Except it was Morgaine who, like Heaven, decided where they should go and when; and there had been all too much of comradely understanding in that small gesture—as if she had confessed that she was weary, too, and there were no miracles.
From his liege, he did not want such admissions.
He finished his work. He overtook her at the buried fire, leading the horses; and having the horses between him and Chei, he took his Honor-blade sheathed from his belt and gave it to her without a word—for safety's sake. She knew. She slipped it into her belt next her own ivory-hilted Korish blade, and pulled and hooked the belt ring which slid the dragon sword up to ride between her shoulders, before she took Siptah's reins from his hand and climbed into the saddle. The gray stud snorted his impatience and worked at the bit.
Vanye set his foot in Arrhan's stirrup and settled himself in the saddle, reining her about, where Chei waited, dressed in his borrowed clothing and his own mended boots, and holding his sleeping blanket rolled in his arms.
'You will want that on the ride,' Vanye said, taking the blanket roll into his lap, and cleared his left stirrup for the man. Chei set his foot, took his offered hand as Arrhan shifted weight, and came astride and well-balanced so quickly that Vanye gave the mare the loose rein she expected. It made the mare happier about the double load; she pricked her ears up and switched her tail and took a brisk stride behind Siptah.
Through the trees and down along the river which had guided them—by the light of an incredible starry heaven and a slivered moon, so brilliant a night as the sunlight left the sky utterly, that the pale grass shone and the water had sheen on its darkness.
Behind him, Chei wrapped the blanket about himself, for the breeze was chill here in the open; and Vanye drew an easier breath, bringing Arrhan up on Siptah's left—the left, with Morgaine, shield-side and never the perilous right. She had her hair braided for this ride: not the clan-lord's knot to which she was entitled, but the simple warrior's knot of clan Chya of Koris, like his own.
They were enspelled—not with magics, but with the sense of change, of passage, the night sky's softening influence that made them part of a land to which they did not belong.
And Chei had sworn, on his life, that they might expect peace for a time on this ride.
They took the same slow pace when they had come to the Road, with its ancient stone bridge across the stream. Woods gave way briefly to meadow and to woods again, a tangled, unkept forest. A nightbird called. There was the sound of their horses' hooves—on earth and occasionally on stone, and eventually on the stone and damp sand of a ford which crossed a stream, perhaps tributary to the river they had left.
'I do not know its name,' Chei said when Vanye asked. 'I do not know. I only know we crossed it.'
They let the horses drink, and rode further, in wilderness cut well back from the road, but unthinned beyond that. No woodsmen, Vanye thought, no caretaker. It was still wild woods, overgrown and rank with vines and thorns. But the trees grew straight and clean. Gate-force did not reach to this place. They were beyond the region in which they would know if the gate were used; and they were beyond the region in which some weapon of that nature could reach to them.
He felt Chei lean against him, briefly, and recover himself; felt it again; and again the same recovery; a third time: 'No matter,' he said. 'Rest,' and: 'No,' Chei murmured.
But in time Chei slumped a while against him, till they faced a stream-cut to go down and up again. 'Chei,' Vanye said, slapping him on the knee.
Chei came awake with a start and took his balance. Arrhan took the descent and the climb with dispatch then, and quickened her pace till she had overtaken Siptah.
They were still on the Road. It began to stretch away across a vast plain, country open under fewer and fewer stars, exposed to view as far as the eye could see, and Morgaine drew rein, pointing to the red seam along the horizon.
'Chei. That is the sun over there.'
Chei said nothing.
'Where are we?' she asked.
'It is still the Road,' Chei protested; and: 'Lady, this is notthe land i know. northward—yes. but here—i have never been but the once. we are still on the road—we will make it—'
'How far does this go?' Her voice had an edge to it, a dangerous one. 'Wake up, man. You know what I would know. You swore that you did. Do you want your enemies' attention? Or do you tell me full and free that you do not know where you are?'
'I know where I am! There is a kind of ruin, I do not know how far—I swear to you, we will reach it by morning.' Chei's teeth chattered, and his breath hissed, not altogether, Vanye thought, of exhaustion and the night chill. 'It was our starting-place misled me. The river must have bent. I know it is there. I swear it is. We can still come to it. But we can go wide, now.' He pointed over westward, where the plain rolled away to the horizon. 'We can pick up the trail yonder in the hills. Off Gault's lands.'
'But equally off our way,' Morgaine said, and held Siptah back, the dapple gray backing and circling. 'How is Arrhan faring?'
'She will manage,' Vanye said, and looked uneasily toward the lightening of the sky in the east, over low and rolling hills.
'North,' she said, and held Siptah still a moment, when he would have moved. 'By morning, he swears. It is very little time.'
She swung about and went on, not quickly, saving the horses.
'No,' Chei said; and shivered, whether with cold he could not tell.
Morgaine had said it; there was only one way, ultimately, that they could go; and less and less he liked delay along this road, less and less he liked the prospect of a long journey aside, and more and more he disliked their situation.
'Best you be right, man.'
Morgaine dropped back to ride beside. They went perforce at Arrhan's double-burdened pace, under an open sky and fading stars.
Chei hugged his blanket about him. It was terror kept him awake now. It was nightmare as dread as the wolves, this slow riding, this pain of half-healed sores and the slow, steady rhythm of horses which could go no faster, not though Gault and all his minions come riding off the horizon.
The sky brightened, the few wispy clouds in the east took faint and then pinker color, until at last all the world seemed one naked bowl of grass and one road going through it, unnaturally straight track through a land all dew-grayed green. At times Vanye and the lady spoke in a language he did not understand, a harsh speech which fell on the ear with strange rhythms, but softly spoken, little exchanges of a word and a few words. There was a grim tone to it. There was discontent. He imagined it involved him, though he dared not ask.
'Where are these ruins of yours?' Vanye asked then, and slapped him on the knee when he failed to realize that it was to him he had spoken.
'I know that they are there,' he said, 'I swear to you.'
'Neither does the sun lie,' Vanye said.
There was the beginning of daylight. There was the hint of color in things. And the white mare was weary now. Did their enemies find them, Chei thought, there was no way that the mare might run.
Did their enemies find them. . . .
But on that terrible hilltop, like a dream, he recalled light coming from Morgaine's fingers, and recalled chain melting and bending, and how Vanye had shielded him from that sight.
He looked at the open land around him, and the treacherous roll of hills which might mask an army.
They would kill him first, he thought, if they suspected ambush. There was no doubt but what they would; he
