Exiles Gate

'Tomorrow,' he said anxiously, 'we will camp here, and I will go a little down the way and bring back forage for the horses—I do not think we ought to stir out of here for a few days. Listen to me!' he said, as she began to answer him. 'Whatever you ask, I will do, you know that. But hear me out. Time will serve us. If it takes us months—we will live to get to Mante.'

'No,' she said. 'No. We have no months. We have no days. Does thee understand me? This Skarrin—this lord in Mante—' She fell silent again, leaning her chin on her arm, resting on her knee, and there was a line between her brows, in the fading of the light. 'There are qhal and there are qhal, and Skarrin's is an old name, Vanye, a very old name.'

'Do you know him?'

'If he is what I think he is—I know what he is; and I tell thee there is no risk we have ever run—' Her fist clenched. 'Only believe what I tell thee: we have no time with this man.'

'What is he?'

'Something I hoped did not exist. Perhaps I am wrong.' She sighed and worked the fingers of that hand. 'Talk of something else.'

'Of what?'

'Of anything.'

He drew a breath. He cast back. It was Morija came to mind. It always did. But darker things overshadowed it—a keep surrounded with flood. A forest, haunted with things which did not love human or qhal. Of his cousin. But that was a memory too fraught with dark things too.

'At least we are warmer,' he said, desperate recourse to the weather.

'And dry,' she said.

'Good grazing here. A few days,' he said. 'Liyo, —we can rest a few days. The horses will not take more of this.'

'Vanye—'

'Forgive me.'

'No, thee is right, but we have no choice. Vanye—I had no choice.'

It was not their moving on that she meant. Her voice trembled.

'I know that,' he said, no steadier.

She looked at him and reached out to his arm, a light touch which jolted him like hot iron, drew him out of despair and absorbed his attention so thoroughly a score of enemies could have ridden down on them and come second in his mind.

No, he had wit to think, but not much beyond that. Her arms clenched about him. Her mouth met his. There was precious little more to do, surrounded by enemies, under arms, with no rest to be had and no leisure to spend unwary.

There will never be a time, he thought, in a chill of panic, and held her the tighter, as she held him, in an armored grip become harsh and desperate, with nothing of gentleness about it. Everyone else has failed her. Too much she has lost, too many dead —For that reason she armed me more than herself, gave me her chiefest weapon; and what did it win us but calamity to our friends, and rage at each other?

They slept finally, turn and turn about, on the sloping, stony ground where the brush afforded them cover. He watched her as she slept. He wished—but there was no hope.

Only they managed to heal what was torn, there was that much.

Morgaine waked him toward dawn, a shadow between him and the day. He heard her voice telling him there was breakfast and he murmured an answer, rolled over and favored an aching arm, holding it across him.

'We should move,' she said, 'a little ways this morning.'

'Oh, Heaven,' he moaned, and bowed his head between his knees, arms over his neck.

She did not stay to argue. She went back to sit on her saddle, where she had laid out a cold breakfast on the leather wrappings they used for foodstuffs, knowing matters would go her way.

He followed, and sat down on the grass, and ate in silence no different than other silences.

And did not give way to temper, or venture in headlong.

'Liyo,' he said when he was toward finishing: 'Listen to me. This enemy of yours —whoever he is. You think he will run. But a man will not run, who thinks himself winning. No one can be that cautious.'

She said nothing. It was not a frown on her face, only thought.

'Let them lose us,' he said. 'Let this Skarrin marshal some defense against us. Let him think he has turned us. A man in power—he will not want to give up what he has. He will go nowhere at all. In the meanwhile we will learn this land, we will go slowly—we will gather strength, rest, find a way to him—am I not right?'

Her lips made a taut line. There was warfare in her eyes, unbelief and consideration. 'Possibly. Possibly. But being wrong, Vanye—'

'What will a man do who is cornered? He is far more apt to use the gate at Mante and escape us.'

He argued for their lives, for sanity and safety.

And she gathered that thing into her lap in silence, the sword, that weapon which was constantly beside her, day and night, and which gave them no peace.

'Liyo, you drive this man and you force this man, and what will he do? You will unseat him: his own vassals will question his power; or you will make him desperate—you always strike too hard, liyo, —listen to me: you know no moderation with your enemies. You give them no choices and while they have no warning, that serves you well—but you have no subtlety in the field. You are the kind of lord who loses lives—forgive me.' His heart beat hard and he gazed up into her eyes in a dread of the things he had to say with brutal force, that the numbness of recent sleep let him say without stumbling, and the quiet of the dawn let her hear without preventing him. 'If it were an army with us I should never question you: if you told me to go against any odds, then, I would do that, and trust there was good cause. But you have no army. You have one man. And he is bound, liyo, to cover your back and your side, as long as he can; and he will do that. But he is one man, all the same, and someday, if you keep on as you are, you will lose him, because he will die before he lets you go down first.'

The frown had deepened on her face. There was storm in her eyes. 'I can guard my own back. I need no fools to kill themselves, plague take you, I have had enough of fools to fling themselves in my way—'

'It is your back I am talking about.'

Her breath came hard. His own did. 'And I am talking about fools,' she said. 'Bron's sort. Chei's sort. Arunden, for another.' Her enemies saw that look. It had been a long time since she had turned it on him. 'Ten thousand men at Irien, who would not hold where I told them to hold, no, they must get to the fore of me, because I am there and their damnable pride makes them do what no lord could order them to do in cold blood, if it means charging a wide open gate—'

'That is what you are doing now. That is what I am objecting to, liyo. Do you not see it?'

There was shock in her eyes, and outrage, a shake of her head. 'Thee is—'

'I am telling you that you are wrong. I do not do that often. And you do not want to hear me because you suppose I do not want the same thing that you want. But that is how much I love you: I do not know enough to understand all the why of the things you do, but I stake my soul that you are right; I have sworn to go on with or without you, liyo, and if that is true, then listen to me, will you listen, if you do not think me an utter fool?'

'I am listening,' she said in a different and milder voice.

'Be the wind. Do not make our enemy afraid. If he hears reports what happened south of here, he will use his power. He has men to send. He has ten thousand things to try before he is out of resources. He will not run at the first whisper of war. He will attack. And we will be the wind again and go find him in his lair.'

'So easily. Did thee ever take Myya?'

Heaven! she has a sharp edge when the swords are out.

'No,' he said reasonably, quietly. It is tactic. Lord in Heaven, she knows only the attack, never defense, even with me. 'But then, I was one man. They did not take me. And if I had aimed at the Myya-lord's life, I would have