There were more ways to die in the Wild. But none more sure than what those riders had done—under what pressure he didn’t hope to guess. He’d never met a spook he couldn’t resist. He was still alive. And he didn’t call them fools for having died. Fools didn’t get past their first season up here.
The deep snow in the tin said the deaths had happened before the snowfall quit—last night or before; and he hadn’t heard a thing in the ambient. Nothing.
Possibly it just hadn’t had the range a rogue was credited to have. Possibly that was exaggerated—he didn’t take everything he’d heard as truth. He’d never dealt with one. But granted the range of its sending wasn’t exaggerated—then it might have been as much as two days ago, before he’d arrived on the Height.
Grim as it was, his mind was working on details like that while he went, and confusing Burn, who was thinking <bones> and trying to figure the smells that came to him. Burn didn’t understand past things as relevant; Burn wanted <travel fast,> with a vague notion of <eaten horses,> and hit a gait not kind to a sore leg and an aching head.
Guil made no complaint.
The sun had passed overhead and westward, behind the mountain wall, putting the snowy woods in the blued shadow which was the story half the day in the mountains, in any season; afternoon clouds formed above the peak—formed and drifted on with a little spit of snow, to drop rain on the lowlands.
Demi-shadows lengthened with afternoon, evergreens grown near-black against the snow. Thunder rumbled and echoed among the peaks.
That was a serious, imminent warning, not of the afternoon snow-flurries that were a daily event once autumn began, but of the truly dangerous storms that swept winter in their wake, that dumped snow nearly waist-deep to a man in a single night. The wild nighthorses fled the mountains with the coming of the first winter fronts. The spook-bears took to digging, and with their long, long claws made tunnels out again after such storms ended, retreating more and more until, when hunting grew sparse, they slept the deep sleep and waked again with spring.
There was that feeling in the air, worse than Jackson Peak, which he’d served out of Malvey—six days south and a thousand meters lower made a great deal of difference in the weather. Rogers Peak was that much farther north, Tarmin Ridge was higher than the villages on Jackson, Konig, or Darwin, and a man or a horse who disregarded that difference was in for trouble. Not a night on which he’d sit out and wait—not if a major storm was moving in.
<Burn walking,> he thought, and when Burn slowed, coughing in the bitter, thin air, he slid down and carried the packs himself. <Guil walking side by side with Burn, Guil riding, Guil walking, Guil riding—>
It had taken him years and argument to get that simple sequence of events notion through Burn’s present-time attention—now, soon. But Burn understood him now: Burn walked along with him, head lowered, coughing, as Burn’s rider struck the fastest walk a two-legged creature could sustain on other than level ground. Legs burned, lungs burned, sore leg hurt like hell, but it gave Burn the interval to catch his breath.
Then it was Guil up to Burn’s back again, another stint as fast as Burn could take it; and walk again. <Village gate at sunset,> Guil kept thinking, and <us walking, us riding, going fast.>
Burn understood. It wasn’t the worst or the first time they’d made time like this: it was <go fast,> that was all, and Burn was completely in agreement, feeling a storm wind and smelling <snow.> The tops of the evergreens sighed with a breath of wind and with successive gusts—then whipped over and tossed in a sudden knife-edged gale that dropped the temperature by tens before they’d passed the next winding of the trail.
A dry wind, at first, and they could be glad of that—but Guil swung up to Burn’s back and Burn struck his staying-pace again.
Hope, Guil thought, that the rogue found similar need of shelter—or, best for everyone, that in its demented state it just stood still and froze to death.
He walked again. And in that stint at walking he came on a strange thing—a child’s coat in the snow, and not just lost— gnawed by vermin teeth.
A short time after that he found rags of cloth and leather, stiffened with ice. And vermin that, despite the weather, scampered down the mountain face below the trail.
Bones, then. Small, unidentifiable bones, recent, half-lost in the snow and the rocks beside the clear-cut and fill.
Snow was starting to fall. He thought, <us coming into rider camp, sunset in the sky. Village gates. Snow falling on us,> and took a skip and a bounce for a junior’s belly-down mount onto Burn’s weary back.
Burn was thinking <bones > and <dark.> Burn moved the moment he felt his rider’s weight, and struck a desperate pace through the gathering chill.
There wasn’t a phone working. No way to warn the other villages. “Lines must be down,” Carlo had said, when Danny reported back; but Luke had had to try it, saying he must not be doing it right; and Luke had had no luck.
Luke had also seen enough by daylight to convince even a senior rider he didn’t want to go into the other buildings. Luke came back and had a beer and stayed quiet for a time. Jonas thought he might go try the phone, and asked if they’d cranked it—“Yes,” Luke said testily. “I’m not a fool, brother.”
It seemed to Danny it was time to keep his head down and argue nothing at all—argue when it mattered, yes, but if the Westmans wanted to accuse each other he had ample patience to wait in a corner of the store beside Carlo while the Westmans sorted it out.
The horses had wanted out, weary of the inside, accustomed to freedom to go where they liked as they liked, but not leaving their riders, either, in a place that smelled of <dead things> and <fight.> Cloud snapped at Shadow, Shadow snapped at Cloud, but all of it was horses insisting they were staying close to the store— all of it horses worried with <dead village> and <vermin.>
Danny just sat on a heap of flour sacks and listened to the ambient through the walls.
And more than the ambient. A wind rose. Something loose was banging repeatedly, somewhere down the street—but weather be damned, the horses didn’t ask to be in again, not minding the wind—he heard Cloud’s <wind, cold, smell of snow> in the ambient, and the spookiness that was Shadow. Ice and Froth were there, too, skittish, smelling <dead bodies > and <evergreen.>
“It’s going to storm.” Randy came and sat down with them, huddled up close against his brother’s side. There was a little silence. The weather was worsening—the night was coming. It was one more night in this place, waiting.
“She’s coming back, isn’t she?” Randy asked finally, sum of his dreads.
“We don’t need to be afraid,” Carlo said. “There’s a lot of us now.” Carlo put his arm around Randy’s shoulders. “Don’t think about it. All right?”
<White streets,> came from outside. <Snow coming down thick. Wind blowing.>
<Skull.> One of the horses had found a curious object. Thought it might have something edible about it. <Horses near porch,> came a severe order—specific to the horse, and Danny thought it was Jonas ordering Shadow to leave it alone. The boys were upset, and there were faces and people in the ambient, village folk Danny didn’t know.
<Still water,> Danny sent, occupying the ambient with a rude, strong effort that seniors might have slapped down, but he had help then, Ice’s rider, Hawley, thinking <freezing water, rime of ice on the edges,> so that the very air seemed colder, right next to the stove.