There was silence.
'Then go, curse you, go, ride out into the dark and take your chances! Or do what I tell you. Take him!'
The servants hesitated. Of a sudden one of them bolted and ran, and another fled, and the rest after them, afoot, toward the road. One of the qhal gave pursuit.
And fell.
Chei sprang and Vanye rolled and resisted him as best he could, tried to get his legs to bear for a kick, but Chei caught him in his arms and held him fast against him, one arm nigh choking him while shouts and alarm rang about him.
Alive, Vanye thought; and:
As one and another of the qhal fell and such as were left huddled close within that shelter.
They were six, Vanye saw when the night grew quiet again and consciousness came back to him, as he lay still in Chei's tight grip. Mostly there were bodies strewn out across the open; and one of the qhal by them called a name and crept out to reach a friend, against his lord's advice.
'Get out of here,' Vanye said to that man, for a man who would take that risk seemed better to him than the rest of them. 'Get on your horse and ride out of here. She will not stop you.'
But it was that man who came back and seized him out of Chei's hands and battered and half-choked him before the others pulled him off.
He lay silent after that, dazed and relieved of some of the pain, so close he was to unconsciousness. But the qhal stirred forth, and saddled their horses in the dark, and led them close by the rock where they sheltered, horses enough for them and a relief mount for each, but Arrhan was not among them.
Then they hauled him up and put him ahorse, and they rode breakneck up the narrow way they had gotten into this place.
When day came, there were only the six of them, and himself, and they pushed the horses, changing from one to the other
But another of them died, at one such change. It was the man, Vanye thought, who had beaten him. He regarded the man in a kind of numbness when he sprawled almost under his horse's hooves, with a black spot on his forehead and a dazed expression on his face. He was not glad of it, except he lifted his eyes toward the low hills and felt as if his liege, unseen, were looking at him this moment.
'It is that cursed stone,' one of the qhal said, as others had muttered. 'She can
'Wrap that cursed thing,' Chei said then, and one of them drew him close and dragged him down off the horse while others got down and lengthened the cord on the stone, and tucked it under his armor at his neck, against his bare skin.
The gate-sense was worse then.
It was worse yet when they had crested a long rise and suddenly found the land dropping away below them across a wide rolling plain; and the crags which had long hung rootless in morning light, faced them across this gulf.
Then the world reeled about him in a mad confusion of blue sky and golden distances and the crags of yellow rock about them. The horse moved again, and his vision cleared, but there still seemed a distance between him and the world—less of pain, but greater unease, gate-sense that crawled up and down his nerves and prickled the hair on his body.
There, he thought, lifting his face toward the high crags. Mante-gate is up there—-
Without question, as he knew the whereabouts of other powers, close by it, like small pools beside an ocean, and that ocean raging with storms and like to swallow up the lives that came near it.
It wanted this stone that he wore, wanted the bearer, wanted all creation, and that was not enough to fill it.
O my God, he thought, my God, if they bring me nearer this thing, if they bring me too close—
He rode, he did not know how. He heard their voices sharp in argument. 'You can feel that thing,' one said, and he knew what thing they meant: it was all about them, it was in their nerves; it made the horses skittish and fractious.
But it was nothing to them who did not hold it against their bare skin.
No more died—for whatever reason, there were no more ambushes, as they shifted horses and kept a pace that even gray Siptah could not match unaided, in this place where the qhalur road broke down into eroded stone traces, and the riders found a course not straight, but recklessly direct, down toward the valley.
She is left behind, he thought. These crags and this rough land has forced her back to the road and she has fallen behind. They have won, in my case. Somewhere I could have done better than this. Somehow I could have done something better.
It was the first thought he had allowed himself, of might-have and could-have, and of how he had fallen to them and the things they had done, and might do. Well enough, he thought, fool, twice fool—and reviewed every move he had made on that hillside, every sign he might have missed, every chance he had had, until the pain was all that took his mind from his inward misery.
Then: fool, he thought. She has taken the odds down.
It would cost, he thought. Time would cost very dear. And chances were hard come by.
The qhal shared rations at midday. 'We had best feed him,' one said, 'or he will faint.' And when Chei consented, one came and fed him a strip of jerky and gave him a drink as they rode, the water splashing down his chin and front and onto the saddle, to dry again in the sun. After that his stomach was queasy, and cramped, and the pounding gait put the taste of blood in his mouth. He wished that he might fall off and simply break his neck and be done, except he was Kurshin, and his body kept the rhythm it had known from childhood, no matter how much he swayed; and the same fool who had fallen into their trap, still thought that there was a hope of delaying them, if he could find the means.
Then he put the matter together and at their next stop, when they were changing horses, as he was about to mount, brought his knee up in his horse's flank and flung himself out of the way as it went hopping and pitching and throwing the horse it was tied to into a wildly swinging panic.
The men grabbed after those and he went for the three a single man was holding, startling those with a wild yell and a shove of his shoulder before someone overhauled him from behind.
He fell, with a man atop him and one of their horses having slipped its bridle and racing off wildly across the road, one of the riders having to free his horse of his relief mount to run it down.
It was a little victory, a little one. The man who had overhauled him dragged him over onto his back and stared at him as though murder was too mild a vengeance.
Vanye brought his knee up with all the strength in him.
Two more of them pinned him to the ground and one of them paid him in kind. After that he lost sense of where he was for the moment, until he felt the weight go off him and heard a shout, and came to with Chei's blade at his throat and a dead man at his side.
And the sound of a rider coming, at full gallop.
Chapter Fourteen
The gray horse became clear, and its rider, and Vanye took in his breath, held as he was against Chei's knee, Chei's sword across his throat. And one of the two qhal with him had taken up his bow, and nocked an arrow.
Vanye swung his leg around in an attempt to strike the bowman. He could not. The blade stung along his neck, taking up what room he had for breathing. 'Look out!' he yelled. But Morgaine was drawing to a halt well down the road. She slid down, and started walking, through the tall grass.
The bowman drew back, aiming a high arc for a distance shot.
'You are in her range,' Vanye said quietly, and the bowman eased off the draw.
'Fire!' Chei said.
