Exile's Gate (37 page)

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 came 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 upended 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 Thirteen

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.

"Possibly
that is so," Chei said then, blinking. "I would not say that it is not.
But who knows what you would bring back? No. She will come in for you.
All you have to do is cry out—and you can do that with no persuasion,
or with whatever persuasion it—"

He
sprang, sliding in the mud, for Chei's throat; and everyone moved, Chei
scrambling backward, the men around them moving to stop him. Chei
fended his first hold off and he grabbed Chei's shirt and drove a hand
toward Chei's throat to break it, but hands dragged at him, and the
blow lost force as they bore him under a tide of bodies and against the
edge of the rock.

There
were more blows. He protected himself as he could and the armor saved
him some of it. He hoped that he had broken Chei's neck and saved them
all from the damage Chei might do—but it was a small hope, dashed when
they hauled him up by the hair and Chei looked down at him from the
vantage of the rock, smiling a twisted, bloodied smile.

"—with whatever persuasion it takes," Chei said.

"She is not a fool."

"—so she will know you are with us. If she comes in—she will have some care of that fact. Will she not?"

"She is not a fool."

"A
fool would kill his hostage. Keep thinking of that." He made another
lunge, while he had the chance. They stopped him. They battered him to
the ground and held him there while they worked at his buckles and
belts, and when he fought them they put a strap around his neck and cut
off his wind.

It
was a man of considerable temper, Chei observed, probing with his
tongue at the split in his lip: a lunatic temper, a rage that did
damage as long as he could free a hand or a knee. But this was the man
had wielded the gate-sword. This was the man had taken half his house
guard and the most part of the levies.

Another
image came to him—a chain was on his leg, and this wild man came riding
down on the wolves, leaning from the white horse's saddle to wield his
sword like some avenging angel, bloody in the twilight.

This
same man, bowing the head to his liege's tempers—defending him with
quiet words, glances from under the brow, measured deference like some
high councillor with a queen—

They
had him down, now, having finally discovered there was no way to deal
with him without choking him senseless. "Do not kill him!" Chei shouted
out, and rose from his seat on the rock and walked the muddy ground to
better vantage over the situation.

They
stripped him—he was very pale except his face and hands, a man who
lived his life in armor. Armor lying beside the little stream—armor
lying beside a river—the same man offering medicines and comfort to him—