It was two days later when, as the morning sun shone down on them, Harry first saw Istan again; and she altered their course a little to the north, for it was not the town she was aiming for, but Jack Dedham's garrison. She prayed to anything that might be listening that he would be there, not off on some diplomatic sortie or border-beating. She could not imagine trying to explain her errand to anyone else; she did not think Jack would conclude that she was mad. She did think that anyone else - even Dickie; especially Dickie - would. But even if Jack were at the fort, and believed her story, would he help her? She didn't know, and didn't dare make guesses. But she and Terim and Senay, even with Senay's father's reinforcements, would not be very effective by themselves.
Rather more effective than I would have been by myself, though, she thought.
The first evening, after Senay and Terim had joined her, and after the animals were settled and the other two human beings were asleep, Harry had cut herself a long straight slender branch from a tree, and stripped it with the short knife she kept in one boot. When they set out that evening she tied it lengthwise to Sungold's saddle, so it rubbed against her right leg as she rode, but at least it did not threaten either of her companions, who rode close at her sides. They eyed it, but said nothing. When she first recognized Istan looming out of the dawn light at them, she paused, took out her knife again, and deliberately ripped several inches of hem from her white tunic, unlashed her branch, and tied the raveling bit of cloth to one end of it. She tucked the other end just under one leg, and held it upright with one hand. "It is a sign that we come in peace," she explained, a little sheepishly, to her friends; their faces cleared, and they nodded.
It was still very early. The town was silent as they skirted it; nothing, not even a dog, challenged them as they rode toward the fort. Harry found herself watching out of the corners of her eyes, looking for any odd little wisps of fog that might be following them. The dogs ought to bark. She didn't see any fog. She didn't know if either of her companions was a fog-rouser; and she knew only too well that she did not know what she herself was capable of.
They rode up to the closed gate of the fort, the horses' hooves making small thunks in the sandy ground, kicking up small puffs of grit; she thought of the fourposter pony, who was no doubt drowsing in his stall now, dreaming of hay. Harry looked at the fort gate in surprise; as she remembered, and she was reasonably sure that she remembered correctly, the gate was opened at dawn, with reveille, and stayed open till taps at sunset. The gate, wooden and iron-barred, in a wall of dull yellow brick, was higher than her head as she sat on Sungold, looking up; and its frame was higher yet. They rode right up to it, and no one hailed them; and they stood in front of it, at a loss, their shadows nodding bemusedly at them from the grey wood before them and Harry's little flag limp at the end of its pole. Narknon went up to the gate and sniffed it. Harry had never thought of the possibility of not being able to get inside the fort in the first place. She rode up next to the gate and hammered on it with her fist. As her flesh struck the solid barrier it sent a tingle up her arm, and a murmur of kelar at the base of her skull told her that she could walk through this wall if she had to, to pursue her purpose. In that instant she realized exactly how Corlath had stolen her from the bedroom that at present was not so far from where Sungold stood; and she understood as well that the kelar must see some use in her errand at the Outlander fort to back her so strongly; and for that she did not know whether to be glad or sorry or fearful. And if fearful, for the sake of whom? Her new people - or her old friends? And she had a quiver of wry sympathy for how the Hill-king must have felt, walking up the Residency stairs in the middle of the night; and then she tipped her head back to stare at the Outlander wall, and touched her calf to her Hill horse's side, to move him away from that wall.
"Since when is this gate closed during daylight?" she shouted; and Homelander speech tasted strange in her mouth, and she wondered if she spoke the words as a Hillwoman might.
With her words, the spell, whatever spell it might be, was broken; and the three Hill riders suddenly blinked, as if the sun had grown brighter; and a small panel shot back, beside the gate and above their heads; and a man's face glared down. "Where did you come from, Hillman, and what do you want of us?" He looked without pleasure at the white rag.
"We came from the Hills," Harry said, grinning, "but I am no Hillman; and we would like speech with Colonel Dedham."
The man scowled at her. She suspected that he did not like her knowing Jack's name. "He does not speak to Hillfolk - or those who ride like Hillfolk," he added disagreeably. By now there were several faces peering over the wall at them; Harry did not recognize any of them, and found this strange, for she had known at least by sight nearly all of Dedham's men. She had not been gone for so many months that it seemed likely the entire complement of the fort could have changed. She squinted up at them, wondering if her eyes or her memory was playing her tricks.
She frowned at her interlocutor's tone. "You could bear a message to him, then," she said, trying to decide if it was worth the possibility of some kind of uproar if she said her name.
"Hillfolk - " began the man at the window, and his tone was not encouraging.
"Oh, Bill, for the love of God, the new orders say nothing about rudeness," said one of the faces at the fence. "If you won't carry a message as requested, I will - and I'll be sure to mention why an off-duty man had to do it."
"Tom?" said Harry hesitantly. "Is that Tom Lloyd?"
There was a tense and breathless silence, and the man at the open panel hissed something that sounded like "witchcraft." The voice from the fence came again, slowly but clearly: "This is Tom Lloyd, but you have the advantage of me."
"True enough," said Harry dryly, and shook back her hood and looked up at him. "We danced together, some months ago: my brother, Di - Richard, collected favors from all his tall friends to dance with his large sister."
"Harry - " said Tom, and leaned over the fence, his shoulders outlined against the light, his face and hands as pale as the desert sand. "Harry?"
"Yes," said Harry, shaken at how strange he looked to her, that she had not recognized him before he spoke. "I need to talk to Colonel Dedham. Is he here?" Harry's heart was in her mouth.
"Yes, he is: reading a six-months-old newspaper from Home over a cup of coffee right now, I'd say." Tom sounded dazed. "Bill, you wretch, open the gate. It's Harry Crewe."
Harry's legs were tight on Sungold's sides, and the big horse threw his head up and shivered.
"He don't look like Harry Crewe," Bill said suddenly. "And what about the two with him - her? And that funny-colored leopard?"
"They're my friends," said Harry angrily. "Either open the gate or at least take my message."
"I can't leave my post - another man'll have to take the word. I won't open the gate to Hillfolk. It's Hillfolk it's closed for. Tom's too easy. How do I know you're Harry Crewe? You look like a bloody Darian, and you ride like one, and you can't even talk right."
Harry's pulse began to bang in her ears.
"For pity's sake - "
"Not you, Tom," said Bill; "we already know as how you're off duty. Get another man what's on."
"Don't bother," said Harry, between her teeth; "I'll take the message myself. I know where Jack's quarters are." She dropped her pole in the dust, and, conscious she was doing a supremely stupid thing, she brought Sungold a few more dancing steps away from the gate, turned him, and set him at it.
He went up and over with a terrific heave of his hindquarters, and Harry had reason to be grateful for the perfect fit of her saddle; but once in the air he seemed to float, and look around, and he came down as lightly as a blown leaf. He trotted two steps and halted, while Harry tried to look calm and lofty and as though she had known what she was doing all the time. The leap was over in a few seconds, and no one had expected anything so incredible, even from a Hillman; now men were shouting, and there was a crowd all around her. She thought no one would shoot her out of hand, but she wasn't quite sure, so she waited, instead of going in search of Jack Dedham as she had threatened. Sungold stretched his neck out and shook himself. Narknon flowed over the gate behind them - there was a howl of fear and wrath from Bill - and the cat trotted to Sungold and crouched under his belly.
But she did not have to look for Jack after all, because the row at the gate brought him at a run scant seconds after Sungold's leap. He rounded the narrow corner of some dark building opposite the place where Sungold stood. The horse lifted first one foot and then another, unaccustomed to such noisy reckless human beings, but still obedient to his rider's wishes. He replaced each foot in just the print it had left.
Jack came to a halt, barely avoiding running into them. Sungold pitched his ears toward the balding grey-haired Outlander who stood now, stock still, staring: his eyes traveled from the big chestnut horse down to the laconic cat, up to the horse's rider, and his jaw visibly dropped. Harry's hood was still back on her shoulders, and her bright hair flamed in the young sunlight; he recognized her immediately, although he had never seen such an expression on her face before. A moment passed while he could think of nothing; then he strode forward with a cry of "Harry!" and raised his arms, and she, a young girl again with a young girl's face, ungracefully tumbled off her horse and into them. He thumped her on the back, as he might have one of his own men back from an impossible mission and long since given up for lost; and then he kissed her heartily on the mouth, which he would not have done to any of his own men; and Harry hugged him around the neck, and then, embarrassed, tried to back away. He held her shoulders a minute longer and stared at her; they were much of a height, and Tom Lloyd, looking wistfully on, found himself thinking that they looked very much alike, for all of the girl's yellow hair and Hill clothing; and he realized, without putting any of it into words, that the girl he had danced with months ago, and thought about as he blacked his boots, and lost sleep over when she disappeared, was gone forever.
Harry drew a hasty sleeve across her eyes; and then Tom, emboldened by his commander's behavior, hugged her too, but backed away without meeting her eyes; and Harry, even preoccupied as she was, was briefly puzzled by Tom's air of farewell, and she guessed something of what her brother had never told her.
The whole fort was aroused; there were dozens of men standing around staring, and asking questions of one another; some were in uniform, and some looked like they had fallen out of bed a minute before; a few carried rifles and were looking around wildly. A few of those rifles were pointed at Narknon, but the cat had sense enough not to move, or even yawn and display her dangerous-looking fangs. The Outlanders asked each other questions, and there was a lot of shrugging; but while their colonel's evident delight in their sudden Hill visitor allayed any immediate fears they might have, Harry thought they looked tense and wary, as men may who live long under some strain.
"What should I ask first?" said Jack. "Why are you here? Your horse tells me where you've been these months past - God, what an animal - but I am totally awestruck by the intelligence ... although, come to think of it, I don't seem to be surprised. Do you know that the entire station turned out to look for you when you vanished? Although I doubt in fact that you know anything of the sort; I flatter myself I searched as painstakingly as anyone, but what the Hills take, if they mean to keep it, they keep it, and I rather thought they meant to keep you. Everyone was sure the Hillfolk did have something to do with your evaporating like that - although it was more a superstition than a rational conclusion, as nary a trace of anything did we find; no rumors in the marketplace either. Amelia, poor lady, had well-bred hysterics, and Charles chewed his mustaches ragged, and Mrs. Peterson took her girls south to Ootang. And your brother stopped talking to everybody, and rode three horses to death - and he takes good care of his horses, usually, or I wouldn't have him here. I don't think he even noticed when Cassie Peterson left."
Harry blushed, and looked at her feet.
"So you see, he does care - you've wondered, haven't you? He wasn't too fond of his commanding officer there for the weeks that it lasted, for I couldn't somehow work up the proper horror - oh, I was worried about you, but I was also ... envious."
He looked at her, smiling, wondering what her reaction would be to his words, wondering if he had said the right thing, knowing that the truth was not always its own excuse; knowing that his relief at seeing her made him talk too much and too freely - a reaction that had, often enough in the past, gotten him into trouble with his superior officers. And Harry looked back at him, and she smiled too, but she remembered the vertigo of the Outlander girl alone in a camp of the Hillfolk, surrounded by a people speaking a language she could not speak, whose hopes she did not understand, whose dreams she could not share.
The people of the Hills had been her own people's foes for eighty years and more, for she was born and bred a Homelander; how could Jack - even Jack - speak of envy?
Her smile froze, and her tunic napped against her back and hips, for she had, somehow, lost her sash, and she had hung Gonturan from Sungold's saddle, so as to look, she hoped, a little less like immediate war. Lost her sash. A Hillman would never lose his sash. What was she? Damalur-sol. Ha. She laid a hand on Sun-gold's shoulder, but when he turned his head to touch her with his nose she was not comforted, for he had lived all his life in the Hills. She wished bitterly that her brother had told her of Tom Lloyd, months ago. That was something she might have understood, and Tom was kind and honest.
She swallowed and looked at Jack again, and he saw memory shining in her eyes, and he smiled sadly at her, and was sorry for any further pain his thoughtless words had given her. "Child," he said quietly, "choices are always hard. But do you not think yours is already made?"
Harry's fingers combed through her Hill horse's mane, and she said, "There never was a choice. I ride the only way open to me, and yet often and again it seems to me I am dangerously unfit for it." She laughed a little and shakily. "It seems to me further that it is very odd that fate should lay so careful a trail and spend so little time preparing the one that must follow it."
Jack nodded. "It is not the sort of thing that is recorded in official histories, but I believe that such thoughts have come not infrequently to others - " he smiled faintly - "ensnared as you are."
Harry's hand dropped back to her side and she smiled again. "Colonel, I shall try not to take myself too seriously."
"And I shall try not to talk too much." They grinned at each other, and knew that they were friends, and the knowledge was a relief and a pleasure and a hope to each of them, but for different reasons. Then Jack looked her over again, as if noticing the travel stains for the first time and said in a deliberately bright tone: "You look like you could use a bath ... My God, that sword: you're carrying a king's ransom casually across your pommel."
"Not casually," said Harry somberly.
"Questions later," Jack said, "but I will hope that you will answer them. First food and rest, and then you will tell me a very long story, and it has to be the true one, although I don't promise to believe it."
"I am not quite alone, " said Harry, smiling again. "Will you let two friends of mine past your formidable gate as well?"
"Not so formidable," said Colonel Dedham. "I wish I'd arrived a minute earlier and seen that jump. I don't believe it."
"It's true, sir," said Tom.
"I believe it's true, I just don't believe it," said Jack. "No doubt all of your story will be just as impossible. And just to start with, what is that?" he said, pointing at Narknon, who still had not moved.
"She's a hunting-cat, a folstza. She adopted me soon after ... I left here."
Narknon, deeming the moment right, stood up slowly, and opened her big green eyes to their fullest extent, batted the long golden lashes once or twice at Jack, and began to pace toward him, while he gamely held his ground. Narknon paused a step away and started to purr, and Jack laughed uncertainly; whereupon the cat took the last step and rubbed her cheek against the back of his hand. Jack, with the look of a man who throws dice with the devil, petted her and Narknon redoubled the purr. "I think I'm being courted," said Jack.
"Narknon has an excellent sense of whose side it is most expedient to be on," said Harry. "But - "
"Yes, we will let your companions come in in the traditional fashion. Unbar the gate, there, Shipson, and be quick about it, before anything else comes over it. I don't like the new standing orders, and they obviously aren't much good besides." Jack looked up from Narknon, who was now leaning her full weight against his legs and tapping her tail against the backs of his thighs, to gaze again at Sungold. "A real Hill horse. Can they all leap over Outlander forts before breakfast?"
"No. Or they may, but most of their riders have more sense than to try it. Particularly after a journey such as we've had." The excitement of seeing Jack again, and the reassurance of the warmth of his welcome, drained away from her, and she remembered that she was exhausted, and the sense of coming home to a place that was no longer home oppressed her further. "I'd like the bath and the food, and we all have to have sleep. But most of the story will have to wait; I'll tell you what I must, but ... we don't have much time."
"You are here for a purpose, and I can guess some of it. I'll try not to be stupid."
The gate opened, and Terim and Senay rode quietly through and stopped by Sungold's flank and dismounted. Harry introduced them, and they bowed, touching their fingers respectfully to their foreheads, but without the last flick outward of the fingers that indicates that the one addressed is of superior rank. When she said in Hill-speech, "And this is Colonel Dedham, whose aid we are here to seek," she was pleased with the way her Outlander friend in his turn bowed and touched his fingers to his forehead, only glancing at her with mild inquiry.
"I am sorry," said Jack as he led the way to his quarters, "but I speak only a little of your Hill tongue. I must ask you to tell me what I need to hear in my own language, and apologize to your friends for the necessary rudeness of excluding them." This was spoken in heavily accented but perfectly adequate Hill-speech, and Terim and Senay both smiled.
"We understand the need for speed and clarity, and it would not have occurred to us to take offense," said Terim, who had a king's son's swiftness for turning a diplomatic phrase; and Senay simply nodded.