“What’s he saying? What happened, mama?”

“So what isthe story?” Ridley asked him, dead calm, as controlled as a rider needed to be. The horses couldn’t hear them here. At least, they shouldn’t be able to.

And he needn’t tell even half of it. He’d given his caution, in asking that the kids leave the camp. They hadn’t. He said only, “Somebody opened a gate. I don’t want to give the details—don’t know the range from your den—”

“Is your horse all right?” Ridley asked. The senior rider here, boss-man in this camp, had an absolute right to ask that question. He had a kid lying on his hearth stiff and gone somewhere she couldn’t get back from. He had a strange horse in the den with their horses. He had a village locked in for the winter, with all its people. He had a daughter as well as a partner to protect.

And if they themselves hadn’t been hallucinating, he had a horse out there in the woods whose distress had waked the wild things in their burrows and relayed its sending God knew how far, disturbing the mountain a second time in less than a month.

“We weren’t there when it happened,” Danny said, the horse-and-rider we, but he wouldn’t elaborate more than he had to, either— didn’t quite lie, just leaned very heavily on Ridley’s assurance the horses in the den were beyond their ordinary range of picking up human beings.

Which could change if one horse picked up a suspicion of human distress in the rider barracks—and they had a young horse out there, an unridden horse of their own, at a stage notorious for being loud and hearing even humans unnaturally far.

So he concentrated entirely on the cup in his hands and sipped it this time not to keep his voice from cracking, but to save his mind from wobbling from the very narrow path of information he had to hold.

“I came in after the fact. These three—they’re all that lived through it. They’re brothers and sister. We’ve been trying not to think of it near the horses. Couldn’t do anything for the girl down there. She’s caught in it, deeper and deeper. She used to react to things. She doesn’t now. I understand there’s supposed to be a doctor in the village.”

The woman pressed Jennie against her legs. Danny found his hands shaking so he burned himself as the tea slopped over. He didn’t look at their faces. He didn’t want to. A mind that wasn’t right wasn’t ever anything to bring near the horses.

A mind that wasn’t right wasn’t anything to leave within range of anythingof the Wild. And Brionne’s mind, above all else that was wrong with her, wasn’t right. They were senior riders. They had to recognize the kind of shock she was in and know that she was dangerous. He’d meant to be out in a shelter tonight—come to Evergreen on a clear, quiet day with no emergency in the situation. But that wasn’twhat had happened. Things were done—choices were made around a set of facts that involved several lives, facts he didn’t want to let loose just for the asking—because the truth could cause a panic that itself could get people killed.

“Was it her,” Ridley asked, “making that spook-feeling out there?”

No, he thought: direction and location had been in the sending: that was what had made it so damn real. It had convinced Cloud.

“No,” he said aloud. “I’m pretty sure it was behind us. A horse. Rider’s died. With the sister’s condition—I didn’t want to stay where it was.”

“Go get the marshal,” Ridley said, meaning, Danny thought, get the little kid out of here and get Brionne the hellout of reach of the horses. The woman took the kid and went out the door to the passageway they’d used—a second and third passage had gone off from there, he remembered them in the light from the door.

Ridley went meanwhile and warmed Carlo’s cup with tea from the pot. Randy was sleeping like the dead, on his stomach, his hand up near his face, head on his arm—he didn’t wake for anything. Poor kid, Danny thought, and hopedthere was better luck for the brothers. They’d earned it.

Ridley came and poured tea into his cup. And in that closeness and the quiet of the ambient Danny took the chance. “There’s more to it than I’ve said. We’reall right. But get the girl out of here fairly soon.”

“What have you brought us?” Ridley asked sharply, and Danny ducked his head to cough—he’d been wanting to since he tipped his head back, and he didn’t want to look Ridley in the eyes.

“Dammit.” Ridley dropped down on his haunches to meet him eye to eye in that privacy of the fire-crackle and the wind outside; and the ambient still stayed quiet and numb as he finished his coughing fit with a swallow of tea that still had spirits in it. “What’s going on down there?” Ridley asked. “What’s a Shameseyrider doing here, for God’s sake? What’s the real story?”

“Rescuing a friend,” Danny repeated. He heard the indignation in Ridley’s voice. He knew he deserved it. “It’s a long story. Get the kids safe and I’ll talk.” He took another sip of the spirit-laced tea, saw Carlo staring into his cup as if it held answers, and saw Randy sleeping.

Brionne didn’t change. Thank God. He was all but counting the minutes until they could bring someone in and get Brionne out of the camp. And very rapidly now the very last reserve of strength was running out of him. He sipped the tea and his hands began to shake.

Feeling was coming back to his feet. They hurt. His hands did. His face did.

“The whole damn season’s felt bad,” Ridley said in a more moderate tone. It wasn’t like a <quiet water> statement. It was a peace offering he didn’t deserve, from a man he deserved worse of, in a situation he couldn’t, right now, discuss. This was, Danny thought, a good-hearted and forgiving man. A man more reasonable than he deserved to have to deal with—he hadn’t wantedto go all the way to Evergreen. But he had. And now he had to deal with the consequences.

“Yeah.” Agreement seemed safest, agreement with everything the local riders said at least until he could use clear-headed judgement.

Meanwhile Carlo had edged over to try to see to his brother, lifting the blanket they’d wrapped him in to look at his feet, and that movement was a distraction for the conversation. “How is he?” he asked Carlo across the intervening space.

“I don’t know.” Carlo let the blanket down. Randy didn’t stir through any of it, and Carlo made a fast swipe at his eyes. Carlo’s hand was shaking.

Ridley got up and squatted down again to take a look at Randy’s hands and feet and ears. He looked at Carlo’s, too, while he was at it.

“Better than yours,” Ridley said. “Work your fingers. Fist.”

Carlo tried. Ridley made a doubtful expression. “Horse medicine,” Ridley said, and got a small grimy pot off the shelf and squatted down and rubbed salve into Carlo’s hands. “Hands and feet. You take the pot with you, son. It’s cheap. We’ve got buckets of it for the horses. Use it. Marshal’s going to find a place for you. You think you need a doctor?”

“No.” Carlo shook his head fast, and Danny could read his mind without Cloud’s help: Carlo didn’t want to be under the same roof with his sister. Didn’t want Randy there, either. “Smith,” Carlo said. “Our folks—” His voice faded and came back again. “They were the smiths down in Tarmin. Need—need to find work if we can.”

“Ours might take you on.” Ridley maintained a tight reserve. “But those hands aren’t going to be fit for smith-work for a while.” He patted Carlo gently on the leg and got up to pace the floor—another not too difficult guess, that Ridley was aching for Callie to get back safely with the marshal and a means to get his problem out of the camp.

Danny drank his tea and kept his mouth shut, feeling even with the pain in his feet and hands and ears that he could pass out where he was sitting—but he held on: if something happened, he wanted to be awake. He wanted to know what disposition village authorities would make of the boys and Brionne, who came under village law.