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—or 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 village 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 cross was where hewas. Burn knew where Burn was: he was, of course, in a shelter with walls this color and a fire and bins of grain. Burnwasn’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 nothappy. 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.
So he walked a good distance, until he was limping and beginning 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 detected, 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, unless 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.
Neverlacked 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 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 <females > 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 together—though they might have frozen in that state—made it worrisome.
<Shelter,> he thought. He’d ridden all along with a shell in the chamber, not a practice he’d have recommended to juniors—but juniors 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.