Exile's Gate (5 page)

"He could have had a knife," Morgaine raged at him. "He might have had any sort of weapon! Thee did not know!"

He thought the same, now it
was done; more, he thought of the hoof-strike that had missed his head,
and his knees went to water. The big gray had shifted balance in
mid-attack and all but fallen trying to miss him; that was what had
saved them.

At his feet the prisoner
moaned and moved, a half-conscious stir of his limbs. Vanye set his
foot in the man's back when he tried to get an arm under him and
pressed him flat, not gently.

"He is not altogether lame," Morgaine observed dryly, then, having recovered her humor.

"No," Vanye said, still
hard-breathing. The deserved reproof of his mercy stung more than the
bruise did. "Nor in any wise grateful."

Chapter Two

Dawn light grew in the
clearing, and Vanye probed the ashes of their fire with a bit of
kindling, as he had fed it from time to time in the hours of his watch.
Yellow threads of fire climbed and sparked in the threads of inner bark
of something very like willow. He added a few other twigs, then
arranged more substantial pieces, deliberate in his leisure. It was a
rare moment in which nothing pressed them, in which he knew that they
were not riding on, and all he needed think on was the fire, the
mystery that was always homelike, no matter what the sky over him, or
the number of moons in it. The horses grazed in the clearing on the
riverside, where the twisted trees let in enough light for
grass—faithful sentries both, dapple gray Siptah wise to war and
ambushes, Arrhan forest-wise and sensible. Something might escape human
ears, but the horses would give alarm—and they found nothing amiss in
this morning. Catastrophe had attempted them in the night—and failed.

On the other side of the
fire, the glow falling on slender hand and silver hair, Morgaine slept
on, which small vision he cherished in that same quiet way as he did
the fire and the dimly rising sun.

"Sleep," he whispered when
she stirred. Sometimes, in such rare leisure, she would yield him the
body-warmed blankets, so he might sleep a little while she made
breakfast—or he yielded them to her, whichever of them had sat the
watch into dawn.

She half-opened her eyes
and lifted her head, nose above the blankets. "Thee can sleep," she
said, in the Kurshin tongue, as he had spoken—but it was an older
accent, forgotten by the time he was born. It was a habit she had when
she spoke to him alone, or when she was muddled with sleep.

"I am full awake," he said,
which was a lie: he felt the long hours of his watch in a slight
prickling in his eyes, his bruised shoulder ached, and the blankets
were tempting shelter from the morning chill. But he saved her from
hardship when he could—so often that it became a contest between them,
of frowns and maneuverings, each favoring the other in a perpetual
rivalry which tilted one way or the other according to the day and the
need.

"Sleep," he said now.
Morgaine sank back and covered her head; and he smiled with a certain
satisfaction as he delved into their saddlebags and brought out a pan
for mixing and cooking.

The prisoner too, lying
prone in his cloak, showed signs of life, rolling onto his side. Vanye
reckoned what his most pressing need likely was, and reckoned that it
could wait a time: shepherding an escape-prone madman out to the woods
meant waking Morgaine to put her on guard; or letting their breakfast
go cold—neither of which he felt inclined to do, considering the
prisoner was healthy enough to have sprinted for the horses last night,
and considering he had won a stiff arm for his last attempted kindness.

Morgaine bestirred herself
as the smell of cakes and bacon wafted into the air—enough to draw the
hungry for leagues about, Vanye reckoned—the most of them bent on
banditry, if what they had seen was any guide.

And another glance toward
the prisoner showed him lying on his side, staring in their direction
with such misery and desolation that Vanye felt his eyes on him even
when he looked back at their breakfast.

"I should see to him,"
Vanye muttered unhappily when Morgaine came back from the riverside. He
poured tea into their smallest mixing bowl, wrapped a cloth about it to
keep it warm, and set out a cake and a bit of bacon on the cloth that
wrapped his cooking-gear, while Morgaine sat down to eat. "Have your
own," he said, "before it cools."

It did not look like a
madman who stared up at him as he came over to his place among the
tree-roots. It looked like a very miserable, very hungry man who hoped
that food truly was coming to him. "I will free your hands," Vanye
said, dropping down on his heels beside him. He set the food down
carefully on the dead leaves of the forest floor. "But not your feet.
Meddle with that and I will stop you, do you understand? For other
necessities I trust you can wait like any civilized man." It was the
qhalur language he spoke, and it did not go so lightly over his tongue
as it ought. He was not sure, at times, what hearers did understand of
him. "Do you agree? Or do I take the food back?"

"The food," the man said, a faint, hoarse voice. "Yes."

"You agree."

A nod of the head, a worried gnawing of the lip.

He turned the prisoner over
and gently worked the knots free on his hands. The man only gave a
great sigh and lay still on his face a moment, his arms at rest beside
him, as a man would who had spent the night with his hands and
shoulders going numb.

"He is quieter," he
reported then to Morgaine, in his own tongue, when he settled down to
breakfast beside her. He took a cup of tea and considered his hands,
where he had touched the man. It was death-stink, lingering: the man
was that filthy; and he could not eat until he had walked down to the
river and washed his hands.

It was overdone bacon then;
Morgaine kept the breakfast warm for him on the coals, along with the
tea which by now was bitter-edged. He drank and made a face.

"I should have gotten up," Morgaine said.

"No," he said. "No, you
ought not. I will take care of him. I will have him down to the river
before the sun is much higher, and I swear to you he will be cleaner
before you have to deal with him."

"I want you to talk to him."

"Me?"

"You can manage that."

"Aye—but—"

"Not?"

"I will do it." Rarely
nowadays she put any hard task on him: and he took it, distasteful as
it was, likely as he was to make a muddle of things. "But—"

"But?"

"He can lie to me. How should I know? How should I know anything he told me? I have no subtlety with lies."

"Is thee saying I do?"

"I did not say—"

She smiled, a quirk of her
mouth, gray eyes flickering. "Man and man; Man and Man. That is the
fact. Between one thing and the other I am not the one of us two he
will trust. No. Learn what brought him here. Promise him what thee sees
fit to promise. Only—" She reached out and laid a hand on his arm. "He
will not go free. We cannot allow that. Thee knows what I will give—and
what I will not."

"I know," he said, and
thought as he said it that he had chosen the road that brought him to
this pass—thought suddenly how more than one land cursed Morgaine kri
Chya for the deaths she brought. He had tried in his life to be an
honorable man, and not to lie.

But he had chosen to go with her.

It was far more warily the
man regarded him on his return, tucked up with his back against a tree,
eyes following every move he made—a filthy, desperate figure their
guest was by daylight, his nose having bled into his white-blond
mustache and down his unkept and patchy beard, dirt-sores and crusted
lines on his face, a trickle of dried blood having run from under the
matted hair at his temple—a reminder of the night previous, Vanye
thought. Likely more than the man's arms ached this morning.

But he had not touched the
binding on his ankles. He had eaten every bit of the cake and the bacon
off the cloth, down to the crumbs. And there was still a look on his
face, as if having eaten off their charity, he felt there was a chance
something else of hope might happen, but much doubted it.

"I will tell you," Vanye
said, sinking down on his heels, arms on knees, in front of him, "how I
am. I hold no grudge. A man in the dark and fevered—he may do strange
things. I reckon that this was the case last night. On the other hand,
if you take some other mad notion that endangers my liege, I shall not
hesitate to break your neck, do you understand?"

The man said nothing at
all. There was only a stare of wary blue eyes, beneath the tangled
hair, and the stink of filth was overwhelming.

"Now I think you have been
a warrior," Vanye said. "And you do not choose to be filthy or to be a
madman. So I should like to take you down to the water and give you oil
and salve and help you present a better face to my lady, do you
understand me at all, man?"

"I understand," the man said then, the faintest of voices.

"So you should know," Vanye
said, taking out his Honor-blade from his belt and beginning to undo
the knots which bound the man's feet, "my lady is herself a very
excellent shot, with weapons you may not like to see—in case you should
think of dealing with me." He freed the knot and unwrapped the leather,
tucking it in his belt to save. "There." With a touch on the man's bare
and swollen right foot. "Ah. That did the swelling no good at all. Can
you walk?—Have you a name, man?"

"Chei."

"Chei." Vanye rose and took
his arm, and pulled the man up to take his weight on his left foot,
steadying him as he tried the right. "Mine is Vanye. Nhi Vanye i Chya,
but Vanye is enough outside hold and hall. There. Walk down to the
water. I warn you it is cold. I would have heaved you in last night,
with that gear of yours, except for that. Go on. I will find you down
by the water. I
will
find you down by the water—or I will
find
you. Do you hear me?"

Thoughts of escape passed
through the man's head, it was clear by the wariness in his eyes; then
different thoughts entirely, and fear, the man being evidently no fool.
But Vanye walked away from him, going back after his kit by the fire.

"Be careful with him!" Morgaine said sharply, as he bent down near her.
Her
eyes were on the prisoner. But he had been sure of that when he had turned his back.

Vanye shrugged and sank down a moment to meet her eyes. "Do as I see fit, you said."

"Do not make gestures."

He drew a long breath. So
she set him free and then wanted to pull the jesses. It was not her
wont, and it vexed him. But clearly she was worried by something.
"Liyo,
I
am not in danger of a man lame in one foot, smaller than I am and
starved into the bargain. Not in plain daylight. And I trust your eye
is still on him—"

"And we do not know this land," she hissed. "We do not know what resources he may have."

"None of them came to him on that hilltop."

"Thee is leaving things to
chance! There are possibilities neither of us can foresee in a foreign
place. We do not know what he is."

Her vehemence put doubt
into him. He bit his lip and got up again. He had never quite let his
own eye leave the man in his walk downhill, save the moment it took to
reach her; but it seemed quibbling to protest that point, the more so
that she had already questioned his judgment, and justly so, last
night. Beyond this it came to opinion; and there were times to argue
with Morgaine. The time that they had a prisoner loose was not that
moment.

"Aye," he said quietly. "But I will attend him. I will stay in your sight. As long as you see me, everything is well enough."

He gathered up one of their
blankets for drying in, along with his personal kit. He walked down the
hill, pausing on the way to lay a hand on Siptah's shoulder, where the
big gray and white Arrhan grazed at picket on the grassy slope. He
reckoned that Morgaine would have that small black weapon in hand and
one eye on him constantly.

It was not honorable,
perhaps, to deal with hidden weapons in the pretense of being
magnanimous; but Morgaine—she had said it—did not take pointless
chances. It was not honorable either, to tempt a frightened man to
escape, to test his intentions, where keeping him under close guard
would save his life. And other lives, it might well be.

But the man had not
strayed—had attended his call of nature and limped his way down to
water's edge by the time Vanye had walked the distance downslope, and
he had never dared bolt from sight of them or wander behind branches.
That much was encouraging. Chei had bent down to drink, with movements
small and painful, there on the margin.

"Wash," Vanye said, and dropped the folded blanket beside him on the grass. "I will sit here, patient as you like."

Chei said nothing. He only
sat down, bowed his head and began with clumsy efforts to unbuckle
straps and work his way out of the filth-and weather-stiffened leather
and mail, piece after piece of the oddly fashioned gear laid aside on
the bank.