“You liar!” the mother started shouting—and nothing came through the ambient. It was a curious numbness.

“She wanted the horses!” Tara shouted back. “And thanks to the fact she didn’ttell us, and she went out that gate on her own, and without our advice, she’s probably met something we could have wished she hadn’t. It wasn’t the Goss boys’ fault. I sawthe father beating the boys; I saw it in his mind and I saw it in theirs!”

“Blasphemy’s not court evidence!” the religious yelled. “You can’t blaspheme against the almighty human God and call it evidence!”

“God,” Tara muttered in disgust, and cast a look at the judge, who hammered the table furiously.

“She is a liar!” the mother screamed. “She was luring our Brionne to perversions! They’reresponsible!”

“Then you can go to bloody hell!” Mina yelled. “There’s a rogue horse out there! Your precious Brionne went out to it! If she’s lucky, it didn’t take her! If she’s not—God knows what we’re in for! So if you want to winter here without riders, you’re on your way, woman! The road crew’s not back and the two that went out looking for your daughter were supposed to be back in a couple of hours—yesterday! So go to hell! We’ll take care of our own, if that’s where we stand!”

People were shouting over the last that Mina had to say, people who were scared about the rogue and scared as hell to have the riders offended, people yelling about God and blasphemy, going quickly from words to shoving and pushing—the judge was getting no attention from anyone with his hammering; and Tara grabbed Mina by the arm to get her away from the edge of the porch before rocks went flying.

“Take it easy, for God’s sake!”

“I’ll beout that gate! I’m not trading us for these fools!” Mina jerked away, headed for the side porch steps, and Tara grabbed her again.

“Mina, use your head!”

“I’ve used my head, I’ve waited. If you’re with them ahead of us, maybe that’s your choice, Tara, but it’s not mine.”

“Mina!”

Mina had jerked to be free, and Tara jerked hard back, realizing in the moment she did it that there wasan ambient now. It had come flooding around them subtle as body-temperature water— you didn’t know it was there, and it was, and it ran over the nerves and stole the breath. “ Mina, dammit!” Crowd-noise was everywhere. Minds were everywhere. A gunshot went off, right next them, but that was a gun on their side, the marshal firing his pistol off.

“ Shut up!” the marshal yelled into a sudden silence, and Tara dragged Mina back to Luisa’s spot near the rear of the porch. The marshal was yelling about law and order and how they’d better listen to the judge or he was going to start making arrests.

“You can’t argue against almighty God,” somebody yelled; and the judge ruled the man in contempt and fined him fifty on the spot. Other howls went up over that, and the mother started yelling about justice again—

“Shut up!” the judge shouted, and banged the hammer, until it had to dent the table top. “It’s clear we’ve got witnesses missing.”

“You can’t take testimony—” —from riders, the religious was clearly about to argue, but the hammer came down again.

“Another fifty! I say I’m not finding cause for a trial until after we’ve got all the principals, and they’re not here. Marshal, lock these boys up until somebody—”

But the words faded out. There was just <dark, snow, wind.>

Tara felt <Mina slipping from her hand,> felt <Skip and Flicker and Green> in angry distress… felt <hundreds of minds… shooting and not-shooting, panic and dark and screaming… >

“Mina!” Luisa screamed, halfway down the steps, in pursuit of her partner, but Tara grabbed the railing and got focus enough to will <calm water. Quiet water. Flicker. Quiet water. Quiet. Quiet air.>

“Damnation!” a resisting mind cried, but the ambient was gibbering nonsense, <fear-fear-fear> and something more.

Tara needed the railing to keep her balance, and she fought with that noisy mind, with a deliberate < behave!>

A scream. Shocked quiet, after. She could feel the railing wobble under her gloves. She looked up at the marshal with a sense of desperation, her partners having cleared a space for themselves in the yard. The ambient was complete chaos.

“Something’s wrong,” she said, maybe louder than she should— her ears weren’t hearing: her mind was, and she felt she had to shout. “Keep that gate closed. If the kid comes back and wants in—don’t listen. Keep that gate closed!”

Her partners went toward the camp. She had to be there. She was the only one who might argue Mina out of doing something foolish, but they were <wanting the camp, wanting quiet dark, wanting Skip and Green, > and she suddenly could hear Flicker—<wanting Tara. Wanting fight, wanting kick.>

Bang! something went at the Little Gate. Bang! of nighthorse hooves.

She didn’t know what the marshal answered. She overtook her younger partners on the run, the crowd seething with questions and fears of the unknown outside—more than one voice was raised in screaming panic.

No comfort existed in the ambient.

<Dark. The going-apart. Flicker wanting through gate. Wanting Tara. Danger! Now!>

Chapter xv

THERE WERE STORIES—HOW SOMETIMES IN SPRING THEY FOUND people frozen on the mountains, just the way they’d sat down, and when the wind blew the fire out, Danny began to fear some party coming up the road with the thaw would find them all that way in a melting snowbank, still huddled around dead sticks.

“Maybe the son of a bitch froze,” Quig said, hugging one hand under his arm for protection.

But Harper swore at everybody and Watt kept working, using a lighter, the lot of them using their bodies and holding a tarp to shield the fire until it took.

Stupid place to camp, Danny thought, while he contributed his own skinny body to the effort and held a corner of the tarp.

They’d found a less windy place a little downland, and thanks to Harper’s pushing everyone, they’d ended up at the edge of dark camped in hellish cold, on the high uphill of the road, where the wind could get a run at them and the horses had no grazing.

They’d run both late and tired, slogging ahead at a pace that taxed both humans and horses, walking and riding by turns—the last had been walking, the Hallanslakers’ horses and Cloud alike simply refusing to carry weight any farther on the uphill.

And finally their road had met another road at a rider-stone, way, way up in the windy cold, where—contrary to expectations of shelter one ought to find at a rider-stone—there wasn’t.

There might still be one fairly close. Maybe even a village—he wasn’t so clear on the distances up here. But the Hallanslakers either knew there wasn’t a shelter—or they had some reason not to go find it. Danny didn’t ask. He didn’t ask anything or question anything since they’d hit him for no more than thinking. He’d found he could tuck down and be quiet—and he was so cold he was brittle. He truly didn’t want to be hit right now. He just kept his grip on the tarp edge and kept as quiet as he could while Harper and his friends from Hallanslake did whatever seemed reasonable to people who couldn’t go into villages.

The rebel thought didn’t get him hit. He didn’t entirely understand why not, except maybe they didn’t want to let go of the tarp to do it.

And that thought didn’t get him hit, either.

He supposed what he thought wasn’t going into the ambient with any strength at all because the horses were tucked together at more than a stone’s toss distant, in a clump of old bearded evergreen, where the wind was less—except Cloud, who sulked apart, but on their lee side, so he had them for a windbreak, Cloud being no fool.