Fires of Azeroth

by C. J. Cherryh

  Morgaine reined about to look back at them.

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  Something flew, hissing, and hit; she went over, flung nearly out of the saddle. Siptah shied wildly, and Vanye cried out and rammed spurs into the mare. Somehow, by desperate strength, Morgaine was still ahorse, clinging by the mane and by one heel across the saddle, her pale hair a wild banner against the shadow, a white-feathered arrow driven somewhere the armor was not. Siptah spun once, confused, then ran, arrows hailing faster. Vanye bent low and drove the mare in desperate flight down the bank after her… somehow Morgaine pulled herself back into the saddle, enough to hold on.

  "Riders!" Sezar shouted behind him.

  He did not turn to look. His eyes were only for Morgaine, who slumped now across Siptah's neck, and the sand over which the mare's hooves flew was spotted with dark drops.

  The mare slowed, faltered, froth spattering her and him. Sezar and Lellin overtook him— passed him now as the mare broke stride. Sezar started to draw back for him. "No!" Lellin cried, and Sezar whipped the horse on to stay with Lellin. Further and further the distance widened between him and arrhendim.

  "Get her to safety!" Vanye screamed after them. To do that, had they come within reach, he would have cast one of them from the saddle and thrown him to the enemy. Perhaps Lellin sensed it, and would not delay in his reach. "Help her!"

  Mai was done, staggering badly. In desperation he turned for the trees up the incline of the bank, drove her for that, to dismount and run for cover afoot.

  But she betrayed him at the last. Her strength failed in the loose sand and she went down nose-first while they were still on the flat. He sprawled, and she heaved down on him before he cleared the saddle, rolled as dead weight, neck broken, limp.

  He twisted round as he heard the riders bearing down on him— grimaced, for his leg was pinned and he could not drag it free nor get leverage against Mai's heavy body.

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  He had no hope of anything further, even that all would give up the chase and delay for him; they did not. Most of them thundered past, spraying him with sand and gravel, but four reined back to deal with him. He had his sword still, and managed to get it into his hand, reckoning even so that it was futile, that they would put an arrow into him at safe distance and end it.

  They were not halfling Shiua, but Men. He recognized them as they left their horses and came to him, and he cursed as they grinned in triumph, making a half-ring about him, out of his reach.

  Myya Fihar i Myya… Mija Fwar, a Hiua accent made the name: there was no mistaking that face, scarred and twisted about the lips with a knife-mark. Fwar had been Morgaine's lieutenant once, before their ways parted in violence. The others were Fwar's kinfolk, all Myya, all with blood-debt against him.

  They laughed at his plight, and he bided quietly, no longer anticipating the arrow, hoping that Fwar in particular would come within reach. "Bring that branch over here," Fwar ordered one of his cousins, Minur. The man brought it, a sandy length of still-sound wood, tall as a Hiua and thick as a man's wrist.

  Not for levering, that; they were wiser. Vanye saw the intent in Fwar's eyes and tucked down as the blow came… clutched the sword against him, but blow after blow to his helmed skull stunned him, and finally they rammed the end of the branch at him and broke his grip on the sword.

  They were on him then; he tried for the dagger, and though he had it from sheath and put a wound on at least one of them, they pinned him and wrested it from him. Then they found cords and tried to bind his hands back; but he fought that wildly, and twice they had to daze him before that was done.

  Then he was finished, and knew it… lay still with his face against the dry sand, gathering his forces for whatever came next. One kicked him in the belly for good measure, and he doubled reflexively, not even focusing his eyes to look at them. They were Myya, of a cold and vengeful clan, which had hated him in Kursh and sworn his death there. But these descendants 94

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  of the proud Kurshin Myya, lost in Gates a thousand years and more…

  knew nothing of honor, despised it as they despised everything beyond themselves. Fwar hated him with a burning and personal hatred.

  They levered Mai off of him finally. He had thought that the leg might be broken where she had fallen on him, but the sand had saved him from that.

  He had some hope then; but the knee gave with a stab of blinding pain when they seized him up and expected him to stand, and not all their blows and curses could amend that. Then he gave up all hope of winning free of them.

  "Put him on a horse," Fwar said. "There might be friends of his hereabouts… and we want time to pay you your due, Nhi Vanye i Chya, for all my brothers and our kinfolk that you killed."

  Vanye spat at him. It was all the recourse he had left, and that too failed of the mark. Fwar's eyes raked him over and calculated… not stupid, this man: Morgaine would not have had a dull-witted man in her service. "He would like us to stay near here as long as possible, I suppose. But the khal-

  lords will see to her, and we can deal with them later. We had better take our prize downriver a ways."

  One of them brought a horse near. Vanye kneed the hapless beast in the flank and sent it screaming and plunging away from him; but the Hiua had an answer for that too, and bound his ankles and flung him over another saddle belly down, lashed him in place so that he could not further delay them. The helm fell; one of them gathered it up and set it mockingly on his own head.

  Then they started off down the riverside, moving rapidly, and from that head-down jolting Vanye began to slip from consciousness… now wholly unaware, but there were long darknesses in which he found no refuge.

  And worse than other pain was the thought of Morgaine, whether the Shiua riders had overtaken her or whether she had fallen to her wound…

  he recalled the blood on the sand, sick at heart. But he must live, then. If she were alive, she needed him. If she were dead, he still must contrive to live; he had sworn so.

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  He had not been reckoning of that when he had fought the Hiua, trying to win of them a quick death and honest; but when he had had time to think of what she had set on him by oath, he gave up fighting his enemies and gathered his strength for another and longer fight, in which there was no honor at all.

  The Hiua stopped at midmorning. Vanye was aware of the horse slowing, but of little else until they freed him of the saddle and flung him roughly to the sand. There he lay still and ignored them, staring at the dark waters of the Narn which flowed a stone's throw away… a black thread that still bound this place to that where she was: the sight of it comforted him, that they were not yet lost, one from the other.

  One of the Hiua seized hold of him and lifted his head, put a flask to his lips. He drank what they would give him; they poured more of it on his face and struck him, trying to restore him. He reacted little to either, although he was aware enough.

  Fwar came, seized him by the hair, shook at him until his eyes fixed on him. "Ger, Awan," he named his dead brothers, "and Efwy. And Terrin and Ejan and Prafwy and Ras, Minur's kin here; and Eran, that was Hul's brother; and Sithan and Ulwy that were Trin's…"

  "And our wives and our children and all those that died before that," said Eran. Vanye looked at him, reading there a hate which equalled Fwar's. He had killed Fwar's brothers with his own hand. Perhaps he had killed the others they named too: many had died in pursuit of them. The women and children had died with their dead hold, no doing of his… but that made no difference in their minds. He was a hate they could seize upon, an enemy they had in hand, and for all the grief they had ever suffered, for Morgaine who had led their ancestors to grief in Irien and tried to bind them in drowning Shiuan— for her too they had such burning hate: but he was Morgaine's, and he was in hand.

  He gave them no answer; none would serve. Trin hit him a dazing blow,
and Vanye twisted over and spat blood on him, with more accuracy than before. Trin hit him a second time, but Fwar stopped him from a third.

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  "We have all day, and all night and after that."

  They looked pleased at that thought, and the talk afterward was foul and ugly, at which Vanye simply set his jaw and stared at the river, ignoring their attempts to bait him. A great deal of their threatening was wasted on him, for they spoke a rough sort of Kurshin well-laden with qhalur and marshlands borrowings, much changed from his own tongue… and he had learned Hiua of a young woman whose speech was gentler. He could guess at enough of it.

  He was angry. That fact dully amazed him, in the far distance to which his thinking mind had retreated… that he would feel more rage than terror. He had never been a brave man. He had come to every grief that had driven him from home and hold and honor because he imagined pain too vividly and came undone at his kinsman's slow tormenting… a boy's misery: he had been all too vulnerable then, loving them more than he had understood.

  He had no love for these, these scourings of Hiuaj's Barrowhills, these fallen Myya. He seethed with anger that of all the enemies he had, he had fallen to them… to Fwar, whose worthless life he had spared, being too much Nhi to kill a downed enemy. Now he had his reward of that mercy.

  Morgaine too they attacked with their foul laughter, and he had to bear it, still hoping that somewhere in their confidence they would make the mistake of freeing his hands with Fwar in reach.

  They did not. They had learned him too well, and devised to get him from his armor without freeing him, throwing a noose about his ankles and suspending him from the limb of one of the trees like a slaughtered deer.

  They amused themselves in that too, pushing him to and fro while the blood pounded in his head and his senses were near to leaving him. Then they had easier work to free his hands and take the armor from him. Even so he succeeded in getting his hands on Trin, but he could not hold him.

  They struck him for their amusement until the blood ran down his arms and spotted the sand beneath him. Eventually his senses faded.

  * * *

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  Horsemen, in number.

  He heard the thunder of the hooves that merged with the pulse in his ears.

  Bodies rushed about him, with panting and blowing of horses.

  More of them, returned from upriver. He remembered Morgaine and struggled back to consciousness, trying to focus his blurred eyes to see whether they had found her or not. Upside down in his vision, all the horses were dark shadows: Siptah was not there. One rider came near, aglitter with scale, whitehaired.

  Khal. Shiua qhal. "Cut him down," the khal-lord ordered. Finally there came a sawing at the rope. Vanye tried to lift his stiffened arms to protect his head, knowing that he must fall. But armored riders locked arms beneath him, eased him to the ground upright. He did not struggle after he realized their support… fell less hard than he might. They were not Fwar's: no more his friends than Fwar's men, and likely crueler; but their immediate purpose involved his living, and he accepted it. He lay still on the sand at the horses' feet, while the blood flowed back to his lower limbs and his heart labored with the strain of it. In his ears were the khal-lord's curses for the Men who had almost killed him.

  Morgaine, he thought, what of Morgaine? But nothing they said gave him any clue.

  "Ride off," the lord bade Fwar and his cousins. "He is ours."

  Eventually— for in Shiuan as here, qhal were the more powerful— Fwar and his men mounted and rode away, without a word of a threat of vengeance… and that, in a Barrows-man and a Myya, boded ill for an enemy's back when the time came.

  Vanye struggled to his elbows to see them go; but he had view of nothing but horses' legs and a few khal afoot, scalearmored and wearing helms which gave them the faces of demons— all helmed, save their lord, who remained ahorse, his white hair flowing in the wind. It was not one of the Shiua lords he knew.

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  The men-at-arms cut the cords that bound his ankles and tried to make him stand. He shook his head at that. "The knee… I cannot walk," he said hoarsely and as they spoke… in the qhalur tongue.

  They were startled at that. Men in Shiuan did not speak the language of their masters, although khal spoke that of Men; he remembered that they were Shiua when one hit him across the face for his insolence.

  "He will ride," said the lord. "Alarrh, your horse will bear this Man.

  Gather up all that is strewn here; the humans have no sense of order. They will leave all this for enemies to read. You"— for the first time he spoke directly to Vanye, and Vanye stared up at him sullenly. "You are Nhi Vanye i Chya."

  He nodded.

  "That means yes, I suppose."

  "Yes." The khal had spoken the language of Men, and he had answered again in qhalur. The lord's pale, sensitive face registered anger.

  "I am Shien Nhinn's-son, prince of Sotharrn. The rest of my men are hunting your mistress. The arrow that took her was the only favor for which we thank the Hiua cattle, but it is a sorry fate for a high-born khal, all the same. We will try to better it. And you, Vanye of the Chya— you will be welcome in our camp. Lord Hetharu has a great desire to find you again… more desire for your lady, to be sure, but you will find him overjoyed to see you."

  "I do not doubt," he murmured; but he did not resist when they bound his hands and brought a horse for him, heaving him into the saddle upright.

  The pain of his wounds almost took his senses from him; he swayed with dizziness as the horse shied off, and the Shiua began to dispute bitterly who should foul his hands and his person in seeing that he stayed ahorse, bloody and half-naked and human as he was. "I am Kurshin," he said then between his teeth. "While the horse stays under me, I shall not fall off. I will have no khal's hands on me either."

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  They muttered at that and spoke of teaching him his place; but Shien bade them to horse. They started off down the sandy bank with speed that jolted, likely malice rather than needful haste. They gave it up after a time, and Vanye bowed his head and gave to the horse's moving, exhausted. He roused only when they made the fording of the Narn, and the wide plain of Azeroth lay open before them.

  After that it was grassland under the horses' hooves, and they went smoothly and easily.

  He lived: that was for now the important thing. He smothered his anger and kept his head down as they expected of a Man awed by them. They would not anticipate trouble of him, these folk who marked their own hold-servants with brands on the face, to know them from other Men…

  reckoning no Man much more than animal.

  It was not uncharacteristic of them that they found a means to splint his knee at their first rest, caring for him with the same detachment that they might have spent on a lame horse, no gentler and no rougher than that; yet no one would give him a drink because it meant his lips touching something they must use. One did throw him a morsel of food when they ate, but it lay on the grass untouched, for they would not unbind his hands and he would not eat after that fashion, as they wished. He sullenly averted his face, and was no better for that stop except that he could at least stand once he had been put on his feet. They saw to that, he reckoned, simply because it saved them having to work so much getting him on and off a horse.

  "There was a khal with you besides your mistress," Shien said to him, riding close to him that afternoon. "Who?"

  He did not look up or give indication that he had heard.

  "Well, you will find time to think of it," Shien said, and spurred disdainfully ahead, giving up the question with an ease curious in his kind.

  And that who seemed to desire a name in answer, as if they had taken Lellin to be one of their own, renegade to them. As if— he thought, hope 100

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  stirring in him— as if they had
not yet realized the existence of the arrhend, or realized a presence in this land besides that of Men. Perhaps Eth had held back more than seemed likely; or perhaps his killers had not left Shathan alive.

  He lifted his head despite himself, and looked at the horizon before him, which was grassy and flat as far as the eye could see, an expanse unbroken save for a few bushes or thorn-thickets randomly scattered. The unnatural shape of Azeroth was not evident to the man who stood amid it: it was too vast to grasp at once. Perhaps there was much still secret from the Shiua…

  indicating that as yet none of Lellin's folk had fallen into their hands, and that the Mirrindim might yet be safe.

  He hoped so with a fearful hope, although he held out little for himself.

  * * *

  They camped in the open that night, and this time they yielded to practicality and freed his hands briefly, standing over him with swords and pikes as if he could run, lame as he was. He ate a little, and one of them condescended to pour a little water into his hands that he might drink, thus saving the purity of his waterflask. But they restored the bonds for the night, hand and foot, securing him to one of their heavy saddles on the ground, so that he could not slip off into the dark. Lastly they threw a cloak over him, that he not freeze, for he had no clothing on his upper body. Then they slept, insolently secure, posting no guard. He fretted long, trying his bonds, with an eye to stealing a horse and running for it; but the knots were out of his reach and the cords were too tight. Exhausted, he slept too, and woke in the morning with a kick in the ribs and a khal's curse in his ears.