Exiles Gate

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.

'That which seems to make you prudent, my lord. Justifiably so. I see you have talked to my enemies.'

'And is your report of me so foul?' Again Gault paced the horse the other direction, weaving a slow, distracting course in the deepening dusk, which Morgaine's hand followed constantly.

'It is your death, my lord. My patience is lessening with every step you take. Do you want to discover which is the fatal one?'

Another three paces. 'He is delaying,' Vanye muttered, scanning the hills with constant attention. 'There is something else out there, and he is waiting for the dark.'

'My lady,' Gault called out. 'You and I might have more to speak of than you think likely. And perhaps more in common than you think.' Gault's voice grew gentler, and he curbed his horse's straying. 'I take it that it is you I deal with and not this gentleman by you.'

'It is myself,' she said. 'Have no doubt of that.'

'What is he?'

'This is delay,' Vanye said. 'Liyo, seek no more of him. Let us be out of here.'

'My companion,' Morgaine answered Gault. 'So—you do not know everything about me.'

'Should I?' Again the horse surged forward and Gault reined it back. 'You are no visitor out of Mante. Your name is Morgaine. So the humans say. Mine is Qhiverin—among others.'

'Liyo. Break away—now! Do not listen to this serpent.'

'You are a stranger here,' Gault said. 'A wayfarer of the gates. You see I am not deceived. You have threatened Mante. Now you will kill me and all my men, lest I reach Tejhos. You think that you have no choice. But here am I, come to parley with you when I might have stayed safe in Morund—or turned prudently south to Morund-gate, once I learned what you are. I did not. I have risked my life and my lord's favor to find you. Is this the action of an implacable enemy?'

'Do not believe him,' Bron said. 'My lady, do not listen!'

Gault held up one hand, took his sword from its hangings and dropped it ringing to the ground. 'There. Does that relieve your suspicions?'

'Withdraw your men,' Morgaine said.

Gault hesitated, seeming uncertain, then lifted his hand to the darkened sky.

A black and moving hedge crested the hill eastward.

'Riders on our left!' Vanye cried, and ripped Changeling from its sheath.

The air went numb and Arrhan shied under him as that the blade came free, an opal blaze till its tip cleared the sheath and whirled free.