Exile's Gate (45 page)

But, O Heaven, it was not in reach, and Morgaine listening to this man—

He
could not think beyond her, not, in any case, with his head swimming
and his thinking and his fears shrunk to the little space between these
rocks, and the chance of an enemy which had been all too fortunate in
its ambush—

And he must not kill this man. Morgaine forbade it. He had defied her order once. Twice was without excuse.

"Do you swear?" he asked Chei, knowing after he had asked, that oaths meant nothing with this creature.

"I
have said," Chei said, and got to his feet. There was darkness in that
stare. There was profound apprehension. Then another, more agitated way
of speaking: "I swear before God. Is that enough?"

That human expression, that shift of voice, sent a chill through him.

Perhaps it was meant to.

But
he let the silence go on a moment, and looked Chei in the eyes, long
and steadily, until the air was a good deal colder and Chei surely knew
it was not fear held his hand.

Then: "Do not cross me," he said to Chei, "and I will return you nothing of what I owe you. Where is my sword?"

Chei's eyes shifted toward the roan horse.

"I will have it back."

Chei nodded. "Aye."

"Aye—
my lord. "

"Aye, my lord."

"Call
your men down here. They can ride away or they can ride with us, but if
one of them missteps, I will lay his head at your feet and lay yours at
my lady's. I am nothing you know, whatever you think you gained at
Tejhos. I am Nhi, and my clan is not reputed to give second chances."

Perhaps Chei believed him. Chei looked once back at him as he turned to face the cliffs, and once at Morgaine.

Then he shouted up at the height. "They have agreed," he called up the cliffs. "Come down."

Three
of them, Vanye kept thinking, and went and gathered up the arrows that
had spilled off the cliff with the dead man—twelve he found with the
fletchings and points whole, and put them in his quiver, the while
Morgaine kept her eye on matters. His ribs ached.

Three of them, he kept thinking in the throbbing of his hurts and the panicked beating of his heart. She has gone mad.

It
is this Skarrin—this man she fears. That is what drives her. That is
what she wants to know—always, always when she does not know as much as
she wishes—she doubts herself—

The Devil rather than honest men, he remembered her saying.
O my liege, you have found him.

The
two from the cliff came riding around the shoulder of the hill as Chei
had come, stopped their horses by the red roan; and came to pay their
respects to their recent enemy—the bowman and the qhal, the bowman's
human face betraying intense worry, the qhal's having no expression at
all.

"Rhanin ep Eorund," Chei named them. "And Hesiyyn Aeisyryn, both late of Mante."

"I
will give you a simple choice," Vanye said, leaning on his bow, and
this time with a quiver half full of arrows. "Ride off now, and go
free. Or go with us, do my liege honest service, and I will forget what
I owe you. I count that more than fair."

Rhanin
nodded, clear of eye and countenance; and had the likeness of truth
about him. "Aye," Rhanin said, and let go a long breath, as if he had
taken him at his word and had worried, until then.

Hesiyyn
lowered his eyes and inclined his head, and looked up with a bland,
half-lidded insolence. "Anything you will, lord human."

Vanye stared at him and thought of striking him to the ground. But then it would come to killing—not one but all of them.

The
archer had fired on his liege: but in defense of his own lord. While
this Hesiyyn, he judged, might do anything and everything for his own
sake.

And this, this was the qhal who had intervened to save his life.

"If they ride with us," he said to Chei, disdaining the qhal with a passing glance, "remember I hold you accountable."

And
he turned his back on Chei as well, feeling their stares like knives;
his heart beat like a hammer in his temples, and his face was hot, the
sky like brass. Morgaine said something to him of riding out, that they
were well off this hillside.
"
Aye
,"
he
said, and shouldered his bow and his quiver, and went to untangle the
horses, which had wound themselves into a predicament, their two with
the nervous geldings. Siptah had braced himself, flat-eared, too
trail-wise to move, despite Arrhan's lead-rope wound across his rump,
and that the blaze-faced gelding had a hind leg in among the rocks, its
rump against the wall, one foreleg crossing its partner's lead.

He
cut both free and straightened out the leads, darting an anxious eye to
Chei and the rest, but Morgaine was watching them: he saw her. He
shoved Siptah with his shoulder to gain room, held Arrhan steady to
re-tie the leads, and recalled his sword on Chei's saddle, uphill with
the other horses.

He
thought of climbing the rocks and making the exchange, but it was a
warhorse in question, easier that Chei should deal with it, and he was
out of breath and not wanting either the climb or any dealings with
weapons at close quarters: bruised ribs and stiff muscles, he thought,
leaning on Siptah's side to work past him and lead him out of the
confusion.

But
when he unstrung his bow to tie it with his gear on Arrhan's saddle,
the weakness of his arm and his lack of wind surprised him. He had to
make a second pull to slip the string. When he had gotten it tied and
set his foot in the stirrup, it more than hurt to pull himself up, it
sapped the strength from him and made him sweat and his head reel
despite the morning chill.

It
is the sun-heat on the metal, he told himself; there is no wind here.
Using the bow and pushing the horses about had strained the
ribs.
It will pass.

He sat still, with the sweat running, leaning on the saddlebow, while Morgaine mounted up.
Get us moving,
he
thought, feeling the sting of salt in his cuts. There was no wind in
this place. He longed to be off this hill, not knowing what they might
meet on that slope
down there or out in the land:
best hurry before they collect a defense,
he
thought; and everything conspired with delays.

"They will go first," Morgaine said, starting out. "I have told them."

"Aye," he murmured. "Let Skarrin's men have
them
for ranging-shots."

"They might have killed us," Morgaine said. "They could have taken the weapons. That much is true."

He thought about that.

"But I do not forget what they did," she said.

"Aye,"
he said. The hill seemed steeper than he recalled as they struck the
open slope—a place littered with dead, thirty, forty or more.

And Chei and his men rode past them, dutifully taking the lead.

'Is thee all right?" Morgaine asked.

"A little faint. I am well enough. It is the heat." He urged Arrhan to a faster pace, and overtook Chei's men.

"Arrows," he said. "All we can gather. We may need them."

"Aye,"
Rhanin said, and veered off on that chancy slope, at hazard of further
attack, from men on the ground, from Heaven knew where on the rocky
heights around them.

Rhanin would not, he thought at the back of his mind, come back. The man would take his chance and ride for his own life.

"The sword," he said to Chei.

Chei took it from his saddle and reversed it, passing it over as they rode.

"A good blade," Chei said.

He said nothing. He unhooked his own from Arrhan's saddle and passed it by the hilt.

"Alayyis' sword," Chei murmured.

"My
liege did not ask his name," he said harshly, and reined back and
hooked the arrhendur blade to his sword-belt, waiting for Morgaine to
overtake him.

O God,
he thought then,
why did I say that? Why am I always a fool?

Morgaine
overtook him. He murmured an explanation for the bowman's departure,
and started up again, riding after the others, a crowded trail avoiding
the lumps of bodies which lay like so much refuse on the hillside. He
watched carefully such dead as they did pass close at hand, wary of
traps. He watched the hills about them, for any flash of armor, any
flight of birds or bit of color out of place.

Far
across the field, Rhanin searched, dismounted, searched again.
Eventually he came riding back, carrying three quivers of arrows. "I
would keep one," Rhanin said, offering two as he rode alongside—no
grudging look, only an earnest and an anxious one.

"Do that," Vanye said; and the man gave him them, and turned off downslope, to overtake Chei and Hesiyyn.

He
hung the two quivers from his saddlebow, and he stared at Rhanin's
retreating back with misgivings. They had reached the bottom of the
hill, and the last body, which lay face upward. Carrion birds had
gathered. He did not look down at it as they rode their slow course
past. That man was incontrovertibly dead. The hour was fraught enough
with nightmares, and he had had enough of such sights in his life.

But, he thanked Heaven, there were no ambushes.

The
hill beyond the next rise gave out onto the flat again, a broad valley;
he blinked at the sweat in his eyes and rubbed at them to make the haze
go away.

"Vanye?" Morgaine asked, as Siptah's heavy weight brushed his leg.

"Aye?"
His head ached where the helm crossed his brow; the sun heated the
metal, heated his shoulders beneath the armor and the pain in his ribs
made his breath hard to draw.

"Is thee bearing up?"

"Well enough. Would there was more wind."

Chei had drawn rein in front of them, and scanned the ground; and waited for them with the others.

"We
should bear south a little," Chei said. "Around the shoulder—" Chei
pointed. "Off into the hills. One of them may well have us in sight.
But the weapon you used up there—" He gave a small, humorless laugh.
"—will have improved my reputation with Mante. At least for veracity.
They will be very hesitant to come at us."

"Why south?"

"Because—"
Chei said sharply, and pointed out over the plain, below, and to their
right, toward the hills. "To reach that, necessitates crossing this,
else, and if you have no liking for—"

"Courtesy, man," Vanye muttered, and Chei drew another breath.

"My
lady," Chei said quietly, "it is safer. If you will take my advice—lend
me the stone a moment and I can send a message that may draw their
forces off us."

"Tell me the pattern," Morgaine said.

Chei
took up the reins on the roan, that flattened its ears toward Siptah.
"Two flashes. A simple report. I can send better than that. I can tell
them the enemy has gone up into the hills. In numbers. And if you
provoke them to answer you, my lady, and you cannot reply rapidly, they
will
know
what you are. I can answer them."

"Do not give it to him," Vanye said, and made no move to hand over the stone.

"No," Morgaine said. "Not here and not now."

"My lady—"

"Can it be—you
have
sent?"

"Aye. From Tejhos."

"And the stone, man!"

"With that," Chei said with a reluctant shrug. "Yes. The first night."

"And
told
them it would stay unshielded. Do not evade me. I am out of patience for guesswork.
What
have you done, what do you suspect, what is out there?"

"They
will have known something went amiss from the time you sealed off the
stone," Chei said in a low voice. "There is rumor Skarrin's gate can
tell one stone from the other, given sure position. I do not know. I
only know there are two more such stones out there. I saw them, clear
as I could see Tejhos."

"In the stone."

"In
the stone, my lady. There may be more than that by now. When yours
stopped sending—It is myself they will be hunting, along with you. I am
well known for treason."

"Did you think they would forgive," Vanye asked, "the small matter of killing your lord's deputy?"

Chei's
eyes lifted to his, hard and level. "No. But, then, if I had won, I
would have done what we are doing now. With your weapons. It is not
Mante I want. It is the gate. . . . With your weapons. I told you my
bargain. And, lady, you have convinced me: I will not follow a lord in
the field who cannot beat me. I should be a fool, else. You won. So I
take your orders."

There was a moment's silence, only the stamp and blowing of the horses.

"Let us," Morgaine said to Chei then, "see where your ability leads us."

And in the Kurshin tongue, when they struck a freer pace, tending toward the south, into rougher land.

"Do
not be concerned for it. I will choose any camp we make, and he will
not lay hands on the stone, to be telling them anything. —Thee is
white, Vanye."