Exile's Children (59 page)

“Think you so?” Yazte sighed hugely. “I see little chance for any of us. I think perhaps we are all doomed.”

“Perhaps we should pray,” Kahteney suggested.

“You've not already?” Yazte pantomimed surprise.

Kahteney knew his akaman too well to take offense, so he only nodded and said, “I have. But perhaps we should hold a Prayer Ceremony.”

Yazte sniffed. “If you think it might do some good. But meanwhile I think I'll take your other advice.”

“Which?” Kahteney asked.

“The messenger,” Yazte answered. “I shall send a rider to the Commacht to find out what Racharran does.”

They came down off the ridgetop cautious as wolves with man-scent on the wind. Rannach took the lead, guiding the stallion with knees alone, his hands on bow and shaft, his eyes alert for sign of promised danger. Morrhyn followed behind, one hand holding the mare's rein, the other locked in her mane. He feared he'd otherwise fall, and cursed his weak
ness. A bow and arrows hung quivered on his saddle, but he doubted he had the strength to flight a shaft. If what he dreaded did wait below, then it should be Rannach's fight alone, and he like some invalid, one of the helpless ones. He prayed his dream was wrong and knew it could not be. Had he any power now, it was oneiric, prophetic.
Something
awaited them.

He clung to the mare as she plunged through the snow drifted amongst the breaks. Perhaps, he thought, the danger lay in the river. Even with the ford, that must be perilous to cross. Frozen along its banks, the water was snow-gorged, running cold and swift, with sizable chunks of ice racing on the flood. It should be easy for a horse to lose footing there, or panic at the onrush of floes. He shuddered at the thought of finding himself unhorsed in midstream, doubting he could hold his seat if the mare bucked; sure that he must die if he fell into the icy water.

He turned a head that ached with the cold toward the walls of the break they descended. Snow glittered there, under a hard blue sky, the sun watery above. Ahead, its rays layered veins of gold on the black water of the river, the floating ice all gemlike—silver and blue. Ahead, Rannach's stallion snorted and began to plunge against the rein.

Rannach came out of the saddle in a single fluid movement, leaving the stallion to wade back to Morrhyn.

“He scents something.” As he spoke, his eyes moved across the terrain below. “Hold him and wait here. Keep them both quiet if you can.”

Morrhyn nodded and urged the mare closer to the nervous stallion. “Be careful, eh?” He took the stallion's rein. The horse snapped yellow teeth and he wondered if he
could
hold both animals: the mare sensed her companion's unease and began herself to shift under him. He wound both reins in his left hand and promised himself that if he should be unseated, he would lie in the snow and hold them until Rannach came back.

If
Rannach came back.

The younger man was already scrambling up the side of the break, his head bared now so that the warrior's braids flung loose. Pale sunlight shone on the fastening brooches. Morrhyn remembered they were Arrhyna's gifts, and how proud Rannach was to wear them.

Then Rannach was gone, cresting the break's wall to find cover behind a snow-clad boulder. It was a vantage point that afforded him a large view across the surrounding network of ravines and washes. They angled down like the scratchings of some gigantic beast to the river, all dips and hollows that radiated from off the ridge. He tested the wind—
it blew from off the river to his right, but when he chanced rising enough that he could scan the banks for some distance in both directions, he saw nothing.

So, whatever scent the stallion had caught came from the right, but not along the river. Therefore, from one of the dips and gulches in that direction. He eased his bowstring down and began to crawl on his belly across the crest.

The depression on the farther side was empty: he slithered down and worked his way on cautious feet to the riverside end, then slunk along the descending slope to the next break.

Fox-wary, he eased around the wall, and saw what had frightened his horse.

It frightened him.

He had seen the Breakers at a distance, from a safe position, but now he looked close on one, and on the creature the Breaker rode. He knew he must kill them both, for they must surely sight him and Morrhyn at the ford and come after them. And he knew they could not outrun that great
thing,
with its massive, clawed paws and hugely muscled legs, not even were his stallion unweary. And Morrhyn would likely fall off Arrhyna's mare, or both horses panic. And there was the river to ford, and Morrhyn said there was no time to waste.

So …

He drew his bowstring tight and sighted down the shaft, trying hard not to think of Arrhyna or the child she carried, for such thoughts urged him to turn and flee, go back to them and leave Ket-Ta-Witko and the People to their fate. But he had made a promise: he could not flee. He swallowed a breath that would be released with his shaft, and hesitated as the beast coughed out a sullen grumble and raised one great paw, licking at the pads for all the world like some enormous cat worrying at a splinter or a cut.

So that was why the Breaker and his beast were alone: the creature was hurt. Rannach might have smiled had he truly believed that afforded him some advantage, but he did not think it did. Even wounded, that thing could slay him. And did he slay the beast, then he must surely face the other, whose armor shone rose-pink as a summer flower and seemed to shift and shimmer so that his eyes could not properly follow its outlines.

But he had made a promise, and he was a warrior. He drew the bowstring until fletchings brushed his cheek, and stepped around the break's concealing wall to loose his shaft.

The lion-thing roared loud enough to wake the dead as the arrow pierced its eye. Its head lurched back, jaws spread wide so that Rannach
saw all the dreadful panoply of its fangs even as he drew a second arrow and nocked it to the string. He bent the bow and let fly again.

The shaft drove into the throat and over the furred scales there, blood darkening the pale flesh. The creature dropped its hurt paw and fell as it clawed at the missiles embedded in its eye and neck.

Rannach drew and fired three more shafts as the awful howling filled up the break and echoed off the walls. He had always been good with a bow, and each arrow struck where he aimed: one drove into the belly, another lanced the remaining eye, the third went in between the jaws.

Then he dropped the bow as the Breaker closed on him.

The invader came fast across the snow, leaving him no time to use that weapon again, so that he let the curved bone drop and snatched hatchet and knife from their scabbards.

Good Grannach steel those blades, the ax mounted on a pole of firetempered hickory wrapped round with soaked leather that had hardened like a second skin. Nor less the knife, its haft secure in his left hand, the blade half an arm's length of pointed metal honed sharp on both its sides.

He ducked under the longer blade the Breaker swung and took the reversing stroke with the hatchet, turning to drive the knife against his opponent's ribs. Had he fought one of the People, his counter would have driven the blade deep through hide and flesh, and hurt and weakened enough he might turn his hatchet and stove in the skull. But the Breaker was armored, and he felt his arm jarred by the impact, a hard metallic elbow slammed against his cheek. He staggered, retreating as the sword reversed and came threatening toward his chest.

He danced back, hampered by the snow, grateful it was not drifted and deep but stamped down by the paws of the screaming beast he prayed was dying, else he was surely lost.

The Breaker's blade glittered, darting in sweeping arcs at his head and chest. It was not such a combat as he was accustomed to, and he sprang farther back, wary as he gauged the reach of his enemy. The sword was twice the length and more of his knife, and he saw the Breaker held it in a double-handed grip and knew that one blow must cut him down, or take off his head.

And then he saw that each sweep turned the Breaker a little to the side. Not long, for the man was very fast and the sword came hurling back even before he exposed his armored ribs—but there
was
a moment. No more than an instant, an eye's blink of time, but perhaps enough.

Rannach wondered how far away were the Breaker's companions. He thought this solitary beastrider must be one of some scouting party,
separated from the rest when the lion-thing went lame. He wondered how far those agonized screams carried, how long before the rest heard them and came back.

“No time,” Morrhyn had said: he could not delay.

Once, he had slain a Tachyn raider with a thrown hatchet. He doubted even Grannach steel, thrown, would pierce the armor the Breaker wore. But close, could he get past that scything blade …

He feigned a stumble, feinted under a vicious, sweeping cut, and dove forward, rolling headlong over the trampled snow to rise inside the Breaker's reach, his hatchet rising and falling even as his knife drove up.

The hatchet hammered against the Breaker's concealing helm; the knife found flesh between the helmet and the armor's collar. Rannach turned the knife, twisting the blade even as he thrust it deeper, even as he smashed the hatchet against the helm.

He felt warmth on his knife hand and knew it was the heat of blood spilling out. He felt the Breaker's arms close around him and the man's weight fold against him, dragging him down onto his knees. Still he pounded the helmet with his ax, and saw the helm buckle and split. For an instant, through the concealing faceplate, he saw blue eyes staring at him in naked surprise. Then the light went out of them and the Breaker gusted a sigh that sounded weary, and was only deadweight.

Rannach pushed the body away and looked toward the dead man's mount. The lion-thing still moved, but its cries were softer now—pained mewlings rather than roars. He climbed to his feet and walked toward it.

It was no pleasanter to observe close up than at a distance. It seemed to him an abomination, neither one true creature or another but some horrid amalgamation, as if some malign creator had taken the parts of several animals and worked them together in obscene parody of what was true. But it was a beast of some kind, and for all that he had wounded it unto death, still he felt a kind of sorrow for its suffering and thought of it as a horse hurt in battle. He lifted his hatchet and brought it down against the rolling skull.

The thing coughed blood and ceased its mewling. Rannach went back to the fallen Breaker.

The man lay on his back on the snow. Blood oozed from under the helmet, dark in contrast with the rose-colored armor. Rannach wondered how a Breaker's face should look. Evil, he supposed, as weirdly distorted as the beasts they rode. He kicked the fallen figure, tapped the lolling head with his hatchet.

It did not move, save to roll and flop in that manner that only the dead possess, so he reached down to find the fastenings and pull the helmet loose.

He started back at what he saw, gasping, for he had revealed the face of a beautiful woman, her eyes wide as they stared sightlessly into the oblivion of the sky. Her hair was long and the color of honey, tumbling loose about perfect features, the bones delicate, the flesh smooth and soft and tan.

Rannach stared at her awhile, then spat and wiped a hand over his face. He rose and found his bow, then went back to where Morrhyn waited.

The Dreamer said, “Praise the Maker, I feared you were slain. I heard screaming …”

“Her mount,” Rannach said. “I killed it.”

“
Her
mount?”

“Did your visions not tell you that?” Rannach said. “She was a woman!” He took his horse's rein and shook his head. “I slew a woman, Morrhyn. A woman! What does that make me? Am I now a woman-killer? Am I now like Vachyr?”

Morrhyn looked out from under the hood of his cape and fixed Rannach with the heat of his burning eyes. “She was a Breaker,” he said.

“She was a woman!”

Morrhyn nodded. “And did she plead with you? Did she ask your help? Ask you to aid her as you would a woman of the People?”

Rannach shook his head and said, “No, she attacked me. She'd have taken my head were I not swifter.”

“Then she was your enemy,” Morrhyn said. “Do you think women are weaker than men? I tell you, no. Listen! Would Arrhyna not fight were she called? Do you think your mother would not take up a blade to defend your father? Do the women of the People not take up arms to defend the clans?”

Rannach nodded. “But not like that. Not all warlike.”

“She was a Breaker,” Morrhyn said. “And they are not like us.” Save they be out other side, he thought. Was that not a part of my dreams? That the Breakers
are
that other side, like shadow to sunlight?

“Even so.” Rannach swung astride the stallion. “I cannot enjoy killing a woman.”

“Likely she'll not be the last.” Morrhyn pointed a finger toward the river. “They'd take Ket-Ta-Witko and lay it waste, feed the People to their beasts—those who survive. So, do we go on? Or shall you mourn her and give her honorable burial, and we wait here until her comrades come for us?”

Rannach looked at him out of troubled eyes. “Are you become so hard?” he asked.

Morrhyn looked him back and answered, “Yes. Now take me to the Wintering Ground, else your conscience destroy the People.”

They forded the river and nighted in the timber on the flatland beyond, then traversed the plain and rode toward the Commacht's ancestral Wintering Ground. Morrhyn's dreams spoke of no further danger along their way, but troubled him nonetheless, for they seemed to promise a homecoming that was somehow not there.

He could not understand that, only advise Rannach that they continue onward. He wondered if the Breakers now owned larger magicks that clouded even the dreams the Maker sent him, or if the Maker himself denied that final promise.