• • •
Beyond that he rode the stream itself for a space, the water only scarcely over Arrhan’s hooves, but it served.
It served, certainly, better than the streamside had served another rider. He saw the mark among bent reeds, the water-filled impression of a horse’s hoof, and searched his mind whether Arrhan had misstepped when he had passed this bank in the morning.
No, he thought, with the blood going colder and colder in him. No. She had not. Not here. They had gone straight along as they went now, making no track at all. He remembered the reeds. He remembered the little shelf of rock where it came down from the hill.
He saw the track merge with the stream further on, a single rider.
Morgaine would not have broken her word to him without reason. He believed that implicitly. She would not have followed, except something had gone very wrong.
There were further marks, down the stream where the water became momentarily and treacherously deeper and a rider had to take to the waterside. He had done so. So had this rider; and one mark showed a shod horse, a shoe of a pattern different than Siptah’s and headed the wrong direction.
There was cold dread in him now. He scanned the hills about him.
If he had been in Myya lands again, his Myya cousins looking to have his head on a pike, he would do what he had told Morgaine he would do: he would go to earth and lie close until the hunters had passed and failed to find him for a fortnight or more.
But then he had not had a woman waiting for him, in the direction the rider was going, camped right on the stream-course as if it were some roadside, now the hunters were out. She would not be sitting blind: she would have vantage from higher on the hill—he took that for granted. But there was the horse to worry for—more visible, and tracking the ground despite all they could do to keep cover. If someone rode through, looking with a skilled eye—never grant that every man in Gault’s party was a fool, even granted one of them had been careless enough to let his horse misstep in this thread of a stream.
He put Arrhan to more speed. He scanned the hills about him, dreading the sight of riders, finding only, in one place between the hills, a fan of tracks in the grass, as riders had come together and joined forces.
Thereafter tracks met the stream and the bank was well-trampled, the mud churned by the hooves of more than a score of horses.
He followed, trying desperately to recollect every stone and every vantage of the camp they had. It was well enough, he thought: their numbers were only an advantage—they could not go silently, Heaven knew that they were no woodsmen, the way they bunched together; and Morgaine with the least of her weapons could take them, once she had taken some position of defense: the greatest worry she must have was whether her companion was going to come riding in to put himself in danger.
Only—he thought of the pyx he wore against his heart and thought of gate-weapons with a lingering chill—it might not be Gault’s folk. It might be something else, out of Mante.
Even if it were not, she would hesitate to use the sword that was her chiefest weapon, for fear of alerting other forces Mante might have sent out southward to find them—
Or through the gate at Tejhos, coming at them from both sides.
Heaven knew what their limit was.
And if one of them had so much as what he carried, it could reshape Changeling’s gate-force, warp it and draw it in such fashion that Changeling became wildly unpredictable, a danger to flesh and substance anywhere between: he had seen one of the arrhim, a gate-warder, brave that danger in the arrhend war—and lose—which sight haunted him every time he thought of what he carried.
The gift was for way-finding, was for light in dark places, for startling an ignorant enemy but not as a weapon—never as that, for someone who rode as shieldman to Morgaine Angharan.
He dared not use it now, in any hope of warning her. He had given his sword to Chei and not reclaimed it—not, in all else they had done, turned him out utterly defenseless.
He had no weapon now but his bow.
And Heaven knew how far he was behind.
• • •
He listened as he rode the center of the stream, close to their camp. He stopped Arrhan where there was brush enough to hide her, and slid down, and stood for a moment steadying her so that he could hear the least stirring of the wind.
A bird sang, natural, long-running song, but it was not a sound that reassured him. There were the tracks, evident now at this muddy bank, and hours old.
Now it was a hard choice what to do. There was no safe place further than this. He took one risk, and made a faint, careful bird-call: I am here, that said, no more than that.
No answer came to him.
He bit his lip furiously, and put a secure tie on Arrhan, took his bow and quiver and slipped away into the brush, onto the hillside. He was not afraid, not yet. There were too many answers. There was every chance she had heard him and dared not risk an answer.
He went hunter-fashion, stopping often to listen. He found the tracks again where he picked up the stream course; and when he had come within sight of the place where they had camped, beneath the hill, Siptah was gone, and with one glance he was reassured.
Good, he thought, she has taken him, the tack is gone.
But there were marks of the enemy’s horses, abundant there, trampling on Siptah’s and Arrhan’s marks, and no matter the skill of the rider, there was no way not to leave some manner of a trail for a good tracker well sure where that trail began.
She would lead them, that was what she would do. She would lead them around this hill and that until they came straight into one of her ambushes.
But so many riders had gone away from this point, left and right, obliterating any tracks the gray stud might have made, the tracks they could have followed; and left him the necessity to cast about beyond the trampled area—and cast about widely he could not, without risking ambush.
Best, he thought, find out what was still here.
He moved, crouched behind what cover there was, along the flank of the hill, among the rocks, stopping now and again to listen. There was nothing astir but the wind.
Then a bird flew up, taking wing east of his backtrail.
He froze where he was, a long time, shifting only the minuscule degree that kept his legs from cramping.
A bird-call sounded, directly on his track.
He calmly, carefully scanned the hillsides and the points of concealment so far as he could from his own cover, not willing to give way to any feeling, not fear, not self-reproach for anything he might have done and not done: there was only the immediate necessity to get off this hillside and take the enemy, whatever had happened behind him, else he might never find her.
He waited what he judged long enough to make them impatient, then moved, quietly, behind what cover the brush and the rocks afforded, without retracing his steps into what might now be tracking him.
They meant him to go to his horse. They had found Arrhan, that was what had happened, and they were effectively advising him where the ambush was, and where he had to go, if he did not want to flee them afoot.
Where is she? was his constant thought. The whole area had become hostile ground, enemy marks everywhere, his horse discovered, and no sign of Morgaine.
If she had heard the bird-calls, she was at least warned.
He sank down behind a rock to wait a moment, to see what they would do, and there was not a sound, not a stir below.
Not even the wind breathed.
Then a pebble rolled, somewhere on the bare rock around the shoulder of the hill above him. A step whispered across stone and left it again.
Carefully he took three arrows from his quiver and fitted one to the string, braced himself comfortably and waited with the bow unbent, not to cramp his arm, for one quick shot if need be.
The step ca
me closer and the sweat ran on his brow and down his sides, one prickling trail and another.
The sound stopped a moment, then advanced again, a man walking on the rock a moment, then disturbing the brush.
He drew a breath and bent the bow all in one motion.
And held his shot in a further intake of breath as a man in a bright mail shirt saw him and slid down the crumbling hill face. His bow tracked the target.
“Vanye,” Chei breathed, landing on two feet in front of him. “For God’s sake—I followed you. I have been following you. What did you expect when you told me go back? Put that down!”
“Where is she?”
“Gone. Put down the bow. Vanye—for God’s sake—I saw them pass; I followed them. There was nothing I could do—”
“Where is she?”
“Northward. That is where they will have taken her.”
His heart went to ice. He kept the bow aimed, desperate, and motioned with it. “Clear my path.”
“Will you kill me too?” Chei’s eyes were wide and outraged. “Is that what you do with your friends?”
“Out of my way.”
“Your friends, Vanye,” Chei repeated, and flattened himself against the rock as he edged past. “Do you know the word? Vanye!”
He turned from Chei to the way ahead, to run, remembering even then the whistle he had heard downslope; and saw an archer standing in his path as a weight smashed down between his shoulders and staggered him.
He rolled, straight down the hillside, tucked his shoulder in a painful tangle of armor straps and bow and quiver. His helm came off; he lost the bow; and went up-ended and down again on the grass of the slope.
He came up blind, and ripped his Honor-blade from its sheath, hearing the running steps and the rattle of armor, seeing a haze of figures gathering about him on the hillside, above and below him.
“Take him alive!” someone shouted. “Move!”
He yelled out at them and chose a target and a way out, cut at a qhal who missed his defense, met him with a shock of steel against leather and flesh; but in that stroke his foot skidded on the bloody grass and there was another enemy on him, with more coming. He recovered his balance on both feet and laid about him with a clear-minded choice of threats, finding the rhythm of their attacks and their hesitations for a moment; and then losing it as other attackers swarmed in at another angle.
A man, falling, seized him by the leg. He staggered and others hit him and wrapped a hold about him, inside his guard; and overbalanced him and bore him down in a skidding mass of bodies.
They brought up against a rock together. It jolted the men who held him and he smashed an elbow into one body and a fist into another’s head as he struggled free and levered himself toward his feet, staggering against the tilted surface as he tried to clear his knife hand of the dazed man who clung to it.
Steps rushed on him, a shadow loomed out of the sun at his right, and others hit him, carrying him backward against the rock. The point of a sword pressed beneath his chin and forced his head back.
Chei’s face cleared out of the haze and the glare, Chei’s face with a grin like the wolves themselves, and a half a score of qhalur and human faces behind him.
“Ah,” Chei said, “very close, friend. But not good enough.”
Chapter 13
They flung him down on the trampled ground of the streamside, and he did not know for a moment where he was, except it was Chei sitting cross-legged on the grass, and Chei’s face was a mask behind which lived something altogether foreign.
Chei was dead, as Bron was dead. He knew it now. As many of these men’s comrades were dead, several wounded, and he was left alone with them to pay for it. That was the logic he understood. It was not an unreasonable attitude in men or qhal, not unreasonable what they had done in the heat of their anger, with a man who had cost them three dead on the selfsame hillside.
Not unreasonable that Chei should look on him now as he did, coldly—if it were Chei and Chei’s reasons. But it was not. He was among men who fed their enemies to beasts.
Morgaine, he thanked Heaven, had ridden clear. She had escaped them, he was sure of it. She had ridden out, she was free out there, and armed with all her weapons.
She might well be anywhere in the country round about. Heaven knew, the same stream that had covered his tracks could cover hers—in the opposite direction, he thought; toward the Road; which their enemies must have thought of, and searched, and failed.
She might have fled toward the north and east as the Road led, thinking to find him by cutting into the country along the way; but that was so remote a chance. Gone on to the Gate itself . . . that was possible; but he did not think so: she would not ride off and leave him to fall into ambush.
Unless . . . O God, unless she were wounded, and had no choice.
And he did not reckon he would have the truth from these men by asking for it.
“Why are you here?” Chei asked him, as if he had a list of questions in mind and any of them would do. “Where do you come from? Where are you going?”
They had not so much as bound him. It was hard enough to lift his cheek from the mire and regard Chei through whatever was running into his eyes and blurring his vision.
“She has authority to be here,” he said, which he reckoned for the truth, and perhaps enough to daunt a qhal.
“Are you full human?”
He nodded and shifted his position, and whatever was dripping, started down his cheek. He dragged his arms under him, and felt, beneath the mail and leather, the pressure of the little box against his heart. They had not discovered it. He prayed Heaven they would not, though they had taken his other weapons, from Honor-blade to boot knife. And the arrhendur sword in Chei’s lap he well remembered.
“Is she qhal?”
He had answered that so often he had lied before he realized it, a nod of his head. “Aye.”
“Are you her lover?”
He did not believe he had heard that question. He was outraged. Then he knew it was one most dangerous to him. And that Chei in Chei’s own mind—had his own opinion. “No,” he said. “I am her servant.”
“Who gave her that weapon?”
“Its maker. Dead now. In my homeland.” His arms trembled under him. It was the cold of the ground and the shock of injury. Perhaps also it was fear. There was enough cause for that. “Long ago—” he began, taking breath against the pain in his gut. “Something happened with the gates. It is still happening—somewhere, she says. Against that, the sword was made. Against that—”
“Bring that thing near a gate, Man, and there will be death enough.”
He started to agree. Then it came to him that they seemed to know—at what range from a gate the sword was too perilous to use. And that put Morgaine in danger.
“What does she seek in Mante?”
The tremors reached his shoulders, tensed his gut so that the pain went inward, and he wished, for his pride’s sake, he could only prevent the shaking from his voice.
“What does she seek in Mante?”
“What she would have sought in Morund,” he said, “if we had not had other advice.”
Chei? he wondered, gazing into that face. Chei? Is there anything left?
Can you remember, man? Is there anything human?
“What advice would that be?”
“That you were unreasonable. Chei knows.” He heaved himself upward another hand’s-breadth to ease the pain in his hip, where they had kicked him, and the tendon there was bruised. He determined to sit up and risk a cracked skull from the ones behind him; and discovered that there was no part of him that their kicks or the butts of their lances had not gotten to. It was blood running down his face. It splashed dark onto his leg when he sat up, and he wiped at the cut on his brow with a muddy hand. “My lady’s mission here—you very well know.?
??
“Death,” Chei said, “ultimate death—for every qhal.”
“She intends no harm to you—”
“Death.”
It seemed the sum of things. There was no peace, then, once the qhal-lords knew what Morgaine purposed with the gates. He gazed bleakly at Chei, and said nothing.
“Where will your lady have gone?”
“To Mante.”
“No,” Chei said quietly. “I doubt that she has. I remember, friend. I remember a night in Arunden’s camp—you and she together—do you recollect that?”
He did. There was altogether too much Chei knew; and he despaired now of all the rest.
“I rather imagine,” Chei said, “that your lady is somewhere in these hills. I rather imagine that she would have tried to warn you—if she could reach you in time. Failing that—she will follow if we move. If we were foolish enough to kill you, then she might even come looking for revenge—would she not?”
“I do not know,” he said. “She might well have ridden for Mante.”
“I do not think so,” Chei said. “I think she is waiting for dark.”
He said nothing. He tensed muscles, testing whether he could rely on his legs if he made a lunge for Chei’s throat. To kill this man might at least keep some knowledge out of the hands of the qhal.
It might put some enemy less dangerous in command of this band, at least.
“I think,” Chei said, “she will come close to see whether you are alive. Afoot, by stealth. And perhaps for your sake she might come and talk to us a little closer.”
“Set me free,” Vanye said. “I will find her and give her whatever message you wish. And come back to you.”
There was startled laughter.
“I am Kurshin,” Vanye said. “I do not break an oath.”
Chei regarded him in silence a long time, eyes flickering slowly, curiously, as if he might be reaching deep into something not qhal and not familiar to him. The laughter died away.
“Chei?” Vanye said, ever so quietly, seeking after whatever balance might have shifted.