Gate of Ivrel

But perhaps the villagers blinked again in the sunlight, and persuaded themselves that they had no proper business with travelers going east: it was only those who came from it, out of Hjemur, that need trouble them to take arms; and there were gray horses foaled who were not of the old blood. Siptah had grown leaner; he was muddy about legs and belly; and he spent none of his strength on high-blooded skittishness, although his ears pricked up toward any chance move and his nostrils drank in every smell.

“ Liyo,” said Vanye when they were quit of the town, “they will hear of us in Ra-baien by evening.”

“By evening,” she said, “surely we will be in those hills.”

“If we had turned aside there, and sought welcome at Ra-baien,” he insisted, “they might have taken you in.”

“As they did in Ra-morij?” she answered him. “No. And I will accept no more delays.”

“What is our haste?” he protested. “Lady, we are all tired, you not least of all. After a hundred years of delay, what is a day to rest? We should have stayed at the Monastery.”

“Are you fit to ride?”

“I am fit,” he acknowledged, which was, under less compulsion, a lie. He ached, his bones ached, but he was well sure that she was in no better case, and shame kept him from pleading his own. She had that fever in her again, that burning compulsion toward Ivrel; he knew how it was to stand in the way of that, and if she would not be reasoned into delay, it was sure that there was little else would stop her.

Then, when the sun was at their backs, reddening into evening upon the snows of Kath Svejur before them, Vanye looked back along the road they had come as he did from time to time.

This time the thing he had constantly dreaded was there.

They were pursued.

“ Liyo,” he said quietly. Both she and Ryn looked. Ryn’s face was pale.

“They will surely have changed horses in Ra-baien,” Ryn said.

“That is what I have feared,” she said, “that there is no war nor feud between Morija and Baien.”

And she put Siptah to a slightly quicker pace, but not to a run. Vanye looked back again. The riders were coming steadily, not killing their horses either, but at a better pace than they.

“We will make the hills and choose a place for them to overtake us as far as we can toward the border,” said Morgaine. This is a fight I do not want, but we may have it all the same.”

Vanye looked back yet again. He began to be sure who it was, and there was a leaden feeling in his belly. He had already committed one fratricide. To fight and to kill at a liyo’s order was the duty of an ilin, even if he were ordered against family. That was cruel, but it was also the law.

“They will be Nhi,” he said to Ryn. “This fight is not lawful for you. You are not ilin, and until you lift hand against Erij and your kinsmen, you are not an outlaw. Go apart from us. Go home.”

Ryn’s young face held doubt. But it was a man’s look too, not the petulance of a boy, which was not going to yield to his reason.

“Do as he tells you,” Morgaine said.

“I take oath,” he said, “that I will not.”

That was the end of it He was a free man, was Ryn; he rode what way he chose, and it was with them. It pained Vanye that Ryn had no more than the Honor blade at his belt, no longsword; but then, boys had no business to attempt the longsword in a battle; he was safest with the bow.

“Do you know this road?” Morgaine asked.

“Yes,” said Vanye. “So do they. Follow.”

He put himself in the lead, minded of a place within the hills, past the entry into Koris, where Erij might be less rash to follow, near as it was to Irien. The horses might be able to hold the pace, though it was climbing for some part. He cast a look over his shoulder, to know how things were with those behind.

The Morijen had fresh mounts surely, to press them so, grace of the lord of Ra-baien, and how much Baien knew of them or how Baien felt toward them was yet uncertain.

There was the matter of Baien’s outpost of Kath Svejur, manned by a score of archers and no small number of cavalry. There was that to pass beneath.

He chose pace for them and held it, not leaving the highroad despite Mogaine’s expressed preference for the open country.

They had speed to take them through, unless there were some connivance already arranged between Baien’s lord and Erij—some courier passed at breakneck speed during the night, to cut off their retreat. He hoped that had not happened, that the pass was not sealed: otherwise there would be a hail of arrows, to match what rode behind them.

Those behind were willing enough to kill their mounts, that became certain; but there was the pass ahead of them, the little stone fort of Irn-Svejur high upon its crag.

“We cannot pass under that,” Ryn protested, thinking, no doubt, of arrows. But Vanye whipped up his horse and tucked low, Morgaine likewise.