Wall of Shiuan

The mob surged forward and Morgaine retreated. Vanye ripped out his sword, and fire burned from Morgaine’s hand, felling one of the Barrowers. The front rank wavered with an outcry of horror.

“Angharan!” someone cried; and some tried to flee, abandoning their weapons and their courage; but weapons were hurled from another quarter, stones. Siptah shied and screamed shrilly.

“Lord!” Jhirun cried; Vanye reined about as Shiua came at them, seeking to attack the horses. The gelding shied back, and Vanye laid about him with desperate blows, the qujal striking what barehanded blows they could.

Vanye did not turn to see what had befallen his liege; he had enemies of hers enough before him. He wielded the longsword with frenzied strength, spurred the gelding recklessly into the attackers and scattered their undisciplined ranks, only then daring turn, hearing screams behind him.

Bodies lay thickly on the slope; fires burned here and there in the brush; the mob broke in flight, scattering down the hillside in advance of Siptah’s charge.

And Morgaine did not cease: Vanye spurred the gelding and followed her, blind to tactic and strategy save the realization that she wanted the road, wanted the hill clear of them.

Folk screamed and scattered before them, and Vanye felt the gelding avoid a body that had fallen before him, then recover and stretch out running as they gained the level ground, the qujalin road. Morgaine turned, heading out for the causeway across the Suvoj, scattering screaming enemies that had turned the wrong way.

On either side stretched flooded land, a vast expanse of shallow water, and the road ran as a narrow thread across it, toward the flooded crossing, where water swirled darkly over the stones. Here, well out upon that roadway, Morgaine stopped, and he with her, reining about as four riders came after them to the same desperate refuge—three terrified qujal and a Barrows-girl, this all their strength, and the roar of the Suvoj at their backs.

On the hillside that they had left, the Hiua regrouped, gathering their forces and their courage, and there was much of shouting and crying. Torches were waved. The glow of fire lit the center of their rallying place, and on that hillside was a tree, from which dangled objects—the aspect of which filled Vanye with apprehension.

“They have hanged them!” Kithan cried in anguish.

But neither Kithan nor his two men ventured forward against those odds. His people, Vanye understood, reckoning the number of dangling corpses against his memory of the band of qujal that had fled crumbling Ohtij-in, a pitiable group, among them women and old ones. Qujal they might be, but bile rose in his throat as he gazed on that sight.

And of a sudden came a shout from that gathering by the tree, and the wave of a torch, exhorting a new attack against them.

“Get back,” Morgaine bade their companions; and the rush came, a dark surge of bodies pouring out onto the causeway. Changeling came free of its sheath, opal color flickering up and down its blade, that ominous darkness howling at its tip, and the first attacker mad enough to fling himself at Morgaine entered that dark and whirled shrieking away within it, sucked into that oblivion.

The mob did not retreat. Others swept against them, wild-eyed and howling their desperation. Vanye laid about him with his sword, reining tightly to keep the gelding from being pushed over the brink.

And suddenly those men that attacked him were alone. Morgaine spurred Siptah into that oncoming horde, swept the terrible blade in an arc that became vacant of enemies and corpses, a crescent that widened.

With a shout she rode farther, driving them in retreat before her, taking any man that delayed, the blade flickering with the cold opal fire, slow and leisurely as it took man after man into that void, dealing no wound, sparing none.

“ Liyo!” Vanye cried, and spurred after her, shouldering a screaming marshlander over the brink. “ Liyo!” He rode to land’s edge; and there perhaps his voice first reached her. She reined about, and he saw the arc of the sword, the sudden eclipse of the light as it swung toward him. He reined over, hard, and the gelding slid on the wet stones, skidding. He recovered. The horse trembled and fretted under him, Morgaine’s wild face staring at him in the balefire of Changeling.

“Put it up,” he urged her in what of a voice remained to him. “No more. No more.”

“Get back.”

“No!” he cried at her. But she would not listen to him: she turned Siptah’s head toward the people that gathered on the hillside, and spurred forward onto the muddy earth. Women and children cried out and ran, and men held their ground desperately, but she came no farther, circling back and forth, back and forth.

“ Liyo!” Vanye screamed at her; and when she would not come, he rode forward, carefully, reining in a few paces behind, where he was safe from her as well as from the enemy.