Fires of Azeroth

Chapter Seventeen

Cold wind whipped among the rocks where they sheltered, and they wrapped in their cloaks and sat still, warmed by hot drink which the arrha brought out to them-fed, although they were so bloody and wretched that food was dry in the mouth. Arrha tended their horses, for they were hardly fit to care for themselves; Vanye interfered in that only to assure himself that at least one of them had some skill in the matter, and then he returned to Morgaine.

Sezar joined them finally, supported by two of the young arrha and wrapped in a heavy cloak; Lellin arose to rebuke him, but said nothing after all, for joy that he was able to have come. The khemeis sank down at his feet and Sharrn's and rested against their knees, perhaps as warm as he would have been inside and fretting less for being where they were.

Morgaine sat outermost of their group, and looked on them little; generally she gazed outward with a bleak concentration which made her face stark in the glare from Nehmin's open doors. Her arm was hurting her, perhaps other wounds as well. She carried it tucked against her, her knees drawn up. Vanye had moved into such a position that he blocked most of the wind, the only charity she would accept, possibly because she did not notice it. He hurt; in every muscle he hurt, and not alone with that, but with the anguish in Morgaine.

Changeling had killed, had taken lives none of them could count; and more than that-it had taken yet another friend; that was the weight on her soul now, he thought: that and worry for the morrow.

There was still the tumult on the field below… sometimes diminishing, sometimes increasing as bands surged toward the rock of Nehmin and away again.

"The road must surely be blocked with the stonefall," Vanye observed, and then realized that would remind her of the arrha and the ruin, and he did not want to do that.

"Aye," she said in Andurin. "I hope." And then with a shake of her head, still staring into the dark: "It was a fortunate accident. I do not think we should have survived otherwise. Fortunate too… there were none of us in the gap twixt Changeling and the arrha."

"You are wrong."

She looked at him.

"Not fortunate," he said. "Not chance. The little arrha knew. I bore her across the field down there. She had great courage. And I believe she thought it through and waited until it had to be tried."

Morgaine said nothing. Perhaps she took peace of it. She turned back to the view into the dark, where cries drifted up fainter and fainter. Vanye looked in that direction and then back at her, with a sudden chill, for he saw her draw her Honor-blade. But she cut one of the thongs that hung at her belt-ring and gave it to him, sheathing the blade again.

"What am I to do with this?" he asked, thoroughly puzzled.

She shrugged, looking for once unsure of herself. "Thee never told me thoroughly," she said, lapsing into that older, familiar accent, "for what thee was dishonored… why they made thee ilin, that I know; but why did they take thy honor from thee too? I would never," she added, "order thee to answer."

He looked down, clenching the thong taut between his fists, conscious of the hair that whipped about his face and neck. He knew then what she was trying to give him, and he looked up with a sudden sense of release. "It was for cowardice," he said, "because I would not die at my father's wish."

"Cowardice." She gave a breath of a laugh, dismissing such a thought. "Thee?-Braid thy hair, Nhi Vanye. Thee's been too long on this road for that."

She spoke very carefully, watching his face: in this grave matter even liyo ought not to intervene. But he looked from her to the dark about them and knew that this was so. With a sudden resolve he set the thong between his teeth and swept back his hair to braid it, but the injured arm would not bear that angle. He could not complete it, and took the thong from his mouth with a sigh of frustration. "Liyo-"

"I might," she said, "if thy arm is too sore."

He looked on her, his heart stopped for a moment and then begi

"No. We are far from kin."

She knew, then, what she did. For a moment he tried to make some answer, then as it were of no consequence, he turned his back to her and let her strip out his own clumsy braiding. Her fingers were deft and firm, making a new begi

"I do not think I can make a proper Nhi braid," she said. "I have done only my own once and long ago, Chya."

"Make it Chya, then; I am not ashamed of that."

She worked, gently, and he bowed his head in silence, feeling what defied speaking. Long-time comrades, she and he; at least in distance and time as men measured it; ilin and liyo- he thought that there might be great wrong in what had grown between them; he feared that there was-but conscience in this area grew very faint.

And that Morgaine kri Chya set affection on anything vulnerable to loss-he knew what that asked of her.

She finished, took the thong from him and tied it The warrior's knot was familiar and yet unaccustomed to him, setting his mind back to Morija in Kursh, where he had last been entitled to it. It was a strange feeling. He turned then, met her gaze without lowering his eyes as once he might That was also strange.

"There are many things," he said, "we have never reckoned with each other. Nothing is simple."

"No," she said. "Nothing is." She turned her face to the dark again, and suddenly he realized there was silence below… no clash of arms, no distant shouting, no sound of horses.

The others realized it too. Merir stood and looked out over the field, of which only the vaguest details could be seen. Lellin and Sharrn leaned on the rocks to try to see, and Sezar struggled up with Lellin's help to look out over the edge.

Then from far away came thin cries, no warlike shouts, but terror. Such continued for a long time, at this point of the horizon and that.

Afterward was indeed silence.

And a begi

The light came slowly as always over Shathan. It sprang from the east to touch the gray clouds, and lent vague form to the tumbled rocks, the ruin of the great cliffs of Nehmin, and the distant breached gate of the Lesser Horn. The White Hill took shape in the morning haze, and the circular rim of the grove which ringed them about. Bodies of men lay thick on the field, blackening areas of it. Birds came with the dawn. A few frightened horses milled this way and that, riderless, u

But of the horde… none living.

It was long before any of them moved. Silently the arrha had come forth into the daylight and stood staring at the desolation.

"Harilim," said Merir. "The dark ones must have done this thing."

But then the distant call of a horn sounded, and drew their eyes northward, to the very rim of the clearing. There was a small band gathered there, which began their ride to Nehmin even as they watched.

"They came," said Lellin. "The arrhend has come."

"Blow the answer to them," Merir said, and Lellin lifted the horn to his lips and sounded it loud and long.

The horses began in their far distance, to run.

And Morgaine gathered herself up, leaning on Changeling. "We have a road to open," she said.

It was a grisly ruin, that tumbled mass on the lower road which had been the Dark Horn. They approached it carefully, and perhaps the arrhendim had vision of setting hands to that jumble of vast blocks, for they murmured dismay; but Morgaine rode forward and dismounted, drew Changeling from its sheath.

The blade shimmered into life, enveloped stone after stone with that gulf at its tip, and whirled them away otherwhere… no random choice, but carefully, this one and the next and the next, so that some rocks fell and some slid over the brink and others were taken. Even yet Vanye blinked when it was done, for the mind refused such vision, the visible diminution of that debris whirled away into the void, carried on the wind. When even a small way was cleared, it seemed yet impossible what had stood there before.

They went past it fearfully, with an eye to the slide above them, for Morgaine had taken some care that it be secure, but the whole mass was too great and too new to be certain. There was enough space for them to pass; and below, cautiously, they must venture it again on the lower windings of the road.

The carnage was terrible in this place: the road had been packed with Shiua when the Horn came down, here and in other levels. In some places Morgaine must clear their way through the dead, and they were wary of stragglers, of ambush, by arrow or stonefall, at any moment; but they met none. The lonely sounds of their own horses' hooves rolled back off the cliff and up out of the rocks of the Lesser Horn as they wound their way down to that breached fortress.

This Vanye most dreaded; so, surely, did they all. But it had to be passed. Daylight showed through the broken doors as they rode near; they rode within and found death, dead horses and dead Men and khal, arrow-struck and worse. Beams and timbers from the shattered doors were scattered so that they must dismount, dangerous as it was, and lead the horses among Shiua dead.

There lay Vis, her small body almost like a marshlander's for size, fallen among her enemies, hacked with many wounds; and by the far gates was Perrin, her pale hair spilled about her and her bow yet in her dead fingers. An arrow had found her heart.

But of Roh, there was no sign.

Vanye dropped the reins of his horse and searched among the dead, finding nothing; Morgaine waited, saying nothing.

"I would find him," he pleaded, seeing the anger she had not spoken, knowing he was delaying them all.

"So would I," she answered.

He thrust this way and that among the bodies and the broken planks, the crashes of disturbed timbers echoing off the walls. Lellin helped him… and it was Lellin who found Roh, heaving aside the leaf of the front gate which had fallen back against the wall, the only one of the four still half on its hinges.

"He is alive," Lellin said.

Vanye worked past the obstacle, and put his shoulder beneath it, heaved it back with a crash that woke the echoes. Roh lay half-covered in debris, and they pulled the beams from him with care, the more so for the broken shaft which was in his shoulder. Roh's eyes were half open when they had him clear; Sharrn had brought his water flask, and Vanye bathed Roh's face in it, gave him a sip to drink, lifting his head.