"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.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
She 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-hiked 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.