Exiles Gate com-4

by C. J. Cherryh

  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?"

  Chei's face was stark and wide-eyed in the twilight. Bron had frozen in place. Vanye withdrew the sword and laid it back across his saddlebow, with a second and challenging glance toward one and the other brother.

  "The dark will help us," Morgaine said quietly. Vanye did not see her face. He did not want to see it. There was in his vision a boy, staring up at him from a dusty road as if death had greatly astonished him. He saw candles and a nightmare room in Ra-Morij, his brother's face all white and still.

  He concentrated instead on the rolling land in front of them and on the hills about them, a constant pass of the eyes, lest the riders arrive at their flank or bring archery to bear from the hill nearest.

  "I hear them," Morgaine said, and a moment later he heard them too, horses coming at considerable speed for horses long on the trail. Their own blew and shifted, and Arrhan's ribs worked less strenuously between his legs. That was the simple strategy of their position: the enemy chose to exhaust their horses overtaking on the uphill; they rested theirs by waiting.

  It was a small band, ten to twenty, that crested the hill. Where are the rest of them? Vanye thought in a moment's cold panic. Then the rest poured over the hilltop, forty, eighty, a hundred and more riders sweeping out on either side of the road.

  Steel rang as Bron began to draw.

  "No," Morgaine said calmly. "Wait. Both of you keep constantly to Vanye's left. Do nothing until I tell you. I have scant patience and less charity today. Vanye—" She changed suddenly to Kurshin accents. "Do not attempt the stone. Here!"

  He had reached after his bow. She flung him Changeling. He caught it one-handed across its sheath, in a rush of cold fear, first because she had thrown it; then that it was in his keeping—the one of her weapons that he knew how to use. He had only to look at the odds and know why.

  "Chei!" he said, and flung his own arrhendur sword to Chei in the same fashion,
as accurately caught, while a familiar panic loosened his joints.

  He drew several breaths more, hoping neither man saw; hoping more that Morgaine did not. It was his besetting weakness, that set his palms sweating on Changeling's hilt and gray sheath, and his heart pounding to the hoofbeats of the oncoming riders.

  Heaven save us, he thought as the line began to spread wide.

  Beside him, Morgaine signaled. He reined over, and Bron and Chei took a place at equal separation in their meager line.

  The centermost riders drew to a halt. The rest kept moving, a half-ring about them, still closing. Move us, he thought, for the love of Heaven, backward, forward, liyo, one or the other!

  Morgaine leveled her hand toward their center, where the most of the qhalur riders were. "Halt!" a man called out, and that envelopment ceased on the instant, everything stopped, except the breathing and stamping of the horses and the leathery creak and jingle of armored riders.

  Morgaine's hand did not lower. It stayed aimed at the center of the qhalur ranks.

  "My lady," the man said to her, human face, human voice.

  "Gault," Chei's voice rasped. "That is Gault, on the roan. The man by him is Jestryn ep Desiny—he was one of our company—"

  "My lord Gault," Morgaine shouted back. "What have we to say to each other that you follow me so far from home?"

  "We might have discovered that had you come to me." Gault rode forward a few paces and drew the roan to a halt again. "You take strange allies, my lady. Brigands. Rebels. You set them free from my justice. You burn my lands and kill my game. Am I to take this for a friendly gesture?"

  "I rarely practice justice. Outright slaughter, yes. I do not call it pretty names, my lord Gault."

  "What is that you hold?" Gault's big roan surged forward and he curbed it, reining aside.

  "That which seems to make you prudent, my lord. Justifiably so. I see you have talked to my enemies."

  "And is your report of me so foul?" Again Gault paced the horse the other direction, weaving a slow, distracting course in the deepening dusk, which Morgaine's hand followed constantly.

  "It is your death, my lord. My patience is lessening with every step you take. Do you want to discover which is the fatal one?"

  Another three paces. "He is delaying," Vanye muttered, scanning the hills with constant attention. "There is something else out there, and he is waiting for the dark."

  "My lady," Gault called out. "You and I might have more to speak of than you think likely. And perhaps more in common than you think." Gault's voice grew gentler, and he curbed his horse's straying. "I take it that it is you I deal with and not this gentleman by you."

  "It is myself," she said. "Have no doubt of that."

  "What is he?"

  "This is delay," Vanye said. "Liyo, seek no more of him. Let us be out of here."

  "My companion," Morgaine answered Gault. "So—you do not know everything about me."

  "Should I?" Again the horse surged forward and Gault reined it back. "You are no visitor out of Mante. Your name is Morgaine. So the humans say. Mine is Qhiverin—among others."

  "Liyo. Break away—now! Do not listen to this serpent."

  "You are a stranger here," Gault said. "A wayfarer of the gates. You see I am not deceived. You have threatened Mante. Now you will kill me and all my men, lest I reach Tejhos. You think that you have no choice. But here am I, come to parley with you when I might have stayed safe in Morund—or turned prudently south to Morund-gate, once I learned what you are. I did not. I have risked my life and my lord's favor to find you. Is this the action of an implacable enemy?"

  "Do not believe him," Bron said. "My lady, do not listen!"

  Gault held up one hand, took his sword from its hangings and dropped it ringing to the ground. "There. Does that relieve your suspicions?"

  "Withdraw your men," Morgaine said.

  Gault hesitated, seeming uncertain, then lifted his hand to the darkened sky.

  A black and moving hedge crested the hill eastward.

  "Riders on our left!" Vanye cried, and ripped Changeling from its sheath.

  The air went numb and Arrhan shied under him as that the blade came free, an opal blaze till its tip cleared the sheath and whirled free.

  Then a darkness greater than the night formed at Changeling's point, and drew in the air all about them. Wind shrieked and keened; men cried out in panic, and the dark lines went to chaos, some breaking forward to meet him, some turning to flee.

  "Gate," he heard cry throughout the enemy ranks, "Gate!" —for gate it was, leading to Hell itself. He swung it and a horse and rider together went whirling away into dark, screaming with one terror. Others collided with each other in their attempt to escape his attack, and them he took in one stroke and the next, merciless, for there was no stopping it, there was no delicacy in it—it ate substance and spun it out again, streaming forms of living men away into Hell and cold—

  —one and the next and the next as Arrhan cut a curving swath through attackers who trampled each other trying to flee it.

  "Archers!" he heard cry. It was for his liege and his comrades he had concern. He reined aside to bring the hell-thing to the defense of his own—taking missiles askew with the wind, trying to shield his liege if he could find her in the unnatural light and the blinding wind.

  "Liyo!" he shouted, desperate, fighting when he must, when some rider rushed him. The gate-force quivered through his arm and his shoulder and deafened him with its screaming; his eyes grew full of the hell-light and the sights and the faces till he was numb and blinded.

  "Liyo!"

  "Vanye!" he heard, and went to that thin sound, turning Arrhan, forcing her with his heels as the mare faltered in blind confusion.

  Riders swept toward him. He swung the sword up at the nearest and saw the horrified face in the light of the blade, saw the mouth open in a cry of disbelief.

  "Bron!" he cried, wrenching the blade aside, veering so that Arrhan skidded and fought wildly for balance.

  Bron was gone. The bartered horse thundered past riderless.

  He guided Arrhan about in a stumbling turn, and saw Morgaine beyond, silver and black, and Siptah's eyes wild in the opal fire.

  "Follow!" she ordered him, and reined about and rode for the dark and the road.

  He did not even think then; he followed. He drove his heels into Arrhan's flanks and swept to her right and behind, to keep Morgaine safe from what he did not know and could not see for the shock to his soul and the blinding of his eyes. If there were enemies still behind he did not know. He held Changeling naked to his right, protecting them both, for in that howling wind no arrow could reach them.

  Up, up and up the steep slope, until horses faltered on the wet grass, and Siptah came about and Arrhan slowed, blowing froth back from her bit.

  "Sheathe it," Morgaine cried. "Sheathe it!"

  He discovered the sheath safe in its place at his side: he had done that much before he lost himself, reflexive and unremembered act. He took the sheath in a trembling hand and turned the other numbed and aching wrist to wobble the point toward safety, the only thing that would contain Changeling's fire.

  That small aperture was a goal he suddenly feared he could not make without calamity. His hand began to shake.

  "Give over!" Morgaine said in alarm.

  He made it. He slid the point home and the fire dimmed and died, so that he was truly blind. His right arm ached from fingers to spine. He had no strength in it nor feeling in his fingers. "I killed Bron," he said with what voice he could manage, quite calmly. "Where is Chei?"

  "I do not know," Morgaine said, reining Siptah close to him. There was hardness in her voice, was very steel. He could not have borne any softer thing. "We did not take them all. Some escaped. I do not know which ones."

  "Forgive—" His breath seemed dammed up in him. "I—"

  "We are near Tejhos. There is a chance that Mante will mistake one gate-fire for the other. At least for the hour." She turned
Siptah on the slope and rode, Arrhan followed by her own will, dazed and blind as he.

  "Too near the gate," he heard her say. "Too cursed near. We must be nearly on Tejhos-gate. I should never have given it to you."

  "Bron is dead," he said again, in the vague thought that she might not have understood him. He had to say it again to believe it. The fabric of the world seemed thinned and perilously strained about him and what he had done seemed done half within some other place, unlinked and without effect here. Things that Were could not be mended piece to piece if he did not say it till it took hold of him. "Chei may have gone with him—O God. O God!"

  He began to weep, a leakage from his eyes that became a spasm bowing him over his saddle.

  "Is thee hurt?" Morgaine asked him sharply, grasping Arrhan's rein. They had stopped somehow. He did not recall. "Is thee hurt?"

  "No," he managed to say. "No." He felt Siptah brush hard against his leg and felt Morgaine touch him, a grip on his shoulder which he could hardly feel through the armor. He was alone inside, half deaf with the winds, blinded by the light which still swung as a red bar passing continually in his vision. He was drowning in it, could not breathe, and he was obliged to say: "No. Not hurt," when next he could draw a breath, because she had no time for a fool and a weakling who killed a comrade and then could not find his wits again. He pushed himself up by the saddlebow and groped after the reins.

  "Give me the sword," she said. "Give it!"

  He managed to wind the reins about his numbed right hand and to pass Changeling back to her with his left.

  "Brighter," he remembered, competent in this at least, that his mind recollected something so difficult amid the chaos. He indicated with a lifting of his left hand toward the northeast, as the road ran. "There. There will be Tejhos gate."

  She stared in that direction; she hooked Changeling to her belt and they rode again at all the pace the horses could bear. His right arm ached in pulses that confused themselves with the rhythm of the horses or with his heartbeats, he could not tell which. He worked the fingers desperately, knowing the likelihood of enemies. He scanned darkened hills the crests of which swam with the blurring of his eyes.