleamed in snow-melt off tall
branches. It was the kind of morning that would lead to glossy
melt by afternoon, and a freezing icy crust again by night, in
Brionne's young experience. The snow tomorrow morning would
crunch underfoot and make hollow shells where footprints were--
and you'd slip walking around the edges of the house where the
run-off made thick ice. She knew. She loved the snow.
    And when the kids of Tarmin village gained permission to go
outside the walls it had always been with riders all about, but
Tarmin wasn't afraid of goblin cats. Tarmin folk and riders both
went out to skate on the mountain lake, and Tarmin children, when




166    ~          C~. Cherryh

the riders were near, went out to build snow forts and sometimes,
especially if you were lovey with boys, just to walk to the Rim and
see the valley, with rider pairs to watch them.
    It was scary being out on her own. But she wasn't truly afraid.
Her horse surely knew she was looking for it, her horse was only
testing her in making her walk so far from the walls, and if there
should be a goblin cat, her horse would never let it come close to
her. If there was a nest of willy-wisps, her horse would hear her call
and come to her rescue, if she couldn't, as a rider could, drive them
away simply by imaging as loudly as she could.
    I'm here, she called to her horse, not with her voice, but the way
the riders spoke, the pictures you made in your mind.
    And there came.., oh, so suddenly you'd never know it had
happened.., the view of a girl in a red coat, with a blue scarf---of
course that was herself. Of course it was. And sometimes, the riders
said, you could get that kind of image from willy-wisps, but it
didn't feel scary like willy-wisps, it felt...   .. so, so lonely
    She pushed aside a branch to pass between two trees, and sud-
denly was sure where she was going, so sure she half-ran the next
wooded slope, arrived at a clear space in the woods, and in that
clear space the sun fell, and in that sunlight.., the most beautiful
horse, its mane so thick and long it cascaded down its black shoul-
der, and all the clearing touched by sun that made its coat shine
like silk.
    Her horse regarded her with one forelock-obscured eye, dipped
its head and pawed the snow anxiously before it took a tentative
step forward, its three-hooved foot taking ever-so-light a step be-
fore Brionne dared commit herself.
    "Are you mine?" she asked, and went on, breathlessly, feeling a
little foolish to be talking with no human to hear. "My name's
Brionne. I'm thirteen I live in Tarmin village. I heard you last
night. What's your name?"  Another step.
    'Tm not afraid, you know. I talk with the riders all the time. I
talk with their horses. There's Quickfoot and Flicker and..."
  A third step. A fourth. Brionne forgot everything, every word.


RIDER AT THE GATE              ~        167

The horse stretched out its neck and Brionne quickly pulled her
glove off and held out her hand.., felt the chill of the air on her
bare skin, saw the horse wrinkle its black nose and bare its teeth.
The center ones were large and square and yellowed--jarringly
real--out of time with this white glisten of morning. The corner
ones were longer and sharp; and for a moment staring at them she
doubted her safety--but she stayed still when the horse's nose ap-
proached her outstretched hand.
    The velvet black lip came down as it reached her fingers. She
laughed shakily as she felt the hot, moist breath puff over her hand,
she touched the delicately molded softness of the horse's nostrils as
it breathed in her scent.
    Another step, hers or the horse's, or maybe it was both, and she
could touch with her fingertips its long forelock. Another step, and
she could run her fingers through that incredible long mane and
put her arm about the horse's neck and shoulder, and hug it tight.
Its mane was like finest, softest, floatiest wool against her cheek,
stirring with any wind. Its winter coat was warm and silky. She let
go a shaky sigh, feeling shivery just feeling it.
    She knew the horse should tell her its secret name then.
"Brionne," she said, thinking about herself, the way her horse had,
imaging <a red-coated Brionne, coming th.rough the trees.>
    Then she couldn't see the woods around her. She saw only <dark,
and the bright and shining moon. >

Of a sudden Flicker's hindquarters buckled and she sat down hard
and fast, knocked a post askew with her rump, and Tara dropped
the pan she was carrying, hot water all down her leg, and ran to
Flicker, flung herself onto her knees on the wet straw and put her
arms about Flicker's neck.
    There was no more <white.> There was <den,> and <tired
horse. >
    Tara shook, holding to her, pillowing her head against Flicker's
back. Flicker shifted a little, matter-of-factly seeking a more com-
fortable position for her forelegs, and Vadim and Chad talked to
each other in human words, quietly relieved, wondering if they
should try to get Flicker up again.



168    ~          C.J. Cherryh

    Tara overheard and thought <Flicker lying down.> Flicker's legs
were tired, and if her legs were too weak and went to sleep under
her and they had to bodily lift her, fine, they had the gear--they
could do that; and Flicker had moved her forelegs on her own. That
was a good sign. Only let Flicker stay down as long as she seemed
to need to.
    She thought of <ham and eggs,> and added <grain> and Flicker
managed a feeble interest. Flicker started licking her foreleg, as
horses would, grooming, scratching an itch with her teeth, and oh,
Tara understood that itch--her own legs had gone past numb with
standing and walking, so swollen the skin felt stretched. Flicker
started paying attention to such small irritants, and that was a good
sign, too.
    Tara just stayed where she was, didn't want to move, put her
head down against Flicker's ribs and lay there, heart pounding so
loud she could hear it, then slowing as she went drifting instantly
close to sleep.
  Didn't feel the terror now. Just sleepy. Just tired. Just aching.
  Just loved, by friends around her. And sleep was very easy.

Clouds billowed out of the high smokestacks--each of the six of
them with its own color and stench. The smoke, black and yellow,
was thick enough to create an impression of permanent storm
hanging above the town and its environs. Most of the foulness went
above and beyond Anveney, but the stinking clouds passing over-
head still rained on the town a kind of gritty soot and a yellow,
powdery dust that an ignorant rider feared wasn't only sulfur, al-
though sulfur was certainly one of the taints on the wind.
    That rain of ash coated the walls and roofs and buildings in a
runny multiplicity of stains. Soot gritted and cracked underfoot,
and you sneezed the stuff out once your nose and lungs had had
enough. Anveney buildings near the edge wanted repair, not just
paint, like Shamesey slum buildings, but essential repair to the rav-
ages of weather and listless years. Shutters hung atilt on upper
floors, excrescent rooms overshadowing the walks were propped
from below with timbers and, sagging further, with mere boards, at
all angles. Porches on upper levels likewise sagged, suspended by


RIDER AT THE GATE              ~        169

 chains and cables, a supported slum so bizarrely contrived that
 whole buildings must rock to the winter gales.
     When folk had once built these dwellings, the main street, at
 least, had had paving stones, limestone quarried north of Anveney.
 The last of them had not quite sunk beneath the mire; and the filth
 that swam atop made slick spots in the road where water gathered
 in rainbow puddles.
     The poor of Anveney town mined, that was the system. The ones
 on the streets were the discarded, the jobless destitute, the old, the
 crippled, the sick, who sat about on doorsteps--
    And there were the predatory disinclined, who, solitary or in
groups, wandered the streets. Guil eyed a handful of underagers
watching him just too keenly, gangling youths with skin in which
soot seemed deeper than the reach of soap, eyes that tracked coldly,
and stared in cold estimation at a rider walking down their street.
    Guil paid steady attention to them, keenly aware of the silence of
the ambient that robbed him of warnings, and kept walking, refus-
ing to cross to the other side of the street.
    He walked past, turning his head to glare at them. But he
couldn't hear, once he'd passed. He listened with his ears--warned
by no more than a foot moving, spun in the very instant a rock
aimed at his back hit his arm. He stared after the fleeing culprits
with an impulse which would have given bystanders nightmares if
Burn had been with him, but Burn wasn't.
    They hadn't stayed, all the same. A few other watchers crossed
the street out of his path as he walked on, maybe reading his mood
from other signs.
    Hate lived here; despair; and muddle-headed confusion. He saw
it in the faces of the old;--he saw it in the faces of midtown chil-
dren, cleaner than their slum-side counterparts, but many, many of
them whiter than soap could make them. They threw no stones.
They only stared, listless and bruised about the eyes.
    The preachers said their state was holy and his own was damna-
tion. Himself, he inhaled as little as he could of townsmen paradise
and wished for rain to wash the air clean.
    If one of them had ever come to a rider and begged--if one had
come to Aby--if one of them had ever just hopped a ride with a




truck--but none of them that he knew had ever asked. Anveney
folk centered all their hopes on the mines, the metals, the mills;
they depended like parasites from the moneyed monster Anveney
was. It shook them off and they sank in the mud and died--all the
while their faith so feared the intrusion of another, alien thought
into their minds they'd die before they worked with a horse.
    And by what he knew, they equally feared the uncertainties of a
rider's life--meaning hunting for their supper. Anveney folk might
have no supper. But they seemed reassured that they were sure they
would have no supper.
    They suffered no surprises. The poison above the town did make
spectacular sunsets ... that was all you could say for it; but Guil
doubted they appreciated the colors above their gray, sooted walls.
He'd touched enough Anveney minds for a lifetime, among those
drivers who regularly came back to this town when they had other
choices. He'd tried to penetrate their sullen, argumentative insis-
tence on certainties. They afflicted him the same way dire illness
did.
    He'd felt an irrational fear ever since he'd passed the guarded
town gates, first that the walls were closing in and then that the
successive concentric rows of buildings were shifting and entrap-
ping him. Even when the buildings became wider spaced that anxi-
ety persisted, on the broadening way down which, if it were
Shamesey, the convoys would come, assembled in the town square
with excitement and honking of horns and cheers of passers-by.
    In Anveney, depend on it as one depended there were rich towns-
men at the heart of everything, there was a town square, but to his
borrowed memory it was all official buildings and rich houses with
sealed windows, while convoys assembled and onloaded and off-
loaded at warehouses outside the town wall, out by the tailings-
heaps.
    The buildings came in better repair as the road inclined uphill,
the pavings mostly clear of muck. Here a shop stood open-doored,
with moderate traffic of buyers, and there, the smell of bread from a
bakery wafted out locally stronger than the general stink of the val-
ley air. The bakery stood next a house with bright red doorposts
and a red and blue door, a level porch with the rail intact and iron



RIDER AT THE GATE              ~        171

bars on the windows. Touches of color became riot further down
the street; red beams with blue trim at the corners of neat yellow
and white buildings, a carving of flowers on a wall inset--they all
had a dusting of soot, and the flowers were black-edged. But the
colors were cheerful.
    The folk who walked here (more idle folk than in the lower
town) wore townsmen's long brown coats and broad, flat hats, men
and women with woolen trouser hems innocent of soot. Children
waddled about like stuffed dolls in overcoats on this nippish day,
children with round scrubbed faces, more color in their cheeks than
in the poorer part of town--no few masked in gauze, leaving only
the eyes exposed. They stood and gawked at the sight of a rider
walking down the street. Their elders stared, too, and drew the
children away.
    He'd reached town center, where he was sure the bank must be,
an open square with all too many silent minds and staring eyes for
his liking, a marketplace not like friendly village markets, with
their open stalls where riders sometimes came to deal and rub
shoulders with townsmen, but shops with most of the goods in-
doors, requiring the buyer to commit himself and go inside. The
nature of the buildings gave him no cue what business they did.
    A woman passed near him, hatted and coated into shapelessness.
"I'm looking for the bank," he said to her, and she evaded him and
his question with a brisk thumping of thick heels down the walk.
    He suffered a flare of anger, and half-smothered it before he re-
membered that Burn wasn't there to spread it around the area--but
he couldn't hear a damned thing, either, not cues, not intentions,
not directions to where money changed hands.
    A merchant in thick sweaters was tending his out-front display
goods, offering them to passers-by, woolens, as happened--fine
knit-work in muted colors; and, offered inside (a sudden realization
of the logic of such indoor shops), they'd smell better. He thought
if the prices were reasonable, if he had money left after finding a
gun, he might come back and buy one of those warm sweaters.
    In that case, the man could damned well direct him. "The bank,"
Guil said, raising his voice to be sure he couldn't easily be ignored.
"Sir, I'm looking for the bank."


172    ~          C.J. Cherryh


    A scowl, as the man arranged a sweater on a cardboard cutout of
a man. A reluctant nod across the square to buildings on the other
side. "Bank," the man said. That was all.
    "Thanks," Guil muttered, jammed his hands deeper into his
pockets and walked across the square, past waddling, gauze-masked
children and clusters of their glum elders who stopped their gossip
to stare. God, he wanted out of this place.
    He couldn't swear to what building the man had indicated. He
thought the likeliest candidate for a repository of money was the
important-looking building with the bars on the windows: it didn't
look to be selling anything, there being no displays, but there was
writing on the windows and the door, and though he couldn't read,
he'd never known anybody to write on windows of a private house.
    The door was open, seeming to invite entry. So he walked in,
onto a bare board floor, facing a grillwork, an armed guard, and a
single young man at an undefended desk out front, while the rest of
the employees sat at desks securely behind those formidable bars,
which led one to wonder which ranked higher.  "Is this the bank?" he asked the guard.
    "Seems so," the guard said, looking him over. Then the young
man at the desk, a thin, nervous fellow, said: "Help you, rider?"
    That was the most politeness he'd had in Anveney. He walked
over to the desk, folded his arms, said, dubiously, "They say I can
draw out money here I put in at Shamesey."
    "Yes, sir. If you've the account number and proper identifica-
tion.''
    You could have blown him over with a light breeze. It couldn't
be this easy. "I know the number. I memorized it. My name's Guil
Stuart."
  "You're supposed to have a card. Do you have one?"
    Yes, they'd given him a card. He'd very few places to store such
things. He fished in his inside breast pocket, not entirely sure he
had it, but he found a little white paper, a little the worse for wear.
He hoped they didn't mind wrinkles.
    The desk man looked at it and said: "Seems in oMer. Would you
step through to a desk, sir?"
  Sir, yet, from a townsman. Gull received the card back, decided



RIDER AT THE GATE              ~        173

he should keep it out, and as he followed the young man, heard a
click that put him in mind of guns. It made his nerves twitch. But
the guard had only opened the bars and let him in to the area where
the men and women sat at safer desks.
  "Help you?" the nearest woman asked.
    "Yes, ma'am," he said, and came and offered her the evidently
important card. "I'd like to take out some money."
  "Certainly," the woman said as she looked at the card.
    "I put it in at Shamesey," he said, still unconvinced the bank was
going to work, or, more to the point, that it was going to work for
a rider.
    "That's fine, sir, the lines are up. No trouble at all." A waved
gesture at the chair beside her desk. "Sit down. I'll be right back."
    The woman got up, taking the card with her, which he didn't
like, and walked back to a door she closed behind her.
    Fancy townswoman. Nice clothes. Flimsy shoes that never saw
mud. Behind that door was evidently the place of moneyed secrets
and decisions, and Guil told himself that Aby had been right and
this banking thing evidently did work. He'd personally had the
feeling, putting hard-earned cash into the bank at Shamesey--a
place where they took your money at an outside window, and you
stood in the street--that he might be throwing it away. He'd never
remotely thought that he'd be collecting it and Aby'd be gone.
    He sat and he sat, feeling awkward, waiting for the woman to
come back, and wondering finally if there was trouble with the
phone lines. Wondering if there was some glitch-up, maybe the
condition of the card--a few rainstorms had blurred the ink in
spots, and he hoped it hadn't blurred anything important.
    Finally, finally, the woman came slinking back, not so crisp, far
from cheerful, and not alone. A frowning older woman walked be-
hind her, an older woman who scarcely got rid of her scowl as she
extended--as Guil was getting up--the offer of a businesslike
handshake.
    The young woman said: "This is Yolande Newater, Mr. Stuart,
president of Anveney Trust."
    "Ma'am," Guil said, and suffered his hand to be shaken by a
cold, boneless grip.



174 ~ C.J. Cherryh

    "Mr. Stuart," Newater began. "There seems to be an embarrass-
ing problem."
    His stomach went sour. He recovered his hand, folded his arms,
tried to keep his temper under control. "That's the card they gave
me when I put the money in. That's my name. I put money in at
Shamesey. They said I could get it anywhere there was a bank and a
telephone."
  "Yes, sir. It should be. However."
    He frowned, not understanding this 'however.' Frustration
boiled up, maybe too fast. He tried to hold it in. "I put in five hun-
dred sixty and change."
    "Yes. I'm not disputing your word, Mr. Stuart, or the card.
Shamesey Bank confirms your deposit. I just talked to them."
    Amazing idea. Just talked to a bank in Shamesey. He'd never
been the subject of a phone call before.
    He didn't think he liked it, in present instance. "So where's my
money?"
    "I trust--" Newater looked intensely uncomfortable. "I trust you
know the co-holder was reported deceased."
    "Dead." He didn't like vague big words for plain nasty facts.
"Dead. I know."
    "There was a new employee at the counter," Newater began.
Then: "This is awkward."
  "Just say it. You lost the money?"
    "We don't lose money, Mr. Stuart. There was a legitimate
claimant."
  "What's a claimant?"
  "A next of kin."
  "Next of kin. Hawley Antrim?"
    "Mr. Antrim came in with identification. He was listed..."
Newater held out her hand and the other woman, silent, standing
by her desk, snatched up a paper and handed it to Newater. "Right
here, as Ms. Dale's next-of-kin."
     She showed it to him, as if it was some special proof that cleared
 her. It was marks on paper, so far as he was concerned, and he
 wanted it out of his face.


RIDER AT THE GATE              ~        175

     "Hawley Antrim walked into this place and said he wanted the
 money. He wanted the money?"
     "Either party can close the account. The right descended to Ms.
 Dale's legitimate heir. Mr. Antrim was listed on the appropriate
 paper--"
   "The hell with any appropriate paper! He had no right!"
  "As Ms. Dale's heir--"
  "He's a cousin! I'm her partner!"
     "It's not that way on the document, Mr. Stuart. There's recourse
 through the court, if you care to sue Mr. Antrim, but that's not our
 business. We have to disburse funds to the persons on the card."
   "I gave you the damn card! My name's on it, right?"
   "It is. But--"
  "Then give me the damn money!"
  The junior woman jumped. Newater frowned and said in a shaky
 voice, "Mr. Stuart ....    this is clearly an emotional situation. I ask
 you--"
     "I'm asking you for my damn money, woman. You had no call to
 give it to Hawley Antrim."
    "Clearly the terms of your partnership weren't defined in our
records. I'm in no position to evaluate the deceased's intentions in
writing regarding another party. I can only follow what informa-
tion Ms. Dale put on her card when she set up the account."  "Aby couldn't read."
    "She clearly answered questions. One of those questions involves
heirs and succession in the account."
    "She didn't know about any succession. You and your words,
they wouldn't mean anything to her, she wouldn't know what any
succession was, any more than Hawley does. That son of a bitch
just walked in here and said he wanted Aby's money, wasn't that
what happened?"
    Newater said, aside, hurriedly, "Lila, call Peter." And to him: "If
you'll just sit down, Mr. Stuart, --"
    As 'Lila' dived away like a scared cat, running for help: he had no
trouble figuring, and he looked about to see where 'Lila' was going,
jumped as Newater touched his sleeve--he wasn't used to being
touched. "Look," he said. "Fair's fair. We can argue later. I lost my



176    ~          C.J. Cherryh

gear. I need a couple hundred. You just give it to me, and we'll talk
when I come back. Minimum, I need a hundred. Rifle and shells."
  "I beg pardon."
  "I need a gun."
    There was appalling, appalled silence from the woman. A
shocked stare.
    "I am a rider, ma'am. I need the gun to go up to Tarmin. Give
me the hundred and we settle it next spring."
    "Mr. Stuart, the right to the money passed to her next of kin. I
can show you right on the authorization card--"
    "Then some damned fool asked her the wrong question, that's
what I'm telling you. They asked her her relations, they didn't ask
her her partner who's sharing the account!"
  "She had that option. She chose to list Mr. Anrrim."
    "She didn't damn choose!" A hand grabbed his arm from behind.
He turned around with the simultaneous knowledge it was a man,
and he didn't question whether the grip meant business: he as-
sumed it did and he grabbed a shirt, twisted, stuck out a foot and
the man hit the floor. Hard.
    The man, the door guard, went for the gun at his hip from that
disadvantage and Gull didn't stop to think--he kicked the hand
before it had the gun clear, and the gun went spinning across the
floor, the injured hand flew up to be cradled by the other hand, and
townsmen were screaming and diving everywhere. Iron bars
clanged and shut.
    "Hell," Guil said, not pursuing anybody. The man with the sore
hand was still lying on the ground, the barred doors were shut.
Guil walked over where the gun was, figuring not to leave that in
play, and the middle-aged fool scrambled up and tried to jump him
from behind.
    He didn't shoot the man. He didn't pull his knife. He didn't hit
the man with the gun. He just dodged, the man being low to the
ground in his dive, shoved him fairly gently as he passed, and the
man hit the ground as all of a sudden a bell began to ring.
    The man probably realized now he'd been a fool. He sat up on
the board floor looking foolish, there wasn't a bank worker in sight


RIDER AT THE GATE              ~        177

except him, and Guil held the gun by the trigger-guard, so any-
body could see he wasn't holding it on the man.
    "I'd give you this back," he said, "except I'm tired of hitting
you. You want to open the door?"
  "Can't," the guard said sullenly.
  "Then get--"
    Runners thundered up to the open outside door, jammed up in
the doorway and sorted themselves out with leveled rifles, aimed
toward them through the bars.
    Guil dropped the gun from two fingers. Thump, onto the
boaMs.
    Somebody, then, had to go outside and around back to get a key
from Newater.
    Ignoring the leveled rifles, Guil rested his rump against a table
and stared glumly at the guard, who was getting to his feet, en-
couraged by the firepower.
    Gull was mad. He was damned mad. He was scared, deep down.
He had to get out to meet Burn by sundown, or Burn was going to
get dangerously restless. He didn't think the guard was going to
back his story. And it didn't look good from where he stood.  "He's got a knife," the guard said.
    "You know," Guil said disgustedly, "you'd be a lot smarter to
wait to tell them that, until they find the key."
  "Hand the knife out," one of the uniformed police said.
  "You can come get it."
  "I said hand it over."
    Hell, he thought, he wouldn't improve the ambient by arguing
the point with four rifles aimed at him. He walked over to the bars
and took out the knife, tossed it out through the bars.
  "He's a borderer," a cop said. "He's got more than one."
    "You want the other?" He bent and took it from his boot, tossed
it out. "That's all."
  "Don't believe it," the cop said.
    Steps sounded fast behind him. He turned to side-step the fool
rushing him, and something jabbed him in the back of the head.
Stars exploded. The guard hit him, knocked him against the bars:
hands grabbed him, held him.


178    ~--'       C.J. Cherryh

    Second crack across the head. He jerked to get free and more
hands than two men had grabbed him through the bars and held
him there. The guard hit him in the gut.
    It was a stand-still when the man came back with the key. He
didn't move and they didn't hit him until they had him outside the
bars.
    Then the guard thought he'd get one more in. Guil dumped the
rightside man over his back, got a clear target with the guard star-
ing stupidly at him and decked him.
  Before an oncoming rifle barrel swung into his vision.



Chapter

Xll

THE PAIN BLURRED THE SKY. BUT THAT SKY WASN'T BLUE. IT WAS A
wooden ceiling, a bare electric bulb for a sun. He had no idea where
he was.
    <Burn,> Guil sent. Always, on waking, the awareness of Burn,
first reality of his world.
  But Burn wasn't there.
    And on that stomach-dropping realization, he panicked, staring
into this electric, burning sun, trying to reconstruct his route to
this place.
    Aby was dead, up above Tarmin. That was how everything con-
nected. He was lying on his back on a bare board floor with days-
old pain in his leg and recently inflicted pain at various points
about his skull.
    <Moving darkness at Shamesey gates. A flash of fire, out of that
crowd-shadow at the edge of night. >
  He'd not realized what it was. Not until the second shot.
  <Telling Burn to run away.>


i!

180 ~ C.J. Cherryh

  He'd slid down, given Burn no choice.., he'd thought.
    But Burn had charged the mob instead of running away--gone
at the townsmen mob dead ahead, and, dirty nighthorse trick,
wasn't where he imaged he was.
    He'd... damned well been where the mob had thought he was:
third shot, and he'd caught itmit had knocked his leg out from
under him and sent him sprawling downhill on the dry grass. He
remembered.
    <Lying there, hands burned on the grass, the camp gates open-
ing.., riders coming out-->
    He thought they were coming to rescue him, he'd thought they
wouldn't let the town take him: camp rights over town marshals-
    <People shouting at each other, while he faced the down-slant of
the hill, trying for his very life to get up ....
    He didn't remember, after that. For a moment the next con-
nected instant seemed here, under the electric light.
  Aby was dead. More... more than that. Aby had died.
    But he couldn't go into that pit yet. There was something in
there he couldn't deal with, a darkness he couldn't escape if he went
in there without understanding where he was now ....
  He drew a deep breath, about to move.
  And knew the smell. Anveney's stink.
      <Desolation, bare, gullied earth. Himself and Burn, approaching
Anveney. Meet--at the rider-stone. Burn waiting.>  How long ago? God, how long ago?
    He rolled over fast, leaned back on his hands as the change of al-
titude sent pain knifing through his skull. Dizziness sprawled him
back onto the floor, onto the lump on the back of his skull.
    Stars and dark a moment. He tried it again more slowly, made it
halfway.
    No furniture in the room, except a bucket. Shut door. No win-
dow.
  <No window. >
    Didn't even know he'd gotten up. He was plastered face-to on
the wooden wall as if he could pour himself through it, arms
spread, shaking like a leaf--and deaf, absolutely deaf to Burn's exis-
tence. The whole world had left him: sound, sense, everything.



RIDER AT THE GATE              ~        181

     But the raw, rough wood under his hands was real. It proved he
 existed.
     He could still smell the stench of Anveney around him. That
 proved something, too, but he couldn't hear a living soul.
     His heart was pounding. Sweat stood cold on his skin. He
 couldn't let go of the wall. Couldn't keep his legs under him, oth-
 erwise.., couldn't depend on his balance.
     First thing a rider knew: panic killed. Panic led to crazy. Panic
 gave the advantage away, free to all takers. The sane, thinking man
 knew he was in Anveney, knew Anveney had no horses in reach to
 carry the ambient.., but... God, he'd never in his life waked up
 deaf to it; he'd never been in a room without windows, he'd never
 not known how he got to a place ....
    He persuaded his knees to hold him---edged along the wall, un-
sure even of his balance, to try the door.
  Locked and bolted from outside. Of course.
      He tried to shake it. He slammed the center of the door once,
hard, with his fist, and heard only silence, inside his head and out.
  Burn--
    Burn would be in deadly danger if he came near the walls, and
Burn would do that if he didn't get back before dark.
    Burn would come for him, knowing the danger, within range of
the rifles that guarded the town.., but Burn wouldn't care. Burn
would come in.
    He didn't know how long he'd been out. He couldn't, in this
damn box, tell day from dark, no more than he knew east from
west, and he couldn't count on any rescue. There was no rider camp
outside Anveney walls, no camp-boss to negotiate him out--in au-
tumn, there probably wasn't another rider within 10 k of here, no-
body to know if he didn't come out of this town.  Nobody but Burn.
    Townsmen would know there was a horse out there waiting for
him. They'd know the hold they had on him--that whatever they
wanted, he'd do, rather than have harm come to Burn. That was
surely why they'd shut him away like this; they surely had to want
something from him, besides some stupid townsman penalty be-


182 ~ C.J. Cherryh



cause a rider inconvenienced a bank that shouldn't have handed out
money to a man that didn't have any right to it--  He remembered. Damn Hawley!
    And to hell with the money. He'd have walked out once he knew
they weren't going to give it to him--he'd have left their damn
town. He didn't think he'd pulled any weapon on them. He didn't
remember any. They didn't need to lock him up in a box and shoot
at Burn, who was--surely--surely old enough and wary enough to
give them hell without putting himself straight-off into some wall
guard's riflesights.
    But he couldn't depend on that. He hadn't done too well at es-
caping town guards, himself.
    He staggered along the wall, one side to the other, wasn't sure
what it contributed to the solution--his leg hurt, his head hurt. It
seemed moving might clear his thinking, maybe; maybe hurt less
than standing still. But if it helped, he couldn't tell it.
    He bashed the door again, hammered it with his fist, in case
someone could hear. He didn't think all that much time had
passed, but he wasn't sure: it could be getting dark. Burn could be
getting restless, waiting for him.
      Saner to sit down. Didn't want to stop moving. Had to have
something to do, not to think, didn't want to think ....  Damn, dead, stupid town ....
    Knees ached and wobbled. He began to get up a charge of anger
then, and braked it, in lifelong habit--
    But it didn't matter. They couldn't hear that, either. He could
wish them in hell.
    He bashed the door with his arm. Twice. Kicked it, with the bad
leg, because he could only keep his balance on the sound one; and
that hurt so bad he had to use the wall to hold him up.
    Hinges were outside. Door had to open out. No handle on this
side. No hinges to take apart. But if the door opened out.., maybe
he could kick it open, maybe hit it with his shoulder until he split
the upright.
    He backed off several steps and rammed it. Once. Twice. Felt it
give. Shake, at least.



RIDER AT THE GATE              ~        183

    He heard something then. Footsteps. He'd raised notice of some
kind.
    Voices outside. He tried to understand them, but his own heart-
beat was too loud in his ears. He shoved back from the door, stood
back as the bolt shot back outside and the door opened.
    He wasn't at all surprised at the three badge-wearing marshals
with guns leveled, reinforcing the guard who opened the door. He
lifted a hand, palm out. "No trouble here," he said, trying to keep
the ambient calm. And he couldn't resist it: "Help you with some-
thing?"
    "Mr. Stuart." The man who'd opened the door indicated he
should come out, so he came out. The men with guns backed up,
maintaining their advantage. "Someone wants to talk to you."
    "Fine." He hoped somebody wanted to talk to him. He hoped
somebody had a deal to offer him to get him out of here, and after
that, he didn't remotely care if Anveney burned down.
    So he walked obligingly where the guard indicated and the man
led, down a dingy hallway, through a maze of halls. He didn't put
it past them to hit him on general principle; he was acutely aware
of the armed men behind him, and acutely aware he couldn't fore-
cast what way their minds were running--he hated the way towns-
men dealt with one another. You could blame practically any
craziness on the fact they didn't know, never knew, only guessed
what another man wanted, or what he was about to do.  Hell of a way to live.
    Meanwhile the man in the lead opened a door onto the daylight
and Anveney streets.
    He drew a shaky, ill-flavored breath, tucked his hands in his
pockets, and amused himself, as they went out, seeking deliberate,
surly eye contact with the rare passers-by, who, understandably
spooked by the police armament, ducked to the other side of the
street. And gawked, until they chanced into his angry stare.
    Twice spooked then, they averted their eyes and found some-
thing urgent to go to.
    They went halfway down the block like that, the guard in front,
him in the middle, the police behind, until the guard came to what
looked more like a house than an office, and showed him and their



gun-carrying escort into a broad, fancy-furnished room with pol-
ished wood and fringed rugs.
    Stairs went up from here, but the guard turned left. There were
doors upon doors in the hall they walked. The guard led him past
all of them, and through the double door at the end into a room
where an overweight old man in expensive town dress sat in a green
overstuffed chair roughly equal to his mass.
    Smoking a pipe. God, did anybody in Anveney need more
smoke?
  "So," the man said. "You're Dale's partner."
    First soul in Anveney that spoke sense to him, putting things
like partnership in their right importance. His shoulders relaxed a
little, guns or no guns, and he didn't care all that much of a sudden
that the room reeked of smokeweed.
    "Stuart," he named himself, and made a guess. "You're Lew Cas-
sivey."
    The man inclined his head, seeming gratified to be famous, at
least to Aby Dale's partner. Head of Cassivey & Carnell, the man
Aby would risk high-country weather to keep happy--his interven-
ing made some sense, but it didn't guarantee his good will, or his
good intentions.
    "Sorry about Dale," Cassivey said, sending up a series of short
puffs. "Real sorry."
    The man wanted a reaction, Stuart realized, in a sudden new in-
sight how deaf townsman minds had to work. The man didn't
know. He prodded. He waited to see how he reacted.
    Guil tucked his hands up under his arms, and in his best approx-
imation of an outward reaction, shrugged and looked sorry himself.
He felt the weight of the building on his back. He felt the scarcity
of air. Smelled smells he couldn't identify. <"Rogue horse,"> he
said. He couldn't stop expecting the man to see it, feel it, know it.
"You heard that part."
    "I heard how she died. Couple of the riders came in with the bad
news. Lost a truck and driver, too."
    "Sorry about that." He attempted town manners, town courtesy.
He wanted help. This was the man that could give it---or have him
shot, directly or indirectly. "I'm on my way to Tarmin."


RIDER AT THE GATE              ~        185

  "Alone?"
     He shrugged, a lump of raw fear in his throat, because they'd ar-
 rived at the life-and-death points and he was feeling in the dark
 after reactions. "My horse. I need to get out there."
   "Hear you had a real commotion at the bank."
   What could he say? He hadn't intended it.
   But no townsman knew that if he didn't say it.
    "Didn't mean to," he muttered. God, he didn't know how to talk
to these people. He didn't know what else they couldn't guess,
blind and deaf as they were. "I tried my best to calm it down."
    Cassivey seemed amused for a heartbeat, whether friendly or un-
friendly amusement he couldn't tell. The amusement died a fast
death. Smoke poured out Cassivey's nostrils. "I hear the bank gave
her money to her cousin."
  "My money, too," he said. "Everything."
  "Your money?"
  "Same account. They said it was town law."
  "It's not that simple," Cassivey said. "But I doubt you'd want to
sue."
  "Go to court?" He shook his head emphatically.
  "Not if it means staying around Anveney, is that it?"
  "Weather's turning."
  "Meaning?"
    "Hard to hunt." He felt stupid, saying the obvious. He wasn't
sure it was all Cassivey was asking him. "I have to get up there. Get
it before the deep snow."  "With no help?"
  "I need a gun," he said.
    "Where's this man's property?" Cassivey asked the guards.
"Who's got his belongings?"
  "He didn't come with any," the one in charge said.
  "No gun? No baggage?"
  "Knives," Guil said. "Two."
    "I'm paying his fine," Cassivey said. "Somebody go get his be-
longings. Stuart, sit down."
    There was another chair near him, stuffed like the one Cassivey
sat in. Guil put his hands on the upholstered arms and sank down



186      --~"~    C.J. Cherryh

gingerly, not sure how far he would sink. There was a sharp pain in
his sore leg when it bent and his knees, now that he heard 'fine' and
'paying' and 'get his belongings,' suddenly had a disposition to
wobble out of lock. The room swam and floated.
    "You want a drink?" Cassivey said, as the guards cleared the
room. "There's a bottle on the table."
  "No," he said. It wasn't worth the risk of getting up. "Thanks."
  "You need a doctor?"
    "I just want out." His breath was shaky. He didn't intend so
much honesty. "But thanks. What do I do for you?"
    "Dale was reliable. You could trust things didn't get pilfered."
Puff. Second puff. "What's your record on reliability?"
    "Same," he said, embarrassed to have to make claims, when he
didn't know how Cassivey should believe a man who'd come in
with armed guards. "Mostly I work out of Malvey south," he said,
and not sure Cassivey was remotely interested in his explanations,
he remembered how the bank had phoned. "You could phone Moss
Shipping in Malvey. They know me."
    "I might do that," Cassivey said. "Dirty trick, what Dale's cousin
did."
    He shrugged. It was. But that was his business and he didn't
answer.
  "The job I have for you," Cassivey began.
    "I," Guil interjected, fast, before the man committed too much.
"I have to get up to Tarmin Height before the snow. I have to get
that thing." Maybe it was stupid. From time to time since he'd left
Shamesey he'd not even been sure he cared. But the realization--
the reality---of Aby's death had made itself a cold nest in the mid-
dle of his thinking.
    And she wouldn't rest until he'd cleared Aby's trail for her,
mopped up all the loose business. Settled accounts to her satis-
faction.
    Which might make him lose this man's offer, when he was in-
debted for a fine he couldn't pay, with no gun, no way out. But that
was the way it was; he hoped the man was reasonable. "I'm sorry,"
he said, "I have to go up there. Just get me out of here. I'll work it
off for you next spring."


in in
'and
~1 to

 the

 ))

so


RIDER AT THE GATE              ~        187

    Cassivey stared at him, expressionless, the pipe in his hand.
Then: "Don't turn down my offer until you've heard it. A commis-
sion. Enough money, supplies, whatever you need to go upcoun-
try-the best commissions when you come to town again in the
spring. Preference. Top of the list preference. What's that worth to
you?"
    It was beyond generous. It was Aby's deal with this man. It had
to be.
    "I still have to go up there. I have to hunt that thing. Local rid-
ers might get it. But they might not. You can't use that road till
somebody does get it. It won't be safe."
      "l don't argue that. You go up there, you get the horse that got
her, and you do one more thing for me."  "What's that?"
  "What kind of man is Jonas Westman?"
    He didn't expect that question of all questions. He didn't know
why Cassivey asked it. He was feeling in the dark again. And he
didn't know how to put words around the answer that a townsman
would understand. He drew a breath, said what said it all. "High-
country rider."  "Honest?"
  "Yeah." There were qualifications to that. "Enough."
  "Honest as Dale was?"
    He shook his head. Complicated question. He wondered just
what shape of beast Cassivey was tracking with his question--or
whether Cassivey in any way understood any rider. Sometimes he
seemed to, and sometimes not.
    "Aby liked you," he said to Cassivey, and still didn't know if
Cassivey understood him. "Jonas Westman and his brother--
they're Hawley Antrim's partners. Hawley's Aby's cousin. He'd do
what Aby said, as long as she put the fear in him. So they might.
On a good day."
  "Aby wouldn't steal."
    Steal. Pilfer. Town words, for relations between townsmen and
riders. Different, in a camp, among riders--where some would and
some wouldn't. "If you didn't cheat her," he said, "she wouldn't
steal from you."


188    ~          C.J. Cherryh


      A pause, while Cassivey relit an evidently dead pipe. "Not even
if she had a chance for real, real money?"  "How much?"
  "Three hundred thousand. Maybe more."
      He laughed, sheer surprise--tried to think how much money
that would be, and it came up ridiculous.  "What's funny?" Cassivey asked.
    Nothing, thinking of it. It was a townsman amount of money. A
scary amount of money. It was an amount of money you found in
banks.
    And where would a rider come near that kind of money? More,
what could a rider do with it if she had it?
    Cassivey sent out another puff of smoke. "The truck that went
off the road?" Cassivey said. More puffs. "Gold shipment."
    Stunned comprehension. He stopped the breath he was drawing.
Didn't move for a second. Couldn't reach after the ambient, much as
he wanted to. It wasn't there.
    But then, Cassivey couldn't know what he was thinking, either.
Cassivey had just told him where enough money was that rich
townsmen would kill each other in droves to get it. _
    Enough money that a rider, if he had it stashed, could take to the
roads and the hills and never work again for the rest of his life--
but he'd never sleep easy about it.
  "Dale knew what was on that lead truck," Cassivey said.
    Now he did. Townsmen would kill each other to know what he
knew.
    Except that townsmen, even heavily armed, even posting guards
over their sleep, and traveling with more than one truck, weren't
safe going up there into the High Wild to reach that wreckage.
  Not safe from the weather.
Not safe from the rogue that could overwhelm all their defenses.
But somebody from the villages up there was inevitably going to
get down to that truck. Its apparent cargo--what he'd seen in
Jonas' image--had been lumber, which wasn't damn valuable on a
forested mountainside, but just the metal in that truck had value.
The engine parts. The tires and axles. Every piece of it was valuable
salvage to a village. And if some village crew got to stripping it--


RIDER AT THE GATE              ~        189

      "Find the box," Cassivey said. "Turn it over to the head of
Tarmin Mines, at Tarmin. That's Salmon Martines. Simple job."
  "Simple."
    "Truck went off on the downhill, on that bad turn--you know
the road ?"
    "Seen it." He didn't say it he'd only seen it in Aby's mind. Cas-
sivey wouldn't understand and it didn't matter. He'd seen it in
Jonas' image. A rogue horse and that turn. Hell.
    "Must be ten, fifteen trucks have gone down there." Cassivey
puffed smoke. "There, and hitting the wall at the end of the grade.
Rock's soft. Surface skids with you. Nasty, nasty turn."
    "What's the weight?" He was suddenly in territory he knew, ne-
gotiating with a shipper, on technicalities he understood.
    "More than one man can haul up a mountain. You'll have to
bring it up part at a time. Hire an ox-team and drivers at Tarmin.
It's going to take that. You ride guard on the crew, say it's company
papers you're after, and make sure all of it gets to Martines. When
the weather opens up next spring, and you're sure you can make it
down with the load, you hire that same ox-team and bring it down
to Anveney. Pay's equipment now, and a thousand in the bank.
When we get that box back... I'll drop five more thousand into
your account."
    He saw why Aby had gone out of her way for this one shipper.
And he knew, in one moment of revelation, what Aby had been
guarding on these annual endhof-season convoys, and why Cassivey
had gone out of his way to keep one honest, reliable rider very well
paid.
  "You're giving me the deal she had."
    "I asked her once who else I could trust, if it ever happened she
couldn't take a convoy through."
    The air in Anveney suddenly didn't smell half so bad. "I need a
rifle. Ammunition, blanket, carry-pack, flour, oil, burning-
glass.., couple of sides of bacon. Got to have that."
    "You're a very modest man, Stuart. What in hell happened to
your gear?"
  ~Gunfire. Hitting the ground. Burn.v



190    ~          C.J. Cherryh

    "No matter," Cassivey said. "None of my business. Six hundred
do it on the gear?"
  "Four. She said I was honest."
    "Five. Get a pistol, too. A rifle's not always in reach. I want you
back with my money."
    The man wasn't just any townsman. He couldn't be a rider.
Trucker, Guil decided. Maybe a high-country miner. At least some-
one who'd not sat behind town walls all his life. Aby hadn't said.
Aby'd kept all her inside-buildings dealings at Anveney to herself,
partly because he wasn't interested in towns. There was just the
single surface thought urging him to join her on this run. The
rest--he hadn't discussed.
    This man was clearly a debt of hers. This man had asked her not
to talk about his business. Somewhere, somehow, she'd owed Cas-
sivey, in a major way. He understood it. He wondered if Cassivey
did.
    "Understand," Cassivey said, "you don't talk about what's in that
truck. You don't talk about the thing those trucks sometimes
carry."
  "Aby never talked your business to me."
    Cassivey nodded slowly. Made several slow puffs, staring at him.
"A damn good woman."
    He couldn't talk for a moment. He knew now. Aby'd not done
anything out of order, hadn't changed, hadn't been other than the
woman who'd grown up with him. Aby had pleaded with him to
join her--and himself, thick-headed, he'd seen only the evasions
and getting mad about it. But it was Aby. It was the woman he
knew. She came back to him---dead, she came back to him the way
she had been, she hadn't lied to him, and a weight went off his
back.
  "Yeah," he said finally.
    "I'll make you out a contract," Cassivey said, and laid aside the
pipe. "I'll send someone to the bank. One fine's enough."

He went out with what was newly his and with a contract in his
pocket, riding in the open back of a Cassivey & Carnell truck,
through the main town streets and down through the town gates.


RIDER AT THE GATE              ~        191

    One part townsman arrogance, he'd have thought it, without
having met Cassivey, to send a truck outside Anveney gates with no
horse to protect it, to deliver a rider back to the Wild.
    He'd have taken it as an affront to his pride and his profession--
under other circumstances; points for an old trucker, scored on a
rider who ordinarily would watch over anybody going a stone's
throw out past the gates of any other town.
    Not at Anveney, the point surely was. At Anveney, armed guards
weren't riders, and they didn't need help--in their grassless desola-
tion.
    Right now, with his leg hurting like unforgiven sin, he was just
damned grateful that Cassivey took the trouble to save him some
walking, and he was glad enough of that courtesy that he was will-
ing to make idle conversation with the guard in the back of the
truck, a guard who chattered about the weather and the coming
winter and how he'd like to drive the long routes, but he wasn't
sure his wife wouldn't take up with somebody else if he did.
    So why didn't his wife drive or ride guard in the cab? Guil won-
dered, and remembered--he was more practiced at it than this
morning--that the guard didn't remotely know what he wondered,
no horses being near.
    He was even moderately curious what the guard thought, after
his experience with townsmen. He wondered to a greater extent
than he ever had just what went on in townsmen minds--so much
so that, on a further thought, he troubled to ask his question aloud.
    "Yeah, but all those village girls.., with my wife along?" the
guard asked him in return, and laughed and elbowed him in the
ribs as if he should understand.
    But he wasn't sure he understood the guard's logic. He still felt
dull and deaf to townsman cues.., and he didn't understand 'wife,'
he suspected, or at least, didn't understand Anveney expectations of
wives and husbands.
    But before he could ask into that odd remark, or try to figure
where he and Aby had fit against that pattern in their own arrange-
ment, they'd reached a turn-around at a fork in the dirt road.
    The truck stopped, and the driver said that was as far as they
were supposed to go.


192      ~        C..J. Cherryh

:!

    So he climbed down--sore from head to foot, with a miserable
headache and a spot on his temple that hurt like hell when he
frowned into the evening sun. The stink was all around them, or
he'd imagine it for days, and it clung to everything he'd gotten in
Anveney.
    But he wished them both a safe trip back, got information from
them where the forks led, one to Anveney West Road--he'd
thought he was right--and one to a mining pit he didn't want to
visit.
    They turned around and drove off in a cloud of dust, and he
slung his new-bought belongings to his shoulder and walked, a lit-
tle dizzy, limping, decidedly with more load than he had the
strength to carry for very long or very far.

By stages and resting a bit he could, he told himself, walk to the
junction of roads and the rider stone--he didn't know how he'd
have done without the lift, but he was glad he didn't have to try,
the more so since a bank of cloud was moving in, just the gray edge
advancing from off the mountains over the foothills, promising
weather before dark--cold rain down here and undoubtedly snow
in the high country last night, he said to himself. A cold, damp
wind, blowing off the peaks of the Firgeberg, fluttered the fringes
of his jacket. Its occasional gusts bent the flat brim of his hat.
    Before he'd reached the next hill the temperature had dropped
several degrees.
  Which said he'd better hurry, as much as he could.
    Various parts of him might hurt--but he hadn't even marked
down a grudge against the bank: thanks to Cassivey, who'd yanked
strings on everybody including the bank, the marshal's office, and
the town judge, he'd no record of any wrongdoing, he'd been able
to buy everything he remotely needed in the way of supplies,
money was, by arcane townsman miracles, back in the bank, under
a new number with a new card that had only his name on it and no
next-of's to enable anyone to rob him.
    So Cassivey assured him, Cassivey having full confidence, Cas-
sivey said, in the men he'd sent to make things clear to the woman
at the bank. Cassivey'd paid the fine, the business was off, as towns-


RIDER AT THE GATE              ~        193

men called it, the books. All of which was, at the moment, more
help than he'd remote interest in comprehending--if he survived
the winter he'd be very interested.
  But that was on the other side of winter.
    He still wasn't sure if the bank business was going to work. He
personally suspected it was a way contrived for townsmen to cheat
riders, and the bank still held they'd been justified in dealing Aby's
funds out to Hawley.
    Which confused him--and which was the one reason he was re-
motely interested, right now, in what was the law with the bank.
On one level he knew that he was right and that Hawley was
wrong. But, town law holding to the contrary, and things having
worked out in some kind of justice, by town law and townsman
generosity--two words he hadn't thought possibly fit together--it
left him in enough doubt about the right and wrong of what Haw-
ley had done that he wasn't sure he'd even mention the transgres-
sion to Hawley, though he'd recently sworn he was going to get it
out of Hawley, and then beat Hawley into horse-food.
    He didn't, now, know how much fault was Hawley's and how
much was because the bank women had suggested it to him. Haw-
ley wasn't damn bright in certain matters, smart enough on the
trail, as far as staying alive, but he could have let his wants and
what the bank told him get ahead of his common sense.
He could understand that. He knew Hawley with all his faults.
But it would still be a good idea if Hawley and both his partners
were out of Shamesey before he got back next spring. It would be a
good idea if they just happened to find jobs elsewhere, but on roads
he traveled, for a couple of years. A couple of years might be
enough to let him cool down enough, and enough to let him figure
what he thought about what Hawley had done--  Right now, still damn him to bloody hell.
    Damn Shamesey and Lyle Wesson, too, who could have been a
lot more helpful--a lot more forward getting his belongings to
him outside Shamesey gate, for one thing. Getting his belongings
was why he'd gotten shot, and getting shot was why he'd not had a
chance to talk to Hawley and his partners.
  And Hawley and Jonas and Luke hadn't been damn forward, ei-


194      ~       C.J. Cherryh

ther, to round up what was his and get it outside the gates, and
maybe to signal there was more to tell him, and maybe, just
maybe, like friends, to just camp outside the walls that night and
make themselves available for talk, for errands, for whatever a man
needed who wasn't steady enough to go into the largest camp in the
settled world. Put themselves out? Make themselves available?
  Hell, no, they headed for the bar and warm beds.
    Nobody'd been a damn lot of help, once he started adding up
what certain people should have done and hadn't. There was
enough blame to go around in the situation as far as he was con-
cerned--a lot of people in the class of riders that he wasn't damned
happy with, which was why the business at the bank in Anveney
had sunk away into cool indifference. Townsmen could be fools all
they liked and you expected it. But riders had screwed him, people
he dealt with, people with a history with him, and that made him
damned mad.
  Only Aby...
    He knew, dammit. He knew the woman and he'd been the one
to fail, thinking she'd changed. He didn't know what the debt
was--he didn't have to know. She'd have paid it. If silence was
what the man asked, regarding those shipments, and she owed Cas-
sivey--
    She'd done all she could to get him into Cassivey's employ, ca-
joled, pleaded. Truth be told--he'd refused to go up to Anveney for
many more reasons than the smell on the money. He'd offered his
own proposal: Come down to Malvey.
    Why's it always your way? he'd asked, he thought, reasonably.
They'd quarreled. He'd been mad. Aby'd gone off mad--and hurt,
he'd picked that up in the ambient.
    But nothing of her reasons. Aby could throw that anger up like a
wall. And had.
  They'd thought there was forever.
    But she'd owed a man. And, damn, the woman he knew never
betrayed a trust. Never. He had.
    A sudden apprehension came shivering its way through his con-
sciousness that he'd just slipped into Aby's last set of motions,
working for the same man, following the same route--retracing, in


RIDER AT THE GATE              ~        195

short, everything Aby'd done down to leaving Anveney in Cas-
sivey's employ, exactly where Aby'd wanted him to be when they'd
had their last quarrel.
    So he'd just taken that job Aby had wanted him to take--more,
he owed Cassivey. It was her job he inherited, her obligation, her
promises.
    He wasn't superstitious like the preacher-men, but he kept
thinking about that first step they kept talking about, the one on
the slide to hell. He'd failed Aby; she'd have lived if he'd been
there. He wouldn't have been riding at the rear, leaving Aby on
point at the worst damn turn on the mountain. He'd sent her off to
partners who'd failed her. He'd sent her off to die; and maybe, in
the economy of the preachers' God, maybe he was going up where
he was somehow supposed to have been in the first place.
    Only this time Aby wouldn't be there for him. Turn about was
fair play.
  Got her back and the woman began to bother him again.
    Got her back and he had to ask--where in hell did she spend the
money?
    Or had she spent it? She'd never said exactly what she'd had in
the account. He couldn't read the damn card. No more than she
could. And she'd never said.
  How much did the bank give to Hawley, anyway?
    His legs wobbled. The sky went violet and brass. His shortness
of breath took him by surprise. The rifle, the pistol--a winter's am-
munition, the food, all added up, considering he'd taken no few
knocks. But he needed the gun. Needed the supplies. Couldn't lay
anything down.
    And Burn depended on him--Burn couldn't afford to have him
go down on his face out here and freeze in the coming storm. He
couldn't bet Burn's life that Burn would use the road to come look-
ing for him. A nighthorse wasn't held to roads.
    He couldn't faint out here, for Burn's sake, he couldn't faint and
he couldn't quit. He set his goal as the next hill down the barren
road and walked that far. Then he set his intention as another
hill--struggled up to its crest, telling himself now that he'd done
the hard part, he could make the downhill, at least.



196 ~ C..J. Cherryh

    But his breath was short and when he looked up his blurred vi-
sion was starting to give him two barren, eroded horizons, two
road-traces among doubled rocks.
    His head was light. His heart began to pound. Straight line was
more efficient. Wandering used up his strength faster. Had to walk
straight, had to stay conscious, above all else--if he was conscious,
he persuaded himself, Burn might find him; if he wasn't, Burn
might not hear him and go right by.
    He walked the next uphill--and sat down at the top, in an act of
prudence, to nurse his splitting headache at the road edge, rather
than the middle of it, in the vague notion a truck could come along.
Which common sense then told him wasn't possibly going to hap-
pen again in this country until next spring, but that had been his
thought when he sat down--he didn't want to be hit by traffic.
    He didn't want to freeze, either. He could sit here till winter
snows covered him, the way he felt now. The pain shot through his
skull from front to back and off his temples. He squinted and it

was worse.

    So he rested his head on his arms and sat that way to wait for his
breathing to slow down. Raw air burned his throat. He coughed
and coughing hurt his head. The cold of the bare ground had
numbed his feet, and the bite of the wind that swept down off the
mountain wall chilled his back. He wished he'd sent Cassivey's man
after that sweater he'd seen. Rust and black one. Aby'd have liked
it.
    Then he must have shut his eyes for a moment--he couldn't tell
whether the sudden darkening of the land and the advent of a
brassy light was the thickness of the clouds overhead or the cumu-
lative effect of blows to the head.
    He heard the sound of thunder, and thought---damn!--with the
kind of sinking feeling a man got when he'd realized a serious, seri-
ous mistake.
    He knew he had to move. He sat there a time more, breathing
deep to gather his strength, needing to be sure he could get up and
not pass out; and while he sat, a colder wind began to gust along
the ridge, raising dust. He saw it coming, adjusted his hat and scarf


RIDER AT THE GATE              ~        I97

 and pulled the cuffs of the sweater he did have down over his gloves
 as the first fat drops spatted into the barren dust at his feet.
     That was it. God had decided. He had to move. He drew a
 breath tinged with copper and the smell of cold rain, and put an
 all-out effort into getting up.
     Muscles had stiffened. He used the rifle for a prop--might not
 have made it to his feet, he feared, without it.
    He used it for a support to bend and heft the two-pack, slung its
not inconsiderable weight and the rifle-strap over his shoulder.
Then he started walking, heavy drops spattering the powdery dust
around him, making small red craters. It felt like liquid ice where a
drop found its way past the brim of his hat, down his neck or into
his face.
    Then--fool, he thought, remembering in the general haze of his
thoughts that he'd bought a slicker--he slung the two-pack around
to get at it, and had to take his gloves off.
    The slicker was one of those new plastic things that didn't hold
body heat worth a damn, but he hadn't wanted to carry the weight
of canvas, especially on the climb they faced; and the thin plastic at
least kept you dry, life and death in the cold seasons, when a soak-
ing and a cold wind could freeze a man faster than he could make a
shelter. Cassivey's man had sworn it was tough--it could double as
a ground sheet, and kept you drier than canvas.
    If it wasn't flapping and cracking in the gale. If your fingers
didn't freeze, finding the catches.
    He had to drop the rest of the stuff to wrestle it as it snapped
and fluttered in the wind, threatening escape from his numbed fin-
gers, but he fastened latches one after the other and held it fast. It
smelled worse than Anveney smokestacks, even in the gusting
wind, but between that and the coat and the sweater and all, he had
to own it kept the wind out. He felt warmer.
    He put his gloves back on, gathered up his gear again, took the
weight and walked all the way up to the top of the next hill before
he ran out of breath and had to stand there leaning on the rifle and
gasping and coughing.
    But when he cleared the cold-weather tearing from his eyes, he
saw clumps of grass around him, sparse, twisted, and brown with



198    ~          C.J. Cherryh

the season. He'd almost reached the junction with the boundary
road. He was that close.
    <Burn,> he sent into the silent ambient, knees wobbling; des-
perate for some sense of presence, feeling the wind cold against his
legs as the slicker flapped open. He had to keep going, he said to
himself, and walked, using the rifle for a stick.
    A flash of lightning blazed through his headache, blinding him,
making white edges on the rocks; immediately the thunder crashed
around him, total environment, deafening, pain ricocheting inside
his temples and behind his eyes.
    Then the rain hit in earnest, a deluge so thick it made a vapor on
the blowing wind. Rain pooled in the brim of his hat and made an
intermittent waterfall off the edge. He kept moving, tightening his
scarf about his neck to keep the water from going down his collar.
His knees were soaked below the slicker. His feet were beginning
to be soaked through despite the oil coating he maintained on his
boots, and the last feeling in them was going--no help at all to his
balance.
    Then <wet horse> flashed across his vision, <mad, wet horse on
one hill, Gull in flappy brown slicker. >
    The whole universe opened up, a sense of location, a map of rela-
tionship to the whole landscape, and he looked uphill through the
veil of rain and twilight. A dark shape was trotting toward him,
brisk, angry, shaking itself as it came.
    He didn't sit down. He wanted to collapse right there in the
road, his legs were so weak--but he'd only have to get up again,
and be all over mud.
    <Bacon,> he promised Burn, but even that didn't prevent Burn
from detecting the pain and the exhaustion, and didn't prevent
Burn's growing agitation as Burn came slogging up in the mud,
dripping wet and imaging <dark, fire, kick men. Gull on back.>
    Burn stopped alongside him. He leaned against Burn's rain-slick
shoulder, feeling its fever-warmth against his face, with the cold
rain coming down on them--stood there, Burn smelling him over
and snorting in disgust, finding <bad smell and smokeweed> de-
spite the rain.
  Burn was warm. Burn was a windbreak. Burn was solid. Most of


RIDER AT THE GATE              ~        199

 all, his sense of the whole world was back. Burn didn't ask how
 he'd hit his head. Burn wasn't curious about done-things, just pos-
 sibly-to-do things, and if Burn's rider was hurting, Burn was mad
 at the hurt and wanted it to go away. Burn wanted <kicking men,>
 if men were responsible, but <no,> Guil sent. <Man giving bacon.
 Three slabs of bacon. Man giving rifle and gear. Man in room. Guil
 in room. Nice man. With bacon. >
    <Guil's face cut,> Burn insisted. <Blood-smell, bad-smell, Gull-
smell. Kick and bite. >
    He was too sick to argue. He just wanted up on Burn's safe back
and the two of them away from here and under shelter of some
kind, and he didn't think he could make the jump up--knew he
couldn't, with the two-pack. He slung the weight over Burn's
withers, wishing Burn not to object and still figuring to have an ar-
gument, with Burn in that negative mood, figuring possibly to be
left in the roadway in the rain, <Burn shaking offthe pack.>
    Burn didn't sulk at all about the pack. Burn even dropped a leg
to make it easier for a wobbly rider.., but Burn's rider couldn't
make it that way. He wanted Burn square on his feet again, and
(the arm with the rifle all the way over Burn's withers and probably
jabbing him in God-knew-what places) he couldn't do more than
jump for it and land belly-down like a kid. He slithered a leg over
with no grace at all, trying not to hit Burn again with the rifle
barrel or knock the pack off Burn's shoulders--he caught it,
squared it, pinned it with a knee and shakily tucked the slicker
about him, wet knees and all, Burn standing still as a rock the
while, for which he was very grateful.
    Burn slowly started moving, testing his rider's balance. Burn's
heat reached the insides of his legs, traveling upward under the
slicker, wonderful, wonderful warmth. He could hug the slicker
around him and hope for the warmth below to meet the lesser
warmth he'd saved in his upper body, if he could stay upright so
long.
    He shivered, waiting for that to happen. His legs jerking in
spasm bothered Burn, whose thoughts on the matter weren't coher-
ent, something like <Guil falling,> and <this way> and <that


200    ~          C.J. Cherryh

way,> because the twitches were signaling Burn directions he didn't
mean and didn't want.
    Burn figured it out, though, worried about it, and got mad,
imaging <fire, and dark> and <kill.> But Guil imaged <log shel-
ter,> and <rider-stone,> and Burn began to pick up his pace, imag-
ing <grassy hills in twilight,> and <fire> and <fish.>
    <Rider-stone,> Guil insisted, because there was a shelter where
this road joined the boundary road. Intersections were places you
could always look for shelter, and where there was shelter of any
kind, riders set up a marker, be it wood or stone, in this otherwise
desolate land, to carve or scratch over with messages to riders who
came on the same road.
    Burn agreed, finally, while the rain spattered about them and
gullied down the hills. Burn had been waiting for him in that shel-
ter, in a <barren, bad place,> and had only come after him when
the weather turned ... he already saw the refuge Burn was taking
him to, <lean-to made of logs, next the stone. Barren land. Bad-
tasting grass. >
    Didn't have to say things out loud for Burn. Damn lot smarter
than townsmen, Guil thought muzzily. Friendlier than bank-
women.
    <Handsome horse,> Burn agreed, splashing along the barren,
puddled road, pace, pace, pace, pace, never missing a beat, strong
and confident. All around them, water sluiced unchecked down the
hills, remaking the gullies and washing at the roots of the feeble
grass.
  But at least the ground cover that held out grew more frequent.



Chapter

Xlll

THERE WAS DAMP IN THE AIR, DAMP WHICH IN THIS UNEASY SEASON
could be melting snow--or could herald another storm. The clouds
which had in midafternoon wreathed the summit of Rogers Peak
had moved on; and the departing sun, long slipped behind the
mountains, had left a pink glow over the snowy rooftops and blued
shadows along the snow-banked walls. Cookfires spread an upward
smudge on the snow-blanketed evening, and the direction of that
smoke said quiet winds, change pending.
    "Early winter," Tara said, on the porch of the rider quarters
where, the light being better and the wind being still, she'd pulled
the table outside, and she and Vadim diced potatoes for their com-
mon supper. She hashed one to bits and lost three pieces overside
onto the porch. "Damn." It wasn't a good score she was keeping.
  "I can finish," Vadim said. "Take it easy, Tara. Go sit down."
  "I'm fine."
  "I know you're fine. You need your fingers."
  It made her mad. It shouldn't. She knew it shouldn't. She


202      ~        C.J. Cherryh

 chopped away, hacking at the job, trying for self-control. The
 horses were out of range, collectively, in the den. Flicker was 'tak-
 ing it easy.' Flicker was sore as hell, and had earned her rest and
 care, having saved both their necks.
  The knife slipped. She swore, sucked at a nicked finger.
  "Tara, for God's sake--"
    She evaded Vadim's attempt to see it, or to hold her, kept suck-
ing at it. The taste of blood somehow satisfied the gnawing unease.
It was real harm. You could taste it, smell it, feel it, you didn't have
to imagine it. She stood there as Vadim, with misgivings evident
on his face, set back to work. For a moment, inside, the world was
white. White was everywhere and her heart was pounding.
  "Trust you with knives," Vadim muttered. "! told you--"
    She snapped, "I thought Barry and Llew would have started
back. They ought to have started back."
    Vadim didn't look up. A single peeling spiraled down from a
potato in Vadim's strong, capable hands. Finally Vadim said,
"They're big boys. They'll manage the same as you did. If there's
something out there, they have as good a chance as you did. More.
There's two of them."
    "Bunch of skittery townsmen on their hands," she said in a low
voice. "Oxen. God knows what they'd do. The townsmen damn
sure don't know. There's that wrecked truck out there. The damn
convoy could have told us. Aby could have told us."  "They phoned."
  "From Shamesey! They let us sit here--"
    "They were just four riders, that's a big convoy, and the horses
were already under attack: truck transmitters would have sent them
sky high and attracted the trouble to them. God knows what else.
Aby did right."
  "They could have tried somewhere on that road!"
    "It might have followed them. They couldn't lead it to a town,
and it'd go straight for a transmitter. That's thousands of people
down there. If it fixed on Shamesey--they just couldn't risk it,
Tara. At least they didn't lead it here."
    "Well, it came here, didn't it? God, she let us deliver a work crew
out there, she let us leave Barry and Llew out there--"


RIDER AT THE GATE              ~       203

      "The rogue could have been anywhere on the mountain. You
don't know it was ever even near you."  "The hell."
    "You don't know. Unless you saw it next to you, you don't
know."
    "Well, how do you know, either? You never dealt with one. You
didn't feel what I felt out there. You didn't even know it was out
there until I got to the gate, so tell me who was close to it!"
    "I don't know," Vadim confessed, concentrating on the potatoes,
and she hadn't meant to raise her voice. Or to say what she said.
She was embarrassed.
  "I'm sorry," she muttered.
  "No offense. I wasn't out there."
    "It scared me," she said--stupid, obvious admission she wouldn't
have made, except she regretted going at Vadim like that. "I'm still
spooked."
    "Yeah," Vadim said, "no blame from me. I'm only sorry I didn't
hear it."
  "Believe me. You aren't sorry."
    The sending had fallen back before she got to the gate. He'd
heard it only from her memory--and she didn't want to go spread-
ing it, recreating it, carrying it like a contagion in the camp.
    Potatoes went in pieces. She was still mad. She couldn't say why.
Every nerve was raw-ended. She couldn't stand still. She didn't
want to go down to the den, near the horses, but Flicker didn't un-
derstand the reason for that reluctance, Flicker needed her, and she
had to go down and rub down Flicker's sore legs and try to keep a
cover on her anxiousness. She'd rather peel potatoes, only she couldn't
do that right, either.
    "You didn't get any kind of shape on it," Vadim said with a look
under the brow. It was a question. Three times now, it was the
same damned question. "You still don't know if it had a rider."
    "I didn't get any shape," she said--snapped, and didn't mean to.
"Flicker was too strong. I told you. I couldn't reach past her." She'd
said that over and over. But she hadn't said, and she did say, "Truth
is, I didn't ever think of it."
  "Under the circumstances," Vadim said. "Yeah. No question."


204~"--"          C.J. Cherryh


ii.


couldn't fill
said. "No."
  "But you

       never did see it. Never did even imagine seeing it."
    "I'm not one of the kids," she said, again too sharply. She was
disquieted by the thought of touching anything that wild, that un-


RIDER AT THE GATE              ~       205

stable. It hadn't gotten past Flicker's determination. But a
nighthorse was the most powerful thing on the planet.
  A nighthorse was.., far and away the most powerful thing.
  "Could be one of the wild ones," she said. "A fall, a fever."
  "And it could be anywhere in the hills," Vadim said.
    "It was here, I J~lt it. It was behind me. I know where it was. No,
it didn't come to the gate. I was scared, was all."
    She remembered (the woods, the rogue's position shiftingv--
she hadn't let herself think of it, however fleetingly, in her long
hours in the den watching over Flicker. She hadn't let her mind
stay on that dark thought for two consecutive seconds, since. It was
still dangerous to think of too vividly. A going-apart, was how
she'd heard it described. A mind going in fragments, bits of it
coming together at random--tenderness, hatred, desire, sexual
arousal, rage all combining and separating at total random. She
didn't know. She couldn't swear what she'd heard. But Flicker hadn't
let her hear. That was the point.
    "The wild ones will go down to lowland pastures any day now,"
she said. "If there should be something with that band--maybe
it'll go down, too. Or maybe it'll follow."
    "They'd try to drive it off. They'll kill it if they can. They won't
let it follow them."
    She didn't think Vadim knew any more than she did--what the
wild ones might do or be able to do against a threat like that.
Vadim had grown up on Rogers Peak, born to Tarmin; she'd been a
free rider, but only on Darwin Peak, ranging between Darwin set-
tlements, and they were both guessing, she knew for a fact. The
long riders--they told such stories, around safe firesides. That was
collectively all they knew.
    "It'd go for people," she said. "That's what they say. I don't know
if that's always true, but, God, if it does, there's all the villages
around the loop, besides Barry and Llew out there in that damn
road camp. --Vadim, --"
  "You made it in. They can make it in."
  "I was lucky!"
    "You make your luck. If you heard it, they heard it, and they'll
take precautions."


206    ~          C.J. Cherryh

    "Fine. Fine. But what if it's smarter next time? What if the
thing shows up on--"
    A bell rang--the one at the village side of the Little Gate. Some
villager was coming to request something of the riders, God knew
what, maybe another trek out to the road crew. Maybe the marshal
with worse news--maybe with a notion the weather was going to
turn. She hadn't looked at the glass since noon.
    She watched as the blacksmith passed through the gate and shut
it. His name was Andy Goss. His teenaged sons trailed him as he
made a straight line for the porch where they stood. It sure didn't
look like a delivery.
    "You seen my daughter?" the blacksmith asked, coming up out
of breath.
    "Not since morning," Vadim said. And Tara remembered
Brionne Goss coming into the den this morning--the kid never
had understood No or Don't or Leave my horse alone. Wonder that
some horse hadn't bitten hell out of her. Then let the father howl.
  But not since morning--
    "For what?" the blacksmith asked, still hard-breathing, sweating
despite the cold.
    "She brought a biscuit for the horses. Wanted to talk. We said it
wasn't a good time. She left."
    "Then where'd she go?" The blacksmith was angry. "We got the
whole village searching, door to door. When was she here?"
    The outside gate, Tara thought with a chill. The spook in the
woods. The kid's hanging about the horses ... "Crack of dawn." It
was approaching twilight. "You've searched the village? You've
searched all the village?"  "Everywhere."
    "Rider gate," Tara said, and ran the steps, struck out past Goss
and his sons, down across the snowy yard and toward the den,
Vadim hurrying to catch up, the blacksmith and his boys close be-
hind.
    The snow between the village wall and the exposed side of the
nighthorse den hadn't melted that much during the day. They
didn't go to that side of the den unless they were going to the out-
side gate and nobody'd been out, none of the horses had been stir-


RIDER AT THE GATE              ~       207

ring out--truth to tell, they and the horses had slept the whole af-
ternoon.

    But somebody in small-sized boots had gone past the corner of
the den and along the wall, and not come back. The pointed-toed
footprints led up to the camp's outside gate, and the gate had been
dragged open and shut again---enough, one was sure, for the owner
of those boots.
    "Those your daughter's tracks?" Tara asked, indicating the
prints, but the horses were near enough she was already feeling the
father's rising panic.
  The father didn't know the half of it.
  "Chad and I had better go look," Vadim said.
    "The hell," she said, imaged <Tara and Vadim riding out,> im-
aged <guns.> And <long shadows on the snow,> which was the re-
ality out there. It was close to evening.
    "You're not up to it," Vadim said. "Flicker damn sure isn't. We'll
look as far as we can follow those tracks."
    She didn't want to stay and wait. She knew the search wasn't
going to turn up a live and happy girl, and that conviction in her
mind might have been what agitated the blacksmith: they were
next the den wall.
    "What in hell'd she do it for?" the man asked as Vadim went off
quickly around the corner, <getting Chad,> and the ambient flared
with her distress, her resentment of villager stupidity, villager de-
mands. The blacksmith caught her arm, hard. 'Tm talking to you,
damn it, Tara Chang! Why in hell didn't one of you put her back
out the proper gate? What in bloody hell was she doing here in the
first place?"
    "It was a dare," one of the boys muttered, and an image flashed
into Tara's mind: <Brionne slipping through the village side gate.>
"They dared her do it."  "Who dared her?"
    <Kids watching, from the village side.> "The kids. But she was
always coming here. She said she could hear the horses." <Brionne
in a village house. Brionne at a fireside .... >
    But it wasn't anywhere Tara had ever seen. And dammit,
Brionne didn't hear the horses. <Snatching the young fool out of


208    ~          C.J. Cherryh

harm's way,> she remembered, precisely because the girl didn't
hear---or hearing, refused to believe that any horse refused her in-
sistent attentions.
    But she was seeing <Brionne in the village, Brionne next the
forge, her face glowing> and it wasn't her doing it, it was the
blacksmith and his sons too near the horses.
    "My girl's been coming here?" the blacksmith cried, as if it were
her fault. "She's been in and out of here and you didn't report it?
Damn you!"
    They were townsmen unused to the images that came thick and
fast next the den--<Brionne with biscuits, Brionne running out
the door of the den>--and Tara felt panic rising in the ambient.
"She came here. I told her go home. We all told her go home. It
didn't take. She--"
    She couldn't focus on it. She was seeing <Vadim and Chad get-
ting supplies. Restless horses, waiting. >
    <Mina and Luisa wanting to go.> The argument had broken out
on that score before Vadim had exchanged words with Chad inside
the den. Hell, Tara thought in the eyeblink give and take of the
ambient, and caught a breath on: <Chad angry. Long shadows.
Clouds. Twilight behind the peak. >
<Vadim wanting Mina and Luisa with Tara. Flicker upset. >
--and glared in startlement as the blacksmith for a second time
caught her sleeve. <Scared. Wanting daughter.> Then images from
some other near source boiled up: <Hating Brionne. Brionne in
house. Rage. >
     <Goblin cat crouching, ears flat, over bloody rags, red coat--sat-
 isfaction, pain, wanting this with a fevered, angry ache--the man at
 the forge, hammering glowing iron--wanting him, wanting him to
 look at him-->
     God, <the kid, the boys--> She couldn't get a breath past the
 hate in the spiraling ascension of tempers, and the blacksmith
 rounded on the kid with <beating boy,> his fist cocked. The boys
 were on the retreat along the wall, the shorter dragging the taller,
 whose fists were also clenched. Hate flooded the ambient. Anger.
 Pain.
  <Village. Gate. > Tara couldn't find her faculty of speech. She


RIDER AT THE GATE              ~       209

 threw force into the image, shoved at the blacksmith, wanting
 < Goss leaving, boys leaving. Camp gate shut. >
  "Don't you push me!" the blacksmith yelled.
Flicker's temper hit the ambient. Flicker was on her way outside.
"Get out of here!" She found the words, scarcely the breath, and
hit the man with her fist. "You're upsetting my horse! We'll find
your daughter, man, just <get out of here, dammit! Now.f'>
    She shoved him as Flicker came around the corner of the den, a
shape of anger and night. It was a cul-de-sac between the den, the
palisade wall and the camp's outside gate, with a mad horse occu-
pying the only way out, sending <anger, danger, kill, flashes of
light> as Tara ran and physically pushed at Flicker's chest to re-
strain her from a charge.
    "Get past!" she shouted over her shoulder, leaning all her weight
and will against Flicker, making her <back up,> wanting her to
calm down. "Get past, dammit!"
    It was an eternity measured in breaths. Goss and his sons eased
past them. Her arm shook against Flicker's strength, Flicker's
anger--but then Goss and his sons, Goss shouting recriminations
at the boys, headed back along the wall. Goss opened the Little
Gate and went back to the village side of the palisade, mad, scared,
with something maybe broken forever between him and his sons.
    The Goss boys had let loose more truth at their father than
they'd ever intended. The boys hated Brionne: the father was over-
whelmed with panic and the boys with hatred of their sister. The
images as they faded in distance from the wall were of rage and
outrage, and a rider couldn't judge what the right of it was, or who
was justified.
    Brionne was the youngest, Brionne was a pampered, headstrong
brat. Given, she didn't like the kid, but she'd never in her life
shared a moment of such hatred among strangers--sendings going
wild, sendings of a frankness that villagers weren't used to, minds
cycling wildly over thoughts, darting after known soft spots and
old faults as unerringly as willy-wisps to ripe carrion, horse and
human tempers flaring completely out of bounds.
    Shaking, she leaned on Flicker's shoulder and tried to calm
Flicker down, telling herself she didn't remotely know why


210    ~          C..J. Cherryh


Brionne had gone out this morning, or what Brionne thought she
was doing--but if she had to lay a bet on it, the young fool had
thought she'd heard a horse.
    She didn't like that thought. God, she didn't like it. And she
hadn't handled Brionne's father well. She was painfully aware she'd
set up the encounter, not remotely suspecting more than concern
on their side until they got near the horses.
    She stood, still shuddery, with her hands on Flicker, whose mind
she did understand, and kept imaging (quiet, quiet water) and
(still trees and sunshine,> patting Flicker's neck to quiet the vio-
lence she still felt in the ambient.
    She told herself that Flicker was still on edge from a brush with
disaster; or Flicker was reacting to villager hysteria--Flicker shiv-
ered and snorted and worked her jaws, <wanting bite, wanting
blood )--she was still trying to haul Flicker down from her fight-
ing mood when Vadim and Chad came riding around the corner
with the kits they always kept ready against a sudden call--out-
bound.
    Bound outside into danger she'd ridden through last night, for a
damned spoiled brat who'd killed herself in one willful push of a
latch.
    (Goblin cat,> she imaged, and felt Flicker jump under her
hands. She had a leaden weight of apprehension in her gut. There
was no use in what they were doing, this late in the day. Vadim was
having a crisis of guilt, Chad was going because Vadim was dead
set on it; and she was mad, dammit. They were running a risk and
they knew it, but they weren't listening to her.
    Mina and Luisa arrived from around the same corner, their horses
trailing behind them--but being nearer the outside wall than they
were, Tara found it her job to walk along in the men's tracks, un-
latch the gate for them and fight it wide against the snow piled up
inside.
    "Back before dark," Vadim said, from Quickfoot's back, "unless
we do find her trail. We might have to make a camp. I don't think
she got far."
  "She couldn't," she said, and clapped a hand to Vadim's leg, try-


RIDER AT THE GATE              ~       211

ing to still the ambient. "Don't be a fool, God, don't either of you
be fools. You know what's out there, the damn kid's gone to it--"
    "I'll turn him around before dark," Chad said, meaning Vadim.
"Don't you open that gate, Tara, don't open that gate, unless you
know it's us or it's Barry and Llew."
    "Get back before dark? Mina said from behind her. Vadim was
Mina's lover and hers, from time to time, as Chad was Luisa's--or
hers, from time to time, but not so often as Vadim. She caught the
imaging from Mina and from Luisa, both her own most-times part-
hers--and for a moment it was an intimacy rider with rider and
horse with horse that took the breath and scared hell out of her. It
was love, it was friendship, <vivid and warm and smelling of straw
and sex> and the boys were about to ride out the gate.
      "You're senior," Vadim said, and Chad's Jumper passed by her
with a whip of a well-groomed tail.  "Latch down tight," Chad said.
    Then Vadim and Chad passed the gate with a pelting of trodden
snow from their horses' heels, and rode away on a trail of young
girl's footprints.
    They wouldn't find the hope the blacksmith wanted to find, she
was well sure of that.
    Worse, the first hint of sunset color was already in the sky: light
didn't last long in autumn, on this eastern face of the mountains--
they had a treacherously short while they could ride, to find what
an uncompromising Wild might have left of Brionne Goss, and to
get back again safely.
    She dragged the gate shut. Mina helped. Luisa dropped the latch
and shoved it down hard, to be sure.

<Rider-stone in green grass,> Guil remembered. <Trees.> But
Burn remembered not. The accompanying rider-shelter as Burn had
it in his thoughts had not even brush around it, with precious little
grass at all, a desolate place with <bad-tasting grass. >
    And when, as they rounded a bend of the road around a long
hill, Guil saw the rider-stone with his eyes, not his mind--he
rubbed them to be sure.


212    ~          C.J. Cherryh

    Indeed the image, wrapped in the murk of rain and twilight, did
stop when he pressed his fingers against his eyes.
    Burn was right. There was no pasturage worth considering. The
stone stood in a widening mud-puddle filling a slight depression--
a sight that afflicted Guil with a shiver of some kind, be it chill of
weather or doubt of the future he'd bargained for, listening to Cas-
sivey, committing himself to the man's employ.
    Anveney was death. He didn't know how he could have forgot-
ten it, talking to the rich man, taking his hire. It didn't matter if
Cassivey was affable and convenient and talked an extravagantly
good deal--Anveney was still death.
    And when they reached the stone and he chanced to glance at the
signs scratched on it, old marks and new--the first thing his eye
fell on was a plain circle with a crescent.  Aby and Moon.
    <Us on the road,> he urged Burn, unreasoning, spooked. He
wanted nowhere near this place. He wanted no part of this trail,
this direction, this chain of events.
    But Burn thought, <warm log shelter,> and carried him willy-
nilly along an eroded rising trail until the dark, rain-dripping
shadow of the log shelter was in front of them.
    <Aby staying in this place,> Guil thought, and ducked reflex-
ively as Burn passed under the roof edge, into almost-night, into an
east-facing recess where the wind had to come clear around three
walls to enter, and where the rain had to ride those gusts or seep
weakly through cracks in the roof in order to fall on them.
    Something small skittered past Burn's feet, out into the rain.
Burn stamped at it, imaging <nighthorse> and <fire> until what-
ever it was vacated the place glad to be alive.
    All the same, the jolt of that move hit Guil's nerves and sent him
light-headed. He had to lean on Burn's neck until he could muster
the strength to slide off under the weight of the rifle and pistol and
the rest that he carried.
    He committed himself finally, leaned and swung. His feet hit
the ground at the same moment he shed the rifle strap into his
hand. He stood very precariously for a moment, sight and hearing
fading.


RIDER AT THE GATE              ~       213

    Then he saw and heard the rain falling in a night-lit curtain out-
side--felt random drops dripping through the absolute black of the
chinked logs onto their heads, and breathed the mist gusted in
from the open side, but the air inside the shelter felt breathlessly
warm and strange to his cold-numbed skin, all the same, after the
rush of wind-borne water outside.
    He dragged the pack down from Burn's shoulders and wobbled
over to the wall, wet below the knees and around the cuffs of the
sleeves. He couldn't just sit down and wait to dry out, when rain
could easily turn to sleet or snow and temperatures could drop
below freezing with no more warning than that mountain wind out
there already gave him.
    He felt along the wall and leaned the rifle in the corner, then
dropped the pack in what he hoped was a reasonably dry spot. Then
he unbuckled and shed the weight of the sidearm to pegs he felt,
some rider's thoughtful addition to the accommodation.
    Lastly, light-headed, he sat down on the damp earthen floor on
the spot to strip off the wet boots and the trousers, wrapped him-
self below the waist in a dry blanket from the canvas pack, still
wearing sweater, coat, slicker and all, because the plastic was hold-
ing in his body heat and he needed everything he had that was re-
motely dry to keep that heat around him.
    He knew one thing for dead certain: he wasn't moving on in the
morning. If a man got soaked at the edge of winter, a man already
possibly concussed, to judge by the hellish headache he carried be-
hind his eyes, then that man if he wasn't a total fool didn't travel
out of shelter till fire or sun had dried his clothes.
    And Burn's better night vision, in the black inside of the shelter,
told him that a fire wasn't an option. He sent Burn out into the
rain, (looking for woodpile against shelter wall,~ but Burn didn't
find one, came in wet and shook himself.
    Nobody'd restocked the shelter. Wood wasn't available in the
land any longer.
    No wood. Aby'd been the culprit, maybe Hawley and Jonas.
Couldn't blame them, damn their lazy hides. But if it had been
woodless when they used it they'd sure not ridden after any, either.
He'd have restocked the damn shelter unless there was a life-and-



214      ~        C.J. Cherryh

death hurry about getting out, and he didn't think there had been.
If it were anybody but Aby he'd have said careless.
    But maybe with the weather changing, and a need to go on a
schedule that couldn't, by Cassivey's whim, and needn't, by Aby's
judgment, wait for spring--he could forgive her.  Still, ---damn--
    He began to shiver. He huddled there shaking his teeth out,
took his hat off, put the blanket over his wet hair, wrapped his
arms about himself under the blanket and slicker and tucked his
feet up--he couldn't feel his toes, but he didn't think he'd been out
there long enough for frostbite, thanks to Burn, all thanks to Burn.
    <Bacon in dry bright sun,> he promised Burn, clenching his
teeth to still the shivers. <Burn coming over the hill in the rain.
Burn carrying the packs. Handsome, splendid, shining in the sun-
light nighthorse. >
    Burn lapped it up like cream; and Burn began to think of <fire,
and dry bedding and bacon cooking,> which wasn't as good as edi-
ble supper, but it was far better than the drip of rain in the real
world outside.
    <Wet, dripping wood,> Guil thought, there being very little
convenient way to image a complete lack of any given thing--and
Burn wasn't much on the technicalities of fire-making. Burn knew
it was raining, of course, and Burn hadn't found a woodpile, or any
trees, but Burn was hungry. There were three slabs of bacon in the
supplies Burn's rider had lugged an agonizing long way from An-
veney--and that of course changed all logic. Bacon was here.
<Fire> happened in Burn's mind when Burn thought of it.
    So Burn thought of <fire.> Burn did his part. Burn expected it to
happen.
    Well, so the one of them with fingers bestirred himself, teeth
chattering, and, for a peace offering, took some beef jerky out of the
pack, only then and shakily remembering that food hadn't crossed
his path at all today, either.
    So it wasn't bacon, and it couldn't be bacon until the rain
stopped, until he dried off, or unless a woodpile miraculously ap-
peared, but Burn took the jerky as the best he could do under diffi-
cult circumstances, and simply thought <bacon.> Burn chewed the


RIDER AT THE GATE              ~       215

 first piece, then heaved a gusty sigh, circled, Burn's habit when he
 was tired, and sank down, precarious process in the cramped space
 between him and the storm, narrowly missing a vertical support
 pole, arranging himself so that Burn's rider, who insisted on sit-
 ting, could feed him bits of jerky, two, of course, to the human's
 own one, considering Burn had a far bigger appetite.  Burn was, overall, mollified.
     Guil cut his thumb, he was shivering so, but, hell, there were
 worse fates. He had something to keep his stomach quiet, he was
 reasonably sure after a few bites that the food was going to stay
 down, which he hadn't been sure of when the first bite went past
 his teeth, and his situation tonight, give or take the blinding
 headache and a slight nausea, was improving. He gave Burn less
 than Burn wanted, of course, but then, Burn was bottomless, and
 the supplies had to last a lot farther than Anveney Stone.
  <High country,> he said to Burn, <snow and ice. Us walking.>
     <Snow falling,> Burn agreed. <Rider shelters. Hunting spooks,
 playing in the snow.>
     <Traveling the ridge. Snow and fireweed thickets, bright red in
 the sunlight. >
    But he didn't want to think where they were going first, or why,
or searching for what. He shied away from that.
    He thought of <here> instead. Aby had slept in this place. He'd
suffered that one crazed impulse to bolt, before Burn had brought
him here and come inside, all the same, leaving him no escape.
    Except freezing to death in a rainstorm. He was saner than that.
He'd not acted like it, spooking out, out there, but Burn had
known he wasn't rational, and Burn had duly taken him where he
had to go.
    So I'm here, woman, he thought in distress. What more do you
want?
    God, I should have heard you. Should have heard, when you said
you couldn't say your reasons.
    It wasn't easy to hold back with the horses involved. They'd met
as juniors, they'd been naive, having no idea how to deal with peo-
ple, how much to give away, how much to deal for--at least he,
personally and sometimes painfully, had had to discover the rules.


216      ~        C.J. Cherryh

He'd run whenever she came too close to him, he'd stayed whenever
it looked comfortable. He was ashamed of it--but he was a skittish
sort. He just didn't know how to tell right and wrong even with
her, let alone with riders he didn't know, least of all with towns-
men; and he supposed now in hindsight that he'd sensed for four
years that Aby had something going in the Anveney business.
When she'd been snowed in up on the heights last year--he'd win-
tered down in Shamesey alone; hell, he'd been mad, Aby'd tried to
talk to him--he hadn't seen it. He just hadn't seen it.
    Maybe she'd thought he was cleverer than he was. She always
gave him too much credit. And she'd gone off this summer more
than mad--she'd gone off hurt.
      Burn, half-asleep, jerked his head up, shifted a foreleg, licked his
face once, twice, urgently, until he elbowed Burn off.  Burn always had had a jealous, protective streak.
    Burn had, he recalled of a sudden, interrupted him and Aby on
their first night together, at a very personal moment.
    He'd been a kid, embarrassed at his horse's manners and mad as
hell. Aby'd been helpless with laughter--able to laugh, when he
couldn't find it in him.
    Aby'd ever after stood between him and quarrels he'd otherwise
have had. Aby could generally calm him down. Guil, she'd say,
you're being a fool. And, Down, Guil. You're wrong. You're out-
right wrong. Listen to me.
    Suddenly it was that year again, that giddy, all-or-nothing time,
the moment, the night, the place, an open-air camp in early au-
tumn, with the chance of frost. Two fool kids had started out in all
good behavior trying to keep warm, they'd built a small fire under
a cliff, on rock that turned out to be less than comfortable. They'd
shared a blanket, chastely watching leaves from quakesilvers higher
up the slope drift down into their fire and go in a puff of fire. You
could see the veins in fire before they went to ash--quakesilvers
were tough.
    He'd said it was like seeing through the leaves. She'd always re-
member the image, because she thought it wonderful; veins of fire
in a leaf gone invisible. It was their secret. It was the image she'd
cast him.., whenever she wanted him.


RIDER AT THE GATE              ~       217

    The horses had set at their own lovemaking, autumn being wild
in the air--and two chaste fools had gotten, well.., warmer under
their blanket, and more reckless.
    And at the worst---or best--moment Burn had just gotten curi-
ous and hung his nose over them to watch.
    God. He'd chased Burn clear across that mountainside, swearing
and bare-ass naked and embarrassed as hell--while Aby had rolled
on the ground laughing and laughing.
    Two fool kids, in a place and a raw edge of weather no little dan-
gerous. But they'd been only kids, and invulnerable, and they'd had
Burn and Moon with them for protection--what forethought did
they possibly need?
  First love. Never faded.
    He dreamed awake: he drifted in that time, before quarrels, be-
fore mistrust or a promise ever passed between them.
    In the mating season, when desires ran high and thinking was at
an ebb.

The rain drizzled down, dripped miserably off the firelit ever-
greens, and the smoke of the campfire collected under the branches,
whipped this way and that by mist-laden winds, stinging eyes and
noses. They sat in slickers, black and brown, glistening with rain
and firelight. Drips from the overhanging boughs scored on Dan-
ny's neck no matter how he shifted his position at the fire, and
Cloud sulked, standing off from the Hallanslake horses' position
under the trees.
    Hallanslakers, it turned out, felt perfectly free to get into some-
body else's supplies, saying they'd pooled everything.
    Which meant they were common thieves, in Danny Fisher's
thinking, and his displeasure had to come through to them--if
Cloud's continual sulking didn't smother it.
    Nothing like his contempt seemed to bother the Hallanslakers,
who were evidently used to being thought badly of.
    And that left not a damn lot a sixteen-year-old could do, his gun
and ammunition having been pooled, too, along with items of his
personal gear he was sure he wouldn't get back until he could phys-


218    ~          C.J. Cherryh



ically beat the man who'd taken them, not a likely prospect, count-
ing the man bulked like a bear.
< Cattle, > was Cloud's constant impression. < Dung-piles. >
Danny thought so too. He wasn't even sure they were going to
feed him once they'd made supper with his supplies. He and they
hadn't been at all pleasant with each other.
    But when they got down to handing it out, he set his jaw, got up
and made his move for what he figured was a fair share. Nobody
stopped him from filling his plate.
    He ate a spoonful. He was a better cook than that. He didn't care
who heard the thought.
    <Hitting kid,> was the thought in a nearby mind, though the
man didn't take the trouble to get up and do it. Danny took it for a
warning, kept his head down, and thought about <wind moving
green grass. A sulky, stormy wind. With thunder.> He learned
from Cloud.
    He had his biscuits and sausage---or half of it. He saved half for
Cloud, who otherwise was making do on the sparse, edge-of-the-
road grass pasture, in the dark and the rain. The Hallanslakers took
shares out to their own horses, which was at least decent behavior;
Danny slipped Cloud a biscuit and half of the sausage.
    The other horses thought they were going to push in for Cloud's
dinner. Danny took his life in his hands and swatted one nighthorse
nose that came far too close--dodged a kick and bumped into one
of the Hallanslakers, Watt, who grabbed him, sent a surly <be-
have!> to the horses in general, and told him, aloud, "You keep
your hands off my horse, kid."
    "Then keep him out my horse's face," he answered Watt back, in
the same mood he'd swatted the horse.
    And got spun around by another hand, face-to-face with Ancel
Harper.
  "I'm not going to stand there and get bit!" he said to Harper.
    "You..." Harper said, "be careful how you carry yourself, kid.
You could have a serious accident."
    The man meant it. Danny had no doubt. Cloud meant the anger
he sent, too.


RIDER AT THE GATE              ~       219

Danny struggled for calm, said, on a breath, "Yeah, I figured,"
and shrugged his arm free.
    He went over then to stand in the rain in Cloud's close company
and think about Shamesey, because Cloud was mad, and Cloud
could get hurt--<gun firing,> Danny sent, and stroked Cloud's
shoulder and neck and held on to him tightly. <Quiet grass. Quiet
water. >
    But Cloud thought about <Ice and Froth,> and even of
<Shadow,> which he thought might be Cloud's way of saying
they'd been much better off where they'd been, and if Cloud's rider
hadn't lost his temper they wouldn't be here.
    Danny tried not to think about the camp. He thought instead
about the mountains where they were going, and high-country
cold, and tried not to think about Jonas, or guns--they'd pushed
hard and late in their traveling and still not managed to catch Jonas
and his crew. They'd found Jonas' abandoned campsite with no
trouble: the horses could smell <smoke> even when a fire was dead
and buried.
    But they hadn't caught Jonas and his company, and Danny wasn't
at all sorry about it. He feared there'd be shooting if Jonas and the
Hallanslakers met, and he didn't want himself or Cloud to be in the
middle of it. He skittered nervously around the thought that
maybe Jonas and his friends could win a shootout, if one happened;
or that Jonas might lie in wait for Harper; or that Jonas being out
ahead of them might warn Stuart and team up against the Hal-
lanslakers.
    Most of all he tried not to think about Stuart, since he'd as good
as told Harper aloud what way Stuart had gone, and by that, how
and where to lay an ambush.
    Ambush was very much what Harper intended. He gathered that
from the lot of them. They wanted no fair fight. And he didn't
know why---except they hated Stuart because of a dead man whose
name he didn't know, and because of a quarrel they'd had when
they'd worked together. It seemed to him a thin reason to want to
kill somebody, since by what he could gather, Stuart hadn't killed
the man he'd fought, and it had been a fair fight--but that didn't
matter to them or to Harper.


220    ~          C.J. Cherryh


    And the Hallanslakers in general kept imaging Stuart and the
rogue as one and the same, as if--as if somehow they'd become the
same thing in the Hallanslakers' minds, an ugly thing, a tricky,
shifting thing in their thoughts. They wallowed in their notion of
Stuart as the enemy and their image grew and grew even off things
he knew and he brought to the ambient: they caught his image of
<Stuart on the porch> and twisted it until it was an evil, cheating
man, giving a kid bad advice. They caught his memory of <Stuart
shot on the hill> and twisted it around until it was <riders defend-
ing Shamesey gates> against < man meaning harm to them. >
    He felt sick at his stomach with the shifting-about they were
forcing on his memories. They didn't beat him, and on the evidence
of tonight's camp, they didn't intend to starve him. They just
thought their skewed thoughts at him so insistently and so often
and so vengefully he felt the edges of his world curling up, as if the
images he cherished of Stuart were about to peel away and show
something else underneath.
    But when the Hallanslaker images came thick and fast, Cloud
just imaged <dung-pile> and <white, crawling maggots,> contin-
uing surly--a noisy horse, Jonas had said of Cloud.
    And Cloud was. The ambient several times in the afternoon had
gone crazed with conflicting images and Cloud's disgusting com-
mentary, until the man who'd appropriated his supplies had started
calling him names of a sort he'd never in his life tolerated, and then
threatened Cloud.
     That was Quig, no other name, Quig. There were three of them,
 counting Harper. Quig and Watt--he gathered they were cousins.
 Harper's horse was an image of shapes and dark--Spook was how
 he thought of the beast, but he never heard Harper call its name;
 Quig's horse was flashes of light; and he didn't even catch Watt's
 big horse: it just slipped around in the ambient. Watt had a hella-
 cious scar running back into his hair, and a dent in his skull where
 it looked like he'd been kicked once upon a time. They all carried
 rifles. From what he could tell they'd rather shoot from far off than
 confront anybody on equal terms.
  He heard movement. He felt it, simultaneously, from Cloud:


RIDER AT THE GATE              ~       221

<Harper walking,> and looked behind him, where Harper stopped,
hat brim dripping with the rain. Harper was mad.
    "Smart-ass kid," Harper said. "Damn troublemaker. You don't
know all you think you know."
    He didn't want to listen. He turned his face away to avoid a
fight and Harper punched him in the shoulder.
    That got his attention, and a move from Cloud that he stopped
with a shove of his hands.
    "Smart-ass, I'm saying. Big threat, kid. The Wild doesn't give a
damn."
    <Dark. Separation. Forest, trees thick-shadowed with night.
Body in the shadows, lying on the leaves, bones broken, face mot-
tled with shadow and blood, bone bare on cheek and forehead.
Body in the woods, gunshot in the forehead-->
    Harper's thought. Cloud shied off, the horses around them shied,
catching the rogue-feeling implicit in the sending, and Danny
didn't know when Harper grabbed him. Harper was suddenly hold-
ing his arm so hard the slicker clasp parted at his throat. They were
together in a woods where it wasn't raining, and this.., thing was
around them.
  "You don't like it?" Harper asked him. "Don't like it?"
    Harper had cared for the dead rider; Harper had felt pain and
guilt then that Harper felt now, and it was all one thing with Stu-
art, <Stuart with a knife, Stuart inviting attack, a different Stuart
than he knew, angry and deadly serious.> And <the woods and the
rogue and the hillside above Shamesey--> Everything was mud-
dled up together in Harper's mind, and <rider and horse going off
a road> and <blood on the rocks> and <body in the woods> were
all together with <rogue-feeling.>
    Danny couldn't breathe, couldn't think straight. <Quiet water!>
was all he could fight with. And it was a fight: Harper was angry
and Danny used what streetwise and campwise skills he had,
twisted at Harper's grip, insisted on his own thoughts--but Harper
twisted back with a stronger grip and imaged gruesome detail of
the battered, dead face.
    "My brother," Harper said. <Dead face. Gunshot between the
eyes.> "My brother. You think you're going to go up there on the


222    ~          C.J. Cherryh

mountain, facing that thing, and be a hero, kid? You think it's all
that easy? You think you'll sleep easy after that?"
    He began to be afraid, afraid Harper was crazy, afraid that
Harper was going to spook Cloud into an attack and they'd shoot:
he kept sending <no> to Cloud as hard as he could, aware of
Cloud's anger, Cloud's revulsion and the spillage of thoughts of vio-
lence all around him.
    "I've seen it," Harper said, up in his face. "It wants you, that's
what it does, it wants you so bad, and it'll get right up to you and
you'll let it, you can't help it. It wants you, and you can't hear any-
thing else. And that's when you've got to hold firm, that's when
you've got to want to kill it, you got to want to kill it before it
kills your horse and it kills you, you hear me, kid? You shoot it
fast, because you want it so bad it'll haunt you, it'll be back in your
brain every time you put your head down to sleep, it'll be there be-
hind your eyelids every time it's quiet. It'll be there. It's always
there. I've seen it. I've shot it. I shoot it every time it comes back to
me, because I won't let it near me, you hear me?" <Man shot be-
tween the eyes> was the image. <Rogue-sending> was the feeling.
    "Yessir," he breathed, "yessir," because it was the only way he
knew to get loose. He felt sick at his stomach. He wanted <free of
Harper. >
    Harper shoved him away so hard he struggled to keep his bal-
ance on the wet leaves, and that set him free of the images, just
<wet leaves, here, dark, rain> and <Cloud> the instant before he
staggered into Cloud's shoulder.
    Cloud was shivering, twitches of Cloud's skin up his leg and
onto his shoulder, muscles jumping, but something else was going
on, too, association with the horses around him, a sense of <us>
that Cloud hadn't had on the road with these horses, instinct, what-
ever it was . . . it was suddenly <us> against <scattering-
feeling>-
    But in the instant of his panic, Cloud traded it for <us-Danny-
Cloud,> the way it always was, the way Danny expected it to be,
wanted it to be, insisted, dammit, Cloud listen to him. Cloud wasn't
theirs.
  He was shivering. The ambient was still rattling and shaking to


RIDER AT THE GATE              ~       223

the feelings Harper had let loose. He had no doubt that Harper had
dealt with a rogue before, and Harper still had dreams about it.
Harper had scared the whole camp. The Hallanslakers were afraid.
They were bigger than Harper, stronger than Harper, but neither
one of them was smarter, neither of them was more in possession of
the ambient. Only these two had come of those who had stood with
Harper in the meeting, but these two did what Harper wanted and
resonated to Harper's hate and fear.
    Noisy, Harper was that. Harper was always There, when you
were near him. And nobody could argue with him. Harper knew
what he knew and you weren't going to change it.
    He hadn't liked them in the meeting. He truly didn't like them
now. He traced a finger over the softness of Cloud's nose, told him-
self he should think about (quiet watery and notice the firelight
on the puddles and the firelight on the beads of water falling from
the evergreens and not think about any damn thing else--but he
didn't know who it could fool. He couldn't be invisible and he
couldn't persuade them he liked them at all.
    And as for why they hadn't shot him, or beaten him--they
wanted the same thing Jonas had wanted: they wanted him to find
Stuart for them. They probably had the idea he was stupid enough
to go on giving them what he knew, the way he already had. Jonas
said that being noisy like that wasn't unusual in kids who hadn't
gotten a hold on their sendings, or learned to be polite--and Cloud
being young, too, it made it worse.
    So the Hallanslakers counted on him being a stupid kid who'd
think about what he tried not to think about, and give away every-
thing he knew if they just kept him rattled with their lies--
    Only--they didn't think they were lying. They believed what
they thought about the world and about Stuart, which meant they
were the stupid ones; they only thought they had the straight of
things.
    And having no other defense, he decided to think so as often as
possible.


Chapter

X1V

THE FIRE IN THE HEARTH HAD BURNED DOWN AGAIN. TARA GOT UP
and put another log on, but the chill was more than in the air of
this night. Vadim and Chad hadn't come back.
    So what could they do but wait and go on waiting, she and her
partners? The shelter ambient was full of floor-pacing and frustra-
tion-they couldn't go kiting off after Vadim and Chad, because
they couldn't leave the village undefended, especially since they
had reason to fear there was something out there dangerous enough
to put two riders in trouble.
    They could only cling to what Vadim had said about maybe
staying out if they found something--they told each other that, as
hope of things going right grew thinner and thinner.
    By now they were on the third big log of the night; and while
they agreed that Vadim and Chad wouldn't have any trouble camp-
ing out on a clear night, no one could sleep, no one was quite on
her best logic, and no one was talking with any clarity. Anxieties
were too high. Words were too unreliable. They kept the horses


RIDER AT THE GATE              ---.-"-"225

away in the den, out of range of the shelter--they hadn't precisely
consulted about that decision, but Tara had wanted the horses
there, and Luisa and Mina, whose thoughts already were too dark
and too disturbed to make supper sit well, agreed.
    "If there's any chance the girl's alive," Luisa murmured now,
breaking a long, long silence, "if she'd gotten somewhere she could
hole up and stay there.., and if they found it, they could have
tucked in there, waited for a shot at it..."
    "A kid's not going to resist," Mina said. "A kid's not going to
hold out, whatever it is out there. That kid couldn't fend off a new-
born willy-wisp, let alone--"
    Mina's voice trailed off. They weren't thinking that thought
with any clarity. Weren't using that word.
    Luisa said: "If she just wedged herself into the rocks and stayed
there, I mean, kids panic, that's all, they'll freeze up, go still when
they're scared. A horse can't get through that. The kid could actu-
ally be safer than--"
  "Let's not talk about it," Tara said.
    "The boys aren't fools," Mina said. "The likelihood is, they
tracked fast and found something nasty and they're going to hun-
ker down the night--they're not going to come running back here
for us to hold their hands. I mean--what could they do? We have
to have at least two of us here all the time. How else can we sort it
OUt.>"

  "I said let's not talk about it."
    "Well, the kid could actually have gotten a wild horse," Luisa
said. "I mean, there's always the chance. There's been a herd at the
water meadow..."
    "The kid's a damned fool!" Tara snapped. "The kid's something's
supper, if she's wildly lucky, which I think she wasn't; and the boys
are riding around out in the dark risking their necks for a spoiled
brat who's already met what she bargained for! It's not damn worth
it! The kid batted her eyes at Vadim, the kid sneaked out of here
when she damned well knew better, and they're off being damned
stupid men!"
  She didn't need to have said that. She immediately wished she

226      ~        C.J. Cherryh

 could call it back. The chill in the air after that was immune to a
 fever~heat fire.
     So the night wore on in interminable minutes and eternal hours,
 while two grown men who'd gone out to play hero because they
 couldn't say no to a kid who simpered at them.., were out there
 in mortal danger.
     The kid could hear the horses--hell, any villager could hear the
 horses if they stood next the wall--hear and be heard, at close
 enough range: that was why there were walls, for God's sake, that
 was why townsmen didn't go walking out in the woods without a
 rider--because they heard too damned well.
    But Brionne was so self-sure that what she heard was ever so
much more than a horse's own rider did, some flaming miracle of
special sensitivity and understanding of the horses--
    God, the kid had probably been listening out into the dark for
years for what she wanted to hear.., and she probably hadn't real-
ized the defense Flicker had been sending out into the storm was
even going on, because <white-white-white> was the snow, was the
storm. The blacksmiths' house was far enough away from the camp
that the kid might not even have heard Flicker at all or been within
Flicker's defense. She might have heard something beyond the other
village wall.
    And then because stupid damn little girls who thought they
heard the horses and didn't even sense when one was backing up
and about to trample them didn't the hell comprehend that what
precious oh-so-talented Brionne wanted didn't damn matter to the
laws of nature and the inclinations of a crazed killer--precious
Brionne took a walk.
    "You know," Mina said, "they could have gone on to the road
crews and tried to find out about them."
    "Will you the hell let it alone?" Tara said, and hadn't meant to say
that to Mina, either. "I'm sorry," she said. "I'm sorry, Mina."
    Mina shrugged, looked elsewhere, hurt--not at her, just hurting,
without an ambient to carry it, that was why the rider quarters sat
the measured distance it did from the horses, but, God, she could
see it. Luisa and Mina were partners. They were best friends, to-
gether and with the men.


RIDER AT THE GATE              ~       227

    And because she was the know-it-all newcomer, it didn't call on
her to curse at Mina--she hadn't access to the ambient to say <I
love you> or <I'm scared, too,> and she couldn't say what she
thought aloud--words sounded stupid and lame when the ambient
wasn't behind them.
    But she was their senior in years, with Vadim out of the camp.
She was supposed to lay down the laws, she was supposed to keep
them from driving each other off the edge. She was supposed to
keep the camp in order and the village safe--but that hadn't meant

yelling at Mina.
    "Mina," she said, feeling
fault. Sorry."
    "I don't like this," Luisa
feels good."
      "None of us feel good!"
Can we just not go for each
  Tara was seeing <white>
    Then an ember snapped,
covered woodpile: it spat

 the shakes nudging at her arms--"My
 muttered. "I don't feel good. Nothing

Mina snapped. "None of us feel good.
others' throats?"
again. She was back in the forest.
wood they'd carried in out of the snow-
sparks and snapped and spat while it

dried. But her nerves were raw-ended. She jumped and twitched,
and couldn't for a moment get her breath in the sickly closeness of
the air.
    The main room was log-walled, chinked with mortar. The cor-
ners were refuges for shadows, places the light didn't reach, and
they'd not lit the lamps. The firelight cast their three shadows large
on the walls, on the rafters, and the interlocked shadows jumped
with the gusts that bested the chimney's updraft.
    Another snap, not as loud as the first. But the nerves still
jumped. She'd put off her jacket, but she was all bur inclined to
put it on again and go out into the yard and touch ambient one
more time tonight.
    They ought to go the hell to bed. Luisa was right: the boys were
surely holed up somewhere and weren't going to stir out again
until the sun came up and they could face the unpleasant job of re-
porting back a grisly find which had to be the story out there.
    If she hadn't snapped at the kid when the kid had come into the
den--


228    ~          C.J. Cherryh

    Probably with wonderful, special news to tell them. And they
hadn't fallen down admiring her. If there was a bad horse out there,
it was enough trouble. If a bad horse had a rider when it went, the
after-midnight lore held that the rider who didn't shoot it fast went
with it, and whoever was his good friend had better shoot him
equally fast.
    If the rogue snared that kid, then it could get from her what
horses got from human minds--an outright addiction to the com-
plexity of human images and an ability to remember and stick to a
task until it was finished.  Until it was finished.
    And Brionne, precious Brionne, didn't think what anybody else
wanted. When Brionne got an idea--nobody counted but what
Brionne wanted. Did they?
    She had gooseflesh on her arms. She didn't need to turn over that
mental rock and examine the underside.
    She found herself on her feet and pacing again. Mina was stand-
ing, arms folded, staring at the shuttered window. Luisa was whit-
tling something. Luisa was always making wooden animals--she
had a collection of them on the mantelpiece, real ones and fanciful
ones. Tara couldn't see what Luisa was carving. Didn't want to
guess. She ought to set an example and go to bed, but the thought
of going off to a separate room and lying in bed alone with her
thoughts was not at all attractive.
    And maybe it was after all a good idea to check outside again be-
fore she tried to rest.
    It was something to do, at least. If she just found silence out
there, it was some reassurance; and she felt steady enough to look in
on Flicker. So far the ill effects added up to a little swelling and
soreness in the legs, nothing rest wouldn't cure. Flicker could lie
down and get up at will now, no worry about her going down and
her lungs filling; but Flicker's rider wanted to be sure of that from
hour to hour, especially when she was staying a little outside Flick-
er's range.
    Surely the boys were all right. God, they weren't a pair of ju-
niors. They could take care of themselves. Fears spread, was all.
  Hell, she said to herself then, and got up and went for her coat.


RIDER AT THE GATE              ~       229

  "Where are you going?" Mina asked.
  "Just to take another listen," she said. "Be right back."
    Mina looked worried. "You don't go out anywhere," Luisa said.
"You want me to come with you?"
    "Better just one of us. We're too noisy tonight. I'll check on the
horses. Get a grip on my temper while I'm at it." She shrugged
into the jacket under two worried looks. She slung on her scarf and
went out, not dressed for a long stay in the winter night, not even
putting her gloves on.
    The first breath of cold night air was a relief. She went down the
wooden steps, crunched her way across a new film of ice on the
tracked and hole-riddled yard, and trekked out toward the den
under a starry, cloudless sky.
    But there wasn't peace. She felt, even at distance, a sense of un-
ease among the horses, even before one of them came out of the
den, a shadow in the low, earth-banked entry.
    The second horse that showed up was definitely Flicker. All of
them were in a surly mood. The first out had been Mina's Skip, and
Luisa's Green turned up at Flicker's rump--Green nipped at
Flicker, and Flicker returned the favor with real temper.
  <Quiet trees,> she sent. <Deep snow. Snowflakes falling softly. >
  <White,> came Flicker's chilling echo.
    Then something got to her, a quickness of breath and a speeding
heartbeat where everything around her said there was nothing
wrong.
    <Behave!> she sent to Flicker, and the horses sent a shivery,
angry impulse back, on edge about a feeling she couldn't see in the
sky or hear in the air or smell on the wind.
    <Vadim,> she sent out into the ambient as strongly as she could.
<Chad! >
    Then--she was being crazy. She wished she hadn't made that
noise in the ambient--in the remote case the horses together could
carry it--in case the boys might hear it and do something foolish
in the mistaken notion that the camp was in distress.
    <Safety,> she thought, and wanted Flicker to carry that idea far
and wide. < Forest. Village walls. >
  But Flicker was skittish as she walked up. Flicker kept doing a


230 ~ C.J. Cherryh

nervous <white> sending and shifted about uncooperatively when
she bent to lean against Flicker's side and listen to her breathing.
    Just the harsh, regular breathing of an uneasy horse, heartbeat a
little fast, but it kept up with the breathing, and Flicker kept shift-
ing about with her, quarreling with her den-mates.
    Tara gave up, since Flicker was healthy enough to be difficult--
ears up, nostrils working, disturbing attention outward; but she
couldn't get any sense of direction about it, just a general distress.
She went from one horse to the next, patting necks, dodging shift-
ing, restless bodies and swatting Green, who came just too close
with a snap of her teeth.
    <Inside the den,> she ordered them. <Flicker inside, Green in-
side, Skip inside.> She got that occasional <white,> and then a
grudging compliance when she seized Flicker by the mane and
pulled and argued with her.
    Then the report of a gun echoed off the mountain--stark, sud-
den, close. Flicker jerked free of her hand. All the horses were look-
ing toward the palisade wall, not the outer one, but the one that
divided them from the village.
    A flare of light touched the tail of her vision--she turned her
head briefly, saw the shelter door open, a coatless Mina and Luisa
standing on the porch.
  "What was that?" Mina called to her.
    "It came from the village side," she said. It was all she was cer-
tain of. The rogue might be across the village, next the wall--that
was her first clear thought. She went for the narrow gate, the gate
no horse could pass, and she began to run, her feet cracking the
frozen, pitted crust.
    "Tara?" Luisa called out. And Mina: "Wait, dammit! We're com-
ing!''
  "Stay there," she turned around to shout. "Stay with the horses!"
    She wasn't the only one who'd taken alarm. The village bell
began to toll the three-stroke that called Assembly.
    The village didn't know what it was. She guessed that much be-
fore she even reached the gate. She lifted the .latch, went through,
aware that Flicker had followed her, aware of Flicker's frustration at
the gate Flicker couldn't pass.


RIDER AT THE GATE              ~       231

    She didn't have her gun. She hadn't even brought her glovesm
fool, she said to herself when she checked her pockets. She was
damned little use. But she found herself in a flood of villagers in
nightclothes and robes and boots and carrying guns and even axes,
all streaming toward the common hall, to find out what no one
knew and what the ambient, even reinforced by the concerted effort
of anxious horses, couldn't tell her.
    But before she ever reached the hall she was hearing rumors--
the blacksmiths' neighbors, Vonner and Rath, came running up
saying it was the blacksmiths' house the shot had come from.
    The crowd surged in that direction then, unordered, unruly--
she was uneasy, walking deaf in a group of people who didn't read
the ambient, either, unless that feeling of unease she had now was
coming from elsewhere.
    One of Andy Goss' kids was on the doorstep. The other came out
with a gun dangling in his hand. And she feared she knew.
    In the next moment the village marshal came up and took the
gun from the boy without resistance.
  Andy Goss' wife, Mindy Rath, was safe. But Andy Goss wasn't.
    Dead, the marshal's deputy reported with a grimace, on a quick
glance inside the door. Bad in there, Tara thought.
    And the marshal took the boys away, both of them. Tara caught
whispers of dismay, whispers that the Goss-Raths were an upstand-
ing family, and nobody could imagine what prompted it.
    She didn't know what to do, what to say, how to explain to
them. But half the crowd went away, shivering in the cold, and the
marshal took the boys away. And she didn't know what she could
say that would make it better.
    So she went back the way she'd come, through the rider gate,
and found Mina and Luisa, dressed for the cold, out in the yard
with the horses.
    She told them. She said, remembering Andy Goss and the boys
beside the den: "They loved him. I think they killed him."
    <The porch, the boys, the gun, the wife. Herself, watching from
the crowd.> She remembered from their meeting beside the den
< the boys hating Brionne, wanting their father. >


232      ~        C.J. Cherryh

    She added, in a feeling of utter shock: "I think that was why they
did it."

The day came up still misting rain, a gray drizzle outside the shel-
ter. Guil lifted his head, and pain like a knife went from one point
to the other of his skull and bounced. Several times. He let his head
back, eyes shut.
    He didn't want to move after that. He just wanted to lie there
and breathe until his head mended or he died.
    But Burn got up, slow shifting of a heavy body, a second imper-
ilment of the roof supports. He heard the timbers creak.
    Then a breathing horse-smelling shadow came between him and
the daylight, and Burn nosed his face, puffing warm horse-breath
on him. Persisting at it. Gull pushed him away with a none too co-
herent <Guil hurting.>
  <Bacon,> Burn imaged, as if that cured headache.
  And nosed him in the face again.
    It took him a moment more to muster reason, and a moment
after that for coherent images. <Wet wood,> Guil thought, <fire.>
If he could possibly sit up, which his dizziness and the pain in his
head made a nauseating prospect, he was resolved that Burn should
have bacon, if there were any wood to be had.
    He'd never asked Burn to do the job. It seemed worth a try.
<Burn finding wood. Burn dragging it back to the shelter, wood
making fire, fire with bacon. >
    <Cattle,> Burn thought. Burn didn't believe fire made bacon.
Or didn't think wood made fire. At this point in the morning, Guil
didn't know what he believed, either.
    But he groaned, and shifted in his cocoon of blanket, slicker,
sodden coat, and sodden shirt. Which reminded him he hadn't
dried out during the night, and he needed fire for more reasons
than bacon.
    "Hell," he moaned, tried to reckon in fact where he was going to
get wood. <Burn on grassy hills. Finding wood. Guil hurting. Fire.
Big fire. Trees. Wood. Burn dragging wood with his teeth. >
  Burn didn't think so. Burn imaged <bacon> and <Guil riding.>
  <Burn outside. >


~hy they

te shel-
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there

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CO-


RIDER AT THE GATE              i~      233

    The last made his head hurt. It upset Burn, who went out imag-
ing <fire> and <dark> and <fight.> And there wasn't a damned
thing out there. Gull could see it in Burn's images as if he was see-
ing it with his own eyes: <eroded stone, bare rock, puddles and
more barren hills with tufts of grass... >
    <Burn.> Guil wanted him back now, and Burn came back under
the roof.
    <Fire,> Burn imaged, imaged <heat,> which was some help. He
could actually halfway feel it, illusion that it was; but wood was
nowhere outside, from horizon to horizon--thank you, Aby, thank
you, Jonas and Luke and Hawley.
    And if he could somehow persuade Burn to go off hunting the
nearest dead tree, it left him sitting alone in the Wild with a rifle
and a handgun--no more than the Anveney truckers had, to be
sure, and they were still fairly well in the die-off zone, but there'd
been vermin last night, and he wasn't sure he wasn't going to fall
on his face and pass out.
    Which could mean coming awake with willy-wisps swarming
over you, no, God no, there were ways to go, but gnawed half to
death while he was passed out wasn't one he'd choose.
    Lying here wrapped in plastic, waiting for some sunny day to dry
his trousers wasn't a choice, either. He couldn't depend on a sunny
day coming along before snowfall, in which case, also thank you,
Aby, he wanted dry clothing.  That meant firewood.
    And since one of them couldn't leave the other, it meant moving.
He wasn't sure he could get on Burn's back without falling on his
face, but if he did fall, Burn wouldn't desert him.
    Which meant at least willy-wisps wouldn't come near him. So he
was safer going with Burn, if he didn't break his neck falling off.
His head ached so--he really, truly, please God, didn't want to fall
on it again.
    He made it by stages to his feet, splitting headache and all. He
couldn't see for a moment, couldn't find his balance, caught himself
against the shelter wall--which reminded him, lucky thing, that
he had gear to take with him.
  So, knowing he wasn't tracking mentally at all, and in a gloomy


234 ~    C.J. Cherryh

shelter with his eyes not working reliably, he leaned against the
wall until he could list very carefully what he had hung where and
what he'd brought in.
    Then he gathered up his belongings. He folded the blanket,
which was still reasonably dry, and put it in the two-pack. He
found his trousers and his boots, which were colder, if no wetter,
than they'd been last night.
    Burn was worried. Burn kept nosing him in the arm, in the
back, which didn't help his balance at all. Burn licked him on the
ear.
    <Burn carrying two-pack,> he imaged at Burn, figuring he'd get
away with it or they weren't going. He put on the ice-cold and sod-
den trousers, as something Burn's body heat and his could some-
how warm, at least: warm, wet clothes were better insulation than
dry, exposed skin, and the slicker could make a tent, of sorts, on
Burn's heat-generating hide.
    Then, leaning on a post, and on the same logic, he forced one
foot and the other into cold, soggy boots, hoping blood moving
would warm them and hold that warmth as long as the wind stayed
still. He just, half wet as he was, couldn't afford to fall.
    < Burn outside,> he imaged, last of all, and when Burn did leave,
out into the drizzle, he buckled on his sidearm and put his scarf
and gloves and hat on, picked up the gear, occasioning a moment of
visual blackout, and walked through that dark out to Burn--a di-
rection he couldn't lose even without his eyes, and he realized he
was in fact walking with them shut.
    He slung the two-pack across Burn's back, put the rifle over, and
made his best effort first, belly-down, at getting on.
    <Truck going off a cliff. Guard trying to exit. Fear in the ambi-
ent. Horror. Riders unable to move--logs scattering like straws
down the rock slide .... >
    He just lay there a moment belly-down and crosswise on Burn's
back while his headache left him alone with the images, not quite
sure where up or down was, except <Burn> was in contact with
him and <Burn> was usually down ....
    The fog cleared. He could see the ground. He thought for a pre-
carious, strengthless moment that he might throw up, but Burn


RIDER AT THE GATE              ~       235

wouldn't like that. He rested as he was and breathed hard for a
minute or so. Burn, <wonderful, handsome Burn,> stayed rock-
steady under him, so eventually, still in the red-pulsing dark, he
dragged his right knee over the bump that was Burn's hipbone,
lodged his heel over the hollow that was Burn's sensitive flank, try-
ing not to send Burn sky-high, and leaning one hand on the leather
flat of the two-pack that was across Burn's shoulders, used the
weight of the rifle in his right hand and the pistol on his right side
to drag himself square on Burn's backbone.
    Burn sidestepped. Guil swayed like a sapling in a windstorm,
and the whole blurry, double-imaged world swayed out of balance
as gun-side and no-gun-side refused to find center. Burn moved
across under his center of balance, and got the idea, he thought,
that his rider wasn't at all interested in a run right now.
    Burn walked, so sedately a baby could have stayed up. Burn
compensated when the world swayed out of balance, which occa-
sionally required a drunken sidestep. The wind blew cold on Guil's
face and his double-vision and the dark traded places occasionally,
aftermath of exertion--but the blood pressure finally evened out
between his head and his feet. He discovered that a curiously com-
fortable convenience--he never had appreciated how nice it was
that was usually taken care of.
    Forgot where they were going at first. What they had to do.
Then he remembered he was in wet clothes and wanted a fire; and
he remembered about <wood> and <mountains> and <Tarmin vil-
lage. >
    Eventually his legs grew warm on the insides, but his feet re-
mained chilled. He bore with it. He imaged <wood> and <trees>
and Burn kept a pace that didn't jar too much, because <head hurt-
ing> afflicted Burn too.
    Then after what seemed most of a morning, he saw trees growing
up against the rise of a rocky face. The road, on which the rain had
filled all the old tire-ruts down to a gentle high center and two
long puddles beside, tended in that direction.
    It dawned on him then, perhaps a sign his brain was less addled,
that he had a medical kit. He recalled he'd some bitter-root for tea,
which was good for headache. Water certainly wasn't any problem.


236    ~          C.J. Cherryh

Pans weren't, either. He had a pan. He'd bought it. He told himself
he could have hot tea if he didn't fall off and drown in the puddles.
  If he got a fire built. One damn thing after another.

The world shrank away to toys when you looked down from the
mountain. The world faded to pale colors, and the mountain be-
came vivid, rocks and evergreen, and more rocks, as if the two
worlds hadn't a chance of existing together, and you traded one for
the other. All of Shamesey would have been thumbnail-sized if you
could see it from here--but Danny couldn't. A piece of the moun-
tain was in the way.
    And they had to walk a lot more. The horses couldn't carry them
as fast as they could walk. Cloud's back got tired, and Cloud like
the other horses let a rider know when he'd had enough.
    So they hiked, carrying the baggage, which the horses wouldn't
carry. The Hallanslakers might be scum, but there was no way even
stupid scum could argue with their horses.
    An elbow arrived out of nowhere, knocked the wind out of him
for a second. He bent and Quig gave him a knee for his thoughts-
<mad Quig> and <Harper mad> was all through the ambient of a
sudden, then <bite,> as Cloud let out a fighting squall and lunged
at Quig.
    Quig's horse--then all the horses--dived at Cloud, pushing him
to the edge as he fought back.
    Then: <Quiet water, > somebody was sending, and <blood> was
equally strong in the ambient--the Hallanslakers grabbing horses
by mind and mane as fast as they could, as with his feet on the
eroding road edge, he got a grip on Cloud's mane and got through
Cloud's anger in a frantic effort. <Danny falling. Danny falling,
Cloud going forward a step. Breathing quietly. Danny and Cloud.
Danny and Cloud .... >
    His heart was going like a hammer, altitude and panic balled up
together in his chest. Air came so short his vision went black at the
edges. Couldn't get a breath. Couldn't do anything but hold on to
Cloud, unsure where his feet were, how close they were to a fatal
fall.
  Harper was sending <anger. Gun firing.>



RIDER AT THE GATE              ~       23 7

    Then Harper said, with absolute coldness, from where he was
standing, between them and his own horse--"You keep that horse
in line, kid. You hear me. You keep your damn noise down, and you
keep that horse quiet or I'll shoot him. No warning next time. If he
starts a fight I'll shoot him."
    Cloud was mad enough to go at Harper's throat--Danny felt the
muscles bunch, and he leaned against Cloud's chest, got a hand on
his nose and pressed on the nostrils the way a senior rider had told
him was a last-ditch way to get a horse's attention. Air was short
enough as was--he shorted Cloud what there was despite Cloud's
instinctive duck of the head, kept a hold so Cloud had to drag him
or listen, and, panting and shaking, <Danny scared,> he sent with
no effort at all. <Cloud stopping. Cloud standing with Danny--
edge of road. Rocks below. Edge of road, Cloud standing still/>
    Cloud quieted, slowly, and Danny let up the pressure on his
nose. Cloud felt <pain> at his shoulder--the skin was torn there,
black hide glistening with blood, and Danny hugged him and got
him to stand still. He was shaking so he could hardly get his own
breath. He believed <Harper shooting. Nighthorse falling in rocks.
Narrow road. Men with guns.> Nighthorses didn't do well with fu-
ture ideas. <Men shooting> hit Cloud's mind and meant a fight,
Danny began to figure that, and held on to a fistful of mane with
all the shaky strength and breath he had.
    "No. No, Cloud. Quiet down. Quiet." The rest of the party
started on their way, <men walking with the horses. Cloud walking
with Danny, quiet clouds, white, peaceful clouds... >
    Jonas had tried to tell him he was being a fool. He hadn't lis-
tened. He wasn't doing things right; at some basic level he wasn't
doing what the other riders did. <Cloud in danger. >
    Cloud believed him, and threw his head and snorted, looking for
<men with guns. Wanting fight, wanting kill-->
    Harper looked back at them, and Danny pressed his hand hard
on Cloud's nose, saying aloud, "Quiet, quiet," because he couldn't
think straight through his panic.
    Everybody else had their horses quiet. They were scum, but they
got their horses quieted down. It was just him and Cloud that
stayed on the edge of violence. He didn't know why. He wanted to



238--'--'~        C.J. Cherryh

know, but Cloud couldn't tell him. Cloud was barely willing to
stay with him.
    "Come on," he pleaded with Cloud. <Cloud with ears up. Cloud
cheerful. >
  Not likely.
    He carefully let go of Cloud's nose, wanting <Cloud walking
quietly, easily beside Danny.> He walked, kept imaging it, tried to
remember <Jonas talking to him.>
    <Jonas talking about elbows and knees.> That was when you
were riding. That wasn't any good, and he couldn't remember the
rest of it.
    He tried to slow his breathing despite the thin air. He tried not
to shake. That was harder. But Cloud didn't do anything else rash,
at least--Cloud had calmed enough the bitten spot was hurting,
one of those spots Cloud couldn't reach to lick, so Danny got into
his pack while he walked and found the drying-powder, took his
glove off long enough to pat a little onto Cloud's hide.
      It made a white and red spot on Cloud's shoulder and, dammit,
it was going to scar. It made him <mad.>  And Cloud got upset.
    Shut up, he said to himself then, desperately wanting <quiet.>
Jonas had said it was his fault Cloud got upset. And he'd just done
it; he'd just set Cloud off.
    So he concentrated on being quiet, on <Cloud walking quietly.
Jonas saying, <Elbows not moving. Knees quiet. No extra mo-
tions. >
    Hard to do when you were walking with a batch of scum, but he
could, he had to ....
    Quig didn't react. It was stupid of him: he had to stop thinking
thoughts like that--but Quig didn't hear him: the horses up ahead
were noisy in the ambient, still <mad,> and Cloud's contribution
was all <Danny on road, Danny upset .... >
    He walked with his hand on Cloud's shoulder, fervently thinking
<spring grass, evergreens. Nice-smelling evergreens> and then not
touching Cloud at all, trying to hold him just by thinking of trees.
  Their own share of the ambient stayed quiet, Cloud just think-


RIDER AT THE GATE              ~       23 9

ing about <road ahead, nighthorses, strangers,> and Danny: <ever-
greens. >
    Then: <Danny being quiet. Danny's body walking, no more mo-
tion than walking needed, just enough motion, no more, every step
quiet. No elbows. No bad-boy stuff, not Shamesey street-stuff. Just
walking on gravel road. Machine shop: Papa's grease-stained fingers
lining up the gears of a machine, no wobble, no play, everything
right in line and smooth, the way papa knew it had to go. Efficient,
papa saying of an engine. No work but what produces power.
Kitchen: mama's brushwork on a chair arm, laying down paint, the
outermost few hairs on the brush making the line right down the
edge of the design, absolutely calm and sure in mama's thin fingers.
One long stroke. Mama's little finger, bracing the whole hand so
the brush could only stroke so far at a time, mama's hand knowing
just exactly where to touch to make the next stroke. Papa's hand
turning a set-screw, feeling exactly how far.
    He couldn't do what mama's fingers did. He couldn't feel the
set-point that papa felt.
    <Papa saying, "You're rushing it. Feel the wear-point. Listen to
the motor. Listen to the motor." Papa hitting his ear, enough to
sting. "Listen, Danny. Hear it? Hear it change?">
    He hadn't heard it then. He'd lied and said yes. But he listened
instead of talking. That was the best he could do, then.
  <Jonas saying, "You keep him agitated. Don't twitch.">

Burn got him there, bit by slow bit--Burn even managed not to
drop him in the mud, passing by the isolated brush as the land
began to look healthier, higher up, westward along the road: the
wind blew too strong and too cold for open country, even with the
slicker and a dry blanket to break the cold. Guil held out, much as
he longed just to stop and rest and try an open-country camp; he
told himself he could hang on, he could make it, he could last just
another hour on Burn's back--Burn hadn't complained yet of carry-
ing him, and Burn would let him know when he'd become a load.
    Then the topping of a hill showed them not just scattered brush
but real trees where the rougher ground began and where the road


?

240    ~          C.J. Cherryh

began to rise. Even Burn thought he could hold out longer, for
<big fire> and <bacon> and <sweet grass.>
    Burn got him to a place deep in the dripping shadow of ever-
greens, next a stand of quakesilvers and the edge of the wood where
redleaf grew, gone to hollow, pithy stems in autumn, the seedpods
all scattered.
    Those stalks were what he wanted. He slid down, sat down, un-
planned, in a hard landing on his backside on the needle-carpet,
with the rifle and all the gear. It sent a jolt from his tailbone to the
top of his skull and down to his eyes, and blinded him for a mo-
ment.

    Unfair, he thought. The pain was entirely unfair, after all the
rest. But he was here, he'd seen what he needed to see, even if it
took a moment for his eyes to clear and bear the daylight again. He
sat still, tucked up into a huddle of knees and slicker and pack, the
rifle tucked up with him, and imaged, amid the pain, <redleaf
stalks, Burn bringing redleaf stalks,> which he could have gotten
up and done, as soon as his head cleared, which might happen in a
while--but, hell, Burn could have <bacon> soon. There'd be <fire
in the redleaf stalks.> Burn could do it. <Wonderful horse. Beauti-
ful horse bringing redleaf stalks to Guil. >
    Burn went over and got <nasty, mouth-prickly brown stalk,>
and brought it to him and dropped it on the ground in front of
him. Burn pawed it with a three-toed foot, head lowered, <looking
for fire in the stalk,> but Burn didn't find it.
    <Burn bringing another stalk,> Gull imaged. God knew what
Burn thought in Burn's different world, maybe that he was looking
for the right stalk, so Burn went and dragged back another of the
man-tall stalks. And another.
     And another, under Guil's insistence. His head had cleared
 enough that he could see. He broke them up in chunks, split them
 with his thumbnail to expose the pith, not trusting himself with
 the bootknife. Burn nosed into the pile of stalks, still doubtful.
     Guil got out the pocket lighter, flicked the wheel, far faster than
 the burning-glass, more reliable with the broken cloud overhead--
 and Burn jerked his head back as a little flame jumped from it to
 the redleaf pith.


RIDER AT THE GATE              ~       241

     He fed his tiny fire more redleaf pith, and then redleaf stalk, and
 a small pile of only moderately wet evergreen needles swept from
 off the ground around him.
     <Burn breaking down quakesilver deadwood,> Guil sent, imag-
 ing the quakesilver grove near them. <Burn dragging deadwood
 back to Guil and fire. >
     The headache was still killing him. The pants hadn't dried, he
 was icy chill from the hips down, he hadn't felt anything at all in
 his feet in at least an hour and the wind was kicking up. But it
 helped to have something to do. And his fingers at least could be
 warm in the tiny flame, so long as the wind didn't scatter his work,
 or another spate of rain come and drown it.
    Burn knocked the deadfall down. Burn was good at destruction.
Burn forgot what he was supposed to do enjoying destroying the
tree, Guil supposed, and re-imaged <bringing the wood,> and
<bacon.> As the preachers' tempter to evil and corruption, Guil
thought in the extraneity of delirium, Burn was remarkably easily
distracted. < Wood, > he imaged, "dammit .... "
    It arrived. At least half of it did, the stick Burn carried dragging
other brush with it in a haphazard string. He wanted Burn to tram-
ple it where he dropped it. Burn wouldn't. Burn went back to get
more wood, having figured the rest of it belonged with this part.
    So Guil cracked up the sticks he could reach and stuck them in
the feeble fire. And cracked others, the bark, the ragged pieces,
whatever there was.
    Burn brought him a live quakesilver branch with the last sodden
autumn leaves still on, but, hell, by now the fire could handle the
sap-rich wood. He threw in whatever Burn brought and the fire
grew. The heat grew. He felt it against his soaked knees.
    And faithful to his promise, with <Burn bringing wood,> Guil
hauled out <pan> and <bacon,> and put it on to cook. He needed
more wood. Burn wanted more than one bit of bacon. It seemed a
workable bargain.

A second supper--was baked potatoes and sausage, which took no
thought, no effort, and nobody in Tarmin camp was much inter-
ested in food. Tara ate. She didn't taste it. A quiet, worried day, it


242    ~          C.J. Cherryh

had been. She supposed that she ought to report to the village that
Chad and Vadim were still out, but the village was wrapped up in
its own grim business over the blacksmith's murder, and there was
still the chance--still the chance--that the boys would turn up be-
fore she had to explain to the marshal.
    She took potato and grain mash with sausage bits out to the
horses and listened into the gathering dark, standing between
Flicker and Luisa's horse, patting Mina's Skip on an insistent nose
as she set down the pan.
    Then she did something she'd never willfully done, and drew
Flicker's attention first--that was effortless. But she wanted to hear
<outside,> and asked for it.
    Flicker heard the usual little spooks around the edges. Tara kept
listening, putting her attention out to the ambient, and nudged
into Green; and still it was spooks, a lorry-lie, maybe.
    Skip's attention came in without much noise at all, and of a sud-
den they were reaching far, far out, listening for <Quickfoot and
Jumper, Vadim and Chad. >
    What came instead was a disturbance of other minds, and she
tried to shut it out, but it was noisy, much too noisy: <Boy with
gun. Crowd in the village. >
    She didn't know what that was. She didn't like it. She didn't
want panic in the village, some villager picking up on her query
outside the walls.
    She drew away from the horses, wished <silence, still branches,>
and walked completely out and away from the den.
    Not a ripple in the ambient from Vadim and Chad. But, she said
to herself, the likelihood was that the boys would come riding back
with some gruesome story they truly didn't want to take to the
grieving family. That in itself could keep the boys out a little
longer--if they found something they couldn't get quiet in their
own minds: a rider didn't put as first priority the friends waiting
and worrying about him. A rider had loyalty to his horse first; his
actual working partner second; his partner's horse third; his respon-
sibilities to his hire somewhere after that; and his lovers wherever
they crossed the ranks of partners or friends--
  Which meant neither Vadim nor Chad would desert the other


RIDER AT THE GATE              ~       243

out there, where two horses might stand off what one horse couldn't,
and where two minds might find a calm one mind couldn't recover.
    But it damned sure left three women in Tarmin camp pacing the
floor and sweating out the hours, while reasons for them to hold
back bad news at least from the Goss family had evaporated on a
gunshot: the Goss family was shattered. Chad and Vadim couldn't
know that unless they heard her sending. And there was no sign
they had.
    The sky was headed for its second full dark, and cloud was mov-
ing in, girding Rogers Peak now with a gray, impenetrable ceil-
ing-heralding earlier dark, the chance of snow, and a chance of
storm, if that cloud just kept coming, as well it could--this eastern
face of the mountain had better weather, but it gave you surprises
you didn't take lightly.
    The shadows had already gone blue and vague. Tara took the by
now well-worn trail toward the porch, not quickly. But the feeling
of harm was in the air.
    She walked as far as the wooden steps, had her foot on the first
when the summons bell rang a gentle request for attention on the
village side, and the rider gate opened.
  Townsmen came in, the mayor and the marshal.
    Mina and Luisa had heard the bell. They came out onto the
porch, hugging sweatered arms against the cold as the delegation
trudged closer across the cracking, potholed ice.
  "Need to talk to Vadim," the marshal said.
  Tara took a deep breath. "Not here."
  "Where is he?"
  "Out looking for the Goss kid."
  "He didn't say--"
  "There wasn't a need to say."
  "Not a need!"
      "He's doing his job, that's all. He and Chad. They're looking
around out there. What can I do for you?"  "Talk," the mayor said. "Inside."
    Light was fading fast. A wind was getting up. Tara nodded, un-
certain in her capacity as senior rider--it was unprecedented that
village authorities should ever have the urge to cross through that


244      ~        C.J. Cherryh

gate unless it was something involving the whole village-rider
agreement, but she nodded, and Luisa and Mina went inside as she
preceded the mayor and the marshal up the steps and into the
lamplight.
  "Tea?" Mina asked.
    "We'll make this brief," the mayor said. Bay was his name, and
by his manner he didn't intend to sit, take off his coat, or ask any
hospitality. "We've got a meeting going on right now. Judicial
meeting. Andy Goss' son shot him. The older boy. Carlo. He doesn't
deny it."
    "There were circumstances," Tara began, but the mayor cut her
off.
    "The whole village knows the circumstances. The boy hated his
father."
    "Loved his father," Tara said, though she wasn't quite sure she
understood love as villagers had it. It felt the same. "It was his sister
he hated."
  The mayor and the marshal didn't look impressed, just nervous.
    "This is a bad time to be down to three riders," the mayor said.
"This is a real bad time."
    "You can't find anything out sitting inside the walls." She found
herself unwillingly defending Vadim's decision, and had a sudden
dark thought: Damn. Damn/ They're hunting it. That's what
they're doing.
  "No word of the road crew either?"
     "No word," Tara said, "no word from Vadim and Chad, either.
 I've listened."
     The mayor looked as if he'd swallowed something unpalatable.
 The village couldn't tell the riders how to run their affairs. They
 weren't obliged to like it. Or to accept how riders knew things.
     "Is there a possibility," the marshal, Delaterre, asked, "that the
 girl was murdered? That the boy had something to do with that?"
     "Absolutely not." Tara was appalled. "The boy's not a killer. I
 can swear to that. Brionne, on the other hand--"
     "Possible that the boy enticed her outside, knowing the danger
 out there right now, in the hope she wouldn't--"
  "Marshal, the girl's a spoiled brat--she sneaked out the gates.


RIDER AT THE GATE              ~       245

She knew the danger out there same as anybody over five. The boy
and Goss himself were in our camp looking for her."
  "Goss hit the boys," Mina said. "Goss beat them."
    She was twice shocked. Mina never spoke her mind in front of vil-
lagers.
    "There's no evidence," the marshal said. "The wife is testifying
against the boy--"
    "The wife helped," Mina said shortly. "They beat hell out of the
boys. Brionne could do no wrong."
    The horses weren't anywhere near. The ambient through the
camp was all but dead still, quiet, hushed. Even villagers might
feel it.
  "Will you give a deposition to that effect?" the mayor asked.
    "I swear." Mina held her hand up. "I swear right here. You're
witnesses. You can swear for me in court. A rider doesn't need to go
there."
    There was silence in the room, just the crackle of the fire. The
rattle of a shutter in a rising wind.
    "They'd no business," the mayor said, "the senior riders going off
the way they did. The village is their first job."
    Tara frowned and plunged ahead. "I'll tell you something, mayor
Bay. There's something out there scared hell out of my horse. But
the Goss girl went out on her own, looking for a horse she heard.
That's what happened."
    "We're not sure," the marshal said. "You said it. The boys hated
the sister."
    They were wanting to think ill of the boys. They had their case
made. She didn't need the ambient to see that. And it turned a cor-
ner she hadn't expected. She stuck her hands in her pockets and
waited for clarification.
  "You saw the girl leave?" the marshal asked. "Or not?"
    "Didn't see, didn't hear," Tara said. "We had a sick horse. Mine.
It was too noisy to hear anything in the camp. Not in the village.
Not if that kid was listening to the Wild."
    The mayor and the marshal looked uncomfortable--villagers
didn't want details about the horses, or anything else in the Wild.
They wanted their walls to prevent that.


246    ~          C.J. Cherryh

  "Meaning you wouldn't know. You're guessing."
      "We wouldn't know," Tara said. "That's the point. But footprints
went out the gate."  "Alone?"
    "Goss and his kids all accepted it was the girl." She remembered
queasily that they didn't immediately see in their minds what she
saw. She tried to build the picture for men that didn't see. "The
snow hadn't been tracked. Just the ice-melt from the den roof. The
tracks. The gate being pulled inward made a scraped mark. About
as wide as a girl needed. Tracks going out, about her size feet, no
tracks going back."
  "Where are these tracks?"
  "Gone now. Horses tracked over them, all over out there."
  "That's real convenient," the mayor said.
    "Mayor Bay, there's one way out that gate. Horses had to take it
to go out to look for her. And that's what the boys are doing--
looking for her."
  "Single tracks?"
    "Pointed-toed boots." She had a good mental image of the boys'
feet. Their tracks. Her brain saved things like that. "The boys'
boots are square-toed. The blacksmith's--his were round. These
tracks were smaller and lighter. No rider wears boots like that."
  "Andy Goss identified them?"
    Absolutely no doubt in her mind. "The father had just found
out," Tara said reluctantly, "how much the boys hated the sister.
They were standing near the horses. They heard more than they
wanted to hear about each other. ! was there. I heard it. I couldn't
help hearing."
  "You'd better come across," the marshal said. "Give a deposition,
tOO."
    "I've sworn to things before," Tara said. She didn't like village
justice. And it didn't take a rider's word. "I saw what I saw. And
heard what I heard. I agree with her. Write it. I'll sign your paper."
    "Better you should swear to it over village-side," the mayor said.
"Tonight. Where the village can hear. We want this case disposed.
Feelings are running high over there."
  A damned hurry, Tara thought, and looked at Luisa and Mina,


RIDER AT THE GATE              ~       247

and drew shrugs there. But the Raths, the mother's family, were
damned well-to-do. Deacons of the church. Pillars of the village
council.
  "All of you," the mayor said.
  "Got to get our coats," Luisa said.
    "All right," the marshal said and, with the mayor, headed for the
door and out, no hesitation.
    "What did you mean," Tara asked Mina, an urgent whisper, "the
wife helped, the wi)~ beat the boy? For God's sake, you don't know
that for a fact! --Do you?"
    Mina shrugged. "Goss is dead. What good's it going to do to
shoot the boy, too? He's not a bad kid. Goss beat the boys--and
what was she doing for sixteen years?"
    It was logic. She had to admit that. Save the salvageable. Vil-
lagers couldn't tell truth from untruth in a rider's mind. They could
save the boys. And the Raths weren't going to like it.
    She grabbed her scarf and hat, and went out with Luisa and
Mina, the three of them resolved on a lie, and no horse near to tell
the mayor or the marshal.
    No horse near to tell them what was going on outside, either.
They crossed the icy yard behind the villagers and entered together
through the village-side gate.., it was farther than they liked to
be from the horses, Tara felt it and she felt the same from Luisa and
Mina.
    But they walked, all the same, and heard a commotion out in the
winter cold, saw lanterns lit, and a steamy-breathed crowd gathered
under the lanterns.
    They proved more conspicuous than they liked, as they walked
into that crowd in the mayor's wake, and followed (Tara supposed
they were to follow, and nobody stopped them) all the way to the
porch of the marshal's office and the village lock-up, which was
mostly for midwinter drunks, if they got to breaking up the vil-
lage's single bar.
    This time, though, there was a gathering of the village officers,
the clerk and the justice in front of a lot of the village--men,
women, and children--and now the mayor and the marshal and,
lastly, themselves, up the steps and onto the wooden porch that


248    ~          C.J. Cherryh

fronted the marshal's house and the jail and the court office, that
being all the same building. They'd hung lanterns from the porch-
posts and set a table and a chair between them. The judge sat at the
table. The village clerk sat at a right angle to him, to do writing.
    "Say what you said to us," the marshal said, and Tara couldn't
feel Mina panic, but she saw the flinch. Mina said it again, in a
quiet voice:
  "The kid had cause."
    "Louder," the mayor said, and shouted for quiet, and the judge
bashed the table with a metal hammer and said he wanted quiet in
the hearing. There was the hammer on the judge's table. Lying near
it, jumping when he hammered for order, there were two large-
caliber bullets.
    That was the way it was. Tara was appalled; and she nudged
Mina, saying: "Tell it good."
    So Mina spoke up. "Goss and his wife beat the boys. He could
have killed them. It was real clear. They didn't want Brionne back."
    A woman's voice--Goss' wife, Mindy Rath, Tara saw, off to the
side of the porch: "They did it!" the woman shouted. "They were
always bad boys! They were always a trouble in the house! I want
my Brionne! I want my Brionne! What have you done with her,
what have you done with her, Carlo? You put her outside the gate,
didn't you? You lied to her, you made her go out there!"
    "That's not so," Tara said. The magistrate was pounding with the
hammer, and the bullets fell off onto the porch. The clerk scooped
them up again and put them on the table.
  "Say it again, rider Chang," the marshal said. "Say it louder."
    "I'll say it," Luisa said, and raised her voice. "She's wrong. There
were tracks going alone out the gate! Tara saw them!"
    The crowd broke out in murmurs, in calls of "Liar!" from the
wife, and "Hearken not to the beasts!" from one of the village reli-
gious enthusiasts.
  "Say what you know!" the mayor said. "Rider Chang?"
    People were shouting. The elder boy shouted, too, all but crying,
"I didn't want to shoot him, he made me shoot him!"
  Right then Tara got the same impulse Mina had confessed to;


RIDER AT THE GATE              ~       249

 and drew in a guilty breath, and remembered at the same instant
 that nobody could hear what she thought.
     The judge pounded the table, to no avail, until the marshal fired
 offa gun, into the air and offover the walls.
     "Rider Chang," the judge said. "Ordinance of Incorporation, Ar-
 ticle Twelve, a rider can't take oath. But you can give an unsworn
 deposition. What did you observe?"
     "I talked to Brionne Goss in the horse den this morning. I saw
 her tracks, alone, going out the gate. I saw, at sunset, Andy Goss,
 Carlo, there, and Randy, coming in to ask about her whereabouts."
   "Fornicator/" the religious yelled.
    "--and those tracks." Tara raised her voice, thinking only of the
boys now, the way Mina had thought, and with the queasy notion
that she could lie or tell the truth on this side of the wall and the
minds in front of her wouldn't hear the difference. "Were only of
the girl. Goss identified them and I personally heard Goss threaten
the boys, I personally heard the boys complain of beatings and
blame unfairly placed on them."  "Liar!" the wife shouted.
    "Mr. Goss agitated my horse with his behavior. I advised him
and his sons quit the camp for their own protection. Vadim and
Chad went out the gate in search of Brionne Goss. They aren't
back. They'd promised to come straight back. I can personally re-
port--" There was a rising murmur and she outshouted it with
what she'd decided the town had damned well better know, and she
needed to be sure the town knew. Two nights and no word from
Vadim and Chad meant the odds weren't in their favor, and the
Gosses had already made fatal mistakes. "I can personally report,
there's something out there that scared my horse and me. Evidently
Brionne heard it and didn't have the sense to be scared."
    "You liar!" the mother started shouting--and nothing came
through the ambient. It was a curious numbness.
    "She wanted the horses!" Tara shouted back. "And thanks to the
fact she didn't tell us, and she went out that gate on her own, and
without our advice, she's probably met something we could have
wished she hadn't. It wasn't the Goss boys' fault. I saw the father
beating the boys; I saw it in his mind and I saw it in theirs!"


250    ~          C.J. Cherryh

    "Blasphemy's not court evidence!" the religious yelled. "You
can't blaspheme against the almighty human God and call it evi-
dence!''
    "God," Tara muttered in disgust, and cast a look at the judge,
who hammered the table furiously.
    "She is a liar!" the mother screamed. "She was luring our Brionne
to perversions! They're responsible!"
    "Then you can go to bloody hell!" Mina yelled. "There's a rogue
horse out there! Your precious Brionne went out to it! If she's lucky,
it didn't take her! If she's not--God knows what we're in for! So if
you want to winter here without riders, you're on your way,
woman! The road crew's not back and the two that went out look-
ing for your daughter were supposed to be back in a couple of
hours--yesterday! So go to hell! We'll take care of our own, if that's
where we stand!"
    People were shouting over the last that Mina had to say, people
who were scared about the rogue and scared as hell to have the rid-
ers offended, people yelling about God and blasphemy, going
'quickly from words to shoving and pushing--the judge was get-
ting no attention from anyone with his hammering; and Tara
grabbed Mina by the arm to get her away from the edge of the
porch before rocks went flying.
  "Take it easy, for God's sake!"
    "I'll be out that gate! I'm not trading us for these fools!" Mina
jerked away, headed for the side porch steps, and Tara grabbed her
again.
  "Mina, use your head!"
      "I've used my head, I've waited. If you're with them ahead of us,
maybe that's your choice, Tara, but it's not mine."  "Mina!"
    Mina had jerked to be free, and Tara jerked hard back, realizing
in the moment she did it that there was an ambient now. It had
come flooding around them subtle as body-temperature water--
you didn't know it was there, and it was, and it ran over the nerves
and stole the breath. "Mina, dammit!" Crowd-noise was every-
where. Minds were everywhere. A gunshot went off, right next


RIDER AT THE GATE              ~       251

 them, but that was a gun on their side, the marshal firing his pistol
 off.
     "Shut up.l" the marshal yelled into a sudden silence, and Tara
 dragged Mina back to Luisa's spot near the rear of the porch. The
 marshal was yelling about law and order and how they'd better lis-
 ten to the judge or he was going to start making arrests.
     "You can't argue against almighty God," somebody yelled; and
 the judge ruled the man in contempt and fined him fifty on the
 spot. Other howls went up over that, and the mother started
 yelling about justice again--
     "Shut up!" the judge shouted, and banged the hammer, until it
 had to dent the table top. "It's clear we've got witnesses missing."
     "You can't take testimony--" --from riders, the religious was
 clearly about to argue, but the hammer came down again.
     "Another fifty! I say I'm not finding cause for a trial until after
 we've got all the principals, and they're not here. Marshal, lock
 these boys up until somebody--"
But the words faded out. There was just <dark, snow, wind. >
Tara felt <Mina slipping from her hand,> felt <Skip and Flicker
and Green> in angry distress.., felt <hundreds of minds.., shoot-
ing and not-shooting, panic and dark and screaming... >
    "Mina!" Luisa screamed, halfway down the steps, in pursuit of
her partner, but Tara grabbed the railing and got focus enough to
will <calm water. Quiet water. Flicker. Quiet water. Quiet. Quiet
air. >
    "Damnation!" a resisting mind cried, but the ambient was gib-
bering nonsense, <fear-fear-fear> and something more.
    Tara needed the railing to keep her balance, and she fought with
that noisy mind, with a deliberate <behave/>
    A scream. Shocked quiet, after. She could feel the railing wobble
under her gloves. She looked up at the marshal with a sense of des-
peration, her partners having cleared a space for themselves in the
yard. The ambient was complete chaos.
    "Something's wrong," she said, maybe louder than she should--
her ears weren't hearing: her mind was, and she felt she had to
shout. "Keep that gate closed. If the kid comes back and wants
in--don't listen. Keep that gate closed/"


252      ~       C..J. Cherryh

    Her partners went toward the camp. She had to be there. She was
the only one who might argue Mina out of doing something foolish,
but they were <wanting the camp, wanting quiet dark, wanting
Skip and Green,> and she suddenly could hear Flicker--<wanting
Tara. Wanting fight, wanting kick. >
    Bang/ something went at the Little Gate. Bang/ of nighthorse
hooves.
    She didn't know what the marshal answered. She overtook her
younger partners on the run, the crowd seething with questions
and fears of the unknown outside--more than one voice was raised
in screaming panic.
  No comfort existed in the ambient.
    <Dark. The going-apart. Flicker wanting through gate. Want-
ing Tara. Danger/Now/>


    Chapter
' XV

THERE WERE STORIES--HOW SOMETIMES IN SPRING THEY FOUND
people frozen on the mountains, just the way they'd sat down, and
when the wind blew the fire out, Danny began to fear some party
coming up the road with the thaw would find them all that way in
a melting snowbank, still huddled around dead sticks.
    "Maybe the son of a bitch froze," Quig said, hugging one hand
under his arm for protection.
    But Harper swore at everybody and Watt kept working, using a
lighter, the lot of them using their bodies and holding a tarp to
shield the fire until it took.
    Stupid place to camp, Danny thought, while he contributed his
own skinny body to the effort and held a corner of the tarp.
    They'd found a less windy place a little downland, and thanks to
Harper's pushing everyone, they'd ended up at the edge of dark
camped in hellish cold, on the high uphill of the road, where the
wind could get a run at them and the horses had no grazing.
  They'd run both late and tired, slogging ahead at a pace that


254 ~    C.J. Cherryh

taxed both humans and horses, walking and riding by turns--the
last had been walking, the Hallanslakers' horses and Cloud alike
simply refusing to carry weight any farther on the uphill.
    And finally their road had met another road at a rider-stone, way,
way up in the windy cold, where--contrary to expectations of shel-
ter one ought to find at a rider-stone--there wasn't.
    There might still be one fairly close. Maybe even a village--he
wasn't so clear on the distances up here. But the Hallanslakers ei-
ther knew there wasn't a shelter---or they had some reason not to
go find it. Danny didn't ask. He didn't ask anything or question
anything since they'd hit him for no more than thinking. He'd
found he could tuck down and be quiet--and he was so cold he was
brittle. He truly didn't want to be hit right now. He just kept his
grip on the tarp edge and kept as quiet as he could while Harper
and his friends from Hallanslake did whatever seemed reasonable to
people who couldn't go into villages.
    The rebel thought didn't get him hit. He didn't entirely under-
stand why not, except maybe they didn't want to let go of the tarp
to do it.
  And that thought didn't get him hit, either.
    He supposed what he thought wasn't going into the ambient
with any strength at all because the horses were tucked together at
more than a stone's toss distant, in a clump of old bearded ever-
green, where the wind was less--except Cloud, who sulked apart,
but on their lee side, so he had them for a windbreak, Cloud being
no fool.
    There was a phone line near them--they were making the fire
near a telephone pole, so he knew they were on a main road, maybe
the Tarmin road itself, and definitely, in that case, not far from real
shelter. He hadn't seen phone lines all the way up, and he remem-
bered the Anveney road was the one--
    But he didn't want to think about that road. He just wasn't sure
what road they'd picked up, but there were the phone lines, and it
did go off into Wild in either direction.
    Stuart might be real near. But he didn't want to think about Stu-
art at all, except he hoped Stuart had met up with Jonas and they


RIDER AT THE GATE              ~       255

were all out there in the bushes this very moment setting up to
blow Harper and his friends to hell in a crossfire.
  He really, really hoped Jonas wasn't too mad at him.
    He cast a furtive look at Harper, wondering that nobody had
heard him, himself and Watt being in body contact at the moment.
Maybe they were all thinking about the fire. Maybe everybody was
too busy. Maybe Cloud was too cold to image. He hoped Cloud was
all right out there in the cold.
    But certainly he'd gotten away with more than he had this after-
noon on the trail when Quig had elbowed him for thinking Quig
was stupid.
  Quig was stupid.
  Quig was really stupid.
  Still no notice.
  Maybe they were just all too tired.
    Maybe God was going to freeze them to death for punishment.
He was in what his mother called bad company, he'd had no ques-
tion of that, and it wasn't God's fault--stupidity had gotten him
here.
    Papa would be disgusted. Papa would have no respect for any of
these men if they walked into his shop, loud and obnoxious, let
alone the fact that they were riders. The men with Harper were
scum. Nobodies, real nobodies. The Hallanslakers--who Harper
was (by what Danny could gather) somehow kin to, or leader of, or
both--thought a lot of things were funny that weren't--and they
were stupid.
    Just damn-all mean, papa would call it. Anybody who was an
outsider to them, like him, was a target, the way Stuart would have
been a target when he'd worked with them. He understood now
how that long ago knife-fight could have started. Stuart wouldn't
have backed down.
    He didn't want to know what they'd think up to do to him now
if there wasn't Harper's glum influence, and if there wasn't Harper
to knock heads when things got too rough. He couldn't figure what
hold Harper had over these men, except they'd wanted to go up that
mountain: they'd egged each other on until they were blind, stupid
tired and the weather turned on them. They'd challenged each


256    ~          C.J. Cherryh

other up that mountain because there was mischief to do, and they
thought it was fun. They were men on the outside, but inside they
were a nest of willy-wisps, all fangs and claws, all mean--he'd
known boys like them in town, and he'd avoided them even before
his father'd yanked him sideways, knocked him on the side of his
head and said he expected brains in his sons and he expected his
sons not to die stupid.
    He'd never heard his father talk like that before and never since.
But he'd remembered.
    Then he'd gone to be a rider and his father didn't talk to him
about virtues at all now.
    He'd not known everything before he left home--but, damn, he
knew his father would have had the insight to have pitched any of
the Hallanslakers and probably Harper out of the shop on first
sight. He didn't know where his father had learned about people
like the boys his father had found him with, but his father had had
them pegged, all right, and he'd gotten the measure of the Hal-
lanslakers in the same way: eager to go up that mountain to do all
the harm they could to Stuart, who'd, by all he could figure, never
done any harm to them personally. About Harper's motives--he
didn't want to think.
    They just had to have a target for their meanness, he guessed, be-
cause if they didn't have one, they just had each other to pick on.
    And that wasn't much fun, since they were too damn stupid to
feel pain.
    He could think that, with his knee right against Quig's. That
was really odd. He thought: Quig's a pig, just to see--not wanting
another elbow in the ribs.
    But he was quiet and secret now--mad; but he'd grown far more
canny in the passing hours. He'd had to be hit a couple of times,
like with papa and the boys--and then, damn, yes, he did learn. He
could keep his thoughts quiet.
  Or Cloud wasn't paying real close attention right now.
    He stole a glance sidelong, saw Cloud about his own business,
nibbling the weeds that still poked up above the snow at road's
edge.
  But Cloud didn't look up.


RIDER AT THE GATE              ~       257

  <Cloud,> he thought.
    But he didn't move his elbows when he thought it, and Cloud
still didn't look up--didn't seem to notice at all.
    Maybe he had a lot better luck being quiet if he wasn't right in
Cloud's convenient view, attracting Cloud's attention. There were
trees in the way. He'd made himself ever so quiet, even wrestling
with the tarp.
    And that led him suddenly, while Watt was swearing at the tarp
and Quig was a slightly less bearlike mass beside him, to the basic
fact that he'd heard a hundred times but never, somehow, gotten
through his head in reality--that he could think anything he liked
if Cloud wasn't in range, and he suddenly realized--astonished--
that the fact that he heard uncommonly far wasn't necessarily all
Cloud's doing. Cloud certainly didn't seem to hear him right now.
    And with that, he acquired a notion of how he got a constant
flow of images from farther than he was supposed to dimbrained
kid that he was, he naturally assumed when people called him noisy
that it was some marvelous special gift he and Cloud had that no-
body else did.
    Special, hell. He fell off his horse and Cloud got into fights: it
wasn't exactly a shining performance on this trek. He'd annoyed
two groups of seniors and nearly gotten shot on the last set-to be-
cause he couldn't calm Cloud down.
    Noise wasn't exactly an advantage if you hadn't any choice
about it.
    And Jonas had said that kids did it--and seniors didn't--except
Wesson, who needed to because of who he was.
    So it wasn't exactly a special gift, it was a special problem kids
tended to have.
    And if it ever was useful, this getting Cloud's attention at a
range at which most people didn't have constant talk with their
horses, it wasn't always useful, witness the situation with Harper
this afternoon.
    When he was on the outs with people, he wanted Cloud's atten-
tion; he just--wasn't comfortable with people the way he was with
Cloud, not even with his friends anymore, since the new had worn


258    ~          C.J. Cherryh

 off him being a rider. Cloud was his friend. Cloud didn't carp and
 criticize--
    Maybe Cloud ought to criticize. Maybe somebody should have
done what his father did and what Jonas did and what Quig had
done--like tell him he was fouling up, mad as it made him. He
was doing wrong with Cloud. Jonas had tried to tell him, but he'd
been too righteous then to believe it.
    Elbows still, Jonas had said. Knees still. Quit looking at Cloud,
which he began to realize was almost impossible for him--every
two seconds he was reaching for Cloud, wanting to know where
Cloud was, like a toddler running after his mother.
    Which kept Cloud's attention all the time on him and nervous.
Other riders had seen it. He'd been the only one not to see it--and
it turned out so damn simple: if he could just hold his body still
and not demand Cloud's constant attention, he could hate the sons
of bitches as hard as he wanted. Horses could hear humans, just
barely, but humans didn't hear well enough to hear each other--
he'd known that, sort of, as a townsman kid knew anything, even
before Wesson had told him. And what that really meant had just
slid off him as one of those details like long division, which he
never liked so he never bothered to think about.
    Stupid kid, he said to himself. Smarted himself right into a real
mess. Didn't need to know things. Didn't like to know things. Real
damned bright--now he was in a situation where he wished to God
he had listened to everything his seniors had tried to tell him. He
swore he'd go back to mama, if God gave him another chance, and
ask her to tell him again about long division. And he'd ask Jonas
Westman to tell him all the things he was doing wrong, if God just
let him and Cloud get out of this.
    But thinking all those things, he didn't move. He didn't twitch.
The tarp fluttered, but he didn't bob around controlling it, he just
bit his lips and tried to keep his arms still as if he had the same
strength as Watt beside him.
    The fire caught, streaming sideways in the wind. "Hold the
damn tarp," Watt ordered everybody. "Hang on, damn you."
    On one level he was fascinated with what Watt was doing. He'd
never seen a fire built in a gale-force wind the way Watt was doing


RIDER AT THE GATE              ~       259

it, with a hastily thrown-up wall of wood, to which he figured the
tarp was a help, not a necessity--and he wanted to see the tech-
nique. They'd failed it once and had to take it apart; but Watt, now
that his inside kindling was set and lit, started assembling his
small-grade wood inside his three-sided shield of bigger pieces,
working fast so that the fire would stay lit--he stuck tinder and
smallest kindling in out of the wind, shielding it with the edge of
his hand the second after he set in a larger stick. There was never a
hesitation in what he picked next, as if he'd had the sizes of the
sticks in his head all along. Fast as he was working, every stick fit
as tight as could be to its neighbor, so that, just with the irregulari-
ties of the wood, the fire could breathe; but the wind couldn't get
at the fire to blow it out.
    Watt stuffed his next grade of sticks in with one hand while
with the other hand he began to take bigger wood from the stack--
he'd built the inner frame, and it was burning. The outer frame was
a chimney now, and the fire held--until, Danny thought, the really
big, last-an-hour stuff could go in after the firepit was full of coals
and able to handle it, and when it wasn't so prone to throw sparks
on the wind. They were scum, but they were careful scum: nobody
burned a forest down.
  Watt was scum. But he had an amazing skill.
    "More wood," Watt said. "That wind's going to burn a pile of it
tonight."
    The others grumbled about it, but they moved off. Danny, being
still, followed them with his eyes, thinking--
    But Harper hadn't gone. Harper sat with his arms on his knees
staring at him, and it was Watt himself who went to gather wood
with Quig.
  "I really wouldn't," Harper said darkly.
  "Get more wood?" Danny played stupid. Harper didn't buy.
  "You know what I mean. Go ahead. Run. See what happens."
    He didn't want Cloud involved in his thoughts. Not moving at
all took willpower. He stared at Harper, thinking that Harper
might be asking himself why Danny Fisher was so quiet this
evening.


260    ~          C.J. Cherryh


    He wasn't faster than a bullet in the back. That was certain. And
Harper had served notice he was watching.
    But he got up slowly after a moment, left the fireside and joined
the men gathering wood, choosing at the same time to move as far
away from the horses as he could, into the teeth of a freezing wind.
He started gathering up deadfall, to prove his honest intentions.
    But he knew now, all but bubbling over with the discovery, that
he could keep quiet enough to have private thoughts, he could do
what the senior riders did--and he resolved then and there that he
was going to leave these men in a snowbank if he got a chance.
    He didn't know woodcraft the way the long riders did, that was
his most serious handicap--like, right now, he would dearly love to
know whether, say, common wood fungus was at least moderately
poisonous. He could get plenty of it off the deadfalls, and he'd, oh,
so gladly put it in their tea, and fake drinking his.
    But if it turned out to taste too strong or if it wasn't debilitating
fast enough, they'd shoot him; and they'd shoot Cloud, because
Cloud would go for their throats in an eyeblink if things blew up.
    So that wasn't a good idea. Whatever he did, he had to make
good on fast, and it couldn't give them a target. Like maybe if the
snow got worse.
    Maybe if a blizzard came. The middle of the night. He could slip
away.
    There had to be riders up here, maybe riders who wouldn't take
to what Harper or Jonas or anybody intended. He wasn't alone up
here. There were whole villages full of people up here--and they
had to be close now that they'd come up on the phone lines, where
Stuart had to come--
  God, shut that thought down. Fast.
    But that the Hallanslakers were willing to camp out in the cold
like this, when there were supposed to be shelters with free food
and firewood, as he understood it, argued to him that they were
scared of Jonas. Harper or somebody had been thinking about Jonas
earlier--even seniors were sometimes noisy. Harper had been
thinking about Jonas and about Stuart--and it. hadn't been pleas-
ant thoughts.
  If Harper thought Jonas and his friends were holed up in a shelter



RIDER AT THE GATE              ~       261

for the night, or, probably worse from Harper's point of view, if
Jonas had gotten up here first, he'd have gotten to shelter. That
could be the reason Harper had them out here shivering in the
cold: they were scared to shoot it out with Jonas at a shelter where
Jonas had cover, and maybe get shot at themselves. That was too
much like a fair fight.
    And they were going to go on skulking in the brush and the
cold until they did find a place Harper didn't mind shooting.
    He wasn't acutely scared anymore: he'd reached a stomach-
upsetting kind of terror he could live with--but trouble was,
now that he'd figured out how to be quiet--he didn't know how
to do anything else but be quiet without giving everything he
thought away; and he didn't know at what moment something
was going to scare Cloud and upset the balance.
    At which point Harper might decide he wasn't any use finding
Stuart, and that he was a liability among them if they ran into
Jonas.
    He stayed out at the perimeter as long as he dared, so long his
fingers were growing numb through the gloves. He gathered up a
fair armful of wood and followed Watt back to the fire. He dumped
it down and squatted down on the edge of the wind-blown heat,
chafing warmth back into his fingers, avoiding Harper's eyes.
Harper had never left the fire.
    In the same moment he felt Cloud's attention skitter over him--
Cloud just brushing by his thoughts--and he thought of the fire
and of <Cloud resting> and <them making supper. Biscuits.> He
liked the biscuits. They weren't as good as mama's. But they were
going to taste good on a cold night. Cloud was going to like the
biscuits. He ought to tell them use less soda. That was the taste
they could use less of. He'd asked his mama, on one of his visits
home, and she'd been making biscuits at the stove and he'd stood
right there and paid real careful attention to the measures and
everything she did, because he really missed those biscuits.
    He stuck a little wood in the fire, not too much. They wanted
less flame than coals in this wind. Nothing to carry into the trees.
Hope they had a decent meal tonight. Watt scorched everything.




262      ~        C.J. Cherryh

Always on the edge of catching the pan afire. He was better.
<Mama saying-->
    Close, close, close, he mustn't look up. Little nervousness among
the horses--they could solve it. He didn't need to look up.
  <Mama in the kitchen. Smell of bread and paint. Home smells.>
    <Mama saying everybody needed to know how to cook--"You
might marry somebody who can't," mama'd said.
    <Them eating their own cooking. Burned.> Mama said they'd
have to. So they got better at it. Even Sam.
    <Baking and paint smells, all mixed up together. > Mama would
buy some scuffed up table or chair from a shop or another house-
hold and do a little sanding and fixing and painting.
    Then she'd trade it to a store or direct to an individual for more
than she paid for it.
    Or sometimes she just did refurbishings for the same owner--
any of which paid money that came in handy before he started
bringing in money and fixed the place up.
    Mama would be sitting there with the bread baking, all the
while she'd be painting flowers on a chair--she liked that part---or
sanding and swearing--she always swore when she sanded--<her
hair trailing around her face, and flour on her chin. >
    There was always some piece of furniture in the apartment that
you weren't supposed to touch or sit on, and it always made his
nose run when she'd been painting.
    But the bread-smell was over all of it, <smell of home. Smell of
comfortable things. >
  Harper never stopped watching him. Just watching.

They'd warned the village. They'd advised everybody lock the doors
and the shutters and stay inside no matter what. People had guns.
They had their storm-shutters locked.
    The rogue-feeling went away and it came back, maybe two,
maybe three hours into the night, as if it was feeling them over,
and it wasn't a thing anybody could catch with human senses. You
didn't know when you'd started being afraid. You just knew by the
prickling terror behind you that it was there again. A shutter bang-


better.

among

.aells. >
-"You

 :hey'd

 ,ould

  )use-

lore

:ed

he

 Dr

 .~r

RIDER AT THE GATE              ~       263

ing in the wind. Rattle of sleet against the roof. A sense of pres-
ence...
  Something was near the walls.
    "It's Vadim," Mina murmured as the three of them, sitting by
their fireside in the shelter, listened. "God, it's Vadim."
    "No!" Tara said sharply, because it was coming by way of their
own horses now, she could hear them, could hear Flicker take up
that <white, white, white> refrain. Mina shoved her chair back and
Luisa grabbed her arm, arguing with her not to go outside, to stay
with them.
    "That thing could be anywhere on the mountain. It's no good
going out there. God, it's echoing in every creature in the woods,
can't you hear it? That's what it's doing--that's why it's so damn
loud--"
    The whole mountain seemed to echo it, loneliness, mourning
over something lost. It echoed failures, or things undone, a terrible
melancholy. It gnawed, it burrowed, it ran, it flew, it crawled--it
slavered with winter-hunter and ached in rut and leapt along the
ground, aching with loneliness and fear--
Then it dissolved, flew apart in screaming rage.
<White-white-white.> Flicker was still there. Skip and Green
were, Tara could feel them through Flicker's noisy presence and,
Luisa's advice to the contrary, she went and snatched up her coat.
  "Tara," Luisa protested.
  "I'm fine, dammit, Flicker's not. I'm going out there."
  "We'll all go," Mina said.
    So that was the way it was--they went out to the porch and
down into the nightbound yard. Snow was gusting on a fierce and
biting wind.
    Then a presence came to them, <running, running in the wind.
Holding tight. Snow stinging the face. >
  <Damned fool,> Tara thought. <You little, damned.., fool >
    She lost her balance--slipped and skidded on the ice. Mina had
her arm.
    A presence so... lost.., so idly strayed from reality.., came
flitting through her senses.
  <Flowers and snowflakes,> it imaged. <Sugar lumps. Biscuits.


264    ~              C.J. Cherryh

Brionne with the horses. All the horses loving her. Brionne in the
moonlight, in the snow.., the numbing, gentle snow ....                        >

    "Get away from us!" Tara shouted into the dark.
    <Wanting mama. Wanting papa.., mama listening. Mama sit-
ting with her Bible... thinking of Brionne. Papa... papa...
papa--./>
    < "Tara./" >
    Luisa hurt her arm, she grabbed it so hard. She slid on the ice
and Mina grabbed both of them.
    < Papa! > went out across the ridge. < Wanting in. Wanting in-->
    "It's her," Tara said. "It's the Goss kid--God, stay here. Keep the
gates shut."
    "Where are you going?"
    <Marshal's office.> The ambient was so live it didn't need a
horse near. <Luisa and Mina taking care of horses. Gates shut.
Gates slammed. >
    <Mama, > the voice cried on insubstantial winds. <Mama, let me
in... >
    Tara ran, sleet stinging her face--she ducked through the village
gate and let it slam behind her; she ran not for where instinct or
whatever drove her told her to go: instinct was screaming at her to
go the other way. She ran against it--ran for reason, ran down the
center of a deserted, sleet-hammered street, all the way to the end
of the street, her throat hurting with the cold air. She ran up the
wooden, icy steps to the marshal's office and pounded her fist on
the door.
    She heard someone coming, footsteps inside. The feeling of pres-
ence behind her all around hermwas overwhelming, a wave of liv-
ing anger rolling toward them, from all around the walls.
    "Who's there?" the marshal called out. "Who's out there?"
    "Tara Chang!" she shouted back, holding to the rail--resisting
the impulse to look back and see if anything was in the street. "It's
here--" she said, and got a chill breath as the marshal opened the
door. The marshal's wife was holding a pistol aimed at her: she paid
it only passing attention. "It's the rogue. It's the kid. Brionne. She's
with it. She's wanting her mama and her papa. You've got to send
word down to Tuck--keep those gates shut. No matter what!"


RIDER AT THE GATE              ~       265

    "It's a kid out there," the marshal began. "We've got to shoot
that horse."
    "It's hell out there." She found herself shaking. "It's my partners
out there. It's our men. It's that kid. We can't help them. We can't
do anything but hold that damned gate, do you hear me? Get out
there! Keep that gate shut, I don't care who wants in! That horse
comes with her and everything in the woods comes next! Keep it
out/"
    The marshal went for his coat and his scarf and his shotgun.
"Watch the boys!" the marshal said to his wife. "If it's the Goss
kid--she might try to get to the boys! Keep that door locked!"
    Tara stood there shivering in the wind, trying to keep her hand
from freezing to the icy porch rail--trying to be deaf and blind and
numb to the ambient. Mina and Luisa were with the horses. She
knew.
  She knew that the Goss boys were still in lockup.
  She knew that Brionne was with the rogue.
    She knew that Brionne was calling to all that was hers--her
mother, her father, her brothers, her friends and acquain-
tances.., every one.
    Brionne had never gotten on Flicker's good side. But she was
calling to (Skip> and (Green> in the lame way she'd always im-
aged their names.
    She called to (Mina and Luisa.> But not to her. Not to Tara
Chang. Brionne hated her. She felt the lost presence flit past her in
anger, and she ran for the camp, assaulted by the (lost, aching>
ambient.
  ("Papal"> it wailed.
    Shutters were opening. Lights from those windows flared out
onto the snow, here and there down the village street. A door
opened, a larger spill of light.  Answering that voice.
    That was the way they heard it. The town was ready and armed
for a rogue.
    They heard a lost kid. They heard Brionne Goss wanting in,
wanting rescue.



266    ~          C.J. Cherryh

"Stay inside!" Tara screamed at the tanner, who came out on his
porch. "That's it, damn it! Get that door shut.r'
    She didn't know whether he listened. She ran for the only source
of help, half-blinded by the sleet, through the narrow gap of the
Little Gate, into the rider camp--and had a clear sense of Flicker's
sending, that <white-white-white) shutting out the world.
    But Skip and Green were absent from the noise. There was only
a darkness wanting <out,> wanting <running, all running. >
    "Mina? Luisa?" She ran for the den, skidding on the uneven
ice--caught herself on the corner post as she came inside, unpre-
pared for the darkness that rushed at her--<nighthorse,) was all
she knew.
    It flared past like a black rage and she pasted herself to the wall,
blind and deaf to everything but <kill> and <bite> and <shoot> as
it passed--
    <Rider,> she realized then, and <Mina, v and she heard <white-
white-white,> so intense and so close a sending that she couldn't
see where she was.
    Gunfire, then. In the village, outside, she wasn't sure. Shots were
going off, echoing off the walls.
    <"Luisa!"v she yelled, trying to get through the ambient, but
<white-white-white> came down like blizzard. She wasn't sure of
Luisa's whereabouts. She wasn't sure of Green's. She only knew
Flicker's, and she didn't want to lead Flicker to disaster.
    <Flicker standing still!> she sent and felt rather than saw her
way--as if the whole world had gone to snow.
    She reached the open air and the blast of the wind, she wanted
<Mina,> and she went the way she'd sensed Mina go.
    But she heard someone screaming then, into an ambient gone
red and black amid the white, a voice beyond the village wall, a
voice near the village gate.
    <"That's my daughter!"> it cried--and she saw <Brionne stand-
ing outside the village gate, Brionne afraid, Brionne, Brionne,
Brionne--wanting mama-- >
    An image of <gate opening> as <desire> and <killing anger>
and <hunger> came flying together in the air, assembled itself in a
rush that reached the heart, the mind, the gut, one creature, one


RIDER AT THE GATE              ~       267

self, one mind--anything else was <Enemy> and Tara was
<Enemy. >
    She thought she saw--sight came fleetingly through the
<white>--the outer gate of the rider camp standing wide against
the dark.
    She thought she saw snow whirling about her--white, thick
snowfall, and wind so loud she couldn't hear the screaming or the
howling it made. It just was, and the snow was, and the cold was.
    <White> came up beside her, it brushed against her, it called to
her, and her hands knew its shape, found its mane to clench onto,
and her body knew where, as she launched herself, she would find
<horse> and <strength> and <warmth.>
    Then--then she was <astride> and <with> and, blind and deaf
as she was, she became the whiteout, she became the blizzard--
blind and deaf and <killing cold... >
    Nothing could touch her. If she'd had another purpose she'd lost
it. If she'd had another destination she didn't know.
    She was in the woods again, sweeping through the trees,
<white> and nothing more.

Harper hadn't moved. Quig had come back with another load of
firewood and dumped it.
    But suddenly something was wrong--Danny felt it, just as the
firewood struck the ground and scattered, like something witnessed
at that half-aware substitute for sleep, a thing of strange impor-
tance and insignificant aspect. He felt a jolt, just the faint brush of
something like horses, running horses--and acute fear--like
Shamesey streets, when the horses imaged together--
    The horses were in it--they snorted and milled about. But that
wasn't the only source. It was coming from somewhere completely
opposite. It was huge, and full of anger, and it had a thousand feet.
It moved--
  <Cloud! > Danny sent. <Quiet water. Quiet.>
  "What in hell is it?" Quig asked the air in general.
  "Could be a cat," Harper said.
    "Cat, hell!" Quig reached for Danny's arm. Danny hadn't ex-
pected it, and scrambled backward from Quig's hand, hit on his




268    ~          C.J. Cherryh

 rump as Quig scrambled after him--and he scrambled away,
 scrambled up, turned and ran.
    A weight hit from his back--he fell, skidded on the snow with
that weight on his back trying to pin his arms. He spat snow from
his mouth, dug with his knees, to get to (Cloud. Getting to
Cloud--~
    "Back that horse of~" Harper yelled from somewhere, and he
panicked, wanted (Cloud running!) wanted (Cloud gone! Guns!)
    He felt the jolt of nighthorse feet on the ground, sharp pivot,
and (Cloud running, breaking branches, gun firing--v
    But none fired, or he'd gone deaf. He was still spitting snow
when whoever had fallen on him hauled him up by the scruff and
shook him, and somebody else grabbed his arm and cuffed him on
the ear.
    He could see Harper then. He knew where he was, in camp with
the Hallanslakers, in the dark, in front of Harper, and Cloud was
(in the woods, in the dark, running and running--v
    Cloud had left him. He didn't know what could make Cloud
leave him--Cloud never had, never would, but he felt something so
scary, so dark, so threatening in the ambient--
    Then he felt as if the mountain were flying apart, as if the
ground were dropping out from under all of them, as if the trees
were about to fall on them.
  "It's the damn kid!" somebody yelled.
    (Quiet water, v somebody was sending. He thought it was the
man who was holding him, but he didn't feel calm--he felt as if he
were drowning in ice water, sinking and sinking in it, the whole
world gone from flying apart to folding in on him, pieces coming
together, heavier and heavier, the red-haired rider, and Stuart--
    "Kid!" Someone cuffed him hard, across the face, and in that mo-
ment's shock he tasted blood.
  Blood was part of the ambient.
    Blood was the smell, was the wind, was the air, was the taste on
the tongue--blood was the anger and the envy and the hate and
people were shooting--
    "Get that horse back," Harper said to him, holding his face in a
hurtful grip. "You hear me, kid. Get that horse back.t"


RIDER AT THE GATE              ~       269

 He tried. <Wanting Cloud safe. Wanting Cloud quiet, not
 fighting. Quiet water. Guns. >
     "It's his horse," Watt said out of the dark behind him, and
 Harper hissed:
     "It's the rogue, fool. That's what it is--watch the dark! Watch
 the dark, dammit, and hold on to the horses! Keep them here!"
     But more real than Harper's voice came something moving and
 dark--an ambient full of screams, cold of snow under Danny's
 hands--he tasted blood and sprang up and ran, with (Cloud run-
 ning, Cloud safe. White, and snow, and blood. People. People run-
 ning in the streets, buildings, people screaming-->
     "That's Tarmin," Quig said. "That's Tarmin gates, damn, that's
 Tarmin, do you see it? They're shooting each other.l'
    "You got to catch him, you got to, you fool! Stop him! He's
doing it!"
    <--fire blazing up, firelight on snow. Gunshots. People
yelling--people falling under him-->
    He couldn't hear. Somebody hit him across the face. His head
snapped back and then he was in the woods again. His right ankle
had folded, but the hands that held his arms had held him up,
dizzied as he was, and cut the blood off from his lower arms.
    He felt the entire side of his face hot and numb, and he was
<darkness in the streets,> he was (going apart,> he was <killing
the voices, killing the staring eyes, killing the silence-->
    He wanted his family. His. Now. And they were (going apart,
flying into the winds--mama--papa! Papa/v
    A second time a blow landed across his face. Second time some-
one shook him.
    "God, shut him up!" someone yelled, and he saw (horses spook-
ing, running through the trees, branches coming at faces, branches
breaking--> "He's spooked the horses, shit! Stop/"
    <Riders wanting them, light blazing and fire breaking out and
gunfire echoing all around,> but he was <lying on the ground,
head exploding, watching the legs of men running past him-->
    He had no other chance. He got his knee under him, he lurched
to his feet, branches breaking--immediately recoiled from a sheer


270    ii~        C.J. Cherryh

 drop, and ran along the edge. <Wanting Cloud, now, quick, Cloud
 coming back through trees!>
    <(Voices--screams in the houses. Fire reflecting on window-
glass. Embers glowing on the wind.)>
    He ran and ran, breaking through branches, plowing through
thickets, blind, desperate. His side caught an agonizing stitch and
the world was still churning with images, <streets and fire and
anger. >
    But snow began to muffle the shouts and the screams, as if the
wind-driven white that skirled through the dark had deadened the
pain and smothered the fear.
    He walked, breathing through his mouth, holding his side,
knowing he was free of Harper, but equally well aware he had no
gun, no supplies, no idea where he was going.
    <(Log walls and fire. Gates open. Going through streets, on
horseback.
  <(Looking. Searching.
<(Days-old ice crunching under three-toed nighthorse feet.
<(Everything the same as she remembers, all the street the same,
but windows reflect orange with fire. Fire through veils of sleet,
sleet flying out of the dark, touching face, making stars in
nighthorse mane--
      <(Gunshot. Horse jumping forward, horse wanting fight, want-
ing her, wanting--what horse can't find.  <(Red-haired woman.
    <(But she can have red hair like that. She can be grown like that.
No one can ever stop her again, no one can tell her no.
    <(Wanting what horse wants. Wanting what she can't find, a
mind she doesn't hear, but listening, listening, all up and down the
streets she knows, because it might be here.
      <(Faces come. Voices come. People walking about their daylight
business as if they'd forgotten the dark.  <(People buying and selling.
    <(Old woman making soap--telling her go away, don't bother
her.
  <(Riders with horses--telling her go away.


RIDER AT THE GATE              ~       271

     ~(Girl with baby--blond braids. Pretty clothes. Kick and bite.
 Nasty girl.
     ((Her hair.., red like the autumn leaves. Fringes fluttering
 about her. Her horse going where she pleases.
  ((Horse trampling over something in the street. Not caring.
  ~(Buildings reflect fire on window-glass. Fire shines paler on the

 snow.

  ((White drifts down. Ash. Or snow.
  ((Riding, searching, still, for what she can't find.)v
      ("Cloud!"~ he shouted out loud, desperate. The other sending
was pouring over him, overwhelming all sight, all sense of direction.
  (Cold, white coming down. Snow falling thicker and thicker.
  (Branches raking, breaking, breath harsher and harsher, stitch in
  side, long pain, can't remember from when, scrapes on face, cold
  skin, numb fingers, numb toes--v
  ((The dark is all, dark streets, new snow falling--)~
  (An edge, then.
  (Heart jumping. Arms catching. Foot on slick ground, sliding.
  (Sailing through dark space...
  ( Thump.
  (Flat on his back. v
    Ahead turned to up, fire to night, ash-fall to snow-fall, thick
white puffs fell in a stillness of the wind, on his sweating face, into
his dry mouth.
    The world was strained to the limit. He felt half of him missing
and he desperately wanted that piece of him, stretched thin into the
dark--
    Not she. He. Him. Here. ((She)) screamed out into the dark
after what she was missing.
    But he was alive. Breathing. And the strain grew less. The miss-
ing part drew near to him. He'd dropped off a ledge. He'd fallen in
a snowbank. He'd had the breath knocked out of him.
    He lay there, got his breath back, relatively undamaged--too
stunned to be alarmed at the moving of the brush on the ledge over
him.
    Not surprised, either, at the (presence becoming Cloud.~ The
missing half of him had shown up and Cloud wanted (downslope,


272      ~       C.J. Cherryh

now, nighthorse feet probing the ledge frantically for a way down
to him, but Cloud couldn't find it--> Cloud was going to jump.
    "No!" Danny found self-awareness at least to wish <Cloud still,
Cloud standing-->
    Then before Cloud tried it again, he had to move an arm, a legm
finally to turn on elbows and knees and crawl up the snow-chill
slope, past the screen of thorn branches-
  <Cloud walking dark, fire-windowed streets.
  <Cloud afraid and angry. Looking for Danny. >
    He hauled himself up by the brush that overhung the last of the
slope. He was on his feet then, couldn't remember getting up, just
<on his feet, hugging Cloud's sweating neck, two of them, here, in
this dark, snowy place, Danny and Cloud. >
    Cloud made a sound between a cough and a snort and shivered
up and down his shoulder. Cloud wanted <us.> Cloud wanted
<kicking and biting,> but Cloud didn't know what the enemy was.
Cloud was as lost as he was in the battering of sendings; and Danny
spared one frightened thought for < lost supplies, lost gun, lost fire-
side and lost Hallanslakers-->
    But after that Danny just thought <us,> and heaved himself up,
belly-down and grace-be-damned, to Cloud's snowy, willing back.
    Cloud moved, walked, not sure where they were going except
<US. >
    Danny rode, not at all sure where he was going, except that, for
the hour, he was where that thing wasn't, that thing that he'd felt
and had no question-
  -no question she was a killer.
    He heard too much. He didn't want to listen anymore. He just
wanted Cloud; he wanted to drift on through the dark and the
downfalling white. He wanted <quiet,> and <escape> from the
things he saw, that still careened centerless about his memory.
  He rode until he was keenly aware of the snow and the cold.
  He rode until his hands and feet and face were numb.
    He rode until he found himself in <forest> and knew that <fire-
windowed streets > was a place he'd never, ever been.
    Then he was afraid to go farther. He'd been following the beacon
of that place--but it was nowhere he wanted to reach.


RIDER AT THE GATE              ~       273

    Nothing stirred. Nothing dared. The air felt warmer than it had.
The wind had stopped blowing. The snow fell, real snow, in thick,
fat lumps.
    <Evergreens,> he thought. <Wide, protecting evergreen
boughs. >
    Because he remembered <Stuart on the porch, Stuart in the
rain,> and somehow it had come up in what Stuart had told him,
about having a knife, and how a knife should be last of everything
you lost, because with that, no matter how desperate you were, no
matter how much of your gear you'd lost, you could make a den,
keep warm, get food, stay alive.
  He hadn't even the knife. They'd taken that.
    But he had his bare hands. In everything about him, even, if it
got to that, tearing the fringes off his jacket for bindings, he had
the makings of shelter, of tools.
    He slid off Cloud's back, imaging <shelter made of evergreen,>
and Cloud hovered about him as he set to furiously, tearing at
branches with his hands, leaning his body against them to break
them free.
    Cloud tore at a few small limbs, using his teeth. <Bad taste,>
Cloud thought, and spat out bits of bark.
    But gloved hands jerked, ripped, twisted until branches splin-
tered, until muscles ached. He tore at the trees, sweating and gasp-
ing for breath, until he had a pile of branches he thought was
enough.
    With them he made a bed, and he had <Cloud lying down on
it. > Then, pulling branches over himself, he lay down on the edge
of their mat, himself tucked against Cloud, warm on one side,
keeping Cloud's side warm because in that horse-smelling pocket
he could make of his body and Cloud's was the only warm air, and
his chest ached and his gut ached with the fall and with shivering.
A long, long time he lay there and shook, until Cloud's warmth
seeped into him.
    Then Cloud himself sighed, gentle movement against his shoul-
der.
  Snow fell on him, but that was all right. It could do that. Snow



274    '~'        C.J. Cherryh

was an insulator, wasn't what he'd heard?--as long as he had
Cloud's body radiating warmth into his.
    Snow was warm, if it kept away the wind, if it kept away the
dark.
    If it didn't let him dream of streets and fire reflecting off glass,
and if it didn't let him dream, sweating warm despite the cold, of
dark and something more terrible than the preachers' devils--  He wanted daylight.
    God, he wanted the day to begin and this night to be over. He
tried not to image, but kids, Jonas had said, couldn't keep from
noise. Kids couldn't shut down.
    (Kids in that village, oh, God, they'd have been close to that
thing. Mamas and papas couldn't do a damned thing to help
them--they'd have been the first, they'd have gone to it.)
    He kept seeing (fire on windowpanes. Kids running. The devil
loose in the streets, and the innocent all running.
    (Preachers in Shamesey streets--crying, Follow not the beast,
hear not the beast-
  (Denis screaming, "God's going to send you to hell!"~
    Cloud snorted, shifted, settled. The whole woods was so scarily
quiet you could almost hear the snowflakes land. He'd not realized
that until now: the whole woods was hushed, and Cloud was part of
that silence.
    They're born to this world, Stuart had said to him. They hear the
Wild first. If you can't hear what's going on, listen to your horse.
Always remember that.
  Cloud's rider listened.
    Cloud's rider lay still, noticing only the trees, only the wind,
only the snow, until he was as quiet as Cloud.
    He wasn't there. For any number of very long hours, he wasn't
there.


Chapter

XV1


THE ROAD UP FROM ANVENEY WAS THE SHORTEST, FASTEST WAY UP
to the High Wild--a good idea, Gull thought as the morning
brightened to warmer daylight, good idea, considering both the
season and the condition of the rider, because he and Burn weren't
going to make any record time; and he damned sure didn't want to
trek all the way back to the main road and then take that ascent:
speed was everything when the weather was chancy, and when you
had to factor in that long trek even to get to the other road. He
didn't mind camping on the main road in clear weather. But he
didn't trust it would stay clear of snow long enough for him to get
over there and get up the mountain. Its gentle slope was treacher-
ous, piling up snow in overhangs--and the chill was definitely in
the air.
    Whichever route you chose, the long, avalanche-prone ridge to
the south or the steep, icy climb he was on, you didn't want to be
on the ascent or the descent once the snows started in earnest: once
he made Tarmin Ridge he had choices and shelters--which in the


276    ~          C.J. Cherryh


high country didn't mean any shabby lean-to: the high-country rid-
ers took their storm shelters seriously and stocked them reliably.
Get just that far and he could survive the worst the mountain could
throw at him.
    There was even a shelter at the halfway point of the climb he was
on, so he'd heard, but by all he knew it was just a shack, no regular
maintenance, no store of food, and he wasn't going to push himself
beyond reason to reach it or stop early to use it. Nothing in the
world cost more than an hour or two delay when you were reckon-
ing the weather by the minute.
    The ill-famed Anveney service road looked easy, at least the
rolling part of it, that went through the sparse, bad-grass hills--
but that, he knew, was the gentle prelude. One had only to look up
at the towering northeast face of the mountain to see that what the
south road did by gentle turns, this road did on the most hellacious
grades trucks or ridden horses could manage.
    And increasingly as he rode, the mountain took on the appear-
ance of a sheer wall. A series of hairpins, on the most meandering of
which he began to realize he'd already embarked, laddered the same
steep face that, you had to remember, ten k north, plunged away
into river-cut Kroman Gorge, a view straight down for most of a
mile. It was a famous sight, it was certainly worth a ten k ride to
look at--and he'd seen that vertical slit in the earth at least in
Aby's mind as <grand and amazing.> But Burn imaged it ner-
vously as <falling into darkness> and he wasn't sure himself if he
went there that he wanted to stand anywhere near that edge.
    He wasn't sure, facing this upward perspective, that it was going
to be much better up there.
    But the road he was on still looked to be faster than the other
from bottom to top, maybe even by a couple of days, even with the
road in the condition it was in. He'd lost precious time, two whole
days he was relatively sure of, drying out his clothes and his gear
and nursing his headache, or his several headaches, counting the
knots on his skull.
    He'd been concussed, he was almost certain--not thinking too
clearly for a day or so; and concussed meant, if you talked to doc-


RIDER AT THE GATE              ~       277

tors, lie down, do little, eat and sleep, if you had somebody to wait
on you.
    Fine, he'd rested, between the necessity to get a fire going and to
fend for himself. He'd used up money-bought supplies he'd rather
not have touched, but a forced lay-up was what such supplies were
for--he supposed they were well-spent. He was alive.
    He'd done some fool things--but close as he was still to An-
veney and doctors, rational or irrational (as he'd been when he'd
taken that ride after wood instead of going for an Anveney doctor),
he'd turned out all right. He didn't need any townsman doctor, one
he couldn't talk to, understand, or deal with. He wasn't going to
have any strangers, however well-intentioned, poking around at
him while Burn fretted at the gates. He'd known, when he waked
that morning with the headache that didn't go away, exactly what
he had, at worst, unless his skull was fractured, which time proved
it wasn't. He certainly didn't need any high-paid town doctor to
tell him that his head hurt, and not to walk any distance in that
condition.
    So he'd won. So he'd been able to lie about feeling his head ex-
pand and contract, and watching the colors come and go behind his
closed eyelids, wanting occasionally to pass out until it was over--
    Eventually you died or you got better. And since he hadn't
caught pneumonia, and he hadn't gone into coma, and since the leg
the bank guard and the marshals had banged about didn't seem in-
fected, just ached like hell, swelled, and hurt when he walked on
it--he guessed he'd saved himself and the town doctor the bother,
and he was still going to make the Ridge before the snows came
down. He was going to deal with Aby's problem, and finish Aby's
business up there. Money was hindmost in that calculation: the
doctor would have cost time and kept him off the trail; and the
snows would have beaten him.
    And by the time they'd gone up a distance, with him walking
and limping on the steep grade, he began to fear they weren't going
to make the speed he would have wanted today: his sore leg was
aching, his good one was burning, his head was splitting, and his
breaths came as if he'd run a race. He leaned on Burn's side and


278    ~          C.J. Cherryh

stood there a while staring up at the first true hairpin before he
could find it in him even to consider going on up the grade.
    He walked as far as he could: Burn wasn't going to make any
speed, either, slogging along under his weight at the angle the road
climbed.
    A turn or so higher, Burn took him up, and when Burn tired
again--where they stopped for breath and for him to get off the
view down, where the edges had eroded in a series of slides, was ab-
solutely spectacular: raw rubble spiked with trees that had found a
foothold on the slopes; while the view up from there was enough to
give a man or a horse serious doubt whether they were sane to try
this road at all. He couldn't see some of the roadway, the angle was
so steep--what he could see of the zigzagging trace of back and
forth hairpins and phone lines was daunting, entirely.
    But underfoot, tribute to mechanical persistence, he could still
see the scarring that trucks this summer or last had made on the
road, such tough, small trucks as ran emergency supplies and phone
lines for the line-riders.
    The modern log and lumber monsters, and the tankers, couldn't
hope to take even the lowest and easiest of the turns to get up here.
It was risky, his eye could well judge, even for the line repair
trucks, and they couldn't go all the way up these days.  <Truck going over. Tires over the rim. >
    Once that happened you hadn't a chance, no way to recover your
traction.
    He pulled back from that thought, heart pounding as if he'd
been on that edge. He started walking, diverting himself with the
pain in his leg and the search for breaks in the phone line, not that
he could do anything about them, but Cassivey had promised him
to call Tarmin and warn them if the lines were up.
    If he knew a call could get through--that would take at least
some weight of necessity off his mind. But it looked chancy.
Watching where the line climbed, ahead of them, he saw poles
braced up with rocks--some of them leaning in impending breaks.
Wait till the winter winds, he thought. Wait till the ice. They
wouldn't hold. They might not have held on the road above.
  No phone line at all on the main road--that was why they'd


RIDER AT THE GATE              ~       279

 kept maintaining this old run on Anveney West, specifically be-
 cause the phone lines were already here and because avalanche was
 constant hell on the other one in winter, sweeping poles and all
 away, more than they lost here to slides. So Aby'd said. And they
 kept the phones going.
    Fifty years ago, when the gold fever had been rampant in the
hills and speculators in every sort of vehicle had made Anveney
their base of operations, this ill-conceived switchback had been all
the road that served a network of mining roads and little, isolated
camps. Most who had tried winter camp, with just their guns and
their gold-fever to insulate them from the Wild, hadn't made it
through the first winter, but by the second winter, the survivors
had clumped in larger camps and the survivors of those had made a
dozen villages up on the Ridge, only a few of which still held out--
compared to those that had once been. That, also, Aby had said: her
man in Anveney told her so.
  ~Come on, Guil, you'll like it up there ....
    And, headache and all, he looked for line-breaks. But you couldn't,
as the inside edge of the road grew more wooded, always see the
poles, let alone the lines. Thickets of greenwood and shag had
grown up around them, unrestricted.
    Worse, washouts were multiplying, eroding away the outside
edge of the road in graveled gullies that were a real danger to the
trucks. Weeds, untouched by trucks' undercarriage chains, had
grown up on the center ridge. Scrub leaned well over the wheel
tracks, and grass had grown up in the tracks themselves. It had to
have been some time since the last line repair truck had come up
here--let alone the road crews it badly needed.
    And that neglected road repair, it took no intelligence even for a
lowland townsman to guess, increased the frequency of spooks
along the way: like weeds, spooks were, no single breed, just ver-
min, prolific and nuisanceful to humans. Hunted out of any trav-
eled territory, they expanded right back into any territory where
brush provided adequate cover. He heard them as he rode: a con-
stant shifting image of giant grass and the noise of something large
and the fear of something (formidable> nearby--which was, of
course, themselves, and the grass wasn't giant except to the creature


280~              C.J. Cherryh

doing the sending. Burn heard them very well, and occasionally
sent out his <nighthorse> and <eating willy-wisps> image, which
cleared the area in short order.
    The little spooks were no harm to a rider, or anyone a rider es-
corted. But once little spooks grew plentiful, they made rich hunt-
ing for midsized spooks, which would happily add the vermin-rich
offal heaps of villages like Tarmin and Verden to their hunting
range; they'd dig and gnaw and try the defenses of supplies in the
rider-shelters--and clear out fast if riders showed up.
    One had to know, though, that after the middle-sized spooks
like nightbabies and lorry-lies moved in, serious trouble was right
behind: goblin-cats and spook-bears and bushdevils and every other
sort of creature that could make a village's dreams uneasy. Tarmin
and the rest of the high-country villages in Anveney's mining
union should have raised hell about the washouts and the brush. It
was a steep, steep face, and if it grew brushy and the road got be-
yond even riders, then there was a breeding area and hunting
ground for things the villages up on the Ridge might not like for
neighbors.
    But figure it, too, that Anveney with its smelters and furnaces
was the chief customer of the mining camps, chief user of the
phone lines between Anveney and the camps, and while the mining
and logging camps had riders encamped and accessible, even semi-
permanently resident, Anveney, alone of towns, didn't have riders,
especially in the current feud with Malvey, to maintain those lines.
    So blame the want of action on the camps and the villages, he
decided, who might regret it once their politicking with Anveney
or their neglect had let the whole east face of Rogers Peak go back
to the Wild.
    Two more turns and the road grew worse, with washouts trench-
ing the whole road surface, with rockfalls lying in the roadway
some rocks of which were considerable--if you met that kind of
thing with a convoy you stopped and with shovels you filled the
washes and fixed it as best you could--
  Or you hoped you hadn't gone too far from a truck turn-around.
    With a horse--and no trucks to worry about--you rode past and
hoped it didn't get worse up above. But he had faith in Burn.


RIDER AT THE GATE              ~       281

  <Cattle,> Burn thought. Burn didn't approve of the road.
 But Burn didn't argue to turn around, either.
    Burn had the high-country wind in his nostrils. Burn thought
<mountains> and <snow> and <females.>

The way-shelter that was supposed to exist at sundown turned up
well short of that--not that he was ahead of schedule--but that the
shelter was a collection of scattered logs and scattered rags several
turns below where it was supposed to be. He saw part of the foun-
dations further up: a boulder had swept it right down the mountain
face.
    It left a flat camping area, once he did reach it, at the edge of
night, but not one he was tempted to use. He cast a misgiving eye
up at the sheer face of the mountain, wondering what other broth-
ers those boulders had poised and waiting up there, and kept mov-
ing until dark dimmed the road too much to see.
    Then he camped in a little stand of brush as sheltered from the
wind as he could manage. There were spooks--he thought one was
a nightbaby, by the distressing <lost-lost-lost> images it sent.
    Something evidently believed it. Whether it caught supper or
whether it became supper, it went silent, and the ambient was
quiet for a while.
    He'd collected dead wood for some distance along the roadside
before he camped, as much as he could conveniently carry--and
now sheltering his little construction with his body and Burn's, in
this wide spot among the rocks where saplings clung, he built a
tiny, well-protected fire, not easy when the wind searched out every
nook and cranny.
  So there was <bacon> for Burn, and cakes for them both.
    Not so bad, he said to himself, snugged down dry and warm
with Burn for a backrest. He had his single-action handgun resting
on his lap beneath the blanket--hand on the grip but his finger
prudently off the trigger, ready, if Burn heard something that Burn
couldn't scare.
  He heard only nuisance spooks, all during supper.
 They sang. They imaged their fierceness. He settled to sleep


282    ~          C.J. Cherryh

against something that, if Burn roused and grew annoyed, could
send <mayhem and anger> louder than the lot of them.
    Which Burn did from time to time, though not troubling to get
up, when the ambient grew noisy with the nocturnal pests.
    Guil sighed, imaged (Burn sleeping quietly,> and shut his eyes
in all confidence of Burn's hearing the ambient even when Burn
was asleep.

<Wind,> Danny decided, huddled in the lee of tumbled rocks, as
another night came down. It had to be <wind moving the
boughs. >
    Cloud hovered close, hungry and in an ill mood, but Cloud had
kept that uncommon quiet, taking no chances, and imaging
<snow> and <snow on branches> so consistently Danny could
hardly, at times, realize he was hearing Cloud and not seeing
<snowy branches. >
    He'd never known Cloud to do that before. He sometimes feared
that something was wrong with Cloud's mind; but Cloud grew dis-
turbed when he tried to get Cloud's attention--Cloud imaged
<hungry horse> and then went back to his <branches> so loudly
he couldn't see anything but that.
    He didn't know what they were going to do about food. He'd
gone to sleep hungry one night, now it was the second, and he didn't
know where they were going to get food for either of them. He was
mad at himself for not thinking to grab his packs, or anything--
but he hadn't been thinking at all when he'd run from the camp,
and not thinking a lot today, in their forest of <snowy branches.>
He was mostly scared.
    They'd moved, today, and they'd seen game, but Cloud hadn't
wanted to hunt and he had no gun.
    He could at least have made a fire. He had his burning-glass in
his pocket, he'd some wrapped, waxed matches on him, but he was
scared to do it for fear that Harper or a horse he didn't want to
meet or even think about would smell it on the wind, in this place
where smells you didn't notice downland were very, very obvious as
man-made. So he'd made his bed with evergreen, the same as last


RIDER AT THE GATE              ~       283

night, with less desperation, with more care. And he really truly
hoped Cloud would find them <breakfast.>
    But that wish got him nothing but <snowy branches, snowy
against the clouds,> so persistently it upset an empty and already
chancy stomach.
    They'd found a berry bush with berries still left out of reach of
smaller creatures, and Cloud could eat the berries, so they were
probably all right, but that wasn't always true: human beings
weren't of the same earth-stuff as horses, and you couldn't always
rely on the safety of plants horses could eat--so once he'd seen
Cloud go at them, he'd tucked handfuls of the autumn-dried
berries in his pockets and eaten just one of them, figuring to test if
he got stomachache or went strange afterward.
    He hadn't, and they were still in his pocket, so he nibbled a few.
They were sour and set his teeth on edge, but they were better than
an empty stomach.
    Cloud found a few sprigs of dried grass that grew about the
rocks, and licked lichen or some kind of fungus off the stone; at
least it looked as if Cloud was getting something to eat out of all
that effort--the image was now <lichen on stone,> for variety, in-
stead of <snowy branches and dry grass above the snow. >
    Which was probably smart to do, this <branches> business. But
it made thinking and planning hard.
    He watched Cloud for a while, wondering if the stuff on the
rocks was edible--but he wasn't greatly tempted to peel it off and
have a try at any scummy fungus, no more than he was tempted to
abandon the little warmth he'd found to go collect it.
    He didn't know where he'd go next, or, more to the point, where
Cloud would be willing to take him. He was, he had to admit it to
himself, lost--not lost, in not knowing where down was on the
mountain, any fool could tell that, but lost because he didn't know
which side of the road he was on, and he didn't know whether the
nearest village was behind him or in front of him, above him or
below him on the mountain. They hadn't crossed a clear-cut, or
seen any other indication of a road in any place they'd crossed.
    Most disturbing--he figured that Cloud was imaging <snowy
branches> so fervently because there was a good reason for hiding.




284      ~        C.J. Cherryh

Which made him, unwillingly, think about the <fire on win-
dows> and that <presence> he didn't want to feel.
    Cloud snorted and shied away from him, with <snowy
branches> louder than ever until he stopped and plunged his head
into his hands and swore to the God back in Shamesey town he was
through being a hero: he wanted <finding the downhill road, going
down to lowland pastures.> Cloud would have his winter in the
Wild, just not in the high country--
    Because Cloud's fool rider, having gotten them into one human
mess after the other, had now lost all his gear and everything he
owned. Cloud depended on his rider to see ahead and think ahead,
and understand the Wild, and his fool rider hadn't even understood
human beings. He wasn't any help to anybody, and the best thing
he could do was get them off the mountain alive and get Cloud fed
and safe.

<Snow falling. Snow drifting down in the dark. >
    <(Desire,)> came a thread of feeling. <(Bodies together, dark
nighthorse bodies, feelings intense as the dark... )>
    Danny caught a breath, roused out of sleep, suddenly beset by
feelings he didn't know where they'd come from----out of control,
but he wouldn't, he wouldn't, he didn't understand what was hap-
pening to him ....
  <(Wanting--wanting closeness, wanting--)>
    <Snow> came down on him, cold and quiet, poured down until
he was lost in a breathing, snowy night. That was Cloud. He knew
it was.
  <(... bodies merging, tearing, ripping apart--)>
    < < . . . Watt, running through the dark, running and running--
chest aching, breath coming edged with cold and terror, not
enough air, branches breaking against arms and face, jabbing at
eyes, branches crashing and breaking--> >
    Stuart on the porch. "Stay with your horse." Jump across time.
Another moment. "Stay with your horse." Danny and Cloud at the
fireside. "Stay with your horse, whatever goes wrong, stay with
your horse."
  <<Man running in the dark, something behind him, branches


RIDER AT THE GATE              ~       285

breaking--he won't turn, he won't turn and look, just running,
sound coming closer with every stride--open ground, and steep
rocks, and empty, dark air--> >
    Danny gasped, jerked, caught at the ground, couldn't get breath,
couldn't overcome the falling-feeling-
    < <Snow. White everywhere. Heart slow, so slow his blood can't
move. So slow he can't breathe--> >
  Then could. Danny sucked in a breath, his ribs able to move.
    He got another, and another, and his gloved hands knew the
solid ground was under him, he hadn't fallen. He wasn't falling.
That was somebody else--somebody was dying.
    <Cold on his face, chilling cold against the sweat.> He sat there
with his heart pounding, sure he'd been somewhere else--that he'd
been somebody else. He was sure that something had been behind
him, but when he looked he saw only the night-shadowed trees and
the solid stone of the mountain.
    A presence went past them then, fast, like a blink of starless
dark--it swirled and it reeled dizzily, it wanted, it fell, it rose, it
was a man and it wasn't--it was lost and it was angry and it was
looking for someone, it lusted after sex, after touch, after feeling,
after something it had <(lost and couldn't find)>--
    He suffered a spasm of chill, then of arousal, but he held himself
still, too wary to catch. He felt <drifting snow> on his face, and
after a time of harsh, measured breathing the lust and the hurt and
the wanting went away, sucked away into the dark farther and far-
ther and farther, faster than any horse alive could run.
    He thought at first it was another kind of falling, and clung to
the rocks, shaking and afraid that the whole mountain would dis-
solve around him--straight outward into the air.
    <(Hunger. Fright. Pouring through the woods--something chas-
ing it. One and the same, predator and prey, feeding and fed upon.
Pain and hunger embracing each other, tearing and biting--)>
  <Blood on pale skin. Knives flashing. A man Harper loved-->
    --and shot dead. <Face pale in the dark woods. Hole in the fore-
head. Staring at the sky. At Harper. >
    <Cattle,> Cloud thought, telling him he was stupid. <Dung-
piles. >




286    ~          Cd. Cherryh

    He felt his fists knotted up. Every muscle was stiff. He was
dreaming, he said to himself, remembering with eyes wide
awake--he didn't know for sure it was Harper. Things you heard in
the ambient sometimes didn't come to you full-blown until later,
sunken things rising to the surface of your mind with more and
more detail. He kept seeing that dead face--
    (Harper shooting--horse, at a fireside. Man and horse coming
into firelight.
  (Harper shooting: they had to die.
    He was holding evergreen bits in his hands. He was sitting on
the ground, on his evergreen bed, testing whether he could breathe
on his own, and whether the ground would stay still and the rocks
not fly off into the night--his brain knew better than to trust what
he'd just lived, but he couldn't let go for a long while, couldn't un-
derstand what had just happened, until he suffered a panicked fear
and found Cloud nuzzling his cheek.
    All right, he said to himself, all right, Danny Fisher, that was
the rogue. You found it. That's what you wanted. It's up here. No
gun. Nothing. Cloud's got to get us out of here ....
  A rogue could send far, far across the mountain.
    But if it wasn't near them it couldn't hear them, because sending
that far, that was what it did--but it couldn't hear farther than they
sent--and they weren't nearly as strong or as loud. Except--
    Except the creatures near them. It picked that up, the same as
they could, only maybe--better than they did.
    It had been near Watt. He'd heard--he'd been Watt: the dark and
the falling-feeling came back to him, the mind-taking pain of
branches gouging an eye, tearing across his face--
    Harper might still be alive. Quig might. He didn't think Watt
was. Somewhere on 'the mountain, Stuart might be alive. They
might get the rogue. They might shoot it.
    He had no gun. He sat and shook in the dark, and fished a berry
or two out of his pocket to take his mind off his fear.
    Cloud came closer to him, hungry and (wanting the berries)
Cloud could smell.
  And suddenly he realized Cloud wasn't stuck on the (snowy


RIDER AT THE GATE              ~       287

branches> image any longer. Whatever Cloud had been saving
them from--was gone from the ambient.
    So Cloud got the berries. All he had. They weren't much for
Cloud's big body, but Cloud got them, and Cloud's rider had only
one last one. Cloud was due that much.
    Cloud would find more berries tomorrow, and they take the
chance they had and go down the mountain, please God. He'd been
stupid. He'd run off from his parents and come up on the mountain
where a stupid kid hadn't any experience or any business being.
God punished people like that. But maybe they had one more
chance to get out of this.
    Cloud snorted, mad. Cloud didn't understand God. But if that
was God that was out there in the dark, Cloud took exception to
his thinking about God: Cloud came between him and the wind
and licked vigorously at his face, making it wet in the cold air. He
tried to shove Cloud off, but Cloud wouldn't leave him, Cloud
pressed in so he had to tuck up tighter in his nook or have his face
scrubbed raw.
    He was warm, though. He shivered, and whenever he thought--
as he had to--that what he'd felt was real, and Watt had run
through the woods, and Watt had fallen off the edge of some
cliff he disturbed Cloud, who didn't want him to, and who
thought about where they were and about <snow,> until he gave
up trying to think of anything else.
    <Snow sifting down on them.> He thought it was Cloud's imag-
ing. But he opened his eyes and felt it on his face when he looked
up. It whitened the evergreen that made their blanket. It stuck to
Cloud's back.
  The terror didn't come back. Maybe the rogue was asleep.
    Maybe it had found what it was hunting. But he hadn't felt it sat-
isfied. It had just--flown away, not finished with what it was doing.
    <Harper firing--on a man and a horse, firing until the gun was
empty. >
  --until the man was dead.
    He squeezed his eyes tight, not wanting to think about that. So
he thought, like Cloud, about <snow and branches) and bore down
on that thought very hard.



i

Chapter

 XVll

THE AIR AT DAYBREAK WAS QUIET, LADEN WITH MIST THAT MADE
the woolen blanket damp. Guil folded it up, wet though it was. He
had two blankets. He'd felt the moisture in the air last night and
not taken the other out of the pack. If the sun came out today he'd
wear the one cloaklike a while and let the wind work on it; but it
could only get wetter, as the morning promised to be, with a veil
over the road.
    Today, he expected a harder trek, and maybe one more night on
the climb; he hoped to God not, mistrusting the clammy mist that
meant a lot of moisture in the air. It was a treacherous kind of
weather. All it took was a front coming over the mountains, and
they were in heavy snow--or a freezing mist. Aby had indicated in
vagrant images of her high-country treks that the high end, beyond
the shelter, was far steeper--more than a twenty-five percent grade
in places.
  Ravines.
  Bridges.



RIDER AT THE GATE              ~       289

    Loose fill where the roadbed was sure to have washed out at the
edges. The number of trucks in the old days that had lost their
brakes and taken the straight route down was legendary.
    With frozen sheen marking the edges of leaves this morning, it
wasn't a road to like at all--but that was the situation they had,
and they walked, both of them, for an hour or more, with only hazy
rock at one side to tell them where the road was bending, hazy gray
at their right to tell them where empty space was, and the grade of
the road and their own burning lungs and weary legs to advise
them how high and fast they were climbing. At least once the sun
was lighting the mist, the frost on the rocks slowly turned liquid.
    By midmorning a mild breeze began, and as dry cold scoured
away the mist, the world below appeared in pastel miniature, a
memorable view down the series of switchbacks and slides.
    There were fewer rock falls: a falling rock wouldn't stay on this
steep, he swore. Earth-slip had skewed a whole section of phone
poles, the line not yet broken, but the poles wanted resetting. He
vowed to tell Cassivey next spring in person and in no uncertain
terms that if they wanted these lines to stay up, whoever was sup-
posed to be responsible for them, they'd better hire riders--and get
a road repair truck up here next summer, or not even a line-rider
with a wire-cutter and a roll of tape was going to be able to get up
here in another year. Damned stupid economy--to wait until they
had to blast a new roadbed out.
    It only got worse. In one place, erosion had cut away half the
road. It made him give anxious thought to the ground under their
feet, which was shored up by timbers the slide had compromised.
Badly.
    In another turn he met the first of the high bridges: the road was
climbing by a rugged set of switchbacks and going further and fur-
ther back into a fold of the mountain, and where the roadbuilders
hadn't found a way to blast away enough mountain to make a road-
way past the slip-zone they had evidently just bridged the gap and
hoped.
    But with the fresh scars of slides going under the bridge, he got
down off Burn's back, climbed down at least far enough on the


290    ~          C.J. Cherryh


 rocks so he could take a look at the underpinnings; and it did look
 to be sound.
     He climbed up then and walked across the boards ahead of
 Burn--as Burn trod the weathered boards imaging <boards shat-
 tering> and switching his tail furiously. <Sharp rocks,> Burn in-
 sisted, <far, far, far down in the gully.>
    It wasn't that far down. But, give or take the missing tie-downs
that made no few of the warped boards rattle and rock--and thun-
der like hell under wheeled traffic, Guil could well imagine--it
forecast nothing good ahead.
    The next such bridge they reached was worse--two boards were
actually missing in a span above a higher drop. Hope, Guil
thought, that the villages had done better with the bridges up near
the crest.
    Another short span. Burn had to cross over more missing boards,
easy stride for a horse--but Burn was, by now, not happy with
bridges in general.
    Then they caught sight of the big one Aby's images had foretold
they could expect, over a gorge by no means so large as Kroman,
but impressive, the longest bridge yet--and as Guil looked up
from below, it showed sky through its structure.
    Guil gazed up at it in dismay, and Burn outright balked on the
gravel road, catching the image from his mind and dizzily lifting
and turning his head to have his one-sided horsewise view of it.
Burn immediately ducked his head down and laid his ears back,
shaking his neck.
    Nothing to do but have a look, Guil thought, and nudged Burn
with his heels, twice, to get him moving up that steep gravel in-
cline.
    The bridge looked no better when they came up on a level with
it, a long span over a rift in the mountain flank, a cable and timber
structure far more ambitious than any they'd met.
    It wasn't wholly suspension, thank God. The rails as well as the
roadbed were missing pieces, and four and five of the crosslaid
planks were gone at a stretch. He counted four, five such gaps in
the bridge deck, so far as he could see from this side, gaps exposing
the underpinnings. The boards had probably, Guil thought, sailed


RIDER AT THE GATE              ~       291

right off in the storms, considering the cold gusts that battered and
buffeted them, sweeping unrestricted along the dry, slide-choked
gorge on the one side and dizzily out into open sky and the whole
of the plains and the distant haze-hidden Sea on the other.
    He jammed his hat on tight and slipped the cord under his chin
before he walked out on the span to look it over, and the look he
got sent his heart plummeting. The gaps were big enough to drop
a horse through, and the winds that swept across that span could
rock a man on his feet.
    Burn didn't like that idea. <Gull coming back,~ Burn urged
him anxiously.
    Days--days to go back down and across to the other route. With
the weather about to turn. If he went back now he wouldn't get up
to Tarmin Ridge until spring--and that left him sitting in An-
veney territory all winter, with nothing done, nothing but using up
his supplies, his account--granting money was there, of which he
was not entirely certain if he failed Cassivey's commission now. If
the villagers found that shipment up there in the rocks---Cassivey
and a lot of Anveney folk weren't going to be damned happy with
him.
    He didn't like losing, or explaining to a shipper why he'd failed;
and failing what he'd promised himself and Aby, hell--it wasn't
why he'd come this far already.
    He walked back off the bridge. <Sharp rocks,> Burn imaged as
he made a risky, wind-battered descent off the roadway, holding on
to rocks to take a look underneath at the supports. <Burn standing.
Guil standing on road. Guil standing on ground.
    The supports were sound enough, run through with iron rods
and huge metal plates bolting the whole together.
    He climbed back up to the road and walked out on the bridge as
far as the gaps. He stood looking at the far side, then shut his eyes a
moment, and made his mind as quiet and confident as he could.
    <Burn walking to Guil,> he sent. <Burn standing on bridge
with Guil. >
  < Burn in meadow. Burn eating green grass.
  <Burn on the bridge. Strong thick boards.
  <Sharp rocks. Holes in bridge.


if,,

292    i~         C.J. Cherryh

    "Come on, Burn, dammit. It's too far to go back." He looked up
at gray-bottomed clouds scudding above the peak. <Snow clouds.
Burn. Burn walking. Now.>
  <Guil with snow on him.>
  "Burn, dammit! Come on!"
  <Thicker snow. Guil in snow, standing on bridge. >
  "Burn. Get your ass out here. <Now.t>''
    Burn moved, came step after slow step, the wind whipping his
mane upward, trying each plank, imaging as he came: <Cold belly.
Tail tucked. Fire and dark. Weathered, split boards. >  "It's all right, Burn. Come on."
    Burn came up beside him, at the area of missing boards, stopped,
and lowered his head to take a long, unhappy, dizzy look down into
the depths below.
    <Burn standing still.> Guil patted Burn's shoulder hard, to be
sure he felt it, laid his rifle and his gear down on the bridge planks,
and with a hand along Burn's side and rump, walked Burn a little
distance out to where a number of planks were loose.
    It wasn't easy to free one. It was a plank sized to support a small
truck. It weighed like hell and he could only lever it up from the
end, looking out over a sheer drop down the face of the mountain,
and the wind blasted his hat off, left it spinning and jerking at his
back, held only by the cord. He got the plank up, turned it,
dragged it back past Burn and, with slow maneuvering and a final,
satisfying thump, installed it in the gap.
    Burn leaned forward in curiosity and peered over that edge. Didn't
trust that board. But Burn was amazed, preoccupied with the gap,
when Guil walked back by him, hand on Burn's side.
    He worked and worked, freed the next plank, and dragged it
along past Burn.
    Then Burn caught on what he was doing, <planks missing be-
hind him. >
    Burn backed up in a panicked rush. Guil let the plank fall crash-
ing to the deck and grabbed a double fistful of nighthorse mane to
stop him. <Burn backing, putting foot into gaping hole. Burn
with cattle tail! >
  <Kicking Guil,> Burn sent, <biting.> But Burn didn't do it.


RIDER AT THE GATE              ~       293

Burn stood there shivering, with a clear imagination of the bridge
unraveling behind him.
    "You don't move!" <Burn standing. Gull fitting plank.> Guil
hurried as best he could, picked up the plank and dragged it into
place.
    He went back and got another one. Burn was still standing,
shivering. Burn could cross a single missing board. Guil dragged
the third board up to Burn's position.
    But Burn was far from certain that any board he'd just seen
moved was going to stay put. Burn grew confused about directions,
and started to back up in great haste.
    "You fool," Guil swore, threw himself under Burn's rump and
shoved with all the strength he had. <Gap behind us,> he argued,
until Burn bent his neck around and took a confused, misgiving
look back.
    Burn didn't trust <migrating holes.> Burn wasn't going back.
Burn wasn't going forward. No.
    There were two of them shaking now. Guil retrieved the plank
he'd dropped, a quarter over the edge of the decking where it had
bounced. He jammed his hat back on and swore and wrestled it up
to the two-plank gap.
    He dropped it in. He was exhausted and his headache had come
back, but he wouldn't ask Burn to accept a hand-span gap in the
planks that were there--Burn's estimation of gaps wasn't so reliable
at the moment. He dragged and wrestled with it and got it butted.
    Then he got up and stamped loudly over the repaired section,
while Burn watched in horror. Stepped across the single missing
plank. Did a kickstep across it, back and forth and twice more, like
a lunatic.
    Then he went back to Burn, and with his hands constantly on
Burn's neck, patted and cajoled and argued, with the wind blasting
up out of the gorge at both of them, rocking even Burn on his feet.
He imaged < Burn walking on bridge. >
    When that didn't work, he tried <Burn standing on bridge in
snow. Snow falling thick. > He was cold. The wind cut like a knife.
Burn was cold. <Frozen Burn. Ice crystals on hide. Guil covered in


294    ~          C.J. Cherryh

frost. Boards falling, carried away on winter wind. Us standing on
the last few lonely boards. >
    The last was only half a lie. It spooked Burn. Burn jumped for-
waM, <going forward> with a thunder on the new, loose planks,
imaged the gap as <gaping hole,> and spooked across it.
  Right for the next gap.
  < "Burn.t ,, >
  Burn cleared it. Thump-bang!--and stopped, scared and confused.
    Guil grabbed up his gear and ran, heart pounding, as far as the
gap Burn had jumped, before his knees wobbled and gave out.
    He squatted down. Burn was standing sideways on the bridge,
looking back in distress.
    It took a considerable while of catching his breath before Guil
slung his rifle to his back, threw the two-pack across the gap, and
crossed it, astride the support boards, with the wind out of the
gorge blasting up under his coat and whipping his hat this way and
that.
<Guil on bridge,> Burn imaged to him, wanting him safe.
<Burn standing still!> he flung back, scared, and with his teeth
chattering. He was mad, he was furious with himself for going
ahead, but back wasn't any easier than forward right now.
  Something white flew across his vision. Several more followed.
    Snowflakes, scattered, few, and from a partially cloudy sky. But it
was a warning. It was a clear warning.
  <Snow.> Burn saw it. <Cold wind.>
    "I'm trying," Guil muttered, and tried to will the headache into
some inner dark. Let his temper and the headache go off together
and trade insults. They'd this bridge to cross. He didn't know how
many more. He didn't know this road except by Aby's image, and
that was the way an experienced rider killed himself and his horse,
just too damn good, too damn cocky with the weather and an un-
known road a junior wouldn't think of trying.
    Burn deserved better. Wasn't going to leave Burn to freeze on a
gap-toothed bridge.
    Two more gaps. More laborious board-movings, a twice-mashed
finger, a bashed knee, a splinter through his right glove, that he
couldn't get all of with his teeth and he didn't want to take the
glove off for fear of losing it, the wind was blowing so and his fin-


RIDER AT THE GATE              ~       295

gers were so numb. Cold helped the headache, only thing he could
say for it.
    Don't do anything, a doctor would say--and the wind blasted at
him at the worst moments of his balance, so he lost one plank that
caught the wind, spun him around, and off his balance. He let go
and fell, it went sailing off into the gorge: he didn't follow it. The
pistol damn near did, spun past his face to the gap: flat on his belly
he grabbed that and recovered it as something else, small and shiny,
slipped his pocket, skittered across the wind-scoured boards and
over the edge. He'd saved the pistol, but the lighter was spook-
bait.
  He got up and got another board.
    He didn't want Burn to try another jump, even if he could talk
him into it. A nighthorse walking the old timbers was one thing. A
nighthorse landing on them was another. He didn't trust the wood.
But the far side hove closer and closer, plank after laboriously
gained plank, and Burn crossed the next to last gap when he told
Burn it was safe.
    <Burn standing,> he sent. But once Burn was across that, Burn
realized <solid ground ahead,> dismissing the intervening gap as
<small hole. >
    "Burn/" Guil yelled, at the same time Burn gathered himself for
the charge, hoof-toed feet thundering down the board.
    Burn sailed across the gap, landed. A board broke--Burn went
in halfway up to his hock, and Guil stared, heart stopped as Burn
clambered across the last few boards to the solid bridgehead.
    Guil took a wobbly few steps forward, remembered his gear,
gathered it up and followed, far more scared than Burn was. Burn
stood on solid ground again. Burn was pleased with himself~
raised a hind foot to lick a scrape, but that was all.
    Burn's rider crossed the last gap above sharp rocks and moun-
tainside and tottered to a rock-sheltered spot to sit down, dizzy,
dry-mouthed with exertion, and feeling his skull trying to explode.
  Which wasn't something he'd regret at the moment.
  But they were safe.
  And the smells on this side of the gorge he suddenly realized


296    ~          C.J. Cherryh

were evergreen and not chemical smoke--clean, pure evergreen,
rocks, nighthorse, and the tang of snow on the wind ....
    <Guil riding.> It was a feeling as much as an image Burn sent
him: Burn's feeling, Guil's sensations when they were touching, the
working of muscles in unison, the warmth in his body and Burn's
at once. They could do that, when they touched, could be one mind
now if he let go and let Burn have him.
    And Burn lipped his ear. His hands met a soft nose, velvet nudge
at his cheek--Burn's tongue licked the side of his eye with utmost
delicacy and tasted salt.
    The taste came into Guil's mouth, too, and identity melted. He
scratched Burn's chin where Burn liked to be scratched, he shut his
eyes and saw through Burn's, <the mountain, the sky, the snow
making white caps on the rocks. >
    Not a full-out storm, only a spat of snow. Not thick enough yet.
Burn stood there, a barricade against the wind. His head still
reeled, and he thought it hurt: it was one of those ghosty kind of
headaches. Half-blind, feeling the altitude after his stint in Malvey
and Shamesey lowlands, he uncapped his canteen and took a sip of
water to ease his throat.
    <Guil riding,> Burn sent, wanting him, wanting reassurance he
was all right. <Guil riding in sunlight. Evergreens. Sweet smell of
evergreens and horse. >
    It took maybe a half an hour for him to get to his feet, and to
climb, belly-down, onto Burn's back. But on this side of the gorge
the wind was less, and the next switchback came up among size-
able, snow-blanketed evergreens that cut off the sight of the valley.
    They'd made the Height. They were on the lower loop of the
Tarmin road.

<Snowy branches> had long since given way to <cold nighthorse>
and <hunger.> That was the only assurance Danny had of safety in
the woods: Cloud was complaining about the game, which they
hadn't seen (another bad sign, Danny thought: something had
scared it) and the lack of berries (which argued game had recently
been here).
  And, no, lichen wasn't edible--or it was, but it wasn't some-


RIDER AT THE GATE              ~       297

thing a human palate or a human stomach wanted to try again.
He'd chewed evergreen trying to get the taste from his mouth. And
it had mostly worked.
    Cloud imaged a better taste for the stuff. Cloud didn't believe
his.
    And his gut hurt, since he'd eaten the stuff, and his heart had
raced and his vision had tunneled for at least an hour afterward,
which wasn't at all a good sign. That had scared him off further tri-
als of anything fungus-like.
    The effect had finally passed. The stomachache had eased, and
become the stomach-empty feeling that had gone past mere light-
headedness. He wasn't near starving to death. He knew that. A
human could go a whole moon-chase with nothing at all to eat,
he'd heard of people doing it who broke a leg or something where
they couldn't get help, and who had to crawl for days.
  He thought about warm beds and his mother's cooking.
    And maybe Cloud interpreted that as a wish Cloud should do
something about, because he felt a fairly purposeful change in di-
rection.
    Within a few minutes Cloud came down a steep, snowy slope
onto a clear-cut that extended in either direction, a track across the
Wild.
  More--he saw phone lines.


Chapter

XVlll

THE EVENING SHADOW ROLLED DOWN EARLY, THICK WITH CLOUD,
and the black, bristling evergreens were white with snow. Snow
made a fine dust in Burn's mane and in the folds of Guil's coat--
still a spat, not a storm, but advising a traveler it might be well to
think about camp: it was all too easy if a real blow came up--as
well could happen with the weather like this--to stray off the road
in the dark and the snow, and right off the edge of a cliff.
    But there was due to be a shelter ahead, down what was, so far, a
well-defined road--a clear-cut marked by the solitary phone line.
    And all the while that thin thread of human talk and commerce,
he supposed, could have let him call the villages ahead. He'd
thought once of buying a handset and learning how to tap in; those
who rode the lines said it was stupid-simple, and all you needed
was tape and wire-cutters besides, but, hell, he'd never needed a
phone--until now. There was a stop-start way you could send a
message without a handset; but the authorities put out warrants if
you ever cut a line purely on rider business, and besides, he didn't


RIDER AT THE GATE              ~       299

know the code: he couldn't spell any more than he could read. And
a handset? It was weight and cost, and Burn had enough to carry,
Burn would tell him so.
    Burn had been damned forgiving this trip. Burn was a <fine
horse,> and he was sorry he'd made Burn's back ache, which it did.
There'd be <bacon> when they got to shelter, there'd be <liniment
and warm water--Guil rubbing tired nighthorse legs, rubbing sore
nighthorse back-->
    Burn was immensely pleased. Doubly so that Burn's rider opted
to slide down and walk; Burn was concerned about his rider's limp
and sore leg, and wanted to lick at it--attention he had as soon
not--but Burn was very glad not to have <heavy, pack-laden rider
on tired nighthorse back> and wanted to be generous.
    You certainly didn't push yourself at this altitude if you weren't
acclimated, and neither of them were acclimated. You didn't press
beyond sensible limits--his own chest ached with the thin air, and
persistent headache rode just at the back of his eyes, not, he
thought, entirely due to the concussion.
    But the thought of a solid shelter and a wood fire was a powerful
incentive: there was supposed to be one fairly close to the ascent
and one more before Tarmin. It was encouraging that there was no
sight nor warning of trouble so far--but he didn't take the High
Wild for granted--he walked with a loaded rifle and a sidearm
ready, at the pace he felt like maintaining, which was a leisurely
limp that didn't hurt beyond what his nerves could bear; and he'd
much rather have solid walls around them tonight.
    The two of them trod knee deep in snow that showed no distur-
bance but the occasional footprint of some spook or other, delicate
imprints written in white, in that strange glow a nighttime snow-
fall had.
    And if the little spooks had moved about in the open not so long
ago then they were the biggest threat abroad. Lately they'd heard a
wally-boo call out to the woods at large, soft, silly cooing that be-
longed to a little spook, all whiskers and ears.
    Burn wasn't sending out his <nighthorse> threat. But as they
came down a slight decline in the road Burn suddenly lifted his
head, switched his ears about and sniffed the dark with that curious





300    ~          C.J. Cherryh

<on the edge> feeling that went with winter winds and the chance
of meetings.
    <Females,> ran under that train of thought. <Snow and fe-
males. >
    <Wild ones,> Guil thought anxiously, not wanting to think
about the rogue they'd come to hunt: it came to him now and again
as <dark and danger> when Burn grew too fractious, or too scat-
tered from what they'd come to find.
    Burn worried and gazed off into the woods with misgivings,
thinking of <willy-wisps> and <lorry-lies,> which was sometimes
a goblin-cat's camouflage: a horse above three or four years knew
that spook trick, and Burn was well aware there was danger up
here. A lot of things imaged what they weren't. Some had the
knack of making you see things that had nothing to do with the
ground you were walking on. The dangerous ones had worse tricks.
You'd see people in the woods. You'd hear them call to you. They'd
wave. A spook-bear could give you anything, any image it had ever
seen.
    A horse was a lot worse than that. A horse could convince you of
anything.
    Burn wasn't sure, himself, of whatever he heard--he shook him-
self, started moving again, treading carefully for a space, then grad-
ually warming again to the thought of <safe den, nighthorses,
bacon. >
    <Bacon,> Guil agreed. Granted they got to shelter before the
night grew too thick or his legs gave out, there would assuredly, he
promised, be < bacon. >
  <Guil riding,> Burn thought then. <Burn walking fast.>
    "Silly ass," Guil muttered, patted Burn on the shoulder and in-
tended to keep walking. He wasn't willing to wear Burn down, or
have him sore tomorrow.
    But Burn nudged him in the back and wanted insistently to go
faster, and he couldn't, counting a bullet-grazed leg and a bashed
knee, sustain the pace Burn wanted. Burn was skittish and full of
notions this evening, thinking of <nightmares> one moment and
<lorry-lies> the next, switching his tail and wanting to move,
wanting <fight,> wanting <us on road.>



RIDER AT THE GATE              ~       301

    So he arranged his gear and made the weary effort to get up---
aching in the arms, and the hand he used to grip with hurt like
hell: probably, he thought, he hadn't gotten all the splinter out.
    But he was glad not to walk, truth be told. Much as he'd tried to
ignore the leg--his eyes watered once he'd gotten up and gotten
relief from it. Burn struck a quicker pace than he could have held,
and he let himself relax while Burn moved--in such intimate con-
tact he heard the ambient as running through his own flesh and
bone. He felt Burn's muscle and movement, saw and smelled the
snow thick on the evergreen boughs, white on dark, sweet on
bright; heard fat flakes changing to sleet that rattled against the
branches.
    Soft, soft sounds, cold, strange smells. Winter in the High Wild.
The night was home and safe when he saw with Burn's eyes and
heard with Burn's ears--they were one creature, the human drifting
on a river of nighthorse senses, the horse remembering where he
was going with human tenacity. Burn had struck his staying-pace,
uncommonly determined, uncommonly spooky and.., the feeling
crept up Guil's backbone.., suddenly, strangely focused on some-
thing in the dark.
    Then, expected and unexpected in the night, they came on a
structure of logs--deserted, by the feel of it: it was the shelter they
were looking for.
    Thank God, he thought, as Burn walked up to it, ears forward.
(Bacon,> was definitely in the ambient now.
    Nobody home. Burn would have known. Gull winced his way
down to the ground and, rifle in hand, waded through a shallow
drift to the door, stiff now that he'd been off the leg for a while. He
set the rifle against the wall, seeing that the latch-cord was out as it
ought to be. He drew his pistol, he pulled the cord, the bar inside
came up, and he kicked snow aside and dragged the door open--
outward, as the latch-doors always opened.
    The dark inside was as cold as the snow-glow outside; but it~lt
empty. Burn put his head in past his shoulder and gave out his
(nighthorse> warning, to scatter any sleeping vermin that might
have burrowed a way in--but what they were hunting, although it



302    ~          C.J. Cherryh

could mask itself as <deep shadow> or even <human occupant,>
couldn't manage a shelter door without human hands.
    No occupants. No pilfered supplies. He put the gun away and
felt after an electric switch beside the door in the small hope one
would be there--lately lowland shelters had installed batteried
lights at the entry.  No such luck.
    But the fireplace was always on the right of the entry, and he
slung his gear aside, took out his waxed matches and sacrificed one
in order to see the state of things in the fireplace.
    There was indeed a fire laid, stuffed with kindling--he spotted a
slow match hanging from the mantel before his wooden match
could die, snatched up the tarred braid and touched his failing
light to the end before the heat got to his fingers.
    He unhooked the slow match from the nail then, bent down
with a wince and a grimace and touched off the tinder, which was,
thank God, dry. He pulled the chain to open the flue, and the gust
from the door swept in along with a moving shadow and a slow
thump of nighthorse hooves as Burn ambled into the shelter. The
door banged back all the way, threatening the fire. Gull sprang up
to reach outside, grab his rifle, grab the door and haul it shut
against the wind.
    The latch dropped. The door sealed out the wind, but the single
room had taken the cold into its wood and stone from long vacancy,
and every surface was frozen cold, not tempting a man to take his
hands out of his pockets or risk his nose above his scarf.
    In the light of the burning kindling Burn clumped over to the
nearest bin, nosed it up, already looking for <grain.>
    <Burn swelled up like three-day carcass,> Guil imaged back,
and squatted down by the fire to warm through his gloves and his
layers of leather and wool.
    <Bacon,> Burn insisted, gulping down grain, impervious to in-
suit.
    He stayed where he was, finally feeling a little warmth through
the chill. He knew that Aby had been here a number of times--he
looked up at the rider board on the wall, an old and extensive one,
and there, sure enough, were Aby's marks among the others. She


RIDER AT THE GATE              ~       303

hadn't been the last to visit here--the filled triangle and the X
were probably the riders who'd regularly refurbished it: they were
the most regular. But she'd been familiar with this place, very defi-
nitely, even from years ago when she'd first used to come up this
way, a kid escorting the small supply missions and the phone crews.
    Her earliest jobs, the years they both had scrounged what hire
they could.
    Then they'd gotten downright prosperous. They could turn
down jobs. All but the best.
    If her presence lingered about here, he'd wish it could talk, or
that she'd once, just once unbent and told him the few important
words that would have made him understand the things she'd
done.
    But what in hell was she doing with Hawley and Jonas? Leave
Luke out of it. Luke was whatever Jonas wanted. But why tell the
bank woman that Hawley was entitled? Had to have been the
wrong question they were asking her.
    Burn brought his head up, came over and nudged him hard.
"What was that for?" he asked. The sound of his own voice startled
him. He didn't use it often----only as often as Burn's behavior defied
imaging.
    Burn nudged him again, decided he was going to lick his sore
leg--"Hell!" he said, fending off the help. Burn left wet, sticky
grain on his trousers. And wasn't helping.
    <Gull and Aby,> Burn imaged to him, then. And as sloppily
licked his cheek. So Burn thought he was crazy. He rested his head
against Burn's neck, arm on his shoulders, really, really wishing he
could fall into the icy-blanketed cot over there and not move for
two days.
  But a man---or a woman--paid out promises, or lived a liar.
  So supper and bacon it had to be.

The snow came down in puffs and stuck, thick on the tall trees,
making precariously balanced loads on branches that dumped down
on rider and horse when they brushed beneath.
    Maybe they should camp for the night, Danny thought. They
couldn't see where they were going. He didn't know what was be-


304      ~        C.J. Cherryh

hind Cloud's insistence on moving. Trust your horse, he kept
telling himself--and telling himself if there were anything out
here in the dark he would know it through Cloud's senses; but the
tales he'd heard around the camp firesides said there were excep-
tions, that horses could be tricked, too, and walk right into traps, a
sending so seamless and on so many levels that even a horse couldn't
see the lie in it.
  <Cloud stopping,> he thought, but Cloud kept going.
<Cloud stopping. Danny getting off. > Cloud paid no attention.
He shifted his weight then, intending to make Cloud break
stride, then to slide down. But Cloud gave a pitch of his hindquar-
ters and imaged something so strange, so disquieting an impression
of multiple minds that it sent chills down Danny's back. He lost all
inclination to get off.
    <Cloud stopping,> he insisted, but that feeling only grew, more
and more distinct, like a swarming of half-crazed animal minds,
<food, fight, gnaw.> Cloud hadn't been carrying it on a conscious
level: it was out there, and Cloud had just sopped it up and not re-
acted to it, not passed it even to the rider on his back. Being trans-
parent, that was what the seniors called it. The predators were good
at it. And he'd startled Cloud into at least a quiet, body-touching-
body sending.
  "I don't like this, Cloud. Wait. Stop."
    <Tumbling over one another. Logs. Jumble of logs. Big, little
images, high and low. Smell of smoke. Logs. Gnawing at wall.
Taste of flour. Taste of blood. Tugging at human hand. >
    "Cloud, stop!" He grabbed at Cloud's mane mid-neck and pulled
up, signaled <back up> with his legs, but Cloud ducked his head,
jerking the mane out of his hand, and plowed ahead.
    <Rogue,> Danny thought, and helplessly remembered: <Fire on
glass. Log buildings. Village gates. ---Cloud stopping. Cloud stop-
ping. >
    But Cloud sent <blood> and <fight> and carried him willy-
nilly toward the chaos in Cloud's thoughts.
    Maybe the rogue was calling to them. Maybe Cloud was going
crazy himself. He didn't know what to do. If he got off he couldn't


RIDER AT THE GATE              ~       305

hold Cloud back at all. Cloud would be helpless, prey to whatever
Cloud believed he was seeing.
    (Men taking Danny's gun,~ he sent. (Harper taking gun.
Cloud stopping. )
    Suddenly walls appeared through the veil of falling snow, walls
at the side of the road--(log walls, a bell-arch, standing hazed in
falling snow. Gates wide open to the night--the main gate stand-
ing wide.
    And rising from inside those walls: (eat and gnaw. Blood and
flesh. Sugar and salt.
    (Nighthorse,~ Cloud sent of a sudden. (Angry nighthorse, v
And charged the open gates so suddenly that Danny scarcely
grabbed a handful of mane.
    They burst through into a street still reeking of smoke, a street
where vermin by the hundreds, black against the snow, swarmed
from under Cloud's charge, snarling and spitting and squalling as
they fled the street for the porches, the porches for the shadows.
Vermin poured over walls, ran down the street ahead of them, a
hissing recalcitrance all up and down the street.
    Something sizeable went over the porch of a house near them, a
house with what looked bodies lying on the porch. Scavengers scur-
ried across the unmoving shapes and into the dark between the
houses.
    (Nighthorse,v was all Cloud's sending. (Angry horse. Dark and
blood. Clouds and lightning.)
    Danny sat paralyzed on Cloud's back as Cloud paced down the
street. There was no real defiance, no (fight3 coming back at
them--the scavengers rolled back like a black tide in the force of
Cloud's warning, willy-wisps running for cover, lorry-lies clamber-
ing up over the walls, flitting shadows diving off porches and under
them and down the spaces between the houses.
    There was no horse present. No answer to Cloud's challenge.
Charred, skeletal timbers that had been buildings. The stench of
smoke. A burned building standing next to a stone one that wasn't
touched at all, its windows appearing intact.
    Bodies--thick in some places, bodies and what was left of them,
sometimes just gnawed pieces, animal or human, he wasn't sure.


306    i~         C.J. Cherryh


    A backbone that small teeth hadn't taken apart turned up in the
snow where something had dragged it and left it. For a second he
wasn't sure what it was. He'd not thought before what pieces
would resist the scavengers longest--if a human or a horse went
down out here. He'd not seen anything to match this destruction,
not even from the images seniors carried with their stories--noth-
ing, nothing this complete.
    "Anyone?" he called aloud, scared to make a noise. His voice
sounded thin and strange in the snowy silence that had succeeded
the hissing.
    He sent <horse and rider> into the ambient, but he feared no
villager holed up in any refuge would dare put their head up until
they heard a human voice. "Hello! Anyone hear me? Call out! You
don't need to come outside--just yell! I'U find you!"
    There wasn't any sound. Scared, he thought, if anybody was
alive--he'd endured only a few minutes of the scavenger babble be-
fore Cloud had sent them running; and he'd had a horse under him.
    Any survivor would have had to hold out sane--God, since he'd
seen the images of the attack. The village had cried out into the am-
bient for help--with only the rogue to image for them. No one had
come. No one had answered. There were supposed to be riders here.
And they hadn't saved the village.
    "Anyone?" he called out, louder. "I'm a rider up from Shamesey!
Do you need help?" Stupid, stupid question. "God, ----can anybody
hear me?"
    He thought then that he did hear something, thin and far, he
couldn't be sure, except he thought he heard it through Cloud's
ears, too, and Cloud's ears had pricked up.
    Then Cloud quickened his pace, imaging <disease> and <fear>
and <fire> as he went--Cloud went as far as a building at the end
of the street, and stopped, a shiver going up his leg, his head up,
his ears up--<disease,> Cloud maintained. <Blood. Vermin.>
    But something else came through: <room with bars> and
<dark> and <fear> and <cold,> all jumbled up together.
    "Who's in there?" Danny called out. "Come out! I'm right out-
side. It's safe."


RIDER AT THE GATE              ~       307

    "We can't," a voice cried from inside. "We're locked in. God, oh,
God, get us out of here."
    He wasn't sure. He had no gun, he had no advice; he only had
Cloud to keep vermin from going at his legs if there was anything
lurking under that wooden porch, and if the rogue should come
back God knew what they could do, at this bottled-up end of the
street and with the wide-open gate and escape far, far off at the other
end.
    He was scared to go up the steps--he was scared to open the
door; but he was scared to linger here, either, dithering while trou-
ble could be making up its mind and coming toward them. He
leaned on Cloud's withers and slid down, climbed the snow-
blanketed steps and tried the door.
    Latched. The paint was raked off the door and the door-frame,
down to bare wood, the same spreading out over the wall and the
storm-shutters. Several of the claw-marks were head-high, and
deep.
  "Get us out! Please, let us out!"
    He didn't know what to do. He didn't want to raise a lot of
racket. He called out, "Can you unlock the door?"
    "No," one voice said, and, "Break it down," the other called out.
"Please. God, please! We're locked in!"
    Images came at him, (gunfire outside the windows> and
(woman with gun. Them shouting. Gun going off in the woman's
hands. Spatter flying--red on walls, on bars, on floor--(rogue-
feeling> in the ambient-->
    It was so real, for a moment Danny's heart reacted. He cast a
look back at Cloud and down the street to see if any other source of
that feeling was out there. Cloud snorted, circled out and back,
fretting; but there wasn't anything; it was Cloud hearing it and car-
rying it to him from inside the building.
    "Hell," Danny muttered between his teeth, checked which way
the door hinges were set--inward opening, which was only safe in-
side towns; and it was the only break he'd gotten. He rammed the
door with his hip and felt play in it, hit it with his shoulder and fi-
nally, holding to the rail outside, hit it with his hip again, above
the doorknob, over and over.


308 ~ C..J. Cherryh


    Wood splintered. The door flew back too fast and banged half-
shut again.
  "Oh, God," a voice said. "We're here! We're here!"
    It was a house, maybe. But, walking in, he couldn't see where he
was. He took a match out of his pocket and lit it--saw bars in the
back, two haggard faces behind them.  God, it was the village jail.
  He didn't want to let loose criminals--but--
    Did you leave anyone--any living creature--in a cage like this,
to be eaten alive by things small enough to swarm through the
bars?
    The match burned his fingers. He dropped it--saw it burning
on the wooden floor and stamped it out.
    He saw in the last impression on his eyes, the lump that was a
woman's body. The sheen of gunmetal, all in the same memory of
matchlight.
    Cloud was insistently <wanting Danny on porch,> and he im-
aged back, teeth chattering, <Cloud in doorway, coming inside. >
    "There's a lamp," one of the voices said. "On the table by the
door."
  "It went out," the other said. "It burned out."
  "It's probably the wick. Try the wick!"
    He was far more interested in the gun he'd seen lying on the
floor. But he wanted light to see what else he might be dealing
with, and where shells and maybe food might be, if the vermin
hadn't gotten into this building, and by the evidence of two people
alive, they hadn't. He stripped off his right glove, felt after the
lamp and, finding it, shook it.
    There was a little slosh left, a very little. He shook it and tipped
it to get oil up onto the wick--took the chimney off and, blind,
turned the key to raise the unburned wick--a lot of it.
    He spent a match. The dry, charred end of the wick went in a
tall, extravagant flame, and the oiled part stayed lit as the rest fell
away in ash.
    He looked across the room--saw a woman's body, grisly damage
to the jaw from a gunshot, blood and bits of flesh spattering the
walls.


RIDER AT THE GATE              ~       309

    Rifle on the floor, under her. <Moaning on the floor. Bleeding to
death. Rogue-feeling. Gunshots in the village. Woman aiming at
them and them yelling and screaming don't-->
    Not men. Two scared kids behind the bars--kids maybe not as
old as he was, no coats, clothes blood-spattered, faces gaunt and
eyes bruised from want of sleep--<wanting out, wanting, wanting,
wanting-- >
    "There's a key!" one told him, teeth chattering, and pointed
through the bars. "In the drawer. In the desk drawer, get the key--"
    "We told her come in with us, we begged her lock the door and
get behind the bars, but they were all over the porch--"
      The kid lost his voice. The other babbled out: "They kept jump-
ing at the door, trying to get in--"  (Fear, scattering-apart.
    (Fire on window-glass. Rogue-feeling, outside the building--in
the street. >
    They began babbling, trying to tell him something, he couldn't
even track what it was, except desperation to be out of there. He
searched the drawer, and the key they claimed was there--wasn't.
He found a box of shells, and set that on the desk. He kept looking,
disarranged the desktop clutter, and found it.
    "That's it, that's it!" the boys cried, and the younger-looking
started sobbing--then yelped as a heavy body trod the steps out-
side and stopped as the steps creaked.
    (Thin boards,) was Cloud's opinion of the porch. Cloud didn't
want to risk it, and Danny didn't want him trying: <nighthorse
foot going through boards,) he thought; and with a shudder he
bent to take up the rifle from under the dead woman. He had to
tug the stock from under her leg.  "Who was she?"
    "Peggy Wallace," one answer came hoarsely. And: "The marshal's
wife," the older boy said. "Tara Chang--one of the riders--she
came. She wanted the marshal. Then--there were shots outside.
There went on being shots--"
    "It was a rogue," the younger said, between chattering teeth.
"Rogue horse."
  He was increasingly uneasy with every passing moment he was



310    ~          C.J. Cherryh

out of Cloud's immediate reach. He had a gun in one hand. He
picked up the box of shells, checked the caliber, found they
matched and stuffed them in his pocket.
  "You've got to let us out!" the younger said.
    And the other: "Look, look, --I'm the one who belongs in here,
my brother doesn't. He didn't do anything. I did. God, he's only
fourteen. Get him out of here."
    "You're both going," Danny said, before the younger could set
up a howl. "Wouldn't leave a dead pig for the spooks. But you lis-
ten to me, do exactly what I say, and if I say move, you move, and if
I say shut up, you shut up, and you don't mess with my horse. He'll
kill you quicker than you can see it coming, you hear me? He's not
used to strangers. So you be real quiet and real fast to do what I say.
Or you're spook-bait. You got that clear?"
    "Yes," the answer was, both of them shaking-scared and throw-
ing off <fear, fear, fear> that didn't have a source or a point--it
washed out their thoughts in a jumble of <scavenger> images and
the <gun going off> and <nighthorse outside, and somebody they
knew, but twisted, and wanting something, wanting someone,
angry--and wanting to kill. >
    His hand shook shamefully just getting the key in the lock. He
shoved it in, turned it, and as he pulled the door open, the boys
came pushing each other out--neither of them having a coat
against the winter around them, no sweaters, no gloves, no light or
heat. They'd had two blankets and each other, that was the only
reason they hadn't frozen when the heat died. Their shuddery
breath frosted in the air.
      "You get those blankets," Danny said. "You'll need everything
we can find. I'll get you out of here."  "The rogue's out there!"
    "It's not out there--but the gate's open. It could have come in
here any time it wanted. We've got my horse with us. We're all
right so long you do what I tell you and do it fast."
    "We got to find mama," the younger said. "Carlo, we've got to
find mama--"
    "No chance," Danny said brutally, but there wasn't any faking it.
He thought about the street and it probably carried. The kids re-


RIDER AT THE GATE              ~       311

 flected something back so scared, so full of blood and terror and
 sense of being stalked that he couldn't get an image through it and
 didn't have time to try. "Everyone's gone or dead. We can probably
 find things the spooks didn't get, but it's not safe out there. I don't
 want to get boxed in this far down the street. I want nearer that
 gate--if we can find anything left."
     "It couldn't get in," the older--Carlo--said. "It went all around
 the place--"
  "It's Brionne," the younger broke in. "It was Brionne."
  <Blond girl, younger than either boy. Blond girl by the fireside.
  <Man and woman and the boys angry and yelling.
    <Gun going off. Carlo holding the gun. Anger. Hate. Man hit-
ting Carlo .... >
    "Don't tell him!" the younger cried, shaking at Carlo's arm.
"Don't tell him, don't think it, don't think about it! He can hear
you!"
    "Kid's right," Danny muttered. He didn't like Cloud outside
alone right now the way he didn't like the idea that Carlo'd shot a
man. "What you did to get locked up--I don't give a damn. We
got to get a place we can hold out." There had to be a lot of sup-
plies and equipment in the village that the vermin hadn't gotten.
Guns. Shells. Knives. All the resources a village had inside it were
still here. Had to be. He didn't like taking stuff from dead peo-
ple-but he wasn't riding away from guns and shells and food that
could make a difference in their survival, either.
    And if they could find a hidey-hole he liked the look of, they
could tuck into it until he could get sorted out. The village gate
out there hadn't looked to be damaged--just standing open.
    Spooks could go over a wall. A horse couldn't. A horse could
trick you and spooks calling to you could make you open a door--
but the rogue for all its strength couldn't get in and it couldn't for
all its power make these kids open the bars without a key. That was
why they were alive.
    "Woman saved your lives," he said to them, searching the cabi-
net for shells. And found another box. "She could've been a fool and
opened that front door. Bars wouldn't stop the little ones. They'd



312 ~    C..J. Cherryh


have got you. She knew she was going to do it and she shot herself
instead. You don't ever forget that woman's name, you. Hear me?"
    The older one held onto the younger. The younger kid was cry-
ing. He guessed by that he'd scared them enough--but she'd been
a woman with the guts to stop it all when she started going under
its influence. The only better thing she could have done was come
in with them, shut the doors and throw the key out, if she'd had
her head clear.
    But no question, once the spooks started clawing at that door,
she was lucky to have found the trigger once.
    With the time the spooks had had to do their work, not likely
that the marshal or anybody else in this village was going to turn
up out of some similar hidey-hole--the luck to have a door you
couldn't open yourself wasn't going to be general. He didn't know
about this Tara Chang the kid talked about, <woman in fringed
leather. Dark-haired.> Senior rider, if he had to guess. No sign of
her or the rest of the riders--no help from that quartet. Not if that
gate was standing open.
    He brought the kids outside--they balked when they saw Cloud
waiting, and Cloud snorted and laid down his ears.
    "You be polite," Danny said in as stern a tone as he had. "He's
not used to village kids. His name is Cloud. You let him smell you
over. You think nice thoughts about him and me, you hear? Hold
out your hands, let him smell them. That way he won't mistake

you for spooks."
    They were scared to death. They
gers,> but they came down the steps
out their bare hands. Cloud sniffed

thought <Cloud biting fin-
and, the older boy first, held
and snorted, threw his head

away from them, and wanted <Danny riding.>
    He wanted <finding food.> But he didn't think, on a second,
queasy thought, that he wanted to let Cloud do the guiding--
Cloud having no fastidiousness about some things, and there being
pieces of human beings in the streets. He thought instead about
<store> and <cans and flour,> hoping the vermin hadn't gotten
everything, and a thought came into his head--he was sure it was
the boys--telling him exactly which building would have that
kind of thing.


RIDER AT THE GATE              ~       313

    Most urgent of everything--(closing the gate.~ Once they did
that, inside, they could get some distance from the walls, at least,
with Cloud's help, enough to keep from mental confusion coming
at them from the spooks outside.
    He didn't know, as tired and sore as he was, if he could get up to
Cloud's back on one try, with the rifle and all. But he wasn't giving
the only gun to two jailed kids to hold. He wanted (Cloud close to
the steps~ and he cheated a mount off the bottom step--made a
fairly senior-style landing on Cloud's back, rifle in hand and all.
    Then he told Cloud (closing gatev and Cloud set out at a fair
pace down the street. The boys hurried after, wrapped in their blan-
kets, having to run to keep up--and by the time they'd reached the
gate and he'd slid down again to heave the huge door shut, the boys
were still halfway back along the street.
    He shoved the gate, the truck-sized door needing no small push
against the accumulation of snow. He brought it to, and the bar
dropped, comforting thump.
    They were in sole possession, he supposed. He had a look about
the gates, checked the latch--felt Cloud bristle up with warning as
the boys came running up, gasping and terrified.
    "We're all right," he said to them. "Gate's shut. If we don't open
it, nothing can. We just stay far from the walls. What village is
this, anyway?"
  "Tarmin," Carlo gasped shakily. "This is Tarmin village."
    The biggest. The most people. The place you'd run to for help.
All dead.
    But maybe not all dead. Other, awful possibilities came to him as
he looked back along the snowy, devastated street.
    "Can you think of any other places where somebody couldn't get
out?" Worse and worse thoughts. "Any sick folk? Any old people,
crippled people--any babies?"
    There were. There had been. The boys were well aware who and
where--they were worried, they were sickened at what they saw,
and scared, not feeling like outlaws and killers at all; he, God help
him, didn't want to do this. He really didn't. But when they
started telling him where people lived, and thinking of houses, it
was clear they knew their village: (wanting people,~ came to him




314 ~ C.J. Cherryh

in confused fashion, an aching fear for specific faces they knew and
feared were <bones in the street. >
    At least it wasn't hard to find a sidearm--he could take his pick,
once he began to walk about among the remains. People had come
out with guns, they'd died with guns in their hands, all up and
down the street. He kept his rifle in the crook of his arm, and
walked back along the street with the boys in tow, Cloud following
close. He scavenged a pistol and holster just lying in a bloody
jacket.
    He gave the jacket to the older boy. He kept the pistol. They
found scarves, hats, a lot of them chewed. A coat for the younger
kid--and a gun. The older boy hesitated at it, afraid to make the
move. Danny took it, checked to see it was loaded, and gave it to
him.
  "Don't make a mistake. Hear? I'll nail you."
    The kid didn't say anything. But the boy wasn't thinking hostil-
ity, either. He was <scared,> thinking mostly about his kid
brother, and <vermin under the porches. >
    They went from house to house, after that, and they called out at
every house. Danny imaged <rider with horse, rider with boys.
Rider looking for people in houses> as loud as Cloud could make
him; but Cloud didn't smell anything he liked in those houses.
    <Human baby,> Danny imaged, <human baby, old people-->
but he didn't get answers.
    They'd done all they could, he told himself. They forced the door
to the village store open, and it wasn't touched. He got a flashlight
and some batteries, and he kept thinking about <babies in houses>
and the couple of places they'd tried the hardest.
    So he went out again, took the boys with him for backup, and
with the boys staying on the porches, he went into open doors with
his torch in one hand, and a pistol in the other, went into upstairs
halls while Cloud was sending his <nighthorse> image downstairs.
He looked in the shut rooms--in one house where the boys said
there was a sick old man who couldn't get out of his bed.  That was bad. That was really bad.
    And inside one after the other of the houses where they said
there were babies--he saw enough to last him. Parents had run to



RIDER AT THE GATE              ~       315

hold their kids when the panic hit. They'd opened the doors to help
their neighbors. That was all they needed to do.
    You learned to damp things down when you worked with the
horses. You learned just--see colors. Patterns. No emotional stuff.
You could see anything. It didn't kill you. Blood was blood, you
had it, they had it, bone was bone, everybody was made of it.
    He went down the steps, of the last one, the one he'd had to talk
himself into cold, numb. Cloud wanted <Danny coming back.>
Cloud wanted <fight> because Cloud's rider was upset; but there
was nothing available to fight.
    A support post got in his way as he came out onto the porch. He
swung on it with the flashlight hard enough he bent the barrel at
an angle and killed the light. The boys didn't ask what he'd found.
    He walked. He didn't want contact with Cloud for a while.
Cloud walked near him, mad and snappish. The boys must have
sensed it, because they trailed along out of reach.
    They went back to the store. That was the best place. The only
one with no bodies and no blood.



Chapter

X1X

THEY WERE THE BLACKSMITH'S SONS. THEIR NAMES WERE CARLO
and Randy Goss. And beyond that it was hard to get all the story.
They brought Cloud up the low porch of the grocery--the flash-
light, by some wonder, still almost worked, at least so they could
get an oil lantern lit, and by that light they started a fire in the
ironwork stove. It had been dark when the trouble came, the store
was shut--the grocer lived next door, the boys said; the door over
there had been open, but this one had a keyed lock, and there was
no need, Danny agreed with the boys, to open the door into the
house.
    The awful thing, where they'd been and what they'd seen, was
having an appetite. But Cloud wasted no time--Cloud was inter-
ested immediately in the cold-locker, not an ears-down kind of no-
tice, but <ham> was in his thoughts, and Danny held the pistol on
the door while Carlo and his brother opened it.
    It was hams. Hams and packets of other stuff. Cloud started
imaging <ham frying,> and Danny didn't think he could stand it,


RIDER AT THE GATE              ~       317

but Cloud wanted it, and with the whole store filled with supplies,
they didn't have to save anything. There were unseasoned iron pans
the store had sold. There was the makings for biscuits. Danny
stirred up soda biscuits and had the boys slice up the ham and put
it in the skillet so they could at least make a start on Cloud's ap-
petite.
    And by the time the biscuits were cooking on the edge of the
stove Cloud was completely occupied watching <ham frying.> No
extraneous thoughts from Cloud--Cloud dominated the ambient,
Cloud wanted <ham, food, warmth> and that was what was in the
ambient--Cloud's stupid rider finally figured out why they were
ravenously hungry and why he found himself heaving a tired sigh
and why the boys had tried to nip a little scrap of ham that floated
free in the pan. Cloud had no squeamishness and no remorse.  And no fondness for thieves.
    "That's Cloud's," Danny said. "Cloud gets peeved if you steal his
supper."
  That brought a sullen look.
    "You want a mad horse or a happy horse inside this little place
with us?" Danny put it to them. "You cut some more ham right
now. We'll get ours."
    Carlo took a cue fast. The younger kid whined. Carlo hit him
with his elbow, said, "Man's telling you," and sliced more ham.
    Man, Danny thought. Man. Was that what he looked like to
these kids?
    Damn fool, if he let that reaction get into the air. He checked on
the biscuits, decided with Cloud involved, he'd better make more
biscuits. It wasn't real good for Cloud to eat nothing but ham,
Cloud's ambitions to the contrary--it was a lot of what the horse
doctors called foreign stuff for him. But Cloud tolerated biscuits
just fine.
    Cloud didn't mind <biscuits.> Cloud thought they were good
with <ham. >
    So they settled down on supply sacks in a fire-warmed room and
cooked panful after panful of ham, stuffed themselves, stuffed
Cloud (harder task) and washed it all down with lowland draft beer,


318    ~          C.J. Cherryh


which the boys had never had. The older was smart with it
sipped.
    The younger, Randy, gulped his like water and passed out on
sacks after one mug.
  Carlo said, after a moment of quiet,
  "Got to thank you."
  "Couldn't leave you," he said.
  "You didn't say your name."
    "Danny--Dan Fisher." He'd lost that chance. Damn. And
needed authority with these kids, for their collective safety. "I
the rogue attack. Long way off. But I couldn't tell where it was,
even what it was, at least when it started."
    "My sister," Carlo began, and trailed off into a long
something about a rider den and a stocky man and a lear
jacketed rider that looked like this Tara Chang that Carlo
already talked about.
  "Your sister's a rider."
    "No. She wanted to be. She ran off. And it was her with
rogue. I know it was her. I could feel it. I could see it,
through the walls. She was looking for papa. She kept calling
calling for papa--"
    "A rogue horse is apt to want people. And they're loud."
on the edge of what he knew about the subject, but the kid
comforting. "It could take an image right from your mind. It'd
like somebody you knew. People paint their own images--the
they want most, the one they're most afraid for. And a predator
pick it right up and give it back to you."
    Carlo gave a fierce shake of his head. <Girl> came into the
ent. <Tracks leading along the snow. Gate with fan-trace in

snow. >

    Danny let out a slow breath, decided maybe after all Carlo
what he was talking about.
    And he didn't know why he'd found <Carlo in jail.> Didn't
derstand Carlo <shooting man.> Things were getting tangled.
he'd like answers.
  Carlo flinched, tucked his knee up fast, rested his chin on


RIDER AT THE GATE              ~       319

hand and didn't look at him. Lamplight glistened on Carlo's eyes.
Chin wobbled.
"You have a good reason to shoot somebody?" Danny asked.
<Man with stick raised--headed at him and his brother. Woman
screaming. Hate, wanting, fear. Shouting>--But you couldn't tell
what in a sending. Cloud couldn't carry human voices yet in any
way you could hear it, just the noise.
    But it looked like--house and family. It 2~/t like house and fam-
ily. He knew the scene when his own papa hit him. He flinched the
same as Carlo and Randy flinched--but, damn, --he'd never shoot
papa, he couldn't do that--he loved him.
    Carlo got up in a hurry, scaring Cloud, who snaked out his neck
and grabbed a mouthful of coat.
  <"Cloud.l" Letting coat go. Boy standing. Still water. >
    Carlo didn't stand. Carlo made it away into the shadows, to sit
down on a coil of cable. He crouched there with his head in his
hands and cried, great noisy sobs.
    <Blood,> Cloud thought, confused, thinking <fight,> but no
longer mad. Cloud knew he shouldn't have hurt the boy. Cloud was
upset, and stared at the boy, wide-nostriled, remembering <Danny
making that sound,> because, dammit, he'd soaked Cloud's shoul-
der a couple of times since they'd teamed up, especially when his
father had announced to the neighborhood he was going to hell.
    Carlo--had done the unthinkable. No knowing why. Carlo was
hurting--he was hurting all over the ambient, aching for what he'd
done.
    "Calm it down," Danny said. "You're near a horse, dammit.
Calm down."
  "I shot him," Carlo stammered. "I shot my f-f-father."
    What did you say to a statement like that? What did you follow
it with? He knew Carlo didn't want to have shot anybody. The mo-
ment was there over and over again, <the fireplace, the man, Carlo
with the gun.
  <Two-sided anger. Flying every direction. >
  < Quiet. >
  He scared Carlo. Carlo looked up at him, stunned and shaken.



320    ~          C.J. Cherryh

    "Horse," Danny said. He was all but sure of it. "The horse was
sending."
  "What horse?"
    "The rogue. It was spooking around out there near the village
when you had your quarrel. It was there. You know it was, but you
don't know you know. I'm hearing it in your memory. Only I'm a
rider. I know what a horse sounds like. I know what I'm hearing in
what you're sending me."
    Carlo wiped his face, still staring up at him out of the shadows,
cwanting, listening, pleading with him. v "I can't send!"
    "You hear me real damn good," Danny said, knowing he was lay-
ing it on thick and knowing he was out of his depth, but he couldn't
afford a kid going off the mental edge in this place. This was a kid
who'd listened to the preachers. He'd been there, once, and he
knew how to make it sound better, at least. "People don't ever re-
ally send, you know that. Not even riders. We all say we do, but re-
ally only the horses hear us and pass things back and forth. Some
people can hear better, or they think images better, or maybe
they're just quicker to put things into shape. A rider's brain just
sorts pictures out better than some--something like. That's what
I've heard, anyway. I'm not as good at it as some. But I can talk in
words. I know riders you don't hear two words out of in days. And
I know how to pick out a rogue-sending. Trust me in that."
    "My sister could hear the horses." Carlo's voice shook. (Fear~
was very strong. "She could hear them at night. She could hear
spooks in the woods. Maybe it runs in the f-family."
    Carlo didn't like this sister, this sister (wanting horse.v There
was a lot of anger there. A lot. And he had a damn scared kid on his
hands.
    "I hate to say your sister was wrong," Danny said. "But I don't
hear the horses all the time. If I'm far from Cloud--I don't. She
may have thought she did. If you hear one across town--that's a
real upset horse. A rogue--she'd maybe hear. But so did you, that's
the fact."
  "I didn't hear it when she left."
    "Yeah, but you heard it later. And she was trying to hear, what I
pick up from you. --Listen to me." The kid was close to panic. His



RIDER AT THE GATE              ~:      321

own nerves were shaky. He wanted it <quiet.> "Listen: that horse
was hanging around. She left, right? Your family was upset. N0-
body's going to think straight when a crazy horse is pushing temper
into the ambient. Listen, down in Shamesey they were shooting at
people when the horses got upset, and there wasn't any rogue, just a
report of one being up here. I'm not saying there wasn't any fault.
I'm saying it went crazy like it did because you got a crazy horse
sending like hell out there. It couldn't hear you. But you could hear
it, no trouble at all, and you could hear anybody who was with that
horse. Sending's the same as hearing. The same as hearing, do you
hear me? You're not going to hell."
    Carlo's jaw worked. Hard. Carlo took another swipe at his eyes
with a hand shaking like a leaf. <Listening. Cautious. Wary.>
    You couldn't push the argument too far. For what he knew the
kid was guilty as sin. But the hazard of the kid blowing up was an
unease sitting like lead at the pit of his own stomach--and the am-
bient began to ease.
    "Want another beer?" Danny asked, and got up and filled Carlo's
mug from the keg.
    Carlo came and took it. Cloud came up behind him--<close be-
hind him. Boy turning quietly. Quiet water. >
      Cloud gave him a sniff-over, trying to figure what was the mat-
ter with him. Carlo held his beer and stood very wisely quiet.
  Cloud went back to his ham-grease and biscuits.
    "Cloud protects me," Danny said. "He's making sure you're not
sick. They don't understand everything we do. He wouldn't like it
if you were sick."
  Carlo was shaking so he spilled beer on his hand.
    "You're all right," Danny said. "We'll get out of here. You and
the kid each with a rifle and a sidearm and supplies and all, I'll
walk you out to somewhere."  "There's Verden."
    "No village up here is real safe right now. This place at least isn't
real noisy in the ambient. The rogue may go for something louder.
Or easier. We're not going to open the gates."
  "Our mother did it."
  "What?"


322      ~        C.J. Cherryh

     "Opened the village gate. She heard Brionne. She wanted
 Brionne." Carlo sipped his beer, staring unblinkingly into it. Swal-
 lowed hard, as if that wasn't all that was going down. "Brionne sure
 came home, didn't she?"
     God, Danny thought, and didn't say anything. The ambient for a
 second was full of <Brionne at the breakfast table. Papa at the
 forge. Kids playing in the blacksmith's shop. Throwing snowballs.
 Laughing. >
     Danny shoved at the ambient. <Boys walking, Danny riding on
 Cloud down a sunny, snow-covered road. Blue sky.> "If we don't
 hear anything, I figure we'll go out tomorrow. I got a friend I'm
trying to catch up with."
  "From where?"
  "Shamesey."
  "That's where you're from? Clear from there?"
  "Yeah."
  "Him, too?"
  "Know it's a him? Know it's a rider?"
  "Yeah." Carlo looked puzzled. "I mean, I guessed."
  "What color's his hair?"
  Carlo looked entirely uneasy. "Blond," he said.
  "See?"
  "I don't want to. God!"
    "Yeah, I figure you don't want to, but there isn't any choice--if
you come near a horse, you're going to see things. You prime your-
self to go toward my horse, you got it? Not away. If anything goes
wrong, you don't spook off on your own--it'll get you sure. Same
with Randy. You better listen real hard to the ambient and don't be
afraid of it. Drivers with a big truck around them, they can sort of
ignore it and follow the rig in front, but on foot, you're down there
with the spooks and the vermin. --Hey. You got your brother for a
responsibility. You'll do it. You have to."
    Carlo didn't feel sure. Carlo stayed scared. But he looked aside at
the sleeping boy, and said, finally, "Yeah."
    "I got a kid brother, too," Danny said, which was about as senti-
mental as he meant to get. But Carlo Goss was pulling together
real well. Real well. He hoped it lasted.


RIDER AT THE GATE              ~       323

  "Yeah," Carlo said again, and went and got another beer.
    Couldn't blame him. Carlo was getting wobbly on his feet with
two. But there wasn't damned much--
    Cloud's head came up. Stark, concentrated look toward the wall.
Toward the outside.
    Not a sending. (Creak of hinges.v Somebody was out there, or
the wind was moving a door in all that quiet.
    From up the street, not down. But nobody could be stirring out
there. It felt like a presence. It kept shifting.
  Shifting. A horse. A rider. Side of the camp.
  (Rider gate, human coming through where the horse couldn't--v
  Shit!
    He grabbed his coat and hauled it on in feverish haste--the coat
first, because you couldn't aim worth a damn shaking your teeth
out. He pulled on his gloves, he grabbed the rifle.  Carlo and Randy were (scared.
    "You got a handgun," Danny said. He was scared himself, but he
had to move too fast to think on it.
"Don't go out there," Carlo begged him. "Please don't go out."
"That's a gate open. Somebody's out there. If they open the big
gate, we could have the damn rogue in our laps. You stay here. The
kid's passed out. You stand over him. You know what the marshal's
wife did. Just don't be too early--or too late."
    "Yeah." Carlo's teeth were chattering. Danny went to the door
and Cloud followed him, ears up.
    It didn't feel like (Cloud being mad.v Cloud was (hearing the
intruder and wary.
    (Man,v Cloud saw in the ambient. (Man in the dark street.
Man with gun.
    (Stuart,~ Danny thought, and with his heart in his throat
opened their makeshift latch and went out onto the porch in the
dark.
    (Jonasv was standing in the middle of the street. Pistol levelled
at (Cloud and Danny. v The gun lowered. Slowly.
    "Everybody all right?" Danny asked. He thought there might be
more (horsesv than one in the ambient--he wasn't sure.
  Jonas had been scared. Jonas Westman--had just been (sur-
324      ~:       C.J. Cherryh

prised and scared. > Jonas walked across the snow-covered street to-
ward him, <mad and madder.>
    "There's ham and biscuits," Danny said, very pleased to be able
to say that to this man, coolly, in full ownership of the premises
and the situation. "It'd take me about fifteen minutes, supper in
hand. Or if you'd rather--"
  "You left the rider gate open."
  Trust Jonas to land on the one mistake. "Hope you closed it."
  "Stuart with you?"
    As if he couldn't be where he was without senior help. "Haven't
seen him. You?" <Harper's camp. Men scattering. Rogue in the
ambient. >
    "No luck," Jonas said. <Partners at the main gate. Cold, worried
partners. Jonas opening gate. >
      <Jonas latching gate.> He hadn't quite meant to let that inso-
lent query hit the ambient. But there it was, edged with hostility.
  <Man in doorway. > Jonas didn't take alarm. <Man with gun.>
  Carlo was behind him. With that three-sixty degree, back of his
  head surety of multiple riders restored to him, Danny thought
  about < drinking beer. > About < sleeping kid. > About <stove> and
  <cold-locker full of hams,> and Jonas walked on down the street to
  let his partners and Shadow in. Jonas went out of Cloud's range and
  into Shadow's, he was sure by the way Jonas vanished into there-
  and-not-there presence.
    He hadn't thought <Carlo in jail.> He resolved he wasn't going
to. He picked up Carlo's confusion, turned and pushed Carlo back
into the warmth and the light.
  "That your friend?" Carlo asked.
  "Did it feel like it?"
  "No," Carlo said.
    "Friends of my friend. Real sons of bitches. But they're all
sons of bitches. They're high country riders. Borderers. We've got
help."
    Carlo didn't quite seem to trust it. Carlo stayed scared, and wor-
ried about < jail. >
    "I'm not going to tell him. It could slip--won't guarantee that
it won't. But village law's not rider law." He had a thought and got


RIDER AT THE GATE              ~       325

Carlo's attention with a knuckle against the arm. "These guys?
Don't let them bluff you."
    Carlo didn't like to hear that. He cast a nervous glance as if he
could still see Jonas.
    "They'll try," Danny said. "They're not leaving you and the kid
here. Or if they do--depend on it, I'm not running. Think of
<them running away> if they think about it. You don't have to say
a thing. Think <scared riders.> They'll hate it like sin."

They made biscuits--Carlo had never cooked in his life, but he
tried; Randy waked with all the commotion and sat up bleary-eyed.
    "Riders are here," Carlo told him. "We're going to be all right,
Randy. You hear?" Randy sat there looking numb and shaky, maybe
a little sick from the beer--the ambient was queasy and scared, but
Cloud wouldn't put up with it. Cloud thought <horses with cattle-
tails> and <horses standing outside in the cold> and Cloud wasn't
happy with the arrival.
    Going to be all right was a little early, too. Cloud's rider didn't
count on it, because Jonas was an argumentative son of a bitch and
Cloud's rider wasn't going to take it.
    Well, Cloud's rider thought--maybe Danny Fisher could tuck
down a little and listen to Jonas, whose disagreeable advice had
kept him alive. He'd learned a bit. He'd been desperate enough to
learn, and he could try being--not ducked down and quiet, but
maybe not quite so touchy.
    He didn't have to feel as if Jonas was threatening him. He'd had
guns aimed at him. Jonas was a lot different.
    Jonas,' who was coming in asking for supper and shelter in what
was, Jonas could figure, his camp, which he'd set up and where
Jonas was asking charity.
    Cloud was first in. Boss horse. Cloud should be <nice,> but the
store was <Cloud's den> and <Shadow-horse standing on the porch
in the snow> if Shadow had <fight> in mind.
    He'd fairly well built the picture when assorted footsteps arrived
on the porch and Jonas' bunch knocked, wanting entry.
    Danny opened the door. "Pretty crowded in here. Room and food
for your horses if they're quiet."



326    ~          C.J. Cherryh

    <Cold horses smelling ham> came back to him, from at least
couple of the horses in the street. Heads were up and nostrils work-

 ~lqaw'ley %o'~eih ex'nausteih.
      "Come on in," Danny said, and held the door, imaging <sacks to
  sit on, horses lying down. Ham and biscuits.>
      "Were you here when it happened?" Jonas asked, taking off his
  hat.
      "They were." Danny nodded toward the two boys, and made the
  introductions: "Jonas Westman, Luke Westman, Hawley Antrim--
  Carlo and Randy Goss. Only ones alive. Their sister Brionne's on
  the rogue."
     That got attention. Hats that had been coming off in courtesy to
 the house got tucked in hand and everybody stared at Carlo and
 Randy for a heartbeat, then wanted <girl on horse. >
     He filled in the blonde hair, the red coat, the fact it was a kid
 looking For dead parents.
     "Shit," Hawley said. Hawley was upset. Something about
 <trucks and rocks and a rider,> that went blurred as Hawley's
 thinking skittered away to <rocks.>
   Jonas bumped Danny's arm. "Kid opened the gates?"
     He didn't want to think. He didn't. He said, "Carlo, ham's burn-
 ing.'' It wasn't. But it was close. Cloud was on the far side of the
 room, by the cold locker door; Cloud was closest to the stove, and
 put his nose out, smelling <ham.> The other horses were near the
 door, crowded in the narrow room, growing argumentative; but
 human presence gave them no more room.
     "Kids are upset enough," Danny said under his breath, and Jonas
 didn't push it. "Bad time," Danny amplified the image of <dead
 village. Pieces of bodies. > But Jonas had seen it.
     "You shouldn't have left that side gate. The outside rider gate
 was standing open wide."
     Damn. But he had it coming. Jonas was telling him what he had
 done that was stupid. That wasn't an unfriendly act in this country.
     "Yeah," he said. "I didn't think. I knew it the second I knew
 somebody was there. Scared hell out of me."
   Jonas was standing close in the crowded quarters. Jonas laid a


RIDER AT THE GATE              ~       327

hand on his shoulder, squeezed it. He wasn't sure he liked it, wasn't
sure what it meant. Jonas had turned his back and gone over to in-
vestigate the stovetop cooking, where Carlo looked to have too few
hands available for too many pans and Danny still wondered what
that had meant--from Jonas' disposition. Hawley was sitting on a
barrel, the source of a glum pressure in the ambient: upset with
what he'd seen outside in the street and trying to keep it quiet.
    Luke--Luke was sitting on pile of sacks talking to Randy, asking
him questions in Luke's quiet way. Randy sneezed, exhausted,
probably sick from the beer, and stared at Luke somewhere between
reassured and scared: too many horses, besides which Shadow and
Cloud together weren't an easy presence in a confined space.
    But four horses, four armed riders and two village boys, well-
armed and fed, holding a wide walled perimeter with a lot of fuel
against the cold were much better odds than he'd hoped for against
the rogue. They didn't need another village until spring, if they had
to hold out.
    "Is there a phone?" Jonas asked. And it was like the business
with the gate: he just hadn't thought--they were still in the
process of getting a camp in order. But he hadn't thought.  He said, calmly, "Carlo, where's a phone?"
    "Mayor's office," Carlo said. <Dark streets. Snow and dead.>
Carlo didn't want to go tonight. It was one too many dark build-
ings, but Carlo was willing if they had guns. "Don't know if it's
working."
    "Do what we can," Jonas said. "We're all right. But villages up
on the High Loop need to know."
    "Yeah," Danny said. He was embarrassed about the phone. But
he didn't know how to use one, anyway. It wasn't quite as bad a
mistake as he'd made with the gate. "I'll go see about it. What
building and what do you do with it?"

The morning came crisp and clear, sunlight striking the tops of the
evergreens--Guil put his head out of the shelter, shut the door and
took his time in the warmth. He had two dry blankets, dry fire-
warmed boots, everything warm from the fireside, and Burn and he
had breakfast on the bacon they'd brought and on the dry supplies


328      ~       C.J. Cherryh

the villages supplied the riders that served them: biscuits and sugar
syrup, firewood already cut, an assortment of small blades and cords
and such that riders might need--you took out, sometimes you put
in, if you had a surplus; it was just an oddments box, always on the
fireside. They made the shelters so much alike on purpose--so you
didn't have to wonder. There were bandages. There were matches.
You left them alone if you didn't need them.
    He sterilized his own needle in the lamp-flame and got a nasty
splinter out of the heel of his hand, a few minor ones out of his fin-
gers. He'd lantern light and firelight this morning, the room was
warm--he'd had time to warm himself and his dry blanket last
night and even wash off before he went to bed on a decent supper.
Then he'd gone out, just out, until he waked with the fire gone to
coals and staggered out to put a couple of more small logs on.
    Quiet, quiet morning. He was tempted to hunker down and stay
another day, at least: he had aches and pains enough to justify it--
he'd do it if there weren't so urgent a reason to move on, at least as
far as Tarmin, where he could find out from the local riders what
the situation was and pass the warning of the situation. Tarmin
could advise the High Loop villages of the danger if the phones
were working--4)r if very brave riders wanted to try to get through.
    There was one more shelter between here and Tarmin if he
needed it: he knew it from Aby, and the map painted on a board
nailed over the hearth advised the same, in a system he couldn't
doubt. There were the sideways crosses for the shelters; there were
the dashes for the phone lines, with a circle for where you were, at
this cross, and the triangles for the villages. Reading might tell you
more, he guessed, because there were some letters on the board; but
you didn't need to know so much which village was which, if you
were on this road. All you needed to know was that there was a vil-
lage ahead and not just a mining camp. The marks always told you
that, triangles for a village, stars for towns (there weren't any on
Tarmin Height) and squares for the camps. Trails were dot and
dash, roads were wide solid lines. It always made sense.
    Not to Burn. Burn believed that it was <villages and roads>
where people and horses were, right down to the shingles and the
walls and the horse dens, but Burn never believed that the circled


RIDER AT THE GATE              ~       329

cross was where he was. Burn knew where Burn was: he was, of
course, in a shelter with walls this color and a fire and bins of grain.
Burn wasn't in any mark on the board, Burn was where Burn clearly
saw Burn was, and the ambient was all <warm, content nighthorse,
Guil sleeping. >
  "No," Guil said reluctantly. <Burn and Guil in snow.>
  Burn was not happy. Burn sulked. <Guil walking in snow. >
    "Come on, Burn. Cut it." Guil gave a slap on Burn's shoulder
and got snapped at by strong nighthorse teeth.
    But he packed up. <Guil walking outside. Goblin-cats sneaking
through snow. >
  <Snow on Guil's head.>
    He kept packing. He put out the fire, put on his coat and hat
and scarf and gloves. The shelter was fast to chill with the fire out.
Much less comfortable. Much less inviting. He gathered up the
two-pack and his rifle, and opened the door. Cold air wafted in.
  Burn shook himself, imaging <fire> and <smoke.>
  Burn was sulking as he came outside. Guil latched the door.
  Guil started walking. Burn followed, still sulking.
    But after a little Burn's gait grew more cheerful, Burn's nostrils
worked on the cold mountain air. Breaths frosted. The snow made
that sound underfoot that came of profound cold. The light sifted
through the middle branches now, shafts of light on the snow-
frosted boughs and spots of light on the snow.
    Burn grew bored with slow moving on a cold morning. Burn
was sore, but Burn wanted <going faster> and couldn't arrange a
compromise between that and <Guil walking.> So Burn danced
along, taking two and three steps for every one he needed.
    Burn ran for silly long bursts and circled with a spray of snow
and came back again. And started to cough from the dry air and the
altitude.
    Guil didn't ask to ride. Burn's back was probably sore: Burn had
put some few knots in it carrying him up the mountain. He still
had a headache, but not so bad this morning. His legs were sore--
too much sitting about camp, he said to himself; about time he
stretched the kinks out.


330    ~          C.J. Cherryh

    So he walked a good distance, until he was limping and begin-
ning to think about <numb feet.>
    Burn had worked off his little coughing fit. But it was too
bright and clear a morning to laze along. Burn was in a good
humor and wanted <Guil riding> for no particular reason Guil de-
tected, except that Burn probably wanted warmth on his back.
    There wasn't an apparent threat in the morning--a dry powder
snow scarcely supported the little spooks, making strange plowed
tracks in the deep places. It flew in clouds from under nighthorse
feet. The air was clean-washed and clear.
    The eye that took in constant information from such tracks could
say there were a lot of them, and they were all nuisance-spooks,
nothing serious.
    The mind--understood a threat in that pattern: there should be
bigger hunters abroad, even with a local number of horses in the
ambient. A horse wouldn't drive the hunters out. Compete with
them. Annoy them. Yes.
    But not interfere with a hunter's predations among so many,
many small spooks--unless human riders wanted to clear the area.
That would be the obvious conclusion--if this rider didn't know
there was another, more ominous possibility.
    The predators gave each other as much room as they needed, un-
less hunger or human presence drove them into a fight that neither
ordinarily would pursue: their sign and their sendings defined
where that back-to-the-wall point was, so they passed with bluster
and bluff; the life-and-death struggle was all with prey, and prey
never lacked predators.
  Never lacked predators.
    It didn't make either of them comfortable, the horse-image in
his head when he thought that.

The ground showed occasional tracks, never enough of them. The
ambient held the occasional spook-image from the bushes. They
walked along together, or Guil rode, and walked again, as Burn
pleased. They had the morning's biscuits as bacon sandwiches, had
a couple of targets if he'd wanted to hunt, but they had supplies
enough and he could get a good meal at Tarmin this evening. He


RIDER AT THE GATE              ~       331

didn't want to shoot off a gun and spook everything into behaviors
that said everything about the gunfire and nothing at all about
what he was hunting. And he might not stay in Tarmin after he got
there. He might sit out and listen--if there was a place he could
fortify and quiet enough near the village to sit out in the dark and
listen.
    Because he never forgot what the job was: he just broke it up
into smaller pieces that never left him daydreaming his way across
the mountain--quick way to disaster, that was; of all mistakes Aby
had made, he knew it wasn't that one--she'd been too long in too
many bad places to get caught napping.
    The phone lines and the clear-cut were a guide along the easy
way--no need to worry about pits, rocks, and hidden holes: Burn
was willing to move--Burn had <village at evening> and <fe-
males> in his head, and wanted <moving fast> again now that
Burn had caught a breath and rested his back.
    Guil took a fistful of mane and was about to do that when he saw
a strange growth on the mountainside above them, like slats or a
curiously regular weed growing out of the rocks. That was the first
blink.
    Then he realized it was bone supporting a coating of snow. A rib
cage, or a part of one, and large. <Horse-bones,> he thought, and
Burn flared his nostrils and looked, sniffing for <trouble. >
    Guil swung up. Dead horse up there. Possibly a wild one. Hard
to say how long dead, but the very fact the bones were hanging to-
gether-though they might have frozen in that state--made it
worrisome.
    <Shelter,> he thought. He'd ridden allalong with a shell in the
chamber, not a practice he'd have recommended to juniors--but ju-
niors weren't riding where he was riding, with maybe a hairbreadth
margin of decision between himself and something that could take
a nighthorse.
    A fall was always possible. A broken leg, a stone-edge gash, a
death by freezing or blood loss or even old age. But that was the
way you'd explain a horse death on mountains where you didn't
have other, worse, possibilities, and he listened into the ambient, in
case there was a rider stranded and dug in somewhere.




332 ~ C.J. Cherryh

    It was very, very quiet in the area--which wasn't unusual in
areas of the deep woods. But it wasn't an ordinary area, in which a
nighthorse had met with something it couldn't deal with. He could
wish it was the rogue and that whatever injuries it had had just
caught up with it--but he didn't bet their lives on it.
    Burn didn't take great upset at the sight at all. <Bones> were
<bones> and the woods were full of them, few hanging together for
any length of time--that a few did argued that the horse hadn't
died too long ago; and that made Burn prick up his ears and
sharpen his other senses into the ambient, not recklessly: Burn lis-
tened, and Burn's rider sat astride and listened, in as close a bor-
rowing of nighthorse senses as a human being could use.
    All around, just a sense of life, little life, distant life, a whisper
in the ambient, the awareness he'd dropped out of only in the deso-
lation as Anveney.
      That hush, everywhere about the mountainside. The rogue, if it
was within reach, was quiescent for some reason.  Sleeping, maybe.
    Or involved with something near and preoccupying to it, if it
shared any traits of sane horses.
    <Shelter,> Guil imaged, thinking of riders potentially in trou-
ble. Burn made no objections to that idea. <Shelter> was a very
good idea with <danger> in the area, but the danger was all <Guil
danger. > Burn didn't find a source of it in the ambient.
    Burn picked up his pace, hit his meaning-business gait and kept
at it, whuffs of breath and hoof-falls in the snow assuming one
quick rhythm. Over close to an hour, the road led down across a
rough spot in the mountain flank and around into a climb to a
place protected by trees and the angle of the mountain.
    It was a place a rider would look to find a shelter built, if he
knew one was due; and Guil had no trouble spotting it among the
evergreens a little above them on the mountain.
    But there was a darkness about the door. It was standing wide;
and when he and Burn turned off the road and went higher on the
slope to investigate the place, vermin scurried madly and darted
from the open doorway.


RIDER AT THE GATE              ~"-"    333

    <Rider opening door,> Guil thought uncomfortably, and sat
astride Burn and called aloud, "Is anyone here?"
    There was no answer. Not a one. A last willy-wisp racketed
about the interior and ran out in desperation past Burn's feet.
    <Horse bones,> Guil thought, and Burn snorted the scent of the
place out of his nostrils and turned his head without Gull asking,
going <downslope> and <toward the road> and <toward den and
females. >
    A restocking of the supplies in a shelter didn't accidentally leave
a door unlatched. A rider wasn't that careless or he was dead in his
first year.
    <Horse bones,> Guil thought, and probably <human bones>
not far from the others. Opening a door under attack was the last
thing a rider would do, except maybe to save a partner, maybe to
get off a shot at the attacker--but, first off, there was a gun-port;
and second, if you did go out, you latched that door. Leaving that
door open behind one's back was a mistake only a fatally confused
rider might make, under circumstances when places of safety and
places of threat might trade places--when even a rider used to
sendings might not be sure what he'd done and not done, or where
the enemy was.
    They turned back down to the road and found, as they went,
supplies strewn along the ground, a blanket hanging in a bush, a
big tin of what had probably been flour, very clean, shiny, dented
and scratched, and missing both flour and lid, lying in the roadway.
It had snow inside the open end and a deep blanket of snow lying
undisturbed on the upper surface.
  That also said something about when the occupants had died.
    It wasn't the last of the debris. Rags turned up here and there, a
few bones hanging together that didn't look to be horse bones. The
scavengers were quick and thorough. There'd been one at the bones
only a moment ago, but it fled into the bushes.
    Burn maintained a very close, very soft contact with the ambi-
ent, listening, lowering his head and smelling the bones and the
vermin-tracked snow--but only briefly, obtaining nothing definite,
from what Guil could detect, besides the expected blood and ani-


334 ~    C.J. Cherryh

 mal smells. There were many more ways to reach that cabin than
 from the road, given the surefootedness of a horse.
     There were more ways to die in the Wild. But none more sure
 than what those riders had done--under what pressure he didn't
 hope to guess. He'd never met a spook he couldn't resist. He was
 still alive. And he didn't call them fools for having died. Fools didn't
 get past their first season up here.
     The deep snow in the tin said the deaths had happened before
 the snowfall quit--last night or before; and he hadn't heard a thing
 in the ambient. Nothing.
    Possibly it just hadn't had the range a rogue was credited to
have. Possibly that was exaggerated--he didn't take everything
he'd heard as truth. He'd never dealt with one. But granted the
range of its sending uaazs~7 exaggerated--then it might have been
as much as two days ago, before he'd arrived on the Height.
    Grim as it was, his mind was working on details like that while
he went, and confusing Burn, who was thinking (bones) and try-
ing to figure the smells that came to him. Burn didn't understand
past things as relevant; Burn wanted (travel fast,) with a vague
notion of (eaten horses,) and hit a gait not kind to a sore leg and
an aching head.
  Guil made no complaint.

The sun had passed overhead and westward, behind the mountain
wall, putting the snowy woods in the blued shadow which was the
story half the day in the mountains, in any season; afternoon clouds
formed above the peak--formed and drifted on with a little spit of
snow, to drop rain on the lowlands.
    Demi-shadows lengthened with afternoon, evergreens grown
near-black against the snow. Thunder rumbled and echoed among
the peaks.
    That was a serious, imminent warning, not of the afternoon
snow-flurries that were a daily event once autumn began, but of the
truly dangerous storms that swept winter in their wake, that
dumped snow nearly waist-deep to a man in a single night. The
wild nighthorses fled the mountains with the coming of the first
winter fronts. The spook-bears took to digging, and with their


RIDER AT THE GATE              ~       335

long, long claws made tunnels out again after such storms ended,
retreating more and more until, when hunting grew sparse, they
slept the deep sleep and waked again with spring.
    There was that feeling in the air, worse than Jackson Peak, which
he'd served out of Malvey--six days south and a thousand meters
lower made a great deal of difference in the weather. Rogers Peak
was that much farther north, Tarmin Ridge was higher than the
villages on Jackson, Konig, or Darwin, and a man or a horse who
disregarded that difference was in for trouble. Not a night on
which he'd sit out and wait--not if a major storm was moving in.
    ~Burn walking,) he thought, and when Burn slowed, coughing
in the bitter, thin air, he slid down and carried the packs himself.
(Gull walking side by side with Burn, Gull riding, Gull walking,
Gull riding--3
    It had taken him years and argument to get that simple sequence
of events notion through Burn's present-time attention--now,
soon. But Burn understood him now: Burn walked along with him,
head lowered, ~oughing, as Burn's rider struck the fastest Walk a
two-legged creature could sustain on other than level ground. Legs
burned, lungs burned, sore leg hurt like hell, but it gave Burn the
interval to catch his breath.
    Then it was Gull up to Burn's back again, another stint as fast as
Burn could take it; and walk again. (Village gate at sunset,3 Gull
kept thinking, and (us walking, us riding, going fast.
    Burn understood. It wasn't the worst or the first time they'd
made time like this: it was ~go fast,~ that was all, and Burn was
completely in agreement, feeling a storm wind and smelling
(snow.~ The tops of the evergreens sighed with a breath of wind
and with successive gusts--then whipped over and tossed in a sud-
den knife-edged gale that dropped the temperature by tens before
they'd passed the next winding of the trail.
    A dry wind, at first, and they could be glad of thatmbut Gull
swung up to Burn's back and Burn struck his staying-pace again.
    Hope, Gull thought, that the rogue found similar need of shel-
ter or, best for everyone, that in its demented state it just stood
still and froze to death.
  He walked again. And in that stint at walking he came on a


336    ~          C.J. Cherryh

strange thing--a child's coat in the snow, and not just lost--
gnawed by vermin teeth.
    A short time after that he found rags of cloth and leather, stiff-
ened with ice. And vermin that, despite the weather, scampered
down the mountain face below the trail.
    Bones, then. Small, unidentifiable bones, recent, half-lost in the
snow and the rocks beside the clear-cut and fill.
    Snow was starting to fall. He thought, <us coming into rider
camp, sunset in the sky. Village gates. Snow falling on us,> and
took a skip and a bounce for a junior's belly-down mount onto
Burn's weary back.
    Burn was thinking <bones> and <dark.> Burn moved the mo-
ment he felt his rider's weight, and struck a desperate pace through
the gathering chill.


There wasn't a phone working. No way to warn the other villages.
"Lines must be down," Carlo had said, when Danny reported back;
but Luke had had to try it, saying he must not be doing it right;
and Luke had had no luck.
    Luke had also seen enough by daylight to convince even a senior
rider he didn't want to go into the other buildings. Luke came back
and had a beer and stayed quiet for a time. Jonas thought he might
go try the phone, and asked if they'd cranked it--"Yes," Luke said
testily. "I'm not a fool, brother."
    It seemed to Danny it was time to keep his head down and argue
nothing at all--argue when it mattered, yes, but if the Westmans
wanted to accuse each other he had ample patience to wait in a cor-
ner of the store beside Carlo while the Westmans sorted it out.
    The horses had wanted out, weary of the inside, accustomed to
freedom to go where they liked as they liked, but not leaving their
riders, either, in a place that smelled of <dead things> and
<fight. > Cloud snapped at Shadow, Shadow snapped at Cloud, but
all of it was horses insisting they were staying close to the store--
all of it horses worried with <dead village> and <vermin.>
    Danny just sat on a heap of flour sacks and listened to the ambi-
ent through the walls.
And more than the ambient. A wind rose. Something loose was


RIDER AT THE GATE              ~       337

 banging repeatedly, somewhere down the street--but weather be
 damned, the horses didn't ask to be in again, not minding the
 wind--he heard Cloud's <wind, cold, smell of snow> in the ambi-
 ent, and the spookiness that was Shadow. Ice and Froth were there,
 too, skittish, smelling <dead bodies > and <evergreen. >
     "It's going to storm." Randy came and sat down with them,
 huddled up close against his brother's side. There was a little si-
 lence. The weather was worsening--the night was coming. It was
 one more night in this place, waiting.
     "She's coming back, isn't she?" Randy asked finally, sum of his
 dreads.
     "We don't need to be afraid," Carlo said. "There's a lot of us
 now." Carlo put his arm around Randy's shoulders. "Don't think
 about it. All right?"
     <White streets,> came from outside. <Snow coming down
 thick. Wind blowing. >
    <Skull. > One of the horses had found a curious object. Thought
it might have something edible about it. <Horses near porch,> came
a severe order--specific to the horse, and Danny thought it was
Jonas ordering Shadow to leave it alone. The boys were upset, and
there were faces and people in the ambient, village folk Danny didn't
know.
    <Still water, > Danny sent, occupying the ambient with a rude,
strong effort that seniors might have slapped down, but he had
help then, Ice's rider, Hawley, thinking <freezing water, rime of ice
on the edges,> so that the very air seemed colder, right next to the
stove.

    "Stuart better make it fast," Luke said, dealing cards to Hawley.
"That's getting mean out there."
    "Can't have gone past," Hawley said. "He'd at least check it
over."
    Danny didn't want to think about the wreck, but suddenly it
was there, <rocks, truck falling,> and Hawley's glum mood: he
didn't want to think about the wreck, but it nagged the ambient, a
before-snow impression of rocks and empty space under the riders'
right hand--Jonas had gotten testy with Hawley's brooding and
told him have a drink, so Hawley had had several.



338    ~          C.J. Cherryh

Hawley and Luke resumed play with Hawley's frayed pack of
cards.
    They were safe enough. Jonas had taken exactly the position that
Danny hoped he would, that they shouldn't have to move again,
that Guil Stuart would come to them, because from the direction
Stuart should be coming he had to pass by Tarmin gates.
    So they'd get Stuart to join them, and shelter here until they'd
rested up--
    And wait until the rogue came to them, he supposed. That made
sense. It made a vast amount of sense if you didn't think about the
other villages up on the road, higher on the mountain, or if you
just took for granted the rogue would stay around the area--
    He didn't understand what Jonas planned to do besides wait for
Stuart--he wasn't altogether easy with the notion of them being
fast friends. But he didn't think they had any mischief in mind. He
wished Jonas would hint what they were going to do about the
coming night. Or what precautions they were going to take.
    And maybe Jonas was just a son of a bitch who didn't explain his
plans, ever; and maybe Jonas had the notion he'd had--that if there
was connection between the rogue and the boys, there was every
chance it would come back to Tarmin rather than go to the villages
up the mountain. Bait.
    That kind of thing, he understood with no trouble: hard choices,
greater and lesser risk, foolhardiness and courage--there was a di-
viding line. Papa had always said so. In that sense they were pro-
tecting the villages on the High Loop just by sitting here and
protecting themselves, and he supposed that was good and he was
on the right side.
    But he didn't understand the dying. Didn't understand the bod-
ies out there--nor why a reasonable God let it happen to people
who'd, in the preachers' economy, had no defense but not to listen,
to shut their ears, inside and out. These were people who'd paid
their tithes and gone to church and not been riotous and drunk too
much and danced. And they were dead.
    His own mother and father and Sam had bought that life for
themselves. They believed in it. They believed righteousness made
you safe.


RIDER AT THE GATE              ~       339

    But, God, it was all so fragile. It was all so terribly fragile. Five
riders hadn't been enough--the way he understood the boys' image
of the situation: five in town, two out on road repair--and none of
them had stopped it.
    In that thought, too, Jonas was doing absolutely right, holding
them here. But the man was so damned cold. As if--
    The ambient changed. Something more was out there than had
been--he couldn't define the change, he didn't know why he was
suddenly feeling the mountain more strongly, just that background
noise that was always there--that now was more to the fore of his
mind.
    He didn't know what else had come in, but he wasn't alone in
perceiving that something had--every rider in the room had gone
still. The card game had stopped--Luke and Hawley looked toward
the wall, toward the outside and the east. Jonas, who'd been clean-
ing and oiling his pistol, hesitated just ever so slightly, then
snapped the cylinder into lock, a sound that made the boys jump,
the general spookiness in the air surely having its effect on them as
well.
    "What is it?" Randy asked. <Terrified,> came flooding through
from both the boys. They had guns. They'd at least had Luke's
short version of how to aim and hope to hit something, and how
not to empty the gun, ever, until you were down to the thing com-
ing dead at you with no way to miss: they'd found the boys simple
revolvers, single action, no rounds to lurk in the chamber and no
safety to remember to take off. Pull the trigger and they went off
a danger to themselves and everything around them if they
spooked.
    "Could be Stuart," Danny said. He couldn't tell even yet what it
was. It was far or it was quiet, and he suddenly suspected that if it
was in fact Stuart, it could sound like that. Stuart and Burn
wouldn't necessarily be a noisy presence.
    A horse had come up onto the walk outside. Cloud wanted
<Danny,> and Cloud wasn't alone in signaling human attention to
the sudden change in the air.
    Jonas went and opened the door--Jonas didn't tell anybody what
he thought and you didn't get it even now through the ambient,



              C.J. Cherryh
340                       images~but Cloud came in, snoW-
 not past Shadow'S blurred
 blanketed, with thunderous steps on the boards.
    Knocked into a stack of pails as he dodged past JonaS. They felt


    ~~~<.:~- -'~ ~~~>~eeiter sense. The little slinks
were back in the upper end of the village, around the marshal's of-
fice, Danny was sure of it~fast-moving scavengers that would be
over the wall or into the cracks before a horse got up the street.
There was no good chasing them and they did no harm with the
horses here.
    They might well be the source of some of the alarm, although he
had a strange conviction it was generally eastward~like waves
rolling on the sea, one to the next, to the next hearer.
    "If it's Stuart he's on his way here," Jonas said. "He'll hear us in
good time."
  "Weather's one hell of a mess out there," Hawley said.
    "Doesn't keep this from being the safest place in the district,"
Luke said. "Just sit still. He'll hear us. He'll want shelter tonight.
You hear that out there?"
    Cloud was dripping puddles onto the board floor, snow melting
off his back. The view outside, beyond the porch, had been snow-

and tarried. C~oud spooked another couple og feet and stoppe6,
s~e&CXing snow wit~ ~ w~aip o{ ~is tail                from the snOW-
                                                Hawley's cards had scat-
    Danny found himself on his feet, not alone
 shower: Carlo and Randy were beside him.
 tered on the floor. Horses outside and inside were feeling an
 undefined presence in the ambient, the echo of living creatures out
 in the woods, all reflecting what the creature in the next territov/
 over had heard in its range.
   Something large waS definitely out there in the woods. Maybe

    more than one.                 ,artteA to ~rxo~, ~?'xck~ng ~t up himsek{,
       'q_s ~.t the rogue!" ~a~&~
     or reading the distress in the room.                    ,,
      ,,Hush,,, Carlo said. "They knw' Let them a~nt~action-but tbe
      Carlo had the right of it: they didn't want
      didn't know, t~at was the trouble, k might be any large creature--'
      several of which bad gone over the wall last night, and

     "~ sa~d--stay wi~
 ~,~/~//;vff Stuart into tJ
 <Rogue and panic, (
 at the gate. Guns ant
  It wasn't a slur, h,
boys out of the
was right; he might l
:He'd been stupid. H,
store.
But there wasn't
'Fisher' wasn't 'boy.'
         picked up th,
the porch.
: He went outside h
   developing, won,
       district. ~

If it was Stuart ou


340    ~          c.J. Cherryh

not past Shadow's blurred images--but Cloud came in, snow-
blanketed, with thunderous steps on the boards.
    Knocked into a stack of pails as he dodged past Jonas. They fell
and rattled. Cloud spooked another couple of feet and stopped,
shedding snow with a whip of his tail.
    Danny found himself on his feet, not alone from the snow-
shower: Carlo and Randy were beside him. Hawley's cards had scat-
tered on the floor. Horses outside and inside were feeling an
undefined presence in the ambient, the echo of living creatures out
in the woods, all reflecting what the creature in the next territory
over had heard in its range.
    Something large was definitely out there in the woods. Maybe
more than one.
    "Is it the rogue?" Randy wanted to know, picking it up himself,
or reading the distress in the room.
  "Hush," Carlo said. "They know. Let them alone."
    Carlo had the right of it: they didn't want distraction--but they
didn't know, that was the trouble. It might be any large creature--
several of which had gone over the wall last night, and might have
grown braver during the day: autumn brought voracious hunger,
hunger that outweighed fears and better sense. The little slinks
were back in the upper end of the village, around the marshal's of-
rice, Danny was sure of it--fast-moving scavengers that would be
over the wall or into the cracks before a horse got up the street.
There was no good chasing them and they did no harm with the
horses here.
    They might well be the source of some of the alarm, although he
had a strange conviction it was generally eastward--like waves
rolling on the sea, one to the next, to the next hearer.
    "If it's Stuart he's on his way here," Jonas said. "He'll hear us in
good time."
  "Weather's one hell of a mess out there," Hawley said.
    "Doesn't keep this from being the safest place in the district,"
Luke said. "Just sit still. He'll hear us. He'll want shelter tonight.
You hear that out there?"
    Cloud was dripping puddles onto the board floor, snow melting
off his back. The view outside, beyond the porch, had been snow-


RIDER AT THE GATE              ~       341

veiled, enough to haze the buildings across the street. Danny
wanted <going to the gate,> and Luke agreed with him. That was
two.

  "But we don't know it's Stuart," Jonas said.
    "I'm going," Danny said. "You can do what you like. He's close.
Whatever it is--he's close--" Because that was suddenly the feel-
ing he had. It was Stuart.
    But he got a <Danny stopping> from Jonas, so strong he did
stop and look back.
  "I came here by myself," Danny said. "I make my own choices."
  "That's fine. Use your head."
  "I am using it. He might need some help out there."
    "He could," Luke said, redeeming himself in Danny's sight,
right there, clean and clear.
    Jonas wasn't happy. <Cold, snow, and vermin> dominated the
images. But Jonas thought about <Stuart,> too, or somebody did.
Jonas, still frowning, picked up his jacket. "Fisher," Jonas said,
"you stay with the village kids. It might not be him."  "Then you need--"
    "I said--stay with them. Do I need to explain? You've been
wanting Stuart into the ambient for an hour, Fisher. Use your head."
< Rogue and panic, Carlo and Randy afoot among the horses, down
at the gate. Guns and gunfire.>
    It wasn't a slur, he heard that. It was even good sense, keeping
the boys out of the range of trouble--he understood it; and Jonas
was right; he might have given the rogue an image to use on them.
He'd been stupid. He just didn't want to be the one staying in the
store.

    But there wasn't another likely choice to guard the boys. And
'Fisher' wasn't 'boy.' He didn't protest when the Westmans and
Hawley picked up their winter gear and their guns and went out to
the porch.
    He went outside himself, just far enough to see it was a real bliz-
zard developing, worse than any storm he'd ever seen come down in
Shamesey district. You couldn't see across the street in the blued
twilight.
  If it was Stuart out there in that whiteout, they might have to


342    ~          C.J. Cherryh

 guide him in. And that was dangerous, because they didn't know
 what they might be calling to in the ambient, or what might come
 back at them out of it.
    Didn't need a junior to go calling out into the storm wide-open,
he said to himself. Jonas had been polite when he'd suggested that
village kids were a liability and hadn't included him in that num-
ber. It wasn't safe to go bunch down there by the gate and listen
into the storm for whatever happened to image back at you. Jonas
had a reason to be hesitant just to go out there, that close to the
wall.
    A lot of reason. He went back inside, shut the door before they
lost all the warm air--stamped off the snow.
    "What is it?" Randy asked, and his older brother elbowed him
with,
  "Shut up, for God's sake, they don't know."
    "It's all right," Danny found himself saying. "These guys--if you
had to be in this situation, they're as good as you could hire any-
where. They won't open that gate until they're sure."
    <Guns shooting> was in the ambient. And, with an edge of an-
guish that turned to a darker, more desperate feeling, from at least
one of the boys:  <Brionne.>
    He couldn't answer that hard problem for them--not with any-
thing they wanted to hear. <Men shooting,> he thought before he
could stop it. Because they would--without a question their sur-
vival was at stake.
    Because by now if their younger sister wasn't bones in the forest
out there--she was half of the rogue. If she wasn't dead--and the
boys thought not--she rode it; she made at least half of any deci-
sion to run, to fight, to kill the village, to kill even their mother.
    With her brothers in the ambient they'd have her attention, that
was what he guessed. They were all the reference points the girl
had now. The rogue was going to come back sooner or later. He had
no question of it.
    Just--if it was Stuart, if they could get Stuart in with them,
along with Jonas, then the odds began to shift the other way.
                                                         :~           g<           :g


RIDER AT THE GATE              ~       343

The snow came down so thick there was no telling they were on the
road, except the lack of trees in front of them, and that could al-
most as well mean a drop off the mountain if they missed a wind-
ing of the road.
    It wasn't a time to hurry, no matter how cold. It was a time to
have made camp, if they'd planned to spend the night in the open.
    There couldn't be that much farther to go to Tarmin. He wasn't
completely sure of his distances, but they ought to be there by now.
They hadn't seen further signs of destruction. The snow was too
thick and coming down too hard, now--but the ambient had been
damned quiet. Damned quiet.
  <Village,> he insisted to Burn. <Warm den.>
    Burn thought, he would have expected Burn would think, <fe-
males. >
    But Burn was as confused as he was by the silence, and thought
instead, <dead things in village.>
  And the ambient was cold. So cold and still.
  Then--wasn't, quite.
    <Riders,> he said to himself, spirits lifting. Somebody else was
out in the hills, on the trail---or maybe in Tarmin itself, where he'd
promised Burn they'd come by nightfall.
    But he still found himself shying off from the thought. He wasn't
sure. He couldn't be sure. The ambient, vague and strange and silent
as it generally was, began to conjure thoughts of a warm fire al-
ready made, and a company of riders. Too good to be true.
    It didn't make sense with what he'd seen, evidence of dead rid-
ers--at least of a dead horse.
    But riders might well be out hunting the rogue. Riders out of
Tarmin village might be looking for it--and a bunch of them, in
this storm, might be sitting safe behind Tarmin walls, trying to
beacon him in through the whiteout of the blizzard, sensing a sane
rider and a sane horse, and not the threat the rogue posed.
    Maybe Cassivey had even done what he promised and called up
to Tarmin to warn the villages. Even Shamesey might have. One
lowland agency surely could have had the basic common sense to
phone a warning of what the villages up here faced; and if that was
the case, even if there'd been trouble here, then he could hope he


344----'' c.J           . Ch     er ryh

came welcome, at a fire he didn't have to build, and a sane barrier
between him and the dark.
    He wanted that. He was in one hell of a fix if Tarmin was shut to
him---or lost.
    He was spooked, was all. He'd spooked badly at Shamesey gates,
and he hadn't any patience at all with himself--he couldn't afford
it in the Wild, with the snow coming down in what was unques-
tionably now a full-scale, high-country blizzard--and a rogue
somewhere in the question. Damned sure that there was trouble on
the mountain, but he'd better sound sane to Tarmin riders, or they
wouldn't let him in. They'd leave him outside till they could get
sober sense out of him, and that risked Burn. Calm down, he said
to himself. Calm way down.
    A couple more rises and falls of the road, a bending against the
flank of the mountain ridge--and he could smell wood smoke in
good earnest. It wasn't at all as noisy as he thought a village
Tarmin's size should be--but it was all right, he said to himself:
the heavy fall of snow and maybe a bad night last night could have
sent a lot of the village to bed early, and left the rider camp on
watch.
    Burn saw <horses.> Burn was picking up something that came
through to him as a liveliness in the otherwise silent ambient.
    Burn called out suddenly, that sharp, high challenge to another
horse that shook Burn's sides, and there was a <darkness, instantly
turning toward them,> instantly in the ambient as Burn imaged
<Burn and Guil. >
    Something came back to him--a familiar echo, he wasn't sure
from where or when, but he'd known that feeling. Burn said
<shifty-image horse > and answered it <fire, dark, and pain. >
    A shot came off the rocks near him, ricocheted and whined. Burn
jumped in utter startlement and a second shot splintered bark off
an evergreen.
      Instant, too, the image that came back, <shifting shadows,
changing shapes, > < foam on water > and < ice-glisten. >
  Damn, he knew those horses.
  Jonas. Luke.
  Hawley.


RIDER AT THE GATE              ~       345

    He didn't consciously think. It hit his gut and it hit Burn's si-
multaneously, and Burn slid immediately into fighting mode,
ready to settle accounts.
    "~No!~" Guil sent, and Burn shied away from the challenge--
imaged ~gun!~ and jumped into a run as a gunshot echoed off the
mountain and shattered bark right next to them. They were at the
village gates--snow-hazed, shadows of men and horses were there.
It was (Jonas and Shadow.
    Burn took him past. He ducked down and hung on, trusting
Burn to get them clear.
    "Guil!" someone yelled, far behind him. "Guil, damn your stu-
pid hide!"
    He didn't look back. He rode low and Burn ran hellbent for as
much distance as he could put between them and ambush--raced
panting and reckless through the deep white of the road.

 Signal shots, had been Danny's first thought when he heard the
 gunfire--
      He'd run out onto the porch, and then--then heard what
 sounded like an exchange of fre.  ~Harper! ~ he thought.
     Harper. Nobody else. Harper was up here on the mountain for
 one reason, and he hadn't given up his hunt--it was Stuart; and it
 was Harper, too.
     "What's wrong?" Carlo and Randy were on his heels, coatless as
 he was as he ran down the street, rifle in hand, Cloud running
 along with him, and past him.
    But he couldn't answer, he was hearing (Jonas mad,v he was
hearing (Jonas on Shadow,) taking off into the blizzard, he was
 hearing cLuke chasing him~ and ~Hawley holding Luke~ while
  horses ~ were headed for (fight.
     "Damn," he said, and spun about and yelled at Carlo: "Get your
 coats. Get my coat! Come on!" He could see (Cloud getting into
 it.) Cloud was into it, (wanting fight~ because there was cfight)
 in the air, and Danny didn't wait for coats or the boys or a second,
 reasoned thought. He put on a burst of speed with the cold air
 burning his lungs, the pistol trying to escape its holster, and the


346    ~          C..J. Cherryh

snow hitting his eyes so he couldn't see. The street was a straight
line--if he stumbled over things in the snow he didn't want to
know what they were. He ran until he was close enough for Cloud
to have to recognize he was in the situation. He wanted <Cloud!)
loud and clear.
    Luke and Hawley were mounting up to ride out. Right in the
gateway he grabbed Cloud first by the mane to stop him from
going out with the other two, then got a hand against Cloud's chest
and shoved him back.
    "Dammit!" he yelled at Luke and Hawley. He meant two senior
fools going out into the whiteout and leaving the gates open on
him and two village kids. He was mad. He wanted <hands on
them.> He wanted (beating hell out them.> They had no right,
dammit. Harper was out there in the whiteout. Harper was near
the village for all he knew.
  But he couldn't catch them. He couldn't leave the boys.
    The two boys came running up out of breath, carrying their
coats, and his, and rifles. He was too hot right now to need a coat,
but he put it on anyway, put on his scarf and hat that the boys had
brought, and took the rifle they handed him. Cloud was fidgeting
back and forth, wanting <chase horses,> but his rider wasn't about
to go off into the whiteout to find a pack of double-crossing sons of
bitches.
  Stuart--God knew what Stuart thought.
  Or what kind of line he'd fallen for from Jonas.
  Stuart's friends. He couldn't swear it wasn't Jonas who'd fired.
  "Our riders," Carlo panted, < scared, > "didn't come back."
    "I know, I know." He wanted <gate shut. Jonas and Luke and
Hawley begging to be let in again. >
    Then he had a cold, clear impression they weren't alone.
< Horses, to the left,> and before he could say a word, he knew it
was <Hallanslakers.> Cloud went on guam facing that direction,
projecting <fight> and <shooting guns.>
    What came back was <Harper and Quig> and what came shad-
owlike out of the blowing white right in front of them was two rid-
ers coming to the gate.
  <Shutting gates! > Danny sent, and the boys moved while he put


RIDER AT THE GATE              ~       347

a round in the chamber and lifted the rifle to his shoulder, shaking
in the knees, but not in the steadiness of his aim, which was right
for center of the shorter one he mentally labeled <Harper. >
    <Rogue in the woods,> he got back. <Quiet water. Quiet grass.
Us coming in the gates. >
    "The hell--shut it!" he screamed at Carlo, and kept his aim while
the riders moved for the gate and two scared kids shoved the heavy
gates shut and dropped the bar.
    "Kid!" he heard Harper yell, the other side of the gates. "Kid,
open up. Open it, or we'll leave you for the rogue!"
    <Harper frozen sitting at fire. Quig with icicles. Us warm. Ham
cooking. >
  "Son of a bitch! Open the gate.t"
    "You had your chance, Harper! You want supplies, we'll give you
supplies, right over the wall. But hell if I owe you anything but a
cold bed in hell! Go find a shelter. You and Quig go tuck in for the
winter and hope to hell I don't come after you myselfl"
    <Rogue in the ambient. Bones breaking. Watt falling.> He sent
that to them. That was what he remembered. And they didn't like
it.
    Stuart had been there. Stuart had been that close to the gates and
spooked off. He'd felt Stuart's presence and Stuart might not know
anything right now except someone here had shot a gun off at him.
Jonas and company had gone after Stuart and might not intend to
come back--which left him with Harper and Quig, sitting here in
the biggest, most attractive stationary target the rogue had, if the
Goss kids were right about their sister.
    In that light he could use Harper's help. He could use a couple of
good shots and he didn't want to think of anybody dying out there
in the Wild the way all Tarmin village had died.
    But Harper wasn't interested in anything but Harper--Harper
was damn crazy, dead set on shooting Stuart, for reasons that had
gotten further and further from any reasonable fear of Stuart's going
rogue. Harper wanted into Tarmin gates because if the Westmans
came back Harper might shoot all of them and have the supplies,
and spend all winter hunting Stuart, if Stuart didn't get him in his
gunsights first.


348 ~ C,J. Cherryh

  There was no dealing with this man.
      <Harper talking to Westmans,> came back through the gate.
< Harper and Quig riding with Westmans through the snow. >  < Cattle, > Danny sent. Cloud added, < Cattle dung. >
    "Who are they?" Randy asked. Randy's teeth were chattering
and he tried not to show it. Cloud was sending into an angry ambi-
ent, <bite and kick,> and violence shivered over his skin and down
into his gut. "They're not who we're looking for. Are they? Where
did Jonas and them go?"
    "These two are thieves." Danny said. "Damned bandits, is all.
They're up here hunting Stuart for some crazy grudge. I hope to
God he got away clear." It dawned on him Jonas might have kited
out like that in honest fear that Stuart or his horse might have been
hit and need help out there in the storm. Luke would have gone
after his brother--no fault in Luke for that, or Hawley for going to
protect him. But right now he wished Tarmin had a gun-box the
way Shamesey had, because, damn, he'd dust Harper and Quig
right off their doorstep.
  "Kid," Harper said, from the other side of the gate.
  "My name's Dan Fisher, Harper, get it straight."
      "Look--" Harper said. "Call yourself anything you like. One
horse is no match for this thing. Who's that with you? Kids?"
  "You just camp right there, Harper. We need bait."
  "You're real damn brave on the other side of that gate!"
    "You're real damn stupid, Harper. That's why you're on the other
side of that gate." God, he hadn't lost a bit from his bad-boy days
and Randy thought it was wildly funny. Harper clearly didn't.
Carlo looked a shade more maturely worried.
    But Cloud sent <cattle rear ends> into the ambient, loud as
Cloud could be.
  "You damn fool!" Harper said.
    "Camp out there. Be our guests." He was thinking, <Jonas and
his friends coming back, guns firing.> And wasn't altogether confi-
dent of that fight going the way he'd like.
    "You listen to me," Harper said. "You listen. I know what I'm
talking about. My own brother--my brother went that way. You
hear me?" <Man and horse coming into firelight. Harper shooting.


RIDER AT THE GATE              ~       349

 Shooting. Shooting until there weren't any bullets.> "You son of a
 bitch, you hear me? Your friend Stuart knows about it. So damn
 righteous!"
     <Weather coming down, clouds over the mountains. Men and
 horses in whiteout.
      <Stalled-out truck. Riders and truckers struggling with a truck
 on the edge, trying to winch it-
   <Winch cable snapping-
<Recoil through the air, hitting horses and men-
<Man with bleeding face, horse knocked down--men over the
edge as the truck falls-->
    "Maybe you can talk to Jonas," Danny said. "Convince him you're
a good guy." Give the son of a bitch at least the idea of talking it
out, if it didn't naturally occur to dim brains. "He might think you
were worth it. Or he could let you camp out there. Who knows?"
    "My brother, kid. His name was Gerry Harper. You hear me?
Took that hit in the head, him and the horse-- 'Oh, we can make it
through the pass, yeah, we can make it.' Stuart talks a good game
to the truckers, but he's never on the end of the cable when it
breaks. ---Gerry Harper. You hear the name, kid?"
"That's a real sad story, Harper, but it doesn't get you in here."
"You listen to me. I shot him. I shot him. Who's going to pull
the trigger on this one? You better get a man in there--you hear
me? You hear me, kid? That thing'll have you for breakfast."
    "Hasn't yet. If you want to shoot it, shoot it from out there
where it is! You don't rough me up and threaten my horse and ask
my charity, you damn jerk! --And Wart's dead! You hear me,
Harper? Wart's dead out there. If you want to do something really
useful, ride up to the High Loop villages and get some help down
here!"
  "Quit being an ass and < open this damn gate/>"
      "No." He was shaking. Shot his brother, it was now. He was
dealing with a crazy man.  "Kid, --"
    "You're losing ground with me, Harper. I said I had a name. You
keep forgetting it."


350    ~          C.J. Cherryh

    "Fisher, then." The ambient was wholly uneasy. There was com-
plete lack of worry in the voice. "You can be a fool if you like."
    Damn, he thought, realized he'd gotten caught up in the images
and dived into the <quiet water> image to mask himself, signaled
the boys away from the gate, farther and farther. Cloud drew back
with them, mad and still wanting <fight.>
    <Cloud at gate,> he sent, and Cloud stopped following and will-
ingly turned back to <fight.>
    "I'm a fool," he said to the boys, not trusting his ability to keep
his intentions and his worries out of the ambient. But he had
Cloud's attention occupied with a nerve-jangling flare of <angry
horse. Bite and kick.> He looked at the guard-post, where, if he
climbed it, he might get a shot, but he couldn't go thinking about
it. "Rider gate, Carlo. Fast. Can you get a shot off from there?"
  Carlo looked mortally scared.
    "I can't do it," Danny said. "Cloud and I'll keep him talking.
Scare them off. Put shots around them. Whatever. Fire fast. Spook
them out away from the wall--I'll get up there--" A cut of his
eyes to the guard-post aloft--and down, as he grabbed Carlo's arm.
"Don't for God's sake get shot. Or let them in."
    Carlo didn't want to. Danny jerked his arm. "They can hear me
any second, dammit! Do it!"
  "Yeah," Carlo agreed then. "--Randy, stay with him."
    Carlo didn't stop to argue: Carlo went--Randy tried to run after
him, but Carlo grabbed him, jerked him hard and sent him back.
    <Carlo shutting the village-side gate,> Danny wished, but
Cloud wasn't in position to carry it to Carlo--he wasn't getting
this organized; he had Randy in his charge--he had to hope Carlo
remembered.
    Then he thought of vermin maybe occupying the rider camp--
vermin a rider took for granted would clear his path. Carlo wasn't
protected that way, Carlo was a damn brave village kid--with no
horse to see what was going on before he opened that outer gate.
Hell with his plan for climbing the gate-tower: if Carlo went down
on any account Harper and Quig could take the rider camp and
have Tarmin, with just him and Randy left.
  He grabbed Randy by the coat and didn't wait to explain--he


RIDER AT THE GATE              ~:      351

dragged Randy with him half the distance to the rider-side gate,
until they were far enough from the front gate he knew Cloud
couldn't hear--"Don't think about Carlo!" he said. "The horse car-
ries it! Stay here! Dammit, don't budge!"
    Randy was trying to get a breath, trying to get words out--
Randy grabbed his arm and hung on and Danny swung and
knocked the kid across the snow. He didn't have words, didn't have
time--he aimed his rifle skyward and fired off two rounds <warn-
ing Jonas, scaring spooks> and the shots echoed off the mountain
above, shocking the silence.
    He didn't hear Harper and Quig now. But something else was
coming through the ambient--something ominously considerable.
    Damn, he thought. Damn! His heart was speeding. Now he didn't
know where Harper and Quig were. Cloud had left the front gate.
Cloud was coming--but there wasn't a damn thing Cloud could do
from midvillage, and he'd not used his head, God help them.
    He raced down the village street with Cloud at his heels and cut
over to the camp gate---Carlo had shut it. Give the kid credit--
he'd shut it. He flung the latch open and dived past the center-
post, leaving a mad, frustrated horse behind him trying to get past
a barrier that made that door human-only, Cloud making panic-
sounds, sending out <anger and fear> into the ambient as Cloud's
rider chased down Carlo's rapidly filling tracks, white on white,
past the horse den, breakneck through the blowing snow. He let off
two more rounds at the sky to warn Carlo and Jonas at once, saw
Carlo at the rider gate, just then opening it wide to the driving

snow.

  "Carlo!" he yelled. "Get out of the way.f'
    Carlo turned, confused--looked at him and started to shut it
again.
    In the same moment a snow-hazed figure showed up in that
gateway and Danny skidded to one knee, brought the rifle up and
fired without stopping to see who it was.
    Stupid, wrong, his brain told him. It might have been Stuart.
Jonas. God knew. He'd probably missed. He'd scared hell out of
Carlo, and the gateway, after his one shocked blink, held only
blowing snow. He knelt there sighting down the gun and shaking


352      ~        C.J. Cherryh

as Carlo, only belatedly realizing he wasn't the target, had the pres-
ence of mind to grab the gate and shove it to.
    A shot from past Danny's shoulder hit the log wall by Carlo and
splintered the wood.
    He knew it was Randy even before Carlo yelled at the kid,
"Don't shoot, don't shoot, dammit! God! What are you doing?"
    Randy didn't fire another round. Cloud was making a sound he'd
rarely heard Cloud make, a squalling, spitting fit. The den wall
thumped to Cloud's temper as Danny used the rifle butt to get his
shaky legs under him.
    His lungs were burning. Carlo was yelling against the wind at
his brother, something about Put the damn rifle down, it was all
right. Carlo was coming toward him and Randy was spooked, he
got that in the ambient along with Cloud's temper.
    He didn't know how his knees were staying under him. He bent
over, rifle and all, leaned against his knees and tried to get his
breath, short of wind in the high altitude, aware of Carlo coming
past him, Randy running to Carlo, betrayed and scared and hurt.
    "! hit the kid," he gasped, straightening up, and threw the situa-
tion into the ambient, <Randy and Cloud, Harper at the gate> be-
cause he didn't have the wind to talk and he was hearing Cloud all
too well. He went into a coughing fit and got it under control. He
had a stitch in his side. "Did the man go down?" was what he
wanted to know, whether the man he'd shot at had dropped,
whether he'd killed somebody--whether they still had Harper to
contend with--
      But the pressure in the ambient, that thing he'd been feeling, was
gone. The gunfire might have spooked it off.  "Did he go down, Carlo, dammit?"
  "I don't know," Carlo said. "I think you got him."
    He couldn't hear anything but Cloud's panic and outrage. If
there was a rider down, his horse should be doing something, feel-
ing something. Harper's horse should. He had a bad feeling about
things out of control in every direction, and walked back where the
kids were and where Cloud was, Cloud on the far side of the camp
gate and mad and scared.
  Carlo had Randy by the shoulder, <scared, mad,> too, saying


RIDER AT THE GATE              ~       353

something about "Told you to stay put, dammit!" and Randy was
paper-white and on the edge: Randy had been (scared. Danny hit-
ting him--~
    "Kid," Danny said, and lost his voice again. He clapped Randy
on the back. "Danger you'd leak Carlo to the bad guys. --Sorry.
Sorry I hit you. They could have heard you--understand? Sorry."
    Randy had a hand to his bloodied mouth, tears freezing on his
white, cold-blotched face. He still looked to be in shock, but the
ambient eased.
  "Did you shoot him?" Randy asked.
    "Dunno." He still couldn't breathe. He was getting the shakes
enough for them to notice. "Pretty sure I missed. Damned mess.
Sorry. (Cloud, dammit, quiet. ~"
    Cloud was trying to shoulder the obstructing gate-post down.
But there was only Cloud out there on the village side. Danny went
through the gate and moved Cloud back with a push on his chest.
    (Mad horse. Frothing-at-the-mouth horse, v Cloud had blood on
his shoulder where he'd tried to force the narrow gate, and his
breath steamed in great puffs on the bitter wind.
    Danny flung his arm about Cloud's neck and apologized in a
cheek-to-cheek way that didn't need the kind of confused, angry
force Cloud was sending out, just (quiet water, very quiet water,
still, still, reflecting us, reflecting Randy, reflecting Carlo, all
quiet.
    Cloud had never found himself on the wrong side of a barrier
like that. Cloud was so scared he was trembling, too, and he was
spitting froth mixed with blood--he'd bashed his lip on the post,
Danny decided, and was sorry. But he couldn't have done anything
etse--(Man at far gate,) he told Cloud, (Danny shooting. Man
running.
    Big shiver out of Cloud. The boys had come through to the
camp side behind him. They could get the side gate shut and
latched on this side, then, but the main gate still scared him. He
wanted (them and Cloud guarding gatev and walked in that direc-
tion, shaking too much to run.
    He wasn't in the least cold. He was sweating, and his chest
burned from the thin winter air. He could get (up on that tower


354      ~        C.J. Cherryh

with rifle, him above, Cloud below, boys with thick coats and blan-
kets, shooting Hallanslakers.>  Cloud didn't disagree.
      Then somebody fired a shot that rang far off across the moun-
tainside, and they stopped still.  Second shot, from out there.
    Distance made them blind and deaf to the origin--the mountain
echoed it until even Cloud didn't know where it was.
    He waited for a third shot. It didn't come. The boys were
<scared.> But <rogue horse> was in Randy's thoughts. <Shooting
at horse. Shooting at scared blonde girl.> The brothers didn't want
that. The darkness that had been around the <Brionne> image last
night wasn't there, this time.
    <Shooting father,> was there. <Gun going off. Woman scream-
ing and screaming... >
    "Cut it out," Danny said sharply, "shut down. Quiet, dammit. It's
probably just Jonas signaling he's coming back. Maybe he's bring-
ing Stuart."
    He fervently hoped so. More, he hoped they'd just shot the
rogue, and that the boys' blonde sister was coming back with them,
and they'd find Stuart, and they'd tell Harper go to hell and take
his sad stories with him.
    Cloud stayed beside him as they went to the gate--dosed and
latched the door on the store while they were at it, because the boys
had left it wide open, let all the heat out and burned up a load of
wood besides endangering their supplies--"Sorry," Carlo said. But
he didn't blame the boys, and latched it and went on.
    They didn't go into the gate house. Randy thought they should
go in where it was warmer, and set up a fuss about it--but Danny
said a flat no, and tried not to image what was in there. He climbed
up to the tower and down again when he found he couldn't see any-
thing better in the blowing snow--if he'd gone up there he couldn't
have gotten a clear target anyway; so everything about his plan was
stupid, and he came back down to Carlo and Randy fast, before
they got to investigating anything in the gate house.
    He tried not to think about <bones under the snow> while he
was doing it. But there were. Bones and dead people were all up


RIDER AT THE GATE              ~       355

and down the street. The snow was just covering them, that was
all, burying them <deep, deep and quiet. >
    And he wished--he prayed to the God who didn't hear riders--
that Jonas would find Stuart and get him back here so they could
all be safe and the senior riders would know what to do to save
their lives.
    He'd only covered his mistakes. He didn't know who he'd shot,
he didn't know anything: he was down to admitting that, even to
himself.


Chapter

  XX

THE AMBIENT WAS CLEAN NOW. THE SNOW AND THE TREES WERE A
silence no other presence breached.
    <Riders hunting through the woods,> Guil thought. He'd long
since slid down from Burn's back and walked beside Burn, Burn
with head hanging, still coughing occasionally from the cold air.
Moisture from Burn's jaws, frozen on his chest, glistened in the
blued grey of the snowfall. Burn still kept expecting <guns behind
them,> his rider's expectation to the contrary.
    But there wasn't any safety in lingering. Guil kept a hand on
Burn's side, <us walking,> he imaged. <Us moving through the
storm, us walking through the woods--> and he tried not to think
beyond that, or to wonder about human motives, because Burn was
taking in everything and he couldn't stop it.
    They'd gone off the road. They came down to it again, both still
walking. It didn't take hard guessing--just careful footwork on the
steeps, and down again in the same direction. No knowing whether
Jonas was following them or not.


RIDER AT THE GATE              ~       357

    But he'd heard faint shots back in the direction of the walls, and
another couple closer, that he thought might be the searchers sig-
naling each other--they weren't close enough to be firing at him,
but that didn't mean safety.
  Jonas had yelled at him to come back, called him a fool.
    And maybe he was. Maybe there was a real good explanation--like
a nervous guard. But shooting at him wasn't confidence-inspiring.
    Most of all, he didn't know what in hell Jonas was doing sitting
in a village surrounded by tattered scavengings, after he'd shown
no sign of coming up here.
    He damn sure wasn't going to risk Burn going back to give
them another try. And considering things Jonas hadn't told him
about Aby's dealings back at Shamesey gate, he wasn't at all sure
what had made Jonas take another trip up the mountain.
    Jonas had gotten his convoy to Shamesey. He was free to go back
with no one knowing---or giving him specific orders, unless he'd
also gotten them from Cassivey; and he didn't think so.
    Jonas was much more distinguished by what he hadn't done:
Jonas hadn't come out that night to bring him what was his at
Shamesey gate.
  Jonas hadn't said--I'll go with you up the mountain, Guil.
    Jonas hadn't said, in sum, anything about his gear, the bank ac-
count, Hatwley, the gold shipment, or his own intentions to be here.
    Jonas had wanted <quiet> around him, and not given him
damned 'much at Shamesey--just walled himself off and tried to
bottle up the rogue-feeling so it didn't spread: that was a service,
but it was, as they said in the hills, a real cold supper. He didn't say
he'd have been more in control of himself at Shamesey if Jonas had
given him even an I'm sorry; but Jonas hadn't buffered anything he
gave him: just--flung it at him. "Aby's dead, Guil."'
  Now did Jonas come to help?
  Hell.
  Jonas knew about the gold, was one good bet.
    But--that came back to the same question: what in hell did a
rider do with that kind of money? A village could steal that much.
A village could loot the truck. A rider couldn't find anything to do
with it, couldn't be safe if he had that kind of stash, couldn't keep


358      ~       C.J. Cherryh

from rousing curiosity if he didn't work--and had the better things
that money could buy. There was no damn way he could use the
pure metal for one thing. He'd have to fake nuggets or corrupt an
assayer, --or somebody he'd forever be vulnerable to. It wasn't
something a rider would do.
    Get himself in good with Cassivey? Get Aby's job? That was
much more likely.
  That was a rider motive.
    He checked Burn over head to hoof and head to tail once they
reached the level ground of the roadway, in case Burn should have
been hit or cut in their mad dash away from Tarmin and neither of
them know it. Burn was his only worry. Burn's welfare and the
quiet of the mountainside was the only thing that occupied his
brain: they were all that had to make sense at the moment.
    Burn was <mad and wanting to go back, wanting fight,> want-
ing <bad fight,> but Burn was running on fragile strength right
now, too, having carried him much more than Burn ordinarily
would. They'd gone since dawn; they'd had one real night of rest
since the climb up; somebody, most likely Aby's summer's-end
partners and the cousin who'd raided their bank account, had shot
at them for reasons he still didn't figure; and until things made
better sense to an aching head and a tired body, he figured to stay
ahead of the questions and just take care of the business he'd come
to do: get the rogue that was surely responsible for the scavenged
remains and dead horse he'd seen back there at the rider-shelter,
and then figure whether or not to talk to Jonas.
    Then let Jonas keep Hawley Antrim out of his reach. And let
him explain the situation at Tarmin village.
    There were, in his mental map of the lower side of the Tarmin
road, two shelters available, one midway, one just short of the
Climb that went up the steep to the High Loop. The middle one
they could make. They could do it, just hit a staying pace and keep
moving.
    Meanwhile the snow was coming down thick. It melted on
Burn's overheated back as fast as it fell, sticking on Burn's mane
and making a fair blanket on his black hide in only the time he'd


RIDER AT THE GATE              ~       359

 stood still being checked over. The track they'd plowed downhill
 was fast vanishing under new snowfall.
   He walked, Burn beside him.
   <Truck going off the edge.
   <Aby dead on the rocks.
     <Cassivey in the big green chair, surrounded in smoke. Bathed
 in smoke. Backed by men with guns. >
    <Jonas at Shamesey gates, refusing to look at him. Jonas with
his edges crimped in real tight, same with Luke, and Hawley a
lump of grief behind him.> Hawley was the one who'd j~lt some-
thing when they broke the news. Hawley at least had cared.
    Hawley hadn't said about the money. Though, granted, Hawley
wasn't damned bright: Aby's mother's half-sister must've screwed a
post to get Hawley--he'd maintained that for years. Aby'd argued
he wasn't that dim, but, damn, he'd far undershot it. Hawley
pulling what he'd pulled at the bank--God, what did you do with
a man like that?
    He wanted to pound Hawley's head in right now, if only because
Hawley was the easiest problem to puzzle out, and probably the
one of the"three with no malice: Hawley got ideas and got himself
in trouble, not thinking things through, not remotely adding it up
why he was going to make people mad. You wanted to beat his
head in, but you didn't somehow ever get around to doing it, be-
cause to make it worth a human being's time, Hawley had to un-
derstand why you were mad at him--and, dammit, you had a
better chance explaining morals to a lorry-lie.
    At least you knew where Hawley was on an issue. You could
even call him honest, he was so stupid about his pilfering.
    Jonas, on the other hand--if Jonas was coming up here with
honest intentions, meaning nothing else on his mind than paying
debts to Aby, it needed more reasons than he'd ever pried out of the
man. Shadow was a spooky, chancy horse, and Jonas was that kind
of a man--you had to get Luke alone and a few beers along if you
wanted the truth. Jonas and that horse were both spooks. In a
minute and twice on a weekday, yes, Jonas would opt to keep the
truth to himself. Jonas, even to his partners, especially to outsiders
to that threesome, parted with information the way a townsman


360    ~          C.J. Cherryh

parted with cash money, piece at a time, and always, always to
Jonas' advantage.
  Jonas always did his job. Letter of the contract. Depend on it.
    Jonas come up here out of belated remorse? Loyalty? --Friend-
ship? Not to him.
  And where was Hawley, if Jonas was involved?
  Hell, ask Jonas what Hawley thought. Hawley always did.

<Horses> crept up into Cloud's awareness, <Froth> first, a noisy
presence through the palisade walls and the gate.
    <Harper shooting from the hill,> Danny imaged hard, the in-
stant he picked up Jonas' party at all. <Hallanslakers in the Meet-
ing in camp.
    <Harper on his feet yelling. Harper shooting. Harper shooting.
Harper shooting--Harper and Quig at the gate-
  <Danny shooting at a man in the blowing snow.>
    <Ice> appeared almost immediately after <Froth.> <Shadow>
had to be that disturbance around them. Cloud snorted and wasn't
sure he wanted them back, but the boys were glad enough to real-
ize they weren't on their own any longer. And--which he had trou-
ble admitting--he was.
    "Is that the riders?" Carlo wanted to know without his saying
anything. "Is that Jonas? Are you warning them?"
    "Yeah," he said, trying to steady down his images and his nerves
before he had to deal with Jonas.
    "Are they coming back?" Randy wanted to know--Randy had a
sore cheek, but Randy wasn't hurt otherwise, and Randy had
maybe learned to stay away from a horse when there was something
you didn't want shouted to minds all over the area. Randy had fig-
ured a number of things out, maybe, and at least wasn't mad at him
anymore.
    "Yeah, they're coming in. I don't think Harper's stayed around in
range, or he's real quiet out there." He put a hand on Randy's
shoulder and squeezed, feeling the shivery excitement in Randy's
mind. "Just calm down. If you want to go around horses you have
to keep it down all the time, all right?"


RIDER AT THE GATE              ~       361

    "Yeah," Randy said; and took a deep breath. "Are they going to
shoot? Are they going to find this Harper guy?"
    "Just be ready to open the gate," Danny said to the boys; he kept
thinking of (Harper~ and ambush. "Fast."
    But (Harped was gone from the ambient and had been since
the gunshot at the gate, spooked out, elusive as any four-footed
ghosty.
    "Have they found the man?" Randy asked. "The man Harper was
shooting at?"
    "Stuart?" he said. "No, the blurry one's probably Jonas. He's not
real noisy. They're coming up on the gates. Be ready. They'll come
in and we shut it behind them fast as we can. Harper's a coward.
He'll lie low if he's outnumbered. But he could try shooting at
them." He was sending (Harper with gun. Harper's face,~ as
clearly as he could--he couldn't put any time sense with it, he
couldn't tell Jonas it was now and not then he was worried about.
(Man with rifle. Shooting at gate.)
    Randy handled the latch, and he and Carlo hauled at the door,
moving a blanket of snow along with it. They hauled hard, making
a horse-wide fan of it as Luke and then Hawley rode in, their faces
stung red with cold above their scarves, snow thick on them and
their horses. Then Jonas came in last and (not happy.
    "Harper was here!" Danny said. "Harper and Quig. We shot at
them."
  "Explains the gunshot," Jonas said, and slid down.
  "What about Stuart?"
    "Man's a damn spook," Jonas said. "Couldn't stop him. Wouldn't
listen."
    "He thinks we were shooting at him," Luke said. "Lit out up and
over a slope somewhere--couldn't track him in this stew."
    (Steep rocks, brush, blowing snow~ came through. So did the
fear of (Stuart shooting from ambush.
    And from Hawley, Danny thought, the more pleasant image of
(ham and biscuits and a warm fire. v
 ~(Danny shooting at Harper?v Jonas asked.
    (Harper at front gate, gate shut, Jonas and Luke and Hawley off
on road. Danny talking to Carlo, Carlo running for rider gate--v


362    ~          C.J. Cherryh

He didn't want to confess how entirely stupid he'd been, but
<Harper or Quig maybe being shot, thick snow, gate coming
open> was something Jonas needed to know.  "Hit him?"
    "Could have. Could have hit Quig. That's the other guy. But I'm
not sure."
    "You'd know," Jonas said matter of factly, and the ambient went
queasy with <pain, anger, horse going crazy> while Jonas' personal
shell around it was cold as ice. Jonas took his hat off and dusted it
against his leg. "Get us inside. Damn near frozen."

    <Cattle,> was Burn's judgment on the situation, and Guil pat-
ted Burn on the neck as he walked beside him, too numb and too
sore to be coherent.
    Snowed on. Shot at. Chased. Yelled at for a spooky fool. His feet
were numb. His head hurt.
  <Box on the lead truck. The truck that had gone over the edge.
  <Hell!
  < Hell.t >
    Burn snorted, shook his neck, throwing off a warning to the
neighborhood--a dangerously loud sending out into the ambient,
considering the danger they knew was on the loose up here.
    But Burn always thought he owned the territory. Guil caught a
fistful of mane in the middle of Burn's neck and yanked it to dis-
tract him from challenging everything in reach.
  <Shooting at him. > He was still damned mad.
    Wouldn't really have thought it of Jonas--wouldn't have
thought that Jonas would miss, for one thing, but the snow had
been blowing hard. Gust of wind, snow in the eyes.., nobody was
perfect.
    Or it could have been an overexcited villager, thinking that he
was the rogue: spooked villagers could shoot at any damn thing
they thought they saw.
    Could have, could have. The fact was Aby was dead and he didn't
know he was in any sense justified in his increasingly dark suspi-
cions of Jonas--but somewhere between the headache and the ache
in his leg, he was on the irrational edge of very damned mad.


RIDER AT THE GATE              ~       363

     Give Jonas credit--he'd lay odds Hawley hadn't run straight to
 inform his partners about the bank. On a day in town with the
 horses a long way off, even dimbrain Hawley could conceivably
 have done something Jonas and Luke didn't know about.
     And ask where Hawley put the funds--maybe the cold air was
 waking his brain up--but he bet to hell there was another bank ac-
 count. Hawley Antrim could have one. The bank women didn't ask
 about brains, just if you had money. Hawley could have put most of
 it right back in his account, right there in Anveney.
     And ask why Aby had used a bank at Anveney--and why Haw-
 ley knew it.
    She hadn't been able to level with her partner--that was what.
She'd hammered home to her partner that the account existed and
he should use it. He hadn't known--God!--that it was in event of
something happening to her, as if she'd known she ran risks more
than the ordinary. Just so casual--Use the bank, Guil. It's safe.
    In the absence of her partner on her end-of-season run, she'd had
to get a crew she could trust not only not to make off with the
cargo but not to spill every damn thing they knew in village
camps; granted there wasn't anybody closer-mouthed or closer-
minded than Jonas and Luke. Hawley--Hawley was moderately
discreet because he didn't have two thoughts a day--but he sup-
posed, hell, he'd probably have picked Jonas and his lot himself,
given Aby's situation and Jonas showing up.
    Jonas in breaking the news to him had told him about the rogue,
imaging just <Aby dead.> That was how he'd gotten it. The
<trucks racing down mountain> he'd gotten from Luke, but no
real chain of events from Jonas. No side information--and that was
typical Jonas: you got things through that horse of his that flitted,
that shifted, that you just couldn't quite focus on. A nest of willy-
wisps wasn't as echoey as Jonas when he and that horse shaped you
something out of memory. Clear and crisp-edged--Shadow wasn't.
Shadow enjoyed <blood,> Shadow enjoyed <fight.> You didn't
want to linger in Shadow's ambient in a situation like that with
Burn in striking range.
  Two damn dominant males, Burn and Shadow.


364 ~    C.J. Cherryh

    Burn took high offense at the mere comparison with Shadow.
<Biting and kicking. Females. Autumn and snow. >
    "Easy." He gave a tug at Burn's mane, set his hand on the back of
Burn's neck and shook it as Burn sucked winter air into his nostrils,
< looking for females. >  God.
    <Nightmares,> Burn imaged happily, sniffing the wind and
looking for mates while the wind blasted at them cold as the floors
of hell. He was trying to figure who'd just tried to kill them, and
Burn skittered off onto <snow> and <autumn,> running on ner-
vous energy by now--while his was flagging. Hell, he thought,
maybe he and Jonas were crazy as the horses.
    God knew if Aby and Jonas had had anything going between
them. He couldn't imagine it. But maybe there was that in the am-
bient. He'd not picked it up.
    He wouldn't be offended--he didn't think he was. Jonas was po-
tentially more serious than Aby's occasional others.
    But--no. He didn't think so. Not Jonas. For the damn-all major
thing--Jonas wouldn't do it. He wouldn't put himself that close
and that off-guard to Aby's questions.
    A wally-boo called. He took it for reassurance. He had the rifle
slung to his shoulders, his hands stuffed into his pockets. He took
one out, in the wicked gust of snow-laden wind down a fold of the
mountain, to pull his breath-sodden scarf up around his nose. It
was freezing with the moisture of his breath and sagging down to
his mouth. He jerked it behind his head, tugged it down tight in-
side his collar, thinking about that sweater he could have bought in
Anveney--thinking about frostbite, and asking himself whether
the oil on his boots was holding out.
    Maybe some sense of obligation had actually gotten to Jonas,
Aby having paid her life for it.
      Or maybe--maybe Cassivey had talked to more than one man,
made a deal with more than one man regarding that cargo.
  Damn.
  Damn/
    That distracting notion took the trail-sense out of his legs. His
foot wobbled into a hidden hole. He recovered himself a few steps,


RIDER AT THE GATE              ~       365

but he'd hurt the sore leg. The cold had clearly gotten to his brain.
He was frozen between the consideration that maybe he ought to
go back and find out what Jonas wanted--and the equally valid
thought that that had been no signaling shot that had blasted bark
offa tree. Jonas hadn't fired at him when he'd chased him ....
    Burn swung his head around and bit him above the knee, not
hard, but enough to wake him up. <Guil riding,> Burn insisted.
<Warm Guil on warm nighthorse back.>
    Wasn't fair. Wasn't fair to weight Burn down. <Guil walking,>
he thought: the shelter couldn't be far. He'd cut across the moun-
tain where a horse could go and a truck couldn't, and he didn't
know how much time he'd taken off the trek, but he had to be far
closer now to the next way-stop than he was to go back to the vil-
lage.
    Didn't dare to do it again, how-so-ever. Shaky legs had no busi-
ness on a mountain. Damn near killed themselves doing it once.
    And there was a chance of coming down to the road a second
time some distance past the shelter. A chance, if the storm wors-
ened, of freezing to death on the mountainside.
  But he was limping. And speed was harder and harder.
    <Burn carrying baggage,> he imaged; and Burn didn't want to.
Burn would carry him carrying it. Burn didn't like the pack. It
tickled.
    He argued, he imaged <bacon and biscuits in the baggage,> but
Burn, remembering that, just wanted <bacon cooking> right then.
    <Shelter,> Guil insisted. <Burn carrying baggage. Us walking,>
and Burn still wouldn't.
    He stopped. <Gull sitting down.> Burn offered to bite him on
the leg again and'he offered, <Guil walking. Burn carrying bag-
gage. >
    Burn wasn't happy, but Burn finally carried it--<nasty ice
lumps bumping at cold nighthorse ribs. Us in snow. Us in dark.
Snow on us.>
    <Warm fire in the shelter,> he sent back, <bacon frying in the
shelter. >
    For a considerable distance further that even dominated <fe-
males> in Burn's searching the scents the storm brought. But


366    ~E         C.J. Cherryh

(evergreen and ice> was what Burn smelled. <Willy-wisps> once.
The ambient was healthier where they were.
    But night was also coming down fast. The sunglow was leaving
the sky behind the mountain wall. The temperature was dropping
fast and the wind had a shriller voice as it howled among the ever-
greens.
  (Nasty willy-wisps,> Burn imaged. (Nasty falling-down lean-

to.>
    But a high-country shelter was, Guil swore, going to be there--
ransacked like the last one or whole, he didn't care, as long as it was
whole walls, a door that would latch, and a supply of wood.
    Jonas would probably be after them; Jonas could show once the
weather cleared and they'd talk and have some answers.
    They'd talk with him behind a wall with a gun-port and Jonas
out in the yard telling him what the deal was with Cassivey, that
was how they'd talk.
    But he had to get there. Had to get there. Legs had to last.
Lungs had to last.
    As the light dimmed and dimmed, until they were walking in a
murk defined by tree-shadow and the ghostly white of the clear-

cut.

There was ham, there was yeast bread. Danny knew how to make
it, and nobody else claimed the knack. He hoped Harper could
smell it out there on the wind and Harper was real, real hungry.
  He truly, truly hoped Stuart had made it to the next shelter.
    Jonas thought something he couldn't catch. Luke had another
slice of bread.
    'Tll bet," Luke said, "that Harper's pulled back to the north-next
shelter."
  "Could," Jonas said.
  The boys just ate their supper.
    There wasn't a sign of Harper, though he thought they all kept
an ear to the ambient. He ate his supper without a qualm.
    It was only afterward when he began to think again about <man
in the gate, snow blowing> and that man vanishing in the jolt the
gun made--that he really worried he'd hit Quig.


RIDER AT THE GATE              ~       367

  He didn't think he ought to worry. But he did.
    He sat in a warm spot near enough the stove it overheated his
knees. He rubbed the warmth of overheated cloth into his hands,
and didn't want to move.
    "You think you did shoot him after all?" Carlo asked, squatting
down near him.
  "I don't know. I could have."
    Carlo didn't say anything else about it. Carlo was thinking about
his father. About <gun going off. > About <anger> he couldn't deal
with. Carlo was quiet, and Randy came up and sat down by him,
all of them scared. The banging went on down the street, where the
wind hadn't yet hammered whatever-it-was to flinders.
    "When the snow stops," Carlo said, "are they going to go after
this Stuart guy again?"
    "Probably." He rubbed his knees again. The heat was back. It
was almost too uncomfortable.
      "What happens to you," Carlo asked then, careful around his
edges, "--if you go with a rogue and they shoot it?"  "Dunno. I really don't."
    "Do they know?" A slide of Carlo's eyes toward Jonas and the
others. "I mean--"
    Cloud moved in, put his head on Danny's shoulder, and Danny
scratched Cloud's chin without thinking about it.
    "Yeah," Danny said. <Blonde girl in red coat> was insistent in
the air. "It's not a good time to think about it, all right? I don't
know what happens. Harper isn't any genius. He just got spooked
bad." <Man Harper knew. Rogue in the ambient. Shooting man.>
    <Shooting Brionne> came through, and upset ran the whole
room, horses shifting, heads coming up.
    "Go to sleep," Jonas said, and it was like a bucket of ice water on
the ambient. Things just--stopped, the way old Wesson could get
your attention.
    But it scared everybody. Cloud had jerked his head up, too, and
Cloud was surly, feeling it as <attack.>
    Jonas got up and walked over to the stove, towering over them,
his face and himself half in shadow from the flue pipe.
  "No gain," Jonas said, "to some questions. She could freeze. She


368    it~        C.J. Cherryh

 could fall off. Could be she's sane. Could be she isn't. But if you get
 her back she won't be the same as she was. Plain truth."  The air was cold around the fire. Just---cold.
  "She's thirteen," Carlo said in a shaky voice. "She's just thirteen."
     "Horse can't count," Jonas said. "Rogue doesn't care, mountain
 doesn't care. Storm out there doesn't care. And we won't know."
     "Ease off him," Danny said. "Jonas, it's their sister, for God's
 sake."
  "No difference."
     "Maybe riders get dropped under a damn bush, but village kids
 come with sisters, Jonas--sisters and brothers and <family,> and
 damned right it matters! You grow up with somebody and you got
 'em even if you don't damn well like 'em!"
     <Sam. Sitting at the kitchen table. Having a mouthful of
 beans. >
     <Wrench, settling on a thin, crooked pipe fitting. Open air.
 Cold air. Gravel underfoot. >
     Didn't know who that was. Jonas all of a sudden flared up--was
 just <there,> and <mad> and they were <on the floor>; Danny
 couldn't make sense of it, but his heart had jumped.  "Clean up," Jonas said.
  "The hell. You clean up. I cooked it."
  Horses were <upset.> <Fight> was in the ambient.
  "Hawley," Jonas said. "You want to pick up the site?"
  "Yeah," Hawley said, and the air was quieter.
    Carlo had gone tense. Randy was stiff and scared-looking, hud-
dled against him. Danny felt a flutter in his heart and got up from
where he was sitting, went over and calmed Cloud down, trying
not to think real-time, thinking about <flour and biscuit and how
long the wood stack was going to last. >
  <Wrench on a fitting. Brown metal and cold.
      <Papa and the shop, papa fixing engines. Pieces all over the
table. Papa's hands all over grease and black from his work.  <Papa washing up in the sink.>
    But papa never got his fingernails clean, never bothered too
much because it was back to the shop afrer supper. Papa worked
real hard.


RIDER AT THE GATE              ~       369

    <Papa in the blacksmith shop. Sparks flying. Iron glowing in
the heat. >
    That last was Carlo. It was Randy, too. They'd gotten up. They
came over to join him, still <scared,> but picking up on it, maybe,
that when the air went like that in a camp you left things alone, re-
ally alone, fast.

The ambient grew quieter and quieter, as if the whole world was
freezing. Even the hardier creatures on the mountain had sought
shelter from the storm, and the nightly predators had evidently de-
cided on a night to stay snug in their burrows.
    There was a time you thought you had to give it up and try to
tuck in somewhere, and if you didn't, you somehow kept going.
And after you were mind-numb and still walking on that last deci-
sion there came a time the body kept working and the brain utterly
quit: Gull caught himself walking without looking, a second after
he slid on a buried rut and had the bad leg go sideways. Burn just
forged ahead.
    The leg could be broken, for all Gull could feel--it was numb
from toes to knee, the knees and ankles were going, and Burn,
damn him, just kept on plowing through the snow.
    <"Burn/"> he yelled, straining a throat raw with cold, thin air.
That started him coughing, and still Burn didn't stop.
    It was a betrayal he'd never in his life expected. Burn had never
left him.
    Females, maybe, delusions of females---only thing that he knew
would distract Burn to that extent.
    Then: <Shelter in the dark. Logs covered in snow, snow piled
high. Bacon cooking. >
    He got up, he slogged ahead in the trail Burn broke for him. He
stumbled and he used the rifle for help staying on his feet, but,
damn, it was there, it was solid in the dark, he could see it with his
own eyes, tears freezing his lashes and his lids half-shut. Burn was a
<splendid horse. Strong, admirable horse.>
    <Wonderful horse,> Burn agreed, pleased with himself. Burn
was already up at the entry to the cabin, nosing the door, having


370    ~          C.J. Cherryh

gotten, over a lifetime, damned clever with latches and latch
strings.
    "Hell, Burn, you'll ice it breathing on it, you fool--" He could
hardly talk, bur he set the rifle against the wall and squeezed up
beside Burn, got a grip with stiff, gloved fingers on the latch chain,
and pulled.
    The latch lifted. Getting a snowbound door was a matter of
kicking the snow clear and the ice clear, getting a grip on the han-
dle and pulling the door so you had a crack to get your hands into.
    Another tug outward and Burn got his jaw into the act, stuck
just his chin through the door and starred pulling back, working
his head in and forcing it wider.
    Outward-opening. Always outward opening, all the shelters.
You had a snow door, even a roof trap you could use if the snow
piled up and you had to, but outward gave you better protection
against spook-bears, who always pushed and dug.
    "Come on, Burn, Burn, give me some room, you fool, it's still
blocked--"
    Ice broke. It moved, and Burn wasn't taking any nonsense. Burn
got a shoulder in, and more ice broke--Burn's rider's foot was a
narrow miss as Burn shoved his way in with thoughts of <supper>
and a warning of <nighthorse, fierce nighthorse. Eating willy-wisps
cooked in grease. >                  -.
Clean shelter. No vermin. Nothing moved in the dark inside.
He had an idea how the locals set things up now. He retrieved
the rifle, got the door shut--pulled his right-hand glove off with
his teeth and put his fingers in his mouth to warm them.
    They hurt, God, they hurt so much tears started in his eyes and
added to those frozen to his eyelashes. Burn came and breathed on
him, that was some help when the shakes started, enough that he
was able to get into his pocket and get the waxed matches.
    He got one lit--the thumbnail still worked, even if he couldn't
feel the thumb.
    Better yet, he was able to hold onto the match as it flared and
showed him a cabin like any rider shelter--showed him the man-
tel, and besides a charred slow-match, a lantern with the wick
ready and the chimney set beside it.


RIDER AT THE GATE              ~       371

    He lit it on one match, blinked the tears from his eyes and felt
that one little flame as a blazing warmth in a world gone all to ice
and wind.
    The fire was laid and ready. He lit the slow-match from the
lantern, lit the fire from the match, and squatted there fanning it
with his hat until he was sure beyond a doubt he had it going. The
wind was all the while moaning around the eaves like a living
thing and thumping down the chimney. He chose to take a little
smoke until the fire was strong enough for the snow-dump that
sometimes came when you opened the flue--there was almost cer-
tainly a snow-shield on the chimney, but when he finally pulled the
chain, he still got ice. It plummeted onto the logs, hissed, and
knocked some of the inner structure fiat.
    It didn't kill the fire, only flung out a white dusting of ash. He
stayed there in the warmth and light with Burn going about sniff-
ing this and that--he pulled off his left glove and checked his fin-
gers over for frostbite--felt over his face and his ears, which were
starting to hurt, with fingers possibly in worse condition.
    But he wasn't the only one cold and miserable. He put his fire-
warmed gloves back on, wincing with the pain, wrapped a scarf
around his head and, taking a wooden pail from the corner, cracked
the door to get snow from outside, packed it down with his fists
and came back to the fire to melt it. While he waited for that, he
delved into the two-pack and got out the strong-smelling salve that
by some miracle or its pungent content wasn't frozen solid.
    Burn was amenable to a rub-down, even if it took precedence
over bacon, and Guil peeled out of his coat, called Burn over near
the fire and rubbed on salve barehanded, chafed and rubbed until
he'd broken a sweat himself, despite the cold walls and floor.
    Burn was certainly more comfortable. Both of them were
warmer. He thought his fingers might survive. He pulled off his
boots and the cold socks, and applied the stinging salve to his feet,
relieved to find the boots hadn't soaked through, that feeling was
coming back, at least an awareness of his feet, and a keen pain
above the ankles. He wasn't altogether sure he hadn't gotten frost-
bite. Couldn't tell, yet. And the toes wouldn't move. Couldn't af-
ford to go through life with unsound feet. God, oh, God, he


372    it~        C.J. Cherryh

couldn't--limping along on the short routes where the horse could
do all the walking.
    He didn't want that for a future. He was more worried about his
feet than about gunfire--so anxious that Burn in all sympathy
came over and breathed on his feet, licked them, once, but the salve
tasted too bad.
    He'd have been safer and smarter, he thought now, to have
camped in the open. He'd have been warmer sooner. A blizzard like
this could pile up snow in drifts high as a shelter roof--it might
not let up with morning or even next evening. The wind screamed
across the roof--there was a loose shingle up there or a flashing or
something that wailed a single rising and falling note on the gusts,
a note you either ignored or let drive you crazy; but he was so glad
of warm shelter tonight he told himself it was music.
    Burn made another try at his feet. Burn was half-frozen and had
a fearsome empty spot inside. <Miserable horse. Hungry horse.
Looking for crumbs on floor. Hoping for pack to be open. >
    "Hell," Guil moaned, and crawled over, stretched out an arm as
far as he could reach and dragged the pack up close--fed Burn and
himself jerky and a couple of sticky grain sweets, the kind he kept
for moments like this, except his mouth and Burn's had been too
dry too long out there, and Burn's throat was too raw, his tongue
too dry to enjoy it.
    But maybe, maybe there was a little bit of feeling in his feet. He
tried moving his toes. Couldn't quite get all of them to work, but
some did that hadn't--and finally, finally, he got movement out of
them all.
    Guil sighed then, with vast relief--took a pan out, thinking of
other comforts, took his knife to thoroughly frozen bacon, having
to lean on the blade to get through it.
    There was water, finally. There was oil for biscuits--Burn got
the bacon squares; he nipped a couple for himself.
  By then his feet and hands had begun to hurt. Really hurt.
    But the toes wiggled quite nicely, and he sat there content to
watch that painful miracle while the biscuits nearly burned.
  Meanwhile Burn, with water to drink and with the ambient a lot


RIDER AT THE GATE              ~       3 73

less <Guil scared> and <Guil hurting,> had his head blissfully in
the grain bin, fending for himself in the absence of more bacon.
    <Beautiful horse,> Guil thought, and offered Burn the first bis-
cuits out of the pan.
    They disappeared without hesitation. He made more, got one for
himself out of the next pan. Burn got six. He found he hadn't as
much appetite as he had thoughtwbut before he lay down he stood
up, hobbled painfully over to the door and pulled the latch-cord in
to protect their sleep.
    Then he stirred up more biscuits for the morning, put them on
to bake over the coals; and after what felt like a second, Burn had to
wake him up off the warm stones to get him to take them out.
Burn knew <scorch> when he smelled it.
    He ate one more biscuit then, put the rest by, and in shaky self-
indulgence, made hot tea, assured now his teeth wouldn't crack if
he drank it.
    Among his Anveney purchases was a little metal flask of spirits,
for steeping medicines, as he intended, not the luxury of drink.
    But the shelter came, courtesy of the maintenance crews, for
which he blessed their kindness----equipped with a bottle on the
mantel, and he poured about a third spirits into his second cup of
tea; sipped it ever so slowly, letting it seep into dry mouth and dry
throat and burn all the way down.
    It was the first time he'd looked at the rider board, up above the
mantel. His heart nearly stopped.
    Some not-so-bad artist had filled a large area of the board with a
horse head, all jagged teeth, staring eyes, wild mane, ears flat to the
skull.
  Rogue horse. A warning to anybody who came here.
    And he knew the sketch artist beyond a doubt when he saw,
above it, the mark that was Jonas Westman.
    Jonas had been in this place, on his way to Tarmin, Jonas and
his partners--sitting here where he sat. They'd laid the fire he'd
used.
  Made that ghastly image.
    But that wasn't the total source of disturbance. He was feeling
something--faint, dim sense of presence.


374--'-'"         C.J. Cherryh

                                        t
    --Something in the ambient, no image brushing the surface of
his thoughts, just a whisper of life outside the shelter that sent his
hand reaching for the rifle.
    It had Burn's attention, too--head up, ears up, nostrils flared, as
he stared toward the door.
    <Jonas> was the first thought that came to him. <Jonas, Luke
and Hawley coming through the snow and the dark.>
    But the sending didn't seem to come from several horses. It
wasn't strong, it wasn't loud and it shifted and eluded his concep-
tion of it, at times completely disappearing.  Shadow could feel that way--alone.
    But Shadow wouldn't be alone. And he wasn't sure what it was.
He wasn't sure it wasn't some passing cat--but no cat in its right
mind would be out in a blizzard.
    And it didn't travel. It strengthened, there and not-there, consis-
tently strengthened, while he and Burn stayed still.
      Horse. Horse, he was almost certain. Strengthening presence
meant it was coming straight toward the shelter.  Single horse.
    He grabbed up the rifle, cursed himself as he checked its ac-
tion-long overdue precaution. He'd used the piece for a walking-
stick. God knew what he'd done to it the time he'd gone down and
bruised his knee. But it worked. He had a bullet ready.
    He waited, conscious of that sketched image staring out across
the room over his head. He felt the tension in Burn, felt--now and
again--the sense of something reaching out blindly into the dark,
feeling about it, looking.
    A lonely something. A desperate someone. Burn didn't make the
young-horse mistake of reaching back. They waited, quiet for a
long, long while, anxious--but he began to want the thing, began
to think about <Aby> and <rocks> and wanted that thing to come
in, come to the gun-slit at the front of the cabin; get it over with,
get it finished, the first night he was on the ridge.
    He got up from the floor. He stood listening into the ambient,
quiet, careful, not wanting Burn to commit too far, too dangerously
out into that dark.
  But it knew now that they were there. It skittered across his


RIDER AT THE GATE                     ~         3 75

 mind, canny, and scared, and desperate. He wanted to use his
 ears--hear it coming toward the door--but the wind screamed that
 single note across the roof, covering all sound else. He could feel it
 coming closer, and closer, and filling all the ambient, there and not
 there. He went to the wall, where the gun-port was--hesitated to
 unlatch it until he was reasonably sure what he was dealing with.
     <Cold,> he felt it. <Hungry. Very hungry.> Then: <female
 horse. >
     Burn made a strange soft sound. <Female,> entered the ambient.
 <Female wanting in. Male here. Male horse. >
     Another thump. Hard. Two. Burn immediately grew excited,
 throwing his head and imaging back <male, male, male> as, over
 the shriek of the wind came an unmistakable nighthorse sound out-
 side the door, a female's sound. Burn did a little sideways dance as
 Gull left the wall and grabbed a fistful of mane with his free hand.
     "Burn, dammit, shut up." He got a breath. <Burn quiet.> God,
 <Burn quiet, quiet, quiet. >
     "Let me in!" It was hardly a voice. It was maybe a rag of a human
 voice past the wail of the wind. The ambient was howling <fe-
 male. > "Open the door. Open the door, do you hear me?"
  Burn jerked the mane out of his hand, <wanting female. >
     "Open the door!" the voice outside cried, thin and breaking.
 "Dammit!"
     A blow thumped against the door. He saw <horse and rider,
 snow blowing. Snow on them.> He saw <shut door> and <fist
    hammering it.> Most of all he felt <desperate fear. Wanting in.
 Wanting in, something behind them-->
     "There's a rogue loose!" he yelled back. "How do I know it's not
 you?"
     "I'm not, you damn fool! God! Open the door! I left my camp, I
 smelled the smoke--I'm freezing out here, we're both freezing.
 Open the damn door!"
     <Numb feet, numb hands. Cold horse. > They didn't feel insane.
 Bush wisdom held that sometimes a rogue seemed entirely normal.
 Then wasn't.
     Burn was going crazy behind him, on totally different grounds,
 Burn was <wanting door open, door open, wanting out-->


376    ~          C.J. Cherryh

    But that was the mistake every victim made in the Wild. The
voice outside, someone in desperate, mind-shaking need--the rea-
son to open the door.
    "God! Let me in! I'm not any damn rogue! Let me in, you damn
coward! Open this door!"
    Burn believed it. He began to believe it, telling himself it was
still early in the season, there could still be a rider out, and he
could find somebody frozen to death on his step.
    It was a woman, he was sure it was a woman, by the horse and by
the pitch in the voice when it cracked--and he'd no wish to deal
with female horses or female riders; Burn was going crazy on him,
Burn was going to go for the mare if he let them in--
    "Open up!" Another thump of a fist. And he didn't see what else
to do. He set the rifle aside, drew his pistol for closer range--then
lifted the latch, gave the door a shove, and put his shoulders against
the front wall.
    The door dragged outward with a gloved hand pulling it. Then a
horse, as forward as Burn, forced her head in--surged through, a
snow-blanketed darkness that met Burn in the middle of the room
and dodged him in a perimeter-threatening dance around and
around a second time as Burn sniffed after <female> and the mare
gave him a surly, <cold, hungry horse> warn-off.
    He'd glanced at them like a fool--anxious about the horse. He
glanced back a confused eyeblink later face to face with a muffled,
snow-mantled and angry rider--as the mare shook herself from
head to tail and spattered the whole room with snow and icewater.
    "Who are you?" the rider demanded to know, and slammed the
door shut. A gloved hand pulled off the hat and ripped the scarf off
a head of dark hair, a pair of dark eyes, a wind-burned and pretty
face--which was no comfort to a man hoping he hadn't just let two
killers into the shelter with him and his horse. "What are you
doing here?"
    "My name's Stuart," he said, and didn't put away the gun. "Out
of Malvey district. Who are you? The proprietor?"
     "Tara Chang. Out of Tarmin village." Teeth were chattering.
 Hard. "Malvey's a far ride. What are you doing up here?"
  "The rogue killed my partner. I'm afraid it's got your village."


RIDER AT THE GATE              ~       377

    A tremor of distress hit the ambient, but not strongly. The situa-
tion at Tarmin was no surprise to her.
    But it was about all her constitution seemed able to bear. The
(angerv bled out and she walked over to the fire--sank down on
the hearthstones in a precipitate collapse of the legs, head down,
gloved hands in hair. "Hell," she said, and the pain in the ambient
drew the mare over to nose her rider's back.
    The gun didn't seem so reasonable as it had. He wasn't sure. He
kept expecting an explosion, a sudden shift into insanity. But with
none in evidence, he put the gun back in holster, carried the rifle
back to the far side of the fireplace, the side he determined to sit
on--and thought of (biscuits) and (tea.~
    "Yeah," she said. (Hungry.~ Her eyes were pouring tears. She
hadn't gotten her gloves off. God knew about her feet. Or her
horse's.
  (Salve,) he thought. (Warm nighthorse legs.
    She approved of that. She leaned and got the bottle of spirits--
uncorked it and took a swallow.
    You weren't supposed to do that. It was stupid when you were
cold, but she didn't take another. He put on another pan of water to
heat, and with a wary glance at the woman sitting on the hearth,
eyes shut, cradling the bottle in her lap, decided he'd better fill
water buckets again--his and the horses'.
    Which meant the door opening, however briefly, and a cold gale
swirling for a moment about the room while he packed one and
then the other bucket with snow.
    Burn didn't care. Burn was nosing about the mare as he came
back in, pulled the door shut, and set the buckets on the hearth.
    Interested--God. "Burn, let her alone, you damn fool! She's
damn near frozen!" ~Burn licking cold nighthorse legs. Beautiful
horse. Nice nighthorse legs.
    Damn fool, he thought, and poured the woman tea in one of the
shelter's cups. "The water barrel's frozen solid," he said. "It'll warm
up by tomorrow, maybe."  "Yeah," she said.
    "I'll rub your horse down. She'll be all right. Gloves off. Boots
off. There's aromatic rub and there's snow for water."



378    ~          C.J. Cherryh

    "Yeah," she said, and started pulling gloves off with her teeth.
He took the salve, of which he didn't have but half left, and started
in on the mare's legs, while Burn licked the ice off the mare's back.
The mare nipped Burn. But not hard.
"God, save it," he muttered to Burn. "There's problems. God!"
Burn sent him <sex> and <warmth> and he got a feeling that
he didn't know words for, but it involved pushing himself on a
woman when she hurt. The rider was upset, the mare was upset--
    "Let her the hell alone, Burn, you damn fool, give her a chance to
catch her breath."
  "Flicker," Chang said from the hearthside. "Name's Flicker."
    He caught the image. A lot like Shadow, only light, not dark.
She was picking up the other business, too, and while neither of
them was acutely embarrassed--she was no junior--he felt himself
pushed and set upon by his own horse. In most respects he and
Burn were a match. Not in this.
    "Sorry," he said, and squatted down, arms on knees, as far away
from her as he could and still feel the fire. "My horse is a fool. You
want to quiet it down?"  "They're all right."
  "Are you? Hands and feet?"
    "All right." Her feet were bare. She wiggled toes, and meanwhile
downed a piece of biscuit--she'd found them; chased it with spirit-
laced tea.
    She seemed to be. So he got up and got several of the shelter's
blankets down from the shelf, <intending wrapping up in them,
intending sleep, him with his blankets, her with hers,> and he didn't
invite approaches. She and her horse seemed all right, he was en-
tirely sorry he'd given her a hard go-over and kept her out in the
cold--but wherever she'd walked from, those feet hadn't been cold
as long as his had, and Tarmin's troubles weren't just today's event.
A day ago--at least. She'd been somewhere safer than he had.
    She mumbled, "Two days. I think it's two days." <Fire. Rogue-
feeling.> She gave a shiver, and poured more of the spirits into the
tea. Offered the bottle to him.
    He wanted more awareness than that while he slept, though he
was very glad to see she would sleep soundly.


RIDER AT THE GATE              ~       379

     She gave him a narrow look, thinking, <rapist.> Or that was the
 uncharitable way his mind interpreted it.
    "No," he said, taking offense. But her thoughts were skittering
about so fast he couldn't catch them, a lot about people he didn't
know, a lot about a camp he thought must be Tarmin, about a jail
and an alarm in the night.
    Not comfortable thoughts to sleep with. There was <anger,>
when they got loose, and <desire to kill,> but he didn't think--he
didn't think it was an unnatural anger, or an unnatural pain. It just
resonated too well with his own, that left him touchy and on the
edge.
    She took a precautionary look toward the door, <checking the
latch,> then wrapped her two blankets around herself, with a per-
sistent thought about a man--a rider--<in this place. Anger. Two
women, both riders. Both very young. Deep anger. >
  <Fire. Shots going off.
  <Wanting them. Here. >
    He understood that, God, he wished he could put a damper on
that feeling, smooth it down, ease the pain, distance the memories.
It was her lost partners she'd looked to find when she'd smelled the
smoke and come battering at the door.
  <"Who are you?"> with so much anger-
    <Rogue-feelings. Scattering. Wanting kill, shooting horse, horse
with blonde child, wanting--this--wanting--this-->
    Then it went away. Guil got a breath. The horses did, snappish
and dangerous in a closed space.
    While Tara Chang sat in her blankets, rested her head on her
jacketed arm and stared bleakly into the fire.
    Guil sat there a moment--asking himself what he'd let in and
what was over there with Burn.
    Grief, he decided. A day old, no more. A loss that racketed off
his own, and left him raw-nerved. He probably made it worse for
her--couldn't help but make it worse for her.
    <Still water,> he sent, kept it up until the horses had calmed
down, until he saw the woman sigh and settle, and felt the ambient
quiet enough to dare let go and try to relax.
  The mattresses on the bunks might have warmed if he'd dragged


380      ~        C.J. Cherryh

them over and left them an hour or so at the fireside; but right now
he was exhausted and the hearthstones were warmer. He took his
own couple of blankets, laid his pistol down, wrapped in them and
lay down in the fire-warmth, head on his much-abused hat and
scarf, that he stuffed under him from where he'd dropped them.
    He was still cold--as if ice had gotten clear into the core of him,
and another wave of it was coming out to chill his skin. He lay
there by another heavy-coated, living body, as cold as she was, with
no erotic notions whatsoever and wondering if he dared shut his
eyes.
    But in a few moments of quiet, Burn and the mare were back to
their quiet muttering of grunts and sniffing and sneezing--
    The mare was tired, snappish, and out of sorts. Burn, going too
far, nearly got something important nipped. He heard the row.
More, he felt it, and twitched into a spasm of cold chill, knees
drawn up, and wishing intensely that Burn would quiet the hell
down.
    The woman in front of him was a solid sleeping lump now. Two
drinks, as tired as she looked to be, and probably the roof could fall
on her unnoticed.
    Probably it was safe to shut his eyes and get some sleep. He didn't
have any reason to doubt her. Burn didn't doubt the mare, and kept
at his courtship, somewhat more gingerly--which didn't make
Burn's rider more comfortable. Gull turned over, arranged his arm
over the gun and belt beside him.
    In very remote case, he was sure. But he didn't believe in delib-
erate chances.
    Meanwhile the horses were bickering, Burn was exhausted, sore,
and impatient, having made the one perilous try at a chilled, sore-
footed, sore-backed mare, and settled to a sullen male posturing--
imaging <handsome horse, male, male, male horse,> until Burn's
male rider was <desperate, mad male human, trying to rest. Burn
lying down. >
    Burn wouldn't. The mare was on her feet. Burn was <handsome
young male.> Burn wasn't going to lie down in the presence of any
<female horse standing.> If Burn deigned <mating with cold, wet
female. >


RIDER AT THE GATE              ~       381

    "God." Guil took several deep breaths, and imaged, <Horses lying
down, > loud and mad. Which was fit to wake his own bedmate. So
he sent, <Quiet horses. Beautiful mare. Lying down mare. >
    The mare settled down fairly abruptly, imaging--he was sure it
was the mare--< sore legs, sore back. >
    Burn postured, Burn circled twice, lifted and flagged his tail,
preened a foreleg, finally-
  <Rump down,> Guil sent furiously.
    Burn preened the other foreleg, and gracefully, gracefully, settled
to a noble resting posture--not damned comfortable, but, hell,
<handsome horse,> Guil agreed, asking himself if he'd ever in his
human life possibly been such an ass.
  <Aby laughing, and him chasing Burn across the hillside.
  <Aby laughing and laughing.>
    He grew warm, finally. He shut his eyes, drifted toward sleep,
listening to another shifting-about with the horses. Horses didn't
mind resting their legs, but give it about an hour and a healthy
horse would be up to sleep a while standing; and down again, when
he tired of that--they weren't quiet sleeping partners, unless the
night was very cold indeed.
  Which it wasn't, with the fire going.
  And now--
  Now Burn wanted <outside, call of nature. >
  God.
    But Burn had to. It wasn't Burn's fault. Sex failed and the other
urge of nature took over. You couldn't ask Burn to wait. You could
want to shoot him--but, hell, you woke up, took your gun to
guard the door, you got up--
    He let Burn out. He stood there against the wall, freezing in the
brief blast of cold air, testing whether human beings could nap
standing up--he could manage it.
  But now that Burn was outside, the mare wanted <out. >
    Fine. <Mare outside.> He couldn't keep his eyes open. He
opened the door and Burn wanted in where it was warm. Immedi-
ately. Burn came in, radiating cold, covered with snow. Shook him-
self.
  Guil shut his eyes, folded his arms tightly to keep himself from


382      ~        C..J. Cherryh

folding over in the middle, braced his heels, and waited for the
mare. While the wind shrieked over the loose shingle.
    In not so long the mare wanted back in and he wearily opened
the door, accepted another horse shaking herself and spattering
snow about, as he shut the door and double-checked the latch, ar-
guing with himself that the mare was perfectly sane, that possibly
now that the horses were settled, he might settle.
  Chang was staring at him over the top of the blankets.
    "God," she said, and collapsed. <Scared> for a moment. She'd
wakened and been confused where she was.
      "Sorry." He came back, gathered his blankets around him and sat
down--lay down, shivering, and put the gun beside him.  "We're not the rogue," the woman said.
      "We aren't either," he said, laid his head on his makeshift pillow
and wrestled the blankets up to his neck.
  "I knew that."
  "How?"
    "Because I know who is." <Blonde girl. Red coat. Tracks in the
snow, going out a gate. >
    "God." He wanted desperately to shut his eyes and sleep. And he
didn't want to believe what he was hearing. It complicated every-
thing.
    But it felt true. Everything about the woman felt true--and dis-
turbing.
  "A kid."
      "Village kid," she said. "Name's Brionne Goss." <Gate recently
opened, traces in the snow, kid's footprints, a horse sick-->  "Kid's dead, if she's out in this."
    The woman didn't answer. There was too much of <anger,> of
<grief. Two men on horses, leaving a gate, into snowy woods.>
"My partners went out after her. Didn't come back."
    He remembered the rider shelter north of the village. Remem-
bered <horse bones> and shied off from that image too late, send-
ing <regret,> sending <sorrow,> all he understood to give.
    For a long, long moment the air was thick with emotions. The
mare came over and trod on the blankets, nosing her rider's leg.
Burn came, disturbed, and Guil sat up to lay a restraining hand on


RIDER AT THE GATE              ~       383

the offered nose. Pushed at it. <Quiet horse,> he wished, and with
the mare near the woman, there was no coherent thought in the
ambient, just roiling, dark, disturbance.
    Burn made a quiet, disturbed sound--next to a <fight> warn-
ing. <Quiet,> Gull sent, and got to one knee, and slowly to his
feet, wanting to get provocation out of the mare's reach. It was hard
even to breathe, let alone to think. He backed Burn up, wanting
<quiet horses. >
    Then <rogue-image> leapt into the ambient, <painted image,
firelit> grotesque, horrid, in her sight, in her mind, and <anger>
and <killing> flew around the room. Burn reared---Gull grabbed
trailing mane and skidded and held on as Burn shied.
    Held him. Burn stood trembling with anger. Chang had the
mare, had hold of her, scared, and <wanting to kill. >
    <Quiet,> Gull urged at her, at Burn, at everything in reach.
<Quiet. Painted board. Room. Fireplace.> He reconstructed it out
of the dark. He sent <horses standing. Horses quiet,> and felt, fi-
nally, Chang's help quieting the mare. Chang wanted <hitting
him.> But she got it under control, got the horse quiet.
  "Small room," he said. "Easy. Tight space here."
  "That your idea of a joke?" Meaning the image.
    "I didn't do it. Didn't do it. Haven't even made my mark up
there. Swear to you. Didn't make me damn happy either. Throw a
blanket over it."
    She got a breath or two. Thought about <blanket> and didn't do
it. She was calmer. She calmed the mare, who was still throwing off
<warning. > Chang was doing the same, shaky and still <mad.>
    It was cold on this side of the room. He wanted <her giving him
blankets.> He wasn't going close to her horse. He had enough
trouble keeping Burn still.
    For a moment things stayed as they were, balanced on a knife's
edge of Chang's temper and his nerves. Then he felt the anger un-
wind, slowly, slowly, into a quieter disturbance. A few more
breaths.
    She shook at the mare's neck, wanting <easy, relax,> and
thought <him at fireside, wrapping in blankets.> She was shaken
and upset. She wanted--<quiet. >


384    ~          C.J. Cherryh

    He understood--he didn't expect her to get that much steadi-
ness back, not that fast. He wished he'd thought to cover that
damned thing.
    "It's stupid," she said, shaky-voiced. "Not that good a drawing. I
ate your damn supper, I've no right to chase you off your own fire-
side."
    He wasn't sure. Burn wasn't sure. Burn snorted and got between
them, with him holding onto Burn's mane most of the way. But he
ducked past Burn's neck, <not sure> about the offer. Flicker had
her ears laid back. He wasn't confident the woman was all that
steady.
  "I knew," she said, "God, I knew, I just--"
    --hadn't let it get loose, he thought, and stayed where he was as
she made another effort and took a furtive wipe at her eyes. She
turned deliberately and stared at the image on the wall. Stayed that
way for a long moment, then patted the mare on the shoulder, jaw
tight, eyes aswim with moisture, and went back to the fireside.
    He stood there. He didn't know what else to do. She straight-
ened hers, she straightened his. The horses were confused at this
flapping of blankets and shadows, uneasy, not knowing clearly what
the disturbance was. <Rogue horse> had been in her mind and his.
It wasn't good.
    She finished tidying up: Stood there in front of the fire and lost
her battle. A man's face was in the ambient, and she couldn't
breathe--he couldn't, and then the mare was coming at him, scored
a nip on his sleeve as Burn snaked a neck past, defending him.
    He cast about for a broom, a stick--and she dived in and grabbed
the mare's mane--he flung himself in Burn's way, shoving at his
chest, she was shoving at the mare--holding, pushing, <back,
back, back, quiet> until they had a perilous quiet established. The
bottle had gone spinning across the hearth, unbroken. The blankets
were almost in the fire.
    She was shaking. He was. They had it broken up, stood there re-
assuring horses until everything was quiet, inside--while the wind
kept screaming its two notes into the spooked, treacherous dark.
She wanted <him by fire,> wanted <humans sitting down,
wrapped in blankets, wanted <horses quiet, beautiful horses> and


RIDER AT THE GATE              ~       385

he put his own agreement behind it. <Quiet Burn. Nighthorses to-
gether. Humans sitting. Warm us.>
    Dangerous as hell. She was scared. He was scared. There were
scars on the walls. There was blood drawn, minor nips, but it wasn't
a time to push the horses. She put a cold hand in his, they made a
tentative peace, pats on the shoulder, a demonstration of nonhostil-
ity while the horses were bickering and threatening each other.
She'd pulled herself together. She'd used her head. He turned a pat
into an arm around the shoulders, a quick, comradely squeeze with
nothing behind it but thanks for her good sense, but she flinched
away from it, and the ambient was still queasy.
    In what seemed a second thought, then, she caught his arm and
had him sit by the fire, shoved blankets at him and wrapped herself
in her own. Her hands shook, holding the blanket under her chin.
<Sun through evergreen,> she was sending, a calm-sending. <Sun
through branches. Sun through branches, gentle wind. >  "I'm fine," she stuttered. "F-F-Fine."
    A fool would breach that calm-sending. He said with feeling,
"It's all right, woman. Just breathe."
    "Didn't have a choice about being in here. They're dead. They're
all dead. I th-thought I was handling it. Th-Thought Vadim at
least--m-might have made it. He was the best. He was the best,
but he--" <Kid in red coat.> "He'd g-go after that damn k-kid.
Him and Chad. Both."
    He didn't want to stir it up. But he asked himself <Woman and
man leaving village,> and it couldn't help but be a question.
    She shook her head. "No." <White. Moving white. Covering the
whole world.> "Flicker. Flicker got me out. Wasn't thinking. Left
my damn g-gun. I didn't do too well."
    "Doing damn all right, woman. You're alive." He was <glad> of
her calm. He was glad of her life after the thing he'd just felt. He
felt the shakiness still in her, knew there wasn't a way in hell to
reach into a woman's private thoughts and patch anything, no mat-
ter if he wanted to, no matter how good his intentions---couldn't
prevent her doing what she'd do, wasn't right to want to. If he'd
learned one thing from Aby, that was true.
  He'd not held on to her. He'd not tried to change her.


386    ~          C.J. Cherryh

  And she'd died.
    She reached out and laid her hand on his knee, shook at him to
get his attention, her face glistening with tears, <throat tight> as
his was. "Name's Tara," she said, pointed reminder.
  "Yeah," he said.
  "Aby?"
    You couldn't hear words in the ambient. He didn't know how
she came up with the name. But <Aby> was in her imaging, too.
<Aby in the high country. Aby and somebody like Westman and
herself riding together, in the winter snow. >  "You knew her," he said.
    "A lot of years. Last winter. When she stayed over. You're that
Stuart. Her Stuart."
      He nodded. Wanted more of that image. Desperately wanted the
missing pieces of Aby's life. The questions he couldn't answer.
  "She's dead?" She hadn't known. "What in hell happened?"
    He threw it into the ambient. It was easier than talking about
what words didn't say anyway. <Rogue-feeling. Truck going off.
Aby-->
    "I saw the wreck." <Truck on the rocks. Tilted. Dead.> "I'd no
idea--God."
  "So I'm going after that thing. Get it stopped."
  "By yourself?" Then <rogue-image. > "Like hell you are."
  "I'd rather," he began on <you going to village.>
    She shook her head, <seeing him,> now, <Guil in firelight.>
"Two of us. That much more chance."
    He wasn't happy about it. He wanted her safe. Didn't want any
more dying.
  "I need a gun," she said. "You can't use two at once."
  "Woman,    "
  "Name's Tara."
    "Gull," he said. "My guns." That was damn selfish. He was
being a jerk. But he wasn't getting killed, either. "I'll hand you one
for backup. When it matters." He'd admitted she was going with
him. He didn't see anything else to do but give her a gun and send
her off alone. Which meant she'd still hunt it.
  "All right," she agreed after a moment. "All right." She wasn't


RIDER AT THE GATE              ~       387

mad. She didn't blame him. Damn brave woman, he thought,
going out there not knowing if she'd have a gun if he was incompe-
tent.
    She didn't feel like somebody who'd panic. She'd known Aby.
That was something.
    "We'll get it," he said. He didn't know, after that. Didn't have
any plans, after that.
  Except Cassivey's orders. Except next spring.
    She sat there staring at the fire. He wrapped the blankets around
his shoulders and looked at it too.
    The horses wandered back to their courtship. She sat there re-
membering her village and her partners and trying for quiet.
    Finally she lay down on her side and pulled the blanket up to her
ears. He did the same, listening to the horses--<tired horses,
both,> Burn having settled to better manners. The mare was still
scatter-witted, concerned for her rider, a cold-water bath for Burn's
attentions.
    He wasn't sorry. He really, really wanted rest from emotional im-
ages and emotional situations. She didn't think about him. It was
all, all <faces, moments, laughter around a rider quarters, man in
bed, men on horses, women riding with her, sometimes Aby among
them> as she sat there, still as the frozen dead.
    Clenched fist. Steady stare. For a long, long time no thought but
the patterns in the fire. She'd reached the angry stage.
    Best help he could be, he decided, was do the same, image noth-
ing but <fire patterns.>
    She let go a sigh and lay down. Her concentration wobbled. He
kept seeing <patterns in the coals,> and the horses settled, <tired
horses, quiet horses, warm horses, side by side. >

One wasn't tempted to linger in the necessaries in the morning: the
small add-on joined by a too-efficient door to the main cabin had
no heat but the natural insulation, one suspected, of snow piled up
over the roof---and one was very glad to be back inside and back in
front of the fire.
    Tara Chang took her turn while he put tea on and toasted bis-
cuits over a renewed fire. Horses were hungry--horses had to be let


388    ~          C.J. Cherryh

out for their own necessities, and let back in out of the howling
gale.
    It was still whiteout outside. If Jonas had gotten back to shelter
in Tarmin, depend on it that Jonas was going ro stay put, postpon-
ing all questions until the storm had stopped, and hell if he wanted
to see Jonas right now--he'd enough on his mind without dealing
with Hawley.
    "Autumn's definitely over," Tara said, shivering her way inside,
and shutting the door fast.
    "Looks like." He was uneasy. He wanted to keep the light mood
she attempted, but he'd thought of Hawley and Jonas and his mind
wanted to go ranging after questions he didn't want to ask himself.
He was cooking a taste of bacon for the horses, to go with <grain>
and he'd make hot mash, but <Gull and the woman eating bis-
cuits.> He was being very firm about that. He had water heating
for the mash. Which Burn liked adequately well. He wasn't in the
least remorseful about the biscuits.
    Tara made the mash, perfectly nice mash, mixed grains. A little
bacon to flavor it.
    Riders sat and toasted biscuits, and ate slowly, because it was
certain they weren't going anywhere while the wind was howling
like that.
    He thought about Shamesey, in a long silence marked by horses
bashing buckets against the baseboards. He thought about winter
drifts, and evergreen, and high villages.
    "Verden," she said. And he guessed it was Verden he was think-
ing about.
  Where Aby'd spent no few days.
    "Guys I've worked with, Aby's crew, they're back at Tarmin
holed up. Guy who drew that thing--" He indicated the picture
overhead. "You could go back there, if anything happened to me.
They're all right, I mean, I think you'd be all right with them.
They're probably after the thing too, but if something did hap-
pen--"
  "I don't miss."
    "I've been known to," he said. He hated infallibility. Considered
it lethal. "I've decided you're right. One human hasn't a chance. So


388    ~          C.J. Cherryh

out for their own necessities, and let back in out of the howling
gale.
    It was still whiteout outside. If Jonas had gotten back to shelter
in Tarmin, depend on it that Jonas was going to stay put, postpon-
ing all questions until the storm had stopped, and hell if he wanted
to see Jonas right now--he'd enough on his mind without dealing
with Hawley.
    "Autumn's definitely over," Tara said, shivering her way inside,
and shutting the door fast.
    "Looks like." He was uneasy. He wanted to keep the light mood
she attempted, but he'd thought of Hawley and Jonas and his mind
wanted to go ranging after questions he didn't want to ask himself.
He was cooking a taste of bacon for the horses, to go with <grain>
and he'd make hot mash, but <Guil and the woman eating bis-
cuits.> He was being very firm about that. He had water heating
for the mash. Which Burn liked adequately well. He wasn't in the
least remorseful about the biscuits.
    Tara made the mash, perfectly nice mash, mixed grains. A little
bacon to flavor it.
    Riders sat and toasted biscuits, and ate slowly, because it was
certain they weren't going anywhere while the wind was howling
like that.
    He thought about Shamesey, in a long silence marked by horses
bashing buckets against the baseboards. He thought about winter
drifts, and evergreen, and high villages.
    "Verden," she said. And he guessed it was Verden he was think-
ing about.
  Where Aby'd spent no few days.
    "Guys I've worked with, Aby's crew, they're back at Tarmin
holed up. Guy who drew that thing--" He indicated the picture
overhead. "You could go back there, if anything happened to me.
They're all right, I mean, I think you'd be all right with them.
They're probably after the thing too, but if something did hap-
pen--"
  "I don't miss."
     "I've been known to," he said. He hated infallibility. Considered
 it lethal. "I've decided you're right. One human hasn't a chance. So


RIDER AT THE GATE              ~       389

if anything happens, you go back, get Westman. Tell him--" He
decided against what he'd like to say, which was Go to hell.
    "I'm not going to tell him a damn thing. I know who you mean.
I don't like those guys."
    Didn't exactly surprise him. He didn't exactly like them, him-
self, but he couldn't find a cause against them.
  It occurred to him that why was a reasonable question.
  "What's the matter with them?"
  "Just--stand-offish. Just not damn friendly."
  "That's Jonas. And his horse."
    She flung some small dark bit into the fire. Bark chip, maybe.
There was a lot of it on the stones. She didn't talk for a moment.
She wasn't happy with things. "Aby said--"
  She couldn't leave that hanging.
  "What?"
    "Said she was worried. I don't know what about. I don't know
what had happened. The last time, this last trip, before she went
with them up to Verden with the trucks, she rode over to us,
said--God, she said she wasn't staying around them longer than
she had to, they were into her business.., that was what she said."
    He bit his lip. Found his pulse racing. <Wanted> to know. "Did
she say what that business was?"
    "I don't know. Only--you know, they don't run the Tarmin
shipment uphill and then down again, they just set a date and our
trucks meet them and join up at the downhill. So she gave us the
date. And two of our guys, Barry and Llew, they took the trucks
out with one of our road repair crews. And you know, usually when
the convoys join the convoy boss sorts out who's going where in the
line--"
  "Yeah." That was normal.
    "Some bosses, after they sort the trucks out, camp there that
night. Aby did, usually. But they didn't ever stop. My partners
were behind our trucks, and they just started rolling, and our guys,
they stayed with the repair crew, ready to move them up when the
trucks had cleared the road. But the whole convoy was just on
down the mountain. Never did even see the riders. --It's not that
unusual if there's weather threatening. There's a truck pullout a


390    ~          C.J. Cherryh

couple of hours on down. And some bosses just had rather make the
time. Aby'd said she didn't want to spend time with them. I guess
we all assumed she was anxious to get down--down the mountain.
But she wasn't with them, was she?"
    "No. She wasn't." He was very careful with his edges. (Still
water.> "They were spooked. That's their story. The rogue showed
up and spooked the convoy, sent Aby and Moon right off the
mountain."
    "I took supplies and more crew up to the road repair just a few
days ago. They'd found the wreck (way down the mountain.> Our
guys thought it could be a month old. They had no idea."
    He was getting madder, and madder. Burn was disturbed. He
tried to calm himself.
    "Jonas knew," he said. And then broke a promise Aby'd died
keeping: "There was gold on that truck. Whole year's shipment."
      She wasn't knocked-down surprised. Mildly, maybe. "They said
it went with the convoy before."  "They."
  "Rumors. There are always rumors. But--"
  She was confused. Thinking about (rogue. >
    "Jonas imaged me about a rogue spooking the trucks," he said.
"A rogue killing Aby. --Hell of a coincidence, isn't it? A rogue--
and that one truck--the one with the gold?"  "The rogue's real," she said.
    "Yeah," he said, and sat staring into the fire until he'd calmed
himself from the attempt to add that up.
    Sometimes things just happened. Sometimes the luck was just
against you. But bet on it that Jonas Westman knew what was in
that truck. Lead truck, it had been: he resurrected that from the
image he'd gotten. Aby'd gone over the edge. It had.
    (Wrecked truck. Logs scattered like straws down the rocks.>
That was Tara Chang's memory. The way it had been when she'd
visited the site. No bones. Nothing. What died in the Wild van-
ished before morning.
  A lot of riders went that way. Just disappeared. Just gone.


RIDER AT THE GATE              ~       39I

The storm was still piling up snow in Tarmin streets--drifts were
halfway up the windows, and they opened the door to shovel their
way outmDanny worked up a sweat, and the village kids, shovel-
ing with less fury but longer duration, made it to the porch.
    Not senior riders. It was juniors' work. Senior riders sat warming
their feet inside.
    Juniors carried the wood. Filled the water barrel with clean snow
that floated white in black water. Seniors complained about the
length of time the door was opened, and burned more wood.
    Something had turned last night. Danny tried not to think
about it, but there was something unpleasant in the ambient, and
Cloud was surly and snappish enough to match Shadow's disposi-
tion.
    "What are they mad about?" Randy asked when they were out
on the steps.
    "Missing Stuart, probably." It wasn't the truth. He wasn't sure
what was the truth; but something had gone skewed from the mo-
ment Jonas lectured them last night on false hopes, and that image
had come to him which he didn't want to think about.
    So he went back in. They had the storm shutters set back for the
daylight hours, barred them only at night--and he'd found books,
ten of them, the whole that the store offered for sale. He sat down
by the window in the white light reflected from the snow, and read
about <old kings and battles_with swords.>
    He found a strange lot of attention on him then. The boys were
staring. Jonas and Luke and Hawley were. And the horses.
    It was funny, he'd never read around the horses before. He'd just
gotten into the habit of picturing things in his head since long,
long ago, when mama would read to him and Sam and papa.
    Sam never got good at it. Sam wanted to be down in the shop.
Sam didn't want to study. Sam wanted to marry somebody who
read.
  Mama had read aloud.
    "You can go on," Luke said, meaning he wanted more, but Luke
wasn't going to admit it out loud. So he read to them.
    It was an easy place to dive into, full of images. The horses were
confused, but they liked some of it, he guessed--Cloud kept trying


392    ~          C.J. Cherryh

to fix the images so they looked more like Cloud understood, which
wasn't a real help; and sometimes his audience did the same, until
the images were something they more agreed on. Jonas cut in, on
the king's side. You could guess. The boss-man couldn't be a fool.
The story had to bend until the boss-man found some vindication.
    He read until his eyes were tired, and until he was at a place and
a turn of the story that he could shut the book and think about it
and nothing else--like wanting the storm to end, so they could go
out and go find Stuart before Harper did. And stopping the rogue
so they could find someplace safe, and quiet, and he and the boys
wouldn't have to take orders.
    He sat by the fire and had himself a snack--he never in his life
thought he could get tired of ham.
    "Could go on another day," Carlo said. "Never knew it longer.
But it could, I guess." Carlo ducked his head, (wanting to say
something. >
    "Quiet," Danny said, feeling the disturbance. "Calm down. Say
words. Don't picture things."
    "When they go out of here, after him, I mean, are you going
with them?"
    He'd shifted thinking about that. He'd begun thinking differ-
ently since last night. And he was scared.
    "I don't know." He tried to think about the stove, whether it
needed cleaning out: they'd been (burning a lot of wood.> About
the story. (Kings and swords.> "I really don't know." He owed
Stuart. He didn't trust what was going on. (Going with Jonas>
put the boys in danger; going put the boys out there where their
<sister> was.
  "She's our sister," Carlo said urgently. "She might listen to us."
  "She might not. You want your brother to be there?"
    Carlo was scared, too. Cloud moved up and nosed in between
them, jealous of anything that wasn't him. Danny shoved him with
a hand on his chest, not even thinking about it. Carlo put his hand
on Cloud from the other side. Cloud didn't offer to bite.
    "I want her alive," Carlo said, and it was the truth. ".I don't like
her. But I want her out of this."
  "What about Randy?"



RIDER AT THE GATE              ~       393

    "Is here safe?" Carlo asked. "Even if you stayed, is here really
safe?"
    It wasn't. Not with Harper loose. Not with a lot else that was
going on. But he couldn't avoid Jonas.

There was leisure for shaving, for washing clothes to dry in front of
the fire--not damn much else to do. They washed up the pans
they'd used and then, with the wind still howling over the roof,
Tara spent a long, long time working over Flicker's mane and tail.
    That made Burn jealous. <Mare's rider combing mare's mane.
Guil sleeping. Burn with twigs and leaves. Burn covered in mud.>
    Mud, hardly. But he owed Burn on this trip. He got up and
combed until Burn's tail and mane were drifting silk. Brushed a
perfectly good nighthorse hide until Burn was starting to complain
of pain.
    "Pretty fellow," Tara said, and stroked <pretty nighthorse neck.>
Burn did have male muscle and a healthy sheen that made ripples
when he flexed it. As he did. Of course.
  With Tara <scratching Burn under chin. >
    Hell, Guil thought, seeing desertion and conspiracy. He wasn't
feeling at all sociable this afternoon, if it was afternoon. He was
stuck inside, under roofs, with the hearing company of a woman he
liked, to whom he was bound to be polite, while irreconcilable facts
were churning around in his head and he was wanting to shoot
Jonas Westman for suspicions he couldn't fix in any world of fact.
    So he skulked off with his surliness and his suspicions to clean
his guns, which could take a considerable time if it needed to; and
he took all the time and care he could justify at it.
    But a man could only spend so long oiling guns and doing
mending and washing dishes, while two fool horses were at a whole
damned afternoon and evening of foreplay. It was going to be a lot
worse come nightfall--he only hoped to God the storm kept going
long enough to let two lovelorn horses get it worked out and at
least quieter. He didn't want to imagine the rogue coming calling
when the ambient was as erotically charged as it was--particularly
since Tara was sure, at least in the ambient she'd relayed, that the
rogue was female.


394      ~        C.J. Cherryh

    A scary situation if you were the one on the damn lunatic
autumn-hazed male. He couldn't hold Burn. No way in hell he
could hold Burn from going right off a cliff, the same way Aby
couldn't have held Moon, on that road, with an edge too close.
    A tightness hit his chest. He was a lot better. He really was.
Temper wasn't helping it. Suspicion that Aby's death didn't need to
have happened if people had been sane--wasn't helping it.
    Aby'd been carrying secrets all right, secrets that the villagers
had guessed and a horse would pick up on. Aby'd been carrying
just too damn much without her partner. She'd picked up some-
thing from Jonas she didn't like. She could have thought it related
to the gold. She was trying to protect Cassivey's contract--and if
the word got gossiped about, Cassivey wouldn't be happy.
    Jonas might not be after the gold as money. But the deal Aby
had with Cassivey--Jonas could want that real bad. Aby and her
regular partner hadn't been together much in the last two years.
Maybe Jonas had just gotten ideas and that was why Jonas wouldn't
face him at Shamesey. Aby's good living off Cassivey sure as hell ex-
plained Jonas coming back up here. She was making money. She
was making a lot of money; by what Cassivey was paying him, she
was stuffing it in that bank account hand over fist, --and for what?
What did a rider need, beyond her supplies and her guns and her
winter-over?
  Time.
  God. Time.
    They talked about going into the hills and not working for a
while. And they'd always made just about enough for winter-over.
They spent too much. He'd spent too much. He hated towns. Hated
the crowding, the noise--hung about them for her sake. She'd
said--hadn't she?--that someday they'd make the money, buy the
time, take the break to go back to the high country--and he'd
known it would never happen.
    Aby had pleaded with him to join her at Anveney. He'd refused.
She'd gotten mad. And hurt. And they hadn't talked about it. But
winter at Shamesey let her do those jobs at Anveney. And make
money she wasn't spending.
  That was what she'd been doing with her secrecy. That was why


RIDER AT THE GATE              ~       3 95

she'd been hurt. The big plan. The trip back to the south. The year
off work. And Jonas moved in on her.
    Tara sank slowly down on her haunches in front of him and
rested her elbows on her knees, chilled hands in front of her mouth.
The air was scarily tense. The wind screamed a steady song into the
world.

Good man, Tara thought. Honest man.
    And so damn much <anger,> so much <pain>--which he was
so, so careful to contain in himself---all the signs of someone who'd
been with the horses so early and so long that, hurt and hit, he had
only the instinct to hold pain close and kill it, before it killed him,
his horse, his partner.
    She knew. She was smothering a lot of it herself. And she didn't
know what to say that wouldn't intrude where only that partner
ever had. Different from her--who'd had a set of lovers, inter-
changeable and easy. But with Aby Dale--and him--she got im-
ages of <children.> Of <yearling horses.> Of a whole life--
  Fights. Reconciliations. Arguments.
  Love had never changed, in all of it.
    "Listen," she said, in the face of his skittish suspicions. "Don't--
don't shoot Jonas Westman. All right? You don't know. If he shows
up--and he could, when the storm quits, don't--"  "My business."
    "Yeah," she said, and knew when to back off. She began to get
up.
    He caught her wrist. Not hard. Didn't have words framed--
just--image. <Jonas Westman and the others. A gate. Village gate.
Big town gate. Shots fired. >  "At you?"
    "I don't know. I don't know. Now--I think so. But I've known
them a lot of years. I don't know how to think. Maybe they just
knew there was a secret. Maybe they were prying at it. Maybe they
were just worried about her. --Maybe--I don't know how she
thought, you know? --I don't know."
  "I don't either," she said, and was going on to say--But Aby


~I                 396    ~          C..J. Cherryh

would care what happens to you. I don't want you to do something
you could be sorry for--
  She was almost to saying--/could care. I don't want you hurt.
  But another image overrode.
  < Horse wanting out. >
    "Hell," she said. It was Flicker. But it was Burn, too. One had
the idea, and then the other did.
  Gull shook his head, and then looked up.
    In silence. Or near silence. The screech of the wind on the shin-
gle had sunk away to an occasional futter.
  "Storm's letting up," she said. "Or we're covered up over the roof."
  Burn was pawing at the floor. Nudging the latch with his nose.
      "Damn, Burn. Hold it, can you?" Guil got up, snapped the
loaded cylinder closed and gave it to her as she got up.  Meaning guard the door.
  He went and shoved the latch up.
    The door wouldn't budge. Burn shoved it, and it gave a little.
Not much.
    "Well," she said, meaning it had to be' the snow-door, which
meant moving a table, and unscrewing two heavy bolts that held a
wooden bar as thick as her arm. Bear-bars, they called them. With
reason.
    She moved the table, he unscrewed the bolts, and pulled the
door open on a shoulder-high wall of snow with dark above it and a
wind still fit to blast cold air and snow into the room.
    Burn pawed at it, got purchase and began digging furiously.
"Burn!" Guil yelled in protest, nothing availing, and Tara got the
snowshovel and began making a heap of it on the floor. Coats were
definitely in order.
    "Damn," Guil complained, pulling his on, and then took over
the shoveling, piling the stuff in the middle of the board floor as
first his horse, then Flicker behind him broke their way through a
considerable drift. The wind was cold. A pile of snow in the room
was quickly sending a trail of icemelt across the boards to a low
corner under the bed. It was disgusting. And Tara inhaled a cold
gust, shrugging into her coat, and felt like chasing out after the
horses and breathing the free wind herself.


RIDER AT THE GATE              ~       397

    The horses had broken through into the night outside. They
nipped each other and plowed through small snowbanks because
they were there, they did their essential business when the urge
took them, marking the area as theirs--and got to flirting with
shadows, tails up, snow flying, while two humans froze, shoveling
out the snow two horses had kicked into the room.
    <Horses coming in,> Guil insisted, when they'd cleared every-
thing but white traces of the shovel edge and a huge wet spot off
the boards of the floor. <Snow on us. Cold, miserable humans.>
    There was no sympathy. There was a rogue out there somewhere
in the woods, and two fool horses wanted to play tag through brush
that masked holes and drop-offs. <Flicker!> Tara sent furiously.
<Flicker inside. Grain and water. >
    Thirsty work, shoveling or digging. That drew the rascal, who
came shaking her mane and shaking herself once she was inside, a
spatter of quickly melting snow; Burn was right behind, hardly
slower to spatter them and the room, with a whip of his tail to fin-
ish it--and no question in the world what was on both minds now.
Flicker got her drink, from the bucket they kept full; and Burn
moved in for a few gulps of water while two frosted humans were
securing the snow-door to keep the heat in the room and the bears
out.

    But before they were done, the ambient was awash in <male
horse> and <female> and there seemed to be a second source of
heat in the room.
    Two half-frozen humans went to the fire, nonetheless, to warm
their chilled hands--impossible to ignore what was going on in the
room, impossible not to feel the heart speeding and sensitivity in-
creasing in areas one politely--desperately--tried not to think
about.
    And did, because it was impossible to believe a man and woman
in the same room with those two were going to clench their teeth
till daybreak.
    She tried to concentrate on the fire. But she looked at him the
same moment he looked at her, <seeing if she was looking> and it
was like one thought, awareness of each other--impulses shooting
through the parts in question. He was trying <not,> but she didn't


398 ~ C.J. Cherryh

think he was winning. She wasn't. Air seemed very scarce in the
vicinity.
    "Oh, hell," she said, or something like, and he was a degree
closer and she was--they might both have leaned. A thickly
padded hug gave way to a totally mindless intention, mouths meet-
ing mouths and breathing finding some way to happen.
    Burn and Flicker were down to basics; but humans had clothes
to go, and bare skin in a chilled room, and blankets that somehow
the other party was sitting on, that resisted being wrapped around
fast enough to keep the chill away, so her rear was cold, but she
didn't figure out where the end of the blanket was, and didn't care.
    After that--after that were explosions, intermittent rest, and a
quieter trial or two, with the horses quiet enough to let them feel
their way around each other's sensations, new to each other, and old
as their experiences, and full of ghosts.
    He was thinking <Aby> through half of it. She was thinking,
<Vadim> now and again--but not that she didn't care. They were
both confused, and so much was still recent with them that neither
of them could straighten out where they were.
    But within the ambient, human heartbeats began to be in uni-
son-which bothered the horses, whose hearts beat in a different
time. A feeling ran through her like electricity, coming from his
hands, coming from the air--the horses found their own preoccu-
pations, but he was <holding on to her,> he was <body in body,>
the sole shuddering link keeping them both from flying off into
the dark ....
    <Distracting her from the dark behind her brain--where
<white-white-white> was safety.>
    <That godawful dizzy turn out of a steep grade--> that was his
personal terror.
    Then <both falling.> Fright at first, then a long, pleasurable,
leisurely descent until they were breathing together, settled together.
    Hands held matching hands. Fingers clenched. The floor and the
room still tried to come and go until the horses drifted to sleep, fi-
nally, themselves exhausted, and left them in a leaden, blind dull-
ness of senses, just the physical touch, fingers on fingers, arm
against arm.


RIDER AT THE GATE              ~       399

    They didn't talk. He just touched. That it kept on to its own un-
aided and less acute conclusion meant something, she wanted to
think, if only that they each wanted the kind of human contact you
got alone in barracks, in the few places riders found to do things
the blind, strange way humans did aloneMfor different reasons.
Like companionship. Like sensation in that blind, numb state, far
from the horses, when the world seemed so scarily quiet.
  It was an autumn craziness. It meant not a damned thing.
    And did. He'd let her inside, all the while afraid he might have
let Aby's killer inside with him.
    He'd let her close to him--all the while skittish and wary of the
betrayals he expected, and had gotten, from men who should have
helped him.
    Gold; and motives for accidents that weren't accidents--a boxful
of gold hadn't mattered in his thoughts; it was his partner. It was
only his partner.
  Damned if she was going to ride off from him.
    They were going out of here tomorrow. They were half dug out,
only had to get the main door clear and bolt the snow-door tightly
shut--in case Aby Dale's working partners wanted the shelter
tonight.
    They could go to hell. But you didn't leave a shelter so some-
body else couldn't use it. Even the likes of them.
    Fingers squeezed hers. With the horses asleep, higher things didn't
come through. Worry could.
    She turned her head. Stuart looked asleep. She kept watching.
He gave no sign he wasn't. But he turned over and faced the fire
then. So she suspected he hadn't been.

Truck. Rolling down the mountain. Faster and faster.
  <Yelling--<warning--> >
    Horses snorted. Danny waked with his heart thumping, the boys
were awake--everybody in the room was awake, the ambient still
awash with terror, and the remembrance of <falling. Brakes failed.
Wrench-->
  He suddenly felt <attack,> spun over on one arm with the real-


400    ~          C.J. Cherryh

ization it wasn't a dream--that somebody was coming at him,
<mad-->
    Cloud squealed a warning and dived for the man. Bit. HAM--
and everybody was scrambling for their feet--horse hit the stove
and recoiled with a squeal of pain and rage.
    <"Calm down!"> cut through the anger: Jonas; and Shadow. It
was Froth that had gotten singed, not bad, but it hurt, and Luke
was trying to get Froth quieted, while Danny got his hands on
Cloud and tried to keep Cloud from going for Ice.
    "It's that damn kid," Hawley yelled. "It's that kid making the
trouble, it's been him since Shamesey. We're leaving him. Him and
the village kids. We don't need him."
    Cloud wanted <bite Hawley.> Hawley's coat was all that had
saved him as it was.
    "I didn't do anything," Danny said. "I'm sorry if you think I did,
but I didn't. I don't want any trouble."
  <Machinery. Hydraulic line. Leaking. >
  "Hawley," Jonas said. "Hawley, what's the picture? What's going
on.7"

    It had become a quiet, all but breathless night--the wind,
Danny suddenly realized, was quiet. He had his hands on Cloud,
<quiet, quiet. >
  "Fisher?" Jonas said coldly.
    "I didn't say anything. I didn't think anything." The boys were
<scared,> thinking of <gunfire in the streets. Fire. Murder.> Carlo
was holding on to Randy, wanting <him in the shadows, behind
him, safe. >
    "Hawley," Luke said. "What did you do? What did you do, Haw-
ley?''
    "I didn't do a damn thing. I was watching them <fix the truck,>
when we stopped, that was all, the line was <leaking,> that was
all."
  "Line was leaking," Jonas said. "What line was leaking?"
    Hawley didn't say. But Danny didn't think Hawley needed to
say.
  "Hawley," Jonas said, and Shadow was a flickering, smothering


RIDER AT THE GATE              ~       401

 <presence,> loud, God, he was loud. "I want the truth, Hawley.
 Once this trip, I want the truth."
     "They thought we were thieves! Piss on 'em, I said, you want I
 should stop us here, and no, they said--"
    <Money. Bills. Paper money in men's hands.> "Hawley," Jonas
said.
  "Hell, it's him making it up! I didn't take any damn money!"
    "Hawley. Aby's dead. Aby's <dead,> you son of a bitch. What
happened?"
    Ice was on the verge of attack. Shadow was. Froth was on edge
with pain. Danny wanted <quiet. Quiet water. Quiet,> with all the
strength Cloud had; joined Shadow's fight for the ambient, and Ice
backed up, shook his head, snorted in confusion.
    "They gave him money," Luke said, "they didn't want to stall up
there, they'd been spooks all during the trip. They didn't want us
to put a hold on that truck and leave it in the village, and they gave
him money. Didn't they, Hawley?"
    "I said I thought they ought to tarp that truck and leave it there,
but they didn't like it, we knew what they had in that cab, they
were being damn spooks about it. Aby was giving off like crazy she
didn't trust anybody, all trip long--it wasn't my damn fault, Luke,
the whole damn trip was screwed--I mean, Aby was boss, she was
going to see that truck rolled right then, and they give me money,
what was I going to do?"
  "And they wanted to go on down. Right then."
      "I was going to tell Aby. But they put the chocks off and they
rolled, Jonas, I was going to tell her about the brakes."
  "And not us. Why not tell us, Hawley?"
  < Money. >
  "You damned fool."
  "Well, they give it to me. I didn't see any reason not to take it."
  "Yeah," Jonas said. "Hawley, I want to talk to you. Outside."
  "I don't want to talk."
  "Then maybe you better come across with all of it. Here."
  "None of their business."
 Meaning him and the boys, Danny thought, and wasn't happy


402    ~          c.J. Cherryh

about hearing whatever Hawley had done wrong, either. But Luke
said,
    "Pretty clear, isn't it? Hawley. We're not blaming you. You took
the money. They gave it to you. So what did you do?"
    Hawley took a while about it. "I was going to tell you. But I
shouldn't've took the money. Aby'd be mad. I was going to give it
back next stop."
    Jonas was intensely frustrated. Angry. And trying to hold it.
Danny stood patting Cloud's neck, wanting <quiet water.> Carlo
moved up by him, full of questions Carlo didn't dare ask.
    Jonas said, finally, "Storm's stopped. We'd better see if we can
catch Stuart. Tell him what happened."
    "Man's like to shoot us," Hawley protested. "We got the rogue
out there--we got--"
    "One hell of a mess," Jonas said. "One hell of a mess is what
we've got. Dammit, Hawley."
    "I didn't think it'd hurt. They said it'd hold. They was driving
it, I mean they was willing to drive it .... "
    "Yeah. They were stupid, Hawley, does' 'stupid' make sense to
you?"
  Danny let go a breath. Luke said,
      "Froth's got a burn. If we're going out there, I want to grease it
down good--it's going to hurt like hell."  "Yeah," Jonas said. "Do that."
    "So what happened?" Carlo whispered, at Danny's shoulder.
"What did Hawley do?"
"I think the truckers bribed him, something about bad brakes."
But that wasn't the only question in his own mind. Bad brakes
on a bad road. Truckers not wanting to stop, where they probably
couldn't turn around.  Why?
    Luke had found the salve. Jonas was putting his pack together.
So was Hawley.
  "Are we going?" Randy asked.
  Danny said, "Not staying here. Pack up. Now."


Chapter

XX1

THE RISING SUN CAST THE ROAD IN SHADOW, A BLANKET OF SNOW
earlier trafficked by the ordinary dawn scurriers-about. Since they'd
left Tarmin gate in the dark and in all the haste they could manage
with two of their party afoot, the horses had been on edge, putting
out hostile impulses, Shadow earliest and most assertive to warn a
spook out of his path.
    But they were clear of the attraction Tarmin posed to vermin.
Cloud lazed along, thinking <cattle,> and not unhappy to have a
separate place at the rear, the boys walking along on either side as
Danny rode.
    Everything was business, up front. Jonas wasn't pleased with
Hawley, that was clear any time they came close; but Danny stayed
out of it; and not wanting to push anybody including Hawley, with
thoughts that Hawley could take for accusations, Danny thought
<blue sky,> sometimes, and sometimes <evergreens and sunlight>
and sometimes told for the Goss boys what creatures had made the


404    ~          C.J. Cherryh

various tracks, imagined them, little mental ghosts, that occupied
the road-as-it-had-been in the boys' imaging.
    So they could know what made them. So they'd learn what they
watched for, and what was dangerous and what wasn't. Senior riders
and a horse with a good nose had taught him. And he didn't know
but what at some moment the seniors were going to take off at the
speed they could use if they had to.
    Hawley rode point. It hadn't been his habit earlier. Luke and
Jonas rode to the center and back a little, but one in the track of
the other, all in light snow that taxed the horses very little.
    <Still water,> Danny thought, on the edge of notions he didn't
want to think. He thought <ham sandwiches,> of which they had a
great number--but he didn't want to fuss with getting food out of
his pack, and he didn't want his hands encumbered. He preferred to
wait for the sun and the greater surety they wouldn't have a sudden
alarm.
    So he began to talk idly to the boys about growing up in Shame-
sey town, about <his father and the shop,> about <working on the
machines-->
  <Mama and the furniture. Mama sanding and painting. >
    But the boys were distracted, out of breath, thinking about what
would happen if Jonas and the rest did decide to increase the pace
as he began to feel they were doing.
    "It's all right," Danny said. "They don't go long at a run. Horses
won't take it. Sun's up, horses are wanting to move--they'll settle
down."
  "What if we meet something?" Randy asked.
    "Hey, I'm not leaving you. I'm not moving with them, all
right?"
    So they slogged along at the best pace they could with their
breath frosting in the morning light, Randy walking beside Cloud's
shoulder, putting a hand on Cloud when the going got uneven.
And the gap widened, as they followed the trail the three ahead
broke through the snow.
    Cloud wouldn't carry the kid. He'd remotely suggested it and
Cloud was indignant. Cloud wouldn't carry Randy--Cloud wouldn't
carry baggage.


RIDER AT THE GATE              ~       405

    But Cloud didn't mind being touched. He didn't mind <Randy
walking> by him. He liked the boy's hands. Was easily seduced by
brushing and combing.
    Easier if Cloud would agree to <carry the kid,> Danny thought.
Carlo had both guns--Randy was wearing out carrying what he'd
brought, and they'd redistributed and divided the supplies, so that
the kid had the lighter stuff.
    Carlo was struggling. It was probably the farthest they'd walked
in their lives; Carlo was strong, he'd grown up hauling iron about
in the shop, Danny had gotten that from him and, warned what
kind of walk they were facing, Carlo had picked a sturdier pair of
boots out of the store supplies. So had Randy--but they were new
boots, however designed for walking and padded with double
socks, and Danny didn't want to think what was happening to un-
accustomed feet.
    "If I," Randy gasped, at one point, at knee level with him, and
knocking into him on the tracked and thick-lying snow, "if I some-
day wanted a horse---do you suppose---one would want me?"
    "Might," Danny said, figuring that brutal long walking had
something to do with the thought. But he gave it an honest answer.
"You can't say for sure. Even rider kids can wait for years. But,
yeah, one might."
    Randy wanted <horse,> at that thought--like letting something
escape into the light; he wanted <horse> so much Cloud snorted
and moved away.
    "You'll spook him," Danny said, imaging <Danny on Cloud,>
and assuring the silly fool under him that he wasn't going to let
Randy bother him.
  "Why's he scared?" Randy was upset. "I didn't do anything."
  "They're like that. You want him. He doesn't like that."
  "That's stupid," Randy said.
      "No, it isn't," Carlo said, out of breath. "He's got his own ideas.
You do what the man says, brat. You be polite."  "To the horse?"
  "Damned right," Danny said.
    Randy thought about it. He thought about <Cloud in the
store,> and <Cloud leading them away from the jail.> And the am-


406      ~       C.J. Cherryh

bient grew better and easier while he did it. So Randy found what
worked with horses, and it wasn't what Randy'd thought it would
be.
    Randy did a lot of thinking after that. The air grew cluttered
with it.
    But up ahead Jonas' group had finally gone to walking, and they
were catching up slowly. "We better close it up," Danny said, be-
cause he wasn't entirely easy with the gap they'd let develop. The
boys were gasping with the effort they were already making; they
looked at him as if he'd asked them to fly. But he got down and
took Carlo's pack and Randy's, and that made a difference, the three
of them slogging along in the track the horses had already broken
through the knee-high snow.
    Then to their vast relief Jonas pulled a full stop and waited--the
only grace they'd gotten from Jonas since they'd started out.
    And by the time they did catch up, Jonas and the rest had bro-
ken out food for them and for the horses--having breakfast stand-
ing, because there wasn't a warm place to sit except on horseback.
Besides snow for water, they had a bottle of vodka to pass around,
the only thing that wasn't frozen: the sandwiches were, and took ef-
fort.
    But the borderers had known better than they had and kept one
sandwich inside their coats--flattened, but not frozen; and they
learned.
    "You stay tighter," Jonas said to him, when he borrowed the bot-
tle. "You're cat-bait back there."
    "I'm trying," he said. "I know we're pushing hard, but those
kids--"
    <"Come here,"> Jonas said, led him up past the horses and
pointed at their feet.
    Horse track. He looked off down the clear-cut, and far as he
could see, there was an unmistakable disturbance, a track clearly
made since the snow had stopped last night, on ground not yet
churned up by their own horses. They'd been riding down that trail
and he, lagging back, hadn't even seen it.
  It might be the rogue. It might be Harper. It might even be Stu-


RIDER AT THE GATE              ~       407

art. The trail was clearly going Stuart's direction, and moving
ahead of them.
    <Harper,> Jonas said. Or didn't say. "Harper's on his trail. His
smell's clear."
    He'd been going along dealing with the boys. He could have rid-
den right into ambush. He looked in the direction the trail led,
down the clear-cut of the road, mountain on one side and a forested
drop on the other.
    "There's a shelter halfway to the junction," Jonas said. "Stuart's
got no reason not to stay there. He doesn't know Harper's after
him. But Harper can figure where to find him. We're going to have
to make time."
  "Yeah," Danny said. "Quig with him?"
    He didn't know about Quig. What he saw underfoot was one
track. There was no second rider, no second horse. Maybe he had hit
someone when he fired.
    "If Quig's got sense," Jonas said, "he folded last night and got
the hell to cover. Depends on how much he likes Harper. Or how
much he hates Stuart. That's only Harper going this direction. No-
body else."

It was a clear, glaring bright morning. Burn and Flicker, let loose
from the shelter, went immediately to roll in the snow, working the
kinks out of building-cramped nighthorse backs and looking the
total fools. Burn turned silly and luxurious, not a care in the world,
wallowed upside down, feet tucked, belly to the morning sun, then
righted himself and surged to his feet for a few running kicks.
    They came back to the snow-door with snow caked to their hides
and knotted in their manes--Burn had a great lump of ice started
in his mane, where warm horse had met new snow. Flicker was
starting a number of snowballs in her tail.
    "God," Gull sighed, and went in and bolted the snow-door shut,
the last thing of all before they went out the main door and left the
latch-cord out.
    They started out walking, he and Tara, the horses free to work
their sore spots out--and break the way for them unencumbered,
through an area drifted deep across the clear-cut of the road. The


408-"'"""         C.J. Cherryh

horses threw snow with abandon, kicked and plunged their way
through the drift like yearlings.
    They called the horses back after not too long, anxious for the
hazards of the area. And Burn and Flicker came back to walk with
them, sulking at first, but happier when they understood <Tara and
Guil still walking. >
    The skittishness of the season still had Burn and the mare flighty
and spooked--Guil hoped that was all they were reacting to. And
there seemed nothing more sinister than lust in the air when they
finally coaxed the rascals to take them up to ride for the next while:
a silly, giddy heat that made two humans feel awkward with each
other in the memory of last night.
    Guil at least felt awkward this morning--asking himself ever
since they waked what he'd done and what he'd been thinking of,
and where he'd lost his common sense in the blankets last night.
    He hoped it had been Tara's idea. He hoped he hadn't dragged
her into anything she didn't want; but he couldn't sort his thoughts
from hers, the ambient was so confused and full of foolish horses
this morning, who'd no damn thought of any serious business two
minutes running. Autumn heat was no foundation to build on. You
wished each other well, you vowed most times you'd not do that
again--you rode off in the morning or stayed a few days as the
mood took you or the weather required, and if need be that you
stayed together a while longer than that, you didn't take it for any-
thing permanent.
    You didn't, after a night in the blankets, try to work together as
if you'd known each other in any reasonable way or as if you'd any
clear idea what your cabin-mate's abilities were, or her capabilities,
or her strengths and weak spots.
    And it wasn't--perhaps--that dizzy-brained a pair-up they'd al-
most formed. He began to believe that was a part of the distur-
bance he was feeling. They were out on the trail together, they were
on business as serious to them separately as it was desperately vital
to villages up on the High Loop. He felt the determination in the
woman, a spooky, dead-earnest concentration interspersed with
skittishness directed at him, and he didn't know why. They got up
on horseback and rode for a time on a level part of the road, and he


RIDER AT THE GATE              iiE     409

kept feeling it tugging at his attention--doubt of him, anxiety--
he wasn't sure.
    Both of them were facing as nasty a hunt as they'd made in their
lives, they had two horses in desperate lust, and, worse, the rogue
was a mare: Tara believed it and he had no reason to doubt. Much
better a male that would provoke Burn to anger and defense. One
more female that was no natural enemy. God, lust was all over the
ambient, and they were risking their necks, all of them were---only
they hadn't their enamored horses' attention to get it through their
skulls, and he couldn't tell whether the <female-female-female>
nonsense running through Burn's brain and down Burn's spine at
any given instant was Flicker... or a deadly dangerous scent com-
ing at them on the wind.
    He'd have been terrified if he hadn't, along with that feeling
running down Burn's spine and up his own, been sensing the level-
headedness in the woman beside him, a common sense for which he
was entirely grateful--and it was no autumn lust that conjured
that feeling of companionship. This woman, however skittish to-
ward him, wasn't going to fold on him in the hunt; she was no
town rider and might be a damned good backup in a pinch--her
attention patterns to the road and the brush and the hillside
weren't the patterns of a townbred rider or a scatter-wit and he
knew in what he'd learned the fast way, in the ambient, that she
hadn't any intention of spooking out on him. She'd nearly lost her-
self to the rogue at Tarmin, but she'd had no damn help from her
partners.
    More to the point--she was alive after a night with no gun and
no supplies in a winter storm--and in her mind was a grief and a
certainty that her partners weren't.
    And on the mundanely practical side--without a word of her in-
tentions, or any need to do anything but laze in the blankets until
he had the door clear, there being only one shovel in the shelter--
he'd found when he'd finished his own job that the woman had
their packs put together and a dozen flatcakes cooked, so when
they'd set out onto the road, they had decent food in their packs
that didn't use emergency supplies.
  She'd also asked for a pocket-full of shells for the pistol--so, she-


410 ~    c.J. Cherryh

said, if he lent it to her in a hurry she had a reload without needing
the belt.
    This was no stupid woman. He decided he'd have liked her im-
mensely if they'd met on a trail or a camp commons or, one had to
think of it, in Aby's company: someone Aby had dealt with came
with recommendations, so far as he was concerned.
    More, the business about the shells had made him ashamed of his
reserve of all the weapons, and he hadn't just given her the shells;
he'd given her the pistol outright, belt and all, hers with no debt,
in the hope she was going to be at his back---because with her to
back him up, with her knowing the territory as she did, he wasn't
obliged to stay and wait for Jonas' doubtful help.
    Possibly his skittishness toward Jonas was autumn-thinking,
too. Burn and Shadow were a bad pair. And with <male horse> oc-
cupying the ambient, the thought of dealing with Hawley had
edges of very bad feeling, very violent feeling, that didn't make it a
good idea for Hawley, for him, or for Jonas right now, to be sorting
out what they thought about each other.
    He and the woman, on the other hand, could be as noisy as they
wanted to be, since they were looking for trouble. They didn't, ei-
ther of them, they well agreed, want to spend another night wait-
ing for the rogue on its terms, they were reasonably sure it wasn't
behind them, and they meant to push on up the road, the only sane
way up the mountain, until they attracted its attention.
    They could agree on that. But it didn't mean he'd know the rest
of her signals: working with a stranger, sensible as she was, meant
they couldn't predict each other's moves if the ambient went as
crazy on them as he was afraid it would.
  Another reason she needed one of the guns.
    It was likely she had her own doubts about him. She was mostly
thinking about her partners, with that skittish, spooky skipping-
about of thoughts she had--or Flicker had. Hard to pin down.
Hard to understand, sometimes. Skittish as Shadow, and that was
going some. But bright, not dark; she blinded you with sunglare
when you came too close to her. She whited out your vision.
  And he wanted--

 
!i
 ?i


RIDER AT THE GATE              ~       411

    Hell, he didn't know. Flicker's change-abouts were contagious.
Confusing.
    Just--Aby was dead. And he wasn't. He'd discovered that unset-
tling fact last night, felt guilty, and angry, and distracted, and
glad--none of which he could afford right now.
    Autumn promises. He needed his mind on present business. He
needed his mind on the ambient, not pouring problems into it.
    So he wanted the rogue to show, dammit--he saw no reason for
them to freeze chasing it. He <wanted> it into the ambient, until
Burn began to be disturbed with him and laid back his ears and
nipped at his leg. Something ghosted at him in that second, drifted
through the ambient--and stopped.
    "Tell you something," Tara said to him then, in that moment
that the air was still a little spooky and strange. "I was through this
stretch of woods a few days ago with the rogue on my tail. I didn't
know what it was at the time--but it's hard to be back here and
not think about it. Sorry if I do it. Just so you know. It's a mem-
ory.''
    "Yeah," he said. He'd just had a momentary sending, just
<white-white-white> for a moment as if the blizzard had come
back. Scary. Something in the trees.  He'd provoked it, he thought.
    Begging trouble. With a shell in the chamber. Driving his part-
ner crazy. Making her doubt what she heard and saw. A help. A real
help, he was being.
    <Kid on that horse.> That was what scared hell out of him.
Tara's image of that damnfool kid. It wasn't neat, it wasn't clean--
they had a townbred junior to separate out of the problem.
  A kid who, if she hadn't frozen to death, might not be sane.
  Or might not want to be sane, if they did get her back.
    "Kid opened a gate," Tara said sharply. "She went out where she
knew she wasn't supposed to go."
    "Not the only village kid who ever did it," Guil said. Her anger
with the girl bothered him. There wasn't compassion. Maybe it was
because it was a girl, and Tara made demands she'd have made of
herself. He didn't know.
  It was her village that was dead. It was her partners that were


412    ~          C.J. Cherryh

dead, the way Aby had been his. Her dead--her whole village, old
people, kids and all--were because a kid who knew the rules had
wanted what she wanted and to hell with the consequences. She
was angry. And he couldn't argue with it.

It would have been a beautiful sight, all that untracked snow, blan-
keted thick around the trees, the rider shelter snowed-under up to
its roof on the side; but the door was all shoveled out, there was no
smoke from the chimney; and the single track of a horse went right
up to that area, and lost itself in the general churning up of the
snow, where at least one horse had broken through the drifts.
    It wasn't what they hoped they'd find: they'd arrived too late to
catch Stuart.
    "Third set of tracks," Luke said in apparent surprise. "Somebody
was with him."
    Harper, Danny thought, was following. But when he caught the
<tracks> Luke was looking down at, he saw the footprints of a
third horse overlay two outbound horses--how old, that second
horse-track, or whether the last was Stuart following the other two,
wasn't clear in his inexperience. Cloud was imaging <female> and
< Spook-horse. >
      Harper was Spook's rider. But---Quig? he asked himself. Quig's
horse wasn't a mare.  The rogue was.
    "Suppose the first is the rogue?" Hawley asked. "Suppose Stuart
went after it this morning? Or it's after him?"
    "Check the board," Jonas said, basic common sense, and Luke
went and pulled the latch-cord, carrying his gun, even though the
horses imaged no other presence, and warily checked inside.
    Luke shut the door again. "Stuart. And Tara Chang, of all peo-
ple.''
     "Tara's alive!" Randy said, <delighted.> Carlo was excited, too,
 all but moved to tears--because, Danny suddenly thought, they
 weren't the only survivors any more. There was somebody else they
 knew in the world. They remembered <Tara in the camp,> remem-
 bered <looking for Brionne,> and there wasn't a doubt in their
 minds that that was why their rider had come here. <Tara looking


RIDER AT THE GATE              ~       413


for Brionne. With Stuart.> On that, their hopes sprang up to a
wild possibility--he felt it, even Jonas felt it, the whole ambient
disturbed, but Hawley remarked, sourly,
    "That son of a bitch was real comfortable last night, wasn't he?
Didn't wait till Aby was a month gone."
    That made Carlo <fighting mad.> It took Randy, on the far side
and away from Hawley, a moment to catch what Hawley meant,
and then Randy was <mad.> But Jonas told everybody to get back
on their horses and get the hell back on the road.
    Danny swung up, nudged Cloud with knee and heel until he
caught up with Shadow, on the edge of the road, urgent with the
only answer he saw. "Harper's out to kill Stuart," he said to Jonas,
fast, because horses were moving. "That's all he wants. He knows
who he's tracking nowmhe'll have seen that board, too. He's going
to break his neck getting caught up and they're not hurrying--
they're not going to know he's stalking them." <Jonas hurrying.
Three of them. Up the road. Stuart and the Tarmin rider. Him
going slower, with Carlo and Randy.> "Don't lag back for us. I'll
take care of the boys. Just for God's sake get Harper before he gets
Stuart."
    Jonas didn't take to orders. Or suggestions. You never told him a
thing and expected him to do it--for sheer stubbornness, if noth-
ing else.
    "Stuart's your friend, isn't he?" he flung at Jonas. "Isn't he why
you came?"
    <Truck,> hit the ambient. <Wrecked truck.> Something about
a <box.> Jonas was as upset as he'd ever felt the man, spilling
things that didn't make sense to him. And thinking <Stuart,> with
an edge of anger. <Mad at Stuart. >
    But Jonas gave a jerk of his head, said, <"Come on,"> to his
partners, and hit a traveling pace, hard and fast, with <Stuart> the
fading image in the thinning ambient.
    <Cloud standing. Cloud stopped,> Danny wanted, and Cloud
dropped out of a half-hearted run.
    "Where are they going?" Carlo asked, panting, as he reached
Cloud's side. "Danny?"
"Just stay with me." God, he wanted < running down that road. >


414    ~          C.J. Cherryh

Cloud was exploding with the instinct to stay up with the rest,
Cloud wanted <fight> and <follow.>
    Cloud wanted--something that shivered in the air. There was
everywhere the <smell of female about the trees, tracked in the
snow--female and male horse. Sex. And winter. >
    But catching Stuart and Chang wasn't the job they had. It was
doing what riders generally did, getting villagers safely from one
point to the other. Getting Carlo and Randy somewhere they
wouldn't die.
    Right now he wasn't sure where that was--whether to drop back
altogether and lock themselves into the shelter, or to go on where
he wasn't damned much use.
    "They're going to shoot Brionne," Randy said, distressed, want-
ing to go faster. But a human body couldn't. They'd been going
since before dawn and they couldn't go any faster, try as they
would. "Tara wouldn't. --But they might."
    "Stuart won't shoot any kid," he said. He believed that, the way
he'd judged Stuart from the start. "He'll get the rogue. It's just--"
    "Harper?" Carlo panted, struggling to stay with him, while he
fought Cloud's tendency to pick the pace up. Because he was mov-
ing, Carlo and Randy with him; he didn't know about Harper. He
didn't trust Jonas. He didn't like that <truck> business. Jonas had
been mad about <Hawley taking money> and about the brakes.
But Jonas hadn't come here purely for Stuart's sake. Something else
was going on, to bring Jonas away from Shamesey and onto this
trail. He remembered the camp meeting, remembered Jonas argu-
ing for Stuart--remembered Jonas dissuading any hunt going out
after Stuart himself; Jonas was that much of a friend to Stuart.
    But not--he was convinced--not to the exclusion of other mo-
tives. There was something besides what Jonas had said was his rea-
son.
    He couldn't leave the boys. He couldn't go faster. But they were
three guns if they weren't too late to matter; and they were wit-
nesses if witnesses were any restraint to Jonas Westman, whatever
the man was about.


RIDER AT THE GATE              ~       415

They'd passed the small cut-off that Tara said led off toward the
main road, on the downhill; and they were traveling an uphill now,
a place where the wind had scoured the ground all but clear of
snow despite the trees. Brush held drifts. But stone showed
through on the roadway.
    The horses had settled out of some of their foolishness--were
breathing hard on the climb, at work again after the day cooped up
close indoors, and beginning to think of thirst, snatching a lick at
the snow as they moved.
    And human minds had settled into businesslike purpose. Guil
knew he'd bothered Tara--and he'd not pushed at her personal bor-
ders, not on a morning when reason wasn't working and the horses
were doing their own pushing at each other. He felt under him the
give and take of a body as entirely distracted as he was, as danger-
ously astray from their business as he was. He found himself gazing
off up the mountain, where nothing was but snow and rock.
    Not helpful, in a landscape where they weren't seeing the animal
traces they were accustomed to see. Possibly something was laired
up there. He didn't think it was a horse--not up in that tumbled
rock.
    Burn gave a surly kick in his stride, thinking about <horse. Guil
walking. Tara walking. Burn walking with Flicker. Beautiful mare.
Beautiful rump. Beautiful-->
    He thumped Burn in the ribs, and Burn flattened his ears, threw
off <warning> and slogged along with his mind on business,
Flicker likewise, watching the mountain slopes and the trees with
each swing of her head. Trees were still thick on the left hand and
patchy clumps of forest were on the right, trees clinging among
steep rock.
    "No tracks," Tara said, watching the snow they alone were scar-
ring.
    "Noticed that." No animals. No life stirring across or down this
road.
    "We're not that far from the shelter," Tara said. "It's right around
here."
  "Last one, isn't it?"
  "Only place left she could hole up, only chance that kid's alive."


416    ~          C.J. Cherryh

  "If that's a wild horse--indoors isn't real likely."
  "Yeah," Tara said.
    And was thinking thoughts of horse-shooting that sobered
Flicker and Burn.
    So was he thinking those thoughts, carrying the rifle balanced on
his leg, hoping he'd see it or hear it at a distance and not--not
close up in the trees; hoping he could get a clear shot at it in the
woods; hoping he could get a bead on it and not hit the kid.
    Tell that to the gate-guards at Shamesey, who'd missed a charg-
ing nighthorse much closer to them and hit him--Burn having
that clever trick of imaging <horse> where Burn wasn't.
  If it was a wild one gone bad, it might not know about guns.
    But what had happened at Tarmin said the gate-guards hadn't
had any luck aiming at it.
    <Village,> was in Tara Chang's thoughts. <Kids in the streets.
Kid on the horse. Gun firing. >
    Maybe, he thought--one of those cold second thoughts that
came only when they were past the point to do anything about it--
maybe he should have waited for Jonas to show up.
    Maybe he could have ridden side by side with Jonas and Hawley
without wanting to beat hell out of them. Five were a lot stronger
than two, if it came to an argument of sendings.
    If their two sets of horses didn't go for each other instead of the
rogue, and this morning it wasn't certain.
    If he could only figure why that gunshot, or what Jonas was
doing up here at such effort.
    Jonas hadn't expected him to go to Anveney first. Hadn't ex-
pected him to talk to Cassivey. Yeah, Guil, go on up there, get that
son of a bitch horse. Make the woods safe.
  We'll just come up a few days late-
  < Coming apart. >
      <Trees, black against <white-white-white.>> Burn threw his
head and skipped a step. Flicker threw a kick. It was that vivid.
  "Sorry," Tara said. Her breath was shaky for a moment.
    "Yeah, don't blame you. Easy. I'm not hearing anything but
you."
  "Vadim kept asking me--how close it got to me in the woods.


RIDER AT THE GATE    ~    417

--And I don't know. He thought--not at all." Her teeth were all
but chattering. "I couldn't judge."  "He was wrong."
    "The thing was so damn loud--and it called that kid right out
of the village without a one of us hearing. Granted Flicker was
noisy--she was screening it out; I know now why she was as loud
as she was all night. It was out there. But we didn't hear."  "When the kid went?"
    "Her house was across the village. Closer to the other wall, that's
all I can think." She built the village for him in the ambient; a row
of houses, a single street, a rider camp protecting the one side, but
only distance from the wall protecting the far side of that single
street. And there were times, Gull thought, when distance wasn't
enough.
    "Damn kid claimed she heard the horses better than we did--
but she couldn't hear Flicker about to back over her." <Kid in red
coat. Snowy morning. Flicker sick, lying down in the den.> "But
she damn sure heard the one horse she shouldn't have. She came to
us the next morning. I told her get out, leave my horse alone. I
thought she went back home. She didn't."
    The whole business flowed past his vision, the frustration, the
bitter anger.
    <Footprints leading out the gate. The man, the-boys, at sunset.
The gunshot, and the mob and the riders-->
    He couldn't follow all of it, it went by so fast. <Two male riders
going out the gate. Tara at what looked like the village jail, the
marshal's office--rogue at the gates, Tara running--running for her
partners, empty camp, open gate--<white> rushing down on her,
under her, carrying her away-->
    Tara held it back then. The evergreens were around them again.
The sun was shining. Tara said,
    "It's my fault, you understand me? You can tell me all the rea-
sons in the world. You can even tell me I was right, throwing the
kid out of camp that morning." <Shaking kid. Hard. Anger, grief.
A shiver through the ambient.> "But if I think I can get that kid
free of that thing, I'm going for her--I'm going to save her, not
shoot her. So you know."


418    ~          C.J. Cherryh

  "That's not what you're saying inside."
    "No. It isn't. But I don't do everything I think of." <Walking
down snowy road, Tara and Flicker and the blonde girl.> "Maybe I
could teach her something. I don't know. What do you say? She's
thirteen years old. --And she's killed my partners, dammit! Killed
the whole damn village." <Kid reaching for Flicker. Flicker jerking
away.> "She wanted things. She unsettled Flicker just being around
her. Want, want, want. Push, push, push. Damn bottomless well of
'I want.' And temper when she didn't get her way. Real surly tem-
per.'' Silence a moment, the ambient seething with anger that sank,
sank, sank. Then: "You know what I ask myself? I ask myself--
how much of the rogue is the horse, and how much is that kid?
And that's a lousy thought for a rescue."
      It wasn't at all a pleasant thought. But a kid wasn't innocent in
the ambient. Just not as strong.  Usually.
    <Rogue prowling the streets. Fire on window-glass. Rogue hunt-
ing for individuals. Woman. Girl. Boy. Minds going out. Guns
going off. Predators and scavengers rolling through the village
street like a flash flood. The girl riding through it blithe as a sum-
mer wind, searching out victims one by one-->
    <Still water,> he sent. <Still water. Woods around us. Day-
light. >
  He wasn't getting her back. There was only <desire to kill.>
     <Fireplace,> he remembered. That was their potent memory.
 <Skin on skin. Hands touching. >
  < Partner-lover. Talking with him on the porch. >
    For a moment the ambient stifled breath. Then Tara backed off
the anger, drove it down to quiet, quiet, quiet.
    "We do what we can," Guil said. He wasn't good with words. He
sent <meadow with flowers.> He sent <new foals.>
     She'd heard her village die. He'd not been on the mountain yet,
 the only way he could figure it. He didn't know how she'd stood it.
     <White,> came back to him, just <white-white-white,> walling
 him out, all but blinding him. Burn threw his head and took small
 nips at Flicker's shoulder until <white> gave way to <branches>
 and <mountain road.>


RIDER AT THE GATE              ~       419

    "Her damn choice," Tara muttered finally, no weakening of her
anger, just better control.
    He rode thinking about that for a while, thinking he shouldn't
have given her the gun.
    "Don't do any heroics," he said. "My rifle may be able to take
it--drop the horse and miss the kid. If the kid survives--best we
can do."
    Not damn easy, if it came at you--and it might, out of the trees
at any moment. Aim low and hope you knew where the horse--
    A chill went through the ambient, as if a cloud had gone over
the sun. He looked left; and Burn pricked his ears up and laid them
flat again.
    The lump of snow among the trees--wasn't a lump of snow. It
was a roof, blown partially clear.
    <Rider-shelter,> Tara sent. She knew it inside and out. He heard
the soft click as Tara drew the pistol. He became acutely aware of
the rifle in his hand, where its balance was. They made a winding
approach, through the outflung wall of a snowdrift, on the shelter's
lower side.
      Burn was smelling <female.> So was Flicker, he thought. But
smelling something more, something confused, and upsetting.
  Smelled it all the way to the shelter.
    The door was clear. It had been opened. But there was nothing
there. The place felt empty. There were tracks in the snow, both
horse and rider--pointed-toed boots. Village boots. Drag of some-
thing in the snow, he wasn't sure what.
    <Checking inside,> he thought and, rifle on his arm, slid down
from Burn's back. He walked up to the door. The latch-cord was
out. He pulled it, pulled the door open.
    The place was a wreck. Pans on the floor, bed stripped, pottery
broken. The place smelled of horse, smoke, burned food. Recent.
The front of the mantel was smoked.
    The kid hadn't known to open the flue. Or hadn't thought of it
until she had a cabin full of smoke.
    There were charred bones on the hearth. Small animal. He was
almost certain--it was a small animal.


420    ~          C.J. Cherryh

    He shut the door fast, figuring Tara had seen what he'd seen,
smell and filth and all.
    Flicker shied from him. Burn was taking in scents, nostrils
flared. The whole place reeked to their senses: <female horse, fe-
male human. Bad, unhealthy horse. Blood. >
    He grabbed Burn's mane, got up, and Burn wanted to go back,
turned his head downhill. Burn was agitated, thinking <Aby,> for
whatever crazed reason. <Aby. Dead on the rocks.> Burn resisted
the pressure of his knees, kept turning with him, a fit of refusal
that wasn't like Burn, a fear and a confusion that afflicted Flicker,
too, until Tara got her headed around, and moving.
    Then Burn would go. <Flicker> was in Burn's mind. And <Aby
riding away from us. Red hair in the sunlight. Aby on Moon. >
    "Damn fool," Guil muttered. Burn had almost thrown him on
that last fit. He'd slid far enough he'd thought he was going off
into a thicket. He gave Burn a thump behind the ribs, wanted
<going faster,> if Burn had so much energy to waste. They were on
the road Tara imaged as <going up to the curves, past the junction,
beyond the trees.>
  Where he imagined the truck had gone off.
    Tara straightened his road a small distance and thinned the trees
and showed him the mountainside in her memory: a steep, badly
slipped face of the mountain, a road crawling up a long, long curve
that was a steep ascent and a hellish downhill, with all the moun-
tain range spread out to see.
    Burn calmed until that hillside conformed to vague memory, and
it resonated with <truck falling> and that <Aby, Guil and Aby>
nonsense. Burn was a smart horse--Burn remembered more than
some horses; Burn put things together in spooky ways sometimes,
thinking in nighthorse fashion through associations that had to do
with smell and mating and group-making that didn't always find
an echo in a human brain. Burn was right now on one of those
autumn-hazed treks through the associations in his mind--probably,
Guil thought, Burn was disturbed by the ambient smells. A smart
horse felt the land-sense in ways that had nothing to do with the
look of a place, and this place resonated in the memory he'd used
all the way up here.



RIDER AT THE GATE              ~       42I

    <Aby,> Burn was thinking, and <unhealth,> and <death,> with
<female> somewhere in the mix. Burn was traveling with that
ready-to-move feeling in his stride that made a rider aware how fast
the fool could change direction.
  "What's he smelling?" Tara asked.
    "Horse," he said. He wasn't hearing Flicker that clearly--or hadn't
been. Flicker was <uneasy.> Flicker wanted <quiet> and began to
try to turn, except for Tara's pressure on one side and another. Burn
was going willingly ahead. Flicker was confused and increasingly
distressed as Burn picked up the pace. Trees were thinning out.
They crossed a wide clearance, a place where three roads met, the
one they were on, the one down the mountain, and the road Aby'd
died on.
  Burn went toward that place of open sky, wide vistas.
    "Guil, that road's going to be hell up there, bad drifts. That kid's
coming back here. This is where she's been coming to. Maybe we
ought to fall back, just sit and wait. She's not going up that road
much--"
    <Aby,> he was getting from Burn, and then a feeling of <fe-
male> so intense he couldn't breathe for a moment, couldn't think,
because it wasn't just <Burn.> And he kept going.
  Up and up the road. Into the daylight.
  "Gull!" he heard someone shouting at him.
    <Aby,> Burn was thinking, and <death,> and back to <fe-
male,> all while traveling with that light-footed gait that made a
rider know Burn could dive any direction.
      A horse arrived beside him. It roused no alarm. But for a mo-
ment his vision was <white-white-white.>  Then he saw--
    He saw <Aby on Moon, coming down the road toward him. He
saw red hair. He saw her coming for him, after all, alive again, and
beautiful. >
    "No!" a woman yelled, and <white> and <anger> charged in
front of him. A horse shouldered Burn and Burn reared.
    He dismounted--no recourse but that as Burn recovered his bal-
ance. He landed on his feet and in that split second of landing the


422    ~          C.J. Cherryh

vision of <Aby on Moon> was <blonde kid in blankets, tangle-
maned horse. >
    Tara was on foot Tara was beside him. A gun went off next his
ear, rattled his brain, and then <fight> was coming at them, com-
ing from a human, female mind, wanting <kill Tara. Wanting him.
Claiming him. >
    Moon. He had no doubt. Burn, beside him, knew. Burn sent out
a troubled keep-away and Moon stopped. The blonde kid urged
Moon forward with <kill> and <mine!> but Moon stopped again.
  He only then remembered the rifle in his hand.
"Give me the pistol!" he snapped at Tara and held out his hand.
It was <Aby,> he heard her calling to him, <I want you,> he
saw <Aby on Moon, coming down the road toward him, autumn-
haired Aby, asking him where he'd been-->  < Wanting him--so much-->
    He grabbed the pistol that arrived in his hand. He let go the
rifle. He walked forward, <going to Aby. Moon and Aby. High-
country meadows. Moon and Aby and Guil, and the sunlight on
the mountains.
    <Wind shaking the grass. Making waves like the sea. Moon and
Guil--
  <--making love. >
    It was a hurt horse. A thirteen-year-old kid with a wish, on a
horse in mortal pain. He saw it for a blink, but he said to Moon,
<brave horse, beautiful horse.> He didn't see the cuts and the tan-
gles and the blood.
    He said, "Good girl, don't spook on me, you know me, it's
<Guil,> it's just Guil. Let <Aby get down.> Let her get off. That's
right--I'll help you. Come on."
    He reached out his right hand, for the girl's hand that reached to
him.
  He fired with the left, the gun right under Moon's jaw.
    He grabbed the icy fingers, snatched the girl against his chest
and spun away as Moon went down--he held the kid crushed
against him, blind to anything but the mountain--he couldn't see,
either, for the blur of ice in his eyes, couldn't feel the ambient for
the sudden silence he'd made, the murder of what he loved.



RIDER AT THE GATE              ~       423

    He knew Tara was back there, Burn was there. He began to hear.
He couldn't see until he blinked and a shattered sky and a shattered
mountainside whipped into order. The girl was in his arms, live
weight, but there was utter silence in the ambient and his ears were
still ringing. He only saw Tara with the rifle, Tara sighting toward
him--
  Second blink. He began to feel the ambient again.
  <Burn and Flicker.>
  <Tara. Anger. >
    His foot skidded on ice. His balance was shaky. He saw the edge
of the road under his right side and veered away from it. He set the
girl on her feet, pulled the blanket about her, but she just stood
staring into nothing, blue eyes in a tangled blonde mane. He shut
her fist over the ends of the blanket, took her by the other hand and
walked <going toward Tara and Burn and Flicker.
<Tara standing still. Burn standing still--still water. >
Something slammed into him, spun him half about in shock,
about the time he heard the crack of the rifle echo off the moun-
tain. He kept turning, trying to keep his balance, not knowing
where he'd fall--

The rifle-crack rang off the mountain from behind them. Tara spun
toward the sound and dropped to one knee, with the far figure of
rifleman and horse the only anomaly in her sight of woods and
snow. She fired on instinct at the distant figure, pumped another
round, and looked for her target--
    But there was only a horse. And the darkness of a body lying by
it.
    The man didn't get up. She stayed still, rifle trained on that tar-
get until her leg began to shake under her. <Angry horse> washed
up at them; but Flicker imaged <threat> and <warning> at that
distant horse--Flicker took out after it, ignoring her frightened
<stop! >
    Burn imaged <Guil hurt. Fight. Kill--> Burn was hesitating
back and forth, sending snow flying--<staying with Guil.--
Killing horse. >


424      ~        CJ. Cherryh

    She didn't want to shoot it. Didn't want to. She wanted <horse
going. >
    But it wouldn't. Damn it. It wouldn't. She put three shots near
it. She didn't want another rogue on the mountain; but then
Flicker charged into her line of fire, and she couldn't shoot. Burn
followed, balance tipped, wanting <fight. >
    She staggered to her feet, gasping for breath that wouldn't come,
Flicker and Burn both going for the horse.
    At the last moment it turned and ran back down the way it had
come; Flicker and Burn stopped in their charge, circled back a little
and maintained a threatening posture.
    That horse's retreat told her the man she'd shot was dead. That
Flicker and Burn both stopped told her the horse was reacting as it
should, in ordinary fear and confusion. It hesitated in its retreat,
probably querying its master. Burn called out a challenge that
echoed in the distance.
    Then it launched into a run, shaking its mane, going farther
down the road. Nighthorses didn't altogether understand death.
The total silence of a mind confused them dreadfully--in which
thought--
    She turned to see Gull getting up, leaning to one side, trying to
stand. The girl just stood there, staring at nothing.
    She started running. She saw from Guil's face he was in shock,
even before the horses came running back to them, and she caught
<pain> washing through the ambient.
    "Stay down," she said to Guil, and made him sit. <Blood on
snow, spatter all around them, around dead horse.> Burn sent out
threat, <wanting Gull> and ready for <fight,> but she didn't
admit guilt and she didn't retreat: she started unfastening Gull's
coat, looking for damage, and Guil was coherent enough to wish
<quiet horses, Burn standing, Burn quiet. >
    She could feel the wound as if it was in her own side--felt entry
and exit, as the numbness of impact gave way to <pain> that was
going to be hell in another hour. Right now it was still a little
numb.
    "It could be worse," she said, and shoved his hands away. There
was a fair amount of blood, but it didn't look to have hit the gut: it



RIDER AT THE GATE              ~       425

had gone through muscle and it was swelling fast. Guil kept trying
to get his knee under him, <wanting bending over,> but she
stuffed her scarf into his shirt around his middle and started wrap-
ping it as tightly as she could.
    It helped the pain. She could feel it. He was going to want to get
to the shelter back there and lie still a while. She answered his con-
fused memory of the gunshot with <man shooting. Tara shooting
man. >

  "Kid get hit?" he asked in a thready voice.
    She cast a look at the girl who was still just standing there, hold-
ing the blanket. Staring at nothing. There was nothing in the am-
bient. Not from her.
"Didn't touch her. Hang on, all right. Don't faint. All right?"
"Yeah," he said, and pulled his coat to and started getting his
knees under him--the fool was going to get up, and he couldn't
stand; but he got the rifle and leaned on that before she could get
her arm under his.
    Burn was right there, nosing him in the face, in the shoulder,
anxious and about to knock him over. He swatted Burn weakly
with his hand and wanted <picking up kid. Getting kid safe.>
    She had a wounded man on a mountain road bound and deter-
mined to pick up a girl who weighed most of what she did, and she
didn't give a flying damn if the girl stood there and froze.
    But he did. She left him to the wobbling assistance he could get
from the rifle; she grabbed the kid herself and dragged her with
them, with a wary eye toward the downhill road, in case she'd been
mistaken about the man being dead, in the unlikelier case the horse
had been mistaken.
  In the far distance she saw a group of riders coming up.
    <Jonas,> she thought. She didn't know who she'd shot down
there. She hadn't stopped to ask. Jonas was her saner guess. But it
didn't make sense.
    Guil stood beside her, leaning on the rifle, trying to reason out
who it was, too, and coming up with no better answer: <Man with
rifle. Shot fired at him. Tarmin gate.>
    "Three of them," she said. "Maybe it wasn't Jonas down there,
Guil."


426 ~ C.J. Cherryh

    "I don't know," he said. The ambient was confused and muddled
with his thoughts. Things from downland. Things from the village.
From a long time ago, maybe. The shock was catching up to him,
and he found a snow-covered lump of rock to rest on, rifle in one
hand, his elbow tight against his side.
    Burn came up close by him. Tara went and got the kid by the
wrist, got the pistol from where it was lying in the snow, hauled
the kid to the side of the road behind Guil and made her get down
behind the rocks, out of the way of flying bullets.
    She kept the pistol in her hand as the riders kept coming. She
didn't need Guil's recognition to know them. She had a clear image
of <Jonas Westman, of Luke, of Hawley Antrim--> and a notion
of blowing them to hell if she didn't like the answer to her ques-
tions.
    "Whoever shot you," she said to Guil without taking her eyes off
the riders, "I got him. Whoever it was--I got him. Guil."
    Flicker moved in. Made a solid wall behind them, with Burn. A
wall giving off <warning> to the oncoming riders.
      Guil put the rifle butt on his leg. Lowered it, slowly, and the
three riders stopped a fair distance down the road.  "Guil?" the shout came up. "Gull Stuart?"
    "Yeah," Guil shouted back, and hurt from the shouting. "So
what's your story, Jonas? What's the story? Does it say why Aby's
dead? Does it say why I shot Moon, Jonas? Does it say you're a
lying son of a bitch thief, Jonas? I know why you're up here. I know
what you're after, and you don't go up this road. You go to hell,
Jonas!"
  "Hawley wants to talk to you, Guil."
    Burn wanted <bite. Kick.> Burn was <ready to go downhill,
fight.>
    But Guil sent, <Burn standing still.> Wanted <shooting,> and
Tara held herself ready to grab Guil and haul him down behind the
rock in the next instant, had her target picked, in Jonas Westman,
but she kept the pistol at her side, while Flicker sent <fight,>
ready as Burn was, if they got the encouragement.  "Who's that I shot?" she yelled down at them.
  "Guy named Harper," Jonas called up. "Nothing to do with us."


RIDER AT THE GATE              ~       427

    It was somebody Guil knew. A lot of confused memories hit the
ambient, an old fight. Another mountainside. Another edge of the
road. She didn't believe it had nothing to do with present circum-
stances.
  She waited.
  She left Hawley to Guil. She still had her eye on the others.

Guil waited. Kept the rifle generally aimed at Hawley, as Hawley
came up within easy range.
  Then he brought it on target.
    Hawley stopped. Hawley looked scared. With reason. Ice had
followed him up the slope and arrived beside him, the way Burn
stayed by him. Ice was loyal.  So had other things been.
    "Moon's dead, Hawley. It was Moon gone rogue, you know
that?"
  "No. I didn't. I swear I didn't, Guil. It couldn't have. Is~/t it!"
  That, in the ambient, was the undeniable truth.
    But it was the truth as Hawley'd seen it. <From the back of the
convoy. When a truck went plunging past the curve. Aby and
Moon on that edge--in front of the truck that went over. >
    "You left Aby's horse, Hawley, you left Moon hurt, you left her
crazy. Moon maybe had a chance--she was a good horse, she never
did a damn thing against the villages until she took up with that
damned stupid kid, Hawley! You got yourself down that mountain
and you left Moon on her own, the way you left Aby lying there for
the spooks!"
  "I saw that horse go over!"
    That was the truth, too. He blinked, he at least considered a
doubt of Hawley's guilt. It was what Hawley had seen.
    But it wasn't what he'd just faced up the hill. It wasn't the truth
lying there in the roadway, with a bullet in its brain.
    "Guil, I'm sorry. I swear to God, I'm sorry. I wouldn't're left her.
I saw 'em go, I swear. There was rogue-feeling all over--it was a
rogue--"
    "It wasn't any rogue driving that truck, Hawley. I can see that
<truck.> I see it <rolling.> Right in your mind, I can see it. You


428    ~          C..]. Cherryh

can't see Aby from where you are. You can't see her, Hawley. You're
at the back of the convoy. You're a damn liar!"
  "I saw it, I did see it, Guil, I swear to you, I swear to God--"
    The image rebuilt itself. <Truck moving, rolling out of control.
Brake line-->
    "You want to tell me, Hawley? I don't care about the money in
the account. I don't give a damn. I want you to tell me what hap-
pened to Aby."
    "I was going to tell her," Hawley said. There was <paper
money> in Hawley's mind, there were <truckers,> there was
<truck running away downhill-->
  "Tell me. Use words. I want to hear it, Hawley."
  "Jonas says--"
    He brought the rifle up. "I don't give a damn what Jonas says.
You tell me. About the gold, Hawley. What about the gold?"
    "We didn't know about it. We didn't know! She just thought we
did!"
  He was <going to shoot. Dead center of Hawley's gut. >
      "Guil, I swear--we just guessed it. I mean, anybody could guess,
the truckers were guessing--"  "Keep talking."
    "And Aby was mad about it. Aby didn't want anybody to know.
And by the time we got up to Verden she wasn't speaking to us--
she didn't want to be around us. I think she was rattled, she
thought she'd spilled it, but, hell, we knew, Guil, once we was on
to it, we could get it from folk all round us--"
    You knew when Hawley was outright lying. And sometimes
when Hawley was telling all the truth he knew. And this was, he
thought, the truth as Hawley knew it.  "Guil, I swear to you--"
    His arm was shaking. He let the rifle rest on his leg again. "I'm
listening. Keep going, Hawley. You be thorough. I've got nothing
but time."
    "The truckers, they caught it, too. You could feel the upset all
over, and this truck, its brakes weren't good. They was spooked,
didn't want us to pitch that truck out of the line, and Aby, she told
me she wanted them hurry up with that truck. I come along, you



RIDER AT THE GATE              ~       429

know, just walking the line--" (Trucks waiting in convoy, village
center.> "And that truck, the one with the stuff, you know--they
were at fixing the brakes when I come along, and they don't want
me to see, but I know, and they don't want to have me pull that
truck--they're logs they're hauling, but they got something in the
cab they don't want across by daylight, everybody was watching,
you know--and Aby was wanting us out of there--"  "The gold."
    "Yeah. I mean, Guil, they didn't want to have to move that box.
And we wasn't supposed to know about it. I don't think they
trusted any of us. And Aby was madder 'n hell all morning. But
they give me money, Guil, they give me money, they say shut up,
don't talk about the brakes--and I had the money, and they'd fixed
that brake line. I mean, they really fixed it. But then I'd got to
worrying about it, I was going to give it back, I was going to tell
Aby--I was going to tell her, Guil. I knew it was wrong to take the
money. But she give the order, we started rolling then, and she was
up front, and we was in the rear--Guil, I knew this one turn was
bad, but I didn't think the drivers was going to risk their own
necks. Aby was worried about the weather, worried about us get-
ting down to the meeting-place, maybe after dark, but we'd get
there--"
  "So it was just the brakes. And there never was any rogue."
  "There was a rogue, Guil, there was for sure a rogue--"
      "Before that truck went off ? Or later, Hawley? Was there a rogue
when you got to that turn? Was there a rogue there then?"
  "I don't know, Guil. It was there, was all."
  "I shot Moon, Hawley. Moon was the rogue."
    "Moon's dead. I saw her down there on the rocks, I saw <her
with Aby. > I saw it, I saw it plain as plain--Ice saw it, Jonas and
Luke saw it--we all saw it--Guil, for God's sake, we didn't lie to
you!"
    It hurt, that image. He thought about pulling the trigger and
blowing Hawley off the mountain. He thought about not dealing
with it at all, anymore. But Hawley--was so damned earnest,
Hawley believed what he was saying.


430    ~          C..J. Cherryh

    "Hawley, go back and tell Jonas I want to talk to him. Tell Jonas
get his ass up here. And get yours out of my sight. Right now."
    "Guil, I'll give you the money--I swear, I'll give you the
money--I was going to give it to you--"
    His finger twitched. Twice. Stayed still, then, the gun unfired.
Sight came and went. "Only thing that recommends you, Hawley.
You got a single focus. Always know where you are. Always know
what matters, don't you? Truckers put money in your hand and you
don't know how to turn it loose. You get the hell down that road,
Hawley, tell Jonas I said get up here. Now. Hear me? You tell Jonas
get up here or I'll blow him to hell. Hear?"
    "Yeah," Hawley said, anxious, confused as Hawley often was.
"Yeah." He swung up on Ice, and rode fast down the hill.
    Tara said, faintly, "I think it was the truth, Guil. But it doesn't
make sense."
    He was glad to know that. He didn't trust his own perceptions.
He left the rifle over his knee. He watched as Hawley came down
to Jonas; and Jonas looked uphill roward him, and then started up
toward him.
  "Give the son of a bitch credit," Guil muttered.
    Tara said, his voice of sanity, "You asked him, Guil. Hear him
out. You asked to hear him."
    So he waited. He sat with the wound beginning to throb, and
knowing if he shot now he was going to have to shoot from the hip.
    Jonas rode up all the way, on Shadow. And sat there, to talk to
him.
    "So?" Guil asked. "Aby didn't trust you. Truckers bribed Hawley
not to tell about the brakes. And the brakes failed. Not a lot of peo-
ple trusted you, Jonas. What happened up there? You tell me. I
want to hear this."
    "We knew there was something on board. Aby didn't like us
knowing. Truckers suspected. And they spooked. Didn't want to
stop, didn't want to camp out on the road on that height and they
didn't want to leave that damn truck on the High Loop. Gull, I
swear to you--Aby didn't trust anybody. She didn't want to stop.
She was spooked--she knew we knew something, we tried to talk
to her, and she wouldn't have it. It spooked the drivers--"


--    II I     I     II IIII

RIDER AT THE GATE              ~       431

  "Her fault, is it?"
  Jonas shook his head. "Brakes failed. Hawley told you--"
  "Hawley told me about the brakes."
    "They were taking it too damn fast. Riding the brakes too much.
Aby wasn't with us, she wouldn't ride near us. The truck went run-
away--she was down there. I swear to you, Guil, we did everything
we could. It just happened--so fast--"
  "She and Moon went over, did they?"
  "Both of them." <Dead, on the rocks.>
  "That's a lie, Jonas."
    Shadow spooked. Made a move forward that Burn opposed with
a snarl and a threatened lunge.
  And Jonas didn't answer him. Jonas didn't know the truth.
    "I saw her," Jonas said. And it was that image again, <Aby and
Moon. Together. Dead.> "Guil, I didn't know about the brakes.
Didn't know until Hawley told me, last night."
    He stayed still, his finger on the trigger. But the pieces fell to-
gether, finally.
    <Lying on the rocks. Dead horse.> That was where Moon had
imaged being. With Aby.
    He said quietly, "She fooled you, Jonas. Moon fooled you. You
understand. Moon wanted to be down there. In her mind--she was
down there. And wasn't. She was up on that hillside looking down
the same as you were, and you saw what she imaged. I tell you,
Jonas, I believe you. I believe you about Aby. I believe you about
the gold. Which I think is what you came up here to find. Is that
true, Jonas?"
    "Yeah," Jonas said after a moment. "Yeah. --But I didn't know
Hawley'd robbed you, Guil. I'd no idea."
      "Just going to turn that box in yourself, weren't you? Nobody
the wiser. You, with big credit with Cassivey."  "I'd have dealt you in."
    "Yeah, me, who never took the Anveney jobs. I tell you, Jonas,
you go on down to the junction. You take that downhill road. And
I want you to take Hawley somewhere we won't meet for maybe,
two, three years. Then maybe we'll talk. You understand me?"
  "Guil, we'd take you down country."



432    ~          C.]. Cherryh

  "I'll handle it. You get to hell off this mountain."
    Jonas stayed still a moment, turned Shadow half-away, then
looked back. "There's some kids, Guil. Rider named Danny Fisher,
couple of village kids, on this road. Looking for you. They didn't
have anything to do with this. You want to sweep them up, see
they get somewhere safe? Road down's hell when the snow builds
up."
  "Fisher."
  "You know him? He knows you. Horse named Cloud."
  He couldn't place the name.
    But he knew, in one of Jonas' rare slips, that Jonas had gotten
three kids out of Tarmin. Got them on the road. Wanted them safe.
Personally--and earnestly--wanted them safe.
    A lot like the man he'd known a long time back. He almost re-
lented.
  Almost.
  Said, "See you another year, Jonas."
    So Shadow went, and Jonas with him. And the ambient was only
themselves, and the horses, and the wind.



Chapter

XXll

    TAKE CARE]" TARA CHANG SAID, WHEN THEY WERE GATHERED
in the yard of the rider-shelter, and take care was what Danny
meant to do, personally. He'd said his good-byes to Guil Stuart in-
side: Guil wasn't on his feet, but would be, they had confidence of
that. Meanwhile Burn was taking advantage of an open door and a
sunny day. So was Flicker, and Burn was sending Cloud a serious
warn-off, <Burn and female, strong male horse,> that had every-
one's nerves on edge.
    That was one reason for leaving. The kid bundled in the travois
was another: Brionne Goss and her brothers weren't comfortable
companions for nighthorses in a winter shelter, and the first crystal-
clear day, with the sun burning bright in the high-altitude sky was
a chance Danny knew they couldn't turn down.
    Gull didn't mind much, Danny figured that for himself. Gull
got a winter-over with a damn pretty woman, all to himself, and
had a village down the way with a store full of supplies. They'd
shared <ham> with Burn and Flicker and, nighthorses being what


434      ~        C.J. Cherryh

they were, Burn and Flicker didn't mind saying they'd take the
ham, thanks, but Cloud could take his rider, the <rogue-girl> and
the three <males-not-welcome> and hit the road.
    Down the mountain or up the mountain wasn't Burn's urgent
concern. But Guil said, "If you go up, don't linger in the shelters."
    And Tara: "The mountain doesn't give you many days after the
snows start. Either one's dangerous. You make time. Make time, all
you can do."
    So in this bright, clear morning, they went, and he thought up,
all considered, was the best choice. Cloud wasn't against it.
Avalanche on those lower slopes scared him personally worse than
the high, hard climb did. Jonas had taken the chance. He thought
maybe Jonas had won the bet with the mountain; but they'd been
holed up and couldn't prove it.
    The days that that downward road would be passable were get-
ting fewer, if they weren't gone already.
    And Guil said he hoped Jonas made it. About Hawley, Guil still
wasn't sure, but he said Hawley was a thorough-going jerk, that
was what he was guilty of, and he'd forbear to shoot Hawley, in
colder blood, when next they met.
    Assumptions. Assumptions was the thing that had been so fatal.
Lives that touched one another and never knowing they'd touched
at all.
    Aby Dale had never figured, when she'd died, that she'd have
cost so many lives.
    Jonas Westman and his friends had never figured, when they
came clear down to Shamesey, that they'd bring rogue-taint with
them. Likely, was Danny's private opinion, that the disturbance in
his own family owed something to the contagion the Westmans
had brought; likely that Harper's private vendetta owed something
to it, too. Harper had been a haunted man. And rogue-craziness
had been very close to what drove him. The man had carried a
grudge for years and, crazy-mean that he was, had had it set off by
something, maybe rogue-sending, maybe just the scent of blood in
the ambient when they'd shot at Guil down by Shamesey, and a
hunter-sense when Guil had taken to running.



RIDER AT THE GATE              ~       435

    Maybe then in Harper's head the balance of fear had shifted and
he'd seen his chance to settle old scores.
    But it hadn't been a good place, the mountain hadn't, for a man
with a guilty past. A rider could lie to other riders, sure, but he had
to lie to himself first, had to lie to himself. And Guil Stuart hadn't
had a thing to do with Gerry Harper's death. Stuart hadn't known
that Harper was on his tail, hadn't even known how Harper's
brother had died.
    A kid who'd come up from town had had the pieces of it shoved
at him, that fell into place once Guil told what he knew: a whack
in the head from a winch cable, a partner dead, Gerry Harper going
off from Ancel in a fit of rage, the Harper brothers not dealing with
each other any more for years.
    "Gerry was all right," Gull had said. "A lot more reasonable than
his brother. I got along with him. --So Ancel shot him." Guil was
surprised and sad. That came through the ambient. Harper be-
lieved his brother had gone rogue.
    "Maybe he did," was Guil's opinion. "God knows. ! don't. So
Ancel shot him. Shot his horse."
  At a campfire. Late one night.
    Harper had told himself it was all Guil's fault. Told it well
enough at least other men had followed him up a mountain looking
for blood.
    Harper had found blood, all right. They heard his horse at night.
Spook came in looking for him--but it wasn't a rogue, itself, just
lonesome. And they hadn't the heart to shoot it or the guilt to let it
haunt them. Harper'd taken a shot at Guil at Tarmin gates; he'd
taken his second at the start of the Tarmin Climb.
    But Harper wasn't the marksman Tara Chang was. She'd snapped
off that one shot and nailed him dead through the chest. So all
Harper's hate, all Harper's craziness had ended right there, in the
snow. The horse mourned him. Nobody else did.
    Guil hadn't known the Westmans were on his track, either:
when he'd found out, he'd blamed them for the shot at Tarmin vil-
lage and wouldn't trust them. He damn sure hadn't known Harper
and his lot were on his heels, hadn't remotely expected the shot out


436    ~          C.J. Cherryh

of nowhere that had gone through his side. He hadn't, he swore,
cared a damn about Harper, hadn't spoken to him for years.
    But Harper'd paid his life for a grudge Guil didn't know Harper
was carrying.
    And come to find out--Guil had had no idea in the world there
was a kid named Danny Fisher. Riders weren't prone to polite lies:
the horses didn't let them do what townfolk did, and Guil didn't
deny there'd been a rainy afternoon on a porch, and a kid asking
him questions, Guil just didn't remember him. All the way he'd
tracked Guil up on this mountain to pay a debt Guil didn't re-
member.
    In his way he supposed that he was as crazy as Harper was. But it
was a debt he still held valid. He'd heard. He'd listened. He'd
learned.
    He'd remember some time when some kid came to him: he'd
know what he said could save some kid's life and he'd take the
time.
    He might not remember doing it, either. He supposed the mo-
ments that came on you to do something good or something evil
weren't necessarily lit up in flaming letters. The things you as-
sumed all needed looking at, and the way you answered a kid's ask-
ing help needed looking at; if you mistook as few as possible of the
former and did as much of the latter as you could, the best you
could while doing your honest work, he figured that answered all
morality a rider was responsible for.
    That and his ties to his partner. He wouldn't ever forget the way
Guil had come after Aby Dale. He hoped some day to have a part-
ner like that, man or woman. It wouldn't be Guil.
    And it shouldn't be. He couldn't give anything in that relation-
ship. He could only get. And maybe Tara Chang was it for Guil. Or
maybe she wasn't.
A winter in a one-room cabin might be a start on finding it out.
Meanwhile he had two boys in his charge. Carlo and Randy; and
a kid who might never get any better: Brionne Goss. He knew
things he didn't need to tell.
  He was, right now, their best hope of living.
  So it was a down-payment on the debt he had.




RIDER AT THE GATE              ~       437

    "Come on," he said to the boys, and sent Cloud on ahead to
break the trail, Cloud's three-toed feet being quite adept at doing
that. It was what Cloud was born to, the High Wild, and the
mountain.
    There were villages on the High Loop that would take strays in.
There were villages where the boys could find a place and a rider
could earn a living if he wanted to stay.
    But down by spring, he thought. He wasn't ready to settle yet.
Neither was Cloud.
  <Winter and females,> was in Cloud's thought.
  And an upward road.




(continued from front flap)

like a contagion to the horses. Chaos erupts
and Guil is forced from the town at gunpoint.
    Wounded, without supplies or weapons,
Guil and his sardonic, bacon-loving stallion,
Burn, ride into howling winter blizzards, seek-
ing the killer. Danny and the girl's furtive
kinsmen search for Gull, unaware of the dark
enemy who tracks them.
    Waiting for them all is a blinding day of
secrets and blood, terror and truth---with
the fates of Riders, Nighthorses, and an entire
world at stake.
    Powerful, gripping, and brilliantly told,
RIDER AT THE GATE proves once again that
C.J. Cherryh is "The top of the field in both
world building and characterization" (Chicago
Sun-Times) and "One of the finest writers SF
has to offer" (Sdence F~t/0n Chronic/e).


C. J. CHERRYH, multiple award-winning
author of more than thirty novels, includ-
ing Tripoint, Cyteen, and The Pride of Chanur,
is famous for creating knife-edge suspense,
complex, realistic characters, and superbly
envisioned aliens and worlds. Ms. Cherryh
lives in Oklahoma.

Jacket design by Don Puckey
Jacket illustration by Ciruelo Cabral

W~RNER BOOKS

A Time Wamer Company
0-446-51781 -X
COVER PRINTED IN U$.A
 1995 WARNER BOOKS



"Nobody explorf


~ith more excitement

                          ..
and enthusiasm i-                   )ER AT THE GATE,
one of the most skilled, ingenious'-sci'ence fiction writers
ever to have walked planet Earth has done it again."
---~avid Brin


"A powerful
solid lan~





I shivered inits

 the fully characterized people,
 for which C. J. Cherryh is well
    with sufficient suspense, plot
lere to satisfy any aficionado:'
  Zelazny

         vivid a setting that'
             .tIP



II!!!!!!III!UIJ!U!II liililiil
ISBN 0-446-51781-X










