Wall of Shiuan

Fwar, it would be revenge.

Morgaine stood at his side, looked down the road. “They cannot keep our pace,” she said.

“They need not,” said Kithan; and gone now was the slurring of his speech; fear glittered through the haze of his eyes. “There are forces between us and Abarais, my lady Morgaine, and one of them is my brother’s. Hetharu will have ridden over whatever opposition he meets: he is not loved by the mountain lords. But so much the more will forces be on the move in this land. Your enemy has sent couriers abroad: folk here will know you; they will be waiting for you; and being mad, they are, of course, interested in living. We may find our way quite difficult.”

Morgaine gave him a baleful look, took Changeling from her shoulder and hooked it to her saddle before she set foot in the stirrup. Vanye mounted, and drew close to her, thinking no longer of what followed them or of Myya Jhirun i Myya; it was Morgaine he protected, and if that should entail turning on three of their companions, he would be nothing loath.

The land opened before them, rich with crops and dark earth; and closed again and opened, small pockets of cultivated earth hardly wider than a field or two between opposing heights, and occasionally a small marsh and a reed-rimmed lake.

Crags rose towering on all sides of them, a limit to the sky that in other days Vanye would have found comfortable, a view much like home; but it was not his land, and nowhere was there indication what might lie ahead. He looked into the deep places of the weathered rocks, the recesses that were often overgrown with trees and man-tall weeds, and knew that in one thing at least Kithan had told the truth: that there was no passage for a horseman off this road; and if there were trails in the hills, as surely there were, even a runner must needs be born to this land to make much speed.

They did not press the horses, that like themselves had gone without sleep and rest; Kithan rode with them, his two men trailing, and last rode Jhirun, whose bay mare was content to lag by several lengths.

And at dusk, as they came through one of the many narrows, there appeared stones by the road, set by men; and against the forested cliffs beyond was a stone village, a sprawling and untidy huddle next the road.

“Whose?” Morgaine asked of Kithan. “It was not on the maps.”

Kithan shrugged. “There are many such. The land hereabouts is Sotharra land; but I do not know the name of the village. There will be others. They are human places.”

Vanye looked incredulously at the halfling lord, and judged that it was likely the truth, that a lord of Shiuan did not trouble to learn the names of the villages that lay within reach of his own land.

Morgaine swore, and came to a slow stop on the road, where they were last screened by the trees and the rocks. A spring flowed at the roadside, next the trees. She let Siptah drink, and herself dismounted and knelt upcurrent, drinking from her hand. The qujal followed her example, even Kithan drinking from the stream like any peasant; and Jhirun overtook them and cast herself down from her mare to the cool bank.

“We shall rest a moment,” Morgaine said. “Vanye—”

He nodded, stepped down from the saddle, and filled their waterflasks the while Morgaine watched his back.

And constantly, while they let the horses breathe and took a little of their small supply of food, Morgaine’s eye was on their companions or his was, while the dusk settled and became night.

Jhirun held close, by Morgaine’s side or his. She sat quietly, for the most part, and braided her long hair in a single plait down the back, tied it with a bit of yarn from her fringed skirt. And there was something different in her bearing, a set to her jaw, a directness to her eyes that had not been there before.

She set herself with them as if she belonged: Vanye met her eye, remembered how she had intervened in Fwar’s ambush in the stable, and reckoned that were he an enemy of Myya Jhirun i Myya, he would well guard his back. A warrior of clan Myya, restrained by codes and honor, was still a bad enemy. Jhirun, he remembered, knew nothing of such restraints.

It was at the men of Kithan that she stared in the darkness, and they would not look toward her.

And when they remounted, Jhirun rode insolently across the path of Kithan and his men, turned and glared at Kithan himself.

The qujal–lord brought up short, and seemed not offended, but perplexed at such arrogance in a Hiua peasant. Then, with elaborate irony, he reined his horse aside to give her place.

“We are going through,” said Morgaine; “and from now on I do not trust we will be able to rest for more than a few moments at any stopping. We are near Sotharrn, it seems; and we are, from Sotharrn, within reach of Abarais.”

“By tomorrow, liyo?” Vanye asked.

“By tomorrow night,” she said, “or not at all.”

Chapter Sixteen

The village sprawled at the left of the road, silent in the dark, beneath a forested upthrust of rock that shadowed it from Anli’s wan light: a motley gathering of stone houses, surrounded by a wall as high as a rider’s head.

The horses’ hooves rang unevenly off the walls as they rode by. There was no stirring within, no light, no opening of the shuttered windows that overtopped the wall, no sound even of livestock. The gate was shut, a white object affixed to its center.

It was the wing of a white bird, nailed there, the boards smeared blackly with the blood.

Jhirun touched the necklace that she wore and murmured something in a low voice. Vanye crossed himself fervently and scanned the shuttered windows and overshadowing crags for any sign of the folk that lived there.

“You are expected,” Kithan said, “as I warned you.”

Vanye glanced at him, and at Morgaine—met her eyes and saw the shadow there, as it had been at the bridge.

And she shivered, a quick and strange gesture, full of weariness, and set Siptah to a quicker pace, to leave the village behind them.

The pass closed about them, a place where rock had rumbled to the very edge of the road, boulders man- large. Vanye gazed up at the dark heights, and with a shiver of his own, used the spurs. They came through the throat of that place at a pace that set the echoes flying, and there was no fall of stones, no stir of life from the cliffs.

But when, halfway across the next small valley, he turned and looked back, he saw a red glow of fire atop those cliffs.

“ Liyo,” he said.

Morgaine looked, and said nothing. The Baien gray had struck that pace that, on level ground, he could hold for some space; and the gelding could match him stride for stride, but not forever.

The alarm was given: henceforth there was no stopping. What Roh had not known was spread now throughout the countryside.

Soon enough there was another, answering fire among the hills to their left.

The towers appeared unexpectedly in the morning light, half-hidden in forested crags: walls in many turreted and more regular than those of Ohtij-in, but surely as old. They dominated the widest of the valleys that they had seen; and cultivated fields lay round about.

Morgaine reined back briefly, scanning that hold, that guarded the pass before them.

And far behind them, horses unable to stay their pace, rode the three qujal, and last of all, Jhirun.

Vanye unhooked his sword and secured the sheath, marking the smoke that hung above those walls. He laid the naked blade across the saddlebow. Morgaine took Changeling from its place beneath her knee, and laid it, still sheathed, across her own.

“ Liyo,” Vanye said softly. “When you will.”

“Carefully,” she said.