“It could very well be miners,” Ridley said finally, and leaned against the post by her. “But I don’t recognize that horse. Do you?”

“Road drifted shut, maybe,” Callie said after a moment—meaning some rider could be coming to them instead of back to his own village. A road drifted beyond the strength of a single horse to clear it—that was one explanation, and a rider would indeed go to the nearest village. Maybe a hunting party had gotten caught out and couldn’t make it back to Mornay village, which was nearest to them down the road—the land-sense was too diffuse yet to pin the direction down.

Possible too, if somebody had been in longer-lasting trouble out there, a bad storm could be exactly when a party dug in might make their break and run for the nearest village, hoping the predators would stay put in dens. It would be a terrible risk. But he’d heard of miners taking that measure without a rider.

Except—this party had a horse.

He didn’t want to think about dire possibilities in too specific images: the night was chancy enough and they had a scared and sleepy kid on their hands.

“They’re coming in,” Callie muttered. “It’s getting stronger the last while.”

“Mama?” Jennie said, and stirred awake in a frightened jerk.

“Hush.” Callie stroked Jennie’s hair. “Nothing’s happening.”

“I had a bad dream,” Jennie said, and Rain came close and nosed at her. Jennie reached out and patted him, and tucked down again where it was warm.

They couldn’t lie to Jennie. They couldn’t hold her out of what was happening or protect her from it—eight years old, and there was so very little time in which to learn all she had to know to survive—including when it was time to be scared, or angry, or how to keep herself in check to hold onto the horses and not let them spook, because in Shimmer’s and Slip’s reckonings, let alone in Rain’s, Jennie was all of a sudden and in this crisis a serious presence—when she wasn’t drifting off asleep.

Just last fall she’d still been <baby,> and even lately Shimmer still protected her that way; but Shimmer was pushing Jennie away tonight the way Shimmer shoved Rain aside, who was her last, now-grown foal.

Young horse. No brakes on his sensing things. No self-protection. He belonged with a herd, not in a winter den with a pregnant mare, a stallion in rut, and a kid herself years from puberty in close mental contact with a horse that was in the throes of it. He didn’tlike it under ordinary circumstances.

But he could no longer blame Rain for the sending out there. It was real, and Callie was right, it was coming in: they could all feel the sense of <presence in the storm, human and horse> getting closer by the passing minute.

And it was from the direction of the Climb, not from the direction of Mornay—that was increasingly sure in the sending the nearer it came. If it was a rider from anywhere on the High Loop, they’d have had to have ridden pastEvergreen to get to that side of the village.

“Up the Climb,” Callie said faintly. “Why on earth?”

So Callie heard it the same way, and became certain of the direction at the same moment he did.

The rider with that horse had to be crazy, Ridley thought. Shimmer was <spooked.> Slip was <spooked and angry.>

And though right and justice said that once they were reasonably sure they were hearing any rider they ought by all means to beacon him in from such a storm, the skittery character of the sending still made Ridley reluctant to reach out to it.

Maybe it was just Rain’s young nerves. Maybe it was the distance over which they were picking things up, impressions maybe carried by wild creatures snugged down in their dens, things of little brains and little accuracy about an image.

But knowing for certain enough that it wasanother rider: <Riders and shelter here,> he imaged out into the dark, laying himself open to whatever danger might lie in a sending coming back at them. <Camp walls,> he promised that presence. <Food and warmth.>

Callie made up her mind, too. She joined him, with, <Riders here. Fire and water boiling> and said, “I’ll go tell the marshal there’s strangers coming.”

Plainer and plainer to human ears, the ringing of a storm-driven bell, and the delirious dream of <hot water and shelter.> Danny struggled to keep his feet and keep moving; but even believing safety was in front of them, Carlo was fast failing him, losing not the will but the strength to fight his body upright against the wind. Carlo might fall and freeze in all but sight and hail of shelter.

<Leaving Brionne behind,> Danny began to think. But that meant <leaving Randy> because neither of them could carry him, and it meant <Carlo too weak to shoot,> if he left Carlo to defend his brother and sister from vermin and went ahead for help.

He held to Cloud’s mane in the deep snow, gripping the travois pole with a right hand that had lost all feeling. His feet—he didn’t even know.

<Rider in the snow,> he sent for all he was worth, and drove all his efforts toward that bell that rang louder and louder—too tired himself to pull the travois alone, unable to go faster than Carlo could go.

A beautiful image began to come clearer and clearer to him: <warm den, other riders, man, woman, child shoveling the rider gate clear of snow, horse helping dig.>

There were <bunks, supper, warm mash.> They promised the preacher’s Heaven after their day and night of hell, and to reach it, Danny began to believe he’d have to stand still and try to beacon help to them. Breath came raw and cold. Feet faltered repeatedly.

Then out of the bitter cold and the swirling snow—a dark barrier loomed up among the evergreens like a wall across the world, logs and snow, and <life and warmth> waiting for them behind it.

Carlo saw it, too. Cloud did, and all but pulled them through a succession of drifts by the grip Danny had on his mane.

<Randy warm by the fire,> he was picking up from Carlo. <Randy drinking hot tea, Brionne by the fire—>

There wasn’t anything of <Carlo by the fire.> But there hadn’t been enough of <Carlo> all up the mountain, in Danny’s reckoning. It was everything for Randy. Everything for Brionne and not damn well enough of self-preservation.

“Listen to me.” Danny struggled to have a voice at all as, letting Cloud go, he struggled toward paradise and the gate in that solid wall. He said it as fiercely as he could, before thoughts scattered again toward safety and comfort, and before he lost his chance, with distance, to put his own pain between them and eavesdroppers: “Listen to me. You shut it down, Carlo. You shut it down entirely— everything that happened—and you shut Randy down. They’re riders. They’ll kill us as soon as look at us if you go acting crazy in a winter camp. Same way Tara threw us out. So you shut up.”

“We’re here,” Carlo said, seeming bewildered. “We made it to the shelter.”

“We’re not in a damn shelter. This is the village, do you understand me? We haven’t got any place we can put your sister but in the rider camp till the camp boss passes on us and we can’t let her wake up, you understand me?”

“Yeah,” Carlo said faintly. “Yeah. I do.”

“You let me do the talking and you keep her as far away from the horses as you can get. You don’t think about anything down the mountain. You don’t thinkabout it till you’re over villageside. Think about <clouds.> Think about water. <Still water.> Keep Randy quiet. Got it?”

He wasn’t sure Carlo understood everything Carlo said he did. He’d intended—getting to the shelter—having time to figure out a course of next action in that top-of-the-ridge cabin they’d missed. He’d had in mind a slower, more reasoned approach to the villages up here.