Around noon, though it might as well have been midnight, the gloom had thickened until it was nearly impenetrable, he saw a scatter of dark shapes that turned into trees and blocky buildings as he got closer. A shoulder-high wall loomed ahead of him. Neddio the horse squealed and shied; when Simms had him steady again, he followed the wall to a gap. There should have been a gate, but he didn’t see any. He turned through the gap and felt a lessening of the wind’s pressure as the wall broke its sweep. He couldn’t see much, so he let the horse find the driveway and move along it toward what had to be the house.
No lights. Nothing.
“Hall000,” he yelled, raising his voice so he could be heard above the wind. “Hey the house! You got a visitor. Mind if I come in?”
Nothing.
“Well, Neddio, seems to me silence is good as a formal invite.” He slid from the saddle, hunted about for the tie-rail; he found it by backing into it and nearly impaling himself on the end. He secured the reins around it in a quick half-hitch and went groping for the door, expecting to find it closed and barred.
It was open a crack, but resisted when he pushed against it. He pushed harder. The leather hinges tore across and the door crashed down. He heard some quick scuttlings in the darkness as vermin fled from the noise. Nothing else. The stead was deserted; from the dilapidation he could feel and smell it’d been that way for a long time. He leaned against the wall and listened to the slow, rumbling complaints of the rammed dirt, ancient memories of blood and screaming, present groans about the years and years since the wall had a coat of sealer brushed over it. Even the dirt knew it was decaying. He didn’t listen long, it didn’t matter that much why the folk had left, all that mattered was getting shelter before the storm hit.
He left Neddio at the tie-rail and groped his way around to the barn. It was in much worse shape than the house, two of the walls had melted away, the roof was lying in pieces about stalls and bins also broken and half burnt. Its house for old Neddio, he thought, and I best get as much wood in today as I can. When that blow hits full force, we’re not going anywhere. Wonder if there’s something about I can use as a drag so I won’t have to make so many trips? Mellth’g bod, can’t see a thing. Raaht, Simmo, one step at a time. Fire first, then see what I can locate. He gathered an armload of the wood scraps and felt his way back to the front door.
##
The house proved to be in better condition than he’d expected. There were two stories, the roof was reasonably intact and whatever leaked through the shakes was generally soaked up by the cross laid double floor of the second story. He decided to camp in the kitchen; there was a fireplace, a brick oven, several benches and a table that must have been built where it stood since it was far too big to fit through any of the doors. There was a washstand at the far end, close to the fireplace; that part of the kitchen was built over an artesian spring that was still gurgling forth a copious flow of cold pure water, the overflow caught and carried away by a tiled waste channel that split in two parts as it dipped under the back wall. One part flowed under the room next door and emptied into what had once been a large and flourishing vegetable garden-Simms found some tubers and herbs there that made a welcome addition to the stores he was carrying; the other part went to the barn; he found that ditch by falling into it when he poked about in the store sheds and corrals behind the house. In one of those sheds, a low, thickwalled, sod-roofed cube, he found a dozen ceramic jars almost as tall as he was, the tops sealed with a mixture of clay and wax. He put a hand on each of them, red beans, peas, lentils, flour, barley and wheat, old but untouched by rot or mildew. He tried shifting one of the jars; if he put his shoulder to it, he could tilt it and rock it across the floor, but getting it all the way to the house was something else. He’d have to use Neddio to haul them, something the horse wasn’t going to like much. Wood first, though. He stepped outside, got a flurry of snow in the face; in the gusts and between them, the snow was coming down harder. He didn’t have all that much time left before nightfall when even the dim gray twilight would vanish.
He cobbled together harness and collar with bits of rope and the saddle blanket, tied the ends of the harness rope to the front corners of a piece of canvas he’d found rolled up in a closet in the kitchen and began hauling wood back to the house, everything he could scavenge. He worked steadily for the next several hours, back and forth, rails, posts, bits of barn roof, rafters, stall timbers, anything he could chop loose and pile on the canvas, back and forth, the wind battering them, the snow coming down harder and harder, smothering them. Until, at last, there was no wood left worth the effort of hauling it.
He cut the canvas loose and left it in the small foyer, took Neddio around to the shed and hitched him to one of the jars. Hauling proved slow, awkward work; Neddio balked again and again, he detested those ropes cutting into him, that weight dragging back on him. Simms patted him, coaxed him, sang him into one more effort and then one more and again one more.
Heading out of the house for the last of the jars, he heard a mule bray and a moment later, a second one.
“Visitors? Yah yah, Neddio, you can stand down a while till I see what’s what.” He stripped off his heavy outer gloves, tossed them inside, slapped the horse on the shoulder and waited until the beast had retreated into the semi-warmth of the parlor, then he followed the sound of the braying. He groped his way to the wall, found the gap. He could see about a foot from his nose, after that nothing but the flickering white haze so he was very wary of leaving the shelter of the wall, it would be all too easy to get so turned around and confused he couldn’t find his way back to the house. He stood in the gap, leaning into the wind and listening. The mules were off to his left, not far from the wall though he couldn’t see them. He whistled, whistled again. The sound died before it reached them, sucked into the keening of the wind. That was no good. He began to sing, a calling song he’d learned from his outlander grandmer when he was a child. She died when he was six, but he still remembered her songs and the things she’d taught him. He sang across the wind, willed the mules to hear him and come. He sang until he was hoarse-until two dark shapes came out of the snow and stopped before him.
They were hitched to, a light two-wheel dulic, the reins loose, dragging on the ground. The driver was a large lump mounded along the driver’s bench, unconscious or dead. Didn’t matter, the mules were alive, he had to get them into shelter.
Still singing, he teased them closer and closer until he could take hold of a halter and retrieve the reins. He led them along the driveway and took them into the parlor, stripped off their harness and chased them into the corner where he’d spread some straw he’d retrieved from under a section of barnroof and piled up for bedding. After a minute’s thought, he pulled the improvised harness off Neddio and sent him after them; the last jar could stay in the shed until they needed it. If they did.
Now for the driver, he thought. Dead or alive? Well, we’ll see.
He shivered as he plunged into the wind and snow, groped over to the dulic and climbed into it. He burrowed through layers of scarves and cloaks until he could get his fingers on the man’s neck, poked about until he discovered the artery and rested his fingertips on it. The man’s heart was beating strongly, but he was very very cold. Something not wholly natural about the chilly flesh, he didn’t know what it was, but it bothered him. Still, he couldn’t leave him out here to freeze. Offing someone when the blood was hot, well, that was a thing could happen to anyone, cold blood was different, and by damn his blood and everything else was cold. He pried up the massive torso, gritted his teeth under the weight and length of the man, got as much of him as he could wrapped around his shoulders and began the laborious process of getting back to the ground without injuring his load or doing serious damage to himself.