Wall of Shiuan

He did not have an answer. He drew a breath and in it was the stench of the rotting land. Down in the camp the tumult had never ceased. Shrieks suddenly pierced the heavier sounds, seeming closer.

Morgaine looked in that direction and frowned. “Jhirun has been gone overlong.”

His thoughts leaped in the same direction. “She would have had more sense,” he said, gathering himself to his feet; but in his mind was the girl’s distraught mood, Morgaine’s words to her, his dismissal of her. The horses grazed, the bay mare with them, still saddled, although the girths were loosened.

Morgaine arose, touched his arm. “Stay. If she has gone, well sped; she survives too well to fear she would have gone that way.”

The shouting drew nearer: there was the sound of horses on the road, of wild voices attending. Vanye swore, and started of a sudden for their own horses. There was no time left: riders were coming up their very hill, horses struggling on the wet slope.

And Jhirun raced into the firelight, a wild flash of limbs and ragged skirts. The riders came up after, white-haired lord and two white-haired house guards.

Jhirun raced for the shelter, as Vanye slipped the ring of his longsword and took it in hand: but Morgaine was before him. Red fire leaped from her hand, touching smoke in the drenched grass. Horses shied: Kithan—first of the three—flung up his arm against the sight and reined back, stopping his men. And at that distance he faced Morgaine. He shouted a word in his own tongue at her, in an ugly voice, and then in a shriek of desperation: “Stop them, stop them!”

“From what,” she asked, “Kithan?”

“They have murdered us,” the qujal cried, his voice shaking. “The others—stop them; you have the power to stop them if you will.”

There was ugly murmuring in the camp; they could hear it even here: it grew nearer—men, coming toward the slope.

“Get the horses,” Morgaine said.

Two lights appeared behind the screen of young trees, lights that moved; and a dark mass moved behind them. The halflings turned to look, terror in their faces. Vanye spun about, encountered Jhirun, seized her and thrust her again toward the shelter. “Pack up everything!” he shouted into her dazed face.

She moved, seized up blankets, everything that lay scattered, while he ran for the horses, adjusted harness, that of their own horses and Jhirun’s bay mare as well. The stubborn gelding shied as he started to mount: he seized the saddle-horn and swung up in a maneuver he had hardly used since he was a boy, armored as he was: and he saw to his horror that Morgaine had made herself a shield for the three qujal, they at her back, the mob advancing not rapidly, but with mindless force.

He grasped Siptah’s reins, leaning from the saddle, and spurred forward, through the qujal, reined in with Siptah just behind Morgaine.

She stood still, with him at her back; and faced the oncoming men afoot. Vanye stared at what came, panic surging in him, memory of the courtyard—of a beast without reason in it.

And in the torchlight at the head of them he saw Barrows-folk, and Fwar... Fwar, his scarred face no better for a dark slash across it They came with knives and with staves; and with them, panting in his haste, came the priest Ginun.

“ Liyo!” Vanye said, with all the force in him. “To horse!”

She moved, nothing questioning, turned and sprang to the saddle in a single move. He kept his eye on Fwar in that instant, and saw murder there. In the next moment Morgaine had swung Siptah around to face them, curbing him hard, so that he shied up a little. She unhooked Changeling, held it across the saddlebow.

“Halflings!” someone shouted, like a curse; but from other quarters within the mob there were outcries of terror.

Morgaine rode Siptah a little distance across the face of the crowd, and paced him back again, a gesture of arrogance; and still they feared her, and gave back, keeping the line she drew.

“Fwar!” she cried aloud. “Fwar! What is it you want?”

“Him!” cried Fwar, a beast-shout of rage. “Him, who killed Ger and Awan and Efwy.”

“You led us here,” shouted one of the sons of Haz. “You have no intention of helping us. It was a lie. You will ruin the Wells and ruin us. If this is not so, tell us.”

And there arose a bawling of fear from the crowd, a voice as from one throat, frightening in its intensity. They began to press forward.

A rider broke through the qujal from the rear: Vanye jerked his head about, saw Jhirun, a great untidy bundle on the saddle before her, saw the dark arm of the mob that had broken through the woods attempting to encircle them; Jhirun cried warning of it.

In blind instinct Vanye whirled in the other direction—saw a knife leave Fwar’s hand. He flung up his arm: it hit the leather and fell in the mud, under his horse’s hooves. Jhirun’s cry of warning still rang in his ears.