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

time to sleep, the man dragged his
saddle and his bedding over by the horses and lay down there, while the
witch wrapped herself in a dark cloak and settled against an old,
thick-boled tree, to keep night-watch. They left him the warmth of the
coals. They said no word to threaten him. They did not tie him.

    Chei lay in the dark
thinking and thinking, watching and drowsing by turns, observing every
smallest move they made. Hope trembled through him, that they had
already accepted him, for whatever reasons. He wept, in the dark, long
and unreasonably.

    He did not know why, except
their kindness had broken something in him which all Gault's threats
had never touched, and he was terrified it was all a lie.

     

    Chapter Three

     

     

    It was fish, the next
supper they shared. There was not a rabbit to be had—the wolves, Vanye
reckoned, who sang to them nightly, had seen to what hunting there was
about the gate; although why the wolves themselves stayed in such an
unwholesome place, he wondered.

    It was the mountains to the
south, Chei said; and humans; humans to the west and north; qhal to the
north and east; and in all, Vanye reckoned, the wolves were as shy of
habitations as they were in other worlds.

    Excepting only, Chei said, the half-wolves. Gault's pets.

    Or once, when war had made
chaos of the middle lands—then Chei remembered the wild wolves coming
down to human camps and villages to take the sheep. He remembered his
folk moving a great deal—where, he did not know, except it had been in
the hills.

    "Then," Chei said, looking
mostly at the fire, as if his thoughts ranged distant, "then we settled
in Perot's freehold, in Aglund. We felt safe there. But that only
lasted—at most, a year. Then Gault was fighting along with the other
lords. I was a boy then. I remember—I remember wars, I remember having
to move and move again. I remember the winters, with the snow
chest-deep on the horses—and people died, many died. We came to Gault's
freehold, in Morund. We were borderers, for him. Those were the good
years. I rode with Ichandren. My brother, my father and I. They are
dead. All."

    He was silent for a time, then.

    "Mother?" Morgaine asked.

    Chei did not look at her.
His throat worked. But the eyes never shifted from their wide gaze on
the fire. "I do not know. I saw her last—" A lift of one shoulder. "I
was thirteen winters. That was before Morund fell and Gault went north.
He came back . . . Changed. After that—after that, he and the qhal from
the north killed most of the human men at Morund-keep. Killed most
everyone, and brought in men from the east. They would fight for Gault.
Some of those from Morund might have wanted to, but if they took them
at all, they marched them west, to serve the other qhal-lords. Gault
would never trust men who had served him before he was qhal. Aye, nor
women either. They put them all on wagons. We lost—twenty men trying to
take the women from the guards. My father died then. There were just
too many."

    There was more of silence. The fire snapped and spat.

    "But I doubt very much my
mother was alive," Chei said. "Even then. My father believed it. But no
one else did. She was not a strong woman. And it was a bad year."

    Twenty men lost, Vanye thought, amid a man's grief, and thought by the way he had said it that twenty had been a devastating loss. There were just too many. . . .

    He met Morgaine's eyes
across the fire and knew that she had added that as quickly and set
things somewhat in proportions—she, who had taught a young outlaw
something beyond woodcraft and ambush; his lady-liege, who had ridden
to war and sat in the affairs of kings a hundred years before he was
born.

    But she had led him into both war and kings' councils since then.

    He rested his arms on his knees and probed the coals with a stick, watching it take fire.

    "The trees," Morgaine said.
"Do you mark them, Chei, how they twist here? Yet there is no present
feeling of unease in this