Wall of Shiuan

“Where,” Roh asked him, drawing his attention back, “is Morgaine?”

Vanye shrugged, a listless gesture, though he felt the tension in every muscle.

“Come down from your horse,” said Roh.

He wiped the length of the sword on the gelding’s black mane, then climbed down, sword still in hand, and gave the reins of the horse to Jhirun. He sheathed the sword then, and waited.

Roh watched him from horseback; and when he had put away the weapon, Roh likewise dismounted and tossed the reins to a companion, hung his sword at his hip and walked forward until they could speak without raising voices.

“Where is she?” Roh asked again.

“I do not know,” Vanye said. “I have come for shelter, like these others.”

“Ohtij-in is gone,” Kithan said suddenly from behind him. “The quake took it, and all inside. The marshlands are on the move; and some of us they hanged. The man Vanye and the Barrows-girl were with me on the road, else I might have died; my own men deserted me.”

There was silence. There should have been shock, outcry—some emotion on the faces of the Ohtija qujal who surrounded them.

“Arrest,” Hetharu’s voice said suddenly; riders moved up, and Vanye turned in alarm.

Two helmless men were beside Hetharu: scale-armored, white-haired, and alike as brothers—shameless in their change of lords.

“Yours,” Kithan murmured, and managed an ironical bow. The accustomed drugged distance crept into his voice.

“To protect my brother,” Hetharu answered softly, “from his own nature—which is well-known and transparent. You are quite sober, Kithan.”

“The news,” said Roh, from the other side, “outran you, Nhi Vanye. Now tell me the truth. Where is she?”

He turned and faced Roh, for one terrible moment bereft of all subtleties: he could think of nothing.

“My lord Hetharu,” Roh said. “The camp is on the move. Uncomfortable as it is, I think it time to move your forces into position; and yours as well, my lords of Sotharra and Domen, Marom and Arisith. We will make an orderly passage.”

There was a stir within the ranks; orders were passed, and a great part of the gathering began to withdraw—the Sotharra, who were prepared already to move, began to ascend the hill.

But Hetharu did not, not he nor his men.

Roh looked up at him, and at the men that delayed about them. “My lord Hetharu,” Roh said, “lord Kithan will go with you, if you have use for him.”

Hetharu gave an order. The two house guards rode forward and set themselves on either side of Kithan, whose pale face was set in helpless rage.

“Vanye,” Roh said.

Vanye looked at him.

“Once again,” Roh said, “I ask you.”

“I have been dismissed,” Vanye said slowly, the words difficult to speak. “I ask fire and shelter, Chya Roh i Chya.”

“On your oath?”

“Yes,” he said. His voice trembled. He knelt down, reminding himself that this must be, that his liege’s direct order absolved him of the lie and the shame; but it was bitter to do so in the sight of both allies and enemies. He bowed himself to the earth, forehead against the trampled grass. He heard the voices, numb in the Well-cursed air, and was glad in this moment that he could not understand their words of him.

Roh did not bid him rise. Vanye sat back after a moment, staring at the ground, shame burning his face, both for the humiliation and for the lie.

“She has sent you,” Roh said, “to kill me.”

He looked up.

“I think she has made a mistake,” said Roh. “Cousin, I will give you the sheltering you ask, taking your word that you have been dismissed from your service to her. By this evening’s fire, elsewhere—a Claiming. I think you are too much Nhi to forswear yourself. But she would not understand that. There is no pity in her, Nhi Vanye.”

Vanye came to his feet, a sudden move: blades rasped loose all about him, but he kept his hand from his.

“I will go with you,” he said to Roh.

“Not at my back,” Roh said. “Not this side of the Wells. Not unsworn.” He took back the reins of the black mare, and rose into the saddle—cast a look toward the hill, where row on row of Sotharran forces had marshalled themselves, toward which the first frightened lines of human folk labored.

The lines moved with feverish speed behind: those entering that oppressive air hesitated, pushed forward by the press behind; horses shied, of those forces holding the hill, and had to be restrained.

And of a sudden a tumult arose, downtrail, beyond the curve of the mountainside. Voices shrieked, thin and distant. Animals bawled in panic.

Roh reined about toward that sound, the least suspicion of something amiss crossing his face as he gazed toward that curving of the hill: the shouting continued, and somewhere high atop the mountain a horn blew, echoing.

Vanye stood still, in his heart a wild, sudden hope—the thing that Roh likewise suspected: he knew it, he knew, and suddenly in the depth of him he cursed in anguish for what Morgaine had done to him, casting him into this, face to face with Roh.

Vanye whirled, sprang for his horse and ripped the reins from Jhirun’s offering hand as the qujal closed on him; a rake of his spurs shied the gelding up, buying him time to draw. A pike-thrust hit his mailed side, half-throwing him; he hung on with his knees, and the sweep of his sword sent the pikeman screaming backward, that man and another and another.

“No!” Roh’s voice shouted thinly in his roaring ears; he found himself in ground free of enemies, a breathing space. He backed the gelding, amazed to see part of the force break away: Roh, and his own guard, and all of fifty of the Ohtija, plunging toward the hill, and the Sotharra, and the screaming hordes of men that surged toward the Wells, lines confounded by panicked beasts that scattered, laboring carts, and a horde that pressed them behind. The Sotharra ranks bowed, began to break. Into that chaos Roh and his companions rode.

And the Ohtija that remained surged forward. Vanye spurred into the impact, wove under one pike-thrust, and suddenly saw a man he had not struck topple from the saddle with blood starting from his face. A second fell, and another to his blade; and a second time the Ohtija, facing more than a peasant rabble, fell back in confusion. Air rushed; Vanye blinked, dazed, saw a stone take another of the Ohtija—the house guard that had betrayed Kithan.

Jhirun.

He reined back and back, almost to the cover of the tumbled stones of the hillside; and yet another stone left Jhirun’s sling, toppling another man from the saddle and sending the animal shying into others, hastening the Ohtija into retreat, leaving their dead behind them.

Jhirun and Kithan: out of the tail of his eye he saw the halfling still with him, leaking blood from fingers pressed to his sleeve. Jhirun, barefoot and herself with a scrape across the cheek, swung down from her little mare and quickly gathered a handful of stones.

But the Ohtija were not returning. They had headed up, across the slope, where the ranks of the Sotharra had collapsed into utter disorder.

Men, human-folk, poured in increasing numbers up the slope, this way and that, fleeing in terror.

And came others, small men and different, and armed, adding terror to the rout: pitiless they were in their desperation, making no distinction of halfling or human.

“Marshlanders,” Jhirun cried in dismay.

The horde swept between them and the Well.

“Up!” Vanye cried at Jhirun, and delayed only the instant, spurred the exhausted gelding toward that slope, beyond thinking whether Jhirun or Kithan understood. Marshlanders recognized him, and cried out in a frenzy, a few attacking, most scattering from the black horse’s hooves. Who stood in his way, he overrode, wielded his sword where he must, his arm aching with the effort; he felt the horse falter, and spurred it the harder.

And across the slope he saw her, a flash of Siptah’s pale body in a gap she cut through the press: enemies scattered from her path and hapless folk fled screaming, or fell cowering to the ground. Red fire took any that chose to stand.

“ Liyo! ” he shouted, hewed with his sword a man that thrust for him, broke into the clear and headed across the slope on a converging line with her. She saw him; he drove the spurs in mercilessly, and they two swung into a single line, black horse and gray, side by side as they took the slope toward the Wells, enemies breaking from their path in a wide swath.

But at the first of the Ohtija lines, there riders massed, and moved to stop them. Morgaine’s fire took some, but the ranks filled, and others swept across the flank of the hill. Arrows flew.

Morgaine turned, swept fire in that direction.

And the Ohtija broke and scattered, all but a handful. Together they rode into that determined mass, toppled three from their saddles. Siptah found a space to run and leaped forward; and Vanye spurred the gelding after.

Suddenly the horse twisted under him, screaming pain—a rush of earth upward and the sure, slow knowledge that he was horseless, lost—before the impact crumpled him upon shoulder and head and flung him stu

Vanye fought to move, to bring himself to his feet, and the first thing that he saw was the black gelding, dying, a broken shaft in its chest. He staggered to his feet leaning against the rocks and bent for his fallen sword, and gazed upslope, blinking clear the sight of opal fires and Siptah’s distant shape, Morgaine at the hill’s crest.

Enemies were about her. Red laced the opal shimmerings, and the air was numb with the presence of the Gates above them.

And riders came sweeping in toward her, a half a hundred horse crossing that slope. Vanye cursed aloud and thrust himself out from the rocks, trying to climb the slope afoot; pain stabbed up his leg, laming him.

She would not stay for him, could not. He used the sword to aid him and kept climbing.

A horseman rushed up on him from behind; he whirled, seized a pike-thrust between arm and body and wrenched, pulled the halfling off, asprawl with him; the horse rushed on, shying from them. Vanye struck with the longsword’s pommel, dazed the halfling and staggered free, struggling only to climb, half-deaf to the rider that thundered up behind him.

He saw Morgaine turning back, giving up ground won, casting herself back among enemies. “No!” he shouted, trying to wave her off; the exhausted gray could not carry them, double weight in flight. He saw what Morgaine, intent on reaching him, could not see: the massing of a unit of horse on her flank.