There was need of care for another reason in crossing at such a place, for quicksands were well possible. Larrel gave his horse into Kessun's keeping and waded it first; at one place he did meet with trouble, and fell sidelong, working out of it, but the rest of the crossing went more easily. Then Kessun rode the way that he had walked, and Dev followed, and Sharrn and Merir and the rest of them, the women last as usual. On the other side the young arrhenLarrel was soaked to the skin, shivering with the cold and with the exhaustion of his far-riding and his battle with the sands. Qhalthat he was, he looked worn to the bone, thinner and paler than was natural. Kessun wrapped him in his dry cloak and fretted about fevers, but Larrel climbed back into the saddle and clung there.
"We must get away from this place," Larrel said amid his shivering. "Crossings are too easily guarded."
There was no argument from any of them in that; Merir turned them south now, and they rode until the horses could do no more.
They rested at last at noon ,and took a meal which they had neglected in their haste of the morning. No one spoke; even the prideful qhalsat slumped in exhaustion. Roh flung himself down on the sun-warmed earth, the only patch of sun in the cover they had found in the forest's edge, and lay like the dead; Vanye did likewise, and although the fever he had carried for days seemed gone, he felt that the marrow had melted from his bones and the strength that moved them was dried up from the heat. His hand lying before his face looked strange to him, the bones more evident than they had been, the wrist scabbed with wounds. His armor was loose on his body-sun-heated misery at the moment where it touched him; he was too weary even to turn over and spare himself the discomfort.
Something startled the horses.
He moved; the arrhendimsprang up; and Roh.. A whistle sounded, brief and questioning. Merir stood forth to be seen, and Sharrn answered the signal in such complexity of trills and runs that Vanye's acquaintance with the system could make no sense of it. An answer came back, no less complex.
"We are advised," Merir said after it fell silent, "of threat to Nehmin. Sirrindimthe Shiua you fled have come up the Narn in great numbers."
"And Morgaine?" Vanye asked.
"Of Morgaine, of Lellin, of Sezar nothing. It is as if a veil has been drawn over their very existence. Alive or dead, their presence is not felt in Shathan, or the arrhendimthis side could tell us. They cannot. Something isgreatly amiss."
His heart fell then. He was almost out of hopes.
"Come," said Merir. "We have no time to waste."
Chapter Fourteen
The trouble was not long in showing itself. Movement startled birds from cover in the thickets of the Narn's other bank, and soon there were riders in sight, but the broad Narn divided them from the enemy and there was no ford to give either side access to the other.
The enemy saw them too, and halted in consternation. It was a khalurcompany, demon-helmed, scale armored, on the smallish Shiua horses. Their weapons were pikes; but they carried more than those . .. ugly opponents. And the leader, whose white mane flowed evident in the wind of his riding when he led them forward to the water's edge: the arrhendimwere appalled at the sight of him, one like themselves, and different fantastical in his armor, the old-dream elaborations of khalurworkmanship.
"Shien!" Vanye hissed, for there was no one in the Shiua host with that arrogant bearing save Hetharu himself. The khalchallenged them, rode his horse to the knees in water before he was willing to heed his men-at-arms and draw back.
Their own company kept moving, opposite to the direction of the Sotharra band; but Shien and his riders wheeled about and paced them, with the broad black waters of the Narn between. Arrows flew from the Sotharra side, most falling into the water, a few rattling on the stones of the shore.
The qhalPerrin reined out to the river's very brink and shot one swiftly aimed shaft from her bow. A demon-helmed khalscreamed and pitched in the saddle, and his comrades caught him. A cry of rage went up from that side, audible across the water. And Vis raced her horse to the brink and shot another that sped true.
"'Lend me your bow," Vanye asked then of Roh. "If you will not use it, I will."
"Shien? No. For all the grudge you bear him-he is Hetharu's enemy, and the best of that breed."
It was already too late. The Shiua lagged back of them, out of bowshot of the arrheindim,having learned the limits of their own shafts and the deadly accuracy of the Shathana. They followed at a distance on that other side, and there was no way to reach them and no time to stop. Perrin and Vis unstrung their bows as they rode, and the arrhendimkept tight formation about Merir, scanning apprehensively the woods on their own side of the river. It was speed they sought now, which ran them hard over the river shore, with nothing but an occasional wash of brushheap to deter them.
Then Vanye chanced to look back. Smoke rose as a white plume on the Shiua side.
Perrin and Vis saw the fix of his eyes and looked, and their faces came about rigid with anger.
"Fire!" Perrin exclaimed as it were a curse, and others looked back.
"Shiua signal," said Roh. "They are telling their comrades downriver we are here."
"We have no love for large fires," Sharrn said darkly. "If they are wise, they will clear the reach of that woods before night comes on them."
Vanye looked back again, at the course of the Narn which slashed through Shathan, a gap in the armor, a highroad for Men and fire and axes and the harlimslept, helpless by day. He saw the dark shadow of distant riders, the wink of metal in the sun. Shien had done his mischief and was following again.
Again they rested, and the horses were slicked with sweat Vanye spent his time attending this one and the other, for kindly as the arrhendimwere with their mounts, and anxious as they were to care for them, they were foresters and the horses had come from elsewhere into their hands: they had not a Kurshin's knowledge of them.
"Lord," he said at last, casting himself down before Merir, "forest is one thing; open ground is another. We must not press the last out of the horses, not when we may need it suddenly. If the Shiua have gotten into the forest on our side and press us toward the river, the horses will not have it left in them to carry us."
"I do not fear that."
"You will kill the horses," Vanye said in despair, and left off trying to advise the old lord. He departed with an absent caress of the white mare's shoulder, a touch on the offered nose, and cast himself down by Roh, head bowed against his knees.
In a few moments more they were bidden back to the saddle, but for all Merir's seeming indifference to advice, they went more slowly.
Like Morgaine,he thought bitterly, proud and stubborn.And then he thought of her, and it was like a knife moving in a wound. He rode slumped in the saddle, cast a look back once, where Shien and his men still paced them, out of range. He shook his head in despair and knew what that was for: that they were apt to meet a force on their side of the Narn up by the next crossing, and Shien meant to be there to seal them up.