Through the Gate
by Mab
The gate ahead of them looks like the mouth into hell. It was the mouth into hell for ten thousand men a hundred years ago, but Blair is lashing that evil tempered beast he rides onwards, and Jim urges Sweetheart on after them. Blair takes one look back at him and shouts something that Jim can't hear. The howl of the gate hurts his ears and thrums sickeningly inside of him, but he pushes his horse on. If he understands Blair correctly, he has to go through at the same time. He has to if he's to follow Blair, whose face is pale with fear and fury, and much of the fury for Jim.
The hellsword is across Blair's lap as he rides, awkward to hold, surely, and even in its scabbard it shines with white fire and shrieks on a note in terrible harmony with the gate. Jim feels the check in Sweetheart's gait as she nearly stumbles. It's enough that Blair is ahead of him. Sweetheart makes one last effort that nigh breaks her heart, and might have broken Jim's with it, and they catch Blair (or does Blair slow down just enough?) and then - into the mouth of the gate.
It's just as terrible as Jim might have thought, and it lasts forever and no time at all, and then he and Blair and their beasts are out. A wide, pale plain stretches away before them under a grey sky, where before there were the mountains and the pines. And Blair is away, urging his horse on. Fast, hard, and with no look behind him.
Sweetheart is blown, exhausted, and Jim lets her wind down into an unsteady trot, and then stop. He dismounts and watches. Blair rides on, and Jim wonders why he and his horse aren't as exhausted as Jim and Sweetheart. He rides on for a long time, until even Jim's eyes can barely see him, and then he stops. Jim sees him turn around, and some of the burden that sits on top of Jim's heart falls away, and he turns and pats Sweetheart, who is too exhausted to do more than vaguely mouth at the grass beneath her hooves.
"Walk a little, that's it, chuh-chuh-chuh," Jim coaxes her. "Let's find you some water, that's my girl, brave girl." He sniffs out a tiny stream, and has to pull Sweetheart away from the water. She'd drink herself into all sorts of trouble if he let her have her head. And all the while, he can look out over that empty plain and see Blair riding back towards him.
Even when Jim would be able to hear his voice, Blair is uncharacteristically silent. There is no cursing, no rumination, no nothing, and when Jim knows that Blair can see him, he drops to his knees and bows his head, the perfect picture of a respectful liegeman awaiting his lord.
"You fucking idiot," Blair says, when he's about ten feet away. He sounds tired.
Jim doesn't say anything. He's gambled everything, and he can barely hear Blair, it seems, against the appalling thump of his heart.
Blair gets down and he walks over. Jim can see the scuff marks on his boots.
"You idiot. You can't go back. You know what you've done!" Blair's voice is starting to rise.
"You declared me your liegeman. It was my duty to follow."
"I was finished with you, and I released you." Blair's voice is low and tight again and Jim keeps his head down, so that Blair can't see his face.
You aren't finished with me, he thinks. Any more than I'm finished with you. When he's sure of his expression, he lifts his head.
"So I'm no longer your liegeman?"
Blair's mouth thins. "I'm pretty sure that I told you that, a world away. Stubborn. God, so stubborn, so stupid."
The words sting. They're meant to. But there are some things Blair has taught Jim, and others Jim has learned on his own; and one of those is how to tell when Blair is shading the truth. It's part observation, part instinct.
Jim stands. "So I am a free man now?"
Blair takes a swift step backwards. "Don't try that ploy on me. Yes, you're free. No, that does not mean that you get to follow me like a puppy that I mistakenly threw a bone to one night. We are both of us free, and your services, loyal and necessary though they were, are no longer required."
"And what of my gifts? You said that I should have a guide."
"Yes, but not me!" Jim watches closely, and he smells the air, and he can nearly taste the way that Blair denies the want that pours off him for just a moment or two. Blair turns away. "There may be someone here who can help. We'll hope that they're congenial, since you won't be going anywhere else."
"Blair...."
Blair stops. His back is straight but Jim can see the weight that bows his spirit down as he addresses words to the open air, not Jim. " I made promises long before you were born; I can't afford promises to anybody else."
Jim tries to find some spit to moisten his mouth. "Then so be it. But you can teach me about my gifts for a while longer."
Blair shakes his head, his hair whipping about in a frenzy of movement. "No, I can't. Anyone with me is expendable, Jim. They have to be, and I don't want...I don't want that for you."
Jim knows how much that admission costs.
"I've always been expendable. It's nothing new." Jim steps closer but he doesn't touch. No palm curled across a tense shoulder, no grip of a hand to an upper arm, no pat to the back.
"And that's your recommendation of yourself is it?" Blair turns, as his temper rises again. "That you don't matter? Bullshit. Bullshit!"
Jim wisely refrains from pointing out that aspects of Blair's attitude are contradictory. He watches Blair ride out the brief emotional storm until the last shreds of cloud are past, and then says, "At least we won't have to worry about feeding the horses," and gestures out at the plain and the grass.
"Don't you be so sure about that," Blair mutters, contrary again. Still. "And there's the question of feeding ourselves."
Jim shrugged. "We both have weapons and we both know how to hunt. We'll find something."
"Oh, no doubt." Blair remounts his horse. "This isn't this world's master Gate, and we're too close to it. We have food enough for now. We should ride on." He settles irritably in the saddle, muttering about the wasted time. "Come on."
Jim mounts Sweetheart, preparing to argue if Blair insists on his usual mad pace, but they set off sedately enough, Blair slightly ahead.
"You had better not be smiling, James son of Ellis."
"No, my lord." Jim isn't smiling. It's more of a grin, and he's willing to take his chances if Blair turns his head and sees it.
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