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

kindness to you and no good
thing for us either. Quiet is our preference. So you will go with us,
and somewhere we shall have to find you a horse—by one thing and the
other I suppose you are familiar with horses. Am I wrong?"

    Chei stared at her, somewhere between incredulity and panic. "No," Chei said faintly. "No, lady. I know horses."

    "And our business is not
truly needful for you to know, is it? Only that it has become yours, as
your safety has become conditional on ours—as I assure you it is. We
will find you a horse—somewhere hereabouts, I trust. Meanwhile you will
ride with Vanye—as soon as you are fit to ride. In the meanwhile you
eat our food, sleep in our blankets, use our medicines, and repay us
with insults." All of this so, so softly spoken. "This last will
change. You have naught to do today but lie in the sun, in what modesty
or lack of it will not affect me, I do assure you. You do not move
me.—How wide are Gault's lands? How far shall we ride before we cease
to worry about his attacking us?"

    Chei sat there a moment
with a worried look. Then he bit his lip, shifted forward and pulled a
half-burned stick out of the coals to draw in the dirt with it. "Here
you found me. Here the road. Back here—" He swept a wide, vague area
with the stick. "The gate from which you came." The stick moved on to
inscribe the line of the road running past the hill of the wolves, and
up and up northward. "On either side here is woods. Beyond that—" He
gestured out beyond the trees, where the river was, and where meadow
shone gold. "The forest is scattered—a woods here, another there, at
some distance from the road."

    "You are well familiar with this lord's land," Morgaine said.

    The stick wavered, a shiver
that had no wind to cause it. "The north and the west I know. But this
last I do not forget. I watched where they took us." The stick moved
again, tracing the way, and slashed a line across the road. "This is
the Sethoy, this river. It comes from the mountains. A bridge crosses
it, an old bridge. The other side of it, northward across the plain,
lord Gault's own woods begin; and his pastures; and his fields; and
there is his hold, well back from the old Road. In the hills, a
village. A road between. He has that too. There are roads besides the
Old Road, there is a track goes across it from Morund and up again by
the hills; there is another runs by Gyllin-brook—that runs along these
hills and through them, up toward the village. None of these are safe
for you."

    "Further over on either
side, " Morgaine said, and moved around the fire to indicate with her
finger the left and the right of the road. "Are there other roads?"

    "Beyond the western hills." Chei retreated somewhat from her presence, and used his stick to trace small lines.

    "Habitations?"

    "High in the hills. No
friends of any strangers. They keep their borders against every
outsider: now and again the lords from the north come down and kill a
number of them—to prove whatever that proves. Who knows?"

    There was perhaps a barb in that. Morgaine did not deign to notice it. She pointed to the other side. "And here to the east?"

    "Qhalur holdings. Lord Herat and lord Sethys, with their armies."

    "What would you counsel?"

    Chei did not move for a
moment. Then he pointed with the stick to the roads on the west.
"There. Through the woods, beyond Gault's fields. Between Gault and the
hillmen."

    "But one reaches the trail by the old Road."

    "There, lady, just short of Gault's woods. I can guide you—from there. I will guide you, if you want to avoid Gault's hold. I want the same."

    "Where are you from?" Vanye asked, the thing he had not said, and moved close on the other side. "Where is your home?"

    Chei drew in a breath and pointed close above Morund land. "There."

    "Of what hold?" Morgaine asked.

    " I was a free man," Chei said. "There are some of us—who come down from the hills."

    "Well-armed free men," said Vanye.

    Chei's eyes came at