Exiles Gate

But his supply of arrows dwindled.

Chapter Fifteen

The enemy found cover on the rock-studded, scrub-thicketed hill, and targets were fewer. Vanye wiped sweat with the back of his arm, and laid out his last four arrows, with care for their fletchings.

Morgaine left her vantage and climbed to another, a black-clad, white-haired figure in the gathering dawn, whose safety he watched over with an arrow nocked and ready for any move on the slope.

One tried. He quickly lifted the bow and fired, dissuading the archer, but the wind carried the shaft amiss.

Three arrows remaining.

Morgaine reached her perch and sent a few shots to places that provoked shifts in the enemy's positions, and afforded him a target he did not miss.

'We are too close here,' Morgaine shouted across at him—meaning what he already understood, that Changeling was hazardous in the extreme in this confinement of loose boulders and brush, with the horses herded together in that narrow slot among the rocks and close to panic. 'I am going for the horses! Stay where you are and give me cover!'

He drew in his breath and picked up his next to last shaft, his heart trying to come up his throat. He did not like what she proposed, riding out alone, with Changeling under Mante's warped touch.

He did not like, either, their chances if the enemy came up on them, and if they waited too late to gain room for the sword; and of the two of them, Morgaine knew the weapon. There was nothing to do but hold fast and spend his two remaining arrows to afford her the room she needed.

She edged outward on the rock and onto the slope that would lead her down to the horses.

And an arrow whisked past his position and shattered on the rock a hair's-breadth from her.

He whirled and sought a target among the crags over their heads, desperate. Morgaine's fire glowed red on stone as she fired past him and up at the cliffs.

'Get down!' she cried at him. 'Get down!'

'Get to the horses!' he yelled. 'Go!'

As an arrow hit the rock by his foot.

An arrow flew from another quarter, crosswise streak of black on pale rock, high up the ledges.

Not at them. At the hidden archer. An outcry said that it had hit. Other arrows followed, arcing downslope this time, into enemy positions, starting enemies from cover, as Morgaine turned on her slab of rock and fired again and again at targets suddenly visible.

A dark spot moved in the edge of Vanye's vision: he whirled and fired at a man coming up the throat of their little shelter, near the horses.

That man sprawled backward, his armor of no avail against an arrhendur bow at that range; and screamed as he slid down the slope, while Vanye nocked his last arrow with a deliberate effort at steadiness, as shafts sped unexplained over their heads, as the enemy broke and fled, offering their backs to the arrows and the red glow that flashed on a man and doomed him.

There were, perhaps, two or three who made it off that field. When quiet came the very air seemed numb. He still had the one arrow left. He refused to spend it on a retreating enemy. He slid off his rock and lost his footing in the landing, gathered himself up with his bow in one hand and the last arrow still nocked, and struggled through the brush to the tumbled mass Morgaine was descending.

'My lady Morgaine!' a shout came down from the heights.

He crossed the last distance with a desperate effort, to steady Morgaine as she jumped the last distance and to thrust her back where there was at least scant cover.

'No gratitude?' The mocking voice drifted down from that place of vantage. 'No word of thanks?'

'Chei,' Vanye muttered between his teeth, and pressed his body against Morgaine as some large object hurtled off the heights to land close by them, with a sickening impact of bone and flesh.

A helmet rolled and clanged down the rocks. Arrows scattered and rattled; and a qhalur body lay broken on the stone.

He bent the bow, aimed upward, hoping for a target.

'There is my gift,' Chei called down to them, never showing himself. 'One of Skarrin's pets, none of mine. An appeasement. Do I hear yet thanks?'

'He is mad,' Vanye breathed.

'I could kill you both from here,' Chei said. 'I could have let Skarrin's men kill you. But I do not. I had rather come down to talk. Which shall I?'

'Mad,' Vanye said. His arm was shaking as he had it braced. His breath was short. He looked at Morgaine. 'There were three of them. I have the one arrow left. I can gather more out there. Cover me.'

'Stay!' Morgaine said. 'Do not try it.'

He lowered the bow and eased the string.

'My lady,' Chei's voice drifted down to them. And an arrow struck and shattered in front of them. 'Is that earnest enough of good faith? Talk is what I want. On your terms.'

'I cannot see the wretch,' Morgaine hissed softly, looking upward with the black weapon in hand. 'Curse him, he can loft his shots, and I cannot—'

'Let me—'

'We still have another choice.'

'Loose rock,' Vanye muttered, looking at the set of the boulders Changeling might dislodge. 'The horses—'

'My lady—' Chei's voice came down. 'They have sent a gate-jewel into the field, more than one—Do you want to talk about this?'

'I am listening,' Morgaine answered him.

'The while we were on the road the jewel he wore was constantly sending. It could not but draw them. I do not deny—I fought you. But there is no more fighting. If you win, you will destroy the gate at Mante, you will destroy everything, and we die.

If Skarrin wins, we die—as rebels. We have few choices left. You want Mante. I want something else. It is alliance I am proposing.'

'Alliance,' Vanye muttered under his breath.

'Narrow quarters,' Morgaine said quietly. 'And an unstable gate. And no knowing where our enemies out there have gotten to.'

'It is a lie—'

She rested her hand on his shoulder, and looked up at the cliffs. 'Come down!' she called to Chei.

'Under truce?' Chei asked.

'As good as your own,' Morgaine shouted back. 'Do you trust it?'

A pebble dropped and bounded from somewhere above.

'For God's sake, do not trust him.'

'I do not. I want him in sight. Remember I have no scruples.'

He drew a larger breath. His hands were shaking. From off the rock where the qhal had fallen, blood ran, and dripped.

And from up among the rocks, on the trail they had ridden, the sound of movement.

'There were three,' Vanye said again as a rider came down, out of their view behind the hill, hoof-falls echoing among the rocks.

'We do not know how many there are now,' Morgaine said. 'We have a dead man for proof. Perhaps they would kill their own. Who knows?'

He drew a long, slow breath, resting back against the rock that was no shelter.

'On the other hand,' Morgaine said, 'Chei has already killed men of Skarrin's. Did you not say? How did that