“I do not hear them,” he said finally.
“Nor I,” Morgaine whispered, and turned Siptah uphill again, a hard climb and a long one with the two led horses tugging at Arrhan’s harness.
But when they had come high up on that hill, dawn was seaming the east with a faint glow, and the stars were fading to that black before daylight.
And when they had changed off mounts and ridden the downslope on the two bays, Arrhan and Siptah led behind and too weary to object, the red edge of the sun was rising, offering a dim light, showing the distant crags of Mante’s highland upthrust like a snaggled jaw against the sky beyond the hills.
The gelding missed a step and caught himself, and Vanye shifted weight; for a moment the whole of the east seemed to blur and reel, and he caught the saddlehorn, taking in breath in a reflex that hurt. He had bitten through a wound inside his cheek. He did it again, and it was one more misery atop the others.
But Morgaine had drawn up short, and she reached across to him as he caught himself, her horse crowding his amid the scrub and the rocks. “Vanye?”
“I am all right.” His pulse raced with a sullen, difficult beat. The sky still spun and he felt a cold fear that he might fail her in the worst way, weighing on her, forcing her to decisions she would not make and tactics she would not use.
But not yet, he thought. Not yet. If threats and blows of his enemies could keep him in the saddle, his own determination could do as much, until the give and flex had worked the stiffness out of him and food and water had taken the dizziness from his skull.
“Beyond this,” she said, “no knowing how long the ride. Vanye—we can find a place—That is what we must do.”
He shook his head, turned the gelding’s head for the downslope, and set it moving, too much in misery for courtesy.
An object hissed out of thin air and hit his shoulder like a sling-stone, spun him half-about in the saddle by force and shock: in the next heartbeat the arrow-hiss reached his mind and he knew that he had been hit and that arrows were still flying. His horse plunged in panic and shied back, and he fought it, finding life in the numbed arm, his only thought to get back to cover before Morgaine left it for his sake and tried to cover him. The horse stumbled on the brush, recovered itself, crowding Siptah and Arrhan and snagging the lead-rope as it came up against the others, but it was in cover, behind the rocks. He slid down, stumbled as the horse had on the encumbering brush, and brought up on the downhill slant against a boulder, trying to take his breath as Morgaine slid down and fetched up against the same, firing as she went, as the hillside erupted with ambush, a din of shouts.
“Is thee hurt?” Morgaine asked him. “Vanye, is thee hurt?”
The force of the blow had made any feeling uncertain, but the arm worked, and he pushed himself off the rock and struggled back after Arrhan and Siptah, who had wound the tether-ropes into a confusion of frightened geldings and war-trained stallion, in the midst of which was his bow. Arrows landed about him. One, spent, hit Arrhan and shied her off from him, and behind him was Morgaine’s voice cursing him and bidding him take cover.
He seized the bow and ripped it loose from its ties on Arrhan’s saddle, the same with his quiver; and scrambled for higher vantage, up atop a tumbled several boulders that hemmed the horses in.
The climb took his breath. He gained his knees, blind to anything but the necessity and deaf to anything but the cries of the enemy. He set the bow against the rock and his knee as he knelt, and strung it with an effort that brought sweat to his face.
Then he nocked an arrow and chose his target among those who swarmed up the hill, as if the very rocks and brush had come alive in the murky light.
He counted his shots, knowing the value of his position. He fired, calmly, carefully, with the advantage of height and the surety he was a target if he could not take their bowmen before they came to vantage on him or Morgaine, and they were trying: he picked one off, and selected another shaft, shaking the hair from his eyes and feeling the sweat running on cold skin. He wondered had the arrow pierced his armor after all before it fell away. It had hit enough to cause deep pain, the sort that caused a sweat and the weakness in his limbs and the giddiness that sent the landscape reeling.
But he could still draw. He bent the bow and drew breath and sighted all in one deliberate and enveloping focus, time after time taking targets Morgaine’s straight-line fire and lower vantage could not reach, taking the archers foremost, who strove to position themselves and reach him.
But his supply of arrows dwindled.
Chapter 15
The enemy found cover on the rock-studded, scrub-thicketed hill, and targets were fewer. Vanye wiped sweat with the back of his arm, and laid out his last four arrows, with care for their fletchings.
Morgaine left her vantage and climbed to another, a black-clad, white-haired figure in the gathering dawn, whose safety he watched over with an arrow nocked and ready for any move on the slope.
One tried. He quickly lifted the bow and fired, dissuading the archer, but the wind carried the shaft amiss.
Three arrows remaining.
Morgaine reached her perch and sent a few shots to places that provoked shifts in the enemy’s positions, and afforded him a target he did not miss.
“We are too close here,” Morgaine shouted across at him—meaning what he already understood, that Changeling was hazardous in the extreme in this confinement of loose boulders and brush, with the horses herded together in that narrow slot among the rocks and close to panic. “I am going for the horses! Stay where you are and give me cover!”
He drew in his breath and picked up his next to last shaft, his heart trying to come up his throat. He did not like what she proposed, riding out alone, with Changeling under Mante’s warped touch.
He did not like, either, their chances if the enemy came up on them, and if they waited too late to gain room for the sword; and of the two of them, Morgaine knew the weapon. There was nothing to do but hold fast and spend his two remaining arrows to afford her the room she needed.
She edged outward on the rock and onto the slope that would lead her down to the horses.
And an arrow whisked past his position and shattered on the rock a hair’s-breadth from her.
He whirled and sought a target among the crags over their heads, desperate. Morgaine’s fire glowed red on stone as she fired past him and up at the cliffs.
“Get down!” she cried at him. “Get down!”
“Get to the horses!” he yelled. “Go!”
As an arrow hit the rock by his foot.
An arrow flew from another quarter, crosswise streak of black on pale rock, high up the ledges.
Not at them. At the hidden archer. An outcry said that it had hit. Other arrows followed, arcing downslope this time, into enemy positions, starting enemies from cover, as Morgaine turned on her slab of rock and fired again and again at targets suddenly visible.
A dark spot moved in the edge of Vanye’s vision: he whirled and fired at a man coming up the throat of their little shelter, near the horses.
That man sprawled backward, his armor of no avail against an arrhendur bow at that range; and screamed as he slid down the slope, while Vanye nocked his last arrow with a deliberate effort at steadiness, as shafts sped unexplained over their heads, as the enemy broke and fled, offering their backs to the arrows and the red glow that flashed on a man and doomed him.
There were, perhaps, two or three who made it off that field. When quiet came the very air seemed numb. He still had the one arrow left. He refused to spend it on a retreating enemy. He slid off his rock and lost his footing in the landing, gathered himself up with his bow in one hand and the last arrow still nocked, and struggled through the brush to the tumbled mass Morgaine was descending.
“My lady Morgaine!” a shout came down from the heights.
He crossed the las
t distance with a desperate effort, to steady Morgaine as she jumped the last distance and to thrust her back where there was at least scant cover.
“No gratitude?” The mocking voice drifted down from that place of vantage. “No word of thanks?”
“Chei,” Vanye muttered between his teeth, and pressed his body against Morgaine as some large object hurtled off the heights to land close by them, with a sickening impact of bone and flesh.
A helmet rolled and clanged down the rocks. Arrows scattered and rattled; and a qhalur body lay broken on the stone.
He bent the bow, aimed upward, hoping for a target.
“There is my gift,” Chei called down to them, never showing himself. “One of Skarrin’s pets, none of mine. An appeasement. Do I hear yet thanks?”
“He is mad,” Vanye breathed.
“I could kill you both from here,” Chei said. “I could have let Skarrin’s men kill you. But I do not. I had rather come down to talk. Which shall I?”
“Mad,” Vanye said. His arm was shaking as he had it braced. His breath was short. He looked at Morgaine. “There were three of them. I have the one arrow left. I can gather more out there. Cover me.”
“Stay!” Morgaine said. “Do not try it.”
He lowered the bow and eased the string.
“My lady,” Chei’s voice drifted down to them. And an arrow struck and shattered in front of them. “Is that earnest enough of good faith? Talk is what I want. On your terms.”
“I cannot see the wretch,” Morgaine hissed softly, looking upward with the black weapon in hand. “Curse him, he can loft his shots, and I cannot—”
“Let me—”
“We still have another choice.”
“Loose rock,” Vanye muttered, looking at the set of the boulders Changeling might dislodge. “The horses—”
“My lady—” Chei’s voice came down. “They have sent a gate-jewel into the field, more than one—Do you want to talk about this?”
“I am listening,” Morgaine answered him.
“The while we were on the road the jewel he wore was constantly sending. It could not but draw them. I do not deny—I fought you. But there is no more fighting. If you win, you will destroy the gate at Mante, you will destroy everything, and we die. If Skarrin wins, we die—as rebels. We have few choices left. You want Mante. I want something else. It is alliance I am proposing.”
“Alliance,” Vanye muttered under his breath.
“Narrow quarters,” Morgaine said quietly. “And an unstable gate. And no knowing where our enemies out there have gotten to.”
“It is a lie—”
She rested her hand on his shoulder, and looked up at the cliffs. “Come down!” she called to Chei.
“Under truce?” Chei asked.
“As good as your own,” Morgaine shouted back. “Do you trust it?”
A pebble dropped and bounded from somewhere above.
“For God’s sake, do not trust him.”
“I do not. I want him in sight. Remember I have no scruples.”
He drew a larger breath. His hands were shaking. From off the rock where the qhal had fallen, blood ran, and dripped.
And from up among the rocks, on the trail they had ridden, the sound of movement.
“There were three,” Vanye said again as a rider came down, out of their view behind the hill, hoof-falls echoing among the rocks.
“We do not know how many there are now,” Morgaine said. “We have a dead man for proof. Perhaps they would kill their own. Who knows?”
He drew a long, slow breath, resting back against the rock that was no shelter.
“On the other hand,” Morgaine said, “Chei has already killed men of Skarrin’s. Did you not say? How did that go?”
“Aye.” Breath was short. He sent his thoughts back, to gather everything, putting it in one place. “Typthyn was the name. For the stone. It was the stone the captain wanted. To take it to Mante, he said. And to get clear. But do not believe him for the sake of that. Chei wanted it for himself.”
A single rider came into view, on the red roan that had been Gault’s, the man a slight, young figure in silver mail.
“The fool,” Vanye breathed.
“Foolish or desperate.”
“No!” Vanye said. “I believed him a moment too long. He lies—very well.”
Her hand clenched on his shoulder, on bruises. “Be patient. We will hear him out. That at least we can afford.”
She stood clear to face the rider, who, finding himself in a pocket in the maze of stone, dismounted and leapt up to the flat rock which had been Vanye’s post. Vanye took his place at her left shoulder, the bow easy in his hands, aimed at the ground.
But he kept the arrow nocked.
Chei spread wide his hands. “That I have men above me, you can guess. And you have the sword.” He walked forward on the slanting surface and dropped lightly off the rock to the ground facing them—spread his hands again, keeping the palms in plain view. “I think the advantage is yours.”
“Come no closer,” Morgaine said. “For this I have no need of the sword.”
Chei stopped instantly. The mockery was gone from his face as she lifted her hand toward him. “My lady—”
“I am not your lady and whatever there is of Chei ep Kantory I should best requite by killing his enemy, Gault. I saved you for last, only so you might keep the others under your hand. I spared you once on Vanye’s word—and because I should have enjoyed it too much—Do you hear me, Gault?”
“My men, my lady. Above us.”
“We two, lord Gault, are in front of you, and this is the cleanest of my weapons, for which you may thank me. Is there something you want that is worth this?”
“What I always wanted. What I would have freely given, if you had come to Morund. What the boy gave when you befriended him—”
“Lies,” Morgaine said sharply.
“Vanye!” Chei said, holding out his hands.
“I had as lief kill you,” Vanye said; and bent the bow as Chei took a step closer. “No farther!”
Chei fell to his knees, hands outheld. “God help me, I do not know what I am, I cannot sort it out—What else do you leave me?”
“No more lies!”
“Listen to me. I know the way in. Do you want Skarrin? I will give him to you.”
“Our guide,” Vanye breathed, “to whom we owe so much already.”
There was fear on Chei’s face now. The eyes flickered desperately, distractedly for a moment, and he moistened his lips before they steadied. “The boy—misled you. I am not that boy. My men have you in sight. Will you throw away your lives—merely to have mine? It seems a poor exchange.”
“We can take him with us,” Vanye said in the Kurshin tongue. “I will take care of him.”
“Skarrin will kill me for what I have done—he will kill all of us. Listen to what I am saying. I know how to mislead them. I know the way in. I will give you Skarrin . . . for your promise to take us with you.” He rested back on his heels, hands on his knees, and the rising sun shone fair on Chei’s curling hair, on Chei’s earnest face. “And I will not betray you.”
“Why not?” Morgaine asked. “You are betraying Skarrin.”
“Because,” Chei said with a foreign twist of the mouth, a sullen look up, as he set his hands on hips and sat back. “Skarrin is not a lord I chose, not a lord who chooses me, what is more. You are no fool, lady. And I am not. You have knowledge of the gates that I do not have. I made one try. You won. I have spent my life bowing down to a lord who has trod my face into the dust more than once, and the boy—when I will listen to him—” The young features contracted, a kind of grimace. “—the boy remembers you dealt well with him.”
Vanye’s breath shortened. “Let us get out of here,” he said, “liyo.”
“The boy meant to kill me,” Chei said. “He wanted to die. He still wants revenge. He came to me—to pit himself against me—inside—to drive me mad, if he could.” Chei’s mouth jerked, neither grimace nor smile, both humorless. “But he has changed his mind about death. It never agreed with him. Or with me. And he has changed his mind about killing you. He thought you would kill him—and me. He was disturbed that you declined. Now he understands more and more what a fool he was, having acquired a man’s understanding, and a warrior’s good sense. And what he remembers tells me I am safer right now than I would ever be in Morund.”
“He was mistaken now and again. I need no assassin at my back.”
“You need me, my lady. And Skarrin will prove it to you, too late, if you kill me. I know the way into Mante. And you will not find it!”
“I have done harder things.”
“I am not a rebel by nature, my lady! Give me a lord I can serve, give me a lord who can win against Skarrin, deal with me as you deal with your own, put me beside you, and you will find I have skill, my lady—in a command twice Morund’s size, in any field, I am a man worth having, only so I have a lord more set on winning than on his fears of having me win! I do not rival you. I do not wish to. Only take me and my men and I will tell you how I will prove it: I will swear my allegiance through Vanye, I will put myself under his orders—he is a fair man. I know that he is a fair man—”
“But no fool,” Vanye said bitterly, down the shaft of the arrow, “besides which, man, I have my own allegiance, which is to my liege, and her safety, and if I have to shoot you where you kneel I will do that before I will let you at her back.” The arrow trembled and almost he lost his grip on it, so much the soreness of his joints and the lightness of his head affected him. He tightened his fingers, feeling the sweat stinging in the cut on his brow; and for all his stomach knotted up in loathing of the choices, it was not for her to do, after so many other burdens she had. “Liyo,” he said, and lapsed into the Kurshin tongue, looking nowhere but at the center of Chei’s chest. “Let him call the others down. Let us—as you say—have them in sight. Let us get down off this hill. And I will deal with them.”