Gate of Ivrel by C. J. Cherryh

ripping loose, and started to mount. Pain exploded across the base of his skull. The world turned in his vision and he had momentary view of Mai's belly passing over him as the mare bolted. She jumped him, managing to avoid him with her hooves; he scrambled up against the earthen bank, half-blind, seeking to draw his sword.
     
    Liell was upon him then, wresting his hand from the hilt, close to overpowering him, dazed as he was; but the thought of being taken by Leth animated him to frenzy. He twisted, not even trying to defend himself, only to tear free, to reach Morgaine's side and keep his oath for his soul's sake. Mai was out of reach; the black was at hand. He sprang for that saddle and laid heels to him before he was even sure of the reins, gathering them up and settling low in the saddle from his precarious balance. Black legs flashed long in the dark, muscles reached and gathered, bounding obstacles, splashing over inlets of the lake, surging up rises of the shore.
     
    The black at last had run all he chose to run, beyond the shore and far upon the trail: Vanye laid heel to him again, mer-
     
    ciless in his fear. The animal gathered himself and plunged forward again.
     
    Morgaine's pale form was ahead. At last she looked around, seeming to hear him; she whipped up Siptah, and he cried out to her in despair, urging the black to further effort.
     
    And she held back, pulling up, weapon in hand until he had come closer.
     
    "Vanye," she exclaimed softly as he drew alongside. "Is thee thief too? What came of Liell?"
     
    He reached behind his head, felt a tenderness at the back of his head despite the leather coif. Dizziness assailed him, whether of the blow or of the fever, he did not know.
     
    "Liell is no friend of yours," he said.
     
    "Did you kill him?"
     
    "No," he breathed, and was content to hang over the saddlebow a moment until his sight cleared. Then he urged the black into a gentle pace, Siptah keeping with him: no horses that had run all the distance from Ra-leth could overtake them now.
     
    "Is thee much hurt?" she asked.
     
    "No."
     
    "What did he? Did he lift weapon against you?"
     
    "Tried to hold me—tried to persuade me to break oath."
     
    And the other thing he would not tell her, the urging and then the vile feeling he had had of the look in Liell's eyes, a feverish anxiousness that had wanted something of him, a touch that had twice sunk cruelly into his arm, an avarice matching the hunger in his eyes.
     
    It was not a thing he could tell anyone: he did not know what to name it, or why he had provoked it, or what it aimed at, only that he would die before he fell into the hands of Leth, and most especially those of Liell.
     
    His back had been turned: the man could easily have cut him across the backs of the knees, quickest way to disable a man elsewhere armored, slain him out of hand; instead he had fetched him a crack across the skull, had risked greatly taking him hand to hand when he could have killed him safely: he had wanted him alive.
     
    He could not remember it without shuddering. He wanted nothing of the man. It filled him with loathing to possess the gear and the horse that he had stolen: the black beast with its ill temper was a creature more splendid and less honest than
     
    his little Mai, and leaving his little mare in those hands grieved him.
     
    Deep forest closed about them, straight and proper trees now, and they walked the horses until there was no sky. overhead, only the interlacing branches. The horses were spent and they themselves were blind with weariness.
     
    "This is no place to stop," he protested when Morgaine reined in. "Lady, let us sleep in the saddle tonight, walk the horses while they may. This is Koriswood, and it may have been different in your day, but this is the thick of it. Please."
     
    She sighed in misery, but for once she looked at him and listened, and consented with a nod of her head. He dismounted and took the reins of both horses,