Exile's Gate

by C. J. Cherryh

  Chapter 2

  Dawn light grew in the clearing, and Vanye probed the ashes of their fire with a bit of kindling, as he had fed it from time to time in the hours of his watch. Yellow threads of fire climbed and sparked in the threads of inner bark of something very like willow. He added a few other twigs, then arranged more substantial pieces, deliberate in his leisure. It was a rare moment in which nothing pressed them, in which he knew that they were not riding on, and all he needed think on was the fire, the mystery that was always homelike, no matter what the sky over him, or the number of moons in it. The horses grazed in the clearing on the riverside, where the twisted trees let in enough light for grass—faithful sentries both, dapple gray Siptah wise to war and ambushes, Arrhan forest-wise and sensible. Something might escape human ears, but the horses would give alarm—and they found nothing amiss in this morning. Catastrophe had attempted them in the night—and failed.

  On the other side of the fire, the glow falling on slender hand and silver hair, Morgaine slept on, which small vision he cherished in that same quiet way as he did the fire and the dimly rising sun.

  "Sleep," he whispered when she stirred. Sometimes, in such rare leisure, she would yield him the body-warmed blankets, so he might sleep a little while she made breakfast—or he yielded them to her, whichever of them had sat the watch into dawn.

  She half-opened her eyes and lifted her head, nose above the blankets. "Thee can sleep," she said, in the Kurshin tongue, as he had spoken—but it was an older accent, forgotten by the time he was born. It was a habit she had when she spoke to him alone, or when she was muddled with sleep.

  "I am full awake," he said, which was a lie: he felt the long hours of his watch in a slight prickling in his eyes, his bruised shoulder ached, and the blankets were tempting shelter from the morning chill. But he saved her from hardship when he could—so often that it became a contest between them, of frowns and maneuverings, each favoring the other in a perpetual rivalry which tilted one way or the other according to the day and the need.

  "Sleep," he said now. Morgaine sank back and covered her head; and he smiled with a certain satisfaction as he delved into their saddlebags and brought out a pan for mixing and cooking.

  The prisoner too, lying prone in his cloak, showed signs of life, rolling onto his side. Vanye reckoned what his most pressing need likely was, and reckoned that it could wait a time: shepherding an escape-prone madman out to the woods meant waking Morgaine to put her on guard; or letting their breakfast go cold—neither of which he felt inclined to do, considering the prisoner was healthy enough to have sprinted for the horses last night, and considering he had won a stiff arm for his last attempted kindness.

  Morgaine bestirred herself as the smell of cakes and bacon wafted into the air—enough to draw the hungry for leagues about, Vanye reckoned—the most of them bent on banditry, if what they had seen was any guide.

  And another glance toward the prisoner showed him lying on his side, staring in their direction with such misery and desolation that Vanye felt his eyes on him even when he looked back at their breakfast.

  "I should see to him," Vanye muttered unhappily when Morgaine came back from the riverside. He poured tea into their smallest mixing bowl, wrapped a cloth about it to keep it warm, and set out a cake and a bit of bacon on the cloth that wrapped his cooking-gear, while Morgaine sat down to eat. "Have your own," he said, "before it cools."

  It did not look like a madman who stared up at him as he came over to his place among the tree-roots. It looked like a very miserable, very hungry man who hoped that food truly was coming to him. "I will free your hands," Vanye said, dropping down on his heels beside him. He set the food down carefully on the dead leaves of the forest floor. "But not your feet. Meddle with that and I will stop you, do you understand? For other necessities I trust you can wait like any civilized man." It was the qhalur language he spoke, and it did not go so lightly over his tongue as it ought. He was not sure, at times, what hearers did understand of him. "Do you agree? Or do I take the food back?"

  "The food," the man said, a faint, hoarse voice. "Yes."

  "You agree."

  A nod of the head, a worried gnawing of the lip.

  He turned the prisoner over and gently worked the knots free on his hands. The man only gave a great sigh and lay still on his face a moment, his arms at rest beside him, as a man would who had spent the night with his hands and shoulders going numb.

  "He is quieter," he reported then to Morgaine, in his own tongue, when he settled down to breakfast beside her. He took a cup of tea and considered his hands, where he had touched the man. It was death-stink, lingering: the man was that filthy; and he could not eat until he had walked down to the river and washed his hands.

  It was overdone bacon then; Morgaine kept the breakfast warm for him on the coals, along with the tea which by now was bitter-edged. He drank and made a face.

  "I should have gotten up," Morgaine said.

  "No," he said. "No, you ought not. I will take care of him. I will have him down to the river before the sun is much higher, and I swear to you he will be cleaner before you have to deal with him."

  "I want you to talk to him."

  "Me?"

  "You can manage that."

  "Aye—but—"

  "Not?"

  "I will do it." Rarely nowadays she put any hard task on him: and he took it, distasteful as it was, likely as he was to make a muddle of things. "But—"

  "But?"

  "He can lie to me. How should I know? How should I know anything he told me? I have no subtlety with lies."

  "Is thee saying I do?"

  "I did not say—"

  She smiled, a quirk of her mouth, gray eyes flickering. "Man and man; Man and Man. That is the fact. Between one thing and the other I am not the one of us two he will trust. No. Learn what brought him here. Promise him what thee sees fit to promise. Only—" She reached out and laid a hand on his arm. "He will not go free. We cannot allow that. Thee knows what I will give—and what I will not."

  "I know," he said, and thought as he said it that he had chosen the road that brought him to this pass—thought suddenly how more than one land cursed Morgaine kri Chya for the deaths she brought. He had tried in his life to be an honorable man, and not to lie.

  But he had chosen to go with her.

  It was far more warily the man regarded him on his return, tucked up with his back against a tree, eyes following every move he made—a filthy, desperate figure their guest was by daylight, his nose having bled into his white-blond mustache and down his unkept and patchy beard, dirt-sores and crusted lines on his face, a trickle of dried blood having run from under the matted hair at his temple—a reminder of the night previous, Vanye thought. Likely more than the man's arms ached this morning.

  But he had not touched the binding on his ankles. He had eaten every bit of the cake and the bacon off the cloth, down to the crumbs. And there was still a look on his face, as if having eaten off their charity, he felt there was a chance something else of hope might happen, but much doubted it.

  "I will tell you," Vanye said, sinking down on his heels, arms on knees, in front of him, "how I am. I hold no grudge. A man in the dark and fevered—he may do strange things. I reckon that this was the case last night. On the other hand, if you take some other mad notion that endangers my liege, I shall not hesitate to break your neck, do you understand?"

  The man said nothing at all. There was only a stare of wary blue eyes, beneath the tangled hair, and the stink of filth was overwhelming.

  "Now I think you have been a warrior," Vanye said. "And you do not choose to be filthy or to be a madman. So I should like to take you down to the water and give you oil and salve and help you present a better face to my lady, do you understand me at all, man?"

  "I understand," the man said then, the faintest of voices.

  "So you should know," Vanye said, taking out his Honor-blade from his belt and beginning to undo the knots w
hich bound the man's feet, "my lady is herself a very excellent shot, with weapons you may not like to see—in case you should think of dealing with me." He freed the knot and unwrapped the leather, tucking it in his belt to save. "There." With a touch on the man's bare and swollen right foot. "Ah. That did the swelling no good at all. Can you walk?—Have you a name, man?"

  "Chei."

  "Chei." Vanye rose and took his arm, and pulled the man up to take his weight on his left foot, steadying him as he tried the right. "Mine is Vanye. Nhi Vanye i Chya, but Vanye is enough outside hold and hall. There. Walk down to the water. I warn you it is cold. I would have heaved you in last night, with that gear of yours, except for that. Go on. I will find you down by the water. I will find you down by the water—or I will find you. Do you hear me?"

  Thoughts of escape passed through the man's head, it was clear by the wariness in his eyes; then different thoughts entirely, and fear, the man being evidently no fool. But Vanye walked away from him, going back after his kit by the fire.

  "Be careful with him!" Morgaine said sharply, as he bent down near her. Her eyes were on the prisoner. But he had been sure of that when he had turned his back.

  Vanye shrugged and sank down a moment to meet her eyes. "Do as I see fit, you said."

  "Do not make gestures."

  He drew a long breath. So she set him free and then wanted to pull the jesses. It was not her wont, and it vexed him. But clearly she was worried by something. "Liyo, I am not in danger of a man lame in one foot, smaller than I am and starved into the bargain. Not in plain daylight. And I trust your eye is still on him—"

  "And we do not know this land," she hissed. "We do not know what resources he may have."

  "None of them came to him on that hilltop."

  "Thee is leaving things to chance! There are possibilities neither of us can foresee in a foreign place. We do not know what he is."

  Her vehemence put doubt into him. He bit his lip and got up again. He had never quite let his own eye leave the man in his walk downhill, save the moment it took to reach her; but it seemed quibbling to protest that point, the more so that she had already questioned his judgment, and justly so, last night. Beyond this it came to opinion; and there were times to argue with Morgaine. The time that they had a prisoner loose was not that moment.

  "Aye," he said quietly. "But I will attend him. I will stay in your sight. As long as you see me, everything is well enough."

  He gathered up one of their blankets for drying in, along with his personal kit. He walked down the hill, pausing on the way to lay a hand on Siptah's shoulder, where the big gray and white Arrhan grazed at picket on the grassy slope. He reckoned that Morgaine would have that small black weapon in hand and one eye on him constantly.

  It was not honorable, perhaps, to deal with hidden weapons in the pretense of being magnanimous; but Morgaine—she had said it—did not take pointless chances. It was not honorable either, to tempt a frightened man to escape, to test his intentions, where keeping him under close guard would save his life. And other lives, it might well be.

  But the man had not strayed—had attended his call of nature and limped his way down to water's edge by the time Vanye had walked the distance downslope, and he had never dared bolt from sight of them or wander behind branches. That much was encouraging. Chei had bent down to drink, with movements small and painful, there on the margin.

  "Wash," Vanye said, and dropped the folded blanket beside him on the grass. "I will sit here, patient as you like."

  Chei said nothing. He only sat down, bowed his head and began with clumsy efforts to unbuckle straps and work his way out of the filth- and weather-stiffened leather and mail, piece after piece of the oddly fashioned gear laid aside on the bank.

  "Lord in Heaven," Vanye murmured then, sickened at what he saw—not least was he affected by the quiet of the man sitting there on the grass and taking full account, with trembling hands and tight-clamped jaw and a kind of panic about his eyes, what toll his ordeal had taken of his body—great, deep sores long festered and worn deep in his flesh. Wherever the armor had been ill-fitted, there infection and poison had set in and corruption had followed, deepening the sores, to be galled again by the armor. Wherever small wounds had been, even what might have been insect bites, they had festered; and as Chei pulled the padding beneath the mail free, small bits of skin and corruption came with it.

  It was not the condition of a man confined a day or even a few days. It bespoke something much more terrible than he had understood had happened on that hill, and the man sat there, trembling in deep shock, trying stolidly to deal with what a chirurgeon or a priest should attend.

  "Man—" Vanye said, rising and coming over to him. "I will help."

  But the man turned his shoulder and wanted, by that gesture, no enemy's hands on him, Vanye reckoned—perhaps for fear of roughness; perhaps his customs forbade some stranger touching him; Heaven knew. Vanye sank down on his heels, arms on his knees, and bit his lip for self-restraint, the while Chei continued, with the movements of some aged man, to peel the leather breeches off, now and again pausing, seeming overwhelmed by pain as if he could not bear the next. Then he would begin again.

  And there was nothing more than that, that a man could do, while Vanye watched, flinching in sympathy—Lord, in Ra-morij of his birth, a gentleman would not countenance this sort of thing—chirurgeon's business, one would murmur, and cover his nose and go absolve himself with a cup of wine and the noisy talk of other men in hall. He had never had a strong stomach with wounds gone bad.

  But the man doggedly, patiently, worked out of the last of it, put his right leg down into the water, and the left, and slipped off the bank, to lose his balance and fall so suddenly that Vanye moved for the edge thinking he had gone into some hole.

  Chei righted himself and clawed for the bank—held on in water only chest deep as Vanye gripped his forearm against the grass. Chei was spitting water and gasping after air, his blond hair and beard streaming water, his teeth chattering in what seemed more shock than cold.

  "I will pull you out," Vanye said.

  "No," Chei said, pulling away. "No." He slipped again, and all but went under, fighting his way to balance again, shivering and trying to pull free.

  Vanye let him go, and watched anxiously as the prisoner ducked his head deliberately and rubbed at ingrained dirt, scrubbing at galled shoulders and arms and body.

  Vanye delved into his kit and found the cloth-wrapped soap. "Here," he said, offering it out over the water. "Soap."

  The man made a few careful steps back to take it and the cloth; and wet it and scrubbed. The lines about the eyes had vanished, washed away with the dirt. It was a younger face now; tanned face and neck and hands, white flesh elsewhere, in which ribs and shoulder-blades stood out plainly.

  More of scrubbing, while small chains of bubbles made serpentines down the rapid current. There was danger of that being seen downstream. But there was danger of everything—in this place, in all this unknown world.

  "Come on," Vanye said at last, seeing how Chei's lips had gone blue. "Come on, man—Chei. Let me help you out. Come on, man."

  For a moment he did not think the man could make it. Chei moved slowly, arms against his body, movements slowed as if each one had to be planned. The hand that grasped Vanye's was cold as death. The other carefully, deliberately, laid the soap and the cloth in the grass.

  Vanye pulled on him, wet skin slipping in his fingers, got the second hand and drew him up onto the grass, where Chei might have been content to lie. But he hauled Chei up again and drew him stumbling as far as the blanket, where he let him down on his side and quickly wrapped him against the chill of the wind, head to foot.

  "There," Vanye said. "There—stay still." He hastened up again, seeing Morgaine standing halfway down the slope, there by the horses: and recalled a broken promise. He had left her sight. He was shamefaced a second time as he walked up to speak to her.

  "What is wrong?" sh
e asked, fending off Arrhan's search for tidbits. There was a frown on her face, not for the horse.

  He had turned his back on their prisoner again. But: "He is too ill to run," Vanye said. "Heaven knows—" It was not news that would please her. "He is in no condition to ride—No, do not go down there, this is something a man should see to. But I will need the other blanket. And my saddlebags."

  She gave him a distressed look, but she stopped with only a glance toward the man on the bank, a little tightening of her jaw. "I will bring them down halfway," she said. "When will he ride?"

  "Two days," he said, trying to hasten the estimate; and thought again of the sores. "Maybe."

  It was a dark thought went through Morgaine's eyes—was a thought the surface of which he knew how to read and the depth of which he did not want to know.

  "It is not his planning," he said, finding himself the prisoner's defender.

  "Aye," Morgaine said quietly, angrily and turned and walked uphill after the things he had asked.

  She brought the things he asked back down to him, no happier. "Mind, we have no abundance of anything."

  "We are far from the road," Vanye said. It was the only extenuation of their situation he could think of.

  "Aye," she said again. There was still anger. It was not at him. She had nothing to say—was in one of her silences, and it galled him in the one sense and frightened him in the other, that they were in danger, that he knew her moods, and her angers, which he had hoped she had laid aside forever. But it was a fool who hoped that of Morgaine.

  He took what she gave him and walked back to the bank, and there sat down, a little distance from their prisoner—sat down, trying to smother his own frustration which, Heaven knew, he dared not let fly, dared not provoke his liege to some rashness—some outright and damnably perverse foolishness, he told himself, of which she was capable. She scowled; she was angry; she did nothing foolish and needed no advice from him who ought well to know she was holding her temper very well indeed, Heaven save them from her moods and her unreasonable furies.