“Let us leave this place,” Vanye said; and Morgaine took up the reins, about to heed him.
But Kithan suddenly hailed the place, a loud cry that echoed in the emptiness; and again he called, and finally turned his horse full circle to survey all the ruined keep, the dead that hung from the tree and that lay within the yard, while the two men with him looked about them too, their faces white and drawn.
“Sotharrn,” Kithan exclaimed in anguish. “There were better than seven hundred of our folk here, besides the Shiua.” He gestured at the fluttering cords. “Shiua belief. Those are for fear of you.”
“Would Hetharu have gathered forces here,” Morgaine asked him, “or lost them? Was this riot, or was it war?”
“He follows Roh,” Kithan said. “And Roh has promised him his heart’s desires—as he doubtless would promise others, halfling and human.” He gazed about him at the shelters that had housed men, that were empty now, as—Vanye realized suddenly—the village in the night had lain silent, as the valleys and hills between had been vacant, with only the alarm fires to break the peace.
And of a sudden one of the guards reined about, and spurred through the gates. The other hesitated, his pale face a mask of anguish and indecision.
Then he too rode, whipping his tired horse in his frenzy, and vanished from sight, deserting his lord, seeking safety elsewhere.
“No!” cried Morgaine, checking Vanye’s impulse to pursue them; and when he reined back: “No. There are already the fires: they are enough to have warned our enemies. Let them go.” And to Kithan, who sat his horse staring after his departed men: “Do you wish to follow them?”
“Shiuan is finished,” Kithan said in a trembling voice, and looked back at her. “If Sotharrn has fallen, then no other hold will stand long against Hetharu, against Chya Roh, against the rabble that they have stirred to arms. What you will do—do. Or let me stay with you.”
There was no arrogance left him. His voice broke, and he bowed his head, leaning against the saddlebow. When he lifted his face again, the look of tears was in his eyes.
Morgaine regarded him long and narrowly.
Then without a word she rode past him, for the gate where the feathered cords fluttered uselessly in the wind. Vanye delayed, letting Jhirun turn, letting Kithan go before him. Constantly he felt a prickling between his own shoulders, a consciousness that there might well be watchers somewhere within the ruins—for someone had strung the cords and tried to seal the gate from harm, someone frightened, and human.
No attack came, nothing but the panic flight of birds, a whispering of wind through the rums. They passed the gate on the downward road, riding slowly, listening.
And Vanye watched the qujal-lord, who rode before him, pale head bowed, yielding to the motion of the horse. Without choices, Kithan—without skill to survive in the wilderness that Shiuan had become, helpless without his servants to attend him and his peasants to feed him… and now without refuge to shelter him.
Better the sword’s edge, Vanye thought, echoing something that Roh had said to him, and then dismayed to remember who had said it, and that it had been true.
At the road’s joining, Morgaine increased the pace. “Move!” Vanye shouted at the baffling, spurring forward, and struck Kithan’s horse with the flat of his blade, startling it into a brief burst of speed. They turned northward onto the main road, slowing again as they came beyond arrowflight of the walls.
On sudden impulse Vanye looked back, saw on the walls of Sotharrn a brown, bent figure, and another and another— ragged, furtive watchers that vanished the instant they realized they had been seen.
Old ones, deserted, while the young had been carried away with the tide that swept toward Abarais: the young, who looked to live, who would kill to live, like the horde that followed still behind them.
The land beyond Sotharrn bore more signs of violence, fields and land along the roadway churned to mire, as if the road itself could no longer contain what poured toward the north. Tracks of men and horses were sharply defined beside the road and in mud yet unwashed from the paving stones.