C. Cherryh - Exiles Gate

It did not look like a madman who stared up at him as he came over to his place among the tree-roots. It looked like a very miserable, very hungry man who hoped that food truly was coming to him. "I will free your hands," Vanye said, dropping down on his heels beside him. He set the food down carefully on the dead leaves of the forest floor. "But not your feet. Meddle with that and I will stop you, do you understand? For other necessities I trust you can wait like any civilized man." It was the qhalur language he spoke, and it did not go so lightly over his tongue as it ought. He was not sure, at times, what hearers did understand of him. "Do you agree? Or do I take the food back?"

"The food," the man said, a faint, hoarse voice. "Yes."

"You agree."

A nod of the head, a worried gnawing of the lip.

He turned the prisoner over and gently worked the knots free on his hands. The man only gave a great sigh and lay still on his face a moment, his arms at rest beside him, as a man would who had spent the night with his hands and shoulders going numb.

"He is quieter," he reported then to Morgaine, in his own tongue, when he settled down to breakfast beside her. He took a cup of tea and considered his hands, where he had touched the man. It was death-stink, lingering: the man was that filthy; and he could not eat until he had walked down to the river and washed his hands.

It was overdone bacon then; Morgaine kept the breakfast warm for him on the coals, along with the tea which by now was bitter-edged. He drank and made a face.

"I should have gotten up," Morgaine said.

"No," he said. "No, you ought not. I will take care of him. I will have him down to the river before the sun is much higher, and I swear to you he will be cleaner before you have to deal with him."

"I want you to talk to him."

"Me?"

"You can manage that."

"Aye—but—"

"Not?"

"I will do it." Rarely nowadays she put any hard task on him: and he took it, distasteful as it was, likely as he was to make a muddle of things. "But—"

"But?"

"He can lie to me. How should I know? How should I know anything he told me? I have no subtlety with lies."

"Is thee saying I do?"

"I did not say—"

She smiled, a quirk of her mouth, gray eyes flickering. "Man and man; Man and Man. That is the fact. Between one thing and the other I am not the one of us two he will trust. No. Learn what brought him here. Promise him what thee sees fit to promise. Only—" She reached out and laid a hand on his arm. "He will not go free. We cannot allow that. Thee knows what I will give—and what I will not."

"I know," he said, and thought as he said it that he had chosen the road that brought him to this pass—thought suddenly how more than one land cursed Morgaine kri Chya for the deaths she brought. He had tried in his life to be an honorable man, and not to lie.

But he had chosen to go with her.

It was far more warily the man regarded him on his return, tucked up with his back against a tree, eyes following every move he made—a filthy, desperate figure their guest was by daylight, his nose having bled into his white-blond mustache and down his unkept and patchy beard, dirt-sores and crusted lines on his face, a trickle of dried blood having run from under the matted hair at his temple—a reminder of the night previous, Vanye thought. Likely more than the man's arms ached this morning.

But he had not touched the binding on his ankles. He had eaten every bit of the cake and the bacon off the cloth, down to the crumbs. And there was still a look on his face, as if having eaten off their charity, he felt there was a chance something else of hope might happen, but much doubted it.

"I will tell you," Vanye said, sinking down on his heels, arms on knees, in front of him, "how I am. I hold no grudge. A man in the dark and fevered—he may do strange things. I reckon that this was the case last night. On the other hand, if you take some other mad notion that endangers my liege, I shall not hesitate to break your neck, do you understand?"

The man said nothing at all. There was only a stare of wary blue eyes, beneath the tangled hair, and the stink of filth was overwhelming.

"Now I think you have been a warrior," Vanye said. "And you do not choose to be filthy or to be a madman. So I should like to take you down to the water and give you oil and salve and help you present a better face to my lady, do you understand me at all, man?"

"I understand," the man said then, the faintest of voices.

"So you should know," Vanye said, taking out his Honor-blade from his belt and beginning to undo the knots which bound the man's feet, "my lady is herself a very excellent shot, with weapons you may not like to see—in case you should think of dealing with me." He freed the knot and unwrapped the leather, tucking it in his belt to save. "There." With a touch on the man's bare and swollen right foot. "Ah. That did the swelling no good at all. Can you walk?—Have you a name, man?"

"Chei."

"Chei." Vanye rose and took his arm, and pulled the man up to take his weight on his left foot, steadying him as he tried the right. "Mine is Vanye. Nhi Vanye i Chya, but Vanye is enough outside hold and hall. There. Walk down to the water. I warn you it is cold. I would have heaved you in last night, with that gear of yours, except for that. Go on. I will find you down by the water. I will find you down by the water—or I will find you. Do you hear me?"

Thoughts of escape passed through the man's head, it was clear by the wariness in his eyes; then different thoughts entirely, and fear, the man being evidently no fool. But Vanye walked away from him, going back after his kit by the fire.

"Be careful with him!" Morgaine said sharply, as he bent down near her. Her eyes were on the prisoner. But he had been sure of that when he had turned his back.

Vanye shrugged and sank down a moment to meet her eyes. "Do as I see fit, you said."

"Do not make gestures."

He drew a long breath. So she set him free and then wanted to pull the jesses. It was not her wont, and it vexed him. But clearly she was worried by something. "Liyo, I am not in danger of a man lame in one foot, smaller than I am and starved into the bargain. Not in plain daylight. And I trust your eye is still on him—"

"And we do not know this land," she hissed. "We do not know what resources he may have."

"None of them came to him on that hilltop."

"Thee is leaving things to chance! There are possibilities neither of us can foresee in a foreign place. We do not know what he is."

Her vehemence put doubt into him. He bit his lip and got up again. He had never quite let his own eye leave the man in his walk downhill, save the moment it took to reach her; but it seemed quibbling to protest that point, the more so that she had already questioned his judgment, and justly so, last night. Beyond this it came to opinion; and there were times to argue with Morgaine. The time that they had a prisoner loose was not that moment.

"Aye," he said quietly. "But I will attend him. I will stay in your sight. As long as you see me, everything is well enough."

He gathered up one of their blankets for drying in, along with his personal kit. He walked down the hill, pausing on the way to lay a hand on Siptah's shoulder, where the big gray and white Arrhan grazed at picket on the grassy slope. He reckoned that Morgaine would have that small black weapon in hand and one eye on him constantly.

It was not honorable, perhaps, to deal with hidden weapons in the pretense of being magnanimous; but Morgaine—she had said it—did not take pointless chances. It was not honorable either, to tempt a frightened man to escape, to test his intentions, where keeping him under close guard would save his life. And other lives, it might well be.