“It came from the village side,” she said. It was all she was certain of. The rogue might be across the village, next the wall—that was her first clear thought. She went for the narrow gate, the gate no horse could pass, and she began to run, her feet cracking the frozen, pitted crust.

“Tara?” Luisa called out. And Mina: “Wait, dammit! We’re coming!”

“Stay there,” she turned around to shout. “Stay with the horses!”

She wasn’t the only one who’d taken alarm. The village bell began to toll the three-stroke that called Assembly.

The village didn’t know what it was. She guessed that much before she even reached the gate. She lifted the latch, went through, aware that Flicker had followed her, aware of Flicker’s frustration at the gate Flicker couldn’t pass.

She didn’t have her gun. She hadn’t even brought her gloves— fool, she said to herself when she checked her pockets. She was damned little use. But she found herself in a flood of villagers in nightclothes and robes and boots and carrying guns and even axes, all streaming toward the common hall, to find out what no one knew and what the ambient, even reinforced by the concerted effort of anxious horses, couldn’t tell her.

But before she ever reached the hall she was hearing rumors— the blacksmiths’ neighbors, Vonner and Rath, came running up saying it was the blacksmiths’ house the shot had come from.

The crowd surged in that direction then, unordered, unruly— she was uneasy, walking deaf in a group of people who didn’t read the ambient, either, unless that feeling of unease she had now was coming from elsewhere.

One of Andy Goss’ kids was on the doorstep. The other came out with a gun dangling in his hand. And shefeared she knew.

In the next moment the village marshal came up and took the gun from the boy without resistance.

Andy Goss’ wife, Mindy Rath, was safe. But Andy Goss wasn’t.

Dead, the marshal’s deputy reported with a grimace, on a quick glance inside the door. Bad in there, Tara thought.

And the marshal took the boys away, both of them. Tara caught whispers of dismay, whispers that the Goss-Raths were an upstanding family, and nobody could imagine what prompted it.

She didn’t know what to do, what to say, how to explain to them. But half the crowd went away, shivering in the cold, and the marshal took the boys away. And she didn’t know what she could say that would make it better.

So she went back the way she’d come, through the rider gate, and found Mina and Luisa, dressed for the cold, out in the yard with the horses.

She told them. She said, remembering Andy Goss and the boys beside the den: “They loved him. I think they killed him.”

<The porch, the boys, the gun, the wife. Herself, watching from the crowd.> She remembered from their meeting beside the den <the boys hating Brionne, wanting their father.>

She added, in a feeling of utter shock: “I think that was why they did it.”

The day came up still misting rain, a gray drizzle outside the shelter. Guil lifted his head, and pain like a knife went from one point to the other of his skull and bounced. Several times. He let his head back, eyes shut.

He didn’t want to move after that. He just wanted to lie there and breathe until his head mended or he died.

But Burn got up, slow shifting of a heavy body, a second imperilment of the roof supports. He heard the timbers creak.

Then a breathing horse-smelling shadow came between him and the daylight, and Burn nosed his face, puffing warm horse-breath on him. Persisting at it. Guil pushed him away with a none too coherent <Guil hurting.>

<Bacon,> Burn imaged, as if that cured headache.

And nosed him in the face again.

It took him a moment more to muster reason, and a moment after that for coherent images. <Wet wood,> Guil thought, <fire.> If he could possibly sit up, which his dizziness and the pain in his head made a nauseating prospect, he was resolved that Burn should have bacon, if there were any wood to be had.

He’d never asked Burn to do the job. It seemed worth a try. <Burn finding wood. Burn dragging it back to the shelter, wood making fire, fire with bacon.>

<Cattle,> Burn thought. Burn didn’t believe fire made bacon. Or didn’t think wood made fire. At this point in the morning, Guil didn’t know what he believed, either.

But he groaned, and shifted in his cocoon of blanket, slicker, sodden coat, and sodden shirt. Which reminded him he hadn’t dried out during the night, and he needed fire for more reasons than bacon.

“Hell,” he moaned, tried to reckon in fact where he was going to get wood. <Burn on grassy hills. Finding wood. Guil hurting. Fire. Big fire. Trees. Wood. Burn dragging wood with his teeth.>

Burn didn’t think so. Burn imaged <bacon> and <Guil riding.>

<Burn outside.>

The last made his head hurt. It upset Burn, who went out imaging <fire> and <dark> and <fight.> And there wasn’t a damned thing out there. Guil could see it in Burn’s images as if he was seeing it with his own eyes: <eroded stone, bare rock, puddles and more barren hills with tufts of grass… >

<Burn.> Guil wanted him back now, and Burn came back under the roof.

<Fire,> Burn imaged, imaged <heat,> which was some help. He could actually halfway feel it, illusion that it was; but wood was nowhere outside, from horizon to horizon—thank you, Aby, thank you, Jonas and Luke and Hawley.

And if he could somehow persuade Burn to go off hunting the nearest dead tree, it left him sitting alone in the Wild with a rifle and a handgun—no more than the Anveney truckers had, to be sure, and they were still fairly well in the die-off zone, but there’d been vermin last night, and he wasn’t sure he wasn’t going to fall on his face and pass out.

Which could mean coming awake with willy-wisps swarming over you, no, God no, there were ways to go, but gnawed half to death while he was passed out wasn’t one he’d choose.

Lying here wrapped in plastic, waiting for some sunny day to dry his trousers wasn’t a choice, either. He couldn’t depend on a sunny day corning along before snowfall, in which case, also thank you, Aby, he wanted dry clothing.

That meant firewood.

And since one of them couldn’t leave the other, it meant moving. He wasn’t sure he could get on Burn’s back without falling on his face, but if he did fall, Burn wouldn’t desert him.

Which meant at least willy-wisps wouldn’t come near him. So he was safer going with Burn, if he didn’t break his neck falling off. His head ached so—he really, truly, please God, didn’t want to fall on it again.

He made it by stages to his feet, splitting headache and all. He couldn’t see for a moment, couldn’t find his balance, caught himself against the shelter wall—which reminded him, lucky thing, that he had gear to take with him.

So, knowing he wasn’t tracking mentally at all, and in a gloomy shelter with his eyes not working reliably, he leaned against the wall until he could list very carefully what he had hung where and what he’d brought in.

Then he gathered up his belongings. He folded the blanket, which was still reasonably dry, and put it in the two-pack. He found his trousers and his boots, which were colder, if no wetter, than they’d been last night.

Burn was worried. Burn kept nosing him in the arm, in the back, which didn’t help his balance at all. Burn licked him on the ear.

<Burn carrying two-pack,> he imaged at Burn, figuring he’d get away with it or they weren’t going. He put on the ice-cold and sodden trousers, as something Burn’s body heat and his could somehow warm, at least: warm, wet clothes were better insulation than dry, exposed skin, and the slicker could make a tent, of sorts, on Burn’s heat-generating hide.