Free Exile's Gate by C. J. Cherryh Page A

a betrayal of
his own kind, then he was apt enough for that trade.

    He might have tamed the
wolves, finally, and if they would let him be a wolf, then he need not
fear Gault, or anything in the world—for a while. They might well be
Gault's enemies: rumor was that the thing which was Gault had no love
lost with his Overlord. They might be from Mante, or from somewhere—the
woman had said it—that he did not understand; but if they let him be a
wolf, if they took him among themselves and there was a kind of man who
could walk among the qhal free as that one walked, and still in his own
right mind—then there was hope. . . .

    He shivered again, seeing
Ichandren's head outside Gault's gates, seeing that dungeon again, and
hearing the screams wrung from a man who was the bravest and strongest
he had ever known, before they reduced him to a red and terrible lump
of meat and struck off his head. . . .

    . . . There was revenge.
Gault would never know him by sight. It was a random choice had
selected the few for the wolves. He was no one, that Gault should
single him out for any personal revenge.

    But if he was a wolf, there was a time Gault would learn to fear him and to curse the day he met him.

    That was an aim even worth a man's soul.

    For the first time the chance of a future opened up before him, like a mist clearing.

    But he had met the woman's
eyes by accident across the fire, and after that avoided—after that,
avoided remembering, too closely, that he had felt himself in bodily
danger from her. It was that kind of feeling,
that a man did not expect to feel with a woman, that was unmanly to
feel with a woman, and that one would never admit to; but if ever he
remembered it, afterward, when he was with a woman, then he would have
no power with her ... no more with any woman, ever. . . .

    She was indeed a witch, he
thought. He knew folk who called themselves witches, and made a great
deal of muttering over their herbs and potions, and midwived babes and
horses into the world. A man did not cross them, or did so only if he
had bought the token of a greater one for stronger luck—and too great a
one might, the priests said, taint a man's soul.

    Such great power he had
felt in this one. He knew that it was. And it was better mercy by far
had he gotten from her than Gault had gotten from Mante—the Gault they
had honored before the qhal had taken him up with talk of peace; the
Gault who had been Ichandren's friend, and worked the same ploy on
Ichandren—God help them all.

    Truce. Truce—Gault had said.

    That was the faith qhal kept.

    The man Vanye came down the
hill finally: Chei watched him come—and trembled, as if in a dream; and
walked with him at his invitation to share their fire.

    Thereafter Chei sat wrapped
in his blanket and took a meal he could not eat his share of, so weak
his stomach was. But they were easy with him, the man and the woman
both, and asked him few questions, and afterward let him lie over near
the fire, while the witch took the pans down to the water to wash them
like any woman of the bands; and Vanye after she had returned, led the
horses down to water them, from their picket higher on the hill.

    After that, while daylight
faded, they worked on what Chei recognized for his own gear, picking
bits of rust from the links of his chain-mail, scouring the metal with
water and river sand, finishing it with oil.

    His boots were already
done, the one split as it was, but with a length of harness-leather
lying looped about it, sufficient to wrap several times about the ankle
and hold it.

    He saw all these things,
lying on his side, with only the blanket to clothe him . . . watched
them work, even the witch, on these menial tasks which seemed to be for
his benefit—for him, since they had no conceivable need of a pair of
ruined boots or armor much poorer than the wonderful close-linked mail
and supple leather that they wore.

    In the deep night, when
they said to each other that it was