Exile's Gate (40 page)

Then other riders closed in about him and seized reins and bridles to stop her.

Chei was one. Chei shoved the sheathed sword under his chin when all was done and jerked his head up.

"Tonight," Chei told him. "Tonight."

No one spoke, except Chei bade them put a rope to Arrhan's halter and use that as well as the reins.

They
gave him neither food nor water, nor any other consideration for his
comfort, so that the ride became one long misery of heat and ache—no
rest for him at the times they would stop to rest the horses. They
drank at a stream and afforded Arrhan water, but none for him.

It was petty vengeance.

Only
once, there was an outcry from the rear of their column, and Chei gave
furious orders that sent men thundering back along the road toward a
rider that appeared like a ghost and vanished again in the tricks of
the rolling land.

He held his breath then. He could not but worry.

But the rider left the road before they came that far.

And within the hour a man pitched dead from the saddle.

"Damn you!" Chei shouted to the hills.
"Damn you!"

The hills echoed him. That was all.

Vanye did not meet his eyes then. He kept his head bowed amid the murmuring of the others.

They were thirty-three.

Close
to him, for some little time, Chei and the captain argued in muted
fury, concerning a place for a camp, concerning the hazard of leaving
the road for the hills.

"It
is him she wants," the captain asserted finally, in hushed violence.
"Put a sword in him, take the jewel, and leave him in the road. She
will stop for him. No horse for him and a wounded man on her hands—
then
the balance shifts.
Then
we become the hunters. More of this is madness."

It
was only too reasonable a course. Vanye listened with a sinking heart,
and braced himself to cause them what trouble he could.

But: "No!" Chei said.

"It
is your ambition," the captain said. "Your damnable ambition, Qhiverin!
No waiting on Mante—no chance of anyone but yourself dealing with
it—You will listen to me, or the high lord will when I bear the report
to him—"

"You
will obey orders, captain, or I will bear reports of my own of your
insubordination, of your obstructing me, damn you! I am
my lord,
and Qhiverin is gone,
captain,
with all his disfavor, Gault is dead, what is more, and you do not know me,
captain,
you
do not know me in the least and you do not know the enemy you are
dealing with and you do not know the weapon you are dealing with. That
stone around his neck keeps us alive, captain. Around yours, much as I
would like to see it, it would be no more than an encouragement—it
cannot take that weapon of hers, need I shout the matter aloud? Whoever
holds the stone will go like a leaf in the wind, and that accursed
sword will stand fast in this world—
that
is what prevents her, nothing more."

"Her lover bleeding in the dirt will prevent her." The captain ripped his sword from its sheath. "And I will carry the stone,
my lord,
and deliver the stone to Mante,
my lord!"

Vanye
drove his left heel into Arrhan's side and she wheeled, jerking hard at
the reins, clear of his reach as Chei's sword came out and rang loud in
the turning of that blade, a mirror-bright flash of sun, a wheeling cut
and the hiss of other steel drawn, on all sides.

A
thunder of hooves and a second man came at him; he drove with his heels
and ducked, flat in the saddle, as the stroke grated off his armor, as
the man leading his horse swung round and an arc of steel flashed over
his head in the other direction, ringing off the rebel's blade close by
his ear. Horses shoved and shied and Arrhan struggled in the press:
there was nothing he could do but lie flat as he could against Arrhan
and the heaving rump of his defender's horse for an instant as the
blades rang above him, as blood spattered over him and one or the other
fell—

He
drove his heels in and fought for balance with an effort that tore
muscles in his stomach, with steel still ringing over his head, then
let go entirely and landed in a space between the horses, to scramble
up again, hands bound, and run.

A
shout, a rumbling behind him—riders on either side of him, and a horse
shouldered him and sent him rolling; up to his feet again and a second
dash for the rocks that he could see—

If Morgaine were near enough, if she could give him cover—

A
horse thundered down at him. There was nothing he could do but run, and
veer, spinning aside at the last moment as the horse rushed past.

But
the second horse he could not evade, and fell, his helm saving his head
and rolling free as he hit on his bound arms and struggled after wind
and purchase to rise.

A
horseman overshadowed him. An extended lance slammed against his armor
and pushed him back, the point hovering an unstable distance from the
pit of his throat.

He
did not know which side had won until Chei's voice bade the rider back
away, and men got down to gather up him and his helmet and take him
back to his horse.

There
were bodies on the road. The captain was one, with his skull split.
There were two other qhal who might have been all the captain's and
might have been, some of them, Chei's. They left them for the
scavengers as they had left the others, and they put him on Arrhan's
back again.

He slumped over such as he could to rest then, and to avoid Chei's attention.

There
was no more dissent. It was a while more of riding, and very little of
speaking at all, until they came into a stony place between two hills,
where the Road had cut deep, and where a stream had cut deeper still
into the hills beside it.

It
was a sheltered place. It was a slit between the rocks where an
overhang provided cover against attack, a natural fortification, and
when they rode into it, and passed within that shadow, Vanye's heart
sank in him as hope had trembled on the edge this last and terrible
hour.

They
were twenty-six as he counted them again—three dead on the road and
four vanished, deserted, he thought, when the fight began to go against
them. But the qhal had done this to themselves, and the noise of the
fight ought to have reached Morgaine through the hills. There had been
a real chance she might have been there when he fled, or after—at the
most, that commotion should have drawn her close again, and she might
have dealt them damage—might have taken some good position among the
rocks and taken out man after man, giving him the chance he needed to
run, on foot, if he must—beneath her covering fire.

But she had not been there. There had been nothing at all from her since early afternoon; and Chei had sent men out to hunt her.

She is hurt, he thought. Something has happened to her or she would have come in—she would have come, she would have come—

Now
they drew into this place shadowed with premature twilight, close among
rocks, where he knew that she could not reach; and that shadow closed
over him, his enemies laid hands on him and pulled him off his horse
and struck him once in earnest of what else they might do, and for the
first time since last night he felt a cold despair.

They
bound his feet and let him lie while they had their supper: for him
there was not so much as a cup of water, and when in desperation he
rolled over to the streamside close by him, they ignored that. It was
all they would do for him, until after, that a few of the human
servants came and unbound him, and then his hands were so swollen and
his arms so lifeless there was little he could do for himself. They
gave him leave to relieve himself, that was the sole mercy; and when he
turned about again they laid hands on him and bound him and hauled him
over to where the qhal-lords sat, the pale and the human-seeming both
by the little fire they had made under the overhang; and Chei
centermost among them, their faces and their eyes reflecting the white
shining of the jewel he wore.

He
sank down there on his knees, his head reeling from hunger and
exhaustion, and the gate-force humming in his bones. He waited to hear
what they would do, and heard the small shifts of the men at his back,
the men who gathered close about him, yet more than a score of them.

"Did I make you a promise?" Chei asked him.

"Aye," he murmured, to stay Chei's madness. Aye to anything.

Something
has happened to her, he reasoned to himself. She is not dead, they
would have reported that. But hurt, somehow held, pinned down in
ambush—O God, or out there, late, perhaps ahead of us, perhaps that is
where she is—

They will want to draw her in, they will want me to draw her—

I must not do that, whatever they do, no outcry this time—

No sound, he told himself over and over, when Chei gave the order that they should take the armor off him.

But: "My lord," one of the qhal said. "No. He is our safety. He is all the safety we have. My lord, we stayed by you—"

Chei said nothing for a long moment. Then: "Do you intend to ride off too?"

There was silence.

"Then go, curse you, go, ride out into the dark and take your chances! Or do what I tell you. Take him!"

The
servants hesitated. Of a sudden one of them bolted and ran, and another
fled, and the rest after them, afoot, toward the road. One of the qhal
gave pursuit.

And fell.

Chei
sprang and Vanye rolled and resisted him as best he could, tried to get
his legs to bear for a kick, but Chei caught him in his arms and held
him fast against him, one arm nigh choking him while shouts and alarm
rang about him.

Alive, Vanye thought; and:
"Be careful,"
he shouted out before Chei's fingers pressed at either side of his throat and began to take his consciousness.
"Liyo,
—"

As one and another of the qhal fell and such as were left huddled close within that shelter.

They
were six, Vanye saw when the night grew quiet again and consciousness
came back to him, as he lay still in Chei's tight grip. Mostly there
were bodies strewn out across the open; and one of the qhal by them
called a name and crept out to reach a friend, against his lord's
advice.

"Get
out of here," Vanye said to that man, for a man who would take that
risk seemed better to him than the rest of them. "Get on your horse and
ride out of here. She will not stop you."

But
it was that man who came back and seized him out of Chei's hands and
battered and half-choked him before the others pulled him off.

He
lay silent after that, dazed and relieved of some of the pain, so close
he was to unconsciousness. But the qhal stirred forth, and saddled
their horses in the dark, and led them close by the rock where they
sheltered, horses enough for them and a relief mount for each, but
Arrhan was not among them.

Then they hauled him up and put him ahorse, and they rode breakneck up the narrow way they had gotten into this place.

When day came, there were only the six of them, and himself, and they pushed the horses, changing from one to the other

But
another of them died, at one such change. It was the man, Vanye
thought, who had beaten him. He regarded the man in a kind of numbness
when he sprawled almost under his horse's hooves, with a black spot on
his forehead and a dazed expression on his face. He was not glad of it,
except he lifted his eyes toward the low hills and felt as if his
liege, unseen, were looking at him this moment.

"It is that cursed stone," one of the qhal said, as others had muttered. "She can
see
it."

"Wrap
that cursed thing," Chei said then, and one of them drew him close and
dragged him down off the horse while others got down and lengthened the
cord on the stone, and tucked it under his armor at his neck, against
his bare skin.

The gate-sense was worse then.

It
was worse yet when they had crested a long rise and suddenly found the
land dropping away below them across a wide rolling plain; and the
crags which had long hung rootless in morning light, faced them across
this gulf.

Then
the world reeled about him in a mad confusion of blue sky and golden
distances and the crags of yellow rock about them. The horse moved
again, and his vision cleared, but there still seemed a distance
between him and the world—less of pain, but greater unease, gate-sense
that crawled up and down his nerves and prickled the hair on his body.

There, he thought, lifting his face toward the high crags. Mante-gate is up there—-

Without
question, as he knew the whereabouts of other powers, close by it, like
small pools beside an ocean, and that ocean raging with storms and like
to swallow up the lives that came near it.

It wanted this stone that he wore, wanted the bearer, wanted all creation, and that was not enough to fill it.

O my God, he thought, my God, if they bring me nearer this thing, if they bring me too close—