The Blue Sword (23 page)

Harry sat still in her chair, where she was sure she would sit forever, gazing in amazement at the story Jack had just told her. She must have looked very queer, for Terim said to her anxiously, “Harimad-sol, what is wrong? You look as if you have seen your father’s ghost. Has this man said aught of ill to you?”

Harry roused and shook her head, which felt thick and heavy. “No; he has just told me something that bewilders me even as it makes all plain.”

Senay said softly: “Sol, might we know what it is?”

Harry tried to smile. “He has said that my mother’s grandmother was a Hillwoman, and thus the blood of your Hills runs in my veins.”

The two looked back at her with the sort of surprise and consternation she was sure was still plain on her own face. Terim said: “But we know you must be one of us, or the king’s madness would not come to you, and everyone knows that it does: already there are tales told of Harimad-sol at the laprun trials. The Water of Sight shows you things, and Lady Aerin speaks to you, and your eyes turn yellow when you are held by some strong emotion. In fact, they are yellow now.”

Harry laughed: a little laugh and a weak one, but still a laugh, and she said to Jack, “My friends are not the least surprised by this intelligence, for all that it shakes me to my soul and makes my heart beat too fast—with fear or joy I am not quite sure. They say they have known me for a Hillwoman all along.”

“I’ve no doubt that’s true,” Jack said dryly. “You may be sure Corlath would have made no Outlander his Rider, even if the Lady Aerin ordered him to.”

“But why was I never told?” Harry mused, still trying to collect her thoughts together in one place so that she could look at them. Perhaps she was a better-constructed bridge than she had realized; and she thought of beams and girders, and almost laughed; how Outlanderish an image that was, to be sure. And as she labeled that bit of herself Outlander she then was free to label some other bit Damarian; and she felt a little more like herself all over, as though she were fitting into her skin a little more securely. She still was not sure what she was, but at least she need not be unhappy for not knowing: and now, perhaps, she had the missing pieces she needed to begin to learn.

“I think,” Jack said slowly, “that I have an idea about that. I had assumed that you did know, but I remember now how Richard and I talked about you when you were to come out here—he seemed to think it would be bad for you in a particular way—” He frowned, trying to remember clearly. “You were evidently a little too, um, bohemian for him, and he obviously thought living in the land of your grandmother’s mother was going to aggravate the tendency. But I never thought he would, er …”

“Protect me from myself by keeping me in ignorance?” Harry smiled ruefully. “Well, I didn’t know, but I’m not surprised. Angry maybe—how
dare
he?—but not surprised. He takes the man’s responsibility toward his frail female relations very seriously, does Dickie. Drat him. Where is my inestimable brother? Here?”

Jack was smiling at her, as she sat with her sword hilt touching her shoulder when she gestured. “No,” he said, “he’s off being diplomatic, which is something he shows some brilliance at, for me and Sir Charles. We’d like some extra men here, just in case this silly tribal matter gets out of hand, and I would only get red and froth at the mouth, while Richard can look earnest and beseeching, and may even have some effect.” He looked gloomily at the table. “I torment myself, now and again, wondering whether, if Corlath had given us a bit more warning about what he had in mind, if Peterson and I could have brought Charles around—even a little—this mess we’re in might have been, even a little, less of a mess. But it is not, as we say when we are being diplomatic, a fruitful source of inquiry.”

Harry was thinking, For that matter, why didn’t Mummy or Father tell me about my mysterious inheritance? They must have known, to tell my wretched brother—indeed, it must have been generally known to some extent; that explains why we were never quite the thing—I always thought it was just because we didn’t give the right sort of dinner parties and spent too much time in the saddle. She went hot and cold, and her last shred of doubt about whether she had chosen wisely when she chose the Hills over the country that had raised her dissolved; but she had loved her family and her home, and she was without bitterness.

She yanked her attention back as Jack began to speak again: “It’s been a little anxious here lately. There is something, or there are somethings, hanging around the town and the fort; and twice my men have gone out scouting and found signs of battle; and once there was a corpse.” His face was drawn and old. “It wasn’t quite human; although from a distance it would probably look human enough.”

Harry said softly: “I have been told that much of the Northern army is not quite human.”

Jack was silent for a little, then said: “In simple numbers I can’t promise much. I don’t want to risk forcibly anyone’s neck but my own, as we will be going against orders, but there are a few men here I know who have the same attitude toward the Northerners that I do. I will put it to them.”

Harry said, “So, how many and how quickly?”

“Not very and very. Those of us who will go have been quivering like so many arrows on so many bowstrings for weeks; we’ll be grateful for the chance to snap forward. Look: you and your friends can have a bath and a nap; and we should be able to march at sunset.”

There had been something obscurely troubling Harry since she entered the fort so precipitously; and at first she had put it down to the confusion, to her first sight of Outlanders since she had ceased to be one herself; and the troubled reflections that this recognition had brought her. But the sense of not-quite-right, of a whiff of something unpleasant, or a vibration in the air, increased as the rest of her relaxed. She looked around her now, able to think about this specific disturbance, to focus on its cause if her
kelar
would point the way. She turned her head one way and another; it was much worse in the small closed space that was Jack’s rooms. It was as she put her hand over the blue stone on Gonturan’s hilt that she finally understood what it was. “One last thing,” she said.

“Yes?” said Jack, but it took Harry a little time to put it in words.

“No … guns. Rifles or revolvers, or whatever it is you use. They’ll only, um, go wrong.” And she shivered in the proximity of Jack’s hunting-rifles hung on the wall, and two revolvers on belts hooked over the back of an unoccupied chair.

Jack tapped his fingers on the table. “Not just rumors, then?” he said.

Harry shook her head. “Not just rumors. It’s not something I’ve seen, about guns—but I know. I know something of what the Hillfolk do, or are—and even if we could stop whatever it is we do, and I can’t, because I usually don’t know what I’m doing in the first place—I know too that, whatever it is, it will ride with those that we will be facing. And—and the presence of yours in this room,” and she waved her hand, while the other one still rested on the blue gem, “is making me feel … edgy. It’s the sort of thing I’m learning to pay attention to.”

The room was suddenly smaller and darker than it had been before Harry spoke; Jack stared at her, seeing his young friend and seeing almost clearly the outline of the thing she had taken on in the Hills; and then an unexpected ray of sunlight fell through the window and the blue gem of her sword hilt blazed up as her hand slipped away from it, and her cheek and hair were lit blue. But the outline of her burden was gone. Jack thought, I am going to follow this child, to my death perhaps, but I am going to follow her, and be proud of the opportunity.

“Very well. I believe you. It’s rather pleasant to have one’s favorite old-wives’-tales borne out as truth. You’ll not want infantry anyway; and our cavalry is accustomed to its sabers.”

“Now, about that bath?” Harry said. Ted was told to provide the baths and beds required; she and Senay were led to Jack’s bathroom first, and Harry sank gratefully into the water in the tall tin tub, sliding down till the water closed over her face and she looked up at a wavering circular world. She had to come up at last to breathe, and the world opened out again. Senay unbraided and combed her long dark hair, which fell past her knees in well-ordered waves; Harry watched with envy. Her own hair was nearly so long, but it liked escaping whatever it was put into, and bits were always getting caught in things and snapped off; so while Senay’s hair smoothly framed her face and smoothly twisted into a knot at the nape of her neck, Harry always had unrepentant tendrils launching themselves in all directions. Senay bound her sleek mane up again as Harry climbed, dripping, out of the tub. Senay slipped into the water with her own grateful sigh, and Harry put on the oversized nightshirt Ted had laid out for her and stumbled into Jack’s bedroom, where two cots had been set up by the bed. Narknon finished investigating all the corners of Jack’s rooms, while Jack and Ted eyed her warily, soon after Harry finished her bath; but when the cat tried to squeeze herself next to her sol on the bed, Harry was so deeply asleep already that she refused to make room and Narknon, with a discontented yowl, had to sleep humped over her feet.

S
he woke up with a jolt, hearing her name, “Harry,” and for a moment she did not know where she was, but was convinced she was a prisoner. It was only Jack, standing in the doorway of the bedroom. She sighed and relaxed, conscious that much of her panic was caused by the fact that her right hand had closed only on bedclothes. Jack was looking at her quizzically; the white-knuckled right fist was not lost on him. “It’s right here,” he said, nodding to his left, where Gonturan hung from a peg on the wall, next to silver-hilted Dalig and long Teksun. She unbent her fingers one by one, and with her left hand smoothed the bedding. Senay and Terim sat up and quietly began pulling on their boots, and Narknon lay down with an offended grunt over the pillow Harry had just vacated.

There was food on the table again, and silent Ted stood to one side, poised and waiting to fill a plate or a cup. Harry came into the front room with her left arm close to her side and her hand across her stomach; Gonturan was hanging over her right shoulder. “Jack,” she said, “do you suppose I could borrow a—a belt from you? I seem to have … lost mine.”

Jack looked at her and then at the saffron- and blue-sashed waists of her two companions. “Lost?” he said, knowing something of Hill sashes.

“Lost,” said Harry firmly.

Ted put down his coffee-pot and went off to search for a leather Outlander belt.

The sky was red when two dozen grim Outlanders set out beside three Hillfolk, one wearing a brass-buckled Outlander belt, heading north and west away from the Outlander fort. “We include one first-rate bugler,” said Jack cheerfully. “At least we’ll know whether we’re coming or going.” His men were dressed in the Homelander uniform of dull brown, with the red vertical stripe over the left breast that indicated Damarian duty. Harry permitted herself a twinge of nostalgia for her first sight of those uniforms, in the little clattering train, sitting opposite her brother. She asked, “Is it indiscreet, or merely putting a good face on it that you’re wearing your proper uniforms?”

Jack replied, staring toward the mountains, “It is that most of us have little useful clothing that is not of army issue.” He turned to her and smiled. “And besides, familiarity also breeds comfort. And I think, just now, we might do well to think of morale whenever we can.”

They jogged steadily, with much jingling of tack from the fort horses; Harry had forgotten how noisy bits and chains and stirrups were, and felt that the Northerners would hear them coming from behind the mountains. They stopped just before dawn, in a valley at the beginning of the foothills. “Tonight,” said Senay, “we must go east into these hills, for there my village is.” Harry nodded.

Jack looked uneasy. “Harry,” he said, “I’m not sure my lot will be very welcome in Senay’s home town. If you like, we can ride a little farther along the way, so as not to lose time, and meet you near the pass—at the foot of the final trail to it, perhaps.”

“Mm.” Harry explained this to Senay, who looked at Jack and then Harry with surprise. “We will all ride together,” she said. “We are comrades.”

Harry did not need to translate. Jack smiled a little. “I wonder if Corlath would approve.”

Terim had caught the king’s name, and asked Harry what was said. “He would say the same, of course,” Terim replied. “It is true we are often enemies, but even when we are enemies, we are nearer each other than we can ever be to the Northerners, at least so long as only human blood runs in our veins. It is why this war is so bitter. We cannot occupy the same land. It has always been thus.”

“We don’t occupy the same land particularly well ourselves, however human we may be,” said Jack, and when Terim looked inquiringly at him, Jack put it in Hill-speech.

Terim chewed his lip a minute. “Yes, we fight, and usually we do not love each other; but we are still the same. The Northerners are not. You will see. Where their feet step, it will be as if our land were sown with salt.”

Jack looked at Harry, and Harry looked at Jack. “I am not sure of this,” she said. “I know the wizardry their folk produce is different than the Hillfolk’s, and … I know that any possibility of a part-blood Northerner is looked on with disgust and … fear. You call someone half-North, thidik, and they may be forgiven for trying to kill you. Evidently,” and Harry’s voice was very even, “Hill and Outlander blood is supposed to cross more gracefully.”

As Jack stared at his horse’s neck, Senay leaned toward him, and touched his horse’s mane. “We are like enough, Jack Dedham; we all follow Harimad-sol.”

Jack smiled. “We all follow Harimad-sol.”

Harry said, “Jack, you are
not
following me. Don’t
you
start.”

Jack looked at her, still smiling; looked up, for his stolid gelding Draco was a hand and a half shorter than Sungold. But he did not answer.

They rested most of the day and started off again an hour before sunset, following Senay’s directions. The desert was behind them now, and so neither the sun nor the conspicuousness of traveling through empty country would force them to march only by night. It was near midnight when two men stepped into the path before them, and held up torches that suddenly burst into fire. Everyone blinked, and the Outlander horses tossed their heads. Then a voice behind one torch said sharply, “Who are you, who travel to the town of Shpardith?”

Senay replied, “Thantow, have you forgotten me so quickly?”

Thantow walked forward, holding his torch high, and Senay dismounted. “Senay you are,” he said, and those near behind could see him smile. “Your family will be pleased to see you return to them,” although his eyes wandered over them, and the jingling of bits was very loud in Harry’s ears.

“These are my comrades,” Senay said simply, and Thantow nodded. He muttered a few words to his companion, who turned and trotted off, the light of his torch bobbing dizzily till he disappeared around a bend of the rocky way.

Harry dismounted, and Narknon reappeared from the darkness to sit under Sungold’s belly and watch the goings-on, and make sure she wasn’t being left out of anything interesting. Senay turned to Harry and introduced her reverently as “Harimad-sol,” whereupon Thantow swept her a very elegant Hill bow, which included the hand gestures of respect, and Harry tried not to shuffle her feet. They all moved forward again, and after a few minutes the narrow path opened up. It broadened slowly till it turned into a round patch of grass encircled by a white path that gleamed mysteriously in the torchlight. A little breeze wandered around them, and the smell was like roses.

Thantow led them around the white path, and at the end of the circle opposite was a tall building of brown and grey stone, built into the mountainside, with moss and tiny, carefully cultivated trees bordering its roof. In the windows of this building lights were appearing. As they approached nearer, the wooden door crashed open, and a child in what was probably a nightgown came flying out, and unerringly sprang into Senay’s arms. “You’ve been gone weeks and
weeks
,” the child said accusingly.

“Yes, love, but I did tell you I would be,” said Senay, and the child buried her face in Senay’s diaphragm and said, “I
missed
you.”

Three other people emerged from the still-open door. First was a tall old man carrying a lantern, and limping on one leg; a younger woman strode behind him, then hurried forward to say, “Rilly, go
inside
.” Senay gently disengaged the reluctant Rilly, who backed up, one foot at a time, toward the house, not caring whom she might run into, till she bumped into the doorframe, fell through it, and disappeared from view. The young woman turned back to Senay, and embraced her long and silently. When the old man came up to them, he called Senay daughter. Harry blinked, for this man was certainly the local lord, the sola, of this place; but then, to be able to send his daughter so far to the laprun trials, perhaps it was not surprising.

The third person was a young man, Senay’s brother, for they both looked like their father; and he patted her arm awkwardly and said, “How was it?” He looked about sixteen.

Senay smiled at him. “I was well defeated,” she said, in the traditional phrase, “and I wear my sash so,” and her fingers touched the torn rent. Harry sighed. “This is Harimad-sol,” Senay said, “who wielded the sword that cut my sash. She took the trials.” The old man turned to look at her sharply, and Harry met his gaze, wondering if he would comment on her obviously Outlander cast of features under the Hillman’s hood; but he looked at her a moment, the lantern light shining in her eyes, and then bowed himself, and said, “My house is honored.” Only then did his eyes drop to the blue hilt just visible beyond the edge of her cloak. He turned to look at the rest of them, and his quiet face gave nothing away as he looked at two dozen Outlander cavalry standing uneasily at his threshold. “These are my comrades,” Senay said again, and her father nodded; and the woman, Senay’s stepmother, said formally, “They are welcome.”

Terim and Jack followed Harry and Senay into the house, while Jack’s men and horses were led along the stone ridge of mountainside that the sola’s house was built against, to a long low hall. “It is the village meeting-place,” Senay explained. “Many of our Hill towns have them, near the sola’s house, for there we can all come together to talk or to celebrate; and when it is necessary we can shelter our friends and stable their horses.”

Harry nodded slowly. “And if you must … defend?”

The old man smiled without humor. “There are caves, and twisting paths that lead pursuers to walls of stone or cliffs; and we can disappear if we must. You would not have come easily to this place if Senay had not guided you. The Hills are not good country for conquerors; there are too many holes in them.”

“Yes,” murmured Jack.

The room they entered was a large one; there were rugs on the floors and walls, and a long low table beside a long window, although it was closely curtained now. “Rilly,” said her mother firmly, “you may stay up for a short while, but you must put your robe and your boots on.” Rilly disappeared again.

Servants entered the room bringing malak and small fat cakes, and Rilly reappeared and snuggled down by Senay, who put an arm around her. Harry waited, wondering if she would have to explain their errand; but Senay said with the same simplicity as she had explained the Outlanders as her comrades: “We go to stop the Northerners who come through the Madamer Gate. Who is there that can come with us?”

Sixteen riders joined them in the morning when they set out once more, and Harry began to feel a trifle silly riding at the head of what was becoming at least a company if not an army. But it was obviously expected of her to ride first, chin in the air, staring forthrightly ahead. It’s better than one mad Outlander on a Hill horse, she thought. What would I have done if Senay and Terim hadn’t followed me, if Jack hadn’t been at the fort?

“Jack,” she said.

“Mmm?”

“Have you ever seen Ritger’s Gap?”

“No. Why?”

“I am wondering, in a foresightful commanding sort of way, how ridiculous a few dozen of us strung out across it are going to look when—if—the Northerners do in fact decide to use it.”

Jack grimaced. “Not very—silly, I mean. I believe it’s a very narrow place; there’s a valley spread out on the far side of it, but the gap itself we should be able to bottle up for some time, even the few of us.”

Harry expelled her breath. “I do keep thinking how much of a fool’s errand this is.”

Jack smiled. “A noble and well-meaning fool’s errand at least.”

That night Harry dreamed: Ritger’s Gap, the Madamer Gate, was a thin cleft of rock, no more than two-horse width; on the south side was a small rocky plateau, which then fell away abruptly into the forested mountainside. On the north was a wide bowl of valley with some dull brush and loose rock covering it; uneven footing, she thought in her dream, and no protection. Not a battlefield of choice. The valley led slowly up to the final narrow gap in the rock. She turned in her dream, and saw a little string of riders, the leader on a tall chestnut horse that gleamed like fire in the sun, striding up the path to the rocky plateau. She had seen these riders before, toiling up that mountainside. The familiarity of the vision comforted her; perhaps she had, after all, made the right choice when the path had forked. Perhaps she would justify Luthe’s faith in her.

And Corlath?

She woke with a start. There was the greyness before true dawn in the sky, but she arose nonetheless and began to stir the fire. She noticed, with a flash of fear and anger, that her hand trembled; and then the fire burned up, and in its red heart she saw two faces. First was Corlath’s. He stood quietly, staring at something she could not see; and he looked sad, and the sadness wrung her heart as though she were the cause of it. Then his face became the flames of a campfire again, but they flickered and rearranged themselves and became the face of Aerin, who smiled wryly, and it came into Harry’s mind that perhaps Aerin had something to do with Senay and Terim following her, and Jack having sent Richard alone to argue for the General Mundy. Harry smiled a little, weakly, herself, at the face in the fire. Aerin looked away, as if something had caught her attention, and there was a blue glint at her side, which might have been Gonturan’s hilt, or only the snapping of a small fire.

“Do we ride out early, then?” said Jack, his voice rough with sleep.

“Yes,” said Harry. “I don’t like my dreams—and I … suspect that I am supposed to pay attention to some of my dreams.”

Their voices caused other sleepers to stir, and by the time the sun rose up over the crest of the Hills on their right, they had ridden some miles. “We will be there by tomorrow,” said Harry at their midday halt; and the grimness of her own voice surprised her. She was sitting on the ground as she spoke, and Narknon came to her, and wrapped herself around her shoulders and back like a fur cloak, as if to comfort her.

There was a scuffle, suddenly, to one side, and Harry whipped around, one hand on Gonturan. A tall woman strode out from the trees, two of Jack’s soldiers, looking tousled, slightly annoyed, and slightly afraid, standing on her either side. One of them held half a loaf of bread and the other a drawn dagger; but he held it like a bread knife. The woman was dressed in brown leather; there was a woven blue belt, sky blue, a color that comforted the eye, around her waist, and a dull crimson cap on her head; and she wore a quiver of arrows over her shoulder and carried loosely in her hand a long bow, with blue beads the color of her belt twisted just below the handgrip.