So she’d shared-in and found herself as happy as she’d been in her life, settling in with a group of riders, all of whom, senior or junior, she could count on in any pinch. She’d gone hungry and she’d slept alone in her junior years, completely on her own since her mother died—and after five years of hell, first as a junior and then as a senior riding Darwin Ridge, she’d ridden into a camp on Rogers Peak too easy to live in and too hard to leave. She’d become pinned down. Tied. Permanent, in a way she’d once, in her footloose youth, sworn she’d never be.
<Steak cooking. > Flicker was definitely interested in camp and food and nighthorse company, out of the skitter and scatter of her thoughts. <Tarmin camp, fires and ham roast. > Flicker was also glad enough to know where such things always resided—glad, too, to be going back to civilization all in one long push today, and not minding the long walk. Flicker never liked road guard and Tara had had her own fill of it this fall. It was boring, and this late in the year it meant standing around in windy places in the sleet where there was nothing to eat, and nothing to do but shift from one cold foot to the other and try to keep the wind from blowing up at your underside.
Until even a rider might hope, after a few weeks on duty, for a goblin cat or some such to make a meal of the crew, so she could go home.
But a rider didn’t make such jokes around nervous villagers. A rider just sat and watched the ambient with nighthorse senses, trying to keep a restive horse from equally bored and very vivid amusement.
So, having served their time in purgatory on the last trip to Verden, and Llew and Barry having gotten the short end of the draw, she and Flicker were homeward bound through the spitting sleet.
Flicker was putting on her winter coat early this year—had been at it for a month, and the sleet stuck to the longer hairs of her body, and to her ears and mane. Flicker had voluntarily picked up the pace since that fleeting thought of pork roast: she was enthusiastically bound for Tarmin, and way-stopping at one of the two lonely storm shelters on their way, then having the next day to turn around and ride out through the snow to restock it (there being no rest for a Tarmin rider when a shelter wanted stocking) was not in Tara’s plans, either.
If they traveled late, they could make it on in with no real need of a way-stop. It was the first winter squall of the season lurking up there about the peak, but not a serious one, she had the skill to bet knowledgeably on that outcome—and the skill to cover that bet and save them both if things went wrong. No mere storm was going to stop them for more than a nasty cold night in the open if they misjudged, and they’d winter-camped many a night out in her starving junior years over on Darwin, where the weather was, if only in her memory, very much worse.
But there’d been a spooky feeling on Tarmin Climb—the worse with the wind howling about the rocks. The road crew there had found an accident, a wrecked truck, logs strewn all to hell and gone up and down the rocks at that hairpin that started the only 20 percent grade on the Climb, a notorious turn, and not the first truck that had ever lost it all on the curve. That section was old road, hard to improve because of where it was located, and often as crews from Tarmin and the higher Ridge villages shored the slip zone up with timbers and fill, it eroded. It was a battle with the weather and the wear of the trucks’ brakes on a grade the road crews couldn’t improve without blasting a whole lot of mountain down and maybe, by what she’d heard, making matters much worse.
So it was one more load of timber and rock to go up there to stabilize that roadbed before winter snows and spring melt made little runnels into major slips. The crew was running a race with the winter and it looked like they might lose this one, though they damn sure could get cut timbers in plenty from the wreck down there.
Dead truckers, for sure—that there had been fatalities was evident both from the condition of the truck and the fact of scavengers numerous about the vicinity. It was possibly as much as a month old, or maybe more recent, part of the last convoy Tarmin had handled, which had joined its High Loop segment coming off that downhill and turned on down to the lowlands, outrunning the winter. Of the driver and his backup they’d not even find the bones intact by now. Unless somehow they’d jumped clear or been rescued the day it had happened, they were gone. The scavengers that night would have made quick work even of personal effects, and the convoy boss doubtless knew the names and next of kin of the dead truckers, so there was no point risking necks. The road crew had hallooed and banged on pans when they’d discovered the wreck, making absolutely sure that there wasn’t some survivor holed up in the truck cab—occasionally such miracles happened; but you didn’t really expect them.
There hadn’t been any response, and she heartily agreed with Barry and Llew: it was just too dangerous, for no real hope of survivors after so long a time, and considering that silence, for a rider to go climbing down that slide where no horse could defend him against what else might be interested in the wreck. Death drew predators as well as scavengers, or one became the other very quickly when they found themselves a nice soft-skinned prey that didn’t image back. Next spring when the weather was better and all of nature was calmer, they’d salvage it for metal.
Flicker imaged slinky little shadows. Flicker didn’t like the roadwork or the carrion-eaters. <Bite and kick,> was Flicker’s thought. <Trample.> Flicker hated little things that ran out under her feet on narrow trails.
Then Flicker stopped cold in her tracks, so suddenly Tara jolted a little forward and caught herself with her hands against Flicker’s suddenly rigid neck, wondering what in the world Flicker had heard besides the sleet rattling among the evergreens. Immediately the ambient had gone unpleasant. That was Flicker’s opinion: she felt that tingling along her nerves, but there might be something more specific she couldn’t sort out of Flicker’s nervousness.
“Damn,” she muttered—she didn’t like things she couldn’t figure from Flicker. She thought, urgently, with authority, <us going on now. Staying on road.>
Flicker wasn’t budging. Tara kicked her gently in the ribs, but Flicker just stood.
Second kick. Harder. Something was in the area. Something was sending in a way she couldn’t quite pick up, maybe just a ghosty, doing its I’m-not-here. Maybe Flicker was just spooky with the weather.
“Come on.” Third kick. Flicker came unstuck from her momentary paralysis and started on her way, step and step, one, two, three, four, her hoof-toed feet scuffing the leaves louder than the sound of the sleet in the branches. Flicker was imaging something that just whited out.
Tara didn’t understand. She’d never known Flicker to do that before. Not her usual soft flutter of light, but a glaring <white-white-white,> as Flicker traveled with that about-to-move floating feeling that advised a rider to keep alert for a sudden jump or a shift of direction.
If it was a beast sending that unease she’d felt for a moment, it was one she didn’t know. And she’d thought she knew everything in the woods of Darwin and Rogers both.
<Going faster,> she imaged. But she couldn’t get through that <white-white-white> sending. Flicker kept her steady pace. Tara kicked her lightly, once, twice; and Flicker moved up to that traveling shuffle nighthorses could keep for hours.
That got them out of the area faster, at least, assuming it was something that laired nearby, not tracking them. Tara slipped the tie-down off her pistol and thumbed the safety off, riding with a fistful of Flicker’s mane in the uneasy, constant feeling that Flicker might dive right out from under her.
It was a long while later the feeling slowly localized, as some danger—she was reasonlessly, absolutely certain—lying behind them, which meant they had finally gotten far enough ahead they had achieved that separation; but Flicker forged ahead for a time longer as if she was nose into some heavy wind.