Exile's Gate (26 page)

"He would know," Chei protested, "lady, any man of his would know—"

"So, now, might our enemies," Morgaine said darkly. "We have no way of knowing
what
they know. Saddle up. Now."

Chei stood frozen a moment, lost in the water-sound and the nightmare. Others moved. A hand dosed hard on his arm.

"Come on," Vanye said
harshly, as he had spoken when they had been enemies; and in his
muddled sense he heard ep Ardris protesting that Gault's riders might
be anywhere—Arunden was innocent, he thought, of the worst things; but
if any of Arunden's folk was in Gault's hands, there was very much that
they knew.

"They do not know the
forest," Chei protested, the least frail hope he could think of, but no
one listened, in the haste to break camp. Gault and his men had gotten
into
the forest, plainly enough.

He could not account for
all of Ichandren's men. He had not thought of that for very long, since
he had sat waiting for the wolves—that there were worse fates than
Gault had meted out to him, and that it was Gault's spite of his own
Overlord that chained healthy and fair-haired prisoners to die within
reach of Morund-gate—when there might be someone in Mante with use for
them. It was defiance Gault made of his master.

But he had no idea who had died on the field, who in the prison, and who might not have been taken to Morund's cellars at all.

Or who—as the lady had
said—of their hunters and scouts of whatever clan might not have
strayed into Gault's hands. For that reason a man never went alone to
the border; for that reason they left no wounded, and carried poison
among their simples and their medicines.

Someone had betrayed them, either living or dead. Someone who knew the ways in.

The roan horse picked a
narrow path among the rocks, a course that others followed in the dark.
They made no night camp, only took such rests as they had to have, and
few of those.

There was fear in Gault ep
Mesyrun, and therefore he drove them. At times thoughts surfaced in him
which Gault himself would have had, and not Qhiverin—to that extent he
was disturbed; and he knew that Jestryn-Pyverrn who rode near him was
much more than that, to the extent that he feared for Pyverrn's self. A
profound shock could affect a mind newly settled in a body, and old
memories might surface, like bubbles out of dark water, from no knowing
which self of the many bodies a man might have occupied, no knowing
whether it might not be the latest and strongest self reorganizing
itself, disastrous in a mind distracted by doubts.

Therefore Jestryn-Pyverrn
himself had laughed, when first the priest had told them what they had
to deal with—had looked into Gault's face with a laugh and a
desperation in his eyes that quickly died, more quickly than Arunden's
priest, who'd been all too willing to talk, for hate, it seemed, a
genuine hatred of a qhalur woman and a man for whose sake he had
suffered some slight; and thought that he had something to trade to
them for his life. "That might be," Jestryn had said, "except we have
no need of a priest—"

At which the priest had
called out Arunden's name, pleading with him as a Man—wherefore Gault
asked Arunden, the quisling they had set over the borderlands:
"Dealings with Mante, now, is it?"

"They are from outside,"
Arunden protested, as the Man had protested everything, disavowed the
fire-setting, wept and sobbed and swore he had never betrayed them,
only the woman was a witch and might read everything he did.

Therefore Arunden had been
compelled to entertain them, therefore he had dealt with them and had
sent men with them—this woman who proposed to attack Mante.

"From outside," Gault had
said then, beginning to believe this lunacy, though they had long
thought there was no outside, and the very thought that there might be,
implied a tottering of the world—challenging the power in Mante, of
Skarrin himself, over whose death neither he nor the men of his company
would shed tears.

But an incursion from outside—

But a threat, babbled in a
human witness's confused terms, against the very gates—and a qhal
counseling humans about things which humans did not well guess—

The priest went on
babbling, pleading his usefulness and his sacrosanctity. "Silence
that," Gault said, and had meant that one of the others should do it.

Quick as the drawing of a
sword, Jestryn cut the priest's throat and stepped back, his face all
flecked with blood: Gault had seen that moment's horror, and well knew
the reason the Pyverrn-self had desired that particular execution.

Exorcism, the humans would say.

They had come in the space
of an hour from anger at human attack to suspect a far greater danger.
"We cannot get a message south," Jestryn had said, meaning one that
should pass the southern gate and speed north with the speed of
thought. "There is Tejhos-gate."

"They will know that,"
Gault had said, and had dispatched one small part of his forces back
toward the road to sweep north, under a man he trusted—which would have
been Jestryn, had he thought Jestryn reliable at the moment.

Perhaps, he thought now,
Jestryn had mustered anger enough to overcome his confusion. Perhaps
luck would be with them and Jestryn could guide them on these trails,
now they knew where their enemy had gone.

But he did not trust to Jestryn's sanity.

"Take him with us," he had said of Arunden. "Kill the rest." And headed for his horse at a run.

There was a Weapon loose.
What the priest and Arunden had described could only be that. It was
that which had lent absolute credence to a tale otherwise incredible.

Skarrin himself was
challenged. The trouble had passed Morund with only a trifling attack.
It was possible that the high lord had stirred up some trouble which
bade fair to destroy him and to take the world down to chaos—it
answered to things which in qhalur lore were only dimmest legend, that
there had been such visitations once, and time itself might shift, and
all reality alter.

He did not count himself a
virtuous man. He did not know one—Skarrin being Skarrin and only the
favored few of his lords profiting from Skarrin's rule; but Gault found
himself with no choice and no one but himself to look to.

He rode without heed of the
night or the rain that should keep them prudently camped. He trusted
himself and his men to the guidance of a traitor and a bloodstained man
struggling for sanity, because there was no time for anything else.

The war he had started out
to fight was for a woods, a handful of deer and rabbits and revenge on
a quisling human he thought had betrayed him.

But in a few words from a human's lips he found himself in a war for survival.

Chapter Nine

"It might be a trick,"
Vanye said to Morgaine, beside her as they saddled in desperate haste,
there by the woven wall of the shelter. He worked by feel on gear
rapidly becoming rain-soaked, with their horses unsettled by the
visitor out of the dark and ill-tempered at taking the trail again. It
had the feel of old nightmares.

And there were Arunden's
men with them; Eoghar and his lot, and ep Ardris, Bron and Chei over
with them, flinging saddles onto wet, angry horses, ep Ardris' beast
standing with hanging head, unfit for the trail.

"They might be waiting for us out there."

Morgaine said nothing, only flung her saddlebags over Siptah's saddle and jerked the ties tight.

"Let me go up on that ridge and have a look," Vanye said.
"I
can climb it—"

"Aye, and it would take considerable time and mesh us in a battle and separate us if the least thing went amiss."

"Nothing would go amiss. There is the water to cover the sound—"

"No," she said sharply. She
finished the last tie on the other side and took up Siptah's reins,
stopping face to face with him as he took up Arrhan's. "If they would
be on us out in the open, they could save themselves the trouble and
fire down from the ridge. Thee is too careful, thee is always too
cursed careful. Let us be out of here!"

His face went hot. But
there was no leisure for argument and less profit in it at the moment.
"Aye," he said sharply, and threw Arrhan's reins over, on his way to
the saddle.

She caught his arm with a
hard grip. "Vanye." And as he stopped and looked full into her face
there in the misting dark: "Take care for
thyself,
not for me, does thee hear me? I need no more fools tonight!"

"I am none," he retorted;
"you mistake me,"—their voices being muffled in the sound of the falls;
and she turned quickly to mount.

It was Chei she meant, Chei
and Bron and every other encumbrance which had seized on her and
weighed on her: that panic in her came of delays and entanglements and
mortal frailties—he knew well enough that pitch of rage that he had
begun to sense growing in himself, the understanding of dangers winding
them about like threads, more and more of entanglements.

He flung himself to horse and reined in beside her. "If so happen," Morgaine said more sanely, "if so happen the qhal
have
Arunden
for whatever cause—then it is speed will save us now, and we cannot
reckon otherwise. There is the gate at Tejhos; and if Gault does come
behind us, then we can reckon that from the hour he reaches either
gate, north or south, the lord at Mante will know everything Gault
knows."

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?"