But the riders gave most of their attention to the roaming Ranyhyn. Whether galloping by like triumphal banners or capering together in evening play, the great horses wore an aura of majesty, as if the very ground they thundered on were proud of their creation. They called in fierce joy to the bearers of the Bloodguard, and these chargers did little dances with their hooves, as if they could not restrain the exhilaration of their return home. Then the unmounted Ranyhyn dashed away, full of gay blood and unfetterable energy, whinnying as they ran. Their calls made the air tingle with vitality.
Soon the sun set in the west, bidding farewell to the Plains with a flare of orange. Covenant watched it go with dour satisfaction. He was tired of horses- tired of Ranyhyn and Ramen and Bloodguard and Lords and quests, tired of the unrest of life. He wanted darkness and sleep, despite the blood burn of his ring, the new-coming crescent of the moon, and the vulture wings of horror.
But when the sun was gone, Rustah told Prothall that the company would have to keep on riding. There was danger, he said. Warnings had been left in the grass by other Ramen. The company would have to ride until they were safe- a few leagues more. So they travelled onward. Later, the moon rose, and its defiled sliver turned the night to blood, calling up a lurid answer from Covenant's ring and his hungry soul.
Then Rustah slowed the riders, warned them to silence. With as much stealth as they could muster, they angled up the south side of a hill, and stopped just below its crest. The company dismounted, left a few of the Bloodguard to watch over the horses, and followed the Cords to the hilltop.
Low, flat ground lay to the north. The Cords peered across it for some time, then pointed. Covenant fought the fatigue of his eyes and the crimson dimness until he thought he saw a dark patch moving southward over the flat.
“
Kresh
,” whispered Hurn. “Yellow wolves- Fangthane's brood. They have crossed Roamsedge.”
“Wait for us,” Rustah breathed. “You will be safe.”
He and the other Cords faded into the night.
Instinctively, the company drew closer together, and stared with throbbing eyes through the thin red light which seemed to ooze like sweat from the moving darkness on the flat. In suspense, they stood hushed, hardly breathing.
Pietten sat in Llaura's arms, as wide awake as a vigil. Covenant learned later that the pack numbered fifteen of the great yellow wolves. Their fore-shoulders were waist-high on a man; they had massive jaws lined with curved, ripping fangs, and yellow omnivorous eyes. They were drooling on the trail of two Ranyhyn foals protected only by a stallion and his mare. The legends of the Ramen said that the breath of such
kresh
was hot enough to scorch the ground, and they left a weal of pain across the grass wherever their plundering took them. But all Covenant saw now was an approaching darkness, growing larger moment by moment.
Then to his uncertain eyes the rear of the pack appeared to swirl in confusion briefly; and as the wolves moved on he thought he could see two or three black dots lying motionless on the flat.
The pack swirled again. This time, several short howls of surprise and fear broke the silence. One harsh snarl was suddenly choked off. The neat instant, the pack started a straight dash toward the company, leaving five more dots behind. But now Covenant was sure that the dots were dead wolves.
Three more
kresh
dropped. Now he could see three figures leap away from the dead and sprint after the survivors.
They vanished into shadows at the foot of the hill. From the darkness came sounds of fighting- enraged snarls, the snap of jaws that missed their mark, bones cracking.
Then silence flooded back into the night. The apprehension of the company sharpened, for they could see nothing; the shadow reached almost to the crest of the hill where they stood.
Abruptly, they heard the sound of frantic running. It came directly toward them.
Prothall sprang forward. He raised his staff, and blue fire flared from its tip. The sudden light revealed a lone
kresh
with hatred in its eyes pelting at him.
Tuvor reached Prothall's side an instant before Foamfollower. But the Giant went ahead to meet the wolf's charge.
Then, without warning, Cord Grace rose out of hiding squarely in front of the wolf. She executed her movement as smoothly as if she were dancing. As she stood, a swift jerk freed her rope. When the
kresh
sprang at her, she flipped a loop of the rope around its neck, and stepped neatly aside, turning as she did so to brace her feet. The force of the wolf's charge as it hit her noose broke its neck. The yank pulled her from her feet, but she rolled lightly to one side, keeping pressure on the rope, and came to her feet in a position to finish the
kresh
if it were still alive.
The Eoman met her performance with a low murmur of admiration. She glanced toward them and smiled diffidently in the blue light of Prothall's staff. Then she turned to greet the other Cords as they loped out of the shadow of the hill. They were uninjured. All the wolves were dead.
Lowering his staff, Prothall gave the Cords a Ramen bow. “Well done,” he said. They bowed in acknowledgment
When he extinguished his staff, red darkness returned to the hilltop. In the bloodlight, the riders began moving back to their horses. But Bannor stepped over to the dead wolf and pulled Grace's rope from around its neck. Holding the cord in a fighting grip, he stretched it taut.
“A good weapon,” he said with his awkward inflectionlessness. “The Ramen did mighty work with it in the days when High Lord Kevin fought Corruption openly.” Something in his tone reminded Covenant that the Bloodguard were lusty men who had gone unwived for more than two thousand years.
Then, on the spur of an obscure impulse, Bannor tightened his muscles, and the rope snapped. Shrugging slightly, he dropped the pieces on the dead
kresh
. His movement had the finality of a prophecy. Without a glance at Cord Grace, he left the hilltop to mount the Ranyhyn that had chosen him.
Nineteen: Ringthane's Choice
CORD Rustah informed Prothall that, according to Ramen custom, dead renders of the Ranyhyn were left for the vultures. The Ramen had no desire to honour
kresh
, or to affront the earth, by burying them, and pyres raised the danger of fire on the Plains. So the riders could rest as soon as their horses were away from the smell of death. The Cord led the company on southward for nearly a league until he was satisfied that no night breeze would carry unrest to the animals. Then the Quest camped.
Covenant slept fitfully, as if he lay with the point of a spike against his stomach; and when the dawn came, he felt as ineffectual as if he had spent the night trying to counterpunch hunger. And when his nose tasted again the tangy smell of the poison
amanibhavam
, the sensation made his eyes water as if he had been struck.
He did not believe that he could hold himself upright much longer. But he still did not have the answer he needed. He had found no new insight, and the green handiwork of Morinmoss on his robe seemed illegible. A sure instinct told him that he could find what he lacked in the extremity of hunger. When his companions had eaten, and were ready to travel again, he climbed dully onto Dura's back and rode with them. His eyes dripped senselessly from time to time, but he was not weeping. He felt charged with passion, but could not let it out. The grief of his leprosy did not permit any such release.
In contrast to the cold ash of his mood, the day was cheery, full of bright, unclouded sun and a warm northward breeze, of deep sky and swift hills. Soon the rest of the company had surrendered to the spell of the Plains- an incantation woven by the proud roaming of the Ranyhyn. Time and again, mighty horses cantered or raced by, glancing aside at the riders with laughter in their eyes and keen shimmering calls in their throats. The sight of them added a spring to the strides of the Cords, and as the morning passed, Grace and Thew sang together:
Run, Ranyhyn:
gallop, play-
feed, and drink, and coat-gloss gleam.
You are the marrow of the earth.
No rein will curb, or bit control-
no claw or fang unpunished rend;
no horse-blood drop without the healing grass.
We are the Ramen, born to serve:
Manethrall curry,
Cord protect,
Winhome hearth and bed anneal-
our feet do not bear our hearts away.
Grass-grown hooves, and forehead stars;
hocks and withers earth-wood bloom:
regal Ranyhyn, gallop, run-
we serve the Tail of the Sky,
Mane of the World.
Hearing the song, Ranyhyn pranced around the company and away, running as smoothly as if the ground flowed in their strides.
In Foamfollower's arms, Pietten stirred and shook off his day sleep for a while to watch the Ranyhyn with something like longing in his blank eyes. Prothall and Mhoram sat relaxed in their saddles, as if for the first time since leaving Revelstone they felt that the company was safe. And tears ran down Covenant's face as if it were a wall.
In his emptiness, the heat of the sun confused him. His head seemed to be fulminating, and the sensation made him feel that he was perched on an unsteady height, where great gulfs of vertiginous grass snapped like wolves at his heels. But the
clingor
of his saddle held him on Dura's back. After a time, he dozed into a dream where he danced and wept and made love at the commands of a satirical puppeteer.
When he awoke, it was mid afternoon, and there were mountains across most of the horizon ahead. The company was making good time. In fact, the horses were cantering now, as if the Plains gave them more energy than they could contain. For a moment, he looked ahead to Manhome, where, he foresaw, a misguided and valueless respect for his wedding ring would offer him to the Ranyhyn as a prospective rider. This was surely one of Prothall's reasons for choosing to visit the Plains of Ra before approaching Mount Thunder. Honour the ur-Lord, the Ringthane. Ah, hell! He tried to envision himself riding a Ranyhyn, but his imagination could not make the leap; more than anything else except Andelain, the great, dangerous, Earthpowerful horses quintessenced the Land. And Joan had been a breaker of horses. For some reason, the thought made his nose sting, and he tried to hold back his tears by gritting his teeth.
The rest of the afternoon he passed by watching the mountains. They grew ahead of the company as if the peaks were slowly clambering to their feet. Curving away southwest and northeast, the range was not as high as the mountains behind Mithil Stonedown, but it was rugged and raw, as if high pinnacles had been shattered to make those forbidding, impenetrable. Covenant did not know what lay behind the mountains, and did not want to know. Their impenetrability gave him an obscure comfort, as if they carne between him and something he could not bear to see.
They stood up more swiftly now as the company rode at a slow run toward them. The sun was dipping into the western plains as the riders entered the foothills of a precipitous outcropping of the range. And their backs were hued in orange and pink as they crossed a last rise, and reached a broad flat glade at the foot of the cliff.
There, at last, was Manhome.
The bottom of the cliff face for the last two hundred fifty or three hundred feet inclined sharply inward along a broad, half-oval front, leaving a cave like a deep, vertical bowl in the rock. Far back in the cave, where they were protected from the weather, and yet still exposed to the open air, were the hooped tents of the Ramen families. And in the front under the shelter of the cliff was the communal area, the open space and fires where the Ramen cooked and talked and danced and sang together when they were not out on the Plains with the Ranyhyn. The whole place seemed austere, as if generations of Ramen had not worn a welcome for themselves in the stone; for Manhome was only a centre, a beginning for the Plains-roaming of a nomadic people.
Perhaps seventy Ramen gathered to watch the company approach. They were nearly all Winhomes, the young and old of the Ramen, and others who needed safety and a secure bed. Unlike the Cords and Manethralls, they had no fighting ropes.
But Lithe was there, and she walked lightly out to meet the company with three other Ramen whom Covenant took to be Manethralls also; they wore necklets of yellow flowers like hers, and carried their cords in their hair rather than at their waists. The company halted, and Prothall dismounted before the Manethralls. He bowed to them in the Ramen fashion, and they gestured their welcome in return. “Hail again, Lords from afar,” said Lithe. “Hail Ringthane and High Lord and Giant and Bloodguard. Be welcome to the hearth and bed of Manhome.”
At her salutation, the Winhomes surged forward from under the cliff. As the riders got down from their horses, each was greeted by a smiling Winhome bearing a small band of woven flowers. With gestures of ritual stateliness, they fastened the bands to the right wrists of their guests.
Covenant climbed off Dura, and found a shy-bold Ramen girl no more than fifteen or sixteen years old standing before him. She had fine black hair that draped her shoulders, and soft wide brown eyes. She did not smile; she seemed awed to find herself greeting the Ringthane, the wielder of the white gold. Carefully, she reached out to put her flowers around his wrist.
Their smell staggered him, and he nearly retched. The band was woven of
amanibhavam
. Its tang burned his nose like acid, made him so hungry that he felt about to vomit chunks of emptiness. He was helpless to stop the tears that ran from his eyes.
With a face full of solemnity, the Winhome girl raised her hands and touched his tears as if they were precious.
Behind him, the Ranyhyn of the Bloodguard were galloping off into the freedom of the Plains. The Cords were leading the company's horses away to be tended, and more Ramen cantered into the glade in answer to the news of the Quest's arrival. But Covenant kept his eyes on the girl, stared at her as if she were a kind of food. Finally she answered his gaze by saying, “I am Winhome Gay. Soon I will share enough knowing to join the Cords.” After an instant of hesitation, she added, “I am to care for you while you guest here.” When he did not respond, she said hurriedly, “Others will gladly serve if my welcome is not accepted.”
Covenant remained silent for a moment longer, clenching his useless ferocity. But then he gathered his strength for one final refusal. “I don't need anything. Don't touch me.” The words hurt his throat.
A hand touched his shoulder. He glanced around to find Foamfollower beside him. The Giant was looking down at Covenant, but he spoke to the pain of rejection in Gay's face. “Do not be sad, little Winhome,” he murmured. “Covenant Ringthane tests us. He does not speak his heart.”
Gay smiled gratefully up at Foamfollower, then said with sudden sauciness, “Not so little, Giant. Your size deceives you. I have almost reached Cording.”
Her gibe appeared to take a moment to penetrate Foamfollower. Then his stiff beard twitched. Abruptly, he began to laugh. His glee mounted; it echoed off the cliff above Manhome until the mountain seemed to share his elation, and the infectious sound spread until everyone near him was laughing without knowing why. For a long moment, he threw out gales as if he were blowing debris from his soul.
But Covenant turned away, unable to bear the loud weight of the Giant's humour. Hellfire, he growled. Hell and blood. What are you doing to me? He had made no decision, and now his capacity for self-denial seemed spent.
So when Gay offered to guide him to his seat for the feast which the Winhomes had prepared, he followed her numbly. She took him under the ponderous overhang of the cliff to a central, clear space with a campfire burning in the middle. Most of the company had already entered Manhome. There were two other fires, and the Ramen divided the company into three groups: the Bloodguard sat around one of the fires; Quaan and his fourteen warriors around another; and in the centre, the Ramen invited Prothall, Mhoram, Foamfollower, Llaura, Pietten, and Covenant to join the Manethralls. Covenant let himself be steered until he was sitting cross-legged on the smooth stone floor, across the circle from Prothall, Mhoram, and Foamfollower. Four Manethralls made places for themselves beside the Lords, and Lithe seated herself near Covenant. The rest of the circle was filled with Cords who had come in from the Plains with their Manethrall teachers.
Most of the Winhomes bustled around cooking fires farther back in the cave, but one stood behind each guest, waiting to serve. Gay attended Covenant, and she hummed a light melody which reminded him of another song he had once heard.
Something there is in beauty
which grows in the soul of the beholder
like a flower.
Under the wood smoke and the cooking doors, he thought that he could smell Gay's clean, grassy fragrance.
As he sat lumpishly on the stone, the last glow of the sunset waved orange and gold on the roof like an affectionate farewell. Then the sun was gone. Night spread over the Plains; campfire flames gave the only light in Manhome. The air was full of bustle and low talk like a hill breeze rich in Ranyhyn scent. But the food Covenant dreaded did not come immediately. First, some of the Cords danced...
Three of them performed within the circle where Covenant sat. They danced around the fire with high prancing movements and sang a nickering song to the beat of complex clapping from the Winhomes. The smooth flow of their limbs, the sudden eruptions of the dance, the dark tan of their skins, made them look as if they were enacting the pulse of the Plains- dancing the pulse by making it fast enough for human eyes to see. And they repeatedly bent their bodies so that the firelight cast horselike shadows on the walls and ceiling.
Occasionally, the dancers leaped close enough to Covenant for him to hear their song:
Grass-grown hooves, and forehead stars;
hocks and withers, earth-wood bloom:
regal Ranyhyn, gallop, run-
we serve the Tail of the Sky,
Mane of the World.
The words and the dance made him feel that they expressed some secret knowledge, some vision that he needed to share. The feeling repelled him; he tore his eyes away from the dancers to the glowing coals of the fire. When the dance was done, he went on staring into the fire's heart with a gaze full of vague trepidations.
Then the Winhomes brought food and drink to the circles. Using broad leaves for plates, they piled stew and wild potatoes before their guests. The meal was savoury with rare herbs which the Ramen relished in their cooking, and soon the Questers were deep in the feast. For a long time the only sounds in Manhome were those of serving and eating.
In the midst of the feast, Covenant sat like a stunted tree. He did not respond to anything Gay offered him. He stared at the fire; there was one coal in it which burned redly, like the night glow of his ring. He was doing a kind of VSE in his mind, studying his extremities from end to end; and his heart ached in the conviction that he was about to find some utterly unexpected spot of leprosy. He looked as if he were withering.