She set Siptah moving again, and Vanye struggled to keep the lead, the breath tearing in his lungs. He waded up to his knees in some places, and felt the force of the water in his shaking muscles.
“Ride,” Morgaine called at him. “Change with me; I will walk a while.”
“You could not,” he looked back to shout at her—saw her tired face touched with anguish. “Liyo,” he added, while he had the advantage of her, “I think that you might have used better sense if I were not with you. Only so much can I do.” He shook the water from his eyes and swept off the helm that was only added weight, that made his shoulders ache. “Take it for me,” he asked of her. The armor too he would have shed if he could have taken the time, but there was none to spare. She took the helm and hung it to her saddlebow by its inside thong.
“You are right,” she said, giving him that consolation.
He drew a deep breath and kept moving, laced his fingers in the gelding’s cheekstrap and felt his way through the swirling dark waters in a darkness that was almost complete. He walked over his knees now, in a current that almost swept him off his feet. He had feared for the horses’ fragile legs. Now he feared for his own. At one moment he went into a hole up to his waist, and thought with increasing panic that he had not much more strength for guiding them: the way ahead looked no better, dark water boiling among the trees.
Something splashed amid the roar of water as he delayed, staring at that prospect before them; he looked back and saw Morgaine waist-deep in the flood, struggling with the current and leading Siptah to reach his side. He cursed tearfully, fought his way to meet her and bid her use good sense, but she caught his arm instantly as he began to object, and drew his attention away to the left, pointing through the murk of night and storm.
The lightning showed a dark mass in that direction, a hill, a heap of stones, massive and dark and crowned with trees, a height that well overtopped any further rise of the waters.
“Aye,” he said hoarsely, hope leaping up in him; but he trusted nothing absolutely in this land, and he shook at Jhirun’s leg to rouse her and point out the same to her. She stared over his head where he pointed, her eyes shadowed and her face white in the lightning.
“What is that place?” he shouted at her. “What would it be?”
“Aren,” she answered, her voice breaking. “It looks to be Aren.”
But Morgaine had not delayed. Vanye turned his head and saw her already moving in that direction, their sounds masked from each other by the rush of water—she wading and leading Siptah in that flood. He wiped his eyes and struggled to overtake her, dreading no longer alien ruins or devils or whatever folk might live in this marsh. It was the water he feared, that ripped at his body and strained his knees. It boiled up about them, making a froth on the side facing the current, waist-deep, chest-deep. He saw the course that Morgaine was seeking, indirectly, to go from high point to high point where the trees were; he drew even with her, shook the blinding drops from his eyes and tried to take the reins from Morgaine’s hand.
“Go on,” he shouted at her, overwhelmed with fear for her. Her lighter weight was more vulnerable to the current that tore at them, her strength perilously burdened by the armor she wore. But she refused vehemently, and he realized then that he was asking something impossible of her: she was too light to dare let go; she clung to the saddle on the other side, Siptah laboring in the strong current. Vanye himself fought the current almost shoulder-deep of a sudden, and the horses began to swim, great desperate efforts of their tired bodies.
“Lord!” Jhirun screamed.
He turned his head to look back at her, turned again in the direction of her gaze to see a great mass coming down on them in the lightning-lit waters, a tree uprooted and coming down the current end toward them.