Nightmare journey

psychic force that was the living city? Do you further mean for me to believe that Chaney and Kiera are primitives because they hunted our meat with their teeth and claws, like mindless animals?
    The wolf-man growled his disapproval of that last remark, and he unthinkingly popped his shiny claws from their protective sheaths, hunched his head forward so that his jaw was more prominent.
    I'm not saying that you are an animal, Jask 'pathed to the wolf- man. In fact, I don't think so at all. I'm merely applying the philosophy that you've spouted to me in the last few minutes.
    Chaney looked away from him, retracted his wicked claws, spat in the snow and tried to find something to look at besides his four companions and the hundred horses below. He finally settled on lifting his head back and staring at the sky, which was dotted with swiftly moving clouds and stained with late-afternoon sunshine.
    Well? Jask asked them again.
    No one responded.
    Melopina?
    I'm afraid, Jask.
    He looked at the horses again.
    They still grazed peacefully, unaware of the discussion on the hilltop, their long hair shifting this way and that in the wind.
    Well, he 'pathed to the other four, I don't intend to walk. If you want to wear your feet to the knees and arrive at the pit four months later than I do, you're welcome to that idiosyncrasy.
    He stepped forward, past Kiera.
    The horses paid no attention.
    He picked out a large, dark mount, sought the shell of its mind with esp fingers, found it, touched it. It was nearly featureless, a smooth shell filled more with general impressions than with details, with emotions rather than intellect, with hazy memories in place of the clarity of a four-dimensional, intellectual understanding of the nature of time. All this was easily grasped- even more easily controlled,
    Jask stood for five minutes, motionless, learning the horse, seeking its fears and allaying them, locating its pleasures and promising those.
    The horse turned, looked up the hill at him, but did not panic.
    Come here.
    It snorted, bent, took a mouthful of grass, and, trotting at a brisk pace but not so fast as to frighten the other beasts, it climbed the hill and came up to Jask.
    Jask patted its black nose.
    The horse snuffled and nuzzled his head. Its tail swished back and forth, evidence of its trust in him.
    He walked around its side, grabbed a handful of the thick mane along its spine, and swung himself to the center of its back.
    Well? he 'pathed to the others.
    Melopina walked forward, surveyed the animals below, chose one, and in minutes was mounted beside Jask.
    We've acted somewhat like fools, Tedesco 'pathed.
    Somewhat! Jask 'pathed.
    You had your turn at bullheadedness, the bruin said. Have grace enough to permit us ours.
    In ten minutes they were all seated atop the wild horses, though none of the horses was wild any longer.
    As they rode down the hillside and sent the other horses galloping in a herd before them, Tedesco 'pathed to Jask, You're not the same Pure lad I led out of the Highlands of Caul.
    I know, Jack said. But you are the same Tedesco-and I'm damned glad of that!
    They grinned at each other for a moment, before the bruin suddenly became self-conscious.
    Let's make some time now that we're off our feet! Tedesco roared.
    He leaned over his enormous mount's sleek neck, clinging to the copious blanket of hair that lay over its back, kicked its sides lightly, and galloped swiftly away.
    They rode during the day, stopping every two hours to walk their horses, water them, and stretch their own legs. They did not press the well-muscled beasts to achieve too great a distance in any single day, though they suspected the horses' endurance was greater than theirs; they all got blistered rumps in short order. Two things kept them from abusing the horses: First, they knew that they would need them for many weeks, and they did not want to wear them out and be left with hundreds of kilometers to cover on foot; second, since they had meshed with the beasts, they felt a certain sympathy, a tenderness, an obligation to be good masters.
    From January Slash they passed into the sparsely populated buffer nation of McCall's Hold, a narrow strip of country, beyond which lay another pocket of the ubiquitous Wildlands, Iron Man's Trust. In the week they took to cross this small territory, they saw thousands of robots piled in rusting heaps in the streets of crumbling villages, which-judging from the scarcity of human skeletons-had