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 hauling 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 stunned against a pile of stones.
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 hauling 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.