“You always command such endearing platitudes,” Harka replied. “Don't you ever tire of them? ”
“Perhaps they are all I have,” Perkar rejoined. “Now let me ride in peace, until such time as you sense danger.”
“Very well, ” the voice in his ear conceded, and was thereafter silent.
The dark clouds boiled and spread eastward; Perkar could sense the sleet in their bellies, feel the cold sucking at him from that quarter of the world. Yet, as Ngangata predicted, they did not advance, and by the time evening came, the sky had nearly frozen clear, indigo veined with copper and crimson where a few high, attenuated clouds still clung. When the first star winked brightly at them, Perkar and Ngangata stopped to make camp. They worked silently at erecting the small horsehide tent Brother Horse had lent them. Perkar searched out a few scraps of withered wood in the dying light as his companion tightened the straps of their shelter.
When he returned, Ngangata was chanting over his bow, thanking the god of the tree from which it was made. Perkar considered following his example, but his sword, Harka, was a god, and as they had argued that day, it would be disingenuous to chant a song of thanks to him. Still, he had bragged that he was returning to the path of Piraku, and so after a few moments, he sang the one song that seemed appropriate, though it was alien. He chanted “Thanking the Horse Mother,” what little he knew of it, to show proper respect to their tent, made as it was from the mortal remains of a stallion named Snakeskin. All Mang tents were made of horsehide, and so each had a name. The song he had learned by listening carefully to the Mang as they made and broke camp.
He and Ngangata finished their chanting at roughly the same time. They met back in front of the tent. In the ruddy remains of sunset, his companion's face seemed more alien than usual, stripped of its Human heritage. His dark sunken eyes and low, sloping forehead recalled the deep, awesome forest of Balat, where the Alwat dwelt. Perkar remembered the broken bodies of Digger and her family, the Alwat who perished because he offended the Forest Lord, and wondered what he could do for their kin, what solace he could offer, what apology?
“Ngangata,” he asked, staring out at the darkening rim of the world, “did you know the names of those Alwat who died in Balat?”
“I know their names,” Ngangata answered, and Perkar noticed, as he often did not, the faint burr in his voice that no Human Being had.
“I would like you to teach them to me someday.”
“Someday,” the other replied, “but only in Balat. Their names should be spoken only there.”
“Ah.” Perkar felt the cold eating into his legs, but he did not yet desire to enter the tent and start a fire. “The sky seems to drink me up here,” he confided instead. He turned to take it all in, noticed the bone bow of the Pale Queen climbing in the east.
“I prefer more crowded land myself,” Ngangata admitted. “Like you, my Human mother was kin to pasture, to hills, to mountains. Her blood was fast-running streams, red bulls, and snowmelt. The Alwat, my father's people, are kin to the trees; they despise to leave them. You and I will both lose our minds if we live long beneath this sort of sky.” He gestured at the heavens with the blade of his hand and half grinned to show that he half joked.
“The Mang live here,” Perkar pointed out. ”Surely other men can do it.”
“But the Mang have the blood of horses coursing in their veins. They are horses, in some ways. Without this sky, they would die of suffocation.”
“So they say,” Perkar acknowledged, recalling Brother Horse's similar claim.
“You seem very thoughtful tonight,” Ngangata observed. “I believe you should take the first watch. Give yourself more time to think.”
Perkar accepted that with a faint chuckle. “Fair enough,” he replied.
MORNING was still clear, and Perkar conceded, once again, that Ngangata understood the sky better than he. They rode out without much talking, though at one point Perkar attempted a song. It fell with the rising wind however, and Perkar glumly reflected that he missed Eruka, who would have sung right on into a gale. Eruka, whose voice and laughter were now bleached bones without even a proper burial.
So much to do.
Just past midday, Harka spoke to him again, and even as he did, Perkar caught himself scrutinizing a certain point on the horizon. He was unaware, at first, that his attention was a product of the strange power his sword had to compel him to “see” danger. But then Harka said, “Comes something strong. ”
“From the direction of the storm?”
“Where else?”
Perkar could make out a speck now. He pointed it out to Ngangata.
“Yes, I see,” the half man said. “Your sword uses your eyes well.”
It seemed a rather backhanded compliment to Perkar, but he knew it was the only sort he deserved. Ngangata would have seen the approaching stranger well before Perkar, all other things being equal.
Harka, however, made things decidedly unequal, protecting Perkar from much harm and healing even the most terrible wounds in a few days at most. It was difficult, therefore, for Perkar to conjure up any fear of a lone figure in the distance, despite Harka's concern. Harka, after all, would be concerned if a jay were diving at him, protecting its nest. Even such slight threats were considered worthy of the sword's attention. Still, a menace to him was also probably a threat to Ngangata, who could be killed rather easily. Perkar did not want that; enough of his friends were already ghosts.
It soon became apparent, however, that the rider—Ngangata said he could make that much out—was moving along the same course as they, rather than coming to meet them. This delayed any worries Perkar might have been tempted to invent, especially because he knew that they should be drawing near the stream where his goddess dwelt, and he was rehearsing what he would say to her. In fact, after some time, the rider ahead of them vanished, not over the horizon but presumably behind some nearer crease in the landscape, obscured by the white sameness of the plain. Perkar's heart quickened, for such a crease might also hide a stream valley.
Midway from noon to sundown, they breasted the Up of the valley. It was a gentle, gradual dale, nothing like the crevasse the Changeling had dug for himself. Indeed, the crest of the hill was scarcely noticeable as such. The stream was not directly visible, hidden by a stand of leafless cottonwoods and furry green juniper. But she was there; Perkar knew her instantly. He clapped T'esh's flanks, bringing the horse to a canter, but Ngangata hailed him down. Almost irritated, Perkar turned to his comrade, who was gesturing at the clean snow of the valley—gesturing at a line of hoofprints not their own.
“You make your peace with the goddess,” Ngangata suggested. “I think I will find out who our stranger is.”
“No,” Perkar snapped. “No. Harka believes it to be dangerous. Leave it alone, whatever it is. Just keep your bow out and your eyes busy. I will not speak to her for long.”
“Best not,” Ngangata muttered. “I don't like not knowing where an enemy is.”
“We don't know that it is an enemy,” Perkar pointed out reasonably. Then, to Harka: “Do we?”
“No. But strong and strange, certainly. And dangerous, like a sleeping snake. ”
Perkar nodded, so that Ngangata would know he had been answered.
“But go cautiously,” Ngangata said. “We should dismount and walk down. Do no good for you to break your neck now—it could take days for you to heal.”
“Fine,” Perkar said, though he would have rather galloped down, heedless.
How old I look, Perkar thought, staring at his reflection in a still edge of the stream. His hood down, he could see the new lines on his face, the unkempt brown hair, gray eyes that seemed rather dull to him, though he had once been proud of their flash and sparkle. He was struck, suddenly, by how much more he looked like his father, and that thought brought an almost dizzying recurrence of his earlier homesickness. Up this stream, far up it, his father's pasture lay. A leaf fallen there might pass now by his feet. The stream blurred, as tears rimmed his eyes.