Fires of Azeroth

"Shall I saddle the horses, liyo ?"

She sat up, shrugged the blanket about her in the morning chill and stared at the ground, resting her hands at her temples. "I have need to think. We must go back somehow. I have need to think."

"Best you do that rested, then."

Her eyes flicked to his, and at once he regretted pricking at her-a perversity in him, who was fretted by her habits. He knew that temper surely followed, along with a sharp reminder of his place. He was repared to bear that, as he had a hundred times and more, intended and unintended, and he simply wished it said and done. "It likely is," she said quietly, and that confounded him. "Aye, saddle the horses."

He rose and did so, troubled at heart. His own moving was painful; he limped, and there was a constant stitch in his side, a cracked rib, he thought. Doubtless she hurt too, and that was expected; bodies mended; sleep restored strength… but most of all he was concerned about the sudden quiet in her, his despair and yielding. They had been travelling altogether too long, at a pace which wore them to nerve and bone; no rest, never rest world and world and world. They survived the hurts; but there were things of the soul too, overmuch of death and war, and horror which still dogged them, hunting them-to which now they had to return. Of a sudden he longed for her anger, for something he understood.

"Liyo," he said when he had finished with the horses and she knelt burying the fire, covering all trace of it. He dropped down, put himself on both knees, being ilin. "Liyo, it comes to me that if our enemies are sitting where we must return, then sit they will, at least for a time; they fared no better in that passage than we. For us– liyo, I beg you know that I will go on as long as seems good to you, I will do everything that you ask-but I am tired, and I have wounds on me that have not healed, and it seems to me that a little rest, a few days to freshen the horses and to find game and renew our supplies-is it not good sense to rest a little?"

He pleaded his own cause; did he plead his concern for her, he thought, then that instinctive stubbor

"We will ride the bow of the forest today," she said, "and see what game we may start, and I agree we should not overwork the horses. They deserve a little rest; their bones are showing. And you-I have seen you limping, and you work often one-armed, and still you try to take all the work from me. You would do everything if you had your way about it."

"Is that not the way it is supposed to be?"

"Many the time I have dealt unfairly with you; and I am sorry for that."

He tried to laugh, passing it off, and misliked more and more this sudden sinking into melancholy. Men cursed Morgaine, in Andur and in Kursh, in Shiuan and Hiuaj and the land between. More friends' lives than enemies' were to the account of that fell geas that drove her. Even him she had sacrificed on occasion; and would again; and being honest, did not pretend otherwise.

"Liyo," he said, "I understand you better than you seem to think-not always why, but at least what moves you. I am only ilin-bound, and I can argue with the one I am bound to; but the thing you serve has no mercy at all. I know that. You are mad if you think it is only my oath that keeps me with you."

It was said; he wished then he had not said it, and rose and found work for himself tying their gear to saddles, anything to avoid her eyes.

When she came to take Siptah's reins and set herself in the saddle, the frown was there, but it was more perplexed than angry.

Morgaine kept silent in their riding, which was leisurely and followed the bendings of the stream; and the weariness of his sleepless night claimed him finally, so that he bowed his head and folded his arms about him, sleeping while they rode, Kurshin-style. She took the lead, and guarded him from branches. The sun was warm and the sighing of leaves sang a song very like the forests of Andur, as if tune had bent back on itself and they rode a path they had ridden in the begi

Something crashed in the brush. The horses started, and he came awake at once, reaching for his sword.

"Deer." She pointed off through the woods, where the animal lay on its side.

Deer it was not, but something very like unto it, oddly dappled with gold. He dismounted with his sword in hand, having respect for the spreading antlers, but it was stone-dead when he touched it. Other weapons had Morgaine besides Changeling, qhalur-soit also, which killed silently and at distance, without apparent wound. She swung down from the saddle and gave him her ski

He shook off that thought. "Had it been to me," he said, "it would have been small game and fish and precious little of that I must have myself a bow, liyo."

She shrugged. In fact his pride was hurt, such of it as remained sensitive with her, that he had not done this, but she; yet it was her place to provide for her ilin. At times he detected hurt pride in her, that the hearth she gave him was a campfire, and the hall a canopy of branches, and food often enough scant or lacking entirely. Of all lords an ilin could have been ensnared to serve, Morgaine was beyond doubt the most powerful, and the poorest. The arms she provided him were plundered, the horse stolen before it was given, and their provisions likewise. They lived always like hedge-bandits. But tonight and for days afterward they would not have hunger to plague them, and he saw her slight hurt at the offense behind his words; with that he dismissed his vanity and vowed himself grateful for the gift.

It was not a place for long lingering: birds' alarm, the flight of other creatures-death in the forest a

He washed his hands from the bloody work, and tied the hide bundle on the saddle, while Morgaine made shift to haul the remnant into the brush. He scuffed the earth about and disposed of what sign he could. Scavengers would soon muddle the rest, covering their work, and he looked about carefully, making sure, for not all their enemies were hall-bred, men of blind eyes. One there was among them who could follow the dimmest trail, and that one he feared most of any.

That man was of clan Chya, of forested Koris in Andur, his own mother's people .. . and of his mother's close kin; it was at least the shape he lately wore.

It was an early camp, and a full-fed one. They attended to the meat which they must carry with them, drying it in the smoke of the fire and preparing it to last as long as possible. Morgaine claimed first watch, and Vanye cast himself to deep early and wakened to his own sense of time. Morgaine had not moved to wake him, and had not intended to, he suspected, meaning to do to him what he had done to her; but she yielded her post to him without objection when he claimed it: she was not one for pointless arguments.

In his watch be sat and fed the fire by tiny pieces, making sure that the drying was proceeding as it should. The strips had hardened, and he cut a piece and chewed at it lazily. Such leisure was almost forgotten, in his life-to have a day's respite, two-to contemplate.

The horses snuffed and moved in the dark. Siptah took some interest in the little Shiua mare, which would prove difficulty did she breed; but there was no present hazard of that. The sounds were ordinary and comfortable.

A sudden snort, a moving of brush… he stiffened in every muscle, his heart speeding. Brush cracked: that was the horses.

He moved, ignoring bruises to rise in utter silence, and with the tip of his sword reached to touch Morgaine's out-flung hand.

Her eyes opened, fully aware in an instant; met his, which slid in the direction of the small sound he had sensed more than heard. The horses were still disturbed.

She gathered herself, silent as he; and stood, a black shape in the embers' glow, with her white hair making her all too much a target. Her hand was not empty. That small black weapon which had killed the deer was aimed toward the sound, but shield it was not. She gathered up Changeling, better protection, and he gripped his sword, slipped into the darkness; Morgaine moved, but in another direction, and vanished.

Brush stirred. The horses jerked madly at tethers of a sudden and whi

Another shadow: that was Morgaine. He stood still, mindful that hers was a distance-weapon, and deadly accurate; but she was not one to fire blindly or in panic. They met, and crouched still a moment No sound disturbed the night now but the shifting of the frightened horses.

No beast: he signed to her with his straight palm that it had gone upright, and touched her arm, indicating that they should return to the fireside. They went quickly, and he killed the fire while she gathered their provisions. Fear was coppery in his mouth, the apprehension of ambush possible, and the urgency of flight. Blankets were rolled, the horses saddled, the whole affair of their camp undone with silent and furtive movements. Quickly they were in the saddle and moving by dark, on a different track: no following a spy in the moonless dark, to find that he had friends.

Still the memory of that figure haunted him, the eerie movement which had tricked his eye and vanished. "Its gait was strange," he said, when they were far from that place and able to talk. "As if it were unjointed."

What Morgaine thought of that, he could not see. "There are more than strange beasts where Gates have led," she said.

But they saw nothing more astir in the night. Day found them far away, on a streamcourse which was perhaps different from the one of the night before, perhaps not. It bent in leisurely windings, so that branches screened this way and that in alternation, a green curtain constantly parting and dosing as they rode.