The Devil rather than honest men, he remembered her saying. O my liege, you have found him.
The two from the cliff came riding around the shoulder of the hill as Chei had come, stopped their horses by the red roan; and came to pay their respects to their recent enemy—the bowman and the qhal, the bowman's human face betraying intense worry, the qhal's having no expression at all.
"Rhanin ep Eorund," Chei named them. "And Hesiyyn Aeisyryn, both late of Mante."
"I will give you a simple choice," Vanye said, leaning on his bow, and this time with a quiver half full of arrows. "Ride off now, and go free. Or go with us, do my liege honest service, and I will forget what I owe you. I count that more than fair."
Rhanin nodded, clear of eye and countenance; and had the likeness of truth about him. "Aye," Rhanin said, and let go a long breath, as if he had taken him at his word and had worried, until then.
Hesiyyn lowered his eyes and inclined his head, and looked up with a bland, half-lidded insolence. "Anything you will, lord human."
Vanye stared at him and thought of striking him to the ground. But then it would come to killing—not one but all of them.
The archer had fired on his liege: but in defense of his own lord. While this Hesiyyn, he judged, might do anything and everything for his own sake.
And this, this was the qhal who had intervened to save his life.
"If they ride with us," he said to Chei, disdaining the qhal with a passing glance, "remember I hold you accountable."
And he turned his back on Chei as well, feeling their stares like knives; his heart beat like a hammer in his temples, and his face was hot, the sky like brass. Morgaine said something to him of riding out, that they were well off this hillside. "Aye ,"he said, and shouldered his bow and his quiver, and went to untangle the horses, which had wound themselves into a predicament, their two with the nervous geldings. Siptah had braced himself, flat-eared, too trail-wise to move, despite Arrhan's lead-rope wound across his rump, and that the blaze-faced gelding had a hind leg in among the rocks, its rump against the wall, one foreleg crossing its partner's lead.
He cut both free and straightened out the leads, darting an anxious eye to Chei and the rest, but Morgaine was watching them: he saw her. He shoved Siptah with his shoulder to gain room, held Arrhan steady to re-tie the leads, and recalled his sword on Chei's saddle, uphill with the other horses.
He thought of climbing the rocks and making the exchange, but it was a warhorse in question, easier that Chei should deal with it, and he was out of breath and not wanting either the climb or any dealings with weapons at close quarters: bruised ribs and stiff muscles, he thought, leaning on Siptah's side to work past him and lead him out of the confusion.
But when he unstrung his bow to tie it with his gear on Arrhan's saddle, the weakness of his arm and his lack of wind surprised him. He had to make a second pull to slip the string. When he had gotten it tied and set his foot in the stirrup, it more than hurt to pull himself up, it sapped the strength from him and made him sweat and his head reel despite the morning chill.
It is the sun-heat on the metal, he told himself; there is no wind here. Using the bow and pushing the horses about had strained the ribs. It will pass.
He sat still, with the sweat running, leaning on the saddlebow, while Morgaine mounted up. Get us moving,he thought, feeling the sting of salt in his cuts. There was no wind in this place. He longed to be off this hill, not knowing what they might meet on that slope down there or out in the land: best hurry before they collect a defense,he thought; and everything conspired with delays.
"They will go first," Morgaine said, starting out. "I have told them."
"Aye," he murmured. "Let Skarrin's men have themfor ranging-shots."
"They might have killed us," Morgaine said. "They could have taken the weapons. That much is true."
He thought about that.
"But I do not forget what they did," she said.
"Aye," he said. The hill seemed steeper than he recalled as they struck the open slope—a place littered with dead, thirty, forty or more.
And Chei and his men rode past them, dutifully taking the lead.
'Is thee all right?" Morgaine asked.
"A little faint. I am well enough. It is the heat." He urged Arrhan to a faster pace, and overtook Chei's men.
"Arrows," he said. "All we can gather. We may need them."
"Aye," Rhanin said, and veered off on that chancy slope, at hazard of further attack, from men on the ground, from Heaven knew where on the rocky heights around them.
Rhanin would not, he thought at the back of his mind, come back. The man would take his chance and ride for his own life.
"The sword," he said to Chei.
Chei took it from his saddle and reversed it, passing it over as they rode.
"A good blade," Chei said.
He said nothing. He unhooked his own from Arrhan's saddle and passed it by the hilt.
"Alayyis' sword," Chei murmured.
"My liege did not ask his name," he said harshly, and reined back and hooked the arrhendur blade to his sword-belt, waiting for Morgaine to overtake him.
O God,he thought then, why did I say that? Why am I always a fool?
Morgaine overtook him. He murmured an explanation for the bowman's departure, and started up again, riding after the others, a crowded trail avoiding the lumps of bodies which lay like so much refuse on the hillside. He watched carefully such dead as they did pass close at hand, wary of traps. He watched the hills about them, for any flash of armor, any flight of birds or bit of color out of place.
Far across the field, Rhanin searched, dismounted, searched again. Eventually he came riding back, carrying three quivers of arrows. "I would keep one," Rhanin said, offering two as he rode alongside—no grudging look, only an earnest and an anxious one.
"Do that," Vanye said; and the man gave him them, and turned off downslope, to overtake Chei and Hesiyyn.
He hung the two quivers from his saddlebow, and he stared at Rhanin's retreating back with misgivings. They had reached the bottom of the hill, and the last body, which lay face upward. Carrion birds had gathered. He did not look down at it as they rode their slow course past. That man was incontrovertibly dead. The hour was fraught enough with nightmares, and he had had enough of such sights in his life.
But, he thanked Heaven, there were no ambushes.
The hill beyond the next rise gave out onto the flat again, a broad valley; he blinked at the sweat in his eyes and rubbed at them to make the haze go away.
"Vanye?" Morgaine asked, as Siptah's heavy weight brushed his leg.
"Aye?" His head ached where the helm crossed his brow; the sun heated the metal, heated his shoulders beneath the armor and the pain in his ribs made his breath hard to draw.
"Is thee bearing up?"
"Well enough. Would there was more wind."
Chei had drawn rein in front of them, and scanned the ground; and waited for them with the others.
"We should bear south a little," Chei said. "Around the shoulder—" Chei pointed. "Off into the hills. One of them may well have us in sight. But the weapon you used up there—" He gave a small, humorless laugh. "—will have improved my reputation with Mante. At least for veracity. They will be very hesitant to come at us."