But long efforts bore fruit, if they had long enough.
And having thought that three times through, he could not rest where he was and he could not risk anything further. He edged down off the height and gathered up Arrhan where he had left her in a brushy hollow; and led her by the dry streambed which had been his route up to this hill.
It merged with yet another narrow water-cut, and took him back into sparsely wooded hills.
Then he mounted up and rode, quietly, back the way he had come, far and far through the hills to the place where the dry bed joined the water.
Beyond that he rode the stream itself for a space, the water only scarcely over Arrhan's hooves, but it served.
It served, certainly, better than the streamside had served another rider.
He saw the mark among bent reeds, the water-filled impression of a horse's hoof, and searched his mind whether Arrhan had misstepped when he had passed this bank in the morning.
No, he thought, with the blood going colder and colder in him. No. She had not. Not here. They had gone straight along as they went now, making no track at all. He remembered the reeds. He remembered the little shelf of rock where it came down from the hill.
He saw the track merge with the stream further on, a single rider.
Morgaine would not have broken her word to him without reason. He believed that implicitly. She would not have followed, except something had gone very wrong.
There were further marks, down the stream where the water became momentarily and treacherously deeper and a rider had to take to the waterside. He had done so. So had this rider; and one mark showed a shod horse, a shoe of a pattern different than Siptah's and headed the wrong direction.
There was cold dread in him now. He scanned the hills about him.
If he had been in Myya lands again, his Myya cousins looking to have his head on a pike, he would do what he had told Morgaine he would do: he would go to earth and lie close until the hunters had passed and failed to find him for a fortnight or more.
But then he had not had a woman waiting for him, in the direction the rider was going, camped right on the stream-course as if it were some roadside, now the hunters were out. She would not be sitting blind: she would have vantage from higher on the hill—he took that for granted. But there was the horse to worry for—more visible, and tracking the ground despite all they could do to keep cover. If someone rode through, looking with a skilled eye—never grant that every man in Gault's party was a fool, even granted one of them had been careless enough to let his horse misstep in this thread of a stream.
He put Arrhan to more speed. He scanned the hills about him, dreading the sight of riders, finding only, in one place between the hills, a fan of tracks in the grass, as riders had come together and joined forces.
Thereafter tracks met the stream and the bank was well-trampled, the mud churned by the hooves of more than a score of horses.
He followed, trying desperately to recollect every stone and every vantage of the camp they had. It was well enough, he thought: their numbers were only an advantage—they could not go silently, Heaven knew that they were no woodsmen, the way they bunched together; and Morgaine with the least of her weapons could take them, once she had taken some position of defense: the greatest worry she must have was whether her companion was going to come riding in to put himself in danger.
Only—he thought of the pyx he wore against his heart and thought of gate-weapons with a lingering chill—it might not be Gault's folk. It might be something else, out of Mante.
Even if it were not, she would hesitate to use the sword that was her chiefest weapon, for fear of alerting other forces Mante might have sent out southward to find them—
Or through the gate at Tejhos, coming at them from both sides.
Heaven knew what their limit was.
And if one of them had so much as what he carried, it could reshape
The gift was for way-finding, was for light in dark places, for startling an ignorant enemy but not as a weapon—never as that, for someone who rode as shieldman to Morgaine Anjhuran.
He dared not use it now, in any hope of warning her. He had given his sword to Chei and not reclaimed it— not, in all else they had done, turned him out utterly defenseless.
He had no weapon now but his bow.
And Heaven knew how far he was behind.
He listened as he rode the center of the stream, close to their camp. He stopped Arrhan where there was brush enough to hide her, and slid down, and stood for a moment steadying her so that he could hear the least stirring of the wind.
A bird sang, natural, long-running song, but it was not a sound that reassured him. There were the tracks, evident now at this muddy bank, and hours old.
Now it was a hard choice what to do. There was no safe place further than this. He took one risk, and made a faint, careful birdcall: I am here, that said, no more than that.
No answer came to him.
He bit his lip furiously, and put a secure tie on Arrhan, took his bow and quiver and slipped away into the brush, onto the hillside. He was not afraid, not yet. There were too many answers. There was every chance she had heard him and dared not risk an answer.
He went hunter-fashion, stopping often to listen. He found the tracks again where he picked up the stream course; and when he had come within sight of the place where they had camped, beneath the hill, Siptah was gone, and with one glance he was reassured.
Good, he thought, she has taken him, the tack is gone.
But there were marks of the enemy's horses, abundant there, trampling on Siptah's and Arrhan's marks, and no matter the skill of the rider, there was no way not to leave some manner of a trail for a good tracker well sure where that trail began.
She would lead them, that was what she would do. She would lead them around this hill and that until they came straight into one of her ambushes.
But so many riders had gone
Best, he thought, find out what was still here.
He moved, crouched behind what cover there was, along the flank of the hill, among the rocks, stopping now and again to listen. There was nothing astir but the wind.
Then a bird flew up, taking wing east of his backtrail.
He froze where he was, a long time, shifting only the minuscule degree that kept his legs from cramping.
A bird-call sounded, directly on his track.
He calmly, carefully scanned the hillsides and the points of concealment so far as he could from his own cover, not willing to give way to any feeling, not fear, not self-reproach for anything he might have done and not done: there was only the immediate necessity to get off this hillside and take the enemy, whatever had happened behind him, else he might never find her.
He waited what he judged long enough to make them impatient, then moved, quietly, behind what cover the brush and the rocks afforded, without retracing his steps into what might now be tracking him.
They meant him to go to his horse. They had found Arrhan, that was what had happened, and they were effectively advising him where the ambush was, and where he had to go, if he did not want to flee them afoot.
Where is she? was his constant thought. The whole area had become hostile ground, enemy marks everywhere, his horse discovered, and no sign of Morgaine.
