Exiles Gate

The bowman drew again, with careful aim. And a second time eased off.

'Fire, curse you!'

'The wind is gusting.' A third time the bowman lifted the bow and drew. His arm trembled with the strain as he sought an arc and a lull in the wind.

'Wind does not trouble her,' Vanye said.

'Wait your target,' Chei said then, and the bowman eased off a third time, trembling. Chei relaxed his grip on Vanye's hair, then shifted his hand to his shoulder and pressed gently. 'Stay still, man, stay still.'

It was worse than the other. His leg began to shake, at its unnatural angle. He moved it. And Morgaine walked closer still, the bowman's necessary arc continually diminishing.

She reached half-range. The bowman lifted his bow, made a swift draw.

'Haaaaiiii!' Vanye yelled, and Chei jerked his head back. The shaft flew.

Morgaine dropped, and sprang up again, covering ground at a run.

The blade stung, and a slow trickle ran down Vanye's neck. 'Iwill kill him,' Chei yelled.

Morgaine stopped. The bowman stopped, a second arrow nocked and drawn.

'Ride off!' Chei shouted at her. 'You leave me nothing to lose, woman!'

'I will bargain with you!' Morgaine's voice came faintly on the wind at full shout.

'I will bargain with you, woman. Throw down the sword and I will give you both your lives. Or I will cut his throat here and now.'

She walked closer, and a second shaft flew, amiss on a gust of wind.

'Curse you,' Chei said to the bowman. 'Fire!'

The bowman brought up another arrow. But Morgaine had stopped. She lifted her hand, aimed dead at them. 'An easy shot for me. Let him free and you are free to ride south. My word on it! Any one of you that wants to live, walk clear.'

The bowman lowered his bow; and: 'My lord,' the qhal on Chei's other side said, and reached, and pressed the blade back from Vanye's throat with his bare hand. 'My lord. We are the last. She will kill us. Let him go. We have lost.'

There was long silence. Chei's grip faltered on his shoulder and tightened again.

'Let him free!' Morgaine said.

'For a price,' Chei said.

'Name it!'

'I will name it later,' Chei said. 'Do you want him on those terms?'

'Let him go!' Morgaine said. 'And I will give you your lives and your gear—or flay the skin off you if you harm him! Let him go!'

Chei's hand loosed. The sword withdrew and Chei shoved him carefully aside and stood up, a clear target 'Free him,' Chei said 'Let him go.'

The second man took a knife and cut Vanye's hands free, and with a hand under his arm, helped him to his feet. He was not one of those who had been forward to do him harm—a tall, silver-haired qhal, expressionless even now in this shift of fortunes. His hand was firm and steady, and gently tested his balance before he let him free.

Vanye walked, the whole of the sky seeming for a moment gone to metal and his hands, lifeless and swinging beside him, seeming to belong, like his feet, to some other man. He staggered on a hole in the ground, recovered himself short of a fall, and kept walking, the gusts of wind touching the sweat on his face and stinging in the cuts on his throat.

But the sky went stranger still, peculiarly translucent, and he was on one knee without knowing how he had gotten there, Morgaine rushing up to kneel and seize him by the shoulder.

'I am all right,' he said. There was a look of dismay on her face; and rage; and she whirled on one knee and aimed her weapon at their enemies.

'No,' he said on a breath, and caught her arm.

She did not fire. He did not know why he had said it, only that it was one more mistake like the rest he had made. He felt the shorn hair blowing about his face and into his eyes, the most visible of the dishonors they had put on him, and her; and that expression of horror was still in her eyes. 'I am sorry,' he said to her, when he could say anything.

'Curse them for this!'

'It was their doing, not mine.' He knelt there shifting glances between her and their unmoving enemy, for she had stopped paying them attention. He did not offer the head-to-ground obeisance that might have made some amends for his shame with a Kurshin liege, did not ask for duel with the man who had done this, did not do any of the things that would have driven her to fury with him. 'Liyo, I am tired, is all.'

'I have Arrhan with me. Yonder, beyond the hill.' She made a motion of her head. 'And all your gear. With her and Siptah to trade about, there was no way they could outrun me.' She found the cord that bound the stone about his neck and pulled it from beneath his armor, which itself was great relief. She laid down the black weapon a moment to take her Honor-blade and cut it free. 'Where is the case for this thing?'

'Chei has it.'

'That is one thing I will get from him.—Is it Gault?'

'Yes.' In the tail of his eye, he saw Chei walk toward them. 'In Heaven's name, liyo, watch them—'

Her gray eyes flicked past his with a killing fury—for them, not for him. He knew then the measure of it, in her red-rimmed and shadowed gaze—the pace she had to have kept, to set ambush after ambush, the strain, constantly to be sure of her targets.

She gathered up her weapon. She rose to her feet, and Vanye levered himself up to stand by her.

'The matter of a price,' Chei called out.

'There is no price,' Morgaine shouted back, 'but your lives, my lord, and that is for old grudges, not new ones! You have the casing for the stone. Let it fall. And get out of my sight!'

'The price, my lady!'

Her hand lifted, the weapon aimed. 'You go too far with me.'

'My enemies—and passage through the gate, for me and mine.' Chei strode forward and stopped, hands held wide and empty. 'There is no way back for us.'

'No way back from hell, my lord, and you are treading on the brink. Vanye wants your life, I have no least notion why—you can thank him on your knees, before you ride out of here. Now! Drop the case, man!'

Chei's hand moved to his neck. A silver chain glittered in the sun as he lifted it over his head and dropped it.

'On your knees, my lord, and thank him, else I will shoot the legs out from under you.'

Chei went down.

'Thank him.'

'Liyo,' Vanye protested.

'Thank him!'

'I give you my thanks, Nhi Vanye.'

Morgaine dropped her hand, and stood staring as Chei got up and went to the roan horse and his remount; and the others, the qhal and the bowman who wore human shape, claimed their own.

'There was one more man—' Vanye recalled with a sudden chill.

'The one who chased the horses?' Morgaine asked. 'That one I accounted for.' She half-turned and whistled for Siptah. The gray horse threw his head and shook himself and tended in their direction, reins trailing, as they walked toward the place Chei had dropped the casing.

Chei and his men rode off, southward, with no delaying. Vanye knelt, fighting dizziness, and picked up the gray box that Chei had dropped in the trampled grass. Morgaine gave him the stone and its cord and he made a ball of it and put it inside. Its raw power left the air like the feeling after storm, and his hands were shaking as he hung it again about his neck on its proper chain, safe and still.