“There is sanctuary here,” he said. “It is the law. There will none touch us here, and if the place is surrounded … well, we will reckon with that when it happens.”
She nodded again, plainly at the end of her strength, and a sorry three they were, she and the youth and a warrior so stiff with bruises and wounds that he could scarcely manage to climb the steps himself.
There were no other guests. He was thankful for that, and helped Morgaine to the first of the several cots, before he went out to tend the horses and bring Morgaine’s gear into the room: she was concerned with that above all else, he knew, and she gave him a grateful look before she tucked the dreadful sword into her arms and sank down upon the bare mattress.
Ryn helped him with the horses, and carried all their gear and their saddles into the guesthouse; and afterward Ryn joined him in the stables and stood by with concern in his eyes as Vanye applied some of their cooking oil to the wound in the dun’s rump.
“He will not go lame,” Vanye judged. “It was an arrow mostly spent, and it is not the season for pests to infest the wound. Oil will ease it, but it will scar, I think.”
Ryn walked with him back to the guesthouse, a short distance hence, among the tall pines and the hedge. The bells had fallen silent now, the Brothers filing in to their prayers.
There was a difference in Ryn. He did not quickly decide what it was, but that a boy had slung harp on his back and ridden after Morgaine from Ra-morij; it was a tired, older youth
that walked beside him in the daylight and observed things in silence. Ryn carried himself differently. He walked with a bearing as out of place in these pine-rimmed lanes as Vanye’s own. They had ridden out of Baien-ei and he had ridden hindmost; there was a new hardness to his eye that had learned to reckon more than to wonder.
Vanye took account of that new silence in him, estimated it, clapped a weary hand upon his shoulder when they had come into the guesthouse. He lowered his voice, for Morgaine seemed asleep.
“I shall watch,” Vanye said. “I am not good for long; yours is next, then hers.”
The youth Ryn might have found some silly protest; he had been sullen at his father’s orders when they first rode together into Morija. Now he nodded assent to that justice of things, and sought a bare cot himself, while Vanye took his sword and set himself on the front steps of the guesthouse, point set between his feet, hands gripping the quillons, head leaned against its hilt. In such position he could stay awake enough. In such a manner he had watched many a night on the road.
And considering himself then, he reflected wryly that he had seen such occupations of Morija’s lower guesthall only when there was some marginally honorable hill-clan passing through, bound for other pastures and asking road-right. Some bandit chief asleep in the guesthouse, his men lounging about swilling cheap wine and scarring the furniture with their feet, while, seal upon the door, some man more villainous looking than the rest sat the steps as door-warden, sword in arms and a sour expression on his face, terrifying the boys who lurked to see what visitors had come among them.
It was a warning to other would-be guests that they would be mad to seek that shelter, and must look elsewhere. Villainy had possessed the only beds, and unless the lords in the hall would take arms and dispossess them, so it would remain until the morning.
So the Brothers found him.
He came fully awake at the first tread upon the flagstone walk, and sat there with his sword between his knees while the gray-robed Brothers came cautiously up to the steps with earthen jars of food.
They bowed, hands tucked in robes. Vanye recognized inno-
cent courtesy when it was offered and made as profound a bow as he could from his seated posture.
“May we ask?” It was the traditional question. It could be refused. Vanye bowed again, full courtesy to the honest Brothers.