“I told him I would,” he muttered. “Cloud wants to go. It’s where he’s from. Even Wesson says. You can’t send me back. If I leave you got no say where I go.”
Second painful squeeze. “Town-brat. You don’t know what you’re up against. You can’t imagine the high country in winter.”
“I know about it. I know it’s hard up there.”
“You also know there’s a rogue up there that’s killed a rider ten years in the business. You know you’re damn bait, kid, that’s all you’ve got sense to be, the way you shout into the dark. That’s why I brought you. Wise up.”
“So I can do one thing real well. My name’s Dan.”
“Danny. All right. A little less pride, a little more clear thinking. Do you have to go up there being bait? Or do you think you can do better than that?”
“Maybe.” If Jonas had something to teach him about slipping around things, he could learn it. If Jonas was just being nasty, he didn’t care. Staying with Jonas got him up there to Tarmin Ridge, up in the honest-to-God high country. Any mountain would have done. That was what he most wanted.
“You just calm down. Calm—down. Hear?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Damn lot to learn, Danny Fisher,” Jonas said then, and dropped his hand from his shoulder, the two of them walking along in front of the horses.
“I’d rather Dan,” Danny muttered.
“It’s Danny. It’s kid when you foul up. You earn Dan.”
Still made him mad. But he quieted it down. He imaged <peaceful clouds> and <clouds over mountains.> “All right,” he said. “I can do that. When I want to.”
“Good,” Jonas said, and didn’t seem to dismiss him. Danny didn’t know what to do with himself then—whether to go back to Cloud, fall back and leave the man alone… or what.
“Name’s Jonas,” Jonas said. “I earned it. —You tried talking, kid?”
“Yes, sir.” His father had pounded ‘sir’ into him. It got you off without being hit.
“Jonas,” Jonas said. “That’s Luke, that’s Hawley. Try not to shout, damn you.”
“I’m sorry, sir. I—”
“Jonas. Try it.”
“Yes, sir.” That wasn’t it, either, but it just fell out. His tongue tied up. He wanted Jonas to let him go, he wanted…
Cloud moved up on them. So did Shadow. So did Ice and Froth with their riders. <Calm water,> Danny imaged. <Still water. Danny walking quietly with this man. Danny upset—>
He couldn’t keep the negatives out of his thinking. <Still water,> was the best he could do consistently. <Clouds over mountains, sunset. > He felt like a fool. And knew everyone heard him. < Danny unhappy.>
<Cattle,> Cloud sent.
“Kid,” Jonas said.
<Quiet water. Cloud standing in quiet water.> Best he could do.
<Danny giving Cloud sugar-lumps. In camp,> he had to amend that, because his pockets were empty of sugar-lumps. < Danny sitting with men.>
<Cattle, > Cloud still imaged. <Cattle rear ends.>
“Cut it out,” Danny muttered, not looking at Cloud, but Cloud knew that tone and knew the thoughts in his head with a very clear understanding when he was getting on his rider’s nerves.
< Cattle everywhere.>
“Sorry,” Danny said to the men around him, and went back and patted Cloud on the shoulder, walked with his arm under Cloud’s neck, patting him under his mane. Cloud kept sulking, but that was because Cloud was getting his way. “You behave,” Danny muttered. When things got bad, he used words, mystery words, things Cloud didn’t know, and Cloud got frustrated, because Cloud knew something was going on Cloud couldn’t have, couldn’t see.
Cloud hated the town. Cloud hated his family. Cloud hated townsmen. Cloud hated people around them. Cloud wanted just him. Alone.
That was scary. That was real scary, when he realized that small truth.
The sleet came down thickly now, whiting over the dark shapes of evergreens, sticking on Flicker’s black coat, dusting Flicker’s mane and up-pricked ears. Pace, pace, pace down the trail at a steady clip; the images from Flicker were still all spooky, distracted, wavery— like smell-images, but stranger than that, and Tara Chang told herself she wasn’t going to stop at the storm-shelters. They’d make it, no matter how heavy the storm grew. She wasn’t bedding down tonight alone in a log shack out in the middle of the woods. She was determined about that matter long in advance of getting there.
But it was a serious decision. It might be a spooked, unwise decision, with the sleet having turned to honest snow by the time they passed the shelter on the trail.
The shelter sat unoccupied, Tara knew that in the same way she knew the ambient and saw no smoke from the chimney. She had no doubt it was stocked and ready for winter—Chad and Vadim had escorted the teams out with the winter supplies the first leaf-turn: clean blankets, grain, preserved meat in strong, pilfer-proof tins, medicines, cordage, anything a storm-trapped rider might need.
She might be foolish. The way ahead of them was turning as white as Flicker’s frantic imaging, and there was safety in those thick log walls and those heavy shutters, if one could keep the doors barred. The shelter would hold her and Flicker both, no question.
But no shelter could help if a rider, in the grip of predator-sent illusions, chose to unbar a door or open a shutter. If you got yourself besieged indoors by a persistent predator, illusions came through walls, through shutters, through barred doors, illusions to confuse a horse and beguile a fool human into lifting a latch.
Flicker snorted and shook herself, never slacking pace as they moved on down the road. Tara agreed by doing nothing and they both committed themselves to the try for at least the next shelter, if not for home. It was a very uneasy feeling in Tara’s several looks back, as the shelter lay farther and farther behind them, as woods closed between and the storm showed signs not of abating, but of getting worse.
It might well have been a mistake, Tara thought. Not necessarily a fatal one, but a rider didn’t get too many such mistakes for free, not in a long life. Staying the night there might have been a mistake, too. She didn’t know. She had no way to judge now, either the weather or the uneasiness about the Wild that still crawled up and down her nerves.
As bad as the weather was looking now, the road crew she’d just taken out to their work might indeed be coming back, all of them, scared by the same storm—so if she’d stayed at the shelter, she might not have been alone for more than the night. If the road crew did decide to winterize the equipment and break camp, Barry and Llew would push through the night if necessary, at whatever pace they could with the ox-teams. They’d offload everything, cache even the supplies, if they didn’t like the look of the weather; and the stolid-seeming oxen could move fast, if they moved unladed, not as fast as nighthorses, but they might be headed for that shelter, all the same.
If she were in charge instead of Barry, the way it was looking now, no question they’d chuck it and leave that exposed mountain flank before the drifts built up.
Barry, though, was a get-the-job-done man. Village-bred, not a born rider. Villagers liked to deal with him. He made sense to village-siders, and Barry had agreed with this jaunt out to flirt with the weather and been willing to sit out there freezing his fingers and toes off. Not to mention other useful parts.
A cold gust blew up the skirts of her coat, found its way into her bones, and she buttoned the weather-bands tightly around her glove cuffs, then took her hat off to get a closer fit on the scarf that protected her ears from frostbite. She slid the chin-cord tight when she put it on again, and turned her collar up. She had a knitted hood in her inside pocket. It made her face itch and she hated it.