The Complete Morgaine

by C. J. Cherryh

  “They are Gault’s or they are out of the gate,” Morgaine said, and set her foot in Siptah’s stirrup. “If the latter, we have no knowledge what weapons they have, and I do not like this ground—Ride!”

  He sprang to the saddle and reined to her left as they made the road. There was no question but that they were seen by now, but the narrowing of the road left them little choice—and that in itself put a fear into him. Many things about the gates bewildered him, but crossing from here to there did not, and if Gault’s men had gone from Tejhos to Mante and back, Mante itself was warned and might have riders coming south to head them off.

  It was more and more of narrow passage ahead of them: the rising sun had limned rougher land stretching eastward and north, and that meant fewer and fewer choices of any sort.

  They had won so many battles. The odds grew and the land shaped itself against them. “Get off the road,” he shouted at Morgaine as he rode alongside. “For Heaven’s own sake, liyo, we cannot win straight through—we cannot outride them behind and before! Let us get into the hills, let them hunt us there, let them hunt us the winter long, if that is what it takes to let them grow careless—”

  It was an outlaw’s counsel. He had that to give. He looked at Morgaine and saw her face set and pale in that unreason that drove her. He despaired then.

  “We make as much ground as we can,” she called across to him, “as long as we can.”

  He looked back over his shoulder, where their pursuers made a darkness on either margin of the road, running beside the sporadic white stone.

  “Then stop and fight them,” he said. “Liyo, in Heaven’s name, one or the other!”

  “There might be others,” she shouted back, meaning overland, through the hills; and he caught the gist of her fears and reckoned as she reckoned, on Mante, and stones, and gates.

  The riders so easily seen might be a lure to delay or herd them.

  Still, still, she was the elder and warier of them.

  They crested a hill and for a time they were running alone, at an easier gait, for a long enough time that he looked back once and twice looking for their pursuers; and Morgaine looked, her silver hair whipping in the wind.

  They were gone.

  “I do not like this,” she said as they rode.

  The road which had held straight so far, through so much of the land, took a bend toward the east which Chei had never mapped.

  And his own instincts cried trap.

  “Liyo, I beg you, let us get off this!”

  Morgaine said nothing, but of a sudden turned Siptah aside into a fold of the hills, keeping a quick pace on grassy and uneven ground, down the course the hills gave them.

  Deeper and deeper into land in which they no longer had a guide.

  • • •

  They rode more quietly at last, finding their way by the sun in a wandering course through grassy hills, brush and scrub forest.

  They watched the hilltops and the edges of the thickets, and from time to time looked behind them or stopped and listened and watched the flight of birds for omens of pursuers.

  Morgaine did not speak now. He rode silent as she, senses wide and listening, for any hint of other presence.

  Only as the sun sank: “The dark is their friend tonight,” Morgaine said, “more than ours, in a land we do not know. We had best find ourselves a place and lie quiet a while.”

  “Thank Heaven,” he muttered; and when they had found that place, a deep fold of the hills well-grown with brush, and when they had gotten the horses sheltered up against an overhang of the hills and rubbed them down and fed them, then he felt that he could breathe again and he had a little appetite for the fireless supper they made.

  “Tomorrow,” he said anxiously, “we will camp here, and I will go a little down the way and bring back forage for the horses—I do not think we ought to stir out of here for a few days. Listen to me!” he said, as she began to answer him. “Whatever you ask, I will do, you know that. But hear me out. Time will serve us. If it takes us months—we will live to get to Mante.”

  “No,” she said. “No. We have no months. We have no days. Does thee understand me? This Skarrin—this lord in Mante—” She fell silent again, leaning her chin on her arm, resting on her knee, and there was a line between her brows, in the fading of the light. “There are qhal and there are qhal, and Skarrin’s is an old name, Vanye, a very old name.”

  “Do you know him?”

  “If he is what I think he is—I know what he is; and I tell thee there is no risk we have ever run—” Her fist clenched. “Only believe what I tell thee: we have no time with this man.”

  “What is he?”

  “Something I hoped did not exist. Perhaps I am wrong.” She sighed and worked the fingers of that hand. “Talk of something else.”

  “Of what?”

  “Of anything.”

  He drew a breath. He cast back. It was Morija came to mind. It always did. But darker things overshadowed it—a keep surrounded with flood. A forest, haunted with things which did not love human or qhal. Of his cousin. But that was a memory too fraught with dark things too.

  “At least we are warmer,” he said, desperate recourse to the weather.

  “And dry,” she said.

  “Good grazing here. A few days,” he said. “Liyo—we can rest a few days. The horses will not take more of this.”

  “Vanye—”

  “Forgive me.”

  “No, thee is right, but we have no choice. Vanye—I had no choice.”

  It was not their moving on that she meant. Her voice trembled.

  “I know that,” he said, no steadier.

  She looked at him and reached out to his arm, a light touch which jolted him like hot iron, drew him out of despair and absorbed his attention so thoroughly a score of enemies could have ridden down on them and come second in his mind.

  No, he had wit to think, but not much beyond that. Her arms clenched about him. Her mouth met his. There was precious little more to do, surrounded by enemies, under arms, with no rest to be had and no leisure to spend unwary.

  There will never be a time, he thought, in a chill of panic, and held her the tighter, as she held him, in an armored grip become harsh and desperate, with nothing of gentleness about it. Everyone else has failed her. Too much she has lost, too many dead—For that reason she armed me more than herself, gave me her chiefest weapon; and what did it win us but calamity to our friends, and rage at each other?

  They slept finally, turn and turn about, on the sloping, stony ground where the brush afforded them cover. He watched her as she slept. He wished—but there was no hope.

  Only they managed to heal what was torn, there was that much.

  • • •

  Morgaine waked him toward dawn, a shadow between him and the day. He heard her voice telling him there was breakfast and he murmured an answer, rolled over and favored an aching arm, holding it across him.

  “We should move,” she said, “a little ways this morning.”

  “Oh, Heaven,” he moaned, and bowed his head between his knees, arms over his neck.

  She did not stay to argue. She went back to sit on her saddle, where she had laid out a cold breakfast on the leather wrappings they used for foodstuffs, knowing matters would go her way.

  He followed, and sat down on the grass, and ate in silence no different than other silences.

  And did not give way to temper, or venture in headlong.

  “Liyo,” he said when he was toward finishing: “Listen to me. This enemy of yours—whoever he is. You think he will run. But a man will not run, who thinks himself winning. No one can be that cautious.”

  She said nothing. It was not a frown on her face, only thought.

  “Let them lose us,” he said. “Let this Skarrin marshal some defense against us. Let him th
ink he has turned us. A man in power—he will not want to give up what he has. He will go nowhere at all. In the meanwhile we will learn this land, we will go slowly—we will gather strength, rest, find a way to him—am I not right?”

  Her lips made a taut line. There was warfare in her eyes, unbelief and consideration. “Possibly. Possibly. But being wrong, Vanye—”

  “What will a man do who is cornered? He is far more apt to use the gate at Mante and escape us.”

  He argued for their lives, for sanity and safety.

  And she gathered that thing into her lap in silence, the sword, that weapon which was constantly beside her, day and night, and which gave them no peace.

  “Liyo, you drive this man and you force this man, and what will he do? You will unseat him; his own vassals will question his power, or you will make him desperate—you always strike too hard, liyo—listen to me: you know no moderation with your enemies. You give them no choices and while they have no warning, that serves you well—but you have no subtlety in the field. You are the kind of lord who loses lives—forgive me.” His heart beat hard and he gazed up into her eyes in a dread of the things he had to say with brutal force, that the numbness of recent sleep let him say without stumbling, and the quiet of the dawn let her hear without preventing him. “If it were an army with us I should never question you: if you told me to go against any odds, then, I would do that, and trust there was good cause. But you have no army. You have one man. And he is bound, liyo, to cover your back and your side, as long as he can; and he will do that. But he is one man, all the same, and someday, if you keep on as you are, you will lose him, because he will die before he lets you go down first.”

  The frown had deepened on her face. There was storm in her eyes. “I can guard my own back. I need no fools to kill themselves, plague take you, I have had enough of fools to fling themselves in my way—”

  “It is your back I am talking about.”

  Her breath came hard. His own did. “And I am talking about fools,” she said. “Bron’s sort. Chei’s sort. Arunden, for another.” Her enemies saw that look. It had been a long time since she had turned it on him. “Ten thousand men at Irien, who would not hold where I told them to hold, no, they must get to the fore of me, because I am there and their damnable pride makes them do what no lord could order them to do in cold blood, if it means charging a wide open gate—”

  “That is what you are doing now. That is what I am objecting to, liyo. Do you not see it?”

  There was shock in her eyes, and outrage, a shake of her head. “Thee is—”

  “I am telling you that you are wrong. I do not do that often. And you do not want to hear me because you suppose I do not want the same thing that you want. But that is how much I love you: I do not know enough to understand all the why of the things you do, but I stake my soul that you are right; I have sworn to go on with or without you, liyo, and if that is true, then listen to me, will you listen, if you do not think me an utter fool?”

  “I am listening,” she said in a different and milder voice.

  “Be the wind. Do not make our enemy afraid. If he hears reports what happened south of here, he will use his power. He has men to send. He has ten thousand things to try before he is out of resources. He will not run at the first whisper of war. He will attack. And we will be the wind again and go find him in his lair.”

  “So easily. Did thee ever take Myya?”

  Heaven! she has a sharp edge when the swords are out.

  “No,” he said reasonably, quietly. It is tactic. Lord in Heaven, she knows only the attack, never defense, even with me. “But then, I was one man. They did not take me. And if I had aimed at the Myya-lord’s life, I would have taken him, do you doubt it?”

  She thought on that point, long and long, with that worried line between her brow.

  “Liyo, they are all about us. They are watching the road. All we need do is stay quiet, and I do not think, I cannot believe that the rumor of a rumor will send this qhal-lord running with his tail tucked. No. Being a man used to power, he will likeliest strike first at his own folk, to subdue any disloyalty, and only then think of us; and when he hears we are only two—”

  “With a gate-weapon. That is what we may well face if he has time to marshal his strength. Whatever he has, he will use.”

  “He might use it by the time we could get there. We cannot go there with enough speed. And we would be spent. So let him lay his plans. We can turn them.”

  She let go her breath, and slid Changeling between her knees, hands on the quillons that were the dragon’s arms, resting her head against the hilt.

  Very, very long she rested there—thinking, he knew, thinking and thinking.

  He rested too, arm on knee and chin on arm, wondering where her thoughts were going, into what nooks that she would report to him, unraveling all his arguments, going far beyond him, telling him new and terrible things.

  Then she lifted her head. “Aye,” she said. “But it is a fearful risk, Vanye.”

  All along, he had used argument like weapons in drill—one tactic, the next, the next in despair that any would suffice: only now he heard what she was saying and realized it was agreement.

  Then, as always when he had won some lesser point, the doubts came to him. What he truly, at the depth of his heart, yearned for, was for his liege to bring up some miracle, some assurance that she knew precisely how to get into Mante and overcome their enemy.

  Knowing that she had no such resource, and that she surrendered her instincts for berserker attack, to his for stealth and stalking, against an enemy of her own kind—

  It was as if a weight had come down on him, of the sort that he was not accustomed to bear. And perhaps some of it had left her shoulders. She gazed at him with an expression he could not read, but a less anguished one—perhaps thinking, perhaps planning again, at a range still beyond him.

  He earnestly hoped so. For when it came to qhal, he had no idea at all of their limits.

  Chapter 12

  The riders gathered again in a place near the road, and Chei leaned on the saddle of the big roan, weary, and feeling the weight of the mail on his shoulders, in a dizziness in which his very body seemed diminished, the light dimmed, the voices about him become strange, calling him ‘my lord’ and speaking to him with courtesies. The qhal who served him were not confused. Certainly a few of the humans with him measured the difference in his stature and saw his apparent youth and thought treasonous thoughts, but had they lifted daggers against him, there were enough of his own folk about him to protect him, and there was the captain of Skarrin’s warders, who was bound, under present and ironical circumstance, to protect him.

  They were a few more than twoscore—of all that company that had left Morund-keep, of the levies; and ten—those men of Skarrin’s who had joined them at Tejhos-gate. The rest were dead or scattered or wounded too severely to continue; and it had needed at least half a score men to leave in charge of the wounded, but he had left six and bidden them stay camped where they were for fear the hillmen might hit them on the way back to Morund. That was how desperate things had become.

  This open sky is madness, Chei thought. The open blue above them, the land laid open to any witness, shivered through his nerves as if he lay naked to his enemies, though he remembered fighting in such land before, in times that humans had come deep within the plains. Something deep as instinct pulled him in two directions, and feared nameless things.

  Most of all, the one he would have turned to for advice was not there, and whenever he turned and looked about him he missed that face, which shifted and changed from silver-haired to red to palest gold like some reflection in troubled water: Pyverrn. Jestryn. Bron. The void ached in him, in a place where the voices could not reach, a point at which all memory found anchor. Qhiverin-Gault-Chei, all alone among the men who followed him, longed for a familiar haven, even if the
nature of it confounded itself between stone walls and the closeness of forest—

  But his enemy, the enemy which lay hidden somewhere in this place, did not shift like sun on water: of him, of her, of the man he was and the man who pursued, he could not think clearly at all: it was like trying to look at the sun itself, a glare in which no shape was distinguishable.

  “The troops from Mante are coming south to meet us,” he told his followers, as he paced the red horse along the roadside, where they formed up. “The captain affirms that. We will have reinforcements. And we will not close with our enemy, now we know what we face.” The red horse shifted under him and he curbed it, riding it back and forth past his listeners, silver-haired and dark, qhal and human. “But there are other ways. Those of you who have been loyal to me—I will reward after this. Count on it. Those of you who are human I will gift with land. Do you hear me? For those of you who follow me, I will give you the holdings of every man who fled. I will have it known how I pay loyalty—and deserters. We will settle this business, we will settle it on our terms, and give Mante’s troops the leavings. Our enemies have gone into the land, that is what they have done; but they do not know their way—and we do. I want this pair. I want them. Need I say how much?”

  • • •

  “I have found a place,” Vanye said, when they found each other after scouting afoot up and down the area, the gray horse and the white left in hiding the other side of the hill.

  “Good,” Morgaine said, wiping her brow, “because there is nothing in the other direction.”

  It was a place they rode to then, where the rains had washed beneath a sandstone cap, and where still a little water ran in a sandy bed, folded on either side by hills and closed round by thorn and a scattered few trees.

  And no better place to hide indeed had they found.

  It was cold rations and not so much as fire to boil water, but it was rest; it was respite from the pace they had set, and it was a chance for the horses to recover their strength, if it meant walking afield and bringing grass to them to keep them hidden.