Or he’d find Stuart himself and ask Stuart whether he wanted to be found.
Then to hell with Stuart’s not-quite-best friends in the entire universe. A winter in the high country, him and a senior rider, and (even if Stuart wasn’t interested in another partner) he could learn from Stuart God-knew how many things. He had his gear, he had a clear notion where Stuart had gone, given they’d named Anveney and a reason Stuart would go there, and he had an absolutely clear idea where Stuart would ultimately go. The main road he and Cloud were on led near Tarmin to another ascent, up to a loop all around to the villages of Rogers Peak—he knew that for certain.
That was where Aby Dale had died, up on that high road, as the convoy was coming down. He even knew the names of most of the villages on the mountain; and he knew that there was another old road to Tarmin up directly from Anveney—an old, tight-turned road almost unused these days except by line-riders.
They’d passed the Anveney lowland turn-off when they’d gone only half a day from Shamesey gates, about the place where Cloud had thrown him and he’d hiked over the shoulder of the hill. But if Stuart had gone down that other way, and over to Anveney the way they thought, then there was no reason for Stuart to ride all the way back to pick up the road they were on—Stuart would get up to Tarmin the old way. Trucks might not use it now, but a horse could.
So he didn’t need to wonder where Stuart was or where he’d come in and pick up the road to the accident—the Anveney-Tarmin road would join theirs before it went on up to the other villages on the High Loop of the Tarmin road. Stuart would go past Tarmin and up to that same road where the wreck was.
So he knew where he had to go.
And in his wildest dream, counting Hawley had made off with Stuart’s money, Stuart could be real glad to see a kid with a gun and ammunition and winter supplies.
Favor paid. He’d like that. He really would. Stuart’s respect of him—God, what wouldn’t he do to feel he’d won that?
That occupied his thoughts as he made their bed of evergreen fronds, and as he settled down to rest in his wind-shadowed nook and Cloud settled down by him, providing him his body heat.
In Cloud’s mind everything was right again, after all this <mad> and <not mad> at the men, and most of all the money-thing, which Cloud never had gotten straight, whether it was a kind of food or guns or whatever.
<Cattle,> was Cloud’s assessment of Jonas and his crew, utter disgust.
But Danny didn’t think of cattle—he thought instead of slinking predators. Shadow-horse still gave him the shivers.
And when, momentarily, he recalled Shadow’s self-image, Cloud’s skin twitched under his back as if something were crawling on it.
Fire warmed the den from the old fireplace they only used for the horses in the bitterest cold. Water was heating, and cloths went into it.
<White, white, white,> was the ambient, <white> so Tara couldn’t see the den except through a veil, < white > so she burned her hands on the kettle and the hot rags, and bit her lip and kept at sponging Flicker down. “Rest,” Vadim begged her. “Lie down at least, Tara, you’ve done enough. Let us take care of her.”
But she wouldn’t. She hardly heard until Chad seized her arm with painful force and made her face him. “You’re contributing to it. Tara. You’re falling into it, same as she is. Pull out.”
Chad hit her across the ear hard enough to make her eyes water. Flicker threw her head and kicked out, lost her balance and all but had her feet go out from under her… Flicker was exhausted, hardly able to stand, and wouldn’t lie down, wouldn’t rest. Tara knew that. She was in the same condition, no different, legs shaking.
Rogue horse, they’d said: the marshal had had that warning in a phone call up from Shamesey—while she was on the trail.
“It’s you,” Chad said, and shook her and slammed her back into a post. “Sit down, Tara, sit! You hear me? You’re upsetting her!”
She jerked away. “Her lungs will fill,” she said, imaging a death she’d seen, long ago, on Darwin. She wasn’t a horse-doctor, she didn’t know how to get Flicker out of this and neither did Vadim or Chad or Mina, or, God save them, young Luisa. She just kept working, kept agitating, for fear that Flicker would give up. She warmed Flicker’s legs and flanks and chest. She brought oil-fragrant smoke and made Flicker breathe as much as she could in the drafty den.
And Vadim and the rest, her own sometime partners Mina and Luisa no mean force in the attempt, kept visiting their own horses, imaging good things, imaging treats and food and the warm den, fearing contagion, but not letting that to the front of their minds.
They curried and rubbed and bathed and combed—with Vadim’s and Chad’s steady good sense, they dragged any thoughts of the snow back to the warm, safe dark. They dragged any reckoning of the howling wind back to the crackle of fire in the fireplace. They kept fighting for their sanity and their lives, not entertaining for two seconds running the fear and the anger that wailed and roiled out there in the storm, and not bolstering, either, the defense Flicker still raised… they wouldn’t echo it, wouldn’t stand for it, wouldn’t give way to it.
Tara knew that they were keeping her sane as well, keeping out the storm, keeping away the white that threatened their collective reason. They were her friends, her refuge, her safety. She tried to tell Flicker that. She imaged their faces for Flicker. She imaged light and warmth and a den and horses Flicker knew. She began to fight for warmth against the white, to image <ice melting, fire on the ice, snowflakes melting on nighthorse back, sun coming up, bright, bright sun.>
It was all that they could do: outlast the storm and look for the sun to rise. The night and the howling white were all about them, a thunderous snow that echoed off the mountains and shook the nerves.
And the white remained a veil, and the dark was too ready to seep into the image, as if the sun would never, ever rise.
Chapter IX
SOMETHING WANTED, THAT WAS THE FEELING. SOMETHING CALLED and called, lonely and desperate, and it wasn’t scary at all, just so terribly sad that Brionne ached for it in her heart. In her dream she stood in the middle of the woods where the snow had just fallen, the soft kind of snow that made soft sparkles under a golden sun, the kind that sat thick on the evergreen branches and fell in wet spattery clumps when the least breeze disturbed them. Otherwise the ground was all smooth rolling lumps and tiny hills, a beautiful, shining surface that no track had yet disturbed, since only she had come there.
In her dream she stood looking toward the dawn, where gold and rose sifted through the evergreens. She stood knowing that she was the only person in the wide world, herself, Brionne, the blacksmiths’ daughter, who could see this sight and hear the singing presence that made all the forest magical.
In her dream a nighthorse came out of the woods and across that smooth, gold-glistening snow, a black horse with a midnight mane that all but floated on the dawn winds, a tail that drifted like a cloud of blackest smoke. The horse made the only other tracks in the world. Its neck arched as it regarded her with a wary eye, its mane and its night-black coat glistening with the golden light.