Exile's Gate (10 page)

No stopping the stallion or
the mare. No stopping any horse from what it truly willed to do, even
if it was a fatal thing. It was always their own vitality that killed
them, a horseman knew that.

He heard a step behind him,
and turned his head. It was Morgaine, bringing the saddlebags. She let
them down at his feet, then, standing close, rested her hand on his
shoulder, and walked away, so startling him by that gesture he simply
stood and stared at her retreating back.

What was that? he wondered.

Apology, of a kind? Sympathy?

She did these things to
him, and walked away in her silences, and left him to saddle the horses
and wonder, in a kind of biding panic, what had moved her to that.

He did not even know,
Heaven witness, why he should be disturbed, or why his heart was
beating in panic, except it was the old familiar business of snatched
sleep and arming by dark and riding through hostile lands, sleeping by
turns in the daylight, tucked close in some concealment.

Except it was Morgaine who,
like Heaven, decided where they should go and when; and there had been
all too much of comradely understanding in that small gesture—as if she
had confessed that she was weary, too, and there were no miracles.

From his liege, he did not want such admissions.

He finished his work. He
overtook her at the buried fire, leading the horses; and having the
horses between him and Chei, he took his Honor-blade sheathed from his
belt and gave it to her without a word—for safety's sake. She knew. She
slipped it into her belt next her own ivory-hilted Korish blade, and
pulled and hooked the belt ring which slid the dragon sword up to ride
between her shoulders, before she took Siptah's reins from his hand and
climbed into the saddle. The gray stud snorted his impatience and
worked at the bit.

Vanye set his foot in
Arrhan's stirrup and settled himself in the saddle, reining her about,
where Chei waited, dressed in his borrowed clothing and his own mended
boots, and holding his sleeping blanket rolled in his arms.

"You will want that on the
ride," Vanye said, taking the blanket roll into his lap, and cleared
his left stirrup for the man. Chei set his foot, took his offered hand
as Arrhan shifted weight, and came astride and well-balanced so quickly
that Vanye gave the mare the loose rein she expected. It made the mare
happier about the double load; she pricked her ears up and switched her
tail and took a brisk stride behind Siptah.

Through the trees and down
along the river which had guided them—by the light of an incredible
starry heaven and a slivered moon, so brilliant a night as the sunlight
left the sky utterly, that the pale grass shone and the water had sheen
on its darkness.

Behind him, Chei wrapped
the blanket about himself, for the breeze was chill here in the open;
and Vanye drew an easier breath, bringing Arrhan up on Siptah's
left—the left, with Morgaine, shieldside and never the perilous right.
She had her hair braided for this ride: not the clan-lord's knot to
which she was entitled, but the simple warrior's knot of clan Chya of
Koris, like his own.
Changeling's
hilt winked
moonlit gold beside the silver of her braid; bright silver sparked and
flashed along the edge of her sleeves, where mail-work shone the like
of which later ages had forgotten. Moonlight touched Siptah's illusory
dapples, the pale ends of his mane and tail.

They were enspelled—not
with magics, but with the sense of change, of passage, the night sky's
softening influence that made them part of a land to which they did not
belong.

And Chei had sworn, on his life, that they might expect peace for a time on this ride.

They took the same slow
pace when they had come to the Road, with its ancient stone bridge
across the stream. Woods gave way briefly to meadow and to woods again,
a tangled, unkept forest. A nightbird called. There was the sound of
their horses' hooves—on earth and occasionally on stone, and eventually
on the stone and damp sand of a ford which crossed a stream, perhaps
tributary to the river they had left.

"I do not know its name," Chei said when Vanye asked. "I do not know. I only know we crossed it."

They let the horses drink,
and rode further, in wilderness cut well back from the road, but
unthinned beyond that. No woodsmen, Vanye thought, no caretaker. It was
still wild woods, overgrown and rank with vines and thorns. But the
trees grew straight and clean. Gate-force did not reach to this place.
They were beyond the region in which they would know if the gate were
used; and they were beyond the region in which some weapon of that
nature could reach to them.

He felt Chei lean against
him, briefly, and recover himself; felt it again; and again the same
recovery; a third time: "No matter," he said. "Rest," and: "No," Chei
murmured.

But in time Chei slumped a
while against him, till they faced a stream-cut to go down and up
again. "Chei," Vanye said, slapping him on the knee.

Chei came awake with a
start and took his balance. Arrhan took the descent and the climb with
dispatch then, and quickened her pace till she had overtaken Siptah.

They were still on the
Road. It began to stretch away across a vast plain, country open under
fewer and fewer stars, exposed to view as far as the eye could see, and
Morgaine drew rein, pointing to the red seam along the horizon.

"Chei. That is the sun over there."

Chei said nothing.

"Where are we?" she asked.

"It is still the Road,"
Chei protested; and: "Lady, this is not the land I know. Northward—yes.
But here—I have never been but the once. We are still on the Road—we
will make it—"

"How far does this go?" Her
voice had an edge to it, a dangerous one. "Wake up, man. You know what
I would know. You swore that you did. Do you want your enemies'
attention? Or do you tell me full and free that you do not know where
you are?"

"I know where I am! There
is a kind of ruin, I do not know how far—I swear to you, we will reach
it by morning." Chei's teeth chattered, and his breath hissed, not
altogether, Vanye thought, of exhaustion and the night chill. "It was
our starting-place misled me. The river must have bent. I know it is
there. I swear it is. We can still come to it. But we can go wide,
now." He pointed over westward, where the plain rolled away to the
horizon. "We can pick up the trail yonder in the hills. Off Gault's
lands."

"But equally off our way," Morgaine said, and held Siptah back, the dapple gray backing and circling. "How is Arrhan faring?"

"She will manage," Vanye said, and looked uneasily toward the lightening of the sky in the east, over low and rolling hills.
"Liyo,
I do not say yea or nay, but I had as lief be off this road. West is likely the best advice at this point."

"North," she said, and held Siptah still a moment, when he would have moved. "By morning, he swears. It is very little time."

She swung about and went on, not quickly, saving the horses.

"Are
you mistaken?" Vanye asked of Chei.

"No," Chei said; and shivered, whether with cold he could not tell.

Morgaine had said it; there
was only one way, ultimately, that they could go; and less and less he
liked delay along this road, less and less he liked the prospect of a
long journey aside, and more and more he disliked their situation.

"Best you be right, man."

Morgaine dropped back to ride beside. They went perforce at Arrhan's double-burdened pace, under an open sky and fading stars.

Chei hugged his blanket
about him. It was terror kept him awake now. It was nightmare as dread
as the wolves, this slow riding, this pain of half-healed sores and the
slow, steady rhythm of horses which could go no faster, not though
Gault and all his minions come riding off the horizon.

The sky brightened, the few
wispy clouds in the east took faint and then pinker color, until at
last all the world seemed one naked bowl of grass and one road going
through it, unnaturally straight track through a land all dew-grayed
green. At times Vanye and the lady spoke in a language he did not
understand, a harsh speech which fell on the ear with strange rhythms,
but softly spoken, little exchanges of a word and a few words. There
was a grim tone to it. There was discontent. He imagined it involved
him, though he dared not ask.

"Where are these ruins of
yours?" Vanye asked then, and slapped him on the knee when he failed to
realize that it was to him he had spoken.

"I know that they are there," he said, "I swear to you."

"Neither does the sun lie," Vanye said.

There was the beginning of
daylight. There was the hint of color in things. And the white mare was
weary now. Did their enemies find them, Chei thought, there was no way
that the mare might run.

Did their enemies find them. . . .

But on that terrible
hilltop, like a dream, he recalled light coming from Morgaine's
fingers, and recalled chain melting and bending, and how Vanye had
shielded him from that sight.

Weapons you may not like to see,
Vanye had warned him.

He looked at the open land around him, and the treacherous roll of hills which might mask an army.

They would kill him first,
he thought, if they suspected ambush. There was no doubt but what they
would; he had failed them. They had cause to be angry.

The sun came up full. The land went gold and green.

And as they crested a rise
of the plain and looked on a darkness that topped the rise ahead he
felt a moment's dread that it was some band of riders—till his eye
adjusted for the scope of the land and he knew it was woods that he saw.

They camped among ancient
stones, beside a stream which crossed the low point among them, under
the branches of trees which arched over and trailed their branches
waterward. Among the ruins, a sparse and stubborn grass grew, on a
ridge well-shielded by the trees; and there the horses grazed.

They ventured a fire only
large enough to heat a little water, and ate bread Morgaine had made at
the last camp, and fish they had smoked; and drank tea—Chei's prepared
with herbs against the fever.

Chei had borne the ride,
Vanye reckoned, very well—was weary, and only too glad to lie down to
sleep, there in the sun-warmth, on the leafy bank. So, then, was he,
leaving the watch to Morgaine, and listening to the water and the wind
and the horses.

"It has been quiet," she
whispered when she waked him, while Chei still slept. "Nothing has
stirred. A bird or two. A creature I do not know came down to drink: it
looked like a mink with a banded tail. There is a black snake sunning
himself down on that log."

These were good signs, of a
healthier vicinity. He drew a deep breath and yielded her up the
blankets, and tucked himself down again in a nook out of the wind. He
had a bite to eat, a quarter of the bread he had saved back from their
breakfast; and a drink of clear water from the stream which ran here,
more wholesome than the river had been.

And when toward dusk, Chei
stirred from his sleep, he rose and stretched himself, and put together
the makings of a little fire—again, hardly enough to warm water, quick
to light and quick to bury, and a risk even as it was.

Morgaine roused them for
tea and day-old cakes and smoked fish, and sat against the rock,
sipping her portion of the tea and letting her eyes shut from time to
time. Then her eyes opened with nothing of somnolence about them at
all. "We might stay here a day," she said. "We have put distance
between ourselves and the gate—which is very well. But this is the last
place we may have leisure. Another night's riding—and we will be beyond
Gault's holdings. Is that not the case?"

"That is the case," Chei said. "I swear to you."

"Bearing in mind that hereafter I will not permit Vanye's horse to carry double, and tire itself."

"I will walk. I can fend for myself, lady."

"Are you fit to walk? I
tell you the truth: if you are not fit—we will give you that day's
grace. But there may be other answers. Perhaps you know something of
Morund's inner defenses."

Chei's eyes widened in dread. "Guarded," he said. "Well guarded."

"I," Vanye said, and rested
his chin on his forearm, his knee tucked beneath his elbow. "I have
stolen a horse or two in my life. I suppose Morund has pastures
hereabouts. And for that matter,
liyo,
I can quite well walk."

Morgaine glanced his way.
So he knew that he had guessed her intention all along, by that calm
exchange. And he had had a queasy feeling in all this ride, good as the
reasons were for quitting the last camp: Arrhan might carry double at a
very slow pace, but not in haste—his liege not being a fool, to press
one of their horses to the limit.

But that she risked them this far on this man's word had bewildered him, all the same—until she asked of Morund.

"Or," he said in the
Kurshin tongue, "we might let our guide walk these trails he claims to
know—alone. And we go the quicker way, the two of us, by night and by
stealth,
liyo,
and get clear of this place. That is my opinion in the matter."