Exiles Gate

He moved finally, carefully, and looked at Morgaine. 'There will be others,' he whispered. 'They may search back again along the watercourses.'

'Only let us hope they confuse our tracks and their own.' She threw Siptah's reins over his neck and rose into the saddle. 'Or better yet—Chei's.'

He set his own foot into Arrhan's stirrup and heaved upward with an effort that cost pain everywhere.

If they had dared a fire, if they could have sweated the aches out with boiled cloths and herbs, if he could have lain in the sun and baked himself to warmth inside and out, instead of lying cold and rising cold and riding again—but they were too close now, to the gate, and the enemy too aware of their danger.

Turn back, he thought of pleading. Go back into the plains and the hills and let us recover our strength.

But they had come so far. And they had no friends in this land and no refuge, and he did not know whether his instincts were right any longer. He yearned, he yearned with a desperate hope for the gate and a way into some other place than this, another beginning, when this one had gone desperately amiss.

They did not try to make speed by dark, with the ground stony and uneven as it was. They rode down one long sweep of hill, passed between others, and over a brushy shoulder. They kept a pace safe for the horses and quiet as they could manage, under a sky too open for safety.

And once, that Siptah pricked up his ears and Arrhan looked the same direction, off to their left flank, his heart went cold in him. He imagined a whole hostile army somewhere about them—or some single archer, who might be as deadly. 'Likely some animal,' Morgaine said finally.

And further on, where they stopped to breathe within a stand of scrub: 'Time, I think, we gave the horses relief,' he said. 'But I do not want to stop here.'

'Aye,' Morgaine said, and slid down, to tie Siptah's tether to his halter; and to calm the stallion, who took exception to the geldings, flattening his ears and pricking them up again, and swinging between them and Arrhan as Vanye dismounted.

'Hold,' Morgaine hissed at the gray, and caught his tether-rope, which usually would stop him; but his head came up and his nostrils flared toward the wind, ears erect.

'Stay,' Vanye said quietly, calmly as he could. 'There is something there.'

The horses were vulnerable. There was no guarantee of cover for them beyond this point. There was no guarantee they were not riding into worse. Siptah threw his head and protested softly, dancing sideways.

'Dawn could see us pinned here,' she said. 'That is no help.'

'Then they have to come to us. Liyo, this once—'

'I thought thee had no more advice.'

He drew in a sharp breath. Pain stabbed through bruised ribs. 'Liyo, —'

Brush cracked, somewhere up on the slope.

'I agree with you,' he said. 'Let us be out of this.'

'Go!' she hissed, and it was Siptah she chose to carry her, war-trained and sure, for all the gray was through his first wind.

He took Arrhan on the same reasoning, the horse he knew, the one that answered to heel and knee. He had both the relief mounts in his charge, that jolted the lead against the saddle as they took the next climb over ground studded with rocks, Siptah's tail a-flash before them in the starlight, eclipsed now and again by black brush and trees, the necessary sound of hoof-falls and harness and the raking of brush sounding frighteningly loud in the night.

Down the throat of the folded hills, along the track of a minuscule stream, they kept a steady pace, until Morgaine drew in and he stopped, and panting horses bunched together, their breathing and the shift of their feet and creak of harness obscuring what small like sounds might be behind them.

'I do not hear them,' he said finally.

'Nor I,' Morgaine whispered, and turned Siptah uphill again, a hard climb and a long one with the two led horses tugging at Arrhan's harness.

But when they had come high up on that hill, dawn was seaming the east with a faint glow, and the stars were fading to that black before daylight.

And when they had changed off mounts and ridden the down-slope on the two bays, Arrhan and Siptah led behind and too weary to object, the red edge of the sun was rising, offering a dim light, showing the distant crags of Mante's highland upthrust like a snaggled jaw against the sky beyond the hills.

The gelding missed a step and caught himself, and Vanye shifted weight; for a moment the whole of the east seemed to blur and reel, and he caught the saddlehorn, taking in breath in a reflex that hurt. He had bitten through a wound inside his cheek. He did it again, and it was one more misery atop the others.

But Morgaine had drawn up short, and she reached across to him as he caught himself, her horse crowding his amid the scrub and the rocks. 'Vanye?'

'I am all right.' His pulse raced with a sullen, difficult beat. The sky still spun and he felt a cold fear that he might fail her in the worst way, weighing on her, forcing her to decisions she would not make and tactics she would not use.

But not yet, he thought. Not yet. If threats and blows of his enemies could keep him in the saddle, his own determination could do as much, until the give and flex had worked the stiffness out of him and food and water had taken the dizziness from his skull.

'Beyond this,' she said, 'no knowing how long the ride. Vanye—we can find a place—That is what we must do.'

He shook his head, turned the gelding's head for the downslope, and set it moving, too much in misery for courtesy.

An object hissed out of thin air and hit his shoulder like a sling-stone, spun him half-about in the saddle by force and shock: in the next heartbeat the arrow-hiss reached his mind and he knew that he had been hit and that arrows were still flying. His horse plunged in panic and shied back, and he fought it, finding life in the numbed arm, his only thought to get back to cover before Morgaine left it for his sake and tried to cover him. The horse stumbled on the brush, recovered itself, crowding Siptah and Arrhan and snagging the lead-rope as it came up against the others, but it was in cover, behind the rocks. He slid down, stumbled as the horse had on the encumbering brush, and brought up on the downhill slant against a boulder, trying to take his breath as Morgaine slid down and fetched up against the same, firing as she went, as the hillside erupted with ambush, a din of shouts.

'Is thee hurt?' Morgaine asked him. 'Vanye, is thee hurt?'

The force of the blow had made any feeling uncertain, but the arm worked, and he pushed himself off the rock and struggled back after Arrhan and Siptah, who had wound the tether-ropes into a confusion of frightened geldings and war-trained stallion, in the midst of which was his bow. Arrows landed about him. One, spent, hit Arrhan and shied her off from him, and behind him was Morgaine's voice cursing him and bidding him take cover.

He seized the bow and ripped it loose from its ties on Arrhan's saddle, the same with his quiver; and scrambled for higher vantage, up atop a tumbled several boulders that hemmed the horses in.

The climb took his breath. He gained his knees, blind to anything but the necessity and deaf to anything but the cries of the enemy. He set the bow against the rock and his knee as he knelt, and strung it with an effort that brought sweat to his face.

Then he nocked an arrow and chose his target among those who swarmed up the hill, as if the very rocks and brush had come alive in the murky light.

He counted his shots, knowing the value of his position. He fired, calmly, carefully, with the advantage of height and the surety he was a target if he could not take their bowmen before they came to vantage on him or Morgaine, and they were trying: he picked one off, and selected another shaft, shaking the hair from his eyes and feeling the sweat running on cold skin. He wondered had the arrow pierced his armor after all before it fell away.

It had hit enough to cause deep pain, the sort that caused a sweat and the weakness in his limbs and the giddiness that sent the landscape reeling.

But he could still draw. He bent the bow and drew breath and sighted all in one deliberate and enveloping focus, time after time taking targets Morgaine's straight-line fire and lower vantage could not reach, taking the archers foremost, who strove to position themselves and reach him.