“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—
He rode, he did not know how. He heard their voices sharp in argument. “You can feel that thing,” one said, and he knew what thing they meant: it was all about them, it was in their nerves; it made the horses skittish and fractious.
But it was nothing to them who did not hold it against their bare skin.
• • •
No more died—for whatever reason, there were no more ambushes, as they shifted horses and kept a pace that even gray Siptah could not match unaided, in this place where the qhalur road broke down into eroded stone traces, and the riders found a course not straight, but recklessly direct, down toward the valley.
She is left behind, he thought. These crags and this rough land has forced her back to the road and she has fallen behind. They have won, in my case. Somewhere I could have done better than this. Somehow I could have done something better.
It was the first thought he had allowed himself, of might-have and could-have, and of how he had fallen to them and the things they had done, and might do. Well enough, he thought, fool, twice fool—and reviewed every move he had made on that hillside, every sign he might have missed, every chance he had had, until the pain was all that took his mind from his inward misery.
Then: fool, he thought. She has taken the odds down.
It would cost, he thought. Time would cost very dear. And chances were hard come by.
The qhal shared rations at midday. “We had best feed him,” one said, “or he will faint.” And when Chei consented, one came and fed him a strip of jerky and gave him a drink as they rode, the water splashing down his chin and front and onto the saddle, to dry again in the sun. After that his stomach was queasy, and cramped, and the pounding gait put the taste of blood in his mouth. He wished that he might fall off and simply break his neck and be done, except he was Kurshin, and his body kept the rhythm it had known from childhood, no matter how much he swayed; and the same fool who had fallen into their trap, still thought that there was a hope of delaying them, if he could find the means.
Then he put the matter together and at their next stop, when they were changing horses, as he was about to mount, brought his knee up in his horse’s flank and flung himself out of the way as it went hopping and pitching and throwing the horse it was tied to into a wildly swinging panic.
The men grabbed after those and he went for the three a single man was holding, startling those with a wild yell and a shove of his shoulder before someone overhauled him from behind.
He fell, with a man atop him and one of their horses having slipped its bridle and racing off wildly across the road, one of the riders having to free his horse of his relief mount to run it down.
It was a little victory, a little one. The man who had overhauled him dragged him over onto his back and stared at him as though murder was too mild a vengeance.
Vanye brought his knee up with all the strength in him.
Two more of them pinned him to the ground and one of them paid him in kind. After that he lost sense of where he was for the moment, until he felt the weight go off him and heard a shout, and came to with Chei’s blade at his throat and a dead man at his side.
And the sound of a rider coming, at full gallop.
Chapter 14
The gray horse became clear, and its rider
, and Vanye took in his breath, held as he was against Chei’s knee, Chei’s sword across his throat. And one of the two qhal with him had taken up his bow, and nocked an arrow.
Vanye swung his leg around in an attempt to strike the bowman. He could not. The blade stung along his neck, taking up what room he had for breathing. “Look out!” he yelled. But Morgaine was drawing to a halt well down the road. She slid down, and started walking, through the tall grass.
The bowman drew back, aiming a high arc for a distance shot.
“You are in her range,” Vanye said quietly, and the bowman eased off the draw.
“Fire!” Chei said.
The bowman drew again, with careful aim. And a second time eased off.
“Fire, curse you!”
“The wind is gusting.” A third time the bowman lifted the bow and drew. His arm trembled with the strain as he sought an arc and a lull in the wind.
“Wind does not trouble her,” Vanye said.
“Wait your target,” Chei said then, and the bowman eased off a third time, trembling. Chei relaxed his grip on Vanye’s hair, then shifted his hand to his shoulder and pressed gently. “Stay still, man, stay still.”
It was worse than the other. His leg began to shake, at its unnatural angle. He moved it. And Morgaine walked closer still, the bowman’s necessary arc continually diminishing.
She reached half-range. The bowman lifted his bow, made a swift draw.
“Haaaaiiii!” Vanye yelled, and Chei jerked his head back. The shaft flew.
Morgaine dropped, and sprang up again, covering ground at a run.
The blade stung, and a slow trickle ran down Vanye’s neck. “I will kill him,” Chei yelled.
Morgaine stopped. The bowman stopped, a second arrow nocked and drawn.
“Ride off!” Chei shouted at her. “You leave me nothing to lose, woman!”
“I will bargain with you!” Morgaine’s voice came faintly on the wind at full shout.
“I will, bargain with you, woman. Throw down the sword and I will give you both your lives. Or I will cut his throat here and now.”
She walked closer, and a second shaft flew, amiss on a gust of wind.
“Curse you,” Chei said to the bowman. “Fire!”
The bowman brought up another arrow. But Morgaine had stopped. She lifted her hand, aimed dead at them. “An easy shot for me. Let him free and you are free to ride south. My word on it! Any one of you that wants to live, walk clear.”
The bowman lowered his bow; and: “My lord,” the qhal on Chei’s other side said, and reached, and pressed the blade back from Vanye’s throat with his bare hand. “My lord. We are the last. She will kill us. Let him go. We have lost.”
There was long silence. Chei’s grip faltered on his shoulder and tightened again.
“Let him free!” Morgaine said.
“For a price,” Chei said.
“Name it!”
“I will name it later,” Chei said. “Do you want him on those terms?”
“Let him go!” Morgaine said. “And I will give you your lives and your gear—or flay the skin off you if you harm him! Let him go!”
Chei’s hand loosed. The sword withdrew and Chei shoved him carefully aside and stood up, a clear target. “Free him,” Chei said. “Let him go.”
The second man took a knife and cut Vanye’s hands free, and with a hand under his arm, helped him to his feet. He was not one of those who had been forward to do him harm—a tall, silver-haired qhal, expressionless even now in this shift of fortunes. His hand was firm and steady, and gently tested his balance before he let him free.
Vanye walked, the whole of the sky seeming for a moment gone to metal and his hands, lifeless and swinging beside him, seeming to belong, like his feet, to some other man. He staggered on a hole in the ground, recovered himself short of a fall, and kept walking, the gusts of wind touching the sweat on his face and stinging in the cuts on his throat.
But the sky went stranger still, peculiarly translucent, and he was on one knee without knowing how he had gotten there, Morgaine rushing up to kneel and seize him by the shoulder.
“I am all right,” he said. There was a look of dismay on her face; and rage; and she whirled on one knee and aimed her weapon at their enemies.
“No,” he said on a breath, and caught her arm.
She did not fire. He did not know why he had said it, only that it was one more mistake like the rest he had made. He felt the shorn hair blowing about his face and into his eyes, the most visible of the dishonors they had put on him, and her; and that expression of horror was still in her eyes. “I am sorry,” he said to her, when he could say anything.
“Curse them for this!”
“It was their doing, not mine.” He knelt there shifting glances between her and their unmoving enemy, for she had stopped paying them attention. He did not offer the head-to-ground obeisance that might have made some amends for his shame with a Kurshin liege, did not ask for duel with the man who had done this, did not do any of the things that would have driven her to fury with him. “Liyo, I am tired, is all.”
“I have Arrhan with me. Yonder, beyond the hill.” She made a motion of her head. “And all your gear. With her and Siptah to trade about, there was no way they could outrun me.” She found the cord that bound the stone about his neck and pulled it from beneath his armor, which itself was great relief. She laid down the black weapon a moment to take her Honor-blade and cut it free. “Where is the case for this thing?”
“Chei has it.”
“That is one thing I will get from him.—Is it Gault?”
“Yes.” In the tail of his eye, he saw Chei walk toward them. “In Heaven’s name, liyo, watch them—”
Her gray eyes flicked past his with a killing fury—for them, not for him. He knew then the measure of it, in her red-rimmed and shadowed gaze—the pace she had to have kept, to set ambush after ambush, the strain, constantly to be sure of her targets.
She gathered up her weapon. She rose to her feet, and Vanye levered himself up to stand by her.
“The matter of a price,” Chei called out.
“There is no price,” Morgaine shouted back, “but your lives, my lord, and that is for old grudges, not new ones! You have the casing for the stone. Let it fall. And get out of my sight!”
“The price, my lady!”
Her hand lifted, the weapon aimed. “You go too far with me.”
“My enemies—and passage through the gate, for me and mine.” Chei strode forward and stopped, hands held wide and empty. “There is no way back for us.”
“No way back from hell, my lord, and you are treading on the brink. Vanye wants your life, I have no least notion why—you can thank him on your knees, before you ride out of here. Now! Drop the case, man!”
Chei’s hand moved to his neck. A silver chain glittered in the sun as he lifted it over his head and dropped it.
“On your knees, my lord, and thank him, else I will shoot the legs out from under you.”
Chei went down.
“Thank him.”
“Liyo,” Vanye protested.
“Thank him!”
“I give you my thanks, Nhi Vanye.”
Morgaine dropped her hand, and stood staring as Chei got up and went to the roan horse and his remount; and the others, the qhal and the bowman who wore human shape, claimed their own.
“There was one more man—” Vanye recalled with a sudden chill.
“The one who chased the horses?” Morgaine asked. “That one I accounted for.” She half-turned and whistled for Siptah. The gray horse threw his head and shook himself and tended in their direction, reins trailing, as they walked toward the place Chei had dropped the casing.
Chei and his men rode off, southward, with no delaying. Vanye knelt, fighting dizziness, and picked up the
gray box that Chei had dropped in the trampled grass. Morgaine gave him the stone and its cord and he made a ball of it and put it inside. Its raw power left the air like the feeling after storm, and his hands were shaking as he hung it again about his neck on its proper chain, safe and still.
“What did they do?” she asked fiercely. “What did they do?”
He did not meet her eyes. He gathered up his helm, from where it had fallen. The gray horse came up to them, snorting and throwing his head, and he went and caught the trailing reins and laid his hand on Siptah’s neck, for the comfort of a creature who asked no questions. “Nothing, past the time you put a fear in them. Mostly want of food and rest.”
“Get up,” she said. “I will ride behind. We will find Arrhan and quit this place.”
He was glad enough of that. He wiped the hair back from his face, put the helm on, slung the reins over and put his foot in the stirrup with a little effort, with a greater one hauled himself onto Siptah’s back and cleared the right stirrup for Morgaine. She climbed up by the cantle and her hand on his leg, and held only to the cantle when they started out, so she knew well enough he was in pain, and did not touch him as they rode. She only gave him directions, and they went over the road and beyond the further hill, where Arrhan placidly cropped the grass with a pair of Chei’s strayed horses.
She slid down. He climbed down and went and gave his hands to Arrhan’s offered muzzle, endured her head-butting in his sore ribs and leaned himself against her shoulder.
His bow, his quiver, hung on Arrhan’s saddle, though different men had stolen them. There was a fine qhalur sword, that one of the lords had worn.
He looked around at Morgaine, at a face as qhal-pale as theirs, and a vengefulness far colder. For a moment she seemed changed far more than Chei.
Then she walked past him to take the rest that she had won, the horses that grazed oblivious to their change of politics. “Remounts,” she said, leading them back. “Can thee ride, Nhi Vanye?”
The Complete Morgaine Page 108