“We’d better look for a spot to tuck down,” he said to Carlo. “Dig in and stay. We’re out of options.”

It meant Brionne was going to die for certain. But they were down to Randy’s life. And down to their own. There were trees. He had a hatchet.

<Snow. Blood. Gunshot.>

“Damn that thing!” Carlo cried, stumbling to a stop. “I’ll shoot it!”

<Stormclouds and pain. Bite and kick.> That was Cloud answering the challenge. Cloud had swung about, also stopped in his tracks, head up, ears flat, nostrils catching the night wind, and Danny dropped the travois and grabbed Cloud by the mane, imaging <Cloud with Danny. Thin and hungry Danny. Danny lying in the snow.> He was scared Cloud was going to take out chasing that sending, and Cloud did drag him a distance through the snow, until weariness had its effect and Cloud came to his senses.

Cloud stood shivering after that. But Cloud knew his rider was beside him at that point, snorted loudly, and listened when Danny imaged <walking uphill.>

Cloud agreed, also wanting <Danny walking,> and Danny let go all but a single handful of his mane and walked past Carlo without a word, because Cloud’s state of mind was as precarious as it could possibly be right now.

“Hey!” Carlo’s ragged voice came from behind him. It was a moment before Carlo could overtake him, pulling the travois alone to the point where he stopped—Carlo was <mad> and <scared.>

“What are you doing?” Carlo cried. Carlo ran out of strength in that last effort and dropped to his knees.

He didn’t know what he was doing. He had Cloud headed in the right direction. That was where his thoughts were. But he took one pole, Carlo hauled at the other, and they pulled in Cloud’s track.

From Randy there was nothing but the image of <biscuits. Steaming biscuits piled on a plate.>

Trees were consistently on either side of them, arguing they hadsomehow missed the shelter and, almost indistinguishable from drifts, there were banks of snow-covered undergrowth that argued whatever this track was, it was used enough to keep the brush down. Trucks in this country dragged chain from their undercarriage to maintain the roads clear of brush and keep the ruts from making high centers; this was surely a road of some kind—if it wasn’t theirs, if they hadgotten diverted onto a logging trail, it might lead to a camp, deserted in this season as the miners headed for villages for the winter, or even dug-in miners, fools so crazy for digging they wouldn’t leave for the winters.

But there’d be a shack strong enough to sleep in, if they could find it in the blowing snow. If they could just get a place to tuck in, even a deep place in the rocks, then they could wait it out—and hold off the horse that was stalking them.

Only if they could get Cloud into it. Only if they could keep him from challenging that horse. He might win.

He might not.

<Blood on white. Blood and a man’s still shape. Gunshot echoing off the mountain. Far, far riders up the road.>

They perceived something else near them, too, something angry and curious that wasn’t a horse. Wildlife was disturbed by the intrusion. Wild things were waking from storm-slumber.

Deep, deep trouble, Danny began to say to himself, and in that inattention put his foot in a hole. He went down, and made Carlo fall. For a moment they both lay there, neither with the strength to move.

Then Cloud broke the force of the wind, coming up to shove with his nose at his back, and slowly, shaking at Carlo to move him, Danny began to get up. He’d gotten snow into his cuffs. He tried to get rid of it, got his feet under him somehow.

“Need to rest,” Carlo gasped.

“You got a kid freezing faster than you are. His body’s thinner. Get up. Now!”

Carlo moved, and got to his knees, and got on his feet.

<Frozen trails of red. Man’s glove. Man’s arm. Echoes of a rifle shot dying on the mountainside.>

They struggled along what, for they knew, was indeed a logging trail. There wasn’t any sense of climbing or descending, no way to tell they weren’t walking to some dead-end clearing out across the broad face of Rogers Peak.

<Cloud and Danny,> the image kept coming to him: <us going up the mountain. Snow coming down on Brionne’s still face, the curly blond hair. Snow making a mound. Snow in a deep, even sheet.>

<Shut up> didn’t work. Cloud didn’t understand anything Cloud couldn’t picture and silence didn’t translate when Cloud was distraught.

<Frozen Danny,> came back to him. <Frozen horse, covered with ice.> Then came: <Horse with tangled mane, sick nighthorse, horse throwing off warning, horse with staring eyes and flat ears.>

Rogue-image.

<StiIl water,> Danny countered desperately. <Still, warm water. Water with steam rising into the cold…>

But that was a trap. It was easy to get to thinking about that and just—not to come back from that image. And anything that faltered, anything that hesitated in the Wild, anything that took a wrong path and broke a leg—it died.

When Men had come down to the world in their ships, horses had been the only thing that had come snuggling up to humans, wicked as they were, being the Beasts that God had sent on the settlers—

And some of them had to take the gift and be damned to save the rest, because the rest without horses, without riders, wouldn’t have made it.

You’re going to hell, his father had yelled at him.

But what he was doing was notwicked. Trying to get these boys to safety was notevil.

“Slow down!” he yelled at Cloud, as Cloud began to widen the lead on them, breaking the way through the drifted snow, making a path for them.

But Cloud wouldn’t stop. Cloud threatened <bite and kick> and wanted <Danny walking.>

<Bell ringing in the distance, far through the snowy woods.>

Carlo didn’t say anything about what Cloud was sending—maybe he heard, maybe he didn’t. But he moved as if he had heard, and pulled desperately on his pole—got up without urging when his feet stumbled on the deep snow.

It wasn’t just a sending. The sound of a bell came unmistakably, now. Cloud was still breaking the path ahead of them, thinking <warm den> and <nighthorses> and <ham.>

We’re going to make it, Danny began to say to himself, half in tears. We’re going to make it.

But—

Rider-shelters out in the wilderness didn’t have bells, —did they?

God, had he led them not past one shelter—but past two? That was a village gate bell.

Had the junior rider in his blind, stupid desperation—just led them all the way to Evergreen?

The den was not only the safest place to be: it was the only place they could do anything besides stand watch in the guard-stations above the walls—which Callie reported the marshal and five men were doing, now, on the village side of the wall.

And by a stretch of awareness, once the horses caught the notion of the marshal on guard from Callie, the villageside guards were near enough to the den that the horses were vaguely aware of them as a force.

That was useful. That meant there couldn’t be alarm over there villageside without them in the camp hearing it.

Better than villageside guns against the Wild, the horses were wary and watching against a sending so moiled and confused. With Slip and Shimmer on guard, nothing harmful would insinuate a sending close enough to make either the guards in the village or them in the rider camp do something stupid, which was generally how you died in the Wild—a gate opened, a latch forgotten. Haste. Confusion. Short-term memory overpowering a human’s long-term thought.

Ridley didn’t intend to make mistakes here. That was what they all said to each other, including Jennie, but Ridley paced and fretted, and Slip made frequent forays outside to sniff the wind and threatened, until Callie, sitting on a straw bale, said, “Quiet, for God’s sake,” and Shimmer’s irritation came through with it.