She set down her empty orange-juice glass, and sighed. They'd missed the orange groves, coming north from Stzara, where her ship put her ashore. She picked up her fork from its shining white, neatly folded linen napkin, and turned it so that the sunlight that had glittered through her orange juice now caught in tiny star-bursts across its tines. Don't fidget, she told herself.
This morning she was to go riding with the two Misses Peterson, Cassie and Elizabeth. They were near her own age, and the admitted beauties of the station; the entire 4th Cavalry, stationed at the General Mundy, were in love with them. But they were also cheerful and open-hearted, and she was fond of them. She had never much cared for beauty, although she was aware that she lacked it and that her position might have been a little easier if she had not.
They would return from their ride by midmorning, because the sun would be growing too hot for anyone to brave it for pleasure. She planned to ask Lady Amelia if they might all come back here for lunch. She already knew what the answer would be: "Why, of course! We are always delighted to see them. I am so pleased, my dear, that you should be so clever as to attach the two most charming girls we have here to be your particular friends." Harry caught herself playing with her fork again, and laid it down emphatically. This evening there was to be another dance. Richard had promised to escort her; she had to acknowledge that, however little they found to say to one another now, he was very good about escorting her to parties, and dancing with her—which meant that there was at least one man present whom she did not tower over. Her gratitude was not at all dimmed by the suspicion that he was nursing a secret passion for Cassie, nor by the thought, not even a real suspicion, that he might not want himself made a fool of by his sister's unpopularity. No, his kindness was real; he loved her, she thought, in his silent and anxious way. Perhaps simply being a very junior military adjutant with an unmarried sister suddenly thrust on one's hands inevitably made one a bit of a prig.
It never occurred to her to speculate whether any of the young men in their shining regimentals that Dickie painstakingly introduced her to, and who then painstakingly asked her to dance, presented themselves from any motive outside a willingness to do their friend Crewe a favor by standing up with his oversized sister. It would have surprised her very much to learn of her two or three admirers, who so far resisted the prevailing atmosphere of the barracks as to incline to an altar less populated than that of either Miss Peterson. "But she's just like her brother," one of them complained to his best friend, who listened with a friend's patience, although he was himself incapable of seeing the charms of any woman other than Beth Peterson. "So damned polite. Oh, she's nice enough, you know. I don't suppose she actually dislikes me," he continued, a bit uncertainly. "But I'm not at all sure she even recognizes me from one day to the next, so it hardly counts."
"Well," said the friend good-humoredly, "Dick remembers you well enough."
The admirer threw a boot at his friend—the one he hadn't polished yet. "You know what I mean."
"I know what you mean," agreed the friend. "A cold fish." The admirer looked up from the boot-blacking angrily and the friend held up the extra boot like a shield. "Dick's stiff with honor. I daresay his sister's like that. You just don't know her well enough yet."
"Balls, dinner parties," moaned the admirer. "You know what they're like; it could take years." The friend in silent sympathy (thinking of Beth) tossed the boot back, and he began moodily to black it.
The object of his affections, had she known of this conversation, would have agreed with him on the subject of balls and dinner parties. In fact, she would have added the rider that she wasn't sure it could be done at all, getting to know someone at any succession of such parties, however prolonged. And the friend was right about Dick Crewe's powerful sense of honor. He knew well enough that at least two of his friends were falling in love with his sister; but it never crossed his mind to say anything about them to her. He could not compromise the privileged knowledge of friendship in such a way.
And Dick's sister, oblivious to the fact that she had won herself a place in the station hierarchy, chafed and fidgeted.
Lady Amelia arrived at the breakfast table next. They had just settled the question of Cassie and Beth coming to lunch—in almost the precise words anticipated—when the door to Sir Charles' study, across the hall from the breakfast room, opened; and Sir Charles and his secretary, Mr. Mortimer, entered to breakfast. The two women looked at them in surprise; they had the unmistakable air of men who have been awake several hours, working hard on nothing more than a cup or two of the dark heavy local coffee, and who will rush through their meal now to get back to whatever they have been doing. Neither of them looked very happy about their prospects.
"My dear," said Lady Amelia. "Whatever is wrong?" Sir Charles ran a hand through his white hair, accepted a plate of eggs with his other hand, and sat down. He shook his head. Philip Mortimer glanced at his employer but said nothing. "Richard's not here yet," said Sir Charles, as if his absence explained everything.
"Richard—?" said Lady Amelia faintly.
"Yes. And Colonel Dedham. I'm sorry, my dear," he said, a few mouthfuls of eggs seeming to restore him. "The message came quite out of the blue, in the middle of the night," he explained through his metaphors as well as his mouthful. "Jack—Colonel Dedham—has been out, trying to find out what he can, and I told him to come to breakfast and tell us what he's learned. With Richard—that boy knows how to talk to people. Blast them. Blast him. He'll be here in a few hours."
His wife stared at him in complete bewilderment, and his young guest averted her eyes when he looked at her, as it was not her place to stare. He laid down his fork and laughed. "Melly, your face is a study. Young Harry here is going to be a fine ambassador's wife someday, though: look at that poker face! You really shouldn't look so much like your brother; it makes you too easy to read for those of us who know him. Just now you're thinking: Is the old man gone at last? Humor him till we're sure; if he calms down a bit, perhaps we'll get some sense out of him even now." Harry grinned back at him, untroubled by his teasing, and he reached across the table, braving candlesticks and an artistically arranged bowl of fruit, to tap her cheek with his fingers. "A general's wife, on second thought. You'd be wasted on the diplomatic corps; we're all such dry paper-shufflers." He speared a piece of toast with his fork, and Lady Amelia, whose manners with her own family were as punctilious as if she dined with royalty, looked away. Sir Charles piled marmalade on his toast till it began to ooze off the edges, added one more dollop for good measure, and ate it all in three gulps. "Melly, I know I've told you about the difficulties we're having in the North, on this side of the mountains with our lot, and on the far side with whatever it is they breed over there—a very queer bunch, from all we can gather—and it's all begun to escalate, this last year, at an alarming speed. Harry, Dick's told you something of this?"
She nodded.
"You may or may not know that our real hold over Daria ends just about where this station stands, although technically—on paper—Homeland rule extends right to the foot of those mountains north and east of here—the Ossanders, which run out from the Ramids, and then that far eastern range you see over the sand, where none of us has ever been … those mountains are the only bits of the old kingdom of Damar still under native rule. There used to be quite a lot of fighting along this border—say, forty years ago. Since then their king—oh yes, there's a king—more or less ignores us, and we more or less ignore him. But odd things—call them odd things; Jack will tell you what he thinks they are—still happen on that plain, our no-man's-land. So we have the 4th Cavalry here with us.
"Nothing too odd has happened since the current king took the throne around ten years ago, we think—they don't bother to keep us up to date on such things—but it never does to be careless. Um." He frowned and, while frowning, ate another piece of toast. "Everything has been quiet for—oh, at least fifteen years. Nearly as long as I've been here, and
that's a long time. Ask Jack, though, for stories of what it was like up and down the northern half of this border before that. He has plenty of them." He stood up from the table, and went across the room to the row of windows. He lifted the curtain farther back as he looked out across the desert, as if breadth of view might assist clarity of thought. It was obvious his mind was not on the explanation he was giving; and for all his assumed cheerfulness, he was deeply worried. "Damn! … Excuse me. Where is Jack? I expected he would have at least sent young Richard on ahead before now." He spoke as if to himself, or perhaps to Philip Mortimer, who made soothing noises, poured a cup of tea, and took it to Sir Charles where he stood squinting into the morning sunlight.
"Trouble?" said Lady Amelia gently. "More trouble?"
Sir Charles dropped the curtain and turned around. "Yes! More trouble." He looked down at his hands, realized he was holding a cup of tea in one of them, and took a swallow from it with the air of a man who does what is expected of him. "There may be war with the North. Jack thinks so. I'm not sure, but—I don't like the rumors. We must secure the passes through the mountains—particularly Ritger's Gap, which gives anybody coming through it almost a direct line to Istan, and then of course to the whole Province. It may only be some tribal uproar—but it could be war, as real as it was eighty years ago. There aren't many of the old Damarians left—the Hillfolk—but we've been forced to have a pretty healthy respect for them. And if King Corlath decides to throw his chances in with the Northerners—"
There was a clatter in the street below. Sir Charles' head snapped around. "There they are at last," he said, and bolted for the front door and threw it open himself, under the scandalized eye of the butler who had emerged from his inner sanctum just too late. "Come in! I've been in high fidgets for the last hour, wondering what's become of you. Have you found out anything that might be of use to us? I have been trying to explain to the ladies what our problem is."
"Would you care for breakfast?" Lady Amelia asked without haste, and with her usual placid courtesy. "Charles may be trying to explain, but so far he has not succeeded." In response to her gesture, a maid laid two more places at the table. With a jingling of spurs the two newcomers entered, apologized for their dirt, and were delighted to accept some breakfast. Richard dropped a perfunctory kiss on his sister's cheek on his way to the eggs and ham. After a few minutes of tea-pouring and butter-passing, while Sir Charles strode up and down the room with barely suppressed impatience, it was Lady Amelia who spoke first. "We will leave you to your business, which I can see is very important, and we won't pester you with demands for explanations. But would you answer just one question?"
Colonel Dedham said, "Of course, Melly. What is it?"
"What is it that has suddenly thrown you into this turmoil? Some unexpected visitor, I gather, from what Charles said?"
Dedham stared at her. "He didn't tell you—? Good God. It's Corlath himself. He's coming. He never comes near here, you know—none of the real Hillfolk do if they can help it. At best, if we want badly enough to talk to him, we can catch one of his men as they pass through the foothills northeast of here. Sometimes."
"You see," broke in Sir Charles, "it makes us hope that perhaps he wishes to cooperate with us—not the Northerners. Jack, did you find out anything?"
Dedham shrugged. "Not really. Nothing that we didn't already know—that his coming here is unprecedented, to say the least—and that it is in fact him. Nobody had any better guesses than ours about why, suddenly, he decided to do so."
"But your guess would be—" prompted Sir Charles.
Dedham shrugged again, and looked wry. "You know already what my guess would be. You just like to hear me making an ass of myself. But I believe in the, um, curious things that happen out there—" he waved the sugar spoon—"and I believe that Corlath must have had some sort of sign, to go to the length of approaching us."
A silence fell; Harry could see that everyone else in the room was uncomfortable. "Sign?" she said tentatively.
Dedham glanced up with his quick smile. "You haven't been here long enough to have heard any of the queer stories about the old rulers of Damar?"
"No," she said.
"Well, they were sorcerers—or so the story goes. Magicians. They could call the lightning down on the heads of their enemies, that sort of thing—useful stuff for founding an empire."
Sir Charles snorted.
"No, you're quite right; all we had was matchlocks and enthusiasm. Even magic wanes, I suppose. But I don't think it's waned quite away yet; there's some still living in those mountains out there. Corlath can trace his bloodlines back to Aerin and Tor, who ruled Damar in its golden age—with or without magic, depending on which version you prefer."
"If they weren't legends themselves," put in Sir Charles.
"Yes. But I believe they were real," said Jack Dedham. "I even believe they wielded something we prosaic Homelanders would call magic."
Harry stared at him, fascinated, and his smile broadened. "I'm quite used to being taken for a fool about this. It's doubtless part of the reason why I'm still a colonel, and still at the General Mundy. But there are a number of us old soldiers whose memories go back to the Daria of thirty, forty years ago who say the same thing."
"Oh, magic," said Sir Charles disgustedly, but there was a trace of uneasiness in his voice as well. "Have you ever seen lightning come to heel like a dog?"
Dedham through his politeness looked a little stubborn. "No. I haven't. But it's true enough at least that the men who have gone up against Corlath's father and grandfather were plagued by the most astonishing bad luck. And you know the Queen and Council back Home would give their eyeteeth to push our border back the way we've been saying we would for the last eighty years."
"Bad luck?" said Lady Amelia. "I've heard the stories, of course—some of the old ballads are very beautiful. But—what sort of bad luck?"
Dedham smiled again. "I admit it does begin to sound foolish when one tries to explain it. But things like rifles—or matchlocks—misfiring, or blowing up; not just a few, but many—yourself, and your neighbor, and his neighbor. And their neighbors. A cavalry charge just as it reaches full stretch, the horses begin to trip and fall down as if they've forgotten how to gallop—all of them. Men mistake their orders. Supply wagons lose their wheels. Half a company all suddenly get grit in their eyes simultaneously and can't see where they're going—or where to shoot. The sort of little things that always happen, but carried far beyond probability. Men get superstitious about such things, however much they scoff at elves and witches and so on. And it's pretty appalling to see your cavalry crumple up like they're all drunk, while these madmen with nothing but swords and axes and bits of leather armor are coming down on you from every direction—and nobody seems to be firing at them from your side. I assure you I've seen it."
Richard shifted in his chair. "And Corlath—"
"Yes, Corlath," the colonel continued, sounding still as unruffled as when he thanked Lady Amelia for his cup of tea, while Sir Charles' face was getting redder and redder and he whuffled through his mustache. It was hard not to believe Dedham; his voice was too level, and it rang with sincerity. "They say that in Corlath the old kings have come again. You know he's begun to reunite some of the outlying tribes—the ones that don't seem to owe anyone any particular allegiance, and who live by a sort of equal-handed brigandry on anyone within easy reach."
"Yes, I know," said Sir Charles.
"Then you may also have heard some of the other sort of stories they've begun to tell about him. I imagine he can call lightning to heel if he feels like it."
"This is the man who's coming here today?" said Lady Amelia; and even she now sounded a little startled.
"Yes, Amelia, I'm afraid so."
"If he's so blasted clever," muttered Sir Charles, "what does he want with us?"
Dedham laughed. "Come now, Charles. Don't be sulky. I don't suppose even a magician can make half a million Northerners disappear
like raindrops in the ocean. We certainly need him to keep the passes through his mountains closed. And it may be that he has decided that he needs us—to mop up the leaks, perhaps."
Lady Amelia stood up, and Harry reluctantly followed her. "We will leave you to discuss it. Is there—is there anything I could do, could arrange? I'm afraid I know very little about entertaining native—chieftains. Do you suppose he will want lunch?" She spread her hands and looked around the table.
Harry suppressed a smile at the thought of proper little Lady Amelia offering sandwiches, with the crusts neatly trimmed off, and lemonade to this barbarian king. What would he look like? She thought: I've never even seen any of the Freemen, the Hillfolk. All the natives at the station, even the merchants from away, look subdued and … a little wary.
"Oh, bosh," said Sir Charles. "I wish I knew what he wanted—lunch or anything else. Part of what makes all this so complicated is that we know the Free Hillfolk have a very complicated code of honor—but we know almost nothing about what it consists of."
"Almost," murmured Dedham.
"We could offend them mortally and not even know it. I don't know if Corlath is coming alone, or with a select band of his thousand best men, all armed to the teeth and carrying lightning bolts in their back pockets."
"Now, Charles," Dedham said. "We've invited him here—"
"—because the fort is not built for receiving guests of honor," Dedham said easily as Sir Charles paused.
"And," Sir Charles added plaintively, "it doesn't look quite so warlike here." Dedham laughed. "But four o'clock in the morning," Sir Charles said.
"I think we should be thankful that it occurred to him to give us any warning at all. I don't believe it's the sort of thing he's accustomed to having to think of." The colonel stood up, and Richard promptly took his place behind him. Sir Charles was still pacing about the room, cup in hand, as the ladies prepared to leave. "My apologies for spoiling your morning to no purpose," said Colonel Dedham. "I daresay he will arrive sometime and we will deal with him, but I don't think you need put yourselves out. His message said merely that he desired an audience with the Homelander District Commissioner—not quite his phrase, but that's the idea—and the general in command of the fort. He'll have to make do with me, though; we don't rate a general. The Hill-kings don't go in much for gold plate and red velvet anyway—I think. I hope this is a business meeting."
The Blue Sword d-1 Page 2
