Fires of Azeroth (30 page)

"The Fires," said Sharrn. "The river. Many."

He looked at the q
hal.

"You took a chance," said Sharrn. "It might have killed you. Do not touch them."

"We could learn no more of them," said Merir, and started the white mare down the bank toward the water.

The
harilim
were gone. The oppression of their presence lifted suddenly and the
arrhendim
moved quickly to follow Merir. Vanye swung up to the saddle and came last but for Roh and Vis. The anxiety that gnawed at him was the keener for the scant information the creature had passed. And when they went down to water's edge he looked this way and that, for although it was not the place they had been ambushed, it was the same situation and as likely a trap. The only difference was that the
harilim
had guided them right up to the brink, and perhaps still stood guard over them in the coming of the light.

There was need of care for another reason in crossing at such a place, for quicksands were well possible. Larrel gave his horse into Kessun's keeping and waded it first; at one place he did meet with trouble, and fell sidelong, working out of it, but the rest of the crossing went more easily. Then Kessun rode the way that he had walked, and Dev followed, and Sharrn and Merir and the rest of them, the women last as usual. On the other side the young
arrhen
Larrel was soaked to the skin, shivering with the cold and with the exhaustion of his far-riding and his battle with the sands.
Qhal
that he was, he looked worn to the bone, thinner and paler than was natural. Kessun wrapped him in his dry cloak and fretted about fevers, but Larrel climbed back into the saddle and clung there.

"We must get away from this place," Larrel said amid his shivering. "Crossings are too easily guarded."

There was no argument from any of them in that; Merir turned them south now, and they rode until the horses could do no more.

They rested at last at noon
,
and took a meal which they had neglected in their haste of the morning. No one spoke; even the prideful
qhal
sat slumped in exhaustion. Roh flung himself down on the sun-warmed earth, the only patch of sun in the cover they had found in the forest's edge, and lay like the dead; Vanye did likewise, and although the fever he had carried for days seemed gone, he felt that the marrow had melted from his bones and the strength that moved them was dried up from the heat. His hand lying before his face looked strange to him, the bones more evident than they had been, the wrist scabbed with wounds. His armor was loose on his body-sun-heated misery at the moment where it touched him; he was too weary even to turn over and spare himself the discomfort.

Something startled the horses.

He moved; the
arrhendim
sprang up; and Roh.. A whistle sounded, brief and questioning. Merir stood forth to be seen, and Sharrn answered the signal in such complexity of trills and runs that Vanye's acquaintance with the system could make no sense of it. An answer came back, no less complex.

"We are advised," Merir said after it fell silent, "of threat to Nehmin.
Sirrindim . . .
the Shiua you fled . . . have come up the Narn in great numbers."

"And Morgaine?" Vanye asked.

"Of Morgaine, of Lellin, of Sezar ... nothing. It is as if a veil has been drawn over their very existence. Alive or dead, their presence is not felt in Shathan, or the
arrhendim
this side could tell us. They cannot. Something
is
greatly amiss."

His heart fell then. He was almost out of hopes.

"Come," said Merir. "We have no time to waste."

Chapter Fourteen

The trouble was not long in showing itself. Movement startled birds from cover in the thickets of the Narn's other bank, and soon there were riders in sight, but the broad Narn divided them from the enemy and there was no ford to give either side access to the other.

The enemy saw them too, and halted in consternation. It was a
khalur
company, demon-helmed, scale armored, on the smallish Shiua horses. Their weapons were pikes; but they carried more than those . .. ugly opponents. And the leader, whose white mane flowed evident in the wind of his riding when he led them forward to the water's edge: the
arrhendim
were appalled at the sight of him, one like themselves, and different . . . fantastical in his armor, the old-dream elaborations of
khalur
workmanship.

"Shien!" Vanye hissed, for there was no one in the Shiua host with that arrogant bearing save Hetharu himself. The
khal
challenged them, rode his horse to the knees in water before he was willing to heed his men-at-arms and draw back.

Their own company kept moving, opposite to the direction of the Sotharra band; but Shien and his riders wheeled about and paced them, with the broad black waters of the Narn between. Arrows flew from the Sotharra side, most falling into the water, a few rattling on the stones of the shore.

The
qhal
Perrin reined out to the river's very brink and shot one swiftly aimed shaft from her bow. A demon-helmed
khal
screamed and pitched in the saddle, and his comrades caught him. A cry of rage went up from that side, audible across the water. And Vis raced her horse to the brink and shot another that sped true.

"'Lend me your bow," Vanye asked then of Roh. "If you will not use it, I will."

"Shien? No. For all the grudge you bear him-he is Hetharu's enemy, and the best of that breed."

It was already too late. The Shiua lagged back of them, out of bowshot of the
arrheindim,
having learned the limits of their own shafts and the deadly accuracy of the Shathana. They followed at a distance on that other side, and there was no way to reach them and no time to stop. Perrin and Vis unstrung their bows as they rode, and the
arrhendim
kept tight formation about Merir, scanning apprehensively the woods on their own side of the river. It was speed they sought now, which ran them hard over the river shore, with nothing but an occasional wash of brushheap to deter them.

Then Vanye chanced to look back. Smoke rose as a white plume on the Shiua side.

Perrin and Vis saw the fix of his eyes and looked, and their faces came about rigid with anger.

"Fire!" Perrin exclaimed as it were a curse, and others looked back.

"Shiua signal," said Roh. "They are telling their comrades downriver we are here."

"We have no love for large fires," Sharrn said darkly. "If they are wise, they will clear the reach of that woods before night comes on them."

Vanye looked back again, at the course of the Narn which slashed through Shathan, a gap in the armor, a highroad for Men and fire and axes . . . and the
harlim
slept, helpless by day. He saw the dark shadow of distant riders, the wink of metal in the sun. Shien had done his mischief and was following again.

Again they rested, and the horses were slicked with sweat Vanye spent his time attending this one and the other, for kindly as the
arrhendim
were with their mounts, and anxious as they were to care for them, they were foresters and the horses had come from elsewhere into their hands: they had not a Kurshin's knowledge of them.

"Lord," he said at last, casting himself down before Merir, "forest is one thing; open ground is another. We must not press the last out of the horses, not when we may need it suddenly. If the Shiua have gotten into the forest on our side and press us toward the river, the horses will not have it left in them to carry us."

"I do not fear that."

"You will kill the horses," Vanye said in despair, and left off trying to advise the old lord. He departed with an absent caress of the white mare's shoulder, a touch on the offered nose, and cast himself down by Roh, head bowed against his knees.

In a few moments more they were bidden back to the saddle, but for all Merir's seeming indifference to advice, they went more slowly.

Like Morgaine,
he thought bitterly,
proud and stubborn.
And then he thought of her, and it was like a knife moving in a wound. He rode slumped in the saddle, cast a look back once, where Shien and his men still paced them, out of range. He shook his head in despair and knew what that was for: that they were apt to meet a force on their side of the Narn up by the next crossing, and Shien meant to be there to seal them up.

Roh rode close to him, so that the horses jostled one another and he looked up. Roh urged one of the
arrhendim's
journeycakes on him. "You did not eat at the stop."

He had had no appetite, nor did now, but he knew the sense of Roh's concern, and took it and washed it down with water, though it lay like lead in his stomach. Small dark Vis rode up on his other side and offered another flask to him.

"Take," she said.

He drank, expecting fire by the smell of it, and it was, enough to make his eyes sting. He took several more swallows, and gave it back to Vis, whose dark eyes were young in her aging face, and kindly. "You grieve," she said. "We all understand, we that are
khemeis,
we that are
arrhen.
So we would grieve too." She pressed fee flask back into his hand. 'Take it. It is from my village. Perrin and I can get more."

He could not answer her; she nodded, understanding that too, and dropped behind. He hung the flask to his saddle, and then thought to offer some to Roh, which Roh accepted, and passed it back to him.

Night-shadow began to touch the sky. The sun burned over the dark rim of Shathan across the river, and from the east there was silence, no comforting whistles out of the dark woods, nothing.

They kept moving while there was still twilight to guide them, and bent into the forest itself, for a river barred their way, flowing into the Narn.

It was not a great river; quickly it dwindled until the trees that grew on its margin almost sufficed to span it.

And suddenly about them stealthy shadows moved, and a chittering warned them of
harlim.

One waited on the riverside, like some large, ungainly bird standing at the water's shallow edge. It chirred at them as that kind would in perplexity, and backed when Merir would have approached it on horseback. Then it beckoned.

"We cannot go another such journey," Sharra protested. "Lord,
you
cannot."

"Slowly," said Merir, and turned the white mare in the direction that the creature would have them go: breast-high she waded, but the current was very weak, and all of them followed, up the other bank, into wilder places.

The
haril
wanted haste: they could not. The horses stumbled on stones, faltered going up the slopes of ravines. The trees were old here, and the place beneath them much overgrown with brush.
Harilim
moved all about them, finding passage that the horses could not.

And suddenly there was a white shape before them in the dark, an
arrhen,
or like unto one, afoot and clothed in white, not forest green. His hair was loose, his whole aspect like and unlike one of the
arrhendim,
seeming more wraith than flesh in the starlight.

Lellin.

The youth lifted his hand. "Grandfather," he saluted Merir, softly. He came and took Merir's offered hand, reaching up to the saddle. Solid he was, yet there was a change on him, a sad quiet utterly unlike the youth they knew. "Ah, Grandfather,
you
should not have come."

"Why should I not?" Merir answered him. The old lord looked frightened. "What madness has taken you? Why this look on you? Why did you not send the message you promised?"

"I had no means."

"Morgaine," Vanye said, forcing his horse past Sharrn's to Lellin. "Lellin-what of Morgaine?"

"Not far." Lellin turned and lifted his arm. "A stony hill, the other side-"

He used the spurs, broke free of them and bent low, caring nothing for their protest, for
harilim
warnings. He would not bring Merir on her without warning. His horse stumbled under him, recovered; brush opposed, branches caught at him and snapped on his armor. He clung low to the saddle and the horse stayed on its feet, upslope and down, shying from this side and that as it sensed
harilim.
Pursuit was on his heels: the
arrhendim
... he heard them coming.