This is power— and the captain has to respect it; and very much wishes he had Mante to consult. And what I can do with it and with what the lady carries, you do not imagine.
"Place your men," he ordered the captain.
"My lord," the man said. Typthyn was his name.
The serpent's man. Skarrin's personal spy.
Chei drew a long breath through his nostrils and looked at the sky, in which the sun had only then passed zenith.
The sun went down over the hill, the shadow came, and they built a fire, careless of the smoke. Vanye watched all this, these slow events within the long misery of frozen joints and swollen fingers. He had not achieved unconsciousness in the afternoon. He had wished to. He wished to now, or soon after they began with him, and he was not sure which would hurt the worse, the burning or the strain any flinching would put on his joints.
He flexed his shoulders such as he could, and moved his legs and arched his spine, slowly, once and twice, to have as much strength in his muscles as he could muster.
In the chance she might come, in the chance his liege, being both wise and clever, might accomplish a miracle, and take this camp, and somehow avoid killing him, remembering—he prayed Heaven—that there was a gate-stone loose and in the hands of an enemy.
But if that miracle happened, and if he survived, then he would have to be able to get on his feet. Then he had to go with her and not slow her down, because there was no doubt there were forces coming south out of Mante, and he must not, somehow must not, hinder her and force her to seek shelter in these too-naked hills, caring for a crippled partner.
A partner fool enough to have brought himself to this.
That was the thing that gnawed at him more than any other—which course he should take, whether he should do everything the enemy wished of him and trust his liege to stay clear-headed; or whether he should refuse for fear she would not, and then be maimed and a burden to her if she did somehow get to him.
Then there was that other thought, coldly reasonable, that love was not enough for her, against what she served. There had been some man before him. And she traveled light, and did always the sensible thing—no need ever fear that she would do something foolish.
He told himself that: he could do what he liked, cry out or remain silent, and have the qhal dice him up piecemeal, and it would do neither harm nor good. He had been on his own since she rode out of here, and would be, till the qhal dragged him as far as Mante and either killed him or, more likely, treated his wounds and kept him very gently till some qhal claimed him for his own use.
Or—it was an occasional thought, one he banished with furious insistence—she might have run straight into forces sent from Mante, and be pinned down and unable to come back—or worse; or very much worse. A harried mind conjured all sorts of nightmares, in the real and present one of the smell of smoke and the unpleasant, nervous laughter of men contemplating another man's slow destruction.
The darkness grew to dusk. The qhal finished their supper, and talked among themselves.
When Chei came to him, to stand over him in the shadows and ask him whether he had any inclination to do what they wanted.
"I will call out to her," Vanye said, not saying what he would call out, once he should see her. "Only I doubt she is here to listen. She is well on her way down the road, that is where she is."
"I doubt that." Chei dropped down to his heels, and took off the pyx that swung from its chain about his neck. "Your property."
He said nothing to that baiting.
"So you will call out to her," Chei said. "Do it now. Ask her to come to the edge of camp—only to talk with us."
He looked at Chei. Of a sudden his breath seemed too little to do what Chei asked, the silence of the hills too great.
"Do it," Chei urged him.
He shaped a cut lip as best he could and whistled, once and piercingly. "Liyo!"
And with a thought not sudden, but one that had come to him in the long afternoon: "Morgaine, Morgaine!For God's sake hear me! They want to talk with you!"
"That is not enough," Chei said, and opened the box, so that a light shone up on his face from the gate-jewel there. The light glared; flesh crawled. Everything about it was excessive and twisted.
"You have only to feel that thing," Vanye said, "to know there is something wrong in the gate at Mante. Truth, man. I have felt others. I know when one is wrong."
"You— know."
"You have no right one to compare it against. It is wrong. It is pouring force out—" He lost his thought as Chei took the jewel in his fingers and laid it down again in the box, and set the open box on the ground beside him.
"So she will know where you are. Call to her again."
"If she is there, she heard me." He had hope of that small box and its stone. The light that made him visible in the twilight, made Chei a target, if Morgaine were there, if she could be sure enough whether the man kneeling by him was the one she wanted. She might be very accurate—unlike a bowman. Several men might be on their way to the ground before they knew they were under attack.
Or she might, instead, be far on her way to Mante.
"That is not enough," Chei said, and called to the men at the fire in rising. "You can," he said then, looking down, "give her far more reason."
He was not going to put them off, then. He might shout, make a useless appeaclass="underline" he spared himself that indignity and drew several quick, deep breaths before they got to him.
When the iron touched him he did not even try to hold it back.
It went on, and on. There was laughter. A human spat in his face, and some thought that amusing. Others, elegant qhal, simply watched.
She has gotten clear,he kept thinking, he insisted to think, like a litany, imagining gray horse, silver-haired rider, far and far across the hills. She is far too wise for them to catch.
And that is well. That is very well.
"O God—!"
Then: "M'lord!" someone said sharply, and a hand gripped his hair and a knife pricked his throat.
It is over,he thought.
But something pale appeared and drifted like a cloud in the dark across the stream. He blinked and haze cleared momentarily on a glimmer of silver hair in the dark, black figure in the starlight, the dragon sword, sheathed, set point down in front of her.
"Liyo, "he cried from a raw throat. "Archers!"
The knife pierced his skin; Chei struck it aside.
"We have a man of yours!" Chei shouted out.
"Liyo,they know—"
A blow smashed into his skull, jolting everything into dark, his sense of place, of whether he had warned her or only meant to—
"Do you want me or do you want to talk?" Morgaine's clear voice rang out of the dark.
Vanye slid his eyes to the open box, the gate-jewel. She could not draw, with that unshielded, without taking him as Bron had gone. He struggled against those who held him, only to bring his legs around, tears of pain running through the sweat on his face.
"Do you want your lover back?" Chei taunted her. "Come in and bargain for him."