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 mantel, and besides a charred slow-match, a lantern with the wick ready and the chimney set beside it.
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 certainly 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 flat.
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 sniffing this and that—he pulled off his left glove and checked his fingers 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 frostbite. Couldn’t tell, yet. And the toes wouldn’t move. Couldn’t afford to go through life with unsound feet. God, oh, God, he 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 beopen.>
“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 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 biscuits 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 thought—but 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.
—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 conception of it, at times completely disappearing.
Shadow could feel that way—alone.
But Shadow wouldn’t bealone. 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, consistently 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 action—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.