Exile's Gate

by C. J. Cherryh

  "Let me—"

  "We still have another choice."

  "Loose rock," Vanye muttered, looking at the set of the boulders Changeling might dislodge. "The horses—"

  "My lady—" Chei's voice came down. "They have sent a gate-jewel into the field, more than one—Do you want to talk about this?"

  "I am listening," Morgaine answered him.

  "The while we were on the road the jewel he wore was constantly sending. It could not but draw them. I do not deny—I fought you. But there is no more fighting. If you win, you will destroy the gate at Mante, you will destroy everything, and we die.

  If Skarrin wins, we die—as rebels. We have few choices left. You want Mante. I want something else. It is alliance I am proposing."

  "Alliance," Vanye muttered under his breath.

  "Narrow quarters," Morgaine said quietly. "And an unstable gate. And no knowing where our enemies out there have gotten to."

  "It is a lie—"

  She rested her hand on his shoulder, and looked up at the cliffs. "Come down!" she called to Chei.

  "Under truce?" Chei asked.

  "As good as your own," Morgaine shouted back. "Do you trust it?"

  A pebble dropped and bounded from somewhere above.

  "For God's sake, do not trust him."

  "I do not. I want him in sight. Remember I have no scruples."

  He drew a larger breath. His hands were shaking. From off the rock where the qhal had fallen, blood ran, and dripped.

  And from up among the rocks, on the trail they had ridden, the sound of movement.

  "There were three," Vanye said again as a rider came down, out of their view behind the hill, hoof-falls echoing among the rocks.

  "We do not know how many there are now," Morgaine said. "We have a dead man for proof. Perhaps they would kill their own. Who knows?"

  He drew a long, slow breath, resting back against the rock that was no shelter.

  "On the other hand," Morgaine said, "Chei has already killed men of Skarrin's. Did you not say? How did that go?"

  "Aye." Breath was short. He sent his thoughts back, to gather everything, putting it in one place. "Typthyn was the name. For the stone. It was the stone the captain wanted. To take it to Mante, he said. And to get clear. But do not believe him for the sake of that. Chei wanted it for himself."

  A single rider came into view, on the red roan that had been Gault's, the man a slight, young figure in silver mail.

  "The fool," Vanye breathed.

  "Foolish or desperate."

  "No!" Vanye said. "I believed him a moment too long. He lies—very well."

  Her hand clenched on his shoulder, on bruises. "Be patient. We will hear him out. That at least we can afford."

  She stood clear to face the rider, who, finding himself in a pocket in the maze of stone, dismounted and leapt up to the flat rock which had been Vanye's post. Vanye took his place at her left shoulder, the bow easy in his hands, aimed at the ground.

  But he kept the arrow nocked.

  Chei spread wide his hands. "That I have men above me, you can guess. And you have the sword." He walked forward on the slanting surface and dropped lightly off the rock to the ground facing them—spread his hands again, keeping the palms in plain view. "I think the advantage is yours."

  "Come no closer," Morgaine said. "For this I have no need of the sword."

  Chei stopped instantly. The mockery was gone from his face as she lifted her hand toward him. "My lady—"

  "I am not your lady and whatever there is of Chei ep Kantory I should best requite by killing his enemy, Gault. I saved you for last, only so you might keep the others under your hand. I spared you once on Vanye's word—and because I should have enjoyed it too much—Do you hear me, Gault?"

  "My men, my lady. Above us."

  "We two, lord Gault, are in front of you, and this is the cleanest of my weapons, for which you may thank me. Is there something you want that is worth this?"

  "What I always wanted. What I would have freely given, if you had come to Morund. What the boy gave when you befriended him—"

  "Lies," Morgaine said sharply.

  "Vanye!" Chei said, holding out his hands.

  "I had as lief kill you," Vanye said; and bent the bow as Chei took a step closer. "No farther!"

  Chei fell to his knees, hands outheld. "God help me, I do not know what I am, I cannot sort it out—What else do you leave me?"

  "No more lies!"

  "Listen to me. I know the way in. Do you want Skarrin? I will give him to you."

  "Our guide," Vanye breathed, "to whom we owe so much already."

  There was fear on Chei's face now. The eyes flickered desperately, distractedly for a moment, and he moistened his lips before they steadied. "The boy—misled you. I am not that boy. My men have you in sight. Will you throw away your lives—merely to have mine? It seems a poor exchange."

  "We can take him with us," Vanye said in the Kurshin tongue. "I will take care of him."

  "Skarrin will kill me for what I have done—he will kill all of us. Listen to what I am saying. I know how to mislead them. I know the way in. I will give you Skarrin . . . for your promise to take us with you." He rested back on his heels, hands on his knees, and the rising sun shone fair on Chei's curling hair, on Chei's earnest face. "And I will not betray you."

  "Why not?" Morgaine asked. "You are betraying Skarrin."

  "Because," Chei said with a foreign twist of the mouth, a sullen look up, as he set his hands on hips and sat back. "Skarrin is not a lord I chose, not a lord who chooses me, what is more. You are no fool, lady. And I am not. You have knowledge of the gates that I do not have. I made one try. You won. I have spent my life bowing down to a lord who has trod my face into the dust more than once, and the boy,—when I will listen to him—" The young features contracted, a kind of grimace. "—the boy remembers you dealt well with him."

  Vanye's breath shortened. "Let us get out of here," he said, "liyo."

  "The boy meant to kill me," Chei said. "He wanted to die. He still wants revenge. He came to me—to pit himself against me—inside—to drive me mad, if he could." Chei's mouth jerked, neither grimace nor smile, both humorless. "But he has changed his mind about death. It never agreed with him. Or with me. And he has changed his mind about killing you. He thought you would kill him—and me. He was disturbed that you declined. Now he understands more and more what a fool he was, having acquired a man's understanding, and a warrior's good sense. And what he remembers tells me I am safer right now than I would ever be in Morund."

  "He was mistaken now and again. I need no assassin at my back."

  "You need me, my lady. And Skarrin will prove it to you, too late, if you kill me. I know the way into Mante. And you will not find it!"

  "I have done harder things."

  "I am not a rebel by nature, my lady! Give me a lord I can serve, give me a lord who can win against Skarrin, deal with me as you deal with your own, put me beside you, and you will find I have skill, my lady—in a command twice Morund's size, in any field, I am a man worth having, only so I have a lord more set on winning than on his fears of having me win! I do not rival you. I do not wish to. Only take me and my men and I will tell you how I will prove it: I will swear my allegiance through Vanye, I will put myself under his orders—he is a fair man. I know that he is a fair man—"

  "But no fool," Vanye said bitterly, down the shaft of the arrow, "besides which, man, I have my own allegiance, which is to my liege, and her safety, and if I have to shoot you where you kneel I will do that before I will let you at her back." The arrow trembled and almost he lost his grip on it, so much the soreness of his joints and the lightness of his head affected him. He tightened his fingers, feeling the sweat stinging in the cut on his brow; and for all his stomach knotted up in loathing of the choices, it was not for her to do, after so many other burdens she had. "Liyo, " he said, and lapsed into the Kurshin tongue, looking nowhere but at the center of Chei's chest. "Let him c
all the others down. Let us—as you say—have them in sight. Let us get down off this hill. And I will deal with them."

  She delayed her answer. The sweat stung his eyes and ran down his sides, into raw burns; the muscles of his arm began to tremble dangerously.

  She touched his shoulder then. "No," she said; and the breath went out of him and the world spun so that he braced his feet as he lowered the bow. "You are Vanye's," she said to Chei. "What he does short of killing you I will not prevent." Her hand pressed hard on Vanye's shoulder. "No," she said in the Kurshin tongue, "thee cares too much."

  He drew a breath and lifted the bow on the draw, half-blind and choking on the desperation in him. He fired. But her hand struck his arm up and the arrow sped past Chei's head to strike a chip from the stone wall behind him.

  Everything froze in its place—Chei in front of him, white-faced; Morgaine at his side. He trembled in the aftershock of attempted murder; he felt the weakness on him with a giddiness that dimmed the light and made sounds ring in his ears.

  "Aye," he said, because something seemed incumbent on him to say then, who had disregarded her orders. If there was a part of his soul undamned, he had done it by that act, excepting her forgiveness. He drew in a breath, straining bruised ribs, vision hazing—the blows to his head, he thought; the lack of food; the exertion of the fight. He wanted only to have them moving again, himself in the saddle with the horse to carry him. Rest would mend him, a night's sleep—

  But, O Heaven, it was not in reach, and Morgaine listening to this man—

  He could not think beyond her, not, in any case, with his head swimming and his thinking and his fears shrunk to the little space between these rocks, and the chance of an enemy which had been all too fortunate in its ambush—

  And he must not kill this man. Morgaine forbade it. He had defied her order once. Twice was without excuse.

  "Do you swear?" he asked Chei, knowing after he had asked, that oaths meant nothing with this creature.

  "I have said," Chei said, and got to his feet. There was darkness in that stare. There was profound apprehension. Then another, more agitated way of speaking: "I swear before God. Is that enough?"

  That human expression, that shift of voice, sent a chill through him.

  Perhaps it was meant to.

  But he let the silence go on a moment, and looked Chei in the eyes, long and steadily, until the air was a good deal colder and Chei surely knew it was not fear held his hand.

  Then: "Do not cross me," he said to Chei, "and I will return you nothing of what I owe you. Where is my sword?"

  Chei's eyes shifted toward the roan horse.

  "I will have it back."

  Chei nodded. "Aye."

  "Aye—my lord. "

  "Aye, my lord."

  "Call your men down here. They can ride away or they can ride with us, but if one of them missteps, I will lay his head at your feet and lay yours at my lady's. I am nothing you know, whatever you think you gained at Tejhos. I am Nhi, and my clan is not reputed to give second chances."

  Perhaps Chei believed him. Chei looked once back at him as he turned to face the cliffs, and once at Morgaine.

  Then he shouted up at the height. "They have agreed," he called up the cliffs. "Come down."

  Three of them, Vanye kept thinking, and went and gathered up the arrows that had spilled off the cliff with the dead man—twelve he found with the fletchings and points whole, and put them in his quiver, the while Morgaine kept her eye on matters. His ribs ached.

  Three of them, he kept thinking in the throbbing of his hurts and the panicked beating of his heart. She has gone mad.

  It is this Skarrin—this man she fears. That is what drives her. That is what she wants to know—always, always when she does not know as much as she wishes—she doubts herself—

  The Devil rather than honest men, he remembered her saying. O my liege, you have found him.

  The two from the cliff came riding around the shoulder of the hill as Chei had come, stopped their horses by the red roan; and came to pay their respects to their recent enemy—the bowman and the qhal, the bowman's human face betraying intense worry, the qhal's having no expression at all.

  "Rhanin ep Eorund," Chei named them. "And Hesiyyn Aeisyryn, both late of Mante."

  "I will give you a simple choice," Vanye said, leaning on his bow, and this time with a quiver half full of arrows. "Ride off now, and go free. Or go with us, do my liege honest service, and I will forget what I owe you. I count that more than fair."

  Rhanin nodded, clear of eye and countenance; and had the likeness of truth about him. "Aye," Rhanin said, and let go a long breath, as if he had taken him at his word and had worried, until then.

  Hesiyyn lowered his eyes and inclined his head, and looked up with a bland, half-lidded insolence. "Anything you will, lord human."

  Vanye stared at him and thought of striking him to the ground. But then it would come to killing—not one but all of them.

  The archer had fired on his liege: but in defense of his own lord. While this Hesiyyn, he judged, might do anything and everything for his own sake.

  And this, this was the qhal who had intervened to save his life.

  "If they ride with us," he said to Chei, disdaining the qhal with a passing glance, "remember I hold you accountable."

  And he turned his back on Chei as well, feeling their stares like knives; his heart beat like a hammer in his temples, and his face was hot, the sky like brass. Morgaine said something to him of riding out, that they were well off this hillside. "Aye," he said, and shouldered his bow and his quiver, and went to untangle the horses, which had wound themselves into a predicament, their two with the nervous geldings. Siptah had braced himself, flat-eared, too trail-wise to move, despite Arrhan's lead-rope wound across his rump, and that the blaze-faced gelding had a hind leg in among the rocks, its rump against the wall, one foreleg crossing its partner's lead.

  He cut both free and straightened out the leads, darting an anxious eye to Chei and the rest, but Morgaine was watching them: he saw her. He shoved Siptah with his shoulder to gain room, held Arrhan steady to re-tie the leads, and recalled his sword on Chei's saddle, uphill with the other horses.

  He thought of climbing the rocks and making the exchange, but it was a war-horse in question, easier that Chei should deal with it, and he was out of breath and not wanting either the climb or any dealings with weapons at close quarters: bruised ribs and stiff muscles, he thought, leaning on Siptah's side to work past him and lead him out of the confusion.

  But when he unstrung his bow to tie it with his gear on Arrhan's saddle, the weakness of his arm and his lack of wind surprised him. He had to make a second pull to slip the string. When he had gotten it tied and set his foot in the stirrup, it more than hurt to pull himself up, it sapped the strength from him and made him sweat and his head reel despite the morning chill.

  It is the sun-heat on the metal, he told himself; there is no wind here. Using the bow and pushing the horses about had strained the ribs. It will pass.

  He sat still, with the sweat running, leaning on the saddlebow, while Morgaine mounted up. Get us moving, he thought, feeling the sting of salt in his cuts. There was no wind in this place. He longed to be off this hill, not knowing what they might meet on that slope down there or out in the land: best hurry before they collect a defense, he thought; and everything conspired with delays.

  "They will go first," Morgaine said, starting out. "I have told them."

  "Aye," he murmured. "Let Skarrin's men have them for ranging-shots."

  "They might have killed us," Morgaine said. "They could have taken the weapons. That much is true."

  He thought about that.

  "But I do not forget what they did," she said.

  "Aye," he said. The hill seemed steeper than he recalled as they struck the open slope—a place littered with dead, thirty, forty or more.

  And Chei and his men rode past them, dutifully taking the lead.

>   'Is thee all right?" Morgaine asked.

  "A little faint. I am well enough. It is the heat." He urged Arrhan to a faster pace, and overtook Chei's men.

  "Arrows," he said. "All we can gather. We may need them."

  "Aye," Rhanin said, and veered off on that chancy slope, at hazard of further attack, from men on the ground, from Heaven knew where on the rocky heights around them.

  Rhanin would not, he thought at the back of his mind, come back. The man would take his chance and ride for his own life.

  "The sword," he said to Chei.

  Chei took it from his saddle and reversed it, passing it over as they rode.

  "A good blade," Chei said.

  He said nothing. He unhooked his own from Arrhan's saddle and passed it by the hilt.

  "Alayyis' sword," Chei murmured.

  "My liege did not ask his name," he said harshly, and reined back and hooked the arrhendur blade to his sword-belt, waiting for Morgaine to overtake him.

  O God, he thought then, why did I say that? Why am I always a fool?

  Morgaine overtook him. He murmured an explanation for the bowman's departure, and started up again, riding after the others, a crowded trail avoiding the lumps of bodies which lay like so much refuse on the hillside. He watched carefully such dead as they did pass close at hand, wary of traps. He watched the hills about them, for any flash of armor, any flight of birds or bit of color out of place.

  Far across the field, Rhanin searched, dismounted, searched again. Eventually he came riding back, carrying three quivers of arrows. "I would keep one," Rhanin said, offering two as he rode alongside—no grudging look, only an earnest and an anxious one.

  "Do that," Vanye said; and the man gave him them, and turned off downslope, to overtake Chei and Hesiyyn.

  He hung the two quivers from his saddlebow, and he stared at Rhanin's retreating back with misgivings. They had reached the bottom of the hill, and the last body, which lay face upward. Carrion birds had gathered. He did not look down at it as they rode their slow course past. That man was incontrovertibly dead. The hour was fraught enough with nightmares, and he had had enough of such sights in his life.