<“Cloud!” Letting coat go. Boy standing. Still water.>
Carlo didn’t stand. Carlo made it away into the shadows, to sit down on a coil of cable. He crouched there with his head in his hands and cried, great noisy sobs.
<Blood,> Cloud thought, confused, thinking <fight,> but no longer mad. Cloud knew he shouldn’t have hurt the boy. Cloud was upset, and stared at the boy, wide-nostriled, remembering <Danny making that sound,> because, dammit, he’d soaked Cloud’s shoulder a couple of times since they’d teamed up, especially when his father had announced to the neighborhood he was going to hell.
Carlo—had done the unthinkable. No knowing why. Carlo was hurting—he was hurting all over the ambient, aching for what he’d done.
“Calm it down,” Danny said. “You’re near a horse, dammit. Calm down.”
“I shot him,” Carlo stammered. “I shot my f-f-father.”
What did you say to a statement like that? What did you follow it with? He knew Carlo didn’t want to have shot anybody. The moment was there over and over again, <the fireplace, the man, Carlo with the gun.
<Two-sided anger. Flying every directions
<Quiet.>
He scared Carlo. Carlo looked up at him, stunned and shaken.
“Horse,” Danny said. He was all but sure of it. “The horse was sending.”
“What horse?”
“The rogue. It was spooking around out there near the village when you had your quarrel. It was there. You know it was, but you don’t know you know. I’m hearing it in your memory. Only I’m a rider. I know what a horse sounds like. I know what I’m hearing in what you’re sending me.”
Carlo wiped his face, still staring up at him out of the shadows, <wanting, listening, pleading with him.> “I can’t send!”
“You hear me real damn good,” Danny said, knowing he was laying it on thick and knowing he was out of his depth, but he couldn’t afford a kid going off the mental edge in this place. This was a kid who’d listened to the preachers. He’d been there, once, and he knew how to make it sound better, at least. “People don’t ever really send, you know that. Not even riders. We all say we do, but really only the horses hear us and pass things back and forth. Some people can hear better, or they think images better, or maybe they’re just quicker to put things into shape. A rider’s brain just sorts pictures out better than some—something like. That’s what I’ve heard, anyway. I’m not as good at it as some. But I can talk in words. I know riders you don’t hear two words out of in days. And I know how to pick out a rogue-sending. Trust me in that.”
“My sister could hear the horses.” Carlo’s voice shook. <Fear> was very strong. “She could hear them at night. She could hear spooks in the woods. Maybe it runs in the f-family.”
Carlo didn’t like this sister, this sister <wanting horse.> There was a lot of anger there. A lot. And he had a damn scared kid on his hands.
“I hate to say your sister was wrong,” Danny said. “But I don’t hear the horses all the time. If I’m far from Cloud—I don’t. She may have thought she did. If you hear one across town—that’s a real upset horse. A rogue—she’d maybe hear. But so did you, that’s the fact.”
“I didn’t hear it when she left.”
“Yeah, but you heard it later. And she was trying to hear, what I pick up from you. —Listen to me.” The kid was close to panic. His own nerves were shaky. He wanted it <quiet.> “Listen: that horse was hanging around. She left, right? Your family was upset. Nobody’s going to think straight when a crazy horse is pushing temper into the ambient. Listen, down in Shamesey they were shooting at people when the horses got upset, and there wasn’t any rogue, just a report of one being up here. I’m not saying there wasn’t any fault. I’m saying it went crazy like it did because you got a crazy horse sending like hell out there. It couldn’t hear you. But you could hear it, no trouble at all, and you could hear anybody who was with that horse. Sending’s the same as hearing. The same as hearing, do you hear me? You’re not going to hell.”
Carlo’s jaw worked. Hard. Carlo took another swipe at his eyes with a hand shaking like a leaf. <Listening. Cautious. Wary.>
You couldn’t push the argument too far. For what he knew the kid was guilty as sin. But the hazard of the kid blowing up was an unease sitting like lead at the pit of his own stomach—and the ambient began to ease.
“Want another beer?” Danny asked, and got up and filled Carlo’s mug from the keg.
Carlo came and took it. Cloud came up behind him—<close behind him. Boy turning quietly. Quiet water.>
Cloud gave him a sniff-over, trying to figure what was the matter with him. Carlo held his beer and stood very wisely quiet.
Cloud went back to his ham-grease and biscuits.
“Cloud protects me,” Danny said. “He’s making sure you’re not sick. They don’t understand everything we do. He wouldn’t like it if you were sick.”
Carlo was shaking so he spilled beer on his hand.
“You’re all right,” Danny said. “We’ll get out of here. You and the kid each with a rifle and a sidearm and supplies and all, I’ll walk you out to somewhere.”
“There’s Verden.”
“No village up here is real safe right now. This place at least isn’t real noisy in the ambient. The rogue may go for something louder. Or easier. We’re not going to open the gates.”
“Our mother did it.”
“What?”
“Opened the village gate. She heard Brionne. She wanted Brionne.” Carlo sipped his beer, staring unblinkingly into it. Swallowed hard, as if that wasn’t all that was going down. “Brionne sure came home, didn’t she?”
God, Danny thought, and didn’t say anything. The ambient for a second was full of <Brionne at the breakfast table. Papa at the forge. Kids playing in the blacksmith’s shop. Throwing snowballs. Laughing.>
Danny shoved at the ambient. <Boys walking, Danny riding on Cloud down a sunny, snow-covered road. Blue sky.> “If we don’t hear anything, I figure we’ll go out tomorrow. I got a friend I’m trying to catch up with.”
“From where?”
“Shamesey.”
“That’s where you’re from? Clear from there?”
“Yeah.”
“Him, too?”
“Know it’s a him? Know it’s a rider?”
“Yeah.” Carlo looked puzzled. “I mean, I guessed.”
“What color’s his hair?”
Carlo looked entirely uneasy. “Blond,” he said.
“See?”
“I don’t want to. God!” ‘
“Yeah, I figure you don’t want to, but there isn’t any choice—if you come near a horse, you’re going to see things. You prime yourself to go toward my horse, you got it? Not away. If anything goes wrong, you don’t spook off on your own—it’ll get you sure. Same with Randy. You better listen real hard to the ambient and don’t be afraid of it. Drivers with a big truck around them, they can sort of ignore it and follow the rig in front, but on foot, you’re down there with the spooks and the vermin. —Hey. You got your brother for a responsibility. You’ll do it. You have to.”
Carlo didn’t feel sure. Carlo stayed scared. But he looked aside at the sleeping boy, and said, finally, “Yeah.”
“I got a kid brother, too,” Danny said, which was about as sentimental as he meant to get. But Carlo Goss was pulling together real well. Real well. He hoped it lasted.