He flexed his shoulders such as he could, and moved his legs and arched his spine, slowly, once and twice, to have as much strength in his muscles as he could muster.
In the chance she might come, in the chance his liege, being both wise and clever, might accomplish a miracle, and take this camp, and somehow avoid killing him, remembering—he prayed Heaven—that there was a gate-stone loose and in the hands of an enemy.
But if that miracle happened, and if he survived, then he would have to be able to get on his feet. Then he had to go with her and not slow her down, because there was no doubt there were forces coming south out of Mante, and he must not, somehow must not, hinder her and force her to seek shelter in these too-naked hills, caring for a crippled partner.
A partner fool enough to have brought himself to this.
That was the thing that gnawed at him more than any other—which course he should take, whether he should do everything the enemy wished of him and trust his liege to stay clear-headed; or whether he should refuse for fear she would not, and then be maimed and a burden to her if she did somehow get to him.
Then there was that other thought, coldly reasonable, that love was not enough for her, against what she served. There had been some man before him. And she traveled light, and did always the sensible thing—no need ever fear that she would do something foolish.
He told himself that: he could do what he liked, cry out or remain silent, and have the qhal dice him up piecemeal, and it would do neither harm nor good. He had been on his own since she rode out of here, and would be, till the qhal dragged him as far as Mante and either killed him or, more likely, treated his wounds and kept him very gently till some qhal claimed him for his own use.
Or—it was an occasional thought, one he banished with furious insistence—she might have run straight into forces sent from Mante, and be pinned down and unable to come back—or worse; or very much worse. A harried mind conjured all sorts of nightmares, in the real and present one of the smell of smoke and the unpleasant, nervous laughter of men contemplating another man's slow destruction.
The darkness grew to dusk. The qhal finished their supper, and talked among themselves.
When Chei came to him, to stand over him in the shadows and ask him whether he had any inclination to do what they wanted.
"I will call out to her," Vanye said, not saying what he would call out, once he should see her. "Only I doubt she is here to listen. She is well on her way down the road, that is where she is."
"I doubt that." Chei dropped down to his heels, and took off the pyx that swung from its chain about his neck. "Your property."
He said nothing to that baiting.
"So you will call out to her," Chei said. "Do it now. Ask her to come to the edge of camp—only to talk with us."
He looked at Chei. Of a sudden his breath seemed too little to do what Chei asked, the silence of the hills too great.
"Do it," Chei urged him.
He shaped a cut lip as best he could and whistled, once and piercingly. "Liyo!"
And with a thought not sudden, but one that had come to him in the long afternoon: "Morgaine, Morgaine! For God's sake hear me! They want to talk with you!"
"That is not enough," Chei said, and opened the box, so that a light shone up on his face from the gate-jewel there. The light glared; flesh crawled. Everything about it was excessive and twisted.
"You have only to feel that thing," Vanye said, "to know there is something wrong in the gate at Mante. Truth, man. I have felt others. I know when one is wrong."
"You—know."
"You have no right one to compare it against. It is wrong. It is pouring force out—" He lost his thought as Chei took the jewel in his fingers and laid it down again in the box, and set the open box on the ground beside him.
"So she will know where you are. Call to her again."
"If she is there, she heard me." He had hope of that small box and its stone. The light that made him visible in the twilight, made Chei a target, if Morgaine were there, if she could be sure enough whether the man kneeling by him was the one she wanted. She might be very accurate—unlike a bowman. Several men might be on their way to the ground before they knew they were under attack.
Or she might, instead, be far on her way to Mante.
"That is not enough," Chei said, and called to the men at the fire in rising. "You can," he said then, looking down, "give her far more reason."
He was not going to put them off, then. He might shout, make a useless appeal: he spared himself that indignity and drew several quick, deep breaths before they got to him.
When the iron touched him he did not even try to hold it back.
It went on, and on. There was laughter. A human spat in his face, and some thought that amusing. Others, elegant qhal, simply watched.
She has gotten clear, he kept thinking, he insisted to think, like a litany, imagining gray horse, silver-haired rider, far and far across the hills. She is far too wise for them to catch.
And that is well. That is very well.
"O God—!"
Then: "M'lord!" someone said sharply, and a hand gripped his hair and a knife pricked his throat.
Itis over, he thought.
But something pale appeared and drifted like a cloud in the dark across the stream. He blinked and haze cleared momentarily on a glimmer of silver hair in the dark, black figure in the starlight, the dragon sword, sheathed, set point down in front of her.
"Liyo, " he cried from a raw throat. "Archers!"
The knife pierced his skin; Chei struck it aside.
"We have a man of yours!" Chei shouted out.
"Liyo, they know—"
A blow smashed into his skull, jolting everything into dark, his sense of place, of whether he had warned her or only meant to—
"Do you want me or do you want to talk?" Morgaine's clear voice rang out of the dark.
Vanye slid his eyes to the open box, the gate-jewel. She could not draw, with that unshielded, without taking him as Bron had gone. He struggled against those who held him, only to bring his legs around, tears of pain running through the sweat on his face.
"Do you want your lover back?" Chei taunted her. "Come in and bargain for him."
Vanye gave a sudden heave, swung his left leg over and brought it down on the lid. The light went out. He was blind.
Then Changeling's light flared out, a bar of opal which grew to a white blaze, a shimmering into colors the eye did not want to see. Qhal who had faced that thing before scrambled to escape.
But Chei snatched the box and rolled to cover at Vanye's back, beside the tree.
"I have the stone in my hand," Chei yelled. "Come near my men and I uncover it!"
"Vanye?" her voice rang out. He saw her and all the brush and hill about her lit in Changeling's fire. He saw her hesitate, stopped still. But the winds still blew, howling and blowing the grass. No arrow could fly true in that.
"Liyo, he is telling the truth. Do what you have to. They will not keep me in any comfort."
"In perfect comfort," Chei called out, "if you are reasonable."
"What do you want?"
"Liyo, it is Chei!"
There was silence then, and he lay back against the tree, satisfied, then, he had gotten out what would tell her everything. It was all she needed know.
Perhaps there would be a miracle. He thought not. The only thing he hoped now was that she would not try further, understanding now there was no bargain to be made—not with Chei, who knew far too much about her intentions.
"Curse you for that," Chei said at his shoulder, and surprised him into a painful laugh. It was altogether Chei's expression, plaintive and indignant.
"Let me free," he said to Chei. "It is the only bargain you can make. At the least you will have to keep me in better state than this."
"We have him," Chei shouted out into the dark. "Come near us and he will suffer for it, all the way to Mante—he will wear that stone about his neck, lest
you have notions otherwise!"
"Let me tell you, I will take your men one by one, and you will not kill him—you will not dare harm him, else your men die faster, my lord, you will see how fast. And you will not kill him, for your own life's sake, because he is the only thing keeping you alive. Lest you doubt me—"
A man cried out and fell, and Chei whirled half about and clenched his hand on Vanye's shoulder.
"Now what will you do?" Vanye taunted him.
"Damn you—"
Vanye grinned, for all the pain it cost him.
On the slope, Changeling's fire went out, leaving them blind to the dark.
And Chei's men murmured in indignation and fear.
They gave him food at the dawn—not much, but a piece of waybread and a kind of porridge that was tolerable to his stomach; they let him eat with his hands free, and drink from the stream and wash, with two score men watching him and most of them close enough to fall on him and weigh him down if nothing else. The humor of it was salve for the pain which rode every breath and slightest movement. He would, he hoped, grow more limber the longer he did move, and he refused to show them the pain that he was in or to ask any consideration they dared refuse. The burns on his chest and stomach bid fair to be the worst, the more so that they intended to set him in armor again—lest, Chei argued loudly with a captain who objected, some accident take him on the road.
Chei prevailed, by shouting, and the forty-odd men watched him sullenly as he pulled on his breeches and his shirt and padding, and the mail, which weight felt ten times what it was wont; but it made his bruised and burned ribs and stomach feel the safer from chance blows. He fumbled about with the straps of the leather, and Chei cursed him, whereat he hurried no more than before, having judged Chei had no wish to try his fortunes and discommode his men before the day was even begun.
Then Chei ordered him tied. He had known that they were going nowhere until they had done it; he had known they would take what revenge they dared in the doing of it, and he resolutely disappointed them by standing quietly and yielding his hands behind him, using his strength only when they put pressure on his arms, intentionally to cause him pain.
And the stone, which had been unshielded the night long, pouring its evil into the air, Chei brought him and hung about his neck as he had said, eye to eye with him for that moment.
"There will be ways," Chei said to him.
"You can save your men, Chei. Give me my horse and let me go. That is all you have to do. You have fifty good years as you are, whether we win or lose. Otherwise you have only a handful of days—if you have that. Do you think you will be the last my lady leaves alive with me?"
There was fear in Chei's eyes. And hate. Chei drew his hand away, and smashed it across his face before he could entirely evade the blow.
There was fear, when he shook the hair back and looked past Chei at his men. There was outright resentment.
"Threats," Chei scoffed, and went to his horse. He waved his hand at the others. "Move! Mount up! We have ground to cover."
There was a small, dull sound. The man holding the red roan for him fell without an outcry, only a puff of foul smoke hanging in the air. The camp broke into chaos, the horse shied. A second man fell, further away.
Chei whirled and flung himself at Vanye, arms about his waist, and came down on top of him with an impact that drove the breath out of him and half stunned him with the blow to the back of his head. He came to himself in pain, being dragged to a sitting position with Chei's arm about him and Chei shouting orders at his men to find Morgaine.
Not likely, he thought. He did not resist being used as a shield. He sat there with his eyes shut and drew small breaths that did not hurt. "If she wants you," he murmured to Chei, "she will surely take you."
There had been forty men and two in their company last night. He had taken account. Losing one last night, two this morning, there were thirty-nine, counting himself.
"Shut up," Chei hissed at him.
He rested, that was all.
When the men, by ones and twos, trailed back from their search of the hillsides, there were thirty-seven, and Chei, standing, shouted furious orders to mount up.
"There are reinforcements coming," the second in command protested, in full hearing of the others. "We should raise a fortification and stay here. You are losing men, Qhiverin, all for your damnable insistence on going ahead with this—"
"Do as I tell you!" Chei shouted at the man. "Get to horse! We are riding out of here!"
The qhalur captain, tall and elegant, bowed his head with ill grace and went for his horse.
To all this Vanye said nothing at all, considering the state of his ribs and his gut. Chei grabbed him by the hair getting him on his feet and even this he bore, that and the hard grip of the men who pushed him at Arrhan. But one of them hit her when she shied from them and at that he resisted, an instant's bracing of muscles before he thought quickly that men of their ilk might as like kill her to spite him. So he struggled to get his foot into the stirrup and let them shove him up onto her back. They tied Arrhan's reins to a sorrel gelding's saddle and she did not like that either, side-stepping and jerking till he tapped her with his heels and spoke to her in the Kurshin tongue, softly, one friend in this situation, where he had as soon not have had her.
The company rode out of the camp and across country, toward the road.
He was not surprised by that. They hoped to deprive Morgaine of cover from which to strike at them. All day they would be thinking of means to save themselves and to have revenge on them both.
Himself, he gave himself up to Arrhan's gait and slept, in what stretches he could, between the pain of burns and stiff muscles and the ache of his shoulders and back, and the peculiar unpleasantness of the unshielded stone which rode close against his throat, as Chei had tied it, a sense of gate-force which reached a mind-numbing pitch and stayed there, never abating.
When Morgaine needed him to do something she would signal him. He had no doubt she would do it in some fashion—perhaps through the stone itself, if it would not likewise advise their enemy.
Beyond that he did not try to think, except where the qhal themselves afforded him something to wonder on. To think what the end of this might be, or to think how he had wandered into this, was too deadly a sink, a place in which he could lose himself. This much he had learned of Morgaine, to deal with the moment and keep his mind flowing with it—like swordplay, like that intricate art in which there was no time to spare for forever.
He waited, that was all.
And by afternoon another man pitched from the saddle.
There were outcries, there was shouting—some men broke and ran and the whole company did, stringing out in disorder.
Two riders veered far off toward the northwest, and kept going.
"They are cowards!" Chei yelled at the rest. "Likeliest they are dead men. Stay with the column."
"Let him go!" one of the qhal shouted back. "Let him go, let us ride back to Morund!"
"Silence!" Chei bade him. "Do you think any of us would live out the hour?"
"No one would prevent you," Vanye said. "Go home. It is your high lords who use the gates—this one is spending your lives to no—"
He ducked his head and put his shoulder in the way of Chei's sheathed sword as it came whistling round for him, ducked again from the second blow, and as Arrhan shied, drove his heels in.
The mare jerked and bolted, hitting the reins with all her weight and throwing the other horse into a wild stagger after balance. For a moment he kept her circling and shying up under the impacts of his heels.
Then other riders closed in about him and seized reins and bridles to stop her.
Chei was one. Chei shoved the sheathed sword under his chin when all was done and jerked his head up.
"Tonight," Chei told him. "Tonight."
No one spoke, except Chei bade them put a rope to Arrhan's halter and use that as well as the reins.
They gav
e him neither food nor water, nor any other consideration for his comfort, so that the ride became one long misery of heat and ache—no rest for him at the times they would stop to rest the horses. They drank at a stream and afforded Arrhan water, but none for him.
It was petty vengeance.
Only once, there was an outcry from the rear of their column, and Chei gave furious orders that sent men thundering back along the road toward a rider that appeared like a ghost and vanished again in the tricks of the rolling land.
He held his breath then. He could not but worry.
But the rider left the road before they came that far.
And within the hour a man pitched dead from the saddle.
"Damn you!" Chei shouted to the hills. "Damn you!"
The hills echoed him. That was all.
Vanye did not meet his eyes then. He kept his head bowed amid the murmuring of the others.
They were thirty-three.
Close to him, for some little time, Chei and the captain argued in muted fury, concerning a place for a camp, concerning the hazard of leaving the road for the hills.
"It is him she wants," the captain asserted finally, in hushed violence. "Put a sword in him, take the jewel, and leave him in the road. She will stop for him. No horse for him and a wounded man on her hands—then the balance shifts. Then we become the hunters. More of this is madness."
It was only too reasonable a course. Vanye listened with a sinking heart, and braced himself to cause them what trouble he could.
But: "No!" Chei said.
"It is your ambition," the captain said. "Your damnable ambition, Qhiverin! No waiting on Mante—no chance of anyone but yourself dealing with it—You will listen to me, or the high lord will when I bear the report to him—"
"You will obey orders, captain, or I will bear reports of my own of your insubordination, of your obstructing me, damn you! I am my lord, and Qhiverin is gone, captain, with all his disfavor, Gault is dead, what is more, and you do not know me, captain, you do not know me in the least and you do not know the enemy you are dealing with and you do not know the weapon you are dealing with. That stone around his neck keeps us alive, captain. Around yours, much as I would like to see it, it would be no more than an encouragement—it cannot take that weapon of hers, need I shout the matter aloud? Whoever holds the stone will go like a leaf in the wind, and that accursed sword will stand fast in this world—that is what prevents her, nothing more."
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