Exiles Gate com-4

by C. J. Cherryh

  "Best we move."

  "Is there—"

  "No. Only shortness of time. A little of the night left. We travel while we can."

  He glanced around to see were Chei and Bron awake then, one instant's impulse, and remembered everything like a blow to the stomach; he drew a breath then and rubbed an unshaven face, and quickly gathered himself to his feet, trying not to think on anything but the road.

  Fool, he thought. Do not look back. Look around you. Look around you. That is what caused this sorry business, nothing more and nothing less than losing track of things.

  He wanted to weep. He adjusted Arrhan's gear and reached out to hold Siptah's bridle for Morgaine as she prepared to mount. "Do not be seeing to me," she said sharply, taking back the reins, by which she meant do not be twice a fool.

  It stung. He was not in a mood to bear her temper, and she was not in a mood for debating what she wanted. He turned and flung himself to horse, and waited on her, since she was in such haste.

  She mounted up and rode without a backward look. She was fey and doom-ridden, and the loss of a comrade and the driving away of another—the excessive cruelty of it, like her ultimatum to him with Chei, was all one thing.

  It was because of that blade she bore. It was because of the lives it took. It was because of the things she knew that he did not, and the madness—the madness which distracted her, and which, this morning, beckoned both of them.

  Her moods had been tolerable while he had been no more than ilin and now were enough to drive him to black, blind rage, anger to match her own.

  She spoke finally. It was to remark on the land, as if there had never been a quarrel.

  "Aye," he said, and: "Aye, my liege," choking down his temper—for hers was gone, vanished. That was the way of her. He was Nhi on one side of the blanket and Chya on the other and temper once it rose was next to madness, it blinded and it drove him—even to fratricide; after which he had learned to smother it under ilin –law. O Heaven, he thought, ilin to a temper-prone woman was one thing. Both lover and shieldman to a woman half-mad and geas-driven was another.

  He had the warrior's braid back. The cool air on his neck, the high-clan honor that forever reminded him he could take another path, the ilin's oath that bound him to a liege he could in no wise leave—unwise, unwise, ever to tangle matters further, unwise to have drifted closer and closer until she could wound him, and drive him mad, and then absently forget she had struck at him at all.

  But it had happened. He was snared. He had been enspelled from the beginning.

  And she left him with his ghosts—thinking at one time he heard more horses than their two, thinking at another moment that Chei and Bron were behind him. They haunted the tail of his eye so that a bit of brush, a stone, a trick of the rising sun, persuaded his sight that they were there.

  Both.

  Chei is dead, he thought with a chill, and crossed himself. Chei isdead.

  And he could not say why he suddenly believed this, or why it was two riders that haunted him, except it was guilt, or foreknowledge what they had sent Chei to, in a land where he had qhal-taint on him.

  He wept, the tears running down his face, without expression. Beside him, Morgaine said some word.

  "Vanye," she said then.

  There was no place for a man to go, except to turn his face away.

  She was silent after. The wind dried his face. There seemed nothing to say, that would not lead to things he did not want to discuss. He only gave a sigh and shifted in his saddle and looked at her, so that she would know that he was all right.

  The sun came up by degrees in the sky and showed them other ghosts, the heights of hills which had not been there, showed them a land of crags and rough land ahead of them, all painted in shadows of gold and cloud.

  "Rest," she said again, when they had come to water, a little pond between two hills, and this time again he took Siptah's bridle as she dismounted.

  She laid her hand on his back as she walked past him, as he slipped the horses' bits to let them graze and rest a little. He felt it faintly through the armor, and it set the thoughts moiling in him, a little of relief, a great deal of reluctance to do or say anything with her. It was not a quarrel of woman and man. It was, he decided finally, that their blood was up, both, that they had killed, that she had fighting in her mind and so did he, and to expect any gentleness or to offer any was unwise.

  He went and washed his hands and his face and his neck in the pond, wetting his boots in the boggy grass.

  "Do not drink," she said from behind him, reminding him of cautions that he knew as well as she, and he turned half about with a sudden, trapped fury in him.

  He said nothing, and rose and walked back to sit down on his heels and press his wet hands to the back of his neck and to his brow.

  "Sleep," he said without looking at her. "You are due that."

  "I should not have chided thee."

  "No, you should have let a fool drink from standing water. It is not Kursh, or Andur, liyo. I know that. I was not that much fool."

  "Thee can take the rest. Thee has more need."

  "Why, because I am short-tempered? I have killed a man. I have killed one man I held for a friend. And we have lost the other. No matter." He wiped the hair back from his stubbled face, the wisps that had come loose from his braid and trailed about brow and ears, and he had not the will left to do more than wipe them out of his way. "I am learning."

  Then the reach of what he had said shot through him. He glanced up at her face. My God, why did I say that?

  The mask had come back over her countenance, pale as it was. She shrugged and looked aside at the ground. "Well that we save our shafts for our enemies."

  "Forgive me." He went to his knees and she moved so suddenly he thought she would strike him in the face, but it was his shoulder she caught, hard, with the heel of her hand, before he could even think to bow to the ground as reflex made natural. He met her angry stare and there was nothing woman-gentle in the blow that had stopped him from the obeisance. He had meant to make peace. Now he only stared at her.

  She looked dismayed too, finally, the anger fading. Her hand went gentle on his shoulder and trailed down his arm. "There is no way back," she said. "If you learn anything of me, learn that."

  He felt his throat tighten. He drew breaths to find an adequate one and finally shook his head, and turned aside and got up clumsily, since she gave him no room.

  "I am sorry," he said with his back to her. The arm that had wielded the sword ached again, and he rubbed at the shoulder she had struck. "I have my wits about me, better than you see. God knows, we are going to need our rest. And I do you no service to rob you of yours. I am not the first man mistook a friend in a fight, God knows I am not—" He remembered the harper, with a wince. He could not but wound her, no matter what he did or said; no more than she with him. He could not think where they would find rest, or where he would shake the phantoms in the tail of his eye, and of a sudden panic came over him, thinking what odds mounted against their passing those mountains ahead.

  It was speed they needed. And human bodies and exhausted horses could only do so much before hearts broke and flesh failed.

  "They are my mistakes," she said. He heard her move, and her shadow fell past him and merged with his on the thin grass, "to have taken them with us, to have given thee the sword. It was thy own strength betrayed thee, that thee kept using it. Never—never bear it till it wields thee. That is what happened. That, I did not make thee understand. It has happened to me. Thee learns. And sometimes even then—"

  She did not finish. He looked half around at her and nodded, and refused to regard the phantom that beckoned him from the tail of his eye, a shadow on the horizon of the road. Her hand rested on his arm and his pressed hers.

  Until that phantom insisted, and this time he must look, seeing a horseman atop the ridge.

  "Liyo!" he hissed. "On the road—"

  He leapt up and she did; and hu
rried for the horses, to tighten cinches and refit bridles: he caught Siptah first, his duty to his liege, and she left him to that for economy of motion and did the same for Arrhan, still working as he led Siptah to her.

  A last buckle and she was done. He cast a glance over his shoulder and saw the oncoming riders, twenty, thirty or more.

  "They are Gault's or they are out of the gate," Morgaine said, and set her foot in Siptah's stirrup. "If the latter, we have no knowledge what weapons they have, and I do not like this ground—Ride!"

  He sprang to the saddle and reined to her left as they made the road. There was no question but that they were seen by now, but the narrowing of the road left them little choice—and that in itself put a fear into him. Many things about the gates bewildered him, but crossing from here to there did not, and if Gault's men had gone from Tejhos to Mante and back, Mante itself was warned and might have riders coming south to head them off.

  It was more and more of narrow passage ahead of them: the rising sun had limned rougher land stretching eastward and north, and that meant fewer and fewer choices of any sort.

  They had won so many battles. The odds grew and the land shaped itself against them. "Get off the road," he shouted at Morgaine as he rode alongside. "For Heaven's own sake, liyo, we cannot win straight through—we cannot outride them behind and before! Let us get into the hills, let them hunt us there, let them hunt us the winter long, if that is what it takes to let them grow careless—"

  It was an outlaw's counsel. He had that to give. He looked at Morgaine and saw her face set and pale in that unreason that drove her. He despaired then.

  "We make as much ground as we can," she called across to him, "as long as we can."

  He looked back over his shoulder, where their pursuers made a darkness on either margin of the road, running beside the sporadic white stone.

  "Then stop and fight them," he said. "Liyo, in Heaven's name, one or the other!"

  "There might be others," she shouted back, meaning overland, through the hills; and he caught the gist of her fears and reckoned as she reckoned, on Mante, and stones, and gates.

  The riders so easily seen might be a lure to delay or herd them.

  Still, still, she was the elder and warier of them.

  They crested a hill and for a time they were running alone, at an easier gait, for a long enough time that he looked back once and twice looking for their pursuers; and Morgaine looked, her silver hair whipping in the wind.

  They were gone.

  "I do not like this," she said as they rode.

  The road which had held straight so far, through so much of the land, took a bend toward the east which Chei had never mapped.

  And his own instincts cried trap.

  "Liyo, I beg you, let us get off this!"

  Morgaine said nothing, but of a sudden turned Siptah aside into a fold of the hills, keeping a quick pace on grassy and uneven ground, down the course the hills gave them.

  Deeper and deeper into land in which they no longer had a guide.

  They rode more quietly at last, finding their way by the sun in a wandering course through grassy hills, brush and scrub forest.

  They watched the hilltops and the edges of the thickets, and from time to time looked behind them or stopped and listened and watched the flight of birds for omens of pursuers.

  Morgaine did not speak now. He rode silent as she, senses wide and listening, for any hint of other presence.

  Only as the sun sank: "The dark is their friend tonight," Morgaine said, "more than ours, in a land we do not know. We had best find ourselves a place and lie quiet a while."

  "Thank Heaven," he muttered; and when they had found that place, a deep fold of the hills well-grown with brush, and when they had gotten the horses sheltered up against an overhang of the hills and rubbed them down and fed them, then he felt that he could breathe again and he had a little appetite for the fireless supper they made.

  "Tomorrow," he said anxiously, "we will camp here, and I will go a little down the way and bring back forage for the horses—I do not think we ought to stir out of here for a few days. Listen to me!" he said, as she began to answer him. "Whatever you ask, I will do, you know that. But hear me out. Time will serve us. If it takes us months—we will live to get to Mante."

  "No," she said. "No. We have no months. We have no days. Does thee understand me? This Skarrin—this lord in Mante—" She fell silent again, leaning her chin on her arm, resting on her knee, and there was a line between her brows, in the fading of the light. "There are qhal and there are qhal, and Skarrin's is an old name, Vanye, a very old name."

  "Do you know him?"

  "If he is what I think he is—I know what he is; and I tell thee there is no risk we have ever run—" Her fist clenched. "Only believe what I tell thee: we have no time with this man."

  "What is he?"

  "Something I hoped did not exist. Perhaps I am wrong." She sighed and worked the fingers of that hand. "Talk of something else."

  "Of what?"

  "Of anything."

  He drew a breath. He cast back. It was Morija came to mind. It always did. But darker things overshadowed it—a keep surrounded with flood. A forest, haunted with things which did not love human or qhal. Of his cousin. But that was a memory too fraught with dark things too.

  "At least we are warmer," he said, desperate recourse to the weather.

  "And dry," she said.

  "Good grazing here. A few days," he said. "Liyo, —we can rest a few days. The horses will not take more of this."

  "Vanye—"

  "Forgive me."

  "No, thee is right, but we have no choice. Vanye—I had no choice."

  It was not their moving on that she meant. Her voice trembled.

  "I know that," he said, no steadier.

  She looked at him and reached out to his arm, a light touch which jolted him like hot iron, drew him out of despair and absorbed his attention so thoroughly a score of enemies could have ridden down on them and come second in his mind.

  No, he had wit to think, but not much beyond that. Her arms clenched about him. Her mouth met his. There was precious little more to do, surrounded by enemies, under arms, with no rest to be had and no leisure to spend unwary.

  There will never be a time, he thought, in a chill of panic, and held her the tighter, as she held him, in an armored grip become harsh and desperate, with nothing of gentleness about it. Everyone else has failed her. Too much she has lost, too many dead —For that reason she armed me more than herself, gave me her chiefest weapon; and what did it win us but calamity to our friends, and rage at each other?

  They slept finally, turn and turn about, on the sloping, stony ground where the brush afforded them cover. He watched her as she slept. He wished—but there was no hope.

  Only they managed to heal what was torn, there was that much.

  Morgaine waked him toward dawn, a shadow between him and the day. He heard her voice telling him there was breakfast and he murmured an answer, rolled over and favored an aching arm, holding it across him.

  "We should move," she said, "a little ways this morning."

  "Oh, Heaven," he moaned, and bowed his head between his knees, arms over his neck.

  She did not stay to argue. She went back to sit on her saddle, where she had laid out a cold breakfast on the leather wrappings they used for foodstuffs, knowing matters would go her way.

  He followed, and sat down on the grass, and ate in silence no different than other silences.

  And did not give way to temper, or venture in headlong.

  "Liyo," he said when he was toward finishing: "Listen to me. This enemy of yours—whoever he is. You think he will run. But a man will not run, who thinks himself winning. No one can be that cautious."

  She said nothing. It was not a frown on her face, only thought.

  "Let them lose us," he said. "Let this Skarrin marshal some defense against us. Let him think he has turned us. A man in power—he will not
want to give up what he has. He will go nowhere at all. In the meanwhile we will learn this land, we will go slowly—we will gather strength, rest, find a way to him—am I not right?"

  Her lips made a taut line. There was warfare in her eyes, unbelief and consideration. "Possibly. Possibly. But being wrong, Vanye—"

  "What will a man do who is cornered? He is far more apt to use the gate at Mante and escape us."

  He argued for their lives, for sanity and safety.

  And she gathered that thing into her lap in silence, the sword, that weapon which was constantly beside her, day and night, and which gave them no peace.

  "Liyo, you drive this man and you force this man, and what will he do? You will unseat him: his own vassals will question his power; or you will make him desperate—you always strike too hard, liyo, —listen to me: you know no moderation with your enemies. You give them no choices and while they have no warning, that serves you well—but you have no subtlety in the field. You are the kind of lord who loses lives—forgive me." His heart beat hard and he gazed up into her eyes in a dread of the things he had to say with brutal force, that the numbness of recent sleep let him say without stumbling, and the quiet of the dawn let her hear without preventing him. "If it were an army with us I should never question you: if you told me to go against any odds, then, I would do that, and trust there was good cause. But you have no army. You have one man. And he is bound, liyo, to cover your back and your side, as long as he can; and he will do that. But he is one man, all the same, and someday, if you keep on as you are, you will lose him, because he will die before he lets you go down first."

  The frown had deepened on her face. There was storm in her eyes. "I can guard my own back. I need no fools to kill themselves, plague take you, I have had enough of fools to fling themselves in my way—"

  "It is your back I am talking about."

  Her breath came hard. His own did. "And I am talking about fools," she said. "Bron's sort. Chei's sort. Arunden, for another." Her enemies saw that look. It had been a long time since she had turned it on him. "Ten thousand men at Irien, who would not hold where I told them to hold, no, they must get to the fore of me, because I am there and their damnable pride makes them do what no lord could order them to do in cold blood, if it means charging a wide open gate—"