Exile's Gate

by C. J. Cherryh

  Then, he thought, there was little now that conscience would stay her from. An old and familiar chill lapped him about, more penetrating than the rain and the wind. Morgaine turned Siptah's head and rode forward, the paler tip of Siptah's dark tail moving like a will o' the wisp above the ground and the horse himself like illusion: it was white Arrhan would draw the most attention of all their company—fool, he thought again, that he had ever taken such a gift; and he drew his sword as they rode, quietly passing the rest, sweeping up Chei and his brother with him, devil take the rest who were rising to their saddles. "Stay close," he said as they passed, half lost in nightmare. "Whatever happens, keep close."

  Chei said something which he did not hear in the rush of the stream near them and in the sighing of the trees on the ridge. He blinked the water from his eyes and took his own pace from Morgaine, staying to her left, always to the left, shieldside, as the way out turned onto a narrow trail and the water-laden wind came blasting up the mountainside, under his cloak and into his eyes.

  There the stream took a precipitate course and plunged down the mountain in a second falls as the land opened out. Morgaine took the right-hand bend around the rocks, close against them as possible, toward the wooded track that led higher up, and Vanye glanced behind them as they turned, to see the tail of their column leave the narrows and bolt the other way.

  "Liyo," he exclaimed, and reined Arrhan about as Chei and Bron also turned, drawing the weapons they had.

  "My lady," Bron called out. "Arunden's men—"

  "Let them go," Morgaine hissed, as she drew back even with them.

  "We did not know—"

  "Do you know the way from here to the road, that is what I care for!"

  "We know it," Chei said with no doubt at all in his voice. "Let us to the fore, my lady. At least in this rain we will have less chance of meeting any watchers."

  "Go to it," she said, and with no delay at all Chei and his brother urged their horses past and on. "Do not thee stray far back," she said then to Vanye. "Stay with me."

  That suited him well enough, thinking of qhalur riders at their backs—of whom Eoghar and ep Ardris and the rest could have joy, he thought in dark rage: they had made no decent request to go back to their kin, if that was where they were bound, and it was as likely they were deserting outright to hide in the hills.

  For his part he recollected that great westward jog in the road Chei had drawn. He tried to think where the sun and been and where they might come to it and where Gault might; and he did not like the reckoning.

  He dropped back as the trail narrowed, and wended up again among the rain-dripping trees, cold, large drops falling more unpleasantly than did the fine mist, branches raking them with wet bristles where limbs pressed close on the trail.

  It was climbing for a while and descent for a while, and eventually rest for the horses, who suffered with the rain and the uncertain footing, the lee of a hill being the only respite they could find on this side of the ridge.

  "How much further?" Morgaine asked of Chei and Bron. Their horses, even Siptah and Chei's gelding huddled together as they took their breath, breaking the force of the wind off each other as it skirled about them. "Do we get there tonight? Tomorrow?"

  "Far yet," Chei said, at which Vanye's heart sank in greater and greater despair

  "How far for Gault's folk?" Morgaine asked. "If he sent a messenger up to Tejhos or back to Morund-gate—can we reach Tejhos first?"

  "I think we can," Chei said. "Lady, God knows! We do not know how long ep Ardris hunted for us—we do not know how long Gault will delay—"

  "The Road bends our way up ahead," Bron said. "He cannot send one of his own back to Morund except with a guide, and he has hit his own ally, if Arunden has betrayed us. He may not have men he can spare who know their way up here: they say it is not every Changed can remember—that is what has saved us before this: they get few of us and most of those remember nothing who they were—"

  "Do not count on that," Morgaine said darkly. "It is not the case. Believe that he will have every help he needs, curse your optimism!"

  "We are on the high trails," Chei said. "A large force cannot make good time where we are going, if there are any of Arunden's warders left, they may have to fight their way through—"

  "And Arunden himself may be their safe-conduct and their guide and the warders may find us instead! Man, quit making excuses for our troubles and quit making allowances for our enemies! Do what I tell you and get us to the Road!"

  "It is at least another day to get there!" Chei shouted. "For them and us—and there is no shorter way than this—I swear there is not! We can turn and fight them—"

  "If we could trust that they have not gone straight east to the Road, if we could trust ep Ardris told half the truth—It is time we do not have: do not question me, Chei! Do not make me delays or excuses! Lead! We will find a secure camp, rest and move on when we can make more time. That is all we can do now."

  It was in a weary haze Chei rode at last—fending branches in the dark, feeling an uncertainty in his horse's legs as they negotiated a descent. Of a sudden the animal skidded and went down on its haunches and clawed its way sideways on the muddy hill so that he had to let the reins down and let it fight its own battle.

  The horse recovered itself facing uphill and with its hindquarters braced, unmoving as the other riders came down the straightforward way, but not so steeply. Chei found himself trembling the same as the horse, weak in the legs as he dismounted there on the slope and slipped and slid to lead it around and safely down. The mail had rubbed his shoulders raw; he knew that it had, working wet cloth against wet skin; and that pain brought back the hill, and the wolves, so vividly at times he did not know this woods from the other, or remember the intervening time.

  But Bron was with him. Bron urged him on, promising him rest, saying that there was shelter, and he bit his lip and concentrated on the pain there and not in his arms.

  "Soon," he agreed, teeth chattering, "soon."

  "We need not lose a horse," Vanye said, to which Morgaine said something Chei could not understand; but they got down where they were, on the leaf-slick floor of the ravine, and led their horses an increasingly difficult track in this dark and rain, off the main trails, all of them walking now, descending the next muddy slope and ducking low under the branches.

  "Straight on," Chei said, his heart suddenly lifting as lightning-flicker showed him an ancient pine he knew. He recognized his way again. He pulled at the weary horse, taking it sideways on the slope and down again, around the boggy place between the slopes and up another rise, up and up a pine-grown slope to the crest of the hill.

  It was a hunter's shelter below them, looming up like nothing more than a massive brush-heap in the constant flicker from the clouds; but Chei knew it, and when Bron said that he would go down to it: "I will go," Chei murmured, and led his horse along with Bron, down the incline as Bron hailed the place.

  There was no answer. There was only the dark mass of the shelter; and neither horse seemed shy of it, which was the best indication nothing had sheltered there. Only some small creature skittered away in the brush, at which his weary horse hardly reacted, a little jerk at the reins.

  "Hai-ay," Bron called out again, and with no answer and no answering hail, led his horse into the lee of the hut.

  It was enough. Chei reached the place, leaned against his horse and managed the girth; and had him half unsaddled before Vanye and Morgaine had ridden in.

  He dried off his horse vigorously with the blanket and rubbed down its legs, such care as he could give to ease it and protect it from soreness; and looked and saw Bron's horse unattended, which carelessness his brother would not countenance on a night like this and after such a ride.

  Then he spied Bron sitting on the ground, and went to him quietly. "Bron?" he whispered, dropping down to face him, and laid a hand on Bron's shoulder.

  "It is hurting," Bron said. Chei could not see his face in th
e dark, could hardly make out the pallor of skin and hair in the dark, but he gripped Bron's shoulder in a brotherly way and felt a cold about his heart.

  "How bad is it?"

  A whisper of leather and metal, a shrug beneath his hand. "Hurting," Bron said, and drew a breath. "I will make it tomorrow. They will not leave me. They will not. I will not slow you down."

  He embraced Bron, hugged him tight a moment as he reckoned Vanye and the lady were paying no attention to them. "Give me your cloak," he said; and unfastened it from Bron's neck, slung it on and rose to tend Bron's horse, trying not to think of the fear, only of necessity—not turning his head, only doing his work and praying neither Vanye nor the lady would notice in the deep shadow beside the hut and the confusion of two bay geldings and two blond men and a borrowed cloak, that it was the same man on his feet.

  But Vanye walked near him, leading the two pale horses into that shadow, and behind him; and stopped.

  Chei dropped down and rubbed at the gelding's legs, head tucked. But he heard the step in the wet mold, heard the light ring of metal as Vanye went past him and knelt down by Bron.

  He got up then and went over to him. "I am all right," Bron was saying, where he sat against the wall in the wet and the decaying leaves. And Chei, desperately: "He is all right. I will tend the horses, the gray too if he will stand—"

  "We cannot go much more of this," Vanye said, and touched Bron's shoulder and rose and laid a hand on his, gently shaking at him. "My lady has her reasons. How much farther?"

  "Tomorrow," Chei said. His heart was beating hard. He found himself short of breath, not knowing what was in Vanye's mind. "We will get there tomorrow."

  "My lady is grateful. Truly."

  "What does she want of us?" he asked desperately; and did not believe that the lady had said it at all: the lady was angry with them, had been angry since they had broken camp, and everything seemed the wrong thing with her. Now Vanye came to them, on his own, for Vanye's reasons, catching them in another deception, and fear swept over him—irrational, for they could go no faster and no further, and the lady on that iron-winded gray could not so much as find the road without them.

  But honor meant very much, when there was neither clan nor kin; and the lady cursed them and shamed them, even Bron: he had brought his brother to this, and the lady cursed them for mistakes he himself had made, and shamed Bron for things not Bron's doing—

  "We will make it," Vanye said. "Chei—"

  "Aye," he said, and jerked his shoulder free, turning his face to his work again.

  "Chei. Listen to me." Vanye put his hand on the other side of the horse's neck, stood close against its shoulder, close beside him. "She has one manner with everyone. With me as well. She is thinking, that is what she is doing, she is thinking, and what talks to us is not herself when this mood is on her. That is all I can tell you."

  Chei listened in anger, down to the last, that a tendril of cold slipped into his heart. Then he recalled that they were pacted not only with a qhal, but with a witch. He gave a twitch of his shoulders, less angry, and more afraid, and no more certain where honor was in anything.

  "She never remembers her tempers," Vanye said. "Do the best you can do. When she knows what you have done she will be grateful. I thank you. She would want me to. She would want me to tell you—get us as far as the Road, and if you have changed your minds, go aside: we will see to Gault."

  "Mante," Chei said. "We are going to Mante."

  "Do you know what is there? Do you know what we face?"

  He shook his head. He had no wish to know. "The gate," he said. "Somewhere else."

  "Maybe a worse place."

  "It could not be. For us it could not be." He seized Vanye by the arm and drew him well aside, over by the trees, into the dark and the wind. "Vanye, my brother—he is a great man, he is, Vanye: he will be; Ichandren himself used to say that in his life he had never seen any man promise so much—"

  "For whose sake are you doing this? For his? Then leave us at the road."

  "That is not what I am saying!"

  "There is nothing to be had from us. There is nothing we can give you. You mistake us. We have no place to go to. You are chasing after what does not exist."

  "We will not go back to live like bandits! We will not find another clan! We will make a name for ourselves—we—Bron and I. Do not shame us like this."

  Vanye was silent a moment. "I only try to warn you. You cannot ask too much of her. I will not let you."

  "You are her lover."

  An intake of breath. "What I am is my concern."

  "I only mean that I know. We know you are her right hand. We do not dispute you. Only do not let her speak like that to my brother."

  "My lady will speak how she chooses, to me, to Bron, or to you!—But I will talk to him."

  "Do that," Chei said. The wind touched him. He shivered, having gotten less than he wanted. But he had pushed too far; he saw that.

  Vanye walked away from him. Chei stood with his arms and Bron's cloak about him, waiting, while Vanye found Bron looking after the horses himself, cloakless and stubborn.

  They had words together. It did not last long, but they parted with a mutual touch at shoulders, and Vanye took their own two horses in charge, while the lady stayed in shelter.

  "Here," Chei said to Bron, when he had walked back to the arbor. He slung the cloak about Bron's shoulders. "Get out of the wind." And: "Did he say anything?"

  Bron shrugged. "Only courtesy," Bron said. "He offered qhalur medicines. I said I was well enough. Do not trouble him, Chei."

  The morning brought fog again, a general murk that made it uncertain exactly when it ceased to be night and began being daylight; but Vanye levered his aching bones up when there was light enough to see by, in a watch he judged by his own time-sense. "Stay and rest," he said to Morgaine: it was his watch last—they were the better by Chei and Bron having their turn at waking, in the small part of the night they had had left—and he left her and the brothers to drowse away the last few moments while he sought after their gear and carried it up to saddle up.

  But Chei was up as quickly, moving about in the gray and the damp, seeing to his horse and his brother's.

  "I meant to let you sleep," Vanye said, attempting to mend matters.

  "We will manage," Chei said shortly.

  So a company grew irritable, weary as they were, friends more quickly at odds than utter strangers. His face still burned when he recollected Chei's remark of last evening, and how Chei thought he knew more of their affairs than he knew.

  Ilin and liege—and he was not sure whose doing it was, after all this time. He tried to protect their honor; but Chei—

  Chei, being Chei, trod straight in on a matter that would have gotten challenge outright and unexplained, if Chei were of his own people.

  But Chei, being Chei, had not understood, no more than he himself understood more than the surface of Chei's thinking. Bron had seemed dismayed when he went to ask his pardon, had seemed embarrassed, if nothing else. "Chei ought not to have done that," Bron had said. "Forgive him."

  Now Bron came out into the daylight, limping pronouncedly in the first few steps; and concealed that with a grasp after one of the support poles of the shelter.

  Vanye paid it no attention and offered no help. He wanted no more misunderstandings. He flung Siptah's saddle up and tightened the girth.

  "We will break our fast on the trail," he said as Chei passed him; Chei nodded and said no word to him. Perhaps it was only the reaction of a man with his jaw clamped against the chill.

  Or it was the reaction of a man who felt betrayed.

  Morgaine came out, wrapped in her cloak, gray side out, her pale coloring one tone with the fog.

  "Tonight for the open road," she said in a quiet voice, taking Siptah's reins. "So we dare not push the horses today."

  "Aye," Vanye agreed, thanking Heaven one of them at least had come back to reason.

  They rode out,
with breakfast in hand, a little waybread and water from their flasks, ducking water-laden branches, but with the sun bringing a little warmth through the mist, and the wind having stopped. There was that for comfort.

  "Here," Jestryn said, and urged his horse down a trail hardly worthy of the name, a narrow slot of stone and dirt among pines that clung desperately to a crumbling slope. Some of the men murmured dismay, but Gault followed, nothing loath, for the Road passed near a village hereabouts, a straight bare track below the truncate hill: the ancients had carved mountains, disdaining to divert their Road for any cause; and yet bent it sharply west in open ground, for reasons that no qhal living knew.

  Now the descendants of the builders rode quietly as they could, making better time than they had been able to make in the fog, reliant on Jestryn-Pyverrn's human memory and on Arunden's thoroughly human one, under the threat of Jestryn's knife.

  "I swear to you," Arunden had cried, "I swear to you—I will guide you! I am your friend—"

  "Impudent Man," Jestryn had said, and laughed, as Pyverrn would with his human, guttural laughter. "You are not my friend before or after I was human; and God knows you were never Gault's—"

  Jestryn kept such human affectations, and swore and used human oaths qhal did not. But the sparkle in his eye was Pyverrn—past the sword-cut that raked one handsome cheek. It did not distract from his looks. Next to him, Arunden was a clumsy, shambling brute; and Arunden's wit matched his outward look.

  "You will lose a finger," Jestryn had said, "for every annoyance on this trail; I counsel you, tell me where the warders are, and what the signals are, or you will find out what pain is,—my lord Arunden."

  They had taken three of the watchposts. Arunden snuffled and wept about it and protested they were disgracing him and ruining his usefulness.

  But a flash of Jestryn's knife stopped the snuffling.

  "You either serve us," Gault had said then, "or not. Decide now. We can do without you."