Exile's Gate (12 page)

"And hereafter," Morgaine
said, touching Chei on the shoulder before he could get to the saddle,
"should we meet anyone, if you have heard any other name than Morgaine
and Vanye—consider your own safety and forget that ever you heard it:
there are those who would do worse to you than ever Gault did, to have
their hands on anyone who knew different—and you could not tell them
what they would want. Do not ask me questions. For your own sake."

"Lady," Chei said to her, half-whispering. He looked straight into her eyes close at hand, and his face was pale. "Aye, lady."

Vanye walked, the
qhal-witch rode, when they had come down the streamside and found that
trail Chei knew—that narrow track the fey-minded deer and determined
borderers took which ended, often with like result, on Gault's land.

Chei watched them from his
vantage—the qhalur witch, the man who deferred to her at most times and
argued with her with a reckless violence that made his gut tighten
instinctively; a man knew, a Man knew lifelong, that the qhal-lords
were not patient of such familiarity—or Vanye himself had deceived him,
and was not human. But he could not believe that when he looked in
Vanye's brown and often-worried eyes, or when Vanye would do him some
small and unnecessary kindness or take his side—he knew that Vanye had
done that—in argument.

What
these
two were to each other he still could not decide. He had watched all
their movements, the gestures, the little instants that an expression
would soften, or she would touch his arm at times when she gave an
order—but never did he touch her in that same way or truly bid her
anything, for all he might raise his voice and dispute her.

They are lovers, he thought sometimes. Then he was equally sure that they were not—not, in the way the man deferred to her:
my lady,
Vanye would say; or
my liege,
or a third word he did not understand, but which likely signified the same.

Now they raged at each
other, argued in voices half-whisper, half-shout, in which debate
he—Vanye had said it—was undoubtedly the center of matters.

It was not the threat to
his life that bewildered him. It was that there was argument possible
at all. And between arguments he saw a thing he had never, in all his
life, beheld. He watched them in a fascination which, increasing,
absorbed his fear.

Unholy, he thought. But
there seemed profound affection between them. There was more than
that—but not in the way of any man and any woman he had known. It was
that loyalty which bound the bands together.

It was that devotion for which men had followed Ichandren till he died.

It was that motion of the
heart which he thought had died in him; and it ached of a sudden, it
ached so that he rode along with the branches and the leaves raking
him, and the tears running down his face—not fear such as he had felt
in the night, but a quiet ache, for no reason at all that he could
think of except he was alone.

He reckoned even that it
was a spell the witch had cast over him, that from the time she
surprised him with that look into his eyes, from that moment his soul
had been snared. Now he found himself weeping again—for Falwyn and the
rest, and for Bron and Ichandren his lord, and even for his father,
which was foolish, because his father was many years dead.

He was weak, that was all.
When the lady reined back and the man stopped the horse under them,
saying they would rest, he was ashamed, and pretended exhaustion,
keeping his face toward the horse as he climbed down.

So he sat with them, at the
side of what had become a dirt track, and tucked his knees up and bowed
his head against his arms so he should not have to show his eyes damp.

He should find some means
to get a weapon and break from them—in this night, in this tangle he
knew and they did not. The man he had once been would have done
something to resist them, be it only slide off the horse and hope that
he could put brush between them and him, and lie hidden.

But he let go his hopes in
all other directions. He began truly to mean the oath that he had
sworn. He wiped his face, disguising tears as sweat, despite the night
air, and took the cup of water they passed him, and took their
concern—for all that he had thought Vanye's earlier anger was half for
him, Vanye's hand was gentle on his shoulder, his voice was gentle as
he inquired was he faint.

"No," he said. "No. I will walk a while."

"Horses will fly," Vanye muttered to that. "We have half the night gone. What do we look to find ahead?"

"I will know the border," he said. "We have come halfway."

"As you knew the plains yonder?"

"This, I know," he
insisted, anxious, and found the stirrup as the lady mounted up. He
heaved himself into the saddle and took his seat as the horse started
to move, Vanye walking ahead on the road, defined in a ray of moonlight
and gone again, ghostly warrior in forest-color and mail and leather,
the white scarf about his helm, the sheen of the sword hilt at his
shoulders the most visible aspect of him. And the lady was no more than
gray horse and shadow: she had put on her cloak and the dark hood made
her part of the night.

Only he himself was
visible, truly visible, to any ambush—helmless, in a pale linen shirt
and astride the white mare that shone like a star in the dark. He
thought of arrows, thought of the gates of Morund which lay beyond the
woods, across the ancient Road.

He thought of Ichandren's
skull bleaching there, and the bodies of the others cast on Morund's
midden heap, and shivered in the wind, taking up his gray blanket again
and wrapping it about himself partly for the cold and partly that he
felt all too visible and vulnerable. He trembled; his teeth chattered
if he did not clench them, and every measured tread of the horse
beneath him, the whisper of the wind, the small sounds of the
night—seemed all part of a terrible dream begun at Gyllin-brook.

He had ridden this way,
part of Ichandren's band. In those days they had been Gault's allies;
in those days they had won victories. For a few years there had seemed
to be a turning in their fortunes against the northlord.

It was the same road. But
the boy who had traveled it, keen on revenge for both mother and
father, on winning a sure victory against the thing Gault had become .
. . had become a thin and beaten man, much the wiser, in the company of
strangers and on a journey which at one moment seemed swift and full of
turns, and in this forever-lasting night—such a peak of terror that it
could not last; as the things they did to his comrades could not last;
as the nights atop the hill could not last: there was always a morning,
and done was done, and a man survived somehow, that was all—but O God,
the hours between, that a man had to live. . . .

They rested yet again.
Quietly the woman spoke—some suggestion which Vanye refused: perhaps,
Chei thought, it was to put him off the horse and make him walk a time.
And Vanye would not, whatever it was, which imagined kindness reassured
him and made him warmer in the long night.

But he was afraid with a
growing fear—that he had not accurately reckoned their pace: the rides
he recalled had been swift and none of them had been afoot. Once he had
misjudged the plains: that was the mistake of a shock-dazed memory. But
now he misjudged again—he knew that he had, and that safety was further
than daylight at the pace they were setting; and more difficult than he
had thought, for the shock was done and the mind began reckoning
clearly again, that since Ichandren was lost—any situation might
prevail and the borders might have moved as they did after battles:
things might not be what they had been and it was not to a known land
that he was returning.

Nor was it any longer a known land in which he was both guide and hostage.

And to confess to them the fact that he had twice mistaken the distance—or given them false assurance—

He moistened his lips. He shifted his weight in the saddle. "Man," he whispered. "Vanye."

Then something else came to
his ears beyond wind and leaf-whisper and the sound of their own
horses. Vanye stopped the horse. The lady reined back and circled back
toward them, then stopped again in mid-turn.

The woods felt wrong. Hairs
lifted at his nape, and he shivered again, looking about him as Vanye
did, at thicket and nightbound silence. The mare stood steady,
hard-muscled under Vanye's touch. The gray stud yonder had his ears up,
and they angled back and twitched as he shifted round, restless and
with nostrils flared.

Of a sudden, in that silence—was another definite sound, faint and far ahead.

"Get down," Vanye whispered faintly. "Get down, man. Take cover. Quietly."

Chei looked at him in
panic. "Gault's men," he whispered, with one wild thought of driving in
his heels and seizing control of the horse—weaponless as he was, with
Gault's hunters abroad.

"My lady has a weapon aimed at you," Vanye said, "and you will get down."

Chei looked in startlement.
He saw no weapon at all, only the cloaked form and the lady's face. And
in that instant, quick as a snake striking, Vanye had one hand
entangled in his breeches-leg, and the mare was shying the other
direction—the night suddenly, irrevocably upended and his shoulders and
the back of his head meeting the ground before his hips and his legs
did.

Colors exploded in his
skull. He was helpless for the instant, the breath driven out of him;
he saw Vanye leap to the saddle, saw the white mare shy over in quiet,
mincing paces and move back again as Vanye carefully, quietly, drew his
sword and lifted the fallen blanket from the dust.

Vanye flung it at him off
the sword-tip, and he caught it, dazed as he was; flung himself over
and scrambled for the brush and safety, hugging the blanket to him as
he sprawled belly down.

The white and the gray
horse had moved too, like ghosts over amongst the trees, a wisp of
illusion, a pallor which did not belong and which a searching eye must
see.

Chei wrapped the blanket
about his own white shirt and made himself part of the ground, next a
deadfall, next the smell of decaying leaves and rotting wood and the
pungent, herbal stink of centurel that he had bruised in lying there.

Such a small accident could
kill a man. A waft of wind. A breeze. A silence when no silence should
be—as there was now; or the smell of crushed leaves reaching an enemy.
He held himself from shivering, pressed as tight to the cold earth as
if he could by willing himself, sink into it.

Chapter Four

The sound grew in the
night—riders on the road, a goodly number of them, Vanye reckoned, knee
to knee with Morgaine there in the dark; and a tremor went through his
muscles, the chill that was no chill but a desire to move. He felt the
heavy press of Siptah's shoulder against his right leg, heard the small
sounds as the warhorse pulled at the reins and worked at the bit.

Arrhan stood—arrhend-foaled
and trained to stand silent at a pass of a hand over her neck and a
careful hand on the reins. So the Baien gray was trained to stand and
hold silent; but that was not all his training, and Morgaine's little
distractions with the bit only availed so far with him. It was oil and
metal, was the presence of a mare and the smell of strangers and
strange horses the warhorse would have in his sensitive nostrils, and
it was only a skilled and familiar hand could hold him as still as he
was, frothing the bit and sweating.

It would happen, Vanye
thought; horseman that he was, he felt it in the air—sensed it in the
number of the horses coming, the agitation at his right, which infected
the mare under him and made her shiver and work the bit—it was in the
way the road lay and the startlement likely when the riders turned that
bend and the shifting and fickle breeze carried sound and scent to the
horses, was in the growing sound of hooves and metal, not the sound of
peaceful folk, but of riders in armor, in the night and moving together.

A horse whinnied, on the
road before the turning. Siptah snorted and gave half an answer before
he answered to the rein, rising on his hind legs and breaking brush on
his descent; Arrhan shied over and fidgeted, complaining.

There was quiet again, both their horses and the ones down the road, deathly quiet in the woods.

"That has it," Morgaine
hissed, hardly above a breath. "They have stopped. They will sit there
till daylight if we are lucky—and send a messenger back to their lord
if we are not."

Vanye slid his sword into sheath. "My bow," he said, and made a sign in that direction.

She leaned and loosed it
from her gear, along with the capped quiver, and quietly passed it over
to him. The horses bided quiet, the damage done. Siptah ducked his head
and worked to free more rein, but Arrhan stood steady as Vanye stepped
carefully down from the saddle and felt for footing among the
undergrowth. He cleared Arrhan's reins and lapped them round a sapling
that might hold when Siptah moved, Heaven knew.

He took off his helm with
its betraying sheen and passed it to Morgaine before he slipped past
Siptah's head with a reassuring touch on a sweaty neck and insinuated
his way into the brush.