Exile's Gate (28 page)

"Aye," Vanye agreed, thanking Heaven one of them at least had come back to reason.

They rode out, with
breakfast in hand, a little waybread and water from their flasks,
ducking water-laden branches, but with the sun bringing a little warmth
through the mist, and the wind having stopped. There was that for
comfort.

"Here," Jestryn said, and
urged his horse down a trail hardly worthy of the name, a narrow slot
of stone and dirt among pines that clung desperately to a crumbling
slope. Some of the men murmured dismay, but Gault followed, nothing
loath, for the Road passed near a village hereabouts, a straight bare
track below the truncate hill: the ancients had carved mountains,
disdaining to divert their Road for any cause; and yet bent it sharply
west in open ground, for reasons that no qhal living knew.

Now the descendants of the
builders rode quietly as they could, making better time than they had
been able to make in the fog, reliant on Jestryn-Pyverrn's human memory
and on Arunden's thoroughly human one, under the threat of Jestryn's
knife.

"I swear to you," Arunden had cried, "I swear to you—I will guide you! I am your friend—"

"Impudent Man," Jestryn had said, and laughed, as Pyverrn would with his human, guttural laughter. "You are not
my
friend before or
after
I was human; and God knows you were never Gault's—"

Jestryn kept such human
affectations, and swore and used human oaths qhal did not. But the
sparkle in his eye was Pyverrn—past the sword-cut that raked one
handsome cheek. It did not distract from his looks. Next to him,
Arunden was a clumsy, shambling brute; and Arunden's wit matched his
outward look.

"You will lose a finger," Jestryn had said, "for every annoyance on this trail; I counsel you,
tell
me where the warders are, and what the signals are, or you will find out what pain is,—my lord Arunden."

They had taken three of the
watchposts. Arunden snuffled and wept about it and protested they were
disgracing him and ruining his usefulness.

But a flash of Jestryn's knife stopped the snuffling.

"You either serve us," Gault had said then, "or not. Decide now. We
can
do without you."

"My lord," Arunden had said.

Now they rode quietly as they could, with bows strung and arrows ready.

Jestryn gave a quiet call, a kind of lilting whistle, and a like signal answered it from down the slope.

The horses picked their way
down with steady, small paces, to a place where the trail widened. A
Man waited there, whose eyes betrayed shock the moment before Gault's
arrow took him. Perhaps it had been the sight of Jestryn, back from the
dead. Perhaps it had been the sight of Arunden himself, who was their
own lord, beside Gault, who had been lord over the human south, not six
years gone: Men to the outward sight, and armored like Men, he and
Jestryn, Qhiverin and Pyverrn—both archers of Mante's warrior Societies
and both deadly.

Jestryn grinned at him, an
expression light and pleasant as ever Jestryn-the-Man could have used,
past Arunden, who sat his horse in apparent shock.

"Let us go," Gault said, and motioned to the men who followed.

They rode forward, closer
to the human camp, with the stench of its midden all too evident. It
was that garrison which guarded the road; and there was dangerous work
at hand—We must take them, Jestryn had said, and reach the Road there:
that is the quickest way.

If only, Gault thought,
they did not bog down in some day-long siege; but Jestryn promised not:
Arunden would hail them out once their archers were positioned.

Gault chose three arrows as
he rode quietly at Jestryn's back: he did not ride the roan, which was
too well known—but on a borrowed sorrel. The rest of the column
overtook them on this flat ground as the shapes of huts appeared among
the pines. Gray smoke drifted up as haze in that clearing, from fires
about which humans pursued domestic business, the weaving of cloth, the
grinding of grain doubtless bartered or plundered from Gault's own
storehouses.

There was hardly reason at
first that these humans should take alarm at human riders arriving in
their camp, since those riders had had to pass their sentries, even if
the riders carried bows at their sides.

They could only be mildly
alarmed when their own lord Arunden rode forward of the three, and in a
ringing voice ordered everyone to the center of the village.

Only when those bows lifted
and bent and the shafts went winging to drop those who obeyed, then the
cries went up and humans rushed to the attack of two solitary archers.

Then the rest of Gault's troop appeared from the brush around the camp, and arrows came from every direction.

It was unfortunate that Arunden was not quick enough, and that a stray shaft tumbled him from his horse.

Beyond this there was
little resistance. Certain humans escaped into the brush and saved
their lives: do not pursue, Gault had told his men. We have no time.

When there was quiet in the
clearing Gault changed horses again and rode where Jestryn beckoned
him, where the height on which the village sat, dropped away sheer, and
the Road showed as patches of white stone in an otherwise grassy
expanse of rolling hills.

Jestryn led them down the
slope of the hill to a track which human feet had worn, going and
coming, laying bare the roots of pines and stripping those roots of
bark, a natural series of steps in the muddy slope which gave the
horses somewhat surer footing on their way down to the plains.

There was no dread of arrows now. Only of what they followed.

He could not understand why
they had burned his woods and sheltered with humans; why, if they were
hostile they had not attacked Morund; why, if they were not, they had
not approached it. The woman whom Arunden had abundantly described was
surely no halfling and the tall Man with her doubtless hosted some
qhalur mind: they would have been welcome in Morund, if they were
Mante's enemies, some shadow out of Skarrin's traffic in the gates.

But they had one and now
two of Ichandren's lot to advise them: that too, Arunden had told them,
among other things. That one of them was Chei ep Kantory surprised him:
the pale-haired wolf-whelp had cozened Morund-gate's wolves then,
longer than he would have thought: Kantory's get was hardy as its sire,
whatever might presently house in that human frame—for it was well
possible the strangers had taken his offering at Morund-gate.

But that the other Man was
Bron ep Kantory distressed him: Bron who had carried off Gault's serfs
and raided his storehouses three times in the last two years. He had
thought he had taken care of that matter at Gyllin-brook, along with
the rest of Ichandren's rebels.

Bron
could
not be qhal, having been near neither gate; and therefore Chei was not
likely to be. Bron would have suspected a changeling—they never would
have deceived him. No, it was a question of humans.

And qhal who dealt with them in preference to legitimate authority, for whatever purpose.

It was a ride on which
Gault-Qhiverin had had ample time to think; and the thoughts which
chased one another through his mind held only greater and greater
uncertainty, whether he could hope to find common ground with these
strangers, Mante's likely enemies, or whether he should only strike and
kill and hope for reward as Skarrin's savior.

Which would last, he
thought, about as long as it took for Skarrin to arrange his
assassination. Gault-Qhiverin the exile was something Skarrin could
ignore. Gault the hero of the south—was not.

He reached the road just
behind Jestryn and with room to run, the red roan overtook Jestryn's
bay with a vengeance, weary as they all were.

"We will catch them," Jestryn said. "There is still time."

It was Tejhos Jestryn was
thinking of; so were they all. That was the place the enemy was going,
and that was the place they would find them.

The trail led down by the
last of the twilight, and deeper still the twilight under the great
trees which overshadowed the trail in the descent. "Not far, not far,"
Bron assured them, when once Morgaine asked. Bron's face was pale in
the half-light and sweat glistened on it. Constantly Chei had a worried
look, but Bron did not ask to stop; neither did Chei, though Bron's
riding now was generally with his shoulders hunched in pain, his hands
braced against the saddlehorn against the jolts of the descent: his leg
by now must be agony and Vanye hurt with a sympathetic pain, who had
endured similar miserable rides.

But suddenly their trail
reached a level place, and in a little more of riding the trees began
to thin: the forest edge gave way to open land and hills the like of
the hills in the south, open grassland.

Between the last trees,
under a clearing and fading sky, a rain-puddled bit of white stone, the
trace of the Road; and looking up from it, toward the hills in the
dusk, it was easy to see it, a line where ancient builders had sundered
hill from hill, letting nothing divert it from here to the horizon.

Exhausted as they were, the
horses picked up their pace somewhat on this level ground, and they
grouped two and two, Bron and Chei to the fore and himself and Morgaine
behind, with all the open hills before them and the sunset at their
left.

"We will make it," Bron said, dropping back a moment to ride with them. "My lady, we will make it there very soon."

"Tejhos is on the road itself," Morgaine asked him, "is it not?"

"Yes," Bron said.

"We can find our way, then, from here. Go back. Take my advice."

"No," Bron said, "my lady."

"I have warned you." She shifted in the saddle. "That is all I will do."

"I know the reports of the
road," Bron said. "I have never ridden it, but I know something of
where it goes. I know something of the lord in Mante. I have these
things to trade. Lady—"

"As far as you will." Morgaine said after a moment, and heavily. "As far as you can. I will keep my word to you."

Chei had dropped back with them. There was heavy silence as they rode.

Chei's eyes sought toward
Vanye as if even then he questioned; and Vanye shrugged and looked
away, denying him any help or any encouragement.

Morgaine laid her heels to Siptah and rode from between them.

"It is kindness she meant,"
Vanye said, and lingered a moment more to reason with them, holding
Arrhan as she made to follow Siptah, reining her about again. "That is
all."

Chei answered something.
Vanye held steady, sweeping his eye back to a thing in the dusk beyond
Chei's shoulder, a darkness that had not been on the horizon the
instant before. It might have been a rock or a tree in the first blink
of the eye.

But it moved. It vanished from the horizon.

Chei and Bron turned their horses about, fallen silent. "God in Heaven," Vanye murmured, and turned and rode after Morgaine.
"Liyo,"
he said as she turned half about. "They are behind us. Someone at least—is on the Road."

She looked, and reined back
somewhat. "Ground of our choosing," she said in a low voice, and
brought Siptah to a halt as Chei and Bron overtook them.

She slipped the hook on
Changeling's
sheath and laid it across the saddlebow.

Chapter Ten

"I cannot see them now,"
Vanye said, straining his eyes against the gathering dark, holding
Arrhan steady as she would stand with Morgaine's big gray chafing at
the bit and stamping the ground beside her. "We have lost them out
there."

"They will come to us," Morgaine said, while Bron drew his sword and Chei waited weaponless except for his knife.

"Their horses may be no more rested than ours," Bron said.

"Then again," Morgaine said, "they may be."

"This is mad," Chei cried. "There is the woods over there. We might make it."

"Again," Morgaine said, "we might not. Put away the sword."

"My lady—"

"Do as I say, Bron. Put it away."

"My lady, for our lives—listen to me. Vanye—"

"Never ride on my lady's
right," Vanye said quietly. He was excruciatingly conscious of the
stone at his heart, inert and harmless as it was at the moment. He had
his own sword unhooked and resting across the saddlebow, as Men would
parley who met under uncertain circumstances; but he did not reckon it
likely that this world knew that sign of conditional peace.

"Vanye," Chei protested, riding close, "for God's sake—"

"Have done!" He whipped the
sheathed sword across Chei's chest and stopped it a finger's width from
his shoulder. He glared at Chei with temper flaring in him; but this
time the sword was sheathed; this time he had the control to hold it,
trembling, short of touching. "There will none of them live if we come
to blows. Do you understand me? Not the innocent and not the purest. We
cannot let them to the gate. We cannot let one escape. It is clear
targets we want, range where their archers are useless and none of them
can escape. Will that satisfy you?"