He didn’t know how his knees were staying under him. He bent over, rifle and all, leaned against his knees and tried to get his breath, short of wind in the high altitude, aware of Carlo coming past him, Randy running to Carlo, betrayed and scared and hurt.
“I hit the kid,” he gasped, straightening up, and threw the situation into the ambient, <Randy and Cloud, Harper at the gate> because he didn’t have the wind to talk and he was hearing Cloud all too well. He went into a coughing fit and got it under control. He had a stitch in his side. “Did the man go down?” was what he wanted to know, whether the man he’d shot at had dropped, whether he’d killed somebody—whether they still had Harper to contend with—
But the pressure in the ambient, that thing he’d been feeling, was gone. The gunfire might have spooked it off.
“Did he go down, Carlo, dammit?”
“I don’t know,” Carlo said. “I think you got him.”
He couldn’t hear anything but Cloud’s panic and outrage. If there was a rider down, his horse should be doing something, feeling something. Harper’s horse should. He had a bad feeling about things out of control in every direction, and walked back where the kids were and where Cloud was, Cloud on the far side of the camp gate and mad and scared.
Carlo had Randy by the shoulder, <scared, mad,> too, saying something about “Told you to stay put, dammit!” and Randy was paper-white and on the edge: Randy had been <scared. Danny hitting him—>
“Kid,” Danny said, and lost his voice again. He clapped Randy on the back. “Danger you’d leak Carlo to the bad guys. —Sorry. Sorry I hit you. They could have heard you—understand? Sorry.”
Randy had a hand to his bloodied mouth, tears freezing on his white, cold-blotched face. He still looked to be in shock, but the ambient eased.
“Did you shoot him?” Randy asked.
“Dunno.” He still couldn’t breathe. He was getting the shakes enough for them to notice. “Pretty sure I missed. Damned mess. Sorry. <Cloud, dammit, quiet.>”
Cloud was trying to shoulder the obstructing gate-post down. But there was only Cloud out there on the village side. Danny went through the gate and moved Cloud back with a push on his chest.
<Mad horse. Frothing-at-the-mouth horse.> Cloud had blood on his shoulder where he’d tried to force the narrow gate, and his breath steamed in great puffs on the bitter wind.
Danny flung his arm about Cloud’s neck and apologized in a cheek-to-cheek way that didn’t need the kind of confused, angry force Cloud was sending out, just <quiet water, very quiet water, still, still, reflecting us, reflecting Randy, reflecting Carlo, all quiet.>
Cloud had never found himself on the wrong side of a barrier like that. Cloud was so scared he was trembling, too, and he was spitting froth mixed with blood—he’d bashed his lip on the post, Danny decided, and was sorry. But he couldn’t have done anything else—<Man at far gate,> he told Cloud, <Danny shooting. Man running.>
Big shiver out of Cloud. The boys had come through to the camp side behind him. They could get the side gate shut and latched on this side, then, but the main gate still scared him. He wanted <them and Cloud guarding gate> and walked in that direction, shaking too much to run.
He wasn’t in the least cold. He was sweating, and his chest burned from the thin winter air. He could get <up on that tower with rifle, him above, Cloud below, boys with thick coats and blankets, shooting Hallanslakers.>
Cloud didn’t disagree.
Then somebody fired a shot that rang far off across the mountainside, and they stopped still.
Second shot, from out there.
Distance made them blind and deaf to the origin—the mountain echoed it until even Cloud didn’t know where it was.
He waited for a third shot. It didn’t come. The boys were <scared.> But <rogue horse> was in Randy’s thoughts. <Shooting at horse. Shooting at scared blonde girl.> The brothers didn’t want that. The darkness that had been around the <Brionne> image last night wasn’t there, this time.
<Shooting father,> was there. <Gun going off. Woman screaming and screaming… >
“Cut it out,” Danny said sharply, “shut down. Quiet, dammit. It’s probably just Jonas signaling he’s coming back. Maybe he’s bringing Stuart.”
He fervently hoped so. More, he hoped they’d just shot the rogue, and that the boys’ blonde sister was coming back with them, and they’d find Stuart, and they’d tell Harper go to hell and take his sad stories with him.
Cloud stayed beside him as they went to the gate—closed and latched the door on the store while they were at it, because the boys had left it wide open, let all the heat out and burned up a load of wood besides endangering their supplies—“Sorry,” Carlo said. But he didn’t blame the boys, and latched it and went on.
They didn’t go into the gate house. Randy thought they should go in where it was warmer, and set up a fuss about it—but Danny said a flat no, and tried not to image what was in there. He climbed up to the tower and down again when he found he couldn’t see anything better in the blowing snow—if he’d gone up there he couldn’t have gotten a clear target anyway; so everything about his plan was stupid, and he came back down to Carlo and Randy fast, before they got to investigating anything in the gate house.
He tried not to think about <bones under the snow> while he was doing it. But there were. Bones and dead people were all up and down the street. The snow was just covering them, that was all, burying them <deep, deep and quiet.>
And he wished—he prayed to the God who didn’t hear riders— that Jonas would find Stuart and get him back here so they could all be safe and the senior riders would know what to do to save their lives.
He’d only covered his mistakes. He didn’t know who he’d shot, he didn’t know anything: he was down to admitting that, even to himself.
Chapter XX
THE AMBIENT WAS CLEAN NOW. THE SNOW AND THE TREES WERE A silence no other presence breached.
<Riders hunting through the woods, > Guil thought. He’d long since slid down from Burn’s back and walked beside Burn, Burn with head hanging, still coughing occasionally from the cold air. Moisture from Burn’s jaws, frozen on his chest, glistened in the blued grey of the snowfall. Burn still kept expecting <guns behind them,> his rider’s expectation to the contrary.
But there wasn’t any safety in lingering. Guil kept a hand on Burn’s side, <us walking,> he imaged. <Us moving through the storm, us walking through the woods—> and he tried not to think beyond that, or to wonder about human motives, because Burn was taking in everything and he couldn’t stop it.
They’d gone off the road. They came down to it again, both still walking. It didn’t take hard guessing—just careful footwork on the steeps, and down again in the same direction. No knowing whether Jonas was following them or not.
But he’d heard faint shots back in the direction of the walls, and another couple closer, that he thought might be the searchers signaling each other—they weren’t close enough to be firing at him, but that didn’t mean safety.
Jonas had yelled at him to come back, called him a fool.
And maybe he was. Maybe there was a real good explanation—like a nervous guard. But shooting at him wasn’t confidence-inspiring.
Most of all, he didn’t know what in hell Jonas was doing sitting in a village surrounded by tattered scavengings, after he’d shown no sign of coming up here.
He damn sure wasn’t going to risk Burn going back to give them another try. And considering things Jonas hadn’t told him about Aby’s dealings back at Shamesey gate, he wasn’t at all sure what had made Jonas take another trip up the mountain.