She strode over to pluck her knife from the turf. She loomed over him, and then with a bark of laughter gave him a cuff that sent him sprawling. He was still recovering from it as she took food from the bag. 'Vandien,' she called over her shoulder in an affable voice, 'you may yet be worth something. At least you growl well, even when you know you're beaten. Want anything to eat?'
'I'm still chewing my pride, thank you,' he muttered as he rose to dust tendrils of moss from his clothes.
'It's too late for you to eat anyway,' Hollyika observed calmly. 'Time for us to be riding on. I'm loading her back onto the nasty grey. If we meet more farmers, I don't want her hampering me. You'll still lead her horse, but don't get any stupid ideas.'
'Have I ever had any other kind?' Vandien asked bitterly, and moved to help load Ki. She was too light in his arms. He placed her as comfortably as he could, but she still looked as fragile as the flower he had stepped on. As he secured her in place, the rain began. No warning patter preceded it; it came down like a curtain, chill, soaking, relentless.
In the time it took him to get to Sigmund's back the horse was already drenched. He didn't want to move out of the grove's shelter, but Vandien pressed him on. Hollyika and Black were a sable shadow in front of him. The road was theirs again, empty of pursuit for as far as Vandien could see in the driving rain.
The spattering drops drowned all other sound. His hair soaked to his scalp, and then rivulets of water began to trickle down his face. His moustache was like a damp rag pressed to his mouth. He shook his head to clear the tickling drops, but the water clung like oil. He resigned himself to it and fixed his eyes on Hollyika's back as she plodded along, past meadows and marsh and field. At least she looked as uncomfortable as he felt. Wherever her fur was exposed, it was soaked into dripping points. Her sodden crest flopped to one side, ruining her warlike appearance.
'Vandien!' The long wailing cry cut through the rain noise and reached him. Vandien in his turn called forward to Hollyika and reined in his mount. Sigmund was glad of the rest. The road, once so fair and hard, was now softening again into a sucking muck that gripped hooves when it did not slip beneath them. Vandien was shivering, rain running down his bare arm on one side and soaking his sleeve on the other. He could not remember a more miserable night. 'Ki's awake,' he told the Brurjan as her black horse picked its cautious way back to him. 'With your most gracious permission, I'll cut the bonds on her ankles so she can ride upright.'
'No.' Hollyika's voice was flat. 'I know of what I speak. She'd find a way to turn that beast and set heels to it. It's her horse, after all, and used to taking the commands of her voice. No, she rides well enough the way she is.'
A slow anger began to burn inside Vandien as he looked into her grim face. He glanced again to the rain dripping from Ki's lank mop of hair. 'Look at her,' he said flatly, 'You'll kill her. Who knows when she last ate?'
'No. She's tougher than she looks. Even I know that, as short a time as I have known her. She last ate before I met her on the riverbank; I would wager on that. And she has drunk only the Limbreth water since then. But don't worry about that. Romni can go forever on a sip of water and a gnawed bone ? I should know, I've rousted enough of them. She'll be fine. You think you are trying to aid a friend, but you're only dancing to the Limbreth's tune. She is theirs. They have all her thoughts; she doesn't care for her own well-being or comfort. So we won't either. Let her ride belly down; it's the least bother to us.'
'Listen to me!' Ki gasped out the words, spitting aside strands of hair. She was panting with the effort of speaking while face down across Sigurd's back. 'I have words for you.'
'Say them,' Hollyika ordered tersely, and silenced Vandien with a glare.
'The Limbreths speak to me, and through me to you. They bid me make their will known to you, unenlightened as you are.' Ki paused, and Hollyika rolled her eyes at the dramatic wording. But Vandien leaned closer, brows knit, for the voice that spoke was strangely unlike Ki's, as if someone else did speak through her mouth. Though, he reflected quickly, he had not often spoken to her while she was flung over a horse like a sack of grain.
'The Limbreths have decided to grant you their mercy. It grieves them, for you both turn aside from the graces and knowledge they offer, and from a chance to make more of your lives than merely a time to eat, rut, and sleep.'
'They left out fighting.' Hollyika grinned over to Vandien.
Ki drew breath. 'You may go. They will make it very easy for you to regain the Gate. If you set me free to return to them and to finish the task we have begun. They do not desire to hamper you in pursuing your petty goals; all they ask is the return of their consecrated servant, that she may finish the task she set herself.'
'And if we don't? What if one of our petty goals is taking her back to the Gate with us?'
'Then you will fail. Do you think the road is bad now? Defy them, and see what it becomes. The folk of this land will rise up against you, in numbers you cannot ignore, and the road will forget the way to the Gate and lead you only to your destruction. And mine also. So you see, you cannot save me for whatever end you had in mind. Better to release me now, and go on to the Gate unmolested, than to stubbornly follow a path that leads to all our deaths.'
Hollyika snorted merrily. 'Lovely logic. We should set you free and go our way, so we all get what we want. The only thing they do not mention is that you are to run back to your own death at their hands. So, it's all one to us, whether you die doing the Limbreth's bidding, or by being spitted on a farmer's staff.Vandien. Pass me the waterskin.'
He unlooped it from where it was strapped on Sigurd's back. Hollyika took it from him, and slid from her horse, her boots sinking deep in the muck. 'Drink or drown,' she told Ki. As Vandien opened his mouth to protest, Hollyika stared him down with baleful eyes. 'If you get off that horse, I'll break her neck. This is no worse than that sludge you forced down me. Where was your sensitivity and mercy then? Look the other way, if you must.'
But he couldn't. The Brurjan moved close to Ki, trapped her head at an awkward angle in the bend of her arm, and forced the neck of the waterskin between her teeth. She pinched Ki's nose shut and squeezed the waterskin. Ki gasped and spluttered as best she could, choking, and then gulping the water to clear the way for air to her lungs. But another spurt of water followed before air, and most of it went down. Hollyika released her. Ki choked and gasped and sneezed violently. 'Too bad we can't get food into her the same way,' Hollyika observed calmly. 'It might bring her to her own senses again. But we've no time to stop, and no dry wood or pot for you to use to brew up another of your disgusting messes. The longer we stand here, the more time they'll have to carry out their threats. Let's be on.'
'The Gate can't be far,' Vandien agreed wretchedly as he eyed Ki. Her eyes had sagged shut and the rain dripped from her face. 'I remember that I ran from the Gate all the way to the bridge on foot. We've come a good gallop from the bridge already. I think the Limbreths know we are nearly out of their reach, and are trying to bluff us out of our captive.'
'Come on.' Hollyika remounted. The black slogged ahead of them and Sigmund fell in behind him, and a tug on the lead rope brought Sigurd at their heels. Vandien tried to sit so as to make no shift of weight that would throw the great horse off stride in the dangerously mucky footing. The rain streamed down endlessly upon them from a blacked sky and the road dwindled to a trail of mud between trees. In vain Vandien looked for some sign of the fragrant flowering trees that had arched his path when first he came through the Gate. All was blackness ahead, no sign of the Gate's red mouth. The trees that hedged the road now were black leafless things with long raking thorns jutting from their reaching branches. The path was narrower than Vandien remembered, and not well trodden. Roots humped up in the middle of it to make the weary horses stumble. Twice swift running streams crossed their path. They had cut deep gouges in the trail, so that the big horses lurched down into them, and then awkwardly lunged up again, their wide hooves slipping and squelching in the bad footing. On they rode, and on. The trail became a track, and dwindled to less than that. Soon the horses were breaking through vines that twined across their path from tree to tree. Vandien was damned if he knew what signs Hollyika was following; there were not even any stars to give them a heading. They could be endlessly circling. But the black horse ahead of him kept plodding on, and he kept the greys in its tracks. He could think of nothing better to do, even though he knew they should have reached the Gate long ago.
Slower and slower they plodded. Sigurd bunched up on Sigmund's heels, and Vandien became aware of Ki's voice speaking. How long she had been talking he didn't know, but she was speaking to him. Her tone was calm and reasonable, her words weighted and barbed.
'... Dragged me from one of your impulses to another. Never content to let me live my own life in my own
