Wall of Shiuan

Panic spread at that dismissal; she did not regard the questions others shouted at her, but seized at Vanye’s sleeve. “The horses. Get our horses out before that wall goes.”

“Aye,” he agreed, and then realized it meant leaving her; half a step he hesitated, and saw her face with that unreasoning fixedness, saw the folk that crowded frantically about her, that in their fear would cling to her: she could not get away. He fled, steps quickening, avoiding this man and that, racing across the puddled yard to the stable, remembering Jhirun, left to her own devices, panicked horses and the damage of the quake.

The stable door was ajar. He pushed it open. Chaos awaited him inside that warm darkness, planks down where horses had panicked and broken their barriers. There was a wild-eyed bay that had had the worst of it: it bolted when he flung the stable door wide. Other horses were still in stalls.

“Jhirun,” he called aloud, seeing with relief Siptah and his own horse and Jhirun’s mare still safe.

No voice responded. There was a rustling of straw—many bodies in the darkness.

Fwar stepped into the light, his kinsmen emerging likewise from the shadows, from within a stall, over the bars of another: armed men, carrying knives.

Vanye spun half about, caught a quick glimpse of others behind him.

He slung the sheath from his sword and sent it at them, whirled upon the man at his left and toppled him writhing in the straw, bent under a whistling staff and took that man too: his comrade fled, wounded.

A crash attended those behind, Siptah’s shrill scream. Vanye turned into a knife attack, ducked under the clumsy move and used the man’s arm to guide his blade, whipped it free and came on guard again, springing back from the man that sprawled at his feet.

The others scattered, what of them survived, save Fwar, who tried to stand his ground: a shadow moved, a flash of a bare ankle—Fwar started to turn, knife in hand, and Vanye sprang for him, but the swing of harness in Jhirun’s hands was quicker. Chain whipped across Fwar’s head, brought him down screaming: and in blind rage he tried to scramble up again.

Vanye reversed the blade, smashed the hilt into Fwar’s skull, sprawled the man face-down in the straw. Jhirun stood hard-breathing, still clenching the chain-and-leather mass in her two hands; tears streamed down her face.

“The quake,” she murmured, choking, “the rains, and the quake—oh, the dreams, the dreams, my lord, I dreamed... ”

He snatched the harness from her hands, hurting her as he did so, and seized her by the arm. “Go,” he said. “Get to horse.”

It was in his mind to kill Fwar: of all others that had perished, this one he would have wished to kill, but now it was murder. He cursed Jhirun’s help, knowing that he could have taken this man in clean fight, that after killing kin of his, this was the wrong man to leave alive.

Jhirun came back to his side, leading the bay mare. “Kill him,” she insisted, her voice trembling.

“This is kin of yours,” he said angrily—minded as the words left his mouth that she had once said something of the same to him. “Go!” he shouted at her, and jerked her horse’s head about, pushed her up as she set foot in the stirrup. When she landed astride he struck the mare on the rump and sent it hence.

Then he flung open the stalls of Siptah and his own horse, dragged at their reins and led the horses down the aisle, past the bodies. His sword sheath lay atop the straw; he snatched it up and kept moving, paused only in the light of the doorway to settle his sword at his side and mount up.

The gelding surged forward: he fought to control the vile-tempered animal with the Baien stud in tow; and overtook Jhirun, who was having difficulty with the little mare in the press of the yard. Vanye shouted, cursing, spurred brutally, and the crowd parted in terror as the three horses broke through. About them, folk already streamed toward the shattered gates, their backs laden with packs, some leading animals or pulling carts. Women carried children, older children carried younger; and men struggled under unwieldy burdens that would never permit them long flight.

And from the keep itself folk came streaming out, bearing gold and all such things as were useless hereafter—men who had come to possess the treasures of Ohtij-in and stubbornly clung to them in its fall.

Morgaine stood safely by the ruin of the tower, a stationary figure amid the chaos, waiting, with solid stone at her back and Changeling, sheathed, in her two hands.