Don’t do anything, a doctor would say—and the wind blasted at him at the worst moments of his balance, so he lost one plank that caught the wind, spun him around, and off his balance. He let go and fell, it went sailing off into the gorge: he didn’t follow it. The pistol damn near did, spun past his face to the gap: flat on his belly he grabbed that and recovered it as something else, small and shiny, slipped his pocket, skittered across the wind-scoured boards and over the edge. He’d saved the pistol, but the lighter was spook-bait.
He got up and got another board.
He didn’t want Burn to try another jump, even if he could talk him into it. A nighthorse walking the old timbers was one thing. A nighthorse landing on them was another. He didn’t trust the wood. But the far side hove closer and closer, plank after laboriously gained plank, and Burn crossed the next to last gap when he told Burn it was safe.
<Burn standing,> he sent. But once Burn was across that, Burn realized <solid ground ahead,> dismissing the intervening gap as <small hole.>
“Burn!” Guil yelled, at the same time Burn gathered himself for the charge, hoof-toed feet thundering down the board.
Burn sailed across the gap, landed. A board broke—Burn went in halfway up to his hock, and Guil stared, heart stopped as Burn clambered across the last few boards to the solid bridgehead.
Guil took a wobbly few steps forward, remembered his gear, gathered it up and followed, far more scared than Burn was. Burn stood on solid ground again. Burn was pleased with himself— raised a hind foot to lick a scrape, but that was all.
Burn’s rider crossed the last gap above sharp rocks and mountainside and tottered to a rock-sheltered spot to sit down, dizzy, dry-mouthed with exertion, and feeling his skull trying to explode.
Which wasn’t something he’d regret at the moment.
But they were safe.
And the smells on this side of the gorge he suddenly realized were evergreen and not chemical smoke—clean, pure evergreen, rocks, nighthorse, and the tang of snow on the wind…
<Guil riding.> It was a feeling as much as an image Burn sent him: Burn’s feeling, Guil’s sensations when they were touching, the working of muscles in unison, the warmth in his body and Burn’s at once. They could do that, when they touched, could be one mind now if he let go and let Burn have him.
And Burn lipped his ear. His hands met a soft nose, velvet nudge at his cheek—Burn’s tongue licked the side of his eye with utmost delicacy and tasted salt.
The taste came into Guil’s mouth, too, and identity melted. He scratched Burn’s chin where Burn liked to be scratched, he shut his eyes and saw through Burn’s, <the mountain, the sky, the snow making white caps on the rocks.>
Not a full-out storm, only a spat of snow. Not thick enough yet. Burn stood there, a barricade against the wind. His head still reeled, and he thought it hurt: it was one of those ghosty kind of headaches. Half-blind, feeling the altitude after his stint in Malvey and Shamesey lowlands, he uncapped his canteen and took a sip of water to ease his throat.
<Guil riding,> Burn sent, wanting him, wanting reassurance he was all right. <Guil riding in sunlight. Evergreens. Sweet smell of evergreens and horse.>
It took maybe a half an hour for him to get to his feet, and to climb, belly-down, onto Burn’s back. But on this side of the gorge the wind was less, and the next switchback came up among sizeable, snow-blanketed evergreens that cut off the sight of the valley.
They’d made the Height. They were on the lower loop of the Tarmin road.
<Snowy branches> had long since given way to <cold nighthorse> and <hunger.> That was the only assurance Danny had of safety in the woods: Cloud was complaining about the game, which they hadn’t seen (another bad sign, Danny thought: something had scared it) and the lack of berries (which argued game had recently been here).
And, no, lichen wasn’t edible—or it was, but it wasn’t something a human palate or a human stomach wanted to try again. He’d chewed evergreen trying to get the taste from his mouth. And it had mostly worked.
Cloud imaged a better taste for the stuff. Cloud didn’t believe his.
And his gut hurt, since he’d eaten the stuff, and his heart had raced and his vision had tunneled for at least an hour afterward, which wasn’t at all a good sign. That had scared him off further trials of anything fungus-like.
The effect had finally passed. The stomachache had eased, and become the stomach-empty feeling that had gone past mere light-headedness. He wasn’t near starving to death. He knew that. A human could go a whole moon-chase with nothing at all to eat, he’d heard of people doing it who broke a leg or something where they couldn’t get help, and who had to crawl for days.
He thought about warm beds and his mother’s cooking.
And maybe Cloud interpreted that as a wish Cloud should do something about, because he felt a fairly purposeful change in direction.
Within a few minutes Cloud came down a steep, snowy slope onto a clear-cut that extended in either direction, a track across the Wild.
More—he saw phone lines.
Chapter XVIII
THE EVENING SHADOW ROLLED DOWN EARLY, THICK WITH CLOUD, and the black, bristling evergreens were white with snow. Snow made a fine dust in Burn’s mane and in the folds of Guil’s coat— still a spat, not a storm, but advising a traveler it might be well to think about camp: it was all too easy if a real blow came up—as well could happen with the weather like this—to stray off the road in the dark and the snow, and right off the edge of a cliff.
But there was due to be a shelter ahead, down what was, so far, a well-defined road—a clear-cut marked by the solitary phone line.
And all the while that thin thread of human talk and commerce, he supposed, could have let him call the villages ahead. He’d thought once of buying a handset and learning how to tap in; those who rode the lines said it was stupid-simple, and all you needed was tape and wire-cutters besides, but, hell, he’d never needed a phone—until now. There was a stop-start way you could send a message without a handset; but the authorities put out warrants if you ever cut a line purely on rider business, and besides, he didn’t know the code: he couldn’t spell any more than he could read. And a handset? It was weight and cost, and Burn had enough to carry, Burn would tell him so.
Burn had been damned forgiving this trip. Burn was a <fine horse,> and he was sorry he’d made Burn’s back ache, which it did. There’d be <bacon> when they got to shelter, there’d be <liniment and warm water—Guil rubbing tired nighthorse legs, rubbing sore nighthorse back—>
Burn was immensely pleased. Doubly so that Burn’s rider opted to slide down and walk; Burn was concerned about his rider’s limp and sore leg, and wanted to lick at it—attention he had as soon not—but Burn was very glad not to have <heavy, pack-laden rider on tired nighthorse back> and wanted to be generous.
You certainly didn’t push yourself at this altitude if you weren’t acclimated, and neither of them were acclimated. You didn’t press beyond sensible limits—his own chest ached with the thin air, and persistent headache rode just at the back of his eyes, not, he thought, entirely due to the concussion.
But the thought of a solid shelter and a wood fire was a powerful incentive: there was supposed to be one fairly close to the ascent and one more before Tarmin. It was encouraging that there was no sight nor warning of trouble so far—but he didn’t take the High Wild for granted—he walked with a loaded rifle and a sidearm ready, at the pace he felt like maintaining, which was a leisurely limp that didn’t hurt beyond what his nerves could bear; and he’d much rather have solid walls around them tonight.