Exile's Gate (9 page)

He might have tamed the
wolves, finally, and if they would let him be a wolf, then he need not
fear Gault, or anything in the world—for a while. They might well be
Gault's enemies: rumor was that the thing which was Gault had no love
lost with his Overlord. They might be from Mante, or from somewhere—the
woman had said it—that he did not understand; but if they let him be a
wolf, if they took him among themselves and there was a kind of man who
could walk among the qhal free as that one walked, and still in his own
right mind—then there was hope. . . .

He shivered again, seeing
Ichandren's head outside Gault's gates, seeing that dungeon again, and
hearing the screams wrung from a man who was the bravest and strongest
he had ever known, before they reduced him to a red and terrible lump
of meat and struck off his head. . . .

. . . There was revenge.
Gault would never know him by sight. It was a random choice had
selected the few for the wolves. He was no one, that Gault should
single him out for any personal revenge.

But if he was a wolf, there was a time Gault would learn to fear him and to curse the day he met him.

That was an aim even worth a man's soul.

For the first time the chance of a future opened up before him, like a mist clearing.

But he had met the woman's
eyes by accident across the fire, and after that avoided—after that,
avoided remembering, too closely, that he had felt himself in bodily
danger from her. It was
that
kind of feeling,
that a man did not expect to feel with a woman, that was unmanly to
feel with a woman, and that one would never admit to; but if ever he
remembered it, afterward, when he was with a woman, then he would have
no power with her ... no more with any woman, ever. . . .

She was indeed a witch, he
thought. He knew folk who called themselves witches, and made a great
deal of muttering over their herbs and potions, and midwived babes and
horses into the world. A man did not cross them, or did so only if he
had bought the token of a greater one for stronger luck—and too great a
one might, the priests said, taint a man's soul.

Such great power he had
felt in this one. He knew that it was. And it was better mercy by far
had he gotten from her than Gault had gotten from Mante—the Gault they
had honored before the qhal had taken him up with talk of peace; the
Gault who had been Ichandren's friend, and worked the same ploy on
Ichandren—God help them all.

Truce. Truce—Gault had said.

That was the faith qhal kept.

The man Vanye came down the
hill finally: Chei watched him come—and trembled, as if in a dream; and
walked with him at his invitation to share their fire.

Thereafter Chei sat wrapped
in his blanket and took a meal he could not eat his share of, so weak
his stomach was. But they were easy with him, the man and the woman
both, and asked him few questions, and afterward let him lie over near
the fire, while the witch took the pans down to the water to wash them
like any woman of the bands; and Vanye after she had returned, led the
horses down to water them, from their picket higher on the hill.

After that, while daylight
faded, they worked on what Chei recognized for his own gear, picking
bits of rust from the links of his chain-mail, scouring the metal with
water and river sand, finishing it with oil.

His boots were already
done, the one split as it was, but with a length of harness-leather
lying looped about it, sufficient to wrap several times about the ankle
and hold it.

He saw all these things,
lying on his side, with only the blanket to clothe him . . . watched
them work, even the witch, on these menial tasks which seemed to be for
his benefit—for him, since they had no conceivable need of a pair of
ruined boots or armor much poorer than the wonderful close-linked mail
and supple leather that they wore.

In the deep night, when
they said to each other that it was time to sleep, the man dragged his
saddle and his bedding over by the horses and lay down there, while the
witch wrapped herself in a dark cloak and settled against an old,
thick-boled tree, to keep night-watch. They left him the warmth of the
coals. They said no word to threaten him. They did not tie him.

Chei lay in the dark
thinking and thinking, watching and drowsing by turns, observing every
smallest move they made. Hope trembled through him, that they had
already accepted him, for whatever reasons. He wept, in the dark, long
and unreasonably.

He did not know why, except
their kindness had broken something in him which all Gault's threats
had never touched, and he was terrified it was all a lie.

Chapter Three

It was fish, the next
supper they shared. There was not a rabbit to be had—the wolves, Vanye
reckoned, who sang to them nightly, had seen to what hunting there was
about the gate; although why the wolves themselves stayed in such an
unwholesome place, he wondered.

It was the mountains to the
south, Chei said; and humans; humans to the west and north; qhal to the
north and east; and in all, Vanye reckoned, the wolves were as shy of
habitations as they were in other worlds.

Excepting only, Chei said, the half-wolves. Gault's pets.

Or once, when war had made
chaos of the middle lands—then Chei remembered the wild wolves coming
down to human camps and villages to take the sheep. He remembered his
folk moving a great deal—where, he did not know, except it had been in
the hills.

"Then," Chei said, looking
mostly at the fire, as if his thoughts ranged distant, "then we settled
in Perot's freehold, in Aglund. We felt safe there. But that only
lasted—at most, a year. Then Gault was fighting along with the other
lords. I was a boy then. I remember—I remember wars, I remember having
to move and move again. I remember the winters, with the snow
chest-deep on the horses—and people died, many died. We came to Gault's
freehold, in Morund. We were borderers, for him. Those were the good
years. I rode with Ichandren. My brother, my father and I. They are
dead. All."

He was silent for a time, then.

"Mother?" Morgaine asked.

Chei did not look at her.
His throat worked. But the eyes never shifted from their wide gaze on
the fire. "I do not know. I saw her last—" A lift of one shoulder. "I
was thirteen winters. That was before Morund fell and Gault went north.
He came back . . . Changed. After that—after that, he and the qhal from
the north killed most of the human men at Morund-keep. Killed most
everyone, and brought in men from the east. They would fight for Gault.
Some of those from Morund might have wanted to, but if they took them
at all, they marched them west, to serve the other qhal-lords. Gault
would never trust men who had served him before he was qhal. Aye, nor
women either. They put them all on wagons. We lost—twenty men trying to
take the women from the guards. My father died then. There were just
too many."

There was more of silence. The fire snapped and spat.

"But I doubt very much my
mother was alive," Chei said. "Even then. My father believed it. But no
one else did. She was not a strong woman. And it was a bad year."

Twenty men lost,
Vanye thought, amid a man's grief, and thought by the way he had said it that twenty had been a devastating loss.
There were just too many. . . .

He met Morgaine's eyes
across the fire and knew that she had added that as quickly and set
things somewhat in proportions—she, who had taught a young outlaw
something beyond woodcraft and ambush; his lady-liege, who had ridden
to war and sat in the affairs of kings a hundred years before he was
born.

But she had led him into both war and kings' councils since then.

He rested his arms on his knees and probed the coals with a stick, watching it take fire.

"The trees," Morgaine said.
"Do you mark them, Chei, how they twist here? Yet there is no present
feeling of unease in this woods. Birds come here. They tolerate the
gate-force very little. Why do you suppose this is?"

"I do not know," Chei said faintly.

Morgaine did not answer.

"Why would it be?" Chei asked her then.

Morgaine shifted the dragon
sword to her lap, tucking one knee up, and hugged that knee against
her. "If I cast leaves in the fire, it would flare. Would it not?"

"Yes, lady."

"And you would move back. Would you not?"

"Yes," Chei said, more faintly still, as if he regretted ever asking into qhalish lore.

"Quickly?"

"Yes, lady."

"So the birds would fly for their comfort if that gate yonder opened this moment. And you would feel it in your bones."

Chei flinched, visibly.

"So this is a very good
place for a camp," Morgaine said, "for us who have no desire for
unannounced visitors. How frequently do you suppose this gate is used?"

"I would not know."

"Perhaps not. So of that
use we would have warning. If we ride from here we have Gault to
concern us. How long—might we ride, slowly, on the road itself, before
we came to his notice?"

"If we left after sundown—"
Chei's breath came rapidly. "We could make the western road and be deep
in the woods before daybreak. Lady, I do not know where his riders may
be, no one could say that, but I know where they are likeliest not. We
could make a safe camp in that woods near his lands, stay there the
day, and pick up the west road. No one would be traveling that at
night; and by one more morning we can reach the hills. We rest during
the day, we travel at night. That is the best thing to do."

"So," Morgaine said, and
glanced Vanye's way, a quick shift of her eyes. "We can reach the woods
before the dawn," she said, looking back at Chei. "You are sure of
that."

"A-horse, I know that we could."

"Then we will go," she said
quietly. "If our guest swears he can bear the saddle, we had best leave
this place. We do not know how long our welcome will last."

Vanye nodded, agreeing, with misgivings he knew she shared, and with a quiet as carefully maintained.

The place, true, had a ward as great as any fabled witchery could provide—that they would feel any disturbance in the gate.

But it held danger too: it
was remotely possible—that that flaring of power could simply take
them, at this range, if there were some unshielded gate-stone to which
the force might reach—and if their enemies had found them.

Vanye had one change of
clothes, cloth breeches and a fine shirt—the one for those times they
could lay aside the armor, which did not look likely here: light and
fine, delicately sewn—a waste to wear such a gift on the trail; but the
giver had insisted.

Now he laid all this at
Chei's side, along with the mended boots, as Morgaine was meticulously
packing and weight-measuring with their bags.

"You could not bear the
armor on your shoulders," Vanye said. "My liege will carry it; I will
carry you on my horse. We are taking your word we can make cover before
sunrise."

Chei took up the fine cloth
and frowned in surprise. Well he might, Vanye thought; and went to
prepare his own gear, and to saddle the horses in the dark.
They
knew that there was a journey to come, and stamped and shifted in impatience at this meddling about.

He saddled them both, and
hung his sword at Arrhan's right side, where he would not carry it on a
ride like this, except he had Chei at his back. He tied a folded
blanket flat under thongs bound to the rings that ordinarily held it
rolled, scratched Arrhan in the soft underside of her throat, and
Siptah under his chin, snatching his fingers from the stud's
half-hearted nip—trouble, he thought. Siptah had been trouble of one
kind before, well-trained as he was; now that he had acquired the mare,
Siptah had other thoughts in his head, and Arrhan had like ones.

"Fool," he muttered to
himself, that ever he had taken her, that ever he had brought her to a
land like this. He was Kurshin, was a horseman from his birth. And he
had been, a handful of days ago, under a fair sun, too willing to
hope—Heaven save them—for something other than this.

Fool, he thought again. For
disaster went about the gates. Where power was, there the worst men
gathered—too rarely, the best. He had ridden out among the twisted
trees, among ruins, into murder and wars—

And all his subtle
plans—for Morgaine was mad, at times, and drove them too hard and wore
herself to bone and will—all his plans, ill-thought that they were,
involved a means to travel at a saner pace. For that, he had accepted
the mare, knowing there was a risk—but hoping for a more peaceful
passage, for leisure and time, even to drop a foal of the Baien stud:
such thoughts the arrhend had made reasonable, and now they seemed mad.

Now it was his own instincts urged they run.

He hugged the mare about
the neck, pressed his head against her cheek, patted her hard, all with
a pang of bitter guilt. "So we go," he whispered to her. She ducked her
head free and nosed him in the side with a horse's thoughtless strength.