Exiles Gate

sword-belt, waiting for Morgaine to overtake him.

O God, he thought then, why did I say that? Why am I always a fool?

Morgaine overtook him. He murmured an explanation for the bowman's departure, and started up again, riding after the others, a crowded trail avoiding the lumps of bodies which lay like so much refuse on the hillside. He watched carefully such dead as they did pass close at hand, wary of traps. He watched the hills about them, for any flash of armor, any flight of birds or bit of color out of place.

Far across the field, Rhanin searched, dismounted, searched again. Eventually he came riding back, carrying three quivers of arrows. 'I would keep one,' Rhanin said, offering two as he rode alongside—no grudging look, only an earnest and an anxious one.

'Do that,' Vanye said; and the man gave him them, and turned off downslope, to overtake Chei and Hesiyyn.

He hung the two quivers from his saddlebow, and he stared at Rhanin's retreating back with misgivings. They had reached the bottom of the hill, and the last body, which lay face upward. Carrion birds had gathered. He did not look down at it as they rode their slow course past. That man was incontrovertibly dead. The hour was fraught enough with nightmares, and he had had enough of such sights in his life.

But, he thanked Heaven, there were no ambushes.

The hill beyond the next rise gave out onto the flat again, a broad valley; he blinked at the sweat in his eyes and rubbed at them to make the haze go away.

'Vanye?' Morgaine asked, as Siptah's heavy weight brushed his leg.

'Aye?' His head ached where the helm crossed his brow; the sun heated the metal, heated his shoulders beneath the armor and the pain in his ribs made his breath hard to draw.

'Is thee bearing up?'

'Well enough. Would there was more wind.'

Chei had drawn rein in front of them, and scanned the ground; and waited for them with the others.

'We should bear south a little,' Chei said. 'Around the shoulder—' Chei pointed. 'Off into the hills. One of them may well have us in sight. But the weapon you used up there—' He gave a small, humorless laugh. '—will have improved my reputation with Mante. At least for veracity. They will be very hesitant to come at us.'

'Why south?'

'Because—' Chei said sharply, and pointed out over the plain, below, and to their right, toward the hills. 'To reach that, necessitates crossing this, else, and if you have no liking for—'

'Courtesy, man,' Vanye muttered, and Chei drew another breath.

'My lady,' Chei said quietly, 'it is safer. If you will take my advice—lend me the stone a moment and I can send a message that may draw their forces off us.'

'Tell me the pattern,' Morgaine said.

Chei took up the reins on the roan, that flattened its ears toward Siptah. 'Two flashes. A simple report. I can send better than that. I can tell them the enemy has gone up into the hills. In numbers. And if you provoke them to answer you, my lady, and you cannot reply rapidly, they will know what you are. I can answer them.'

'Do not give it to him,' Vanye said, and made no move to hand over the stone.

'No,' Morgaine said. 'Not here and not now.'

'My lady—'

'Can it be—you have sent?'

'Aye. From Tejhos.'

'And the stone, man!'

'With that,' Chei said with a reluctant shrug. 'Yes. The first night.'

'And told them it would stay unshielded. Do not evade me. I am out of patience for guesswork. What have you done, what do you suspect, what is out there?'

'They will have known something went amiss from the time you sealed off the stone,' Chei said in a low voice. 'There is rumor Skarrin's gate can tell one stone from the other, given sure position. I do not know. I only know there are two more such stones out there. I saw them, clear as I could see Tejhos.'

'In the stone.'

'In the stone, my lady. There may be more than that by now. When yours stopped sending—It is myself they will be hunting, along with you. I am well known for treason.'

'Did you think they would forgive,' Vanye asked, 'the small matter of killing your lord's deputy?'

Chei's eyes lifted to his, hard and level. 'No. But, then, if I had won, I would have done what we are doing now. With your weapons. It is not Mante I want. It is the gate. . . . With your weapons. I told you my bargain. And, lady, you have convinced me: I will not follow a lord in the field who cannot beat me. I should be a fool, else. You won. So I take your orders.'

There was a moment's silence, only the stamp and blowing of the horses.

'Let us,' Morgaine said to Chei then, 'see where your ability leads us.'

And in the Kurshin tongue, when they struck a freer pace, tending toward the south, into rougher land.

'Do not be concerned for it. I will choose any camp we make, and he will not lay hands on the stone, to be telling them anything. —Thee is white, Vanye.'

'I am well enough,' he said again.

If he confessed otherwise, he thought, she might take alarm, might seek some place to rest, where they must not—must not go to hiding now, when Mante knew the vicinity to search, and might throw company after company into the field. Even Changeling had its limits—

—had them, more and more as they drew near the aching wound that was Mante

My fault, he kept thinking. All of this. O Heaven, what are we going to do?

And others, out of the muddle of heat and exhaustion, she has taken them because she knows I am near to falling; she needs help; she takes it where she can, against this stranger-lord in Mante— against this Skarrin—needs them in place of me—to guard her back—

O God, that I leave her to these bandits—

It is her own perverse way of managing them, putting them under my hand, forcing the bitter draught down their throats—lest they think they can leave me behind: it is her own stratagem, give them a captain like to spill from his horse, and let them vie for her favor, whereby she keeps Chei at bay, and in hope of succession, and he never dares strike at me, lest he lose what gratitude he might win of her later—If he has not betrayed us outright— if the ambush was not a trick, their own arrangement—

A man learned to think in circles, who companied with Morgaine kri Chya. A man learned craft, who had before thought a sword-edge the straightest way to a target.

She might manage Chei. Surely Rhanin. I should tell her to keep that man.

And: This weakness of mine may pass. It may well pass. She is winning time for me. Gaining ground.

And lastly: Why did she prevent me from Chei? Why strike my hand?

You care too much?

What did she mean by that?

Hills closed about them, brushy ravines and rock and scrub, steep heights on either side. He looked up and behind them, and never was there trace of any watcher.

Except in a fold between two hills, near a stand of scrub, where they came to a stream: there Hesiyyn drew up by the grassy margin and signaled Chei.

They were old tracks. It had surely been yesterday that some rider had paused to water his horse, and ridden along the hillside, in this place of tough, clumped grass which showed very little trace otherwise. The track there went out onto that ground on their own side, not, Vanye reckoned, hard to follow, if one had to wonder where that rider had gone, or if one were interested in finding him.

As it was: 'What is this place?' he asked angrily. 'A highway their riders use? A known trail?'

'Doubtless,' Hesiyyn said, 'my lord human. We are all anxious to die.'

He sent Hesiyyn a dark look.

'We are no more anxious for a meeting than you are,' Chei said. 'They are out here, that is all. I told you. Skarrin is no longer taking the matter lightly.—I ask you again, lady, in all earnestness: lend me the stone.'