Exiles Gate com-4

by C. J. Cherryh

  Arunden wiped a hand across his mouth. The bowl tilted perilously in his hand. From time to time as Morgaine spoke the gathering murmured almost enough to drown her voice, but it was quiet now.

  Arunden was entirely drunk, Vanye thought. He was drunk and half numb and the visitor he had tried to ply with drink and drug had spun a spell enough to muddle a man's mind—that was the witchery Morgaine practiced. He had seen her work it on more than one man with his wits about him; and he watched now a desperate and inebriate man trying to break the strands of that web, with sweating face and glittering eyes and quickened breath.

  "Lies," Arunden said.

  "Wherein?"

  "Because you will never do it! Because no one can get through."

  "That is my worry. I have said: shelter for the night. Safe passage through to the road. That is all."

  "That is easy done," Arunden said, wiping his mouth again. He held out the bowl which had come to him. "It is empty!"

  A woman hastened to fill it. There were a great number of bowls filled, and a general and rising commotion among the onlookers. Chei's hand a second time rested on Vanye's shoulder.

  "Quiet!" Arunden shouted, and took another deep draft of the bowl. "Quiet!"

  There was a slow ebb of noise. Wind sighed in the leaves, and bodies shifted anxiously.

  "Gault will move against us," Arunden said, and motioned violently toward her with the bowl, spilling the liquor. "That is what you have done!"

  "He may," Morgaine said.

  "What does a woman know about strategy?" Arunden cried then, and seized by the shoulder one of the women who rested near with the skin of drink, and shook at her. "Eleis here—a fair shot and a fair cook, till she comes to bearing, eh, pretty?—a good many of our girls come down to the marches for a few years, but lead? Carry a sword? This arm here and mine—d'you want to go a pass with me, Eleis?"

  There was rude laughter.

  "What do you say?" Arunden asked then, and jutted his chin and waved the bowl toward Vanye.

  Morgaine laid her hand on his arm again. "Patience," she said, and the laughter sank away a little.

  "Go a pass with you?" Vanye asked in measured tones. "Aye, my lord. Gladly. When you are sober."

  There was a moment quieter still. Then Arunden broke out in laughter, and others laughed. He pushed the young woman roughly aside, and the woman caught her balance and got up and left the circle.

  "Are you human?" Arunden asked him.

  "Aye, my lord."

  "Your speech is strange as hers."

  "That may be, my lord. I learned it of her. My own I muchdoubt you would understand."

  "What clan are you from?"

  "Nhi. I am Kurshin. You would not know that land either, my lord. It had gates—which my liege sealed. There have been others. There have been those who attacked my liege. Many of them. She is here with you."

  That, perhaps, took some thinking for some of them. It evidently did, for Arunden, who sat frowning in a sudden quiet and perhaps wondering whether there was an affront somewhere mixed in it.

  "Ha," Arunden said then. "Ha." He lifted the bowl and drained it. "So. Hospitality."

  "That is what we ask," Morgaine repeated patiently.

  "Weapons."

  "That we have, my lord."

  "Men. You need—three thousand men to storm Mante. Four thousand!"

  "I need one. I have him. That is all, my lord. You will reap the benefit of it—here. You will need those three thousand men, here, in the hills, to wait till the qhal grow desperate. That is what you have to do."

  "You tell me strategy?"

  "I could not possibly, my lord. No one could."

  "Ha!" Arunden said. And: "Ha! Wise woman. Witch! Is that a witch?" He elbowed the priest with his bowl. "That is a witch, is she not?"

  "That is a qhal," the priest muttered, "my lord."

  "That is the way out of these hills. That is the way of winning against the whole cursed breed! Qhal against qhal! Qhalur witch—that, they send, slip into Skarrin's own bed, hey—is that how you will do it?"

  "My liege is very tired," Vanye said. "We have been days on the road. She thanks you for your hospitality; and I thank you. I would like to find her a place to rest, by your leave, my lord."

  "Too much to drink, eh?"

  'Travel and drink, my lord." Vanye gathered himself to his feet in one smooth motion: such as the drug had done, rage had dispelled. He reached down his hand and assisted Morgaine to stand, taking matters beyond Arunden's muddled ability to manage. "Good night to you—gracious lord."

  "See to it," Arunden said, waving his bowl, and women leapt up and hurried as seated men edged aside, opening a path in their circle for the course they were about to take. Shouts went up. More drink splashed into bowls.

  But Chei was on his feet too, and Bron. Vanye escorted Morgaine through the press, toward the horses, with Chei at his heels; and young women intercepted them, managing to come not at either of them, but at Chei: "This way," one said, "come, tell them come—"

  "Our horses," Vanye said, and ignored the summons, he and Morgaine, walking back to where Siptah and Arrhan stood, while the crowd behind them muttered with drunken dismay. "Liyo, let me tend them," Vanye said. "They should not see you do such a thing."

  "One of them can tend them," Morgaine said shortly. "But not with our belongings."

  "Aye," he said, understanding the order to stay close by her; and caught his breath and went hurrying ahead of her, between the horses, snatched thongs loose and retrieved their saddlebags and their blankets, finding female hands all too ready to take anything he would not hold back from them, and Siptah bothered enough to be dangerous. "Take them," he said, and threw the reins at Chei's brother, who limped within range. "Get someone to rub them down—both, else you call me." This last because Siptah was on the edge of his temper, and he was not sure whether any man in camp was sober enough to trust with a twenty year old packhorse, let alone the Baien gray.

  "They have vacated a shelter for the lady," Chei said, at his elbow.

  O Heaven, he thought, get us clear of this. And aloud: "See the horses picketed near us, Chei, Bron, I trust you for that. And have our gear near us."

  "Aye," Chei agreed.

  He turned away, after Morgaine and the women, as they tended out of the firelight and toward the shadow of the woods, as the uproar around the fire grew wilder and more frivolous.

  There was more to-do as they came to the ill-smelling little shelter of woven mats and bent saplings. Women offered blankets, offered water, offered bread and a skin of liquor. "Go," he said shortly, and pushed the ragged wool flap aside to enter the shelter where Morgaine waited. Firelight entered through the gaps in the reed walls. After a breath or two his eyes found it enough light to make out more than shadow, the glow of her pale hair, the glimmer of silver at her shoulders as she dropped the cloak, the shape of her face and her eyes as she looked at him.

  "I would kill him," he said. He had done very well up till now. He found himself shaking.

  She came then and embraced him, her cheek against his for a moment, her arms about his ribs; then she took his face solemnly between her hands. "You were marvelous," she said, laughing somewhat; and touched her lips to his, the whole of which confounded him in that way she could do. Perhaps it was the drug which still muddled him. It seemed only courteous not merely to stand there, but to hold to her and to return that gesture, and perhaps it was she who pressed further, he was not sure—only that he did not want to let her go now she had gotten this close and she did not let him go, but held to him and returned him measure for measure till the world spun.

  "Vanye," Chei's voice came from outside the shelter, and he caught his breath and his balance and broke apart from her with a whispered curse; at which a second touch of Morgaine's hands, lightly this time, on his arm, sliding to trail over his fingers—

  "What?" he asked, far too harshly, flinging back the door-flap.

  Perhaps there was
murder in his look; perhaps his rapid breaths said something; or perhaps the firelight struck his face amiss, for Chei's expression went from startlement to thorough dismay.

  "I was about to say," Chei said, above the uproar from about the fire, "I have told them where to picket the horses, yonder. I am going to go back to the fire, if you—I think I should—Bron and I. . . . Your pardon," Chei said suddenly, and backed and made a hasty retreat, not without a backward look; and a second, and a third, before he suddenly had to dodge a tree and vanished around it.

  Vanye caught his breath and, muddled somewhere between outrage and embarrassment, let the door-flap fall again.

  Morgaine's hands rested on his shoulders, and her head against the back of his neck. "We had best take the sleep," she whispered, her breath disturbing the fine hairs there.

  "Aye," he said with difficulty, thinking that sleep was not going to come easily despite the liquor and the drug and the exhaustion. "They are fools out there. At least ninety and nine of them. I cannot credit that Chei is a fool with the lot of them—"

  "I do not think he is," she said. "I think he has found his brother, that is all. Let him be."

  Fire and clangor of arms, one brother lying dead at his hand, the other lying under the knife in hall—and after that, after that was exile, ilin-ban, and every kinsman's hand against him. The old nightmare came tumbling back again, of bastardy and years of torment before he reacted, once, frightened—no, angry —cornered in a practice match.

  Kandrys had not intended his death. He had reasoned his way to that understanding: it would have been only another baiting—except it was the wrong day, the wrong moment, Kandrys' bastard brother grown better and more desperate than Kandrys knew.

  And he had always wanted most that Kandrys would forgive him his existence and his parentage.

  He drew a sudden, gasping breath, as if a cold wind had blown out of that dream, and brought the grave-chill with it.

  "Vanye?"

  "It is that cursed drink," he murmured. "Likely Chei has his ear to matters out there—my mind is wandering. I am hungry, but I think I am too tired to get into the packs. Did you drink anything of it?"

  "No more than I must."

  "They have left us more of the stuff. Whatkind of fools raise such a noise, living as they do? that is a priest out there—"

  She leaned her head against him. "This is not Andur-Kursh. And they are fools who have fought their war too long," she said. "Fools who are losing it, year by year, and see a hope. If they are not thinking how to betray us and do Gault harm. How far can we trust Chei, do you think? For a few leagues still?"

  "I do not know," he said. He slipped her grasp, turning to look at her, as laughter and shrieks rose from the gathering at the fire. "He may. There is no honor for a man here. He is too good for this. This is a sink, liyo, a man who could not hold his folk, except he binds them with that—out there. That is the game this hedge-lord plays. Only he is gone in it himself. Heaven knows about Chei's brother."

  "Heaven knows when Chei knew about his brother," Morgaine said. "Curse him, he forced this, he has gotten us into this tangle; I do not say he was not taken by surprise, I do not know whether he wanted this from the beginning, but there is disaster everywhere about this place. They have left us bread yonder; and meat; likely it is safe enough; and we will take what food we can and prevail on Chei and his brother at least to see us to the Road. That is all we need of him, and there is an end of it."

  "Aye," he said forlornly, and with a sense of anger: "It is a waste, liyo, this whole place is a waste. Heaven knows we could do better for him."

  "Or far worse," she said.

  "Aye."

  She caught him by the arm and held him so. Perhaps her eyes could see him in the dark. She was faceless to him. "If he ties himself too closely to us—will they ever forget? If he stays then, is he or his brother safe, when once the gates die, and powers start to topple? Or if we take them with us—where are they then? Can you promise them better? Best, I say, we let him go. The eight down in the valley are only an earnest of what we shall do here. When power falls here, it will fall hard."

  "Lord in Heaven, liyo —"

  "Truth, Nhi Vanye, bitter truth. That is the ciphering I do: thee knows, thee knows I have no happier choices—except we leave him, here, near a great fool, who will vaunt his way to calamity with the power he imagines he has; and Chei, being Chei, will know when to quit this hedge-lord—or supplant him. That is the best gift we can give him. To leave him among his own kind and kin."

  He drew several large and quietening breaths, "Aye," he said again, reasoning his way through that. "In my heart I know that."

  "Then be his friend. And let him go."

  "Is it that clear?"

  "Vanye, Vanye—" But what else she would have said, she did not say, not for some little moment. Then: "Did I not tell thee, thee could leave me? I warned thee. Why did thee not listen?"

  He said nothing for a moment, in confusion, a sudden hurt, and deep. He traced it several times, trying to understand how she had gotten to that, or what he had said or done to bring her to that offer again.

  Then he realized it for her wound, not his—a doubt she could not lose.

  "There will never be a time," he said. "There will never be. Liyo, when will you believe it? I cannot leave you. I could never leave you. When will you trust me?"

  There was long silence. He wished that he could see her. The very air ached.

  "I do not know," she said finally, in a voice hushed and faint. "I do not know why thee should love me."

  "God in Heaven—"

  But it was not a simple thing that she meant. It was all that she was. It was the whole that she was.

  Chei, then, was not the one she had meant—be his friend. Let him go.

  He took her face between his hands. He kissed her on the brow, and on either cheek, as a man might his kin. He kissed her a third time on the lips, not after the same fashion. It was desperate; it became passionate, and her arms came around him, while the tumult went on outside.

  Then he remembered she had not wanted this, and he heard the arrival of the horses out beside the shelter; and reckoned that there was too much of ill in this place and too much chance of disturbance and too much that they risked. Perhaps she had the same sense of things. He separated himself from her in consternation, and she touched his face.

  "I think they have brought the horses," she said, foolish for the moment as he was, one heartbeat, one way of thinking, one intention between them, and all of it sliding in that way a dream might—coming apart and passing into the ordinary.

  "Aye," he said, feeling himself still breathing in time with her, and all the world having shifted in its balances, and still reeling. He drew another breath. "Best I see where the rest of our gear is."

  And outside, with the horses, dealing with the several men who tried with little success to deal with the gray—"Let him be," he said, and took the reins himself. "Put the tack over there—" He gave orders while the figures at the fire moved darkly against the glare, and shouts rang out, and his mind was dangerously busier with his liege than it was with Arunden's men and with Chei and Bron, who had deserted them.

  "Whoa, whoa," he whispered to the gray stud, and to the mare, the both of which were unsettled by the place, the fire, the strangers about them. He spoke to them in his own tongue, he stroked them with his hands.

  It was strange that he could suddenly be so content to stay a night in this wretched place, or that he could suddenly put the matter of Chei and Chei's betrayals out of his mind. He went back in, he shared a supper of yesterday's bread and a little honey and a sip of their own arrhendur liquor, and somehow they sat closer together than they were wont, and leaned together, armored that they were—and not, after all, fools enough to shed it, whatever the temptation.

  "There is time," she said against his cheek, when they were also fools enough to lie down together, because it was easier than to move elsewhere
.

  And what she had said somehow frightened him, like an ill omen.

  There was a third presence by them, an unliving thing. She had laid Changeling on her other side, that fell thing without which she never slept, and with and without which she could not rest.

  Against that, against the things which had begun to move in the world, he knew he had no power.

  Chapter Seven

  There had been quiet in the camp for some time, in Vanye's restless sleep. The tumult around the fire had sunk away. Now a milky daylight was streaming through the reed walls, and he lay with his eyes open a moment content only to breathe and to feel Morgaine's warmth against his side, and to know that it was no dream that had happened. Sleep, she had bade him finally: if there was harm here they would have done it—only sleep lightly. It had thundered in the last of the night, a little flashing of lightning, a little sifting of rain against the reed roof, no more than that.

  He drifted again, in that half-sleep in which he had spent the little of the night they had had left, alternate with Morgaine, when she would shake at him and tell him it was her turn for an hour of deep rest.

  It was more rest, at least, than sitting awake and battling exhaustion during a first watch: as the course of things had gone, it was rare luxury, considering the weather and the night chill.

  But he came wide awake again at the simultaneous realization that there was a quiet stirring in the camp, and that Morgaine had shifted onto her elbow.

  "They are awake out there," he said reluctantly; and she: