Exile's Gate (27 page)

"I think
we can," Chei said. "Lady, God knows! We do not know how long ep Ardris hunted for us—we do not know how long Gault will delay—"

"The Road bends our way up
ahead," Bron said. "He cannot send one of his own back to Morund except
with a guide, and he has hit his own ally, if Arunden has betrayed us.
He may not have men he can spare who know their way up here: they say
it is not every Changed can remember—that is what has saved us before
this: they get few of us and most of those remember nothing who they
were—"

"Do not count on that," Morgaine said darkly. "It is
not
the case. Believe that he will have every help he needs,
curse
your optimism!"

"We are on the high
trails," Chei said. "A large force cannot make good time where we are
going, if there are any of Arunden's warders left, they may have to
fight their way through—"

"And Arunden himself may be their safe-conduct
and
their
guide and the warders may find us instead! Man, quit making excuses for
our troubles and quit making allowances for our enemies!
Do
what I tell you and get us to the Road!"

"It is at least another day
to get there!" Chei shouted. "For them and us—and there is no shorter
way than this—I swear there is not! We can turn and fight them—"

"If
we could trust that they have not gone straight east to the Road,
if
we could trust ep Ardris told half the truth—It is
time
we
do not have: do not question me, Chei! Do not make me delays or
excuses! Lead! We will find a secure camp, rest and move on when we can
make more time. That is all we
can
do now."

It was in a weary haze Chei
rode at last—fending branches in the dark, feeling an uncertainty in
his horse's legs as they negotiated a descent. Of a sudden the animal
skidded and went down on its haunches and clawed its way sideways on
the muddy hill so that he had to let the reins down and let it fight
its own battle.

The horse recovered itself
facing uphill and with its hindquarters braced, unmoving as the other
riders came down the straightforward way, but not so steeply. Chei
found himself trembling the same as the horse, weak in the legs as he
dismounted there on the slope and slipped and slid to lead it around
and safely down. The mail had rubbed his shoulders raw; he knew that it
had, working wet cloth against wet skin; and that pain brought back the
hill, and the wolves, so vividly at times he did not know this woods
from the other, or remember the intervening time.

But Bron was with him. Bron
urged him on, promising him rest, saying that there was shelter, and he
bit his lip and concentrated on the pain there and not in his arms.

"Soon," he agreed, teeth chattering, "soon."

"We need not lose a horse,"
Vanye said, to which Morgaine said something Chei could not understand;
but they got down where they were, on the leaf-slick floor of the
ravine, and led their horses an increasingly difficult track in this
dark and rain, off the main trails, all of them walking now, descending
the next muddy slope and ducking low under the branches.

"Straight on," Chei said,
his heart suddenly lifting as lightning-flicker showed him an ancient
pine he knew. He recognized his way again. He pulled at the weary
horse, taking it sideways on the slope and down again, around the boggy
place between the slopes and up another rise, up and up a pine-grown
slope to the crest of the hill.

It was a hunter's shelter
below them, looming up like nothing more than a massive brush-heap in
the constant flicker from the clouds; but Chei knew it, and when Bron
said that he would go down to it: "I will go," Chei murmured, and led
his horse along with Bron, down the incline as Bron hailed the place.

There was no answer. There
was only the dark mass of the shelter; and neither horse seemed shy of
it, which was the best indication nothing had sheltered there. Only
some small creature skittered away in the brush, at which his weary
horse hardly reacted, a little jerk at the reins.

"Hai-ay," Bron called out again, and with no answer and no answering hail, led his horse into the lee of the hut.

It was enough. Chei reached
the place, leaned against his horse and managed the girth; and had him
half unsaddled before Vanye and Morgaine had ridden in.

He dried off his horse
vigorously with the blanket and rubbed down its legs, such care as he
could give to ease it and protect it from soreness; and looked and saw
Bron's horse unattended, which carelessness his brother would not
countenance on a night like this and after such a ride.

Then he spied Bron sitting
on the ground, and went to him quietly. "Bron?" he whispered, dropping
down to face him, and laid a hand on Bron's shoulder.

"It is hurting," Bron said.
Chei could not see his face in the dark, could hardly make out the
pallor of skin and hair in the dark, but he gripped Bron's shoulder in
a brotherly way and felt a cold about his heart.

"How bad is it?"

A whisper of leather and
metal, a shrug beneath his hand. "Hurting," Bron said, and drew a
breath. "I will make it tomorrow. They will not leave me. They will
not. I will not slow you down."

He embraced Bron, hugged
him tight a moment as he reckoned Vanye and the lady were paying no
attention to them. "Give me your cloak," he said; and unfastened it
from Bron's neck, slung it on and rose to tend Bron's horse, trying not
to think of the fear, only of necessity—not turning his head, only
doing his work and praying neither Vanye nor the lady would notice in
the deep shadow beside the hut and the confusion of two bay geldings
and two blond men and a borrowed cloak, that it was the same man on his
feet.

But Vanye walked near him, leading the two pale horses into that shadow, and behind him; and stopped.

Chei dropped down and
rubbed at the gelding's legs, head tucked. But he heard the step in the
wet mold, heard the light ring of metal as Vanye went past him and
knelt down by Bron.

He got up then and went
over to him. "I am all right," Bron was saying, where he sat against
the wall in the wet and the decaying leaves. And Chei, desperately: "He
is all right. I will tend the horses, the gray too if he will stand—"

"We cannot go much more of
this," Vanye said, and touched Bron's shoulder and rose and laid a hand
on his, gently shaking at him. "My lady has her reasons. How much
farther?"

"Tomorrow," Chei said. His
heart was beating hard. He found himself short of breath, not knowing
what was in Vanye's mind. "We will get there tomorrow."

"My lady is grateful. Truly."

"What does she want of us?"
he asked desperately; and did not believe that the lady had said it at
all: the lady was angry with them, had been angry since they had broken
camp, and everything seemed the wrong thing with her. Now Vanye came to
them, on his own, for Vanye's reasons, catching them in another
deception, and fear swept over him—irrational, for they could go no
faster and no further, and the lady on that iron-winded gray could not
so much as find the road without them.

But honor meant very much,
when there was neither clan nor kin; and the lady cursed them and
shamed them, even Bron: he had brought his brother to this, and the
lady cursed them for mistakes he himself had made, and shamed Bron for
things not Bron's doing—

"We will make it," Vanye said. "Chei—"

"Aye," he said, and jerked his shoulder free, turning his face to his work again.

"Chei. Listen to me." Vanye
put his hand on the other side of the horse's neck, stood close against
its shoulder, close beside him. "She has one manner with everyone. With
me as well. She is thinking, that is what she is doing, she is
thinking, and what talks to us is not herself when this mood is on her.
That is all I can tell you."

Chei listened in anger,
down to the last, that a tendril of cold slipped into his heart. Then
he recalled that they were pacted not only with a qhal, but with a
witch. He gave a twitch of his shoulders, less angry, and more afraid,
and no more certain where honor was in anything.

"She never remembers her
tempers," Vanye said. "Do the best you can do. When she knows what you
have done she will be grateful. I thank you. She would want me to. She
would want me to tell you—get us as far as the Road, and if you have
changed your minds, go aside: we will see to Gault."

"Mante," Chei said. "We are going to Mante."

"Do you know what is there? Do you know what we face?"

He shook his head. He had no wish to know. "The gate," he said. "Somewhere else."

"Maybe a worse place."

"It could not be. For us it
could not be." He seized Vanye by the arm and drew him well aside, over
by the trees, into the dark and the wind. "Vanye, my brother—he is a
great man, he
is,
Vanye: he
will
be; Ichandren himself used to say that in his life he had never seen any man promise so much—"

"For whose sake are you doing this? For his? Then leave us at the road."

"That is not what I am saying!"

"There is nothing to be had
from us. There is nothing we can give you. You mistake us. We have no
place to go to. You are chasing after what does not exist."

"We will not go back to
live like bandits! We will not find another clan! We will make a name
for ourselves—we—Bron and I. Do not shame us like this."

Vanye was silent a moment. "I only try to warn you. You cannot ask too much of her. I will not let you."

"You are her lover."

An intake of breath. "What I am is my concern."

"I only mean that I know.
We know you are her right hand. We do not dispute you. Only do not let
her speak like that to my brother."

"My lady will speak how she chooses, to me, to Bron, or to you!—But I will talk to him."

"Do that," Chei said. The
wind touched him. He shivered, having gotten less than he wanted. But
he had pushed too far; he saw that.

Vanye walked away from him.
Chei stood with his arms and Bron's cloak about him, waiting, while
Vanye found Bron looking after the horses himself, cloakless and
stubborn.

They had words together. It
did not last long, but they parted with a mutual touch at shoulders,
and Vanye took their own two horses in charge, while the lady stayed in
shelter.

"Here," Chei said to Bron,
when he had walked back to the arbor. He slung the cloak about Bron's
shoulders. "Get out of the wind." And: "Did he say anything?"

Bron shrugged. "Only courtesy," Bron said. "He offered qhalur medicines. I said I was well enough. Do not trouble him, Chei."

The morning brought fog
again, a general murk that made it uncertain exactly when it ceased to
be night and began being daylight; but Vanye levered his aching bones
up when there was light enough to see by, in a watch he judged by his
own time-sense. "Stay and rest," he said to Morgaine: it was his watch
last—they were the better by Chei and Bron having their turn at waking,
in the small part of the night they had had left—and he left her and
the brothers to drowse away the last few moments while he sought after
their gear and carried it up to saddle up.

But Chei was up as quickly, moving about in the gray and the damp, seeing to his horse and his brother's.

"I meant to let you sleep," Vanye said, attempting to mend matters.

"We will manage," Chei said shortly.

So a company grew
irritable, weary as they were, friends more quickly at odds than utter
strangers. His face still burned when he recollected Chei's remark of
last evening, and how Chei thought he knew more of their affairs than
he knew.

Il
in
and liege—and he was not sure whose doing it was, after all this time. He tried to protect their honor; but Chei—

Chei, being Chei, trod
straight in on a matter that would have gotten challenge outright and
unexplained, if Chei were of his own people.

But Chei, being Chei, had
not understood, no more than he himself understood more than the
surface of Chei's thinking. Bron had seemed dismayed when he went to
ask his pardon, had seemed embarrassed, if nothing else. "Chei ought
not to have done that," Bron had said. "Forgive him."

Now Bron came out into the
daylight, limping pronouncedly in the first few steps; and concealed
that with a grasp after one of the support poles of the shelter.

Vanye paid it no attention
and offered no help. He wanted no more misunderstandings. He flung
Siptah's saddle up and tightened the girth.

"We will break our fast on
the trail," he said as Chei passed him; Chei nodded and said no word to
him. Perhaps it was only the reaction of a man with his jaw clamped
against the chill.

Or it was the reaction of a man who felt betrayed.

Morgaine came out, wrapped in her cloak, gray side out, her pale coloring one tone with the fog.

"Tonight for the open road," she said in a quiet voice, taking Siptah's reins. "So we dare not push the horses today."