But now, and for no sane reason, all of a sudden rogue rider was echoing around the ambient, fear spreading out to attack Aby Dale’s partner—as if Stuart had just gone unstable, just like the ghost stories, only because he’d run from the camp and gone out alone. But wasn’t that what you were supposed to do if you couldn’t hold something in: get away from the horses, get calm, get quiet? Stuart wasn’t crazy. Stuart wasn’t any rogue. It wasn’t fair or reasonable for people to think so.
Was it?
<Cloud?> he questioned the dark, but Cloud didn’t answer him. Either Cloud had gotten out of range, or Cloud was refusing all dealing with him until he’d gotten himself in hand.
<Quiet water,> he thought, trying to calm his rattled nerves. He very much wanted Cloud’s comfort right now. He wanted Cloud to be near him—<soft, beautiful nose, inquisitive black nose, ears up, Cloud walking with Danny. >
But nothing came back but <rocks, and blood.> Constant, now, came the erotic urges of horses heading into winter rut: sex and rivalry and anger. So much anger, no focus, and so much fear of instability…
He couldn’t even image <still water,> as disturbed as he was. He looked at the ground as he walked, at the dust, gaslit from the poles in the tavern yard, determined to notice detail. That was the last mindless defense against an invading image. He strove to see individual grains of dust, in the half-colored texture the gaslights and the lantern light gave to the ground. He noticed how the footprints in that dust were different, the town-made boots, and the ones more individual, borderers, the sharp, tri-partite hoofprints of the horses under and over them.
In that preoccupation he came up among the tables where the commons gave way to Gate Tavern territory, under the gaslights, where old Mastraian had his hands full. Mastraian’s town help were bringing out ale by the pitcher-fulclass="underline" nervous kids, slum kids glad to have any job, even one the preachers said risked their souls, and, working along with them, rider kids, as yet horseless, and a few riders so new or so young they welcomed a tavern job to keep themselves and their horses fed—forage being no viable choice in Shamesey’s civilized lowland, where even open pasture had owners.
He was a second-year junior. He was far richer than that. He had his winter account with the camp-boss, money for camp store, the hostel he stayed in, and another account with Mastraian, beyond what he’d given his family in Shamesey—he even carried a little cash in his belt-purse; and the tavern would thank a customer for cash tonight, he was sure, from anyone who carried it—there were just too many customers, over half the camp having followed the disturbance to the gates, for the harried staff to keep tabs.
So he laid down a five on the porchside counter, in exchange for which the counter help handed him an empty mug. He found himself an empty place at a table, shoulder to shoulder at the end of a long bench with other juniors and a couple who didn’t look at all to be juniors, man and woman, maybe even borderers, he wasn’t sure.
A mug and five meant you could sit at a table, pour from the pitchers the servers set out, and drink yourself gradually stupid, which he was determined to, tonight, for the first time in his life. His father would be furious if he knew, and quote the preachers about ale and riot. His mother would be disgusted, and say he was a stupid kid in bad company, squandering money. Of course. Squandering was his mother’s word. It didn’t matter if it was your money. If you spent money or time on something she didn’t like, you were squandering it.
He was never so conscious of the wall dividing the camp from the town, and him from his family. He’d never had a hangover. He wondered was it as bad as seniors said. He’d spent more money plastering his family’s walls than he’d ever squandered in the Gate Tavern. He’d bought clothes and gear he had to have, nothing extravagant. He’d bought sweets for Cloud… who didn’t at least cry over how wonderful the money was and call him a sinner damned to hell in the same evening.
The high, reedy sound of a flute had started up, another joined in oscillating discord, and then the drummers started a wild and noisy rhythm.
Nobody could be planning sleep in the surrounding hostels tonight. A flood of riders left their tables and started dancing in the commons, some with drinks in hand, men and women in a mingled line.
His table mostly cleared in that first wave, and he refilled his mug and joined what was getting to be a rowdy first-dance line. A handful of borderers had started a contest of sorts, the show-outs holding forth inside the meandering lines—lowland riders didn’t do the borderers’ steps, didn’t do the single-dances like that: he wouldn’t dare go out with them, but he watched, asking himself if he could keep his balance, if he could do those steps, and trying a couple of them in the line-dance.
He found a couple of juniors, both male and girl-less, when the line broke up into sets. They danced through one mug and a refill—he didn’t know one of them except as Lane, a kid from the far side of Shamesey slum himself. He didn’t like Lane much, but that was no requisite for sets. They danced themselves breathless and drank half the refill down.
Then a couple of borderers, already way too many ales down, were spinning past each other with knives flashing, coat-fringes flying. The sets line bowed out for fear of mishaps, while the drummers went crazy, and the hired-help dodged down the line, filling outheld mugs and spilling astonishingly little.
(Follow not the beasts, the preachers said. Avoid ale and riot. Dance is the Devil’s enticement.)
He had his mug refilled without asking—without noticing it was about to happen; and, out of breath, tried a few of the steps he’d seen…
Arms hooked his of a sudden, and he found himself snatched and spun into another set, arms snagged by two sweating men he didn’t know, both drunker than he was, and as suddenly found himself spun out onto a dance circle, where two borderers beckoned him in, wanting him, he feared, to play the female third—
“No knives!” he panted, and the two, holding each other up, roared with laughter, grabbed his free arm, and snatched him into a dizzy circle-dance. Then he just concentrated on footwork to the drum, round and round and round, with gulps from the mug in between, matching their consumption the way he matched their steps.
Sweat was pouring down his face, despite the chill. He’d picked up the step, and thought he was doing damned well at it. The beat became the whole night, the whole universe, so long as his balance lasted.
But after two rounds he’d no breath for anything but to take the good-natured, hard slaps of high country riders on his shoulders and to weave away, thank God, still able to find his way to a table and sit down before he made a public staggering fool of himself.
A server filled his mug. He’d lost count of how many he’d had out there. Assured of a stable bench under his backside, he sipped the ale, not because he wanted the alcohol, but to ease a throat raw and dry from panting.
Most of the dancers were still going, but the two borderers, after deriding the junior for flagging, had fallen down at other tables.