The Blue Sword d-1

by Robin McKinley

  "That was Harry, wasn't it?" Harry's brother said, a little uncertainly.

  Jack smiled a small smile. "Yes. Or it was Harry as much as it was anyone. Terim," he went on in Hill-speech, "we would like to look for Harimad-sol. She might be too … exhausted to return to us. Will you come?"

  Terim said, "Yes," and Senay joined them, while the rest would wait for word. Sungold followed them to the foot of the rock wall Harry had disappeared beyond, and whinnied anxiously after them, and reared and pawed the rock behind them as they climbed away from him.

  "We'll bring her back," Jack said to him. "Be patient."

  Narknon came with them.

  The four of them seemed to move very slowly; or perhaps their feet moved at a reasonable pace, but their minds could not keep up. Narknon, instead of ranging around them as she usually did, trotted at their heels and paused when they paused. Jack felt that he was grinding out thoughts that moved as grudgingly as centuries, and when he shook his head, his brain seemed to turn over uneasily, like a bad swimmer in deep water. His eyes hurt in their sockets, and he still saw Harry with her sword raised and the blue fire around her, although the picture was memory now, and his eyes focused on scrub and dirt and rock and blue dust.

  They all stopped as they came to a slope with trees growing above them. "This can't be right," said Richard; "we saw her on bare rock."

  Jack peered up at the sun. "It is right, though; or at least this is the right direction. If the sun hasn't moved, which I don't guarantee … perhaps these trees grew while the mountains were falling."

  Jack began to climb again as if he were sure he knew the way; Terim and Senay followed, for they were less shocked by Harimad-sol's performance than Jack or Richard, and did not expect the landscape near such a piece of sorcery and kelar to conform to the usual physical rules. They had looked at the sun too, and knew they were heading in the right direction. Richard was last. He felt old, and his bones creaked, and Narknon made him uncomfortable. He knew of the Damarian hunting-cats, but he had never before met one.

  There was a tiny path, as if made by small hoofed animals, up the slope, and Jack followed it hopefully; and after only a few minutes they broke through the trees and into a small glade, with fresh green grass in it, the first good grass they had seen since they left Senay's village. Harry lay crumpled near one edge of the glade, with Gonturan, dull as pewter, the blue stone of her hilt opaque, lying on the grass beside her. Harry lay on her side, curled up, and both her hands touched the sword; the left awkwardly fell over the hilt, the right grasped the blade just below the guard. Jack came into the clearing first, and he was the only one who saw—or thought he saw—a figure in the trees just behind Harry; he thought he saw a glint of red hair. But he blinked, so he could stare again harder, feeling for his saber; and when he looked again, the figure was gone. He was never sure afterward if he had seen anything but an odd fall of leaf shadow, although he knew the Hill legends, and knew who had carried Gonturan before his young friend.

  "Harry," said Richard, and ran forward, and dropped to his knees beside her. The others, who had a little more faith in Hill magic—or who understood a bit better that whatever had happened was finished now, for good or ill—followed more slowly. Jack looked around. There was nothing like the stone knoll where Harry had stood anywhere near them; the trees—real trees, not the grey and stunted things they had seen around the Gate, and in the valley that was no more—stood high overhead, rustling softly in the green breeze from the east; and beyond the little glen there was nothing but more trees, more sweet greenness, for however far the eye could reach, no sunlight-glint of a clear space anywhere.

  Harry was dreaming something, but Dickie was calling her. Aerin was leaning over her, smiling the wry smile Harry knew well by now; it was a smile of affection, but more of understanding. Aerin spoke to her, for the second time; she had a low rough kind voice. "This is what one mad Outlander on a Hill horse would have done; rather like something I once did. But it's not fair that the heroes get all the adventures and all the glory alone; your band will be sung of for centuries to come, and Jack's great-great-grandchildren, and Richard's and yours, and Senay's, and Terim's will remember the Madamer Gate and how the mountains fell and crushed Thurra's army. I found out that those at home don't like having no part in adventures—I didn't learn very much, but I did learn that; and it's as well if someone can learn by my mistakes … "

  "Corlath," said Harry miserably; and Aerin answered her gently: "Corlath is waiting for you." Harry wanted to say, That's what I'm afraid of. But Dickie was calling her. It couldn't be Dickie, she hadn't seen him since … She opened her eyes. Her memory of the immediate past was not good, but she knew she had called on Aerin, and asked Corlath for help in whatever Gonturan's past, master might send her, and that something had happened; and that Aerin had spoken to her about it … and Corlath … Her head hurt. "Richard," she said.

  The other three sat down with a sigh beside her, and there was a silence that no one seemed to know how to break. Narknon put a paw on Harry's chest and began licking her face; a hunting-cat's tongue is much harsher than a housecat's. Harry thought her skin would crumble and peel off, but she didn't have the strength to push her away. At last Harry said, and her voice sounded low and hollow, "Not that I feel much like moving just now, but don't we have some fairly urgent business in the valley? Or have three days gone by while I … and … "

  Richard said, "There is no valley."

  Jack said, "The Northerners are now lying under a very large pile of rock, which used to be a mountain range. You appear to have pulled it down around their ears, and, Harimad-sol, I salute you." He touched his forehead and flicked the fingers out in the particular curl that is the Hillman's gesture of respect to his king.

  Harry smiled weakly. "That's blasphemous, you know. I'll have you court-martialed."

  "By Homelanders or Hillfolk?" Jack inquired blandly. "Can you stand?"

  "I am gathering my courage to find out," replied Harry. She had flopped over onto her back—Narknon was now nibbling lovingly on her hair—and then hauled herself up on one elbow; now Senay and Richard propped her up on both sides, and she reeled to her feet. Her leather vest seemed as stiff as iron. "I feel like a potato that's recently been mashed," she said. Narknon leaned against her knee and purred madly.

  "Shall we carry you?" Terim said, hovering anxiously, torn between respect and caution.

  "Not yet, thank you," said Harry. "But you could hand me Gonturan. I don't quite feel like bending over just now."

  This was said in Hill-speech, so it is possible that Richard did not understand. But of the other three there was a brief but obvious moment when no one moved, and everyone thought of the blue fire on the mountaintop, and everyone's palms prickled. Then Jack took a step forward and bent and picked up Harimad-sol's blade, flat silver now, glinting faintly in the sunlight, and offered the hilt to her. One narrow gleam of white fire ran up the edge of the blue sword, and outlined Jack's fingers. Jack's and Harry's eyes met, for it was only when it was too late to stop her words that she realized what she was—or might be—asking. "Thank you," she said. "I probably should have bent over myself, to find out if I could." She resheathed the sword. Jack looked at his glowing white hand, and rubbed his palm along his thigh. There was a tingle in that hand that buzzed up his arm and fluttered for a moment in his brain. It was not an unpleasant sensation.

  As her fingers closed on Gonturan, Harry realized that her body was functioning; that she would be able to walk. She kept her hand on the hilt of Gonturan and took a step forward. "We'll stop where we are tonight," she said. "Tomorrow we ride back to find Corlath." She shut her eyes a moment; the world spun, then steadied. "They're farther west than they expected to be. Six days, if we hurry. If we can hurry." She frowned, her eyes still closed. "They are beating the Northerners back; they are winning." She opened her eyes again. "They're winning," she repeated, and the color rose in her cheeks, and her three friends smiled at her.<
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  Harry concentrated on walking, and by the time they came to the rockface at the Gate she had gotten pretty good at it; she still kept her eyes on her feet, but she slid and scrambled down by herself, while Jack and Richard, who had gone before her, tried very hard not to reach up and help her. When she got to the bottom, and her people were standing around her, and Tsornin was bumping her shoulder angrily, asking her why she had gone anywhere he couldn't come too, and her Hillfolk were flicking their finger salute at her, Kentarre very deliberately touched her forehead too and flicked the fingers out, and all the archers followed suit. And Jack's Outlanders stared and bowed and pointed saber hilts at her, and she realized how quiet they were. Too quiet. She turned to look at the valley.

  She turned white, and then Jack and Richard did put out hands to steady her. "My God," she said. "That was a bit of … something, wasn't it?" The dust still swirled in clouds over the desert of rubble they looked at, and it hung thickly enough that they could not see beyond it. There were threads of blue woven through and over it, as if there were a webbing holding it in place. The sun burned brightly over the blue-shot fog, and hurt the eyes. The dust got into eyes and noses and throats as they breathed, and mouths as they talked, and their voices grew hoarse with it.

  "Kentarre," said Harry. "Will a lot of rock simply falling on him stop someone like Thurra?"

  Kentarre shrugged. "My sol, I don't believe it has been tried before."

  Harry smiled wanly.

  "It will at least have stopped his army," said Terim; "few of them have any kelar of their own."

  "They have never needed it," said Senay, "for Thurra has always been stronger."

  Jack said, "There's more than rock out there. There's something holding the rock down." He stared out, the flecks of blue teasing the corners of his eyes.

  Kentarre and Senay and Terim, who knew the legends of the Northern mage, were silent. "It is possible that he will rest here," said Kentarre at last. "But we can say that today is ours."

  "Today is Harimad-sol's," said Terim firmly, and Senay's face lit up, and she cried, "Harimad-sol!" Kentarre drew her dagger and tapped herself on the chest with the hilt and then shook the point over her head. "Harimad-sol!" she called, and "Harimad-sol!" the other archers echoed, drawing their daggers in the same gesture; and Senay's people picked up the shout next. Jack's men, shaken out of their half-fearful amazement, began to applaud and stamp, as if they didn't know what else to do; and it was Richard who yelled, "Angharad!" whereupon the Outlanders shouted "Angharad!" too, and a few whistled, as though Harry had just sung an aria at the opera. When at last they stopped, everyone was smiling and easy again, as if individually inspired landslides and earthquakes were quite a normal feat of warfare, or at least of leadership. Then everyone heaved a sigh and settled down, and supper fires were lit; and Narknon appeared, dragging a brown deer larger than herself, and looking terribly pleased with herself. The sunset that evening over the mountains was violet-blue.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  The next morning they left the Madamer Gate, to go back down the mountain as they had come. The little troop was less than half what it had been the morning before, and it moved more slowly, from weariness, wounds and … a slight feeling of anticlimax, Harry thought. She had a foul headache. Every step Sungold took struck like a mallet behind her eyes, and her vision sparkled with it. "Does one always feel a bit lost, the day after a battle?" she asked Jack, who was riding somewhat stiffly at her side. Draco had suffered a cut over his poll, and the headpiece of the bridle was paddled with a bit of blue cloth.

  "Yes," he said. "Even when you win."

  They rode gently but steadily all that day. That evening Harry said to Kentarre: "You may leave now, if you wish, to go home. I—we're all grateful for your help. It's very likely we would not have held them off even long enough for—for Gonturan to drop the mountains on them, without you. And," Harry said more hesitantly, "it is also good to find another friend and ally."

  Kentarre smiled. She smiled much more easily now than she had when she and her archers first stepped out of the trees to pledge to Harimad-sol; and Harry didn't think it was only because the threat of the Northerners had been halted. "It is good to find a friend, lady, as you say, and it is ill to lose one too soon. We would follow you still, and see your king, and give you a little more glory at your return. I think perhaps we filanon have held alone in our woods too long; and without you, Harimad-sol, we would have no homes now to go back to. We were Damarians not so very long ago, and our fathers called Corlath's fathers king. We would go with you." Four of her archers had materialized out of the firelight to stand beside her when she began to speak, and they nodded. One wore a white rag around his forehead, and it covered one eyebrow, which gave him a puzzled uncertain look; but there was no uncertainty in his sharp nod.

  Harry looked unhappily at her hands. "I—I'm not sure it would be wise of you to come to Corlath on my heels, calling me sol. I came here—left him and his army and his battle plans—expressly against his wishes, and I think it more than likely that I'm riding into trouble, as I choose to go back. I—er—applaud the idea that you should declare yourselves as Damarians again, but I—well—highly recommend that you make your own path to Corlath, without me."

  Kentarre did not seem surprised by Harry's words; but then Terim or Senay must have told her the story. "Your Corlath I think is not a fool, and it would be foolish to treat with less than great honor the one who buried Thurra and thousands of his army. We will come with you, and if he turns you away, we will still come with you. You are welcome here," Kentarre said with a wave of her hand and a faint musical clatter of the blue beads around her wrist. "You need not go into exile homeless."

  Harry said nothing. She found that she was too tired to argue, and too grateful for their loyalty, for she was simply afraid of what she was returning to—afraid mainly because she realized how desperately she wanted to be able to go back. It was true, Corlath would be forced to honor her as the cause of Thurra's downfall, for he was no fool and he was a very honorable king; but she did not want him forced. "Very well," she said at last; "let it be as you wish." Kentarre bowed, a brief graceful sweep. "Thank you," said Harry.

  "It is my honor to follow Harimad-sol," said Kentarre.

  Jack smiled at Harry as she knelt down again by their fire, and was swarmed over by Narknon, who seemed in her own way to be as shaken by the mountains' falling as the human beings had been. "We cling to you like leeches," he said, and she looked at him in surprise. "Or so I believe was the gist of your conversation just now."

  Harry nodded.

  "So perhaps this is a good time to warn you that Richard and I and our lot are planning to come too—throw ourselves at the mercy of your Hill-king. There's nothing at home for us. And um—" he turned his hands over to warm the backs of them by the fire, and stared at his callused palms—"we'd like to."

  "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, N
andam, 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."