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.
Thenhe thought of vermin maybe occupying the rider camp— vermin a rider took for granted would clear his path. Carlo wasn’tprotected that way, Carlo was a damn brave village kid—with no horse to seewhat 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 haveTarmin, with just him and Randy left.
He grabbed Randy by the coat and didn’t wait to explain—he 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 carries 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 <warning 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!”
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 as Carlo, only belatedly realizing he wasn’t the target, had the presence 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.
“I hit the kid,” he gasped, straightening up, and threw the situation into the ambient, <Randy and Cloud, Harper at the gate> because 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 thinghe’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, feeling 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 something about “Told you to stay put, dammit!” and Randy was paper-white and on the edge: Randy had been <scared. Danny hitting 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.> 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 else—<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 thisside, then, but the main gate still scared him. He wanted <them and Cloud guarding gate> and walked in that direction, 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 with rifle, him above, Cloud below, boys with thick coats and blankets, shooting Hallanslakers.>
Cloud didn’t disagree.
Then somebody fired a shot that rang far off across the mountainside, 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.