He shivered again, seeing Ichandren's head outside Gault's gates, seeing that dungeon again, and hearing the screams wrung from a man who was the bravest and strongest he had ever known, before they reduced him to a red and terrible lump of meat and struck off his head. . . .
. . . There was revenge. Gault would never know him by sight. It was a random choice had selected the few for the wolves. He was no one, that Gault should single him out for any personal revenge.
But if he was a wolf, there was a time Gault would learn to fear him and to curse the day he met him.
That was an aim even worth a man's soul.
For the first time the chance of a future opened up before him, like a mist clearing.
But he had met the woman's eyes by accident across the fire, and after that avoided—after that, avoided remembering, too closely, that he had felt himself in bodily danger from her. It was that kind of feeling, that a man did not expect to feel with a woman, that was unmanly to feel with a woman, and that one would never admit to; but if ever he remembered it, afterward, when he was with a woman, then he would have no power with her … no more with any woman, ever. . . .
She was indeed a witch, he thought. He knew folk who called themselves witches, and made a great deal of muttering over their herbs and potions, and midwived babes and horses into the world. A man did not cross them, or did so only if he had bought the token of a greater one for stronger luck—and too great a one might, the priests said, taint a man's soul.
Such great power he had felt in this one. He knew that it was. And it was better mercy by far had he gotten from her than Gault had gotten from Mante—the Gault they had honored before the qhal had taken him up with talk of peace; the Gault who had been Ichandren's friend, and worked the same ploy on Ichandren—God help them all.
Truce. Truce—Gault had said.
That was the faith qhal kept.
The man Vanye came down the hill finally: Chei watched him come—and trembled, as if in a dream; and walked with him at his invitation to share their fire.
Thereafter Chei sat wrapped in his blanket and took a meal he could not eat his share of, so weak his stomach was. But they were easy with him, the man and the woman both, and asked him few questions, and afterward let him lie over near the fire, while the witch took the pans down to the water to wash them like any woman of the bands; and Vanye after she had returned, led the horses down to water them, from their picket higher on the hill.
After that, while daylight faded, they worked on what Chei recognized for his own gear, picking bits of rust from the links of his chain-mail, scouring the metal with water and river sand, finishing it with oil.
His boots were already done, the one split as it was, but with a length of harness-leather lying looped about it, sufficient to wrap several times about the ankle and hold it.
He saw all these things, lying on his side, with only the blanket to clothe him . . . watched them work, even the witch, on these menial tasks which seemed to be for his benefit—for him, since they had no conceivable need of a pair of ruined boots or armor much poorer than the wonderful close-linked mail and supple leather that they wore.
In the deep night, when they said to each other that it was time to sleep, the man dragged his saddle and his bedding over by the horses and lay down there, while the witch wrapped herself in a dark cloak and settled against an old, thick-boled tree, to keep night-watch. They left him the warmth of the coals. They said no word to threaten him. They did not tie him.
Chei lay in the dark thinking and thinking, watching and drowsing by turns, observing every smallest move they made. Hope trembled through him, that they had already accepted him, for whatever reasons. He wept, in the dark, long and unreasonably.
He did not know why, except their kindness had broken something in him which all Gault's threats had never touched, and he was terrified it was all a lie.
Chapter Three
It was fish, the next supper they shared. There was not a rabbit to be had—the wolves, Vanye reckoned, who sang to them nightly, had seen to what hunting there was about the gate; although why the wolves themselves stayed in such an unwholesome place, he wondered.
It was the mountains to the south, Chei said; and humans; humans to the west and north; qhal to the north and east; and in all, Vanye reckoned, the wolves were as shy of habitations as they were in other worlds.
Excepting only, Chei said, the half-wolves. Gault's pets.
Or once, when war had made chaos of the middle lands—then Chei remembered the wild wolves coming down to human camps and villages to take the sheep. He remembered his folk moving a great deal—where, he did not know, except it had been in the hills.
"Then," Chei said, looking mostly at the fire, as if his thoughts ranged distant, "then we settled in Perot's freehold, in Aglund. We felt safe there. But that only lasted—at most, a year. Then Gault was fighting along with the other lords. I was a boy then. I remember—I remember wars, I remember having to move and move again. I remember the winters, with the snow chest-deep on the horses—and people died, many died. We came to Gault's freehold, in Morund. We were borderers, for him. Those were the good years. I rode with Ichandren. My brother, my father and I. They are dead. All."
He was silent for a time, then.
"Mother?" Morgaine asked.
Chei did not look at her. His throat worked. But the eyes never shifted from their wide gaze on the fire. "I do not know. I saw her last—" A lift of one shoulder. "I was thirteen winters. That was before Morund fell and Gault went north. He came back . . . Changed. After that—after that, he and the qhal from the north killed most of the human men at Morund-keep. Killed most everyone, and brought in men from the east. They would fight for Gault. Some of those from Morund might have wanted to, but if they took them at all, they marched them west, to serve the other qhal-lords. Gault would never trust men who had served him before he was qhal. Aye, nor women either. They put them all on wagons. We lost—twenty men trying to take the women from the guards. My father died then. There were just too many."
There was more of silence. The fire snapped and spat.
"But I doubt very much my mother was alive," Chei said. "Even then. My father believed it. But no one else did. She was not a strong woman. And it was a bad year."
Twenty men lost, Vanye thought, amid a man's grief, and thought by the way he had said it that twenty had been a devastating loss. There were just too many. . . .
He met Morgaine's eyes across the fire and knew that she had added that as quickly and set things somewhat in proportions—she, who had taught a young outlaw something beyond woodcraft and ambush; his lady-liege, who had ridden to war and sat in the affairs of kings a hundred years before he was born.
But she had led him into both war and kings' councils since then.
He rested his arms on his knees and probed the coals with a stick, watching it take fire.
"The trees," Morgaine said. "Do you mark them, Chei, how they twist here? Yet there is no present feeling of unease in this woods. Birds come here. They tolerate the gate-force very little. Why do you suppose this is?"
"I do not know," Chei said faintly.
Morgaine did not answer.
"Why would it be?" Chei asked her then.
Morgaine shifted the dragon sword to her lap, tucking one knee up, and hugged that knee against her. "If I cast leaves in the fire, it would flare. Would it not?"