C. Cherryh - Gate of Ivrel

Vanye bowed, then gripped the dapple’s mane in his hands and vaulted up, turned the animal and headed off at a gallop, for there was a bow among the sed-uyo’s gear, which he reckoned would be shortly strung, and he had no wish for a red-feathered Torin arrow in his back.

And from place to place across the face of Morija, his pursuers would have found ready replacements for their mounts, fine horses, with saddles and all their equipment.

The night was falling again, coming on apace, and the signal fires glowed brighter upon the hilltops, one blaze upon each of the greater hills, from edge to edge of Morija.

And when that uyo managed to reach San-morij with the little pony—Vanye intensely imagined the man’s mortification, his fine gear borne by that shaggy little beast—then there would be two signals ablaze on the hill by San-morij and upon that by San-hei, and no doubt which fork of the road he had gone. There would be the whole of San and now the clan of Torin riding after him, and the Nhi and the Myya upon the other road, to meet him at Baien-ei.

To have stripped the man of weapons and armor which he so desperately needed would likely have meant killing him: but Changeling was not the kind of blade that left a corpse to be robbed. To have killed the man would have been well too, but he had not, would not: it was his nature not to kill unless cornered; it was the only honor he still possessed, to know there was a moral limit to what he would do, and he would not surrender it.

It would not be paid with gratitude when Torin caught him, and least of all when they brought him to Nhi and Myya.

Now he and the whole of Ra-morij—and if messengers had sped in the wake of his pursuers, the whole of the midlands villages by now—knew where he must run. There was a little pass at Baien-ei, and hard by it a ruined fort where every lad in Morija probably went at some time or another in their farings about the countryside. The best pasturage in all of Morija was in those hills, where ran the best horses; and the ruined fort was often explored by boys that herded for their fathers; and sometimes it served as rendezvous for fugitive lovers. It had had its share of tragedies, both military and private, that heap of stones.

And Morgaine’s guide was a Nhi harper with the imagination of a callow boy on lovers’ tryst, who would surely know no better than to lead her there for shelter, into a place that had but one way out.

There were men guarding the hillside. He had known there must be even before he set out toward it. Any break from Baien-ei by riders had to be through this narrow pass, and with archers placed there, that ride would be a short one.

He left the dapple tethered against the chance he might have to return; the branch he used was not stout, and should mischance take him or he find what he sought, the animal would grow restless and eventually pull free, seeking his own distant home. He took the sheathed sword in hand and entered the hills afoot

All the paths of the hills of Baien-ei could not be guarded: there were too many goat-tracks, too much hillside, too many streams and folds of rock: for this reason Baien-ei had been an unreliable defense even in the purpose for which it was built. Against a massive assault, it was strong enough, but when the jein , the peasant bowman, had come into his own, and wars were no longer clashes between deti-uyin who preferred open plain and fought even wars by accepted tradition, Baien-ei had become untenable—a trap for its holders more than a refuge.

He moved silently, with great patience, and now he could see the tower again, the ruined wall that he remembered from years ago. Sometimes running, sometimes inching forward on his belly and pausing to listen, he made himself part of the shadows as he drew near the place: skills acquired in two years evading Myya, in stealing food, in hunting to keep from starvation in the snowy heights of the Alis Kaje, no less wary than the wolves, and more solitary.

He came up against the wall and his fingers sought the crevices in the stonework, affording him the means to pull himself up the old defensework at its lowest point. He slipped over the crest, dropped, landed in wet grass and slid to the bottom of the little enclosure on the slope inside. He gathered himself up slowly, shaken, feeling in every bone the misery of the long ride, the weakness of hunger. He feared as he had feared all along, that it was nothing other than a trap laid for him by Erij: Myya-deviousness, not to have told him the truth. That his brother should have committed a mistake in telling him the truth and in trusting him was distressing; Erij’s mistakes were few. His shoulders itched. He had the feeling that there might be an arrow centered there from some watcher’s post.

He yielded to the fear, judging it sensible, and darted into shadows, rounded the corner of the building where it was tucked most securely against the hill. There was a crack in the wall there that he well remembered, wide as a door, and yet one that ought to be safest to use, sheltered as it was.

He crept along the wall to that position, caught the stable-scent of horses. Large bodies moved within.

“ Liyo! ” he hissed into the dark. Nothing responded. He eased his way inside, the pale glimmer of Siptah to his left, to his right, blackness.

“Do not move,” came Morgaine’s whisper. “Vanye, thee knows I mean it.”

He froze, utterly still. Her voice was from before him. Someone—he judged it to be Ryn—moved from behind him, put his hands at his waist and searched him cursorily for some hidden weapon before taking hold of the sword belt. He moved his head so that the strap could pass it the more easily: he was unaccountably relieved at the passing of that weight, as if he had been in the grip of something vile and were gently disentangled from it and set free.

Ryn carried it to her: he saw the shadow pass a place of dim starlight. For his own part his knees were trembling. “Let me sit,” he asked of her. “I am done, liyo . I have been night and day in the saddle reaching this place.”

“Sit,” she said, and he dropped gratefully to his knees, would gladly have collapsed on his face and slept, but it was neither the place nor the moment for it. “Ryn,” she said, “keep an eye to the approaches. I have somewkat to ask of him.”

“Do not trust him,” Ryn said, which stung him with rage. “The Nhi would not have made him a gift of the sword and set him free for love of you, lady.”

Fury rose in him, hate of the youth, so smooth, so un-scarred, so sure of matters with Morgaine. He found words strangled in his throat, and simply shook his head. But Ryn left. He heard the rustle of Morgaine’s cloak as she settled kneeling a little distance from him.

“Well it was thee spoke out,” she said softly. “A dozen or so have tried that way these past two days, to their grief.”

“Lady.” He bowed and pressed his forehead briefly to earth, pushed himself wearily upright again. ‘There is a large force, either on its way or here already. Erij covets Thiye’s power, thinking he can have it for himself.”

“You cried at me not to trust him,” she said, “and that I did believe. But how do I trust you now? Was the sword gift or stolen?”

What she said frightened him, so much as anything had power to frighten him, tired as he was: he knew how little mercy there was in her for what she did not trust, and he had no proof. “The sword itself is all that I can give you to show you,” he said. “Erij drew it: it killed, and he feared to hold it. When it fell, I took it and ran—it is a powerful key, lady, to gates and doors.”

She was silent for a moment. He heard the whisper of the blade drawn partway, the soft click as it slipped back to rest. “Did thee hold it, drawn?”