Exile's Gate (20 page)

There was a slow ebb of noise. Wind sighed in the leaves, and bodies shifted anxiously.

"Gault will move against us," Arunden said, and motioned violently toward her with the bowl, spilling the liquor.
"That
is what you have done!"

"He may," Morgaine said.

"What does a woman know
about strategy?" Arunden cried then, and seized by the shoulder one of
the women who rested near with the skin of drink, and shook at her.
"Eleis here—a fair shot and a fair cook, till she comes to bearing, eh,
pretty?—a good many of our girls come down to the marches for a few
years, but lead? Carry a sword? This arm here and mine—d'you want to go
a pass with me, Eleis?"

There was rude laughter.

"What do
you
say?" Arunden asked then, and jutted his chin and waved the bowl toward Vanye.

Morgaine laid her hand on his arm again. "Patience," she said, and the laughter sank away a little.

"Go a pass with you?" Vanye asked in measured tones. "Aye, my lord. Gladly. When you are sober."

There was a moment quieter
still. Then Arunden broke out in laughter, and others laughed. He
pushed the young woman roughly aside, and the woman caught her balance
and got up and left the circle.

"Are you human?" Arunden asked him.

"Aye, my lord."

"Your speech is strange as hers."

"That may be, my lord. I learned it of her. My own I much doubt you would understand."

"What clan are you from?"

"Nhi. I am Kurshin. You
would not know that land either, my lord. It had gates—which my liege
sealed. There have been others. There have been those who attacked my
liege. Many of them.
She
is here with you."

That, perhaps, took some
thinking for some of them. It evidently did, for Arunden, who sat
frowning in a sudden quiet and perhaps wondering whether there was an
affront somewhere mixed in it.

"Ha," Arunden said then. "Ha." He lifted the bowl and drained it. "So. Hospitality."

"That is what we ask," Morgaine repeated patiently.

"Weapons."

"That we have, my lord."

"Men. You need—three thousand men to storm Mante. Four thousand!"

"I need one. I have him. That is
all,
my lord.
You
will reap the benefit of it—here. You will need those three thousand men,
here,
in the hills, to wait till the qhal grow desperate. That is what you have to do."

"You tell
me
strategy?"

"I could not possibly, my lord. No one could."

"Ha!" Arunden said. And:
"Ha! Wise woman. Witch! Is that a witch?" He elbowed the priest with
his bowl. "That is a witch, is she not?"

"That is a qhal," the priest muttered, "my lord."

"That is the way out of these hills. That is the way of
winning
against
the whole cursed breed! Qhal against qhal! Qhalur witch—that, they
send, slip into Skarrin's own bed, hey—is that how you will do it?"

"My liege is very tired,"
Vanye said. "We have been days on the road. She thanks you for your
hospitality; and I thank you. I would like to find her a place to rest,
by your leave, my lord."

"Too much to drink, eh?"

'Travel and drink, my
lord." Vanye gathered himself to his feet in one smooth motion: such as
the drug had done, rage had dispelled. He reached down his hand and
assisted Morgaine to stand, taking matters beyond Arunden's muddled
ability to manage. "Good night to you—gracious lord."

"See to it," Arunden said,
waving his bowl, and women leapt up and hurried as seated men edged
aside, opening a path in their circle for the course they were about to
take. Shouts went up. More drink splashed into bowls.

But Chei was on his feet
too, and Bron. Vanye escorted Morgaine through the press, toward the
horses, with Chei at his heels; and young women intercepted them,
managing to come not at either of them, but at Chei: "This way," one
said, "come, tell them come—"

"Our horses," Vanye said,
and ignored the summons, he and Morgaine, walking back to where Siptah
and Arrhan stood, while the crowd behind them muttered with drunken
dismay.
"Liyo,
let me tend them," Vanye said. "They should not see you do such a thing."

"One of them can tend them," Morgaine said shortly. "But not with our belongings."

"Aye," he said,
understanding the order to stay close by her; and caught his breath and
went hurrying ahead of her, between the horses, snatched thongs loose
and retrieved their saddlebags and their blankets, finding female hands
all too ready to take anything he would not hold back from them, and
Siptah bothered enough to be dangerous. "Take them," he said, and threw
the reins at Chei's brother, who limped within range. "Get someone to
rub them down—
both,
else you call me." This
last because Siptah was on the edge of his temper, and he was not sure
whether any man in camp was sober enough to trust with a twenty year
old packhorse, let alone the Baien gray.

"They have vacated a shelter for the lady," Chei said, at his elbow.

O Heaven, he thought, get
us clear of this. And aloud: "See the horses picketed near us, Chei,
Bron, I trust you for that. And have our gear near us."

"Aye," Chei agreed.

He turned away, after
Morgaine and the women, as they tended out of the firelight and toward
the shadow of the woods, as the uproar around the fire grew wilder and
more frivolous.

There was more to-do as
they came to the ill-smelling little shelter of woven mats and bent
saplings. Women offered blankets, offered water, offered bread and a
skin of liquor. "Go," he said shortly, and pushed the ragged wool flap
aside to enter the shelter where Morgaine waited. Firelight entered
through the gaps in the reed walls. After a breath or two his eyes
found it enough light to make out more than shadow, the glow of her
pale hair, the glimmer of silver at her shoulders as she dropped the
cloak, the shape of her face and her eyes as she looked at him.

"I would kill him," he said. He had done very well up till now. He found himself shaking.

She came then and embraced
him, her cheek against his for a moment, her arms about his ribs; then
she took his face solemnly between her hands. "You were marvelous," she
said, laughing somewhat; and touched her lips to his, the whole of
which confounded him in that way she could do. Perhaps it was the drug
which still muddled him. It seemed only courteous not merely to stand
there, but to hold to her and to return that gesture, and perhaps it
was she who pressed further, he was not sure—only that he did not want
to let her go now she had gotten this close and she did not let him go,
but held to him and returned him measure for measure till the world
spun.

"Vanye," Chei's voice came
from outside the shelter, and he caught his breath and his balance and
broke apart from her with a whispered curse; at which a second touch of
Morgaine's hands, lightly this time, on his arm, sliding to trail over
his fingers—

"What?" he asked, far too harshly, flinging back the door-flap.

Perhaps there was murder in
his look; perhaps his rapid breaths said something; or perhaps the
firelight struck his face amiss, for Chei's expression went from
startlement to thorough dismay.

"I was about to say," Chei
said, above the uproar from about the fire, "I have told them where to
picket the horses, yonder. I am going to go back to the fire, if you—I
think I should—Bron and I. . . . Your pardon," Chei said suddenly, and
backed and made a hasty retreat, not without a backward look; and a
second, and a third, before he suddenly had to dodge a tree and
vanished around it.

Vanye caught his breath and, muddled somewhere between outrage and embarrassment, let the door-flap fall again.

Morgaine's hands rested on
his shoulders, and her head against the back of his neck. "We had best
take the sleep," she whispered, her breath disturbing the fine hairs
there.

"Aye," he said with
difficulty, thinking that sleep was not going to come easily despite
the liquor and the drug and the exhaustion. "They are fools out there.
At least ninety and nine of them. I cannot credit that Chei is a fool
with the lot of them—"

"I do not think he is," she said. "I think he has found his brother, that is all. Let him be."

Fire and clangor of arms,
one brother lying dead at his hand, the other lying under the knife in
hall—and after that, after that was exile,
ilin-ban,
and
every kinsman's hand against him. The old nightmare came tumbling back
again, of bastardy and years of torment before he reacted, once,
frightened—no,
angry
—cornered in a practice match.

Kandrys had not intended
his death. He had reasoned his way to that understanding: it would have
been only another baiting—except it was the wrong day, the wrong
moment, Kandrys' bastard brother grown better and more desperate than
Kandrys knew.

And he had always wanted most that Kandrys would forgive him his existence and his parentage.

He drew a sudden, gasping breath, as if a cold wind had blown out of that dream, and brought the grave-chill with it.

"Vanye?"

"It is that cursed drink,"
he murmured. "Likely Chei has his ear to matters out there—my mind is
wandering. I am hungry, but I think I am too tired to get into the
packs. Did you drink anything of it?"

"No more than I must."

"They have left us more of the stuff. What kind of fools raise such a noise, living as they do? That is a
priest
out there—"

She leaned her head against
him. "This is not Andur-Kursh. And they are fools who have fought their
war too long," she said. "Fools who are losing it, year by year, and
see a hope. If they are not thinking how to betray us
and
do Gault harm. How far can we trust Chei, do you think? For a few leagues still?"

"I do not know," he said.
He slipped her grasp, turning to look at her, as laughter and shrieks
rose from the gathering at the fire. "He may. There is no honor for a
man here. He is too good for this. This is a sink,
liyo,
a
man who could not hold his folk, except he binds them with that—out
there. That is the game this hedge-lord plays. Only he is gone in it
himself. Heaven knows about Chei's brother."

"Heaven knows when Chei knew about his brother," Morgaine said. "Curse him, he forced this,
he
has
gotten us into this tangle; I do not say he was not taken by surprise,
I do not know whether he wanted this from the beginning, but there is
disaster everywhere about this place. They have left us bread yonder;
and meat; likely it is safe enough; and we will take what food we can
and prevail on Chei and his brother at least to see us to the Road.
That is all we need of him, and there is an end of it."

"Aye," he said forlornly, and with a sense of anger: "It is a waste,
liyo,
this whole place is a waste. Heaven knows we could do better for him."

"Or far worse," she said.

"Aye."

She caught him by the arm
and held him so. Perhaps her eyes could see him in the dark. She was
faceless to him. "If he ties himself too closely to us—will they ever
forget? If he stays then, is he or his brother safe, when once the
gates die, and powers start to topple? Or if we take them with us—
where
are
they then? Can you promise them better? Best, I say, we let him go. The
eight down in the valley are only an earnest of what we shall do here.
When power falls here, it will fall hard."

"Lord in Heaven,
liyo
—"

"Truth, Nhi Vanye, bitter
truth. That is the ciphering I do: thee knows, thee knows I have no
happier choices—except we leave him, here, near a great fool, who will
vaunt his way to calamity with the power he imagines he has; and Chei,
being Chei, will know when to quit this hedge-lord—or supplant him.
That
is the best gift we can give him. To leave him among his own kind and kin."

He drew several large and quietening breaths, "Aye," he said again, reasoning his way through that. "In my heart I know that."

"Then be his friend. And let him go."

"Is it that clear?"

"Vanye, Vanye—" But what
else she would have said, she did not say, not for some little moment.
Then: "Did I not tell thee, thee could leave me? I warned thee. Why did
thee not listen?"

He said nothing for a
moment, in confusion, a sudden hurt, and deep. He traced it several
times, trying to understand how she had gotten to that, or what he had
said or done to bring her to that offer again.

Then he realized it for her wound, not his—a doubt she could not lose.

"There will never be a time," he said. "There will never be.
Liyo,
when will you believe it? I cannot leave you. I could never leave you. When will you trust me?"

There was long silence. He wished that he could see her. The very air ached.

"I do not know," she said finally, in a voice hushed and faint.
"I
do not know why thee should love me."