The Blue Sword (Damar #2)(58)

Then there was a silence, for all in the king's tent knew that Corlath's force could not win a victory from the Northerners; nor were they likely able to resist them to the point that the invaders would decide Damar wasn't worth the trouble and return home. The best the defenders could hope for, and this they did hope for, was to cause enough trouble and loss that the Northern army would not have the strength left to seize all of Damar in quite so tight and effective a grip as Thurra would wish; and that pockets of renegade Hillfolk might hide in the Hills, or under the kelar of the City. If they succeeded so much, the battle would be worth what it would cost them, for they would have preserved themselves a future.

Harry swallowed uncomfortably. She heard, a little dizzily, what Corlath was saying about the foothills the mountain pass gave into, and where the army would stand; and she cast in her mind for her best memory of Damarian geography, for she had the unpleasant sensation that something was being ignored, something that shouldn't be. Corlath was saying that they would decide more exactly once they arrived, but he seemed to know every stone and clump of grass there, the exact location of every farmhouse, as did those who listened; no one fell so low as to seek recourse to a map. She frowned in concentration. She could almost see the Residency map of Dana; it was very poor at the eastern end; it barely admitted to the existence of the mountains where the king's City stood - the City itself was one of Jack Dedham's native legends - but about the west it was pretty accurate ... Ah!

Corlath had fallen silent. Murfoth said something and there was another silence, and Harry put in, timidly but stubbornly: "Sola, what of the pass just northwest of the ... of the Outlander station? It is narrow, but not so narrow that the ... the Northerners could not send a line through to come up behind us."

Corlath frowned. "Let them take the Outlander city - it will keep them amused long enough to delay them, perhaps. Even the Outlanders will try to stop them when they are on the threshold."

There was a silence so rigid that Harry felt that speaking words into it was like chopping holes in a frozen lake. "They would do a better job trying to stop them if they were warned," she said. Her words didn't make much of a hole; the ice thickened visibly. She didn't want to do anything so obvious as put her hand on her sword hilt; but she did press her elbow surreptitiously against it, and stiffened her spine.

"They were warned," said Corlath, and Harry raised her eyes to his and saw the golden tide rising in them; and wondered what that fruitless conversation in the Residency must have cost him. Yet he hadn't burned the Residency down with that golden glare of his, as she suspected he could have; and so she blinked at him now and said, "Colonel Dedham would listen to you. You did not know the Northerners were on the march ... then; you know for certain now. The pass is narrow; he could hold it for you indefinitely - but not if they have had time to come through and go where they will." Her voice was rising with fear and perhaps anger: was there anything but stubborn pride, the offended majesty of the absolute ruler of his small land, working in Corlath, that he should waste a chance to gain a little more time? How little she knew him after all, and how little she knew Damar, she who could not visualize every yellow blade of korf before the great pass in the mountains. And yet she could see - did she not truly see? - the threat that this second, narrow pass presented; a threat that the king and the commander of the army was choosing to overlook. She did not understand; she was born of a different people and she understood different things.

"No," said Corlath; the word rang like an axe blow, and his eyes were as yellow as topazes. Harry stared back at him - you great bully - even knowing what he could do to her, even as the sweat broke out on her skin with the effort of holding his eyes. Her elbow clamped desperately on Gonturan, and the hard edge of the blue gem dug into her ribs and encouraged her. Then he snapped his gaze from her and pointed it at the tent flap and shouted, though he rarely shouted, and fresh malak was brought in and fruit with it. The ice began, nervously, to break up, and Harry glowered at her cup and refused to be drawn into conversation, and listened to her heart beating, and wondered if she were a traitor; and if so, to whom?

The next morning thirty-five chosen horsemen, with Corlath at their head and Harry, still somewhat sulky, among them, started up the track to Luthe's holding. The rest of the army broke camp first, and melted into the scrub of the mountains' feet, taking the hunting-beasts and the pack horses with them. Corlath and the little band with him waited till last, watching them go, judging if their disappearance was effective; looking to see if there were any too obvious paths broken in the undergrowth. A few fleeks broke cover, but that was the only sign of their passage. Corlath and whoever else might have a weather talent must have been satisfied, and Harry watched, with a few cold fingers working their way up her spine in spite of the heat: for the loyal fog over them was blandly breaking up. The sky was blue and clear. A britti burst into song, and Harry raised her eyes to watch the little brown speck zigzagging madly overhead. Corlath sent his big bay forward, and thirty-four riders, and one obstinate hunting-cat, followed.

Harry hung near the back. She had not slept the night before for thinking of the northwest pass and Jack Dedham; Dedham's face watching Corlath as he stormed out of the Residency; and Corlath's face as he said, "Let them take the Outlander city - it will keep them amused."

Surely there was a reason none of the Hillfolk thought that gap into Damar worth consideration? But if there was a reason, what was the reason? Perhaps this Luthe would show some sense. Perhaps his crystal ball or what-have-you would say, "Beware the northwest pass! Beware!"