Fires of Azeroth

by C. J. Cherryh

  Some of the enemy attempted the slide itself, scrambling down the unstable rocks to escape; some huddled together in desperate defense, and a few of their own arrows returned from arrhendur bows shattered that.

  There was silence then. The balefire of Changeling lit a place of twisted bodies, riven rock, and seven of them who survived. Kessun lay dead, held in Sharm's arms: the old arrhen mourned in silence; the arrha was gone; Sezar had taken hurt, Lellin trying with shaking hands to tear a bandage for the wound.

  "Help me," Morgaine asked in a broken voice.

  Vanye tried, letting go the reins, but she could not control her arm to give him the sword; it was Merir who rode to her right, Merir alone of them unscathed; and Merir who took the sword from her fingers, before Vanye could prevent it.

  Power… the shock of it reached Merir's eyes, and thoughts were born there that were not good to see. For a moment Vanye reached for his dagger, thinking that he might hurl himself across Siptah— strike before Changeling took him and Morgaine.

  But then the old lord held it well aside, and asked the sheath; Morgaine gave it to him. The deadly force slipped within, and the light winked out, leaving them blind in the dark.

  "Take it back," Merir said hoarsely. "That much wisdom I have gained in my many years. Take it back."

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  She did so, and tucked it against her like a recovered child, bowed over it.

  For a moment she remained so, exhausted. Then she flung her head back and looked about her, drawing breath.

  It was utter wreckage, the place where they had stood. No one moved. The horses hung their heads and shifted weight, spent, even Siptah. Vanye found feeling returning to his back and his fingers, and suddenly wished that it were not. He felt of his side and found riven leather and parted mail at the limit of his reach; whether he was bleeding he did not know, but he moved the shoulder and the bone seemed whole. He dismounted and limped over to pick up his discarded sword.

  Then he heard shouting from the distance below, and the heart froze in him. He returned to his horse and mounted with difficulty, and the others gathered themselves up, Sharrn delaying to take a quiver of arrows from a marshlander's corpse. Lellin gathered up a bow and quiver, armed now as he preferred. But Sezar was hardly able to get to the saddle.

  The sound was coming up from the foot of the road. It roared like the sea on rocks, as wild and confused.

  "Let us ride higher," Morgaine said. "Beware ambush; but that rockfall may or may not have blocked off the road below us."

  * * *

  They rode slowly, the only strength they and the horses had left, up the winding turns, blind in the dark. Morgaine would not draw the sword, and none wished her to. Up and up they wound, and amid the slow ring of the horses' shod hooves there were sounds still drifting up at them out of the night. A great square arch loomed suddenly before them, and a vast hold built of the very stone of the hill. Nehmin: here if anywhere there should be resistence, and there was none. The great doors were scarred and dented with blows, a discarded ram before them, but they had held.

  Merir's stone flashed once, twice, reddening his hand.

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  Then slowly the great doors yielded inward, and they rode into a blaze of light, over polished floors, where a thin line of white-robed arrha awaited them.

  "You are she," said the eldest, "about whom we were warned."

  "Aye," Morgaine said.

  The elder bowed, to her and to Merir, and all the others inclined themselves dutifully.

  "We have one wounded," Morgaine said wearily. "The rest of us will go outside and watch. We have advantage here, if we do not let ourselves be attacked by stealth. By your leave, sir."

  "I will go," said Sezar, though his face was drawn and seemed older than his years. "You shall not," Lellin said. "But I will watch with them for you."

  Sezar nodded surrender then, and slipped down from his horse. If there had not been an arrha close at hand, he would have fallen.

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  Chapter 17

  Cold wind whipped among the rocks where they sheltered, and they wrapped in their cloaks and sat still, warmed by hot drink which the arrha brought out to them— fed, although they were so bloody and wretched that food was dry in the mouth. Arrha tended their horses, for they were hardly fit to care for them themselves; Vanye interfered in that only to assure himself that at least one of them had some skill in the matter, and then he returned to Morgaine.

  Sezar joined them finally, supported by two of the young arrha and wrapped in a heavy cloak; Lellin arose to rebuke him, but said nothing after all, for joy that he was able to have come. The khemeis sank down at his feet and Sharrn's and rested against their knees, perhaps as warm as he would have been inside and fretting less for being where they were.

  Morgaine sat outermost of their group, and looked on them little; generally she gazed outward with a bleak concentration which made her face stark in the glare from Nehmin's open doors. Her arm was hurting her, perhaps other wounds as well. She carried it tucked against her, her knees drawn up. Vanye had moved into such a position that he blocked most of the wind, the only charity she would accept, possibly because she did not notice it. He hurt; in every muscle he hurt, and not alone with that, but with the anguish in Morgaine.

  Changeling had killed, had taken lives none of them could count; and more than that— it had taken yet another friend; that was the weight on her soul now, he thought: that and worry for the morrow.

  There was still the tumult on the field below… sometimes diminishing, sometimes increasing as bands surged toward the rock of Nehmin and away again.

  "The road must surely be blocked with the stonefall," Vanye observed, and then realized that would remind her of the arrha and the ruin, and he did not want to do that.

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  "Aye," she said in Andurin. "I hope." And then with a shake of her head, still staring into the dark: "It was a fortunate accident. I do not think we should have survived otherwise. Fortunate too… Fortunate too… there were none of us in the gap twixt Changeling and the arrha. "

  "You are wrong."

  She looked at him.

  "Not fortunate," he said. "Not chance. The little arrha knew. I bore her across the field down there. She had great courage. And I believe she thought it through and waited until it had to be tried."

  Morgaine said nothing. Perhaps she took peace of it. She turned back to the view into the dark, where cries drifted up fainter and fainter. Vanye looked in that direction and then back at her, with a sudden chill, for he saw her draw her Honor-blade. But she cut one of the thongs that hung at her belt-ring and gave it to him, sheathing the blade again.

  "What am I to do with this?" he asked, thoroughly puzzled.

  She shrugged, looking for once unsure of herself. "Thee never told me thoroughly," she said, lapsing into that older, familiar accent, "for what thee was dishonored… why they made thee ilin, that I know; but why did they take thy honor from thee too? I would never," she added, " order thee to answer."

  He looked down, clenching the thong taut between his fists, conscious of the hair that whipped about his face and neck. He knew then what she was trying to give him, and he looked up with a sudden sense of release. "It was for cowardice," he said, "because I would not die at my father's wish."

  "Cowardice." She gave a breath of a laugh, dismissing such a thought.

  "Thee?— Braid thy hair, Nhi Vanye. Thee's been too long on this road for that."

  She spoke very carefully, watching his face: in this grave matter even liyo ought not to intervene. But he looked from her to the dark about them and 263

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  knew that this was so. With a sudden resolve he set the thong between his teeth and swept back his hair to braid it, but the injured arm would not bear that angle. He could not complete it, and took the
thong from his mouth with a sigh of frustration. "Liyo—"

  "I might," she said, "if thy arm is too sore."

  He looked on her, his heart stopped for a moment and then beginning again. No one touched an uyo's hair, save his closest kin… no woman except one in intimate relation with him. "We are not kin," he said.

  "No. We are far from kin."

  She knew, then, what she did. For a moment he tried to make some answer, then as it were of no consequence, he turned his back to her and let her strip out his own clumsy braiding. Her fingers were deft and firm, making a new beginning.

  "I do not think I can make a proper Nhi braid," she said. "I have done only my own once and long ago, Chya."

  "Make it Chya, then; I am not ashamed of that."

  She worked, gently, and he bowed his head in silence, feeling what defied speaking. Long-time comrades, she and he; at least in distance and time as men measured it; ilin and liyo— he thought that there might be great wrong in what had grown between them; he feared that there was— but conscience in this area grew very faint.

  And that Morgaine kri Chya set affection on anything vulnerable to loss—he knew what that asked of her.

  She finished, took the thong from him and tied it The warrior's knot was familiar and yet unaccustomed to him, setting his mind back to Morija in Kursh, where he had last been entitled to it. It was a strange feeling. He turned then, met her gaze without lowering his eyes as once he might.

  That was also strange.

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  "There are many things," he said, "we have never reckoned with each other. Nothing is simple."

  "No," she said. "Nothing is." She turned her face to the dark again, and suddenly he realized there was silence below… no clash of arms, no distant shouting, no sound of horses.

  The others realized it too. Merir stood and looked out over the field, of which only the vaguest details could be seen. Lellin and Sharrn leaned on the rocks to try to see, and Sezar struggled up with Lellin's help to look out over the edge.

  Then from far away came thin cries, no warlike shouts, but terror. Such continued for a long time, at this point of the horizon and that.

  Afterward was indeed silence.

  And a beginning of dawn glimmered in the overcast east.

  * * *

  The light came slowly as always over Shathan. It sprang from the east to touch the gray clouds, and lent vague form to the tumbled rocks, the ruin of the great cliffs of Nehmin, and the distant breached gate of the Lesser Horn. The White Hill took shape in the morning haze, and the circular rim of the grove which ringed them about. Bodies of men lay thick on the field, blackening areas of it. Birds came with the dawn. A few frightened horses milled this way and that, riderless, unnatural restlessness. But of the horde… none living.

  It was long before any of them moved. Silently the arrha had come forth into the daylight, and stood staring at the desolation.

  "Harilim," said Merir. "The dark ones must have done this thing."

  But then the distant call of a horn sounded, and drew their eyes northward, to the very rim of the clearing. There was a small band gathered there, which began their ride to Nehmin even as they watched.

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  "They came," said Lellin. "The arrhend has come."

  "Blow the answer to them," Merir said, and Lellin lifted the horn to his lips and sounded it loud and long.

  The horses began in their far distance, to run.

  And Morgaine gathered herself up, leaning on Changeling. "We have a road to open," she said.

  * * *

  It was a grisly ruin, that tumbled mass on the lower road which had been the Dark Horn. They approached it carefully, and perhaps the arrhendim had vision of setting hands to that jumble of vast blocks, for they murmured dismay; but Morgaine rode forward and dismounted, drew Changeling from its sheath. The blade shimmered into life, enveloped stone after stone with that gulf at its tip, and whirled them away otherwhere… no random choice, but carefully, this one and the next and the next, so that some rocks fell and some slid over the brink and other were taken. Even yet Vanye blinked when it was done, for the mind refused such vision, the visible diminution of that debris whirled away into the void, carried on the wind. When even a small way was cleared, it seemed yet impossible what had stood there before.

  They went past it fearfully, with an eye to the slide above them, for Morgaine had taken some care that it be secure, but the whole mass was too great and too new to be certain. There was enough space for them to pass; and below, cautiously, they must venture it again on the lower windings of the road.

  The carnage was terrible in this place: the road had been packed with Shiua when the Horn came down, here and in other levels. In some places Morgaine must clear their way through the dead, and they were wary of stragglers, of ambush, by arrow or stonefall, at any moment; but they met none. The lonely sounds of their own horses' hooves rolled back off the 266

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  cliff and up out of the rocks of the Lesser Horn as they wound their way down to that breached fortress.

  This Vanye most dreaded; so, surely, did they all. But it had to be passed.

  Daylight showed through the broken doors as they rode near; they rode within and found death, dead horses and dead Men and khal, arrow-struck and worse. Beams and timbers from the shattered doors were scattered so that they must dismount, dangerous as it was, and lead the horses among Shiua dead.

  There lay Vis, her small body almost like a marshlander's for size, fallen among her enemies, hacked with many wounds; and by the far gates was Perrin, her pale hair spilled about her and her bow yet in her dead fingers.

  An arrow had found her heart.

  But of Roh, there was no sign.

  Vanye dropped the reins of his horse and searched among the dead, finding nothing; Morgaine waited, saying nothing.

  "I would find him," he pleaded, seeing the anger she had not spoken, knowing he was delaying them all.

  "So would I," she answered.

  He thrust this way and that among the bodies and the broken planks, the crashes of disturbed timbers echoing off the walls. Lellin helped him…

  and it was Lellin who found Roh, heaving aside the leaf of the front gate which had fallen back against the wall, the only one of the four still half on its hinges.

  "He is alive," Lellin said.

  Vanye worked past the obstacle, and put his shoulder beneath it, heaved it back with a crash that woke the echoes. Roh lay half-covered in debris, and they pulled the beams from him with care, the more so for the broken shaft which was in his shoulder. Roh's eyes were half open when they had 267

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  him clear; Sharrn had brought his water flask, and Vanye bathed Roh's face in it, gave him a sip to drink, lifting his head.

  Then with a heaviness of heart he looked at Morgaine, wondering whether having found him was kindness at all.

  She let Siptah stand and walked slowly over in the debris. Roh's bow lay beside him, and his quiver that held one last arrow. She gathered up both out of the dust and knelt there, frowning, the bow clasped in her arms.

  Horses were coming up the road outside. She rose then and set the weapons in Lellin's keeping, walking out into the gateway; but there was no alarm in her manner and Vanye stayed where he was, holding Roh on his knees.

  They were arrhendim, half a score of them. They brought the breath of Shathan with them, these green-clad riders, fair-haired and dark, scatheless and wrapped in dusty daylight from the riven doors. They reined in and dismounted, hurrying to give homage to Merir, and to exclaim in dismay that their lord was in such a place and so weary, and that arrhendim had died here.

  "We were fourteen when we came into this place," said Merir. "Two of the nameless; Perrin Selehnnin, Vis of Amelend, Dev of Tirrhend, Larrel Shaillon, Kessun of Obisend: they are our bitter loss."

  "We have taken little hurt, lor
d, of which we are glad."

  "And the horde?" Morgaine asked.

  The arrhen looked at her and at Merir, seeming bewildered. "Lord— they turned on each other. The qhal and the Men— fought until most were dead. The madness continued, and some perished by our arrows, and more fled into Shathan among the harilim, and there died. But very, very many— died in fighting each other."

  "Hetharu," Roh whispered suddenly, his voice dry and strange. "With Hetharu gone— Shien; and then it all fell apart."

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  Vanye pressed Roh's hand and Roh regarded him hazily. "I hear," Roh breathed. "They are gone, the Shiua. That is good."

  He spoke the language of Andur, thickly, but the brown eyes slowly gained focus, and more so when Morgaine left the others to stand above him. "Thee sounds as if thee will survive, Chya Roh."

  "I could not do even this much well," Roh said, self-mocking, which was Chya Roh and none of the other. "My apologies. We are back where we were."

  Morgaine frowned and turned her back, walked away. " Arrhendim can tend him, and we shall. I do not want him near the arrha, or Nehmin.

  Better he should be taken into Shathan."

  She looked about her then, at all the ruin. "I will come back to this place when I must, but for the moment I would rather the forest, the forest… and a time to rest."

  * * *

  They made an easier ride this time across Azeroth, attended by old friends and new. They camped last beyond the two rivers, and there were arrhendur tents spread and a bright fire to warm the night. Merir had come… great honor to them; and Lellin and Sezar and Sharrn, no holding them from this journey; and Roh: Roh, sunk much of the time in lonely silence or staring bleakly elsewhere. Roh sat apart from the company, among the strange arrhendim of east Shathan, well guarded by them, although he did little and said less, and had never made attempt to run.