Spare us this, he wanted to say to her. / have honored you. Do not make this impossible.
He held his tongue.
“I might have killed you,” she said, “in panic. I frighten easily, you see, I am not reasonable. I have ceased to take risks at all. It is unconscionable—that I should take risks with the burden I carry. I tell myself the only immorality I have committed is in trusting you after aiming at your life. Do you see, I have no luxury left, for virtues.”
“I do not understand,” he said.
“I hope that you do not.”
“What do you want of me?”
“Hold to your oath.” She swung up to Siptah’s back, waited for him to mount, then headed them not across the vale of Men, but around the rim of the valley, that trail which she had followed the day of the battle.
She was in a mood that hovered on the brink of madness, not reasoning clearly. He became certain of it. She feared him as if he were death itself making itself friendly and comfortable with her, feared any reason that told her otherwise.
And forebore to kill, forbore to violate honor.
There was that small, precious difference between what he served and what pursued them. He clung to that, though Mor-gaine’s foreboding seeped into his thoughts, that it was that which would one day kill her.
The ride around the rim was long, and they must stop several times to rest. The sun went down the other part of the sky and the clouds began to gather thickly over Ivrel’s cone, portending storm, a northern storm of the sort that sometimes whirled snow down on such valleys as this, north of Chya, but more often meant tree-cracking ice, and misery of men and beasts.
The storm hovered, sifting small amounts of sleet. The day grew dimmer. They paused for one last rest before moving onto the side of Ivrel.
And chaos burst upon them—their only warning a breath from Siptah, a shying of both their horses. Another moment and they would have been afoot. Half-lighting, Vanye sprang back to the saddle, whipped out his longsword and laid about him in the twilight at the forms that hurtled at them from the woods and from the rocks, men of Hjemur, fur-clad men afoot at first, and then men on ponies. Fire laced the dark, Mor-gaine’s little weapon taking toll of men and horses without mercy.
They spurred through, reached the down-turning of the trail. The slope was alive with them. They clambered up on foot, dark figures in the twilight, and not all of them looked human.
Knives flashed as the horde closed with them, threatening the vulnerable legs and bellies of the horses, and they fought and spurred the horses, turning them for whatever least resistance they could find for escape. Morgaine cried out, kicked a man in the face and rode him down. Vanye drove his heels into the black’s flanks and sent the horse flying in Siptah’s wake.
There was no hope in fighting. His liyo was doing the most sensible thing, laying quirt to the laboring gray, putting the big horse to the limit, even if it drove them off their chosen way; and Vanye did the same, his heart in his throat no less for the
way they rode than for the pursuit behind them—skidding down a rocky slope, threading the blind shadows along unknown trail and through a narrow defile in the rocks to reach the flat to Irien’s west.
There, weary as their horses were, they had the advantage over the Hjemurn ponies that followed them, for the horses’ long legs devoured the ground, and at last pursuit seemed failing.
Then out of the west, riders appeared ahead of them, coming from the narrow crease of hills, an arc of riders that swept to enclose them, thrusting them back.
Morgaine turned yet again, charging them at their outer edge, trying to slip that arc before it cut them off from the north, refusing to be thrust back into the ambush at Irien. Sip-tah could hardly run now. He faltered. They were not going to make it. And here she reined in, weapon in hand, and Vanye drew the winded black in beside her, sword drawn, to guard her left.