The Blue Sword (18 page)

One evening they rode into a hollow where nearly a hundred strangers, all mounted, and with several pack horses and hunting-beasts besides, waited for them; and Corlath rode forward with a great hearty cry of welcome, a sound nearer happiness than any Harry had heard from him since they began their march north. A rider at the head of the group rode to meet him, and they seized each other by the shoulders while their horses bumped uneasily together and rolled their eyes at each other. A third man then detached himself from the new group and joined Corlath and his friend.

“Murfoth and his son, Terim,” said Mathin in Harry’s ear. “Murfoth was one of the old king’s friends, though he’s not much more than ten years older than our king. He might have been a Rider, had he wished, but he chose instead to stay at home and look after his lands; and a good job he’s made of it too. Some of our best horses now come from him, and grain to feed many more.”

“We Riders,” said Innath from her other side, “as you may have noticed, tend to be fourth sons or otherwise penniless—or incurable wanderers like Mathin here—but Murfoth now, when he comes to ride with his king, can bring eighty men with him.” Innath’s voice, for all its careless pride, sounded almost wistful. Harry found herself remembering her father’s words to her—it seemed decades ago: “You haven’t a penny, you know.”

Terim was Harry’s age, and when he and his father came to sit at the king’s fireside he came to her and sank down beside her, folding up his long legs as all the Hillmen did. She looked at Terim and he looked at her; his look was eager and a little, to her embarrassment, reverent. “I was First at my laprun trials three years ago,” he said; “but when I took my turn against Corlath my sash was on the ground before I had a good grip on my sword.” He thumped the hilt of his sword, which jangled as it bit into the ground. “My father gave me Teksun here anyway, he said no one ever got a grip on a sword against Corlath. You did, though.” His eyes shone in the firelight.

Harry ran a meditative finger over the careful seam in her sash, which she had put in under Mathin’s promised tutelage. “I didn’t know it was he—I never thought. And he
allowed
me to cross swords with him; and when I realized how much of it was allowing, I got … mad.” She paused. “I was surprised too.” She frowned, remembering the awful headache she’d had for most of that day, and then the more awful sick lurch that seemed to start behind her eyes, where the headache was, and quiver all the way through her body, when she saw the face behind the scarf she had just removed. No one had called her baga for the cut at the corner of Corlath’s mouth, though. She met the boy’s eyes somewhat ruefully and said, “It wasn’t as pleasant an experience as you might think.”

Terim gave a little snort of laughter and said, “Yes, I believe you,” and Harry looked across to where Corlath sat with Terim’s father and found him watching her. She wondered if he had heard what she had just said.

I
n the hollow where they met Murfoth they set up their first proper camp. The hunting-beasts all went out that night, and everyone, not just a few Riders, had good fresh meat for dinner. The king’s zotar was put up, and it was obvious that it was the king’s, for it was the biggest, but this one was plain, a dull dun color, and the door was just a tent flap, and inside there were a few carpets, and hooks on side poles for lanterns, but that was all; although the black-and-white banner still flew bravely from the peak of the roof. She and the king and Murfoth and most of the Riders—Innath and Mathin among them—slept within it; but she lay awake a long time listening to the others breathe. You didn’t hear the person next to you breathing if there wasn’t a ceiling over you to keep the noise closed in. She missed the stars.

The next morning there was breakfast at a long table similar to the one where she had first met the Riders; they were all there again, with a few others of those who had joined them over the last few days. Corlath explained what was immediately ahead of them: how they would climb into the mountains again—the range was widest where the curve west was sharpest—to meet the high plateau where the Lake of Dreams lay, and where Luthe lived. Luthe? thought Harry. Most of the army would not climb all the way to the meeting-place, but fade into the forest in little groups and pretend to be invisible; for, so far at least, Corlath and the outriders believed they had not been sighted. Harry blinked and wondered if the morning mists that seemed to continue all day long every day as a kind of dull haze had after all been more than a curious local weather pattern. Luthe himself—Mathin told her this during an interval while the household folk brought in hot malak—had ways even Corlath did not understand of seeing things, and Corlath wished to see and speak to him. But Luthe never left his lands, and so it was necessary to seek him there. “Luthe claims that lowland air confuses him,” Mathin said, and shrugged the uneven Hill shrug. “It is not for us to know.” He picked up his cup.

“Yes, but who
is
Luthe?” said Harry.

Mathin regarded her with his inscrutable expression. “No one knows,” he said. “Luthe is … someone who lives in the mountains, who sees things—things something like what some of us see when we taste the Meeldtar. He has been there a very long time. No one can remember when Luthe came, or when he has not lived on his mountain.”

“And the Lake of Dreams?”

Mathin stared into his cup. “There is a spring that runs into the Lake of Dreams, and it is where the Water of Sight is found; but sometimes the water from the spring is only water, and no one knows why; although it is believed that Luthe knows. Water drunk from the Lake of Dreams does not give the Sight, as the true Meeldtar does; but it is not quite like drinking … water.”

Harry sighed.

Corlath explained briefly for the newcomers what the army was proposing to do. The Northerners must, perforce, choose the one wide pass in the mountains that led into the great central plain and then the bare desert of Damar, for it was the only gap large enough to accommodate an army’s numbers. The gap was a bit west of the midpoint of the length of the mountains from the curve where the north-south mountains, the Ildik range, became the east-west Horfel Mountains. When the last of Corlath’s little army had collected in the hollow at the elbow of the two ranges, they would ride as quickly as horseflesh would allow to the mouth of that pass, and prepare to engage the enemy among the empty villages and deserted fields of Damar.

Then there was a silence, for all in the king’s tent knew that Corlath’s force could not win a victory from the Northerners; nor were they likely able to resist them to the point that the invaders would decide Damar wasn’t worth the trouble and return home. The best the defenders could hope for, and this they did hope for, was to cause enough trouble and loss that the Northern army would not have the strength left to seize all of Damar in quite so tight and effective a grip as Thurra would wish; and that pockets of renegade Hillfolk might hide in the Hills, or under the
kelar
of the City. If they succeeded so much, the battle would be worth what it would cost them, for they would have preserved themselves a future.

Harry swallowed uncomfortably. She heard, a little dizzily, what Corlath was saying about the foothills the mountain pass gave into, and where the army would stand; and she cast in her mind for her best memory of Damarian geography, for she had the unpleasant sensation that something was being ignored, something that shouldn’t be. Corlath was saying that they would decide more exactly once they arrived, but he seemed to know every stone and clump of grass there, the exact location of every farmhouse, as did those who listened; no one fell so low as to seek recourse to a map. She frowned in concentration. She could almost see the Residency map of Daria; it was very poor at the eastern end; it barely admitted to the existence of the mountains where the king’s City stood—the City itself was one of Jack Dedham’s native legends—but about the west it was pretty accurate … Ah!

Corlath had fallen silent. Murfoth said something and there was another silence, and Harry put in, timidly but stubbornly: “Sola, what of the pass just northwest of the … of the Outlander station? It is narrow, but not so narrow that the … the Northerners could not send a line through to come up behind us.”

Corlath frowned. “Let them take the Outlander city—it will keep them amused long enough to delay them, perhaps. Even the Outlanders will try to stop them when they are on the threshold.”

There was a silence so rigid that Harry felt that speaking words into it was like chopping holes in a frozen lake. “They would do a better job trying to stop them if they were warned,” she said. Her words didn’t make much of a hole; the ice thickened visibly. She didn’t want to do anything so obvious as put her hand on her sword hilt; but she did press her elbow surreptitiously against it, and stiffened her spine.

“They
were
warned,” said Corlath, and Harry raised her eyes to his and saw the golden tide rising in them; and wondered what that fruitless conversation in the Residency must have cost him. Yet he hadn’t burned the Residency down with that golden glare of his, as she suspected he could have; and so she blinked at him now and said, “Colonel Dedham would listen to you. You did not know the Northerners were on the march … then; you know for certain now. The pass is narrow; he could hold it for you indefinitely—but not if they have had time to come through and go where they will.” Her voice was rising with fear and perhaps anger: was there anything but stubborn pride, the offended majesty of the absolute ruler of his small land, working in Corlath, that he should waste a chance to gain a little more time? How little she knew him after all, and how little she knew Damar, she who could not visualize every yellow blade of korf before the great pass in the mountains. And yet she could see—did she not truly see?—the threat that this second, narrow pass presented; a threat that the king and the commander of the army was choosing to overlook. She did not understand; she was born of a different people and she understood different things.

“
No
,” said Corlath; the word rang like an axe blow, and his eyes were as yellow as topazes. Harry stared back at him—
you great bully
—even knowing what he could do to her, even as the sweat broke out on her skin with the effort of holding his eyes. Her elbow clamped desperately on Gonturan, and the hard edge of the blue gem dug into her ribs and encouraged her. Then he snapped his gaze from her and pointed it at the tent flap and shouted, though he rarely shouted, and fresh malak was brought in and fruit with it. The ice began, nervously, to break up, and Harry glowered at her cup and refused to be drawn into conversation, and listened to her heart beating, and wondered if she were a traitor; and if so, to whom?

The next morning thirty-five chosen horsemen, with Corlath at their head and Harry, still somewhat sulky, among them, started up the track to Luthe’s holding. The rest of the army broke camp first, and melted into the scrub of the mountains’ feet, taking the hunting-beasts and the pack horses with them. Corlath and the little band with him waited till last, watching them go, judging if their disappearance was effective; looking to see if there were any too obvious paths broken in the undergrowth. A few fleeks broke cover, but that was the only sign of their passage. Corlath and whoever else might have a weather talent must have been satisfied, and Harry watched, with a few cold fingers working their way up her spine in spite of the heat: for the loyal fog over them was blandly breaking up. The sky was blue and clear. A britti burst into song, and Harry raised her eyes to watch the little brown speck zigzagging madly overhead. Corlath sent his big bay forward, and thirty-four riders, and one obstinate hunting-cat, followed.

Harry hung near the back. She had not slept the night before for thinking of the northwest pass and Jack Dedham; Dedham’s face watching Corlath as he stormed out of the Residency; and Corlath’s face as he said, “Let them take the Outlander city—it will keep them amused.”

Surely there was a reason none of the Hillfolk thought that gap into Damar worth consideration? But if there was a reason, what was the reason? Perhaps this Luthe would show some sense. Perhaps his crystal ball or what-have-you would say, “Beware the northwest pass! Beware!”

And then again maybe it wouldn’t. So, Harry, what do you propose to do about it then?

She didn’t know. She concentrated on Sungold’s ears, slender and pricked, framing the trail in front of her, and the dark grey haunches of Innath’s horse going on before. The scrub gave way to trees, and the trees to greater trees, till they were walking in a forest heavy with age, where even the air tasted old. By the end of the afternoon all the riders were on foot, walking with their sweat-dark horses up a steep uneven incline. Harry was panting, but she tried to do it quietly. Corlath probably never breathed hard. Tsornin’s nostrils showed red, but his ears were as alert as ever, and occasionally he would rub his nose gently against the nape of her neck, just in case she was momentarily not thinking about him. Narknon ranged beside them like a dappled shadow. The trees were so tall and grand that Harry, watching her, could believe that she was no bigger than a housecat; that when she came up to be petted, she would twine around Harry’s ankles, and Harry would pick her up with one hand and put her on her shoulder.

The trees were so high overhead that the twilight beneath them might have been sunset, but might only be leaf shade; and they were a silent company, for no one spoke and the footfalls were muted by leaves and moss. Harry allowed herself to wonder about the trail, as an alternative to her endless mental circles about northwest passes: that it stayed clear enough that no one had to duck under low-hanging branches, or fight a way through an encroaching bush, but so little used that the moss underfoot was thick and smooth. And still smooth after thirty horses and thirty human pedestrians have tramped over it, the thirty-first pedestrian thought, scuffing it curiously with one foot. Sturdy moss. Maybe Luthe is a botanist in his spare time.

By nightfall Harry was still walking only by dint of holding a large handful of Sungold’s mane in one hand. She had tried resting an arm across his back, but his back was too high for comfort; and her sweaty hand kept sliding through his fine hair. Even his head was hanging a little low, and Harry knew she was still in company only by the soft creaking of other saddles and the occasional flicker in the gloom immediately ahead that was Innath’s horse flipping its tail.

As she walked her eyes closed and the colors of exhaustion twinkled across her eyelids. Then to her dismay they began to sort themselves out into patterns, but she was too tired even to open her eyes and disperse them. She saw a red-haired rider on a white horse. The horse was old, white with age, the bones of its face very clear and fine; she thought it went just a bit short with its right hind foot, but its neck was arched and its tail high. The rider’s shoulders were set grimly, the legs against the horse’s sides were determined, not eager. There was a smoky redness to the horizon beyond them, scarlet that did not look like dawn or sunset; they were going toward it, and the light flashed off a chain around the rider’s neck and the helm tied to the saddle, and the rider’s hair, and the horse’s flanks. Harry wondered where they were going, where they had come from. The countryside could have been Damar. It could have been almost anywhere.

She realized there was light shining through her eyelids; it was setting the white horse on fire. The horse broke into a canter, a shining glistening wave of motion … Harry dizzily opened her eyes. They were approaching a clearing set with torches; she could see Corlath halted, talking to a man as tall as he was, but narrower; the man’s hair was yellow. Innath broke into the lighted circle, and Harry came after, trying not to stumble, too tired even to take her hand out of Sungold’s mane for pride’s sake. She looked around a little, and the faces she could see near her were haggard and drooping. Perversely, this gave her strength; she dropped her hand and straightened her shoulders. Sungold turned his head to rest his chin on her shoulder. “Who’s reassuring whom here?” she murmured, and Narknon immediately sat on Harry’s feet and bumped her hand with her head as if to say, I am.

Someone knew the way, for while Corlath finished speaking with the yellow-haired man the rest of the Riders were following someone else to … someplace to lie down, Harry wished fervently. She stole a glance at Corlath as she passed him, and was comforted by the hollows under his eyes and cheekbones. It might have been only the torchlight.

When Harry woke up the sun was high, and for a minute she had no idea where she was. Her first thought was that she had missed breakfast and her father would tease her about burning midnight oil. Then she remembered, with the old lurch of the heart, that she was in Daria with Richard—no, Damar, with Sungold, and Narknon, who sprawled across her feet. And Corlath, and Gonturan. Her hand had rested lightly on her sword hilt again as she slept, and through the first upheaval of waking; now her fingers recognized what they touched. She shivered, sighed, sat up.