On the hillside that they had left, the Hiua regrouped, gathering their forces and their courage, and there was much of shouting and crying. Torches were waved. The glow of fire lit the center of their rallying place, and on that hillside was a tree, from which dangled objects—the aspect of which filled Vanye with apprehension.
“They have hanged them!” Kithan cried in anguish.
But neither Kithan nor his two men ventured forward against those odds. His people, Vanye understood, reckoning the number of dangling corpses against his memory of the band of qujal that had fled crumbling Ohtij-in, a pitiable group, among them women and old ones. Qujal they might be, but bile rose in his throat as he gazed on that sight.
And of a sudden came a shout from that gathering by the tree, and the wave of a torch, exhorting a new attack against them.
“Get back,” Morgaine bade their companions; and the rush came, a dark surge of bodies pouring out onto the causeway. Changeling came free of its sheath, opal color flickering up and down its blade, that ominous darkness howling at its tip, and the first attacker mad enough to fling himself at Morgaine entered that dark and whirled shrieking away within it, sucked into that oblivion.
The mob did not retreat. Others swept against them, wild-eyed and howling their desperation. Vanye laid about him with his sword, reining tightly to keep the gelding from being pushed over the brink.
And suddenly those men that attacked him were alone. Morgaine spurred Siptah into that oncoming horde, swept the terrible blade in an arc that became vacant of enemies and corpses, a crescent that widened.
With a shout she rode farther, driving them in retreat before her, taking any man that delayed, the blade flickering with the cold opal fire, slow and leisurely as it took man after man into that void, dealing no wound, sparing none.
“Liyo!” Vanye cried, and spurred after her, shouldering a screaming marshlander over the brink. “Liyo!” He rode to land’s edge; and there perhaps his voice first reached her. She reined about, and he saw the arc of the sword, the sudden eclipse of the light as it swung toward him. He reined over, hard, and the gelding slid on the wet stones, skidding. He recovered. The horse trembled and fretted under him, Morgaine’s wild face staring at him in the balefire of Changeling.
“Put it up,” he urged her in what of a voice remained to him. “No more. No more.”
“Get back.”
“No!” he cried at her. But she would not listen to him: she turned Siptah’s head toward the people that gathered on the hillside, and spurred forward onto the muddy earth. Women and children cried out and ran, and men held their ground desperately, but she came no farther, circling back and forth, back and forth.
“Liyo!” Vanye screamed at her; and when she would not come, he rode forward, carefully, reining in a few paces behind, where he was safe from her as well as from the enemy.
She stopped, sat her horse facing the great empty space that she had made between the causeway and their attackers. There was, after that confusion and madness, a terrible silence made. And she kept the sword unsheathed, waiting, while time passed and the silence continued.
A voice broke the stillness, distant and its owner well hidden in the darkness. There were curses spoken against her, who had deceived them; there were viler things shouted. She did not move, nor seem provoked, although at some of the words Vanye trembled with rage and wished the man within reach. Almost he answered back himself; but something there was about Morgaine’s silence and waiting against which such words, either attacking or defending, were empty. He had held Changeling: he knew the agony that grew in one’s arm after long wielding of it, the drain upon one’s very soul. She did not move, and the voice grew still.
And at last Vanye gathered his resolve and toed the gelding forward. “Liyo,” he said, so that she would know that it was he. She did not protest his approach now; nor did she turn her head from the darkness she was watching.