Chei, being Chei, trod straight in on a matter that would have gotten challenge outright and unexplained, if Chei were of his own people.
But Chei, being Chei, had not understood, no more than he himself understood more than the surface of Chei’s thinking. Bron had seemed dismayed when he went to ask his pardon, had seemed embarrassed, if nothing else. “Chei ought not to have done that,” Bron had said. “Forgive him.”
Now Bron came out into the daylight, limping pronouncedly in the first few steps; and concealed that with a grasp after one of the support poles of the shelter.
Vanye paid it no attention and offered no help. He wanted no more misunderstandings. He flung Siptah’s saddle up and tightened the girth.
“We will break our fast on the trail,” he said as Chei passed him; Chei nodded and said no word to him. Perhaps it was only the reaction of a man with his jaw clamped against the chill.
Or it was the reaction of a man who felt betrayed.
Morgaine came out, wrapped in her cloak, gray side out, her pale coloring one tone with the fog.
“Tonight for the open road,” she said in a quiet voice, taking Siptah’s reins. “So we dare not push the horses today.”
“Aye,” Vanye agreed, thanking Heaven one of them at least had come back to reason.
They rode out, with breakfast in hand, a little waybread and water from their flasks, ducking water-laden branches, but with the sun bringing a little warmth through the mist, and the wind having stopped. There was that for comfort.
• • •
“Here,” Jestryn said, and urged his horse down a trail hardly worthy of the name, a narrow slot of stone and dirt among pines that clung desperately to a crumbling slope. Some of the men murmured dismay, but Gault followed, nothing loath, for the Road passed near a village hereabouts, a straight bare track below the truncate hill: the ancients had carved mountains, disdaining to divert their Road for any cause; and yet bent it sharply west in open ground, for reasons that no qhal living knew.
Now the descendants of the builders rode quietly as they could, making better time than they had been able to make in the fog, reliant on Jestryn-Pyverrn’s human memory and on Arunden’s thoroughly human one, under the threat of Jestryn’s knife.
“I swear to you,” Arunden had cried, “I swear to you—I will guide you! I am your friend—”
“Impudent Man,” Jestryn had said, and laughed, as Pyverrn would, with his human, guttural laughter. “You are not my friend before or after I was human; and God knows you were never Gault’s—”
Jestryn kept such human affectations, and swore and used human oaths qhal did not. But the sparkle in his eye was Pyverrn—past the sword-cut that raked one handsome cheek. It did not distract from his looks. Next to him, Arunden was a clumsy, shambling brute; and Arunden’s wit matched his outward look.
“You will lose a finger,” Jestryn had said, “for every annoyance on this trail; I counsel you, tell me where the warders are, and what the signals are, or you will find out what pain is—my lord Arunden.”
They had taken three of the watchposts. Arunden snuffled and wept about it and protested they were disgracing him and ruining his usefulness.
But a flash of Jestryn’s knife stopped the snuffling.
“You either serve us,” Gault had said then, “or not. Decide now. We can do without you.”
“My lord,” Arunden had said.
Now they rode quietly as they could, with bows strung and arrows ready.
Jestryn gave a quiet call, a kind of lilting whistle, and a like signal answered it from down the slope.
The horses picked their way down with steady, small paces, to a place where the trail widened. A Man waited there, whose eyes betrayed shock the moment before Gault’s arrow took him. Perhaps it had been the sight of Jestryn, back from the dead. Perhaps it had been the sight of Arunden himself, who was their own lord, beside Gault, who had been lord over the human south, not six years gone: Men to the outward sight, and armored like Men, he and Jestryn, Qhiverin and Pyverrn—both archers of Mante’s warrior Societies and both deadly.
Jestryn grinned at him, an expression light and pleasant as ever Jestryn-the-Man could have used, past Arunden, who sat his horse in apparent shock.
“Let us go,” Gault said, and motioned to the men who followed.
They rode forward, closer to the human camp, with the stench of its midden all too evident. It was that garrison which guarded the road; and there was dangerous work at hand—We must take them, Jestryn had said, and reach the Road there: that is the quickest way.
If only, Gault thought, they did not bog down in some day-long siege; but Jestryn promised not: Arunden would hail them out once their archers were positioned.
Gault chose three arrows as he rode quietly at Jestryn’s back: he did not ride the roan, which was too well known—but on a borrowed sorrel. The rest of the column overtook them on this flat ground as the shapes of huts appeared among the pines. Gray smoke drifted up as haze in that clearing, from fires about which humans pursued domestic business, the weaving of cloth, the grinding of grain doubtless bartered or plundered from Gault’s own storehouses.
There was hardly reason at first that these humans should take alarm at human riders arriving in their camp, since those riders had had to pass their sentries, even if the riders carried bows at their sides.
They could only be mildly alarmed when their own lord Arunden rode forward of the three, and in a ringing voice ordered everyone to the center of the village.
Only when those bows lifted and bent and the shafts went winging to drop those who obeyed, then the cries went up and humans rushed to the attack of two solitary archers.
Then the rest of Gault’s troop appeared from the brush around the camp, and arrows came from every direction.
It was unfortunate that Arunden was not quick enough, and that a stray shaft tumbled him from his horse.
Beyond this there was little resistance. Certain humans escaped into the brush and saved their lives: do not pursue, Gault had told his men. We have no time.
When there was quiet in the clearing Gault changed horses again and rode where Jestryn beckoned him, where the height on which the village sat, dropped away sheer, and the Road showed as patches of white stone in an otherwise grassy expanse of rolling hills.
Jestryn led them down the slope of the hill to a track which human feet had worn, going and coming, laying bare the roots of pines and stripping those roots of bark, a natural series of steps in the muddy slope which gave the horses somewhat surer footing on their way down to the plains.
There was no dread of arrows now. Only of what they followed.
He could not understand why they had burned his woods and sheltered with humans; why, if they were hostile they had not attacked Morund; why, if they were not, they had not approached it. The woman whom Arunden had abundantly described was surely no halfling and the tall Man with her doubtless hosted some qhalur mind: they would have been welcome in Morund, if they were Mante’s enemies, some shadow out of Skarrin’s traffic in the gates.
But they had one and now two of Ichandren’s lot to advise them: that too. Arunden had told them, among other things. That one of them was Chei ep Kantory surprised him: the pale-haired wolf-whelp had cozened Morund-gate’s wolves then, longer than he would have thought: Kantory’s get was hardy as its sire, whatever might presently house in that human frame—for it was well possible the strangers had taken his offering at Morund-gate.
But that the other Man was Bron ep Kantory distressed him: Bron who had carried off Gault’s serfs and raided his storehouses three times in the last two years. He had thought he had taken care of that matter at Gyllin-brook, along with the rest of Ichandren’s rebels.
Bron could not be qhal, having been near neither gate; and therefore Chei was not likely to be. Bron would have suspected a changel
ing—they never would have deceived him. No, it was a question of humans.
And qhal who dealt with them in preference to legitimate authority, for whatever purpose.
It was a ride on which Gault-Qhiverin had had ample time to think; and the thoughts which chased one another through his mind held only greater and greater uncertainty, whether he could hope to find common ground with these strangers, Mante’s likely enemies, or whether he should only strike and kill and hope for reward as Skarrin’s savior.
Which would last, he thought, about as long as it took for Skarrin to arrange his assassination. Gault-Qhiverin the exile was something Skarrin could ignore. Gault the hero of the south—was not.
He reached the road just behind Jestryn and with room to run, the red roan overtook Jestryn’s bay with a vengeance, weary as they all were.
“We will catch them,” Jestryn said. “There is still time.”
It was Tejhos Jestryn was thinking of; so were they all. That was the place the enemy was going, and that was the place they would find them.
• • •
The trail led down by the last of the twilight, and deeper still the twilight under the great trees which overshadowed the trail in the descent. “Not far, not far,” Bron assured them, when once Morgaine asked. Bron’s face was pale in the half-light and sweat glistened on it. Constantly Chei had a worried look, but Bron did not ask to stop; neither did Chei, though Bron’s riding now was generally with his shoulders hunched in pain, his hands braced against the saddlehorn against the jolts of the descent: his leg by now must be agony and Vanye hurt with a sympathetic pain, who had endured similar miserable rides.
But suddenly their trail reached a level place, and in a little more of riding the trees began to thin: the forest edge gave way to open land and hills the like of the hills in the south, open grassland.
Between the last trees, under a clearing and fading sky, a rain-puddled bit of white stone, the trace of the Road; and looking up from it, toward the hills in the dusk, it was easy to see it, a line where ancient builders had sundered hill from hill, letting nothing divert it from here to the horizon.
Exhausted as they were, the horses picked up their pace somewhat on this level ground, and they grouped two and two, Bron and Chei to the fore and himself and Morgaine behind, with all the open hills before them and the sunset at their left.
“We will make it,” Bron said, dropping back a moment to ride with them. “My lady, we will make it there very soon.”
“Tejhos is on the road itself,” Morgaine asked him, “is it not?”
“Yes,” Bron said.
“We can find our way, then, from here. Go back. Take my advice.”
“No,” Bron said, “my lady.”
“I have warned you.” She shifted in the saddle. “That is all I will do.”
“I know the reports of the road,” Bron said. “I have never ridden it, but I know something of where it goes. I know something of the lord in Mante. I have these things to trade. Lady—”
“As far as you will,” Morgaine said after a moment, and heavily. “As far as you can. I will keep my word to you.”
Chei had dropped back with them. There was heavy silence as they rode.
Chei’s eyes sought toward Vanye as if even then he questioned; and Vanye shrugged and looked away, denying him any help or any encouragement.
Morgaine laid her heels to Siptah and rode from between them.
“It is kindness she meant,” Vanye said, and lingered a moment more to reason with them, holding Arrhan as she made to follow Siptah, reining her about again. “That is all.”
Chei answered something. Vanye held steady, sweeping his eye back to a thing in the dusk beyond Chei’s shoulder, a darkness that had not been on the horizon the instant before. It might have been a rock or a tree in the first blink of the eye.
But it moved. It vanished from the horizon.
Chei and Bron turned their horses about, fallen silent. “God in Heaven,” Vanye murmured, and turned and rode after Morgaine. “Liyo,” he said as she turned half about. “They are behind us. Someone at least—is on the Road.”
She looked, and reined back somewhat. “Ground of our choosing,” she said in a low voice, and brought Siptah to a halt as Chei and Bron overtook them.
She slipped the hook on Changeling’s sheath and laid it across the saddlebow.
Chapter 10
“I cannot see them now,” Vanye said, straining his eyes against the gathering dark, holding Arrhan steady as she would stand with Morgaine’s big gray chafing at the bit and stamping the ground beside her. “We have lost them out there.”
“They will come to us,” Morgaine said, while Bron drew his sword and Chei waited weaponless except for his knife.
“Their horses may be no more rested than ours,” Bron said.
“Then again,” Morgaine said, “they may be.”
“This is mad,” Chei cried. “There is the woods over there. We might make it.”
“Again,” Morgaine said, “we might not. Put away the sword.”
“My lady—”
“Do as I say, Bron. Put it away.”
“My lady, for our lives—listen to me. Vanye—”
“Never ride on my lady’s right,” Vanye said quietly. He was excruciatingly conscious of the stone at his heart, inert and harmless as it was at the moment. He had his own sword unhooked and resting across the saddlebow, as Men would parley who met under uncertain circumstances; but he did not reckon it likely that this world knew that sign of conditional peace.
“Vanye,” Chei protested, riding close, “for God’s sake—”
“Have done!” He whipped the sheathed sword across Chei’s chest and stopped it a finger’s width from his shoulder. He glared at Chei with temper flaring in him; but this time the sword was sheathed; this time he had the control to hold it, trembling, short of touching. “There will none of them live if we come to blows. Do you understand me? Not the innocent and not the purest. We cannot let them to the gate. We cannot let one escape. It is clear targets we want, range where their archers are useless and none of them can escape. Will that satisfy you?”
Chei’s face was stark and wide-eyed in the twilight. Bron had frozen in place. Vanye withdrew the sword and laid it back across his saddlebow, with a second and challenging glance toward one and the other brother.
“The dark will help us,” Morgaine said quietly. Vanye did not see her face. He did not want to see it. There was in his vision a boy, staring up at him from a dusty road as if death had greatly astonished him. He saw candles and a nightmare room in Ra-morij, his brother’s face all white and still.
He concentrated instead on the rolling land in front of them and on the hills about them, a constant pass of the eyes, lest the riders arrive at their flank or bring archery to bear from the hill nearest.
“I hear them,” Morgaine said, and a moment later he heard them too, horses coming at considerable speed for horses long on the trail. Their own blew and shifted, and Arrhan’s ribs worked less strenuously between his legs. That was the simple strategy of their position: the enemy chose to exhaust their horses overtaking on the uphill; they rested theirs by waiting.
It was a small band, ten to twenty, that crested the hill. Where are the rest of them? Vanye thought in a moment’s cold panic. Then the rest poured over the hilltop, forty, eighty, a hundred and more riders sweeping out on either side of the road.
Steel rang as Bron began to draw.
“No,” Morgaine said calmly. “Wait. Both of you keep constantly to Vanye’s left. Do nothing until I tell you. I have scant patience and less charity today. Vanye—” She changed suddenly to Kurshin accents. “Do not attempt the stone. Here!”
He had reached after his bow. She flung him Changeling. He caught it one-handed across its sheath, in a rush of cold fear, first because she had
thrown it; then that it was in his keeping—the one of her weapons that he knew how to use. He had only to look at the odds and know why.
“Chei!” he said, and flung his own arrhendur sword to Chei in the same fashion, as accurately caught, while a familiar panic loosened his joints.
He drew several breaths more, hoping neither man saw; hoping more that Morgaine did not. It was his besetting weakness, that set his palms sweating on Changeling’s hilt and gray sheath, and his heart pounding to the hoofbeats of the oncoming riders.
Heaven save us, he thought as the line began to spread wide.
Beside him, Morgaine signaled. He reined over, and Bron and Chei took a place at equal separation in their meager line.
The centermost riders drew to a halt. The rest kept moving, a half-ring about them, still closing. Move us, he thought, for the love of Heaven, backward, forward, liyo, one or the other!
Morgaine leveled her hand toward their center, where the most of the qhalur riders were. “Halt!” a man called out, and that envelopment ceased on the instant, everything stopped, except the breathing and stamping of the horses and the leathery creak and jingle of armored riders.
Morgaine’s hand did not lower. It stayed aimed at the center of the qhalur ranks.
“My lady,” the man said to her, human face, human voice.
“Gault,” Chei’s voice rasped. “That is Gault, on the roan. The man by him is Jestryn ep Desiny—he was one of our company—”
“My lord Gault,” Morgaine shouted back. “What have we to say to each other that you follow me so far from home?”
“We might have discovered that had you come to me.” Gault rode forward a few paces and drew the roan to a halt again. “You take strange allies, my lady. Brigands. Rebels. You set them free from my justice. You burn my lands and kill my game. Am I to take this for a friendly gesture?”
“I rarely practice justice. Outright slaughter, yes. I do not call it pretty names, my lord Gault.”
“What is that you hold?” Gault’s big roan surged forward and he curbed it, reining aside.