Gate of Ivrel

And they came upon tracked snow, where an unexpected road intersected theirs at an angle from the direction of Ivrel. Men afoot—horses—the short-footed sign of the smallish northerners, Hjemurn mixed with the larger prints of men: Andurin.

And blood upon the snow, and bodies lying in the road, abandoned.

Vanye swung down, Erij ordering him otherwise: he ignored his brother, went quickly from one body to the other, turning them to see the faces. Two were Lethen. The other three were the small, dark men of Hjemur, and one fair, like qujal. Relief flooded over him.

Erij hissed, drawing his attention: suddenly there was a stirring, a crunch of snow and a rattling of rocks, and he pulled himself out of his thoughts, looked up to see a dark shadow crouched upon the ledge overhanging the road.

He ran, sprang for the horse, hauled himself into the saddle as the startled animal began to run: he gathered reins awkwardly and tucked low as Erij did.

“Erij,” he gasped when he could, “Hjemurn have come in behind, but Chya Liell and the Lethen are on the road ahead of us—the Hjemurn could not hold them. Ease off, ease off, or we will be riding into them.”

“Then,” said Erij, “we will be one enemy the less.”

Morgaine too, and Roh, if they still lived: Erij, who held the sword, would as gladly kill them both as Chya Liell and Lethen: Nhi’s bloodfeud with Chya was old and well-exercised, and that with Morgaine was as fresh as Irn-Svejur, and still painful.

“Give me a sword,” Vanye asked of him then, for he had not so much as a dagger. “If not hers, then at least some weapon.”

“Not at my back,” said Erij, insulting the oath there was between them. But that was Erij’s privilege: it did not lessen the oath.

Vanye pressed his lips tightly in anger and kept with him, counting Erij for a madman, to press both horses so, to ride unshielded after any company containing Morgaine after his bitter lesson at Irn-Svejur. He regretted his oath for a new reason: that Erij would kill the both of them and hand Changeling to the enemy, madder than Chya Roh and almost as great an idiot.

The road was winding, the turns blind, woods and rocks cutting off their view upon the right, trees almost taking the road in places upon the left.

And they met it, inevitably: the rear of Liell’s column, men warned by their noise and braced to receive them with a hedge of spears, a bristling shadow in the dark.

Erij ripped Changeling loose and let its sheath slide, lost, nothing hesitating. He spurred his uncertain horse and drove the beast at the spears, while the blade flared into opal and a peculiar starry dark hovered at its tip. The Lethen that touched it were quickly nothing: others fled aside, closed in, in renewed determination as Vanye tried to ride through, but few, few of them. Instead came dark, fur-clad bodies off the ridge, dropping thick upon his path– Hjemurn, howling their blood-chilling cries. In his last clear sight of the column ahead he saw a glimmer of white—Siptah among those horses: and the Lethen riders began to run, abandoning those on foot, perhaps knowing what pursued them.

Dark bodies poured between. Vanye kicked his faltering horse, himself and the beast being pulled down together. A spear rammed at his ribs and rocked him badly. Weaponless, he seized the shaft with both hands and tried to wrench it free from its owner.

Then the horse collapsed, and arms encircled him, pulling him to the ground at the same moment. A blade flashed down and rebounded off his mail, surprising the would-be killer. Others hacked at him, with the same result, bruising, driving the wind from him. He was smothered in bodies and sinking into dark.

And as suddenly released.

He scrambled for his feet, still dazed, and sprawled in the stained snow. Screams were in his ears, then silence, a howl of wind, hollow and abruptly silenced too.

He struggled to one knee as steps crunched up to him, looked dazedly upon Erij, who held the sword in the sheath. There were no bodies, and there were no Hjemurn to be seen, only themselves, and the horses standing side by side.

Quickly, he twisted about to look in the direction the riders had taken. There was nothing to be seen there either.

“The riders,” Vanye said. “Killed or fled?”

“Fled,” said Erij. “If you had not fallen—but that must be the Chya blood in you. Get up.”

He rose, steadied unexpectedly by Erij’s hand, and he was surprised into a closer look at his brother, that same dark expression he had known in Ra-morij—anger compounded by something else violent; but the hand that still held him was solidly gentle.

“Why stay for me?” Vanye taunted him, for he truly suspected some brotherly sentiment in the man. “Did you want revenge that badly?”

Erij’s lips trembled in anger. “Bastard that you are, I will not leave even Nhi refuse for the Hjemurn. Get mounted.”