A dry wind, at first, and they could be glad of that—but Guil swung up to Burn’s back and Burn struck his staying-pace again.
Hope, Guil thought, that the rogue found similar need of shelter—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 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, stiffened 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 moment 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 corner 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 ambient through the walls.
And more than the ambient. A wind rose. Something loose was 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 ambient, 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 silence. 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.
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 dividing line. Papa had always said so. In that sense they were protecting 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 bodies 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.
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 cleaning 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 coming 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.