Exile's Gate (43 page)

Then
he gathered up their blankets and bridles and saddles, the latter with
an effort that brought him a cold sweat, but painful as it was, it was
good to stretch and move and pleasant to feel some of the stiffness
work out of him.

It was even more pleasant to sink down on his heels near Morgaine and whisper:
"Liyo,
we are ready. I have the horses saddled."

"Out on you," she said muzzily, lifting herself on her elbow; and with vexation: "Thee ought not."

"I
am well enough." In the tally of the old game, he had scored highly by
that; and it was like the stretch of muscles, a homecoming of sorts.

Home, he thought, better than Morij-keep or any hall he had known—home, wherever she was.

She
gathered herself up and paused by him, to lay her hand on his shoulder,
and when he pressed his atop it, to bend and hug him to her, with
desperate strength, while he was too stiff to stand as easily. "A
little further before daybreak," she said. "We will gain what we can.
Then we will rest as we need to. With the—"

There
was a disturbance among the horses, the two geldings and the mare and
the stud in proximity ample reason for it, but Morgaine had stopped;
and he listened, still and shivering in the strain of night-chill and
stiff muscles.

He pressed her hand, hard, and hers dosed on his and pushed at
him:
I
agree. Move. I do not like this.

He
got up then, silently and in one move, for all the pain it cost. He
reached Arrhan and quieted her and the remounts as Morgaine took Siptah
in charge.

In
the starlight, downhill where the stream cut through, a solitary rider
appeared, and watered his horse at the lower pool. In a little more,
two more riders joined him, and watered theirs, and drank, and rode on
across.

Vanye
shivered. He could not help it. He bade Arrhan stand quiet with a tug
at her head; the others, the remounts, he held close and kept as still
as he could, while Morgaine kept Siptah quiet.

They
were not Chei's folk, whatever they were. He reckoned them for riders
out of Mante, hunting reported invaders—else they would ride the road
and go by daylight like honest and innocent travelers.

He
moved finally, carefully, and looked at Morgaine. "There will be
others," he whispered. "They may search back again along the
watercourses."

"Only
let us hope they confuse our tracks and their own." She threw Siptah's
reins over his neck and rose into the saddle. "Or better yet—Chei's."

He set his own foot into Arrhan's stirrup and heaved upward with an effort that cost pain everywhere.

If
they had dared a fire, if they could have sweated the aches out with
boiled cloths and herbs, if he could have lain in the sun and baked
himself to warmth inside and out, instead of lying cold and rising cold
and riding again—but they were too close now, to the gate, and the
enemy too aware of their danger.

Turn back, he thought of pleading. Go back into the plains and the hills and let us recover our strength.

But
they had come so far. And they had no friends in this land and no
refuge, and he did not know whether his instincts were right any
longer. He yearned, he yearned with a desperate hope for the gate and a
way into some other place than this, another beginning, when this one
had gone desperately amiss.

They
did not try to make speed by dark, with the ground stony and uneven as
it was. They rode down one long sweep of hill, passed between others,
and over a brushy shoulder. They kept a pace safe for the horses and
quiet as they could manage, under a sky too open for safety.

And
once, that Siptah pricked up his ears and Arrhan looked the same
direction, off to their left flank, his heart went cold in him. He
imagined a whole hostile army somewhere about them—or some single
archer, who might be as deadly. "Likely some animal," Morgaine said
finally.

And
further on, where they stopped to breathe within a stand of scrub:
"Time, I think, we gave the horses relief," he said. "But I do not want
to stop here."

"Aye,"
Morgaine said, and slid down, to tie Siptah's tether to his halter; and
to calm the stallion, who took exception to the geldings, flattening
his ears and pricking them up again, and swinging between them and
Arrhan as Vanye dismounted.

"Hold,"
Morgaine hissed at the gray, and caught his tether-rope, which usually
would stop him; but his head came up and his nostrils flared toward the
wind, ears erect.

"Stay," Vanye said quietly, calmly as he could. "There is something there."

The
horses were vulnerable. There was no guarantee of cover for them beyond
this point. There was no guarantee they were not riding into worse.
Siptah threw his head and protested softly, dancing sideways.

"Dawn could see us pinned here," she said. "That is no help."

"Then they have to come to us.
Liyo,
this once—"

"I thought thee had no more advice."

He drew in a sharp breath. Pain stabbed through bruised ribs.
"Liyo,
—"

Brush cracked, somewhere up on the slope.

"I agree with you," he said. "Let us be out of this."

"Go!" she hissed, and it was Siptah she chose to carry her, war-trained and sure, for all the gray was through his first wind.

He
took Arrhan on the same reasoning, the horse he knew, the one that
answered to heel and knee. He had both the relief mounts in his charge,
that jolted the lead against the saddle as they took the next climb
over ground studded with rocks, Siptah's tail a-flash before them in
the starlight, eclipsed now and again by black brush and trees, the
necessary sound of hoof-falls and harness and the raking of brush
sounding frighteningly loud in the night.

Down
the throat of the folded hills, along the track of a minuscule stream,
they kept a steady pace, until Morgaine drew in and he stopped, and
panting horses bunched together, their breathing and the shift of their
feet and creak of harness obscuring what small like sounds might be
behind them.

"I do not hear them," he said finally.

"Nor
I," Morgaine whispered, and turned Siptah uphill again, a hard climb
and a long one with the two led horses tugging at Arrhan's harness.

But
when they had come high up on that hill, dawn was seaming the east with
a faint glow, and the stars were fading to that black before daylight.

And
when they had changed off mounts and ridden the downslope on the two
bays, Arrhan and Siptah led behind and too weary to object, the red
edge of the sun was rising, offering a dim light, showing the distant
crags of Mante's highland upthrust like a snaggled jaw against the sky
beyond the hills.

The
gelding missed a step and caught himself, and Vanye shifted weight; for
a moment the whole of the east seemed to blur and reel, and he caught
the saddlehorn, taking in breath in a reflex that hurt. He had bitten
through a wound inside his cheek. He did it again, and it was one more
misery atop the others.

But
Morgaine had drawn up short, and she reached across to him as he caught
himself, her horse crowding his amid the scrub and the rocks. "Vanye?"

"I
am all right." His pulse raced with a sullen, difficult beat. The sky
still spun and he felt a cold fear that he might fail her in the worst
way, weighing on her, forcing her to decisions she would not make and
tactics she would not use.

But
not yet, he thought. Not yet. If threats and blows of his enemies could
keep him in the saddle, his own determination could do as much, until
the give and flex had worked the stiffness out of him and food and
water had taken the dizziness from his skull.

"Beyond this," she said, "no knowing how long the ride. Vanye—we can find a place—That is what we
must
do."

He shook his head, turned the gelding's head for the downslope, and set it moving, too much in misery for courtesy.

An
object hissed out of thin air and hit his shoulder like a sling-stone,
spun him half-about in the saddle by force and shock: in the next
heartbeat the arrow-hiss reached his mind and he knew that he had been
hit and that arrows were still flying. His horse plunged in panic and
shied back, and he fought it, finding life in the numbed arm, his only
thought to get back to cover before Morgaine left it for his sake and
tried to cover him. The horse stumbled on the brush, recovered itself,
crowding Siptah and Arrhan and snagging the lead-rope as it came up
against the others, but it was in cover, behind the rocks. He slid
down, stumbled as the horse had on the encumbering brush, and brought
up on the downhill slant against a boulder, trying to take his breath
as Morgaine slid down and fetched up against the same, firing as she
went, as the hillside erupted with ambush, a din of shouts.

"Is thee hurt?" Morgaine asked him. "Vanye,
is thee hurt?"

The
force of the blow had made any feeling uncertain, but the arm worked,
and he pushed himself off the rock and struggled back after Arrhan and
Siptah, who had wound the tether-ropes into a confusion of frightened
geldings and war-trained stallion, in the midst of which was his bow.
Arrows landed about him. One, spent, hit Arrhan and shied her off from
him, and behind him was Morgaine's voice cursing him and bidding him
take cover.

He
seized the bow and ripped it loose from its ties on Arrhan's saddle,
the same with his quiver; and scrambled for higher vantage, up atop a
tumbled several boulders that hemmed the horses in.

The
climb took his breath. He gained his knees, blind to anything but the
necessity and deaf to anything but the cries of the enemy. He set the
bow against the rock and his knee as he knelt, and strung it with an
effort that brought sweat to his face.

Then
he nocked an arrow and chose his target among those who swarmed up the
hill, as if the very rocks and brush had come alive in the murky light.

He
counted his shots, knowing the value of his position. He fired, calmly,
carefully, with the advantage of height and the surety he was a target
if he could not take their bowmen before they came to vantage on him or
Morgaine, and they were trying: he picked one off, and selected another
shaft, shaking the hair from his eyes and feeling the sweat running on
cold skin. He wondered had the arrow pierced his armor after all before
it fell away.

It
had hit enough to cause deep pain, the sort that caused a sweat and the
weakness in his limbs and the giddiness that sent the landscape reeling.

But
he could still draw. He bent the bow and drew breath and sighted all in
one deliberate and enveloping focus, time after time taking targets
Morgaine's straight-line fire and lower vantage could not reach, taking
the archers foremost, who strove to position themselves and reach him.

But his supply of arrows dwindled.

Chapter Fifteen

The
enemy found cover on the rock-studded, scrub-thicketed hill, and
targets were fewer. Vanye wiped sweat with the back of his arm, and
laid out his last four arrows, with care for their fletchings.

Morgaine
left her vantage and climbed to another, a black-clad, white-haired
figure in the gathering dawn, whose safety he watched over with an
arrow nocked and ready for any move on the slope.

One tried. He quickly lifted the bow and fired, dissuading the archer, but the wind carried the shaft amiss.

Three arrows remaining.

Morgaine
reached her perch and sent a few shots to places that provoked shifts
in the enemy's positions, and afforded him a target he did not miss.

"We are too close here," Morgaine shouted across at him—meaning what he already understood, that
Changeling
was
hazardous in the extreme in this confinement of loose boulders and
brush, with the horses herded together in that narrow slot among the
rocks and close to panic. "I am going for the horses! Stay where you
are and give me cover!"

He
drew in his breath and picked up his next to last shaft, his heart
trying to come up his throat. He did not like what she proposed, riding
out alone, with
Changeling
under Mante's warped touch.

He
did not like, either, their chances if the enemy came up on them, and
if they waited too late to gain room for the sword; and of the two of
them, Morgaine
knew
the weapon. There was nothing to do but hold fast and spend his two remaining arrows to afford her the room she needed.

She edged outward on the rock and onto the slope that would lead her down to the horses.

And an arrow whisked past his position and shattered on the rock a hair's-breadth from her.

He
whirled and sought a target among the crags over their heads,
desperate. Morgaine's fire glowed red on stone as she fired past him
and up at the cliffs.

"Get down!" she cried at him. "Get down!"

"Get to the horses!" he yelled.
"Go!"