The Complete Morgaine (148 page)

“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 warhorse 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.

But, he thanked Heaven, there were no ambushes.

The hill beyond the next rise gave out onto the flat again, a broad valley; he blinked at the sweat in his eyes and rubbed at them to make the haze go away.

“Vanye?” Morgaine asked, as Siptah's heavy weight brushed his leg.

“Aye?” His head ached where the helm crossed his brow; the sun heated the metal, heated his shoulders beneath the armor and the pain in his ribs made his breath hard to draw.

“Is thee bearing up?”

“Well enough. Would there was more wind.”

Chei had drawn rein in front of them, and scanned the ground; and waited for them with the others.

“We should bear south a little,” Chei said. “Around the shoulder—” Chei pointed. “Off into the hills. One of them may well have us in sight. But the weapon you used up there—” He gave a small, humorless laugh. “—will have improved my reputation with Mante. At least for veracity. They will be very hesitant to come at us.”

“Why south?”

“Because—” Chei said sharply, and pointed out over the plain, below, and
to their right, toward the hills. “To reach that, necessitates crossing this, else, and if you have no liking for—”

“Courtesy, man,” Vanye muttered, and Chei drew another breath.

“My lady,” Chei said quietly, “it is safer. If you will take my advice—lend me the stone a moment and I can send a message that may draw their forces off us.”

“Tell me the pattern,” Morgaine said.

Chei took up the reins on the roan, that flattened its ears toward Siptah. “Two flashes. A simple report. I can send better than that. I can tell them the enemy has gone up into the hills. In numbers. And if you provoke them to answer you, my lady, and you cannot reply rapidly, they will
know
what you are. I can answer them.”

“Do not give it to him,” Vanye said, and made no move to hand over the stone.

“No,” Morgaine said. “Not here and not now.”

“My lady—”

“Can it be—you
have
sent?”

“Aye. From Tejhos.”

“And the stone, man!”

“With that,” Chei said with a reluctant shrug. “Yes. The first night.”

“And
told
them it would stay unshielded. Do not evade me. I am out of patience for guesswork.
What
have you done, what do you suspect, what is out there?”

“They will have known something went amiss from the time you sealed off the stone,” Chei said in a low voice. “There is rumor Skarrin's gate can tell one stone from the other, given sure position. I do not know. I only know there are two more such stones out there. I saw them, clear as I could see Tejhos.”

“In the stone.”

“In the stone, my lady. There may be more than that by now. When yours stopped sending—It is myself they will be hunting, along with you. I am well known for treason.”

“Did you think they would forgive,” Vanye asked, “the small matter of killing your lord's deputy?”

Chei's eyes lifted to his, hard and level. “No. But, then, if I had won, I would have done what we are doing now. With your weapons. It is not Mante I want. It is the gate. . . . With your weapons. I told you my bargain. And, lady, you have convinced me: I will not follow a lord in the field who cannot beat me. I should be a fool, else. You won. So I take your orders.”

There was a moment's silence, only the stamp and blowing of the horses.

“Let us,” Morgaine said to Chei then, “see where your ability leads us.”

And in the Kurshin tongue, when they struck a freer pace, tending toward the south, into rougher land:

“Do not be concerned for it. I will choose any camp we make, and he will not lay hands on the stone, to be telling them anything.—Thee is white, Vanye.”

“I am well enough,” he said again.

If he confessed otherwise, he thought, she might take alarm, might seek some place to rest, where they must not—
must
not go to hiding now, when Mante knew the vicinity to search, and might throw company after company into the field. Even
Changeling
had its limits—

—had them, more and more as they drew near the aching wound that was Mante.

My fault, he kept thinking. All of this.
O Heaven
, what are we going to do?

And others, out of the muddle of heat and exhaustion: she has taken them
because
she knows I am near to falling; she needs help; she takes it where she can, against this stranger-lord in Mante—against this Skarrin—needs them in place of me—to guard her back—O God, that I leave her to these bandits—It is her own perverse way of managing them, putting them under my hand, forcing the bitter draught down their throats—lest they think they can leave me behind: it is her own stratagem, give them a captain like to spill from his horse, and let them vie for her favor, whereby she keeps Chei at bay, and in hope of succession, and he never dares strike at me, lest he lose what gratitude he might win of her later—If he has not betrayed us outright—if the ambush was not a trick, their own arrangement—

A man learned to think in circles, who companied with Morgaine kri Chya. A man learned craft, who had before thought a sword-edge the straightest way to a target.

She might manage Chei. Surely Rhanin. I should tell her to keep that man.

And: This weakness of mine may pass. It may well pass. She is winning time for me. Gaining ground.

And lastly: Why did she prevent me from Chei? Why strike my hand?

You care too much?

What did she mean by that?

Hills closed about them, brushy ravines and rock and scrub, steep heights on either side. He looked up and behind them, and never was there trace of any watcher.

Except in a fold between two hills, near a stand of scrub, where they came to a stream: there Hesiyyn drew up by the grassy margin and signaled Chei.

They were old tracks. It had surely been yesterday that some rider had paused to water his horse, and ridden along the hillside, in this place of tough, clumped grass which showed very little trace otherwise. The track there went out onto that ground on their own side, not, Vanye reckoned, hard to follow, if
one had to wonder where that rider had gone, or if one were interested in finding him.

As it was: “What is this place?” he asked angrily. “A highway their riders use? A known trail?”

“Doubtless,” Hesiyyn said, “my lord human. We are all anxious to die.”

He sent Hesiyyn a dark look.

“We are no more anxious for a meeting than you are,” Chei said. “They are out here, that is all. I told you. Skarrin is no longer taking the matter lightly.—I ask you again, lady, in all earnestness: lend me the stone.”

Morgaine leaned her hands against the saddlebow and quickly restrained Siptah from edging toward the roan. It was warfare, now. The red roan's ears were flat, his eyes—red-rimmed, his least lovely feature—constantly one or the other toward the gray stud.

“No,” she said shortly, and reining Siptah sharply aside to gain room, dismounted and threw her hand up to shy the roan. “Move him off! We will rest here a little. At least they
have
passed here. And it is at least some cover.”

“My lady,” Chei said with heavy resentment, and drew the wild-eyed roan aside, along the stream.

So the rest of them. Vanye glared a warning in their direction, threw his leg over the horn and slid down. He dropped Arrhan's reins to let her drink, and let the two horses he led move up to the water, then sank down on his knees and bathed his face and the back of his shorn neck, discovering that insult again, where it had passed in shock when Chei had done it. For this one unjustified thing he was more and more angry, an unreasoning, killing anger, of the sort he had not felt—

—since the day his brother died.

“We will rest here an hour,” Morgaine said, sinking down to wash beside him, letting Siptah drink.

“Aye.” He dipped up another double handful. It was spring-fed, this stream, and like ice, taking the breath. He stood up with a sudden effort.

The daylight went to gray and to dark.

“Vanye—” Morgaine said.

“Watch them!” he said to her in the Kurshin tongue, and sat down hard where he stood, his balance simply gone, his foot off the edge into the chill water, his wounds jolted so he thought he would not get the next breath at all.

“Vanye!”

“Watch them,” he said again, calmly, fighting panic. He drew his foot out of the water. “
Liyo
, I will rest here a little. I am tired. That is all.”

He heard her bend near him, felt her shadow take the heat of the sun from his face. He heard footsteps in the grass nearby and that frightened him.