The Blue Sword d-1

by Robin McKinley

  And now that Jack believed her, she could depend on him; for Harimad-sol was still laprun, and while she was glad of Terim and Senay, they looked up to her, and she didn't entirely like the sensation. The old friendship with Jack had taught her what kind of man he was, and he would not be embarrassingly awed by Harimad-sol and her legendary sword. The literal-minded pragmatism of the Outlander psyche had its uses.

  But as the weight of solitude eased, his words laid a new weight on her: Were her perceptions so wrong then? Was she in fact thinking like a Homelander—and had she, then, betrayed her new allegiance? She opened the palm of her right hand, and looked at the small white scar that lay across it. What did Corlath think of her desertion? Had Luthe's fears for her been correct, and had she not been able to see the right way when the ways divided before her?

  "Harry." Jack reached across the table and pulled her right hand toward him. "What is that?"

  She closed her fingers till what she suddenly felt was her brand of Cain disappeared. "It's a … ritual I went through. I'm a king's Rider."

  "Good Lord. How the—excuse me—how did you manage that? Not that I ever doubted your sterling qualities, but I know something of that tradition—king's Riders are the, um, the elite … "

  "Yes," said Harry. Jack only looked at her, but her mouth went dry. She swallowed and said, "They thought it would be … useful … to have a damalur-sol again."

  "Lady Hero," said Jack.

  "Yes." She swallowed again. "Cor—Corlath said that this war had no hope, and something like—something like a damalur-sol was a little like hope. I—I have seen Lady Aerin—do you know about the Water of Sight?—and so they think I must be someone important too."

  Jack studied her as a botanist might study a new plant. "Blood calls to blood, evidently. Although Richard is the straightest arrow I've ever seen: maybe it only runs from mother to daughter."

  Harry brought her head up sharply and stared at her old friend. "What?"

  "Surely you know," Jack said, frowning. "Your great-grandmother—mother's mother's mother—was a Hillwoman; one of rank, I believe. That was before we'd gained a proper foothold here, or we were at least still struggling to keep what we'd got. It was a terrible scandal. I don't know much about it; it makes Richard quite green even to think about it. Young Dick turns green rather easily about some things: but some curious sense of honor compelled him to tell me, as his commanding officer, so that I could make allowances if he went off screaming into the Hills of his ancestors, I suppose. The blood taint that Fate has seen fit to hand him seems to prey on his mind." Jack had been watching her closely as he rattled on, and broke off abruptly. "My dear, you must have known of this?"

  Harry sat still in her chair, where she was sure she would sit forever, gazing in amazement at the story Jack had just told her. She must have looked very queer, for Terim said to her anxiously, "Harimad-sol, what is wrong? You look as if you have seen your father's ghost. Has this man said aught of ill to you?"

  Harry roused and shook her head, which felt thick and heavy. "No; he has just told me something that bewilders me even as it makes all plain."

  Senay said softly: "Sol, might we know what it is?"

  Harry tried to smile. "He has said that my mother's grandmother was a Hillwoman, and thus the blood of your Hills runs in my veins."

  The two looked back at her with the sort of surprise and consternation she was sure was still plain on her own face. Terim said: "But we know you must be one of us, or the king's madness would not come to you, and everyone knows that it does: already there are tales told of Harimad-sol at the laprun trials. The Water of Sight shows you things, and Lady Aerin speaks to you, and your eyes turn yellow when you are held by some strong emotion. In fact, they are yellow now."

  Harry laughed: a little laugh and a weak one, but still a laugh, and she said to Jack, "My friends are not the least surprised by this intelligence, for all that it shakes me to my soul and makes my heart beat too fast—with fear or joy I am not quite sure. They say they have known me for a Hillwoman all along."

  "I've no doubt that's true," Jack said dryly. "You may be sure Corlath would have made no Outlander his Rider, even if the Lady Aerin ordered him to."

  "But why was I never told?" Harry mused, still trying to collect her thoughts together in one place so that she could look at them. Perhaps she was a better-constructed bridge than she had realized; and she thought of beams and girders, and almost laughed; how Outlanderish an image that was, to be sure. And as she labeled that bit of herself Outlander she then was free to label some other bit Damarian; and she felt a little more like herself all over, as though she were fitting into her skin a little more securely. She still was not sure what she was, but at least she need not be unhappy for not knowing: and now, perhaps, she had the missing pieces she needed to begin to learn.

  "I think," Jack said slowly, "that I have an idea about that. I had assumed that you did know, but I remember now how Richard and I talked about you when you were to come out here—he seemed to think it would be bad for you in a particular way—" He frowned, trying to remember clearly. "You were evidently a little too, um, bohemian for him, and he obviously thought living in the land of your grandmother's mother was going to aggravate the tendency. But I never thought he would, er … "

  "Protect me from myself by keeping me in ignorance?" Harry smiled ruefully. "Well, I didn't know, but I'm not surprised. Angry maybe—how dare he?—but not surprised. He takes the man's responsibility toward his frail female relations very seriously, does Dickie. Drat him. Where is my inestimable brother? Here?"

  Jack was smiling at her, as she sat with her sword hilt touching her shoulder when she gestured. "No," he said, "he's off being diplomatic, which is something he shows some brilliance at, for me and Sir Charles. We'd like some extra men here, just in case this silly tribal matter gets out of hand, and I would only get red and froth at the mouth, while Richard can look earnest and beseeching, and may even have some effect." He looked gloomily at the table. "I torment myself, now and again, wondering whether, if Corlath had given us a bit more warning about what he had in mind, if Peterson and I could have brought Charles around—even a little—this mess we're in might have been, even a little, less of a mess. But it is not, as we say when we are being diplomatic, a fruitful source of inquiry."

  Harry was thinking, For that matter, why didn't Mummy or Father tell me about my mysterious inheritance? They must have known, to tell my wretched brother—indeed, it must have been generally known to some extent; that explains why we were never quite the thing—I always thought it was just because we didn't give the right sort of dinner parties and spent too much time in the saddle. She went hot and cold, and her last shred of doubt about whether she had chosen wisely when she chose the Hills over the country that had raised her dissolved; but she had loved her family and her home, and she was without bitterness.

  She yanked her attention back as Jack began to speak again: "It's been a little anxious here lately. There is something, or there are somethings, hanging around the town and the fort; and twice my men have gone out scouting and found signs of battle; and once there was a corpse." His face was drawn and old. "It wasn't quite human; although from a distance it would probably look human enough."

  Harry said softly: "I have been told that much of the Northern army is not quite human."

  Jack was silent for a little, then said: "In simple numbers I can't promise much. I don't want to risk forcibly anyone's neck but my own, as we will be going against orders, but there are a few men here I know who have the same attitude toward the Northerners that I do. I will put it to them."

  Harry said, "So, how many and how quickly?"

  "Not very and very. Those of us who will go have been quivering like so many arrows on so many bowstrings for weeks; we'll be grateful for the chance to snap forward. Look: you and your friends can have a bath and a nap; and we should be able to march at sunset."

  There had been something obscurel
y troubling Harry since she entered the fort so precipitously; and at first she had put it down to the confusion, to her first sight of Outlanders since she had ceased to be one herself; and the troubled reflections that this recognition had brought her. But the sense of not-quite-right, of a whiff of something unpleasant, or a vibration in the air, increased as the rest of her relaxed. She looked around her now, able to think about this specific disturbance, to focus on its cause if her kelar would point the way. She turned her head one way and another; it was much worse in the small closed space that was Jack's rooms. It was as she put her hand over the blue stone on Gonturan's hilt that she finally understood what it was. "One last thing," she said.

  "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."
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br />   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.

  They rested most of the day and started off again an hour before sunset, following Senay's directions. The desert was behind them now, and so neither the sun nor the conspicuousness of traveling through empty country would force them to march only by night. It was near midnight when two men stepped into the path before them, and held up torches that suddenly burst into fire. Everyone blinked, and the Outlander horses tossed their heads. Then a voice behind one torch said sharply, "Who are you, who travel to the town of Shpardith?"

  Senay replied, "Thantow, have you forgotten me so quickly?"

  Thantow walked forward, holding his torch high, and Senay dismounted. "Senay you are," he said, and those near behind could see him smile. "Your family will be pleased to see you return to them," although his eyes wandered over them, and the jingling of bits was very loud in Harry's ears.

  "These are my comrades," Senay said simply, and Thantow nodded. He muttered a few words to his companion, who turned and trotted off, the light of his torch bobbing dizzily till he disappeared around a bend of the rocky way.

  Harry dismounted, and Narknon reappeared from the darkness to sit under Sungold's belly and watch the goings-on, and make sure she wasn't being left out of anything interesting. Senay turned to Harry and introduced her reverently as "Harimad-sol," whereupon Thantow swept her a very elegant Hill bow, which included the hand gestures of respect, and Harry tried not to shuffle her feet. They all moved forward again, and after a few minutes the narrow path opened up. It broadened slowly till it turned into a round patch of grass encircled by a white path that gleamed mysteriously in the torchlight. A little breeze wandered around them, and the smell was like roses.