He waited, conscious of that sketched image staring out across the room over his head. He felt the tension in Burn, felt—now and again—the sense of something reaching out blindly into the dark, feeling about it, looking.
A lonely something. A desperate someone. Burn didn’t make the young-horse mistake of reaching back. They waited, quiet for a long, long while, anxious—but he began to want the thing, began to think about <Aby> and <rocks > and wanted that thing to come in, come to the gun-slit at the front of the cabin; get it over with, get it finished, the first night he was on the ridge.
He got up from the floor. He stood listening into the ambient, quiet, careful, not wanting Burn to commit too far, too dangerously out into that dark.
But it knew now that they were there. It skittered across his mind, canny, and scared, and desperate. He wanted to use his ears—hear it coming toward the door—but the wind screamed that single note across the roof, covering all sound else. He could feel it coming closer, and closer, and filling all the ambient, there and not there. He went to the wall, where the gun-port was—hesitated to unlatch it until he was reasonably sure what he was dealing with.
<Cold,> he felt it. <Hungry. Very hungry.> Then: <female horse.>
Burn made a strange soft sound. <Female,> entered the ambient. <Female wanting in. Male here. Male horse.>
Another thump. Hard. Two. Burn immediately grew excited, throwing his head and imaging back <male, male, male> as, over the shriek of the wind came an unmistakable nighthorse sound outside the door, a female’s sound. Burn did a little sideways dance as Guil left the wall and grabbed a fistful of mane with his free hand.
“Burn, dammit, shut up.” He got a breath. <Burn quiet.> God, <Burn quiet, quiet, quiet.>
“Let me in!” It was hardly a voice. It was maybe a rag of a human voice past the wail of the wind. The ambient was howling <females “Open the door. Open the door, do you hear me?”
Burn jerked the mane out of his hand, <wanting female.>
“Open the door!” the voice outside cried, thin and breaking. “Dammit!”
A blow thumped against the door. He saw <horse and rider, snow blowing. Snow on them.> He saw <shut door> and <fist hammering it.> Most of all he felt <desperate fear. Wanting in. Wanting in, something behind them—>
“There’s a rogue loose!” he yelled back. “How do I know it’s not you?”
“I’m not, you damn fool! God! Open the door! I left my camp, I smelled the smoke—I’m freezing out here, we’re both freezing. Open the damn door!”
<Numb feet, numb hands. Cold horse.> They didn’t feel insane. Bush wisdom held that sometimes a rogue seemed entirely normal. Then wasn’t.
Burn was going crazy behind him, on totally different grounds, Burn was <wanting door open, door open, wanting out—>
But that was the mistake every victim made in the Wild. The voice outside, someone in desperate, mind-shaking need—the reason to open the door.
“God! Let me in! I’m not any damn rogue! Let me in, you damn coward! Open this door!”
Burn believed it. He began to believe it, telling himself it was still early in the season, there could still be a rider out, and he could find somebody frozen to death on his step.
It was a woman, he was sure it was a woman, by the horse and by the pitch in the voice when it cracked—and he’d no wish to deal with female horses or female riders; Burn was going crazy on him, Burn was going to go for the mare if he let them in—
“Open up!” Another thump of a fist. And he didn’t see what else to do. He set the rifle aside, drew his pistol for closer range—then lifted the latch, gave the door a shove, and put his shoulders against the front wall.
The door dragged outward with a gloved hand pulling it. Then a horse, as forward as Burn, forced her head in—surged through, a snow-blanketed darkness that met Burn in the middle of the room and dodged him in a perimeter-threatening dance around and around a second time as Burn sniffed after <female > and the mare gave him a surly, <cold, hungry horse > warn-off.
He’d glanced at themlike a fool—anxious about the horse. He glanced back a confused eyeblink later face to face with a muffled, snow-mantled and angry rider—as the mare shook herself from head to tail and spattered the whole room with snow and icewater.
“Who are you?” the rider demanded to know, and slammed the door shut. A gloved hand pulled off the hat and ripped the scarf off a head of dark hair, a pair of dark eyes, a wind-burned and pretty face—which was no comfort to a man hoping he hadn’t just let two killers into the shelter with him and his horse. “What are you doing here?”
“My name’s Stuart,” he said, and didn’t put away the gun. “Out of Malvey district. Who are you? The proprietor?”
“Tara Chang. Out of Tarmin village.” Teeth were chattering. Hard. “Malvey’s a far ride. What are you doing up here?”
“The rogue killed my partner. I’m afraid it’s got your village.”
A tremor of distress hit the ambient, but not strongly. The situation at Tarmin was no surprise to her.
But it was about all her constitution seemed able to bear. The <anger > bled out and she walked over to the fire—sank down on the hearthstones in a precipitate collapse of the legs, head down, gloved hands in hair. “Hell,” she said, and the pain in the ambient drew the mare over to nose her rider’s back.
The gun didn’t seem so reasonable as it had. He wasn’t sure. He kept expecting an explosion, a sudden shift into insanity. But with none in evidence, he put the gun back in holster, carried the rifle back to the far side of the fireplace, the side he determined to sit on—and thought of <biscuits> and <tea.>
“Yeah,” she said. <Hungry.> Her eyes were pouring tears. She hadn’t gotten her gloves off. God knew about her feet. Or her horse’s.
<Salve,> he thought. <Warm nighthorse legs.>
She approved of that. She leaned and got the bottle of spirits— uncorked it and took a swallow.
You weren’t supposed to do that. It was stupid when you were cold, but she didn’t take another. He put on another pan of water to heat, and with a wary glance at the woman sitting on the hearth, eyes shut, cradling the bottle in her lap, decided he’d better fill water buckets again—his and the horses’.
Which meant the door opening, however briefly, and a cold gale swirling for a moment about the room while he packed one and then the other bucket with snow.
Burn didn’t care. Burn was nosing about the mare as he came back in, pulled the door shut, and set the buckets on the hearth.
Interested—God. “Burn, let her alone, you damn fool! She’s damn near frozen!” <Burn licking cold nighthorse legs. Beautiful horse. Nice nighthorse legs.>
Damn fool, he thought, and poured the woman tea in one of the shelter’s cups. “The water barrel’s frozen solid,” he said. “It’ll warm up by tomorrow, maybe.”
“Yeah,” she said.
“I’ll rub your horse down. She’ll be all right. Gloves off. Boots off. There’s aromatic rub and there’s snow for water.”
“Yeah,” she said, and started pulling gloves off with her teeth. He took the salve, of which he didn’t have but half left, and started in on the mare’s legs, while Burn licked the ice off the mare’s back. The mare nipped Burn. But not hard.
“God, save it,” he muttered to Burn. “There’s problems. God!”
Burn sent him <sex> and <warmth> and he got a feeling that he didn’t know words for, but it involved pushing himself on a woman when she hurt. The rider was upset, the mare was upset—
“Let her the hell alone, Burn, you damn fool, give her a chance to catch her breath.”