"But—"
"You'll only be able to talk us out of it with an extraordinary amount of effort, because any reason you may come up with we will immediately assume has to do with your praiseworthy desire to spare us pain or trouble, and we are quite selfishly set on riding east on your heels. And we none of us have the strength for protracted arguing anyway, yourself included. And I may be old and stiff and sore, but I'm wonderfully stubborn."
There was a pause. "Very well," said Harry.
Richard, at Jack's left hand, poked the fire with a stick. "That was easier than I was expecting," he said. Jack smiled mysteriously.
They came to Senay's village the next day, and they were met with a feast. Senay's father explained: "We felt the mountain fall three days ago, for the earth shook under us and ash blew over us. The air felt brighter afterward, and so we knew it had gone well for you."
"The dust was blue," said Rilly.
"And it is a three days' ride to the Gate from here, so we expected you," the young woman, Rilly's mother and Senay's father's second wife, explained; and Senay's father, Nandam, said: "Hail to Harimad-sol, Wizard-Tamer, Hurler of Mountains."
"Oh dear," said Harry in Homelander, and Jack snorted and coughed, and Richard demanded to be let in on the joke. But when the platters, heavy and steaming, were passed, she decided that fame had its advantages. She had not eaten so well since she had sat at the banquet that made her a Rider … with Corlath …
The next morning, to her dismay, Nandam appeared with a tall black horse with one white foot. "I will come with you," he said. "This leg has made me useless in battle, but I am not without honor, and Corlath knew me of old, for Senay is not the first to ride to the king of the City from my family and my mountain. I will ride in your train too, Wizard-Tamer."
Harry winced. "But—" It was her favorite word of late.
"I know," said Nandam. "Senay told me. It is why I will come."
They avoided the fort of the Outlander town, lying peacefully in the sun, untroubled by the tiresome tribal matters of the old Damarians. The Outlanders had known all along there were too few of the Hillfolk to make serious trouble; and if the earth had shivered slightly underfoot a few days ago, it must be that the mountains were not so old as they thought, and were still shifting and straining against their place upon the earth. Perhaps a little volcanic activity would crack a new vein of wealth, and the Aeel Mines would no longer be the only reason the Outlanders went into the Ramid Mountains.
Jack looked rather broodingly toward the iron-bound wall inside which he had spent most of the last eighteen years. He caught Harry looking at him and said: "Anything there waiting for me is something on the order of 'Confine yourself to quarters while we decide what to do with you—poor man, the desert was too much for him and he finally went bonkers.' I'm not going back."
Harry smiled faintly. "I botched it, you know. If I'd known what I was doing, I could have gone alone, quietly dropped half a mountain range where it would do the most good—"
"And ridden off into a cloud, never to be heard of again," said Jack. "I sometimes think the blind devotion—or the press of numbers—of your loyal followers is all that is sending you back to your king at all."
Harry stared unseeingly at the horizon of her beloved Hills, and she remembered Aerin's words, and that Dickie had called her back to this world just a little too soon.
"Is he really such an ogre?" Jack went on. "Don't you want to go back?"
Harry turned and looked back at the smudge on the golden-grey sands that was Istan. "No, he is not an ogre. And, yes, I want to go back—very much. That is why I am afraid."
Jack looked at her; she could feel his gaze on her, but she would not meet his eyes.
The trip back, Harry thought unhappily less than three days later, seemed a lot shorter than the trip away; and this in spite of the fact that they were moving slowly for the sake of their wounded, who had resisted staying in Nandam's village to be healed and demanded to come with them. "They don't want to miss out on any of the fun," Jack said apologetically, as if it were all his fault.
"Fun?" she said, exasperated.
"Your attitude is perhaps a little unnecessarily rigorous," suggested Jack.
Harry muttered something that was better not said aloud, and added, "They take honor and loyalty very seriously here, you know, you Damarian-mad Homelander."
Jack shrugged. "And if they throw us out on our collective ear—even that is fun of a sort, I believe." He paused, and looked at her out of the corner of his eye. "But I'm afraid I have the same optimistic outlook as the rest of Harry's bandits."
Harry protested, "But I know more about it!"
"Ignorance is bliss," replied Jack.
They had no difficulty finding their way to the camp of the Hill-king. Harry never thought about it, beyond the simple word "east." But although "east" covers a great deal of territory, she had pointed Sungold's nose as surely as if she were a route-rider, covering the same path she had traveled for years. She wished now she weren't quite so accurate. She could see the king's tent looming in the twilight before them, the sunset fading behind them, and their long shadows beginning to dissolve in the ripples of the grey sand underfoot. She knew that they were marked by the king's guard, but no one hailed them. She could well believe that she and Sungold and Gonturan were immediately recognizable, but she was surprised that even if she were not to be taken prisoner on sight the very obvious presence of twelve armed Outlanders in her train was exciting no comment.
Since she did not know what else to do, she rode reluctantly but directly to the king's tent; it rose from the center of the other tents, the black-and-white banner flying from its peak. Still no one stopped or questioned her; but several offered her silent hand greeting, the kind a king's Rider might expect, and this comforted her a little. But she wished she would see someone she knew well enough to talk to—Mathin or Innath by choice—to ask what sort of welcome she might expect.
There was little sign that this army had fought a desperate battle against the odds only days before; and she suddenly realized that it had never occurred to her that Corlath might lose. She was learning to believe what the backs of her eyelids told her. The tents were all neatly and precisely pitched, and the horses she saw were sleek and fit. There was a hum of tension about the camp, though, which she could feel; the silence had a stretched quality to it, and those people she saw hurrying from tent to tent looked as though their errands might be about life and death.
Sungold's steps fell too quickly. She saw no other Rider, and at the door to the king's tent she paused, and her company came up behind her, and fanned out into a little court around their captain. The gold-sashed guard saluted her, just as he had done half a year ago; she thought it was even the same man, although he looked much older, almost as old as she felt. She stayed in the saddle; she wanted to stay there forever; at very least it made her taller than a man on foot—even Corlath. What was she to say? "The prodigal has returned? The mutineer wishes to be reinstated? The subordinate, having gone to a great deal of trouble to prove her commander wrong, has come back and promises to be a good little subordinate hereafter, or at least until the next time?"
Then Corlath put back his golden silk door and stood before her, and she stared down at him, and she could not have gotten out of the saddle then even if she had wanted to. She realized why, when her kelar had shown him to her in battle some days ago, she had not at first recognized him, that his sash was the wrong color. He was wearing her sash.