Friends and kin the strangers had taken, as they bade fair to take all the world down to dark.
"Go back if you will," he, Chei, Gault, Qhiverin, had said to his last followers, when they had put distance between themselves and their enemies.
Rhanin had only shaken his head. There was nothing for him in Morund, only in Mante, where his kin were, and his wife, and all else Skarrin had reft away from him. The wife he had had, the human one, in the hills—she would run in terror from what Rhanin had become; and break Rhanin's heart, and with it the heart of the qhal inside him. And Chei knew both things.
Hesiyyn had said, with eyes like gray glass: "To live among pigs, my lord? And tend sheep? Or wait Skarrin's justice?"
He did not understand Hesiyyn. Qhiverin when he was fully qhal had never understood him, only that he was the son of two great families both of which disowned him for his gambling, and that he had been under death sentence in Mante, for verses he had written. He had attached himself to Gault and gambled himself into debt even in Morund: that was Hesiyyn.
So they had ridden north again, from the place they had stopped, not having ridden far south at all.
"They cannot outrace us," Chei said, wiping a second palmful of water over his neck. "They will rest. They will seek some place to lie up for a while—but not long. They know they are hunted."
Wounds had stiffened; and Vanye bestirred himself carefully in the dark, while Morgaine slept. He made several flinching tries at getting to his feet then, cursing silently and miserably and discovering each time some new pain that made this and that angle unwise. Finally he clenched his jaw, took in his breath, and made it all in one sudden effort.
"Ah—" she murmured.
"Hush," he said, "sleep. I am only working the stiffness out."
He dressed by starlight, struggled with breeches and bandages and shirt and padding, and last of all the mail, which settled painfully onto strained muscles and shortened his breath. He fastened up the buckles of the leather that covered it, making them as loose as he dared; he fastened on his belts.
Then he walked by starlight to the place she had tethered the horses, and soothed them and made the acquaintance of the two they had from Chei's men, animals by no means to be disparaged, he thought: the Morund folk bred good horses.
Then he gathered up their blankets and bridles and saddles, the latter with an effort that brought him a cold sweat, but painful as it was, it was good to stretch and move and pleasant to feel some of the stiffness work out of him.
It was even more pleasant to sink down on his heels near Morgaine and whisper: "Liyo,we are ready. I have the horses saddled."
"Out on you," she said muzzily, lifting herself on her elbow; and with vexation: "Thee ought not."
"I am well enough." In the tally of the old game, he had scored highly by that; and it was like the stretch of muscles, a homecoming of sorts.
Home, he thought, better than Morij-keep or any hall he had known—home, wherever she was.
She gathered herself up and paused by him, to lay her hand on his shoulder, and when he pressed his atop it, to bend and hug him to her, with desperate strength, while he was too stiff to stand as easily. "A little further before daybreak," she said. "We will gain what we can. Then we will rest as we need to. With the—"
There was a disturbance among the horses, the two geldings and the mare and the stud in proximity ample reason for it, but Morgaine had stopped; and he listened, still and shivering in the strain of night-chill and stiff muscles.
He pressed her hand, hard, and hers dosed on his and pushed at him: I agree. Move. I do not like this.
He got up then, silently and in one move, for all the pain it cost. He reached Arrhan and quieted her and the remounts as Morgaine took Siptah in charge.
In the starlight, downhill where the stream cut through, a solitary rider appeared, and watered his horse at the lower pool. In a little more, two more riders joined him, and watered theirs, and drank, and rode on across.
Vanye shivered. He could not help it. He bade Arrhan stand quiet with a tug at her head; the others, the remounts, he held close and kept as still as he could, while Morgaine kept Siptah quiet.
They were not Chei's folk, whatever they were. He reckoned them for riders out of Mante, hunting reported invaders—else they would ride the road and go by daylight like honest and innocent travelers.
He moved finally, carefully, and looked at Morgaine. "There will be others," he whispered. "They may search back again along the watercourses."
"Only let us hope they confuse our tracks and their own." She threw Siptah's reins over his neck and rose into the saddle. "Or better yet—Chei's."
He set his own foot into Arrhan's stirrup and heaved upward with an effort that cost pain everywhere.
If they had dared a fire, if they could have sweated the aches out with boiled cloths and herbs, if he could have lain in the sun and baked himself to warmth inside and out, instead of lying cold and rising cold and riding again—but they were too close now, to the gate, and the enemy too aware of their danger.
Turn back, he thought of pleading. Go back into the plains and the hills and let us recover our strength.
But they had come so far. And they had no friends in this land and no refuge, and he did not know whether his instincts were right any longer. He yearned, he yearned with a desperate hope for the gate and a way into some other place than this, another beginning, when this one had gone desperately amiss.
They did not try to make speed by dark, with the ground stony and uneven as it was. They rode down one long sweep of hill, passed between others, and over a brushy shoulder. They kept a pace safe for the horses and quiet as they could manage, under a sky too open for safety.
And once, that Siptah pricked up his ears and Arrhan looked the same direction, off to their left flank, his heart went cold in him. He imagined a whole hostile army somewhere about them—or some single archer, who might be as deadly. "Likely some animal," Morgaine said finally.
And further on, where they stopped to breathe within a stand of scrub: "Time, I think, we gave the horses relief," he said. "But I do not want to stop here."
"Aye," Morgaine said, and slid down, to tie Siptah's tether to his halter; and to calm the stallion, who took exception to the geldings, flattening his ears and pricking them up again, and swinging between them and Arrhan as Vanye dismounted.
"Hold," Morgaine hissed at the gray, and caught his tether-rope, which usually would stop him; but his head came up and his nostrils flared toward the wind, ears erect.
"Stay," Vanye said quietly, calmly as he could. "There is something there."
The horses were vulnerable. There was no guarantee of cover for them beyond this point. There was no guarantee they were not riding into worse. Siptah threw his head and protested softly, dancing sideways.
"Dawn could see us pinned here," she said. "That is no help."
"Then they have to come to us. Liyo,this once—"
"I thought thee had no more advice."
He drew in a sharp breath. Pain stabbed through bruised ribs. "Liyo,—"
Brush cracked, somewhere up on the slope.
"I agree with you," he said. "Let us be out of this."