The Complete Morgaine (130 page)

“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 9

“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 had 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.