C. Cherryh - Exiles Gate

It had been a parting-gift, from a man he had begun to love, one he had wished had been his father. But in Morgaine's service there were only partings—and deaths. Only the small stone and the white horse, these he owned, besides his gear, both of which he knew for foolishness and dangerous vanity—a mare, and white at that; and a stone which marked him equal to a qhal-lord—and reminded him of the arrhend.

That land they had traded irrevocably for this one, where the gates themselves threw out power enough to misshape the trees and make all their vicinity unwholesome.

It was that lost, beautiful forest and another, less wholesome, which haunted his sleep. He dreamed that Morgaine had left him and he could not overtake her.

He dreamed of a ride wherein he had seen a dragon frozen in the snow, beyond which time nothing had been ordinary in his life. For the most part, he thought, folk chose to be where they were born, with familiar dangers. It might be a terrible place or a good one, might be love or hate that came to them, they might have their freedom merely by turning their faces from what they knew and walking straight ahead—yet they would not go, not though the place where they were would kill them. He might have been such a man as that. He had hovered for two years close about theregion of his exile, when he was eighteen and an outlaw, despitehis danger: he had imagined nothing beyond that.

Till Morgaine had found him.

She had shown him things which made no sense in the world he knew. And like the dragon which perished, bewildered, in the snow—he had known he was out of his element from the moment he had begun to follow her.

Therefore he dreamed of endless following. Therefore he walked with his fist clenched on the stone; and lay bewildered, wondering where he was; and where Morgaine was; and was terrified until he had found her, a familiar shadow, beneath the ancient and twisted tree, in more starlight than any world he had yet seen.

He drifted off again. The horses remained quiet. The wind blew and rattled the branches, and there was no sound that did not belong.

But—a brief darkness then; and a snap like a burning log, that brought him out of his sleep reaching for his sword, aware first that Morgaine was at his left and that their guest was to his right and moving, staggering to his feet and reeling away among the trees at no slight speed. Fire burned in the leaf mold. That was the result of Morgaine's weapon: he knew it well enough—knew that was the sound that had waked him; and he scrambled up sleep-dazed as he was and overtook the man before he had gotten as far as the horses he strove to reach—overtook him and seized him at the shoulders, bearing him down in a crash to the leaves at the very hooves of the gray warhorse.

The gray reared up with a challenge and Morgaine's whistle cut the dark. "Siptah!" she shouted, as Vanye shielded his head with his arms, the prisoner with his body, and the iron-shod hooves came down, flinging dirt and leaves into his face and clipping his shoulder, thunder of hooves all about them as the warhorse scrambled over them, missing them with every stride but one. The prisoner beneath him did not move.

"Is thee hurt?" Morgaine was asking. "Vanye, is thee hurt?"

Vanye gathered himself up off the man and caught his own breath in great frightened gasps, looking up at his liege, who had caught firm hold of Siptah's halter rope. He flexed the shoulder as he rose and thanked Heaven the hoof had clipped only leather and a mail shirt.

"He could have had a knife," Morgaine raged at him. "He might have had any sort of weapon! Thee did not know!"

He thought the same, now it was done; more, he thought of the hoof-strike that had missed his head, and his knees went to water. The big gray had shifted balance in mid-attack and all but fallen trying to miss him; that was what had saved them.

At his feet the prisoner moaned and moved, a half-conscious stir of his limbs. Vanye set his foot in the man's back when he tried to get an arm under him and pressed him flat, not gently.

"He is not altogether lame," Morgaine observed dryly, then, having recovered her humor.

"No," Vanye said, still hard-breathing. The deserved reproof of his mercy stung more than the bruise did. "Nor in any wise grateful."

Dawn light grew in the clearing, and Vanye probed the ashes of their fire with a bit of kindling, as he had fed it from time to time in the hours of his watch. Yellow threads of fire climbed and sparked in the threads of inner bark of something very like willow. He added a few other twigs, then arranged more substantial pieces, deliberate in his leisure. It was a rare moment in which nothing pressed them, in which he knew that they were not riding on, and all he needed think on was the fire, the mystery that was always homelike, no matter what the sky over him, or the number of moons in it. The horses grazed in the clearing on the riverside, where the twisted trees let in enough light for grass—faithful sentries both, dapple gray Siptah wise to war and ambushes, Arrhan forest-wise and sensible. Something might escape human ears, but the horses would give alarm—and they found nothing amiss in this morning. Catastrophe had attempted them in the night—and failed.

On the other side of the fire, the glow falling on slender hand and silver hair, Morgaine slept on, which small vision he cherished in that same quiet way as he did the fire and the dimly rising sun.

"Sleep," he whispered when she stirred. Sometimes, in such rare leisure, she would yield him the body-warmed blankets, so he might sleep a little while she made breakfast—or he yielded them to her, whichever of them had sat the watch into dawn.

She half-opened her eyes and lifted her head, nose above the blankets. "Thee can sleep," she said, in the Kurshin tongue, as he had spoken—but it was an older accent, forgotten by the time he was born. It was a habit she had when she spoke to him alone, or when she was muddled with sleep.

"I am full awake," he said, which was a lie: he felt the long hours of his watch in a slight prickling in his eyes, his bruised shoulder ached, and the blankets were tempting shelter from the morning chill. But he saved her from hardship when he could—so often that it became a contest between them, of frowns and maneuverings, each favoring the other in a perpetual rivalry which tilted one way or the other according to the day and the need.

"Sleep," he said now. Morgaine sank back and covered her head; and he smiled with a certain satisfaction as he delved into their saddlebags and brought out a pan for mixing and cooking.

The prisoner too, lying prone in his cloak, showed signs of life, rolling onto his side. Vanye reckoned what his most pressing need likely was, and reckoned that it could wait a time: shepherding an escape-prone madman out to the woods meant waking Morgaine to put her on guard; or letting their breakfast go cold—neither of which he felt inclined to do, considering the prisoner was healthy enough to have sprinted for the horses last night, and considering he had won a stiff arm for his last attempted kindness.

Morgaine bestirred herself as the smell of cakes and bacon wafted into the air—enough to draw the hungry for leagues about, Vanye reckoned—the most of them bent on banditry, if what they had seen was any guide.

And another glance toward the prisoner showed him lying on his side, staring in their direction with such misery and desolation that Vanye felt his eyes on him even when he looked back at their breakfast.

"I should see to him," Vanye muttered unhappily when Morgaine came back from the riverside. He poured tea into their smallest mixing bowl, wrapped a cloth about it to keep it warm, and set out a cake and a bit of bacon on the cloth that wrapped his cooking-gear, while Morgaine sat down to eat. "Have your own," he said, "before it cools."