"You carried mine so long and faithfully," Roh mocked him out of the dark, "I hate to deprive you of it."
"Avert," he said, crossing himself fervently.
"Avert," Roh echoed him, and made the gesture too, and laughed, afterward, which gave him no comfort at all.
He slid the hostile weapon into place at his belt and went to seek the horses, walking through the Hiua, as he must ride among them and sleep beside them and endure them for days more. They did not lose whatever chance they could find to trouble him. He bowed his head and took the abuse, choked with anger, reminding himself that he had grown too proud. It was no more than baiting, though uglier wishes lay beneath it. They hoped to provoke anger from him, which would bring Roh's wrath down on him… Cause me trouble,Roh had said in their hearing, and I will give you to them.They longed for that. But their baiting was only what an ilinin Andur-Kursh might endure under a harsh lord. Morgaine's service had been otherwise, even from the beginning, however hard it had been in other ways. He recalled her face and voice suddenly, and the gentleness she had given him, and thrust the memory away at once, for he could not afford to grieve.
She was not dead. He was not forever bound to the likes of these, in a world where she did not exist. His sanity insisted to believe it.
"Lord," someone said, and pointed south, in the direction of the Gate. There was a second dawn on that horizon, a glimmering of red brighter than the true one.
"Fire." The word hissed through the company on many lips.
Roh stared at it, and suddenly gestured for them to move. "The khalmust have settled the trouble we started in the camp; there is no hope it could be any other way. That fire is their means of dislodging the lower camp and moving them on; we have seen that tactic before. They are behind us now, and their outriders will have moved out long before now. We have to ride hard hereafter. They are coming, all of them."
The smudge of smoke on the horizon was evident in full dawn, but it soon burned itself out and dissipated on the winds: the wind was steadily from the north… had it been otherwise, it would have been a fire perilous in the extreme. "It has come up against the south river," Roh surmised, on one occasion that he turned in the saddle to look back. "I am relieved. Their madness might have swept down on all of us on this plain."
"Their riders will not come much slower than the fire would have," Vanye said, and looked back also; but all that was to be seen was Fwar's troop, and their faces were a sight he cared for as little as Hetharu's own. He turned about again, and spoke little to Roh thereafter, reckoning that much friendliness apparent between them could make things no better for Roh.
He tended Roh's horse at rests, and did all such things as he would have done for Morgaine. The Hiua were uncommonly quiet in their malice by daylight, where all that was done had to be done under Roh's witness. There were only spiteful looks, and once Fwar smiled broadly at him and laughed. "Wait," Fwar said, and that was all. He glared steadily at Fwar, reckoning that his principal danger was a knifing in the back when the time came. Fwar was one that wanted facing all the time.
And once thereafter he saw Fwar looking at Roh's back, with quite another look than he gave to Roh's face.
This is a man,Vanye thought, –who never forgives; some cause he has with me; and perhaps with Roh– another.
Guard my back,Roh had wished him, knowing well the men of his service.
They crossed the two rivers in the morning and the noon. Their bearing was to the north and slightly easterly, toward the ford of the Narn. Vanye chose their direction, for he rode at the head of the company with Roh and Fwar and Trin, and he bore as he would, while Roh adjusted his course to suit his at each small jostling of the horses, and Fwar and his men followed Roh's leading.
There was, he recalled, that camp of Hetharu's men or Fwar's due north, and he did not want to encounter that; there was the ford of the Narn itself, which he wanted less. But between the two, the expanse of a night's hard ride, there was a patch of forest that did not love Men, and that he chose, knowing it might be the end of them.
But having heard Roh's talk with the Hiua, he was determined on it, rather than to guide them all near Morgaine. He lived in the hourly anticipation that Fwar would discover where they were bound, and who was truly leading them, for Fwar had been in that region and might well know the danger… but it did not happen. He made himself as inconspicuous in his position as possible, bowing his head on his chest and feigning to give way to his wounds and to exhaustion. In fact, he did sleep a little while they rode, but not long; and he pretended hardly to be aware of what direction they took.
"Riders," Trin said of a sudden.
Vanye looked up and followed the pointing of Trin's arm. His heart pounded in sudden fright at the cloud that rose on the northwesterly horizon. "A Shiua camp was there," he said to Roh. "But they cannot yet know you have fallen out with Hetharu."
'They would know himquickly enough," Fwar said. "Get some covering round that armor, quick."
Fwar's advice or no, it was worth taking. Vanye slipped off his helm and unlaced his coif, shaking his hair free as the Barrows-men wore theirs. Fwar stripped off his tunic of coarse wool and gave it to him. "Put that on, Roh's bastard cousin, and drop back of us."
He did so, shrugged the unwashed garment down over his own leather and mail and reined back into the center of Fwar's pack of wolves where he was less conspicuous. His face was hot with rage for the taunt Fwar had flung at him… an old one, and one which only Roh could have told them, concerning the proper degree of their kinship. It disturbed him the more because the Roh he had known was his mother's close kin, and the taunt was not one that did honor to clan Chya or Roh's house.
Fwar's riders made close formation about him. Their hair was dark, and none were so tall. He made his stature as little obvious as possible. There was little more to be done. The riders were coming on them at speed now, having seen the dust they raised, and surely meant to meet them.
"The Sotharra camp," a man at his left muttered. "Shien's folk, those."
Roh and Fwar rode ahead to meet the riders at distance from the company, a wise maneuver if it were Shien. The oncoming riders slowed, breaking from a charge to an approach, and finally came to a halt, but for their three leaders, who kept riding. In Fwar's band, bows were strung and arrows readied, but there was no show of them.
It was indeed Shien. Vanye recognized the young khal-lordand thanked Heaven for the distance between them. The horses snorted and fretted wearily under them. There was a time that everything seemed peaceful. Then voices were raised, Shien's bidding them rum and follow his lead to his camp.
"I do not want your Barrows-scum riding where they please and cutting through our territory. They are hindrance as much as help. They take no orders."
"They take mine," Roh returned. "Out of my way, lord Shien. This is my path and you are in it."
"Go on, go on, then, but you are coming up against forest soon. Your men are no loss, but you are. Nothing has come alive out of that area, and I will use force to stop you, lord Roh. You are too much to risk."
Roh lifted his arm. Hiua bows lifted and bent. "Ride off," Roh said.
Shien stared incredulously, dazed by the sight of human defiance. "You are quite mad."
"Ride off. Or discover the limits of my insanity."
Shien backed his horse, and his escort with him; with a sudden jerk he wheeled about and rode back to his own troop, which glittered with scale-armor and pikes. One of the Barrows-men softly entreated protection of his several gods.
Roh started moving, Fwar and Trin beside him. The company moved forward, passing the Shiua riders, who stood still watching them. First their flank and then their backs were exposed to the Shiua, who remained motionless. Eventually the Shiua dwindled in the distance, and Roh started them to a gallop, which they kept until the horses could stay it no more. Even so it was well after dark before they stopped and flung down from their horses.
Fwar asked his tunic back. Vanye surrendered it gladly enough, and tended his horse and Roh's… and Fwar's, for the Barrows-man flung him the reins as Roh had done, to the general laughter of the company; they mocked him: bastardwas a taunt they had all taken up, seeing how it pricked at him.
He averted his face from their tormenting, and settled the horses and passed through the Hiua company back to Roh, where Fwar sat.
And he had no more than sat down than Fwar grasped his shoulder and pulled him roughly about.
"You are our guide, are you? The lord Roh says it. So what did Shien mean about hazards in the forest?"