The Blue Sword (Damar #2)(78)

Harry lay down again. The wind sniggered around the rocks, but overhead it flung itself, laughing shrilly, through the mountains, into the quiet plains of Damar, bearing with it the inhuman whispers and moans of the Northern army. Harry shivered. A finger of breeze touched her cheek and she recoiled; it ran over her shoulder and disappeared. She pulled the blanket over her face.

She must have slept, for when she pushed the blanket away from her face again the mountain was edged with dawn and her mouth tasted sticky. She sat up. Narknon was still asleep. Jack's eyes were open. He was staring grimly at nothing; she watched his eyes pull into focus to look at her. He sat up, saying nothing, and put his elbows on his knees, and rubbed his hands over the grey stubble of hair on his head. Other bodies were stirring. There was a small spring-fed pool in a fist of rock where the front of the shallow cave was sheltered by the trees; one of Jack's men filled a tin at it and brought it to one of Kentarre's archers, who had produced a slender tongue of flame from last night's ashes. Harry stared dreamily at the little fire till something black came between her and it, which proved to be Jack, kneeling down at their own bed of embers. Harry got up, kicking her blankets off, and went to fetch another tin of water.

Jack smiled at her when she returned. She tried to smile back; she wasn't sure how successful she was.

While they waited for the water to boil, Harry walked to the Madamer Gate and stared through it. The top of her head stood above the rock cleft, and the north wind howled down on her; her scalp felt tight and cold. The haze still hung where she had seen it the evening before, at the beginning of the foothills; but this morning she felt she could see flashes of color and motion within it. The color was the color of fear.

The wind chewed into her and she went back to the cave. They were all sitting, hunkered down around their tiny fires; and they were all watching her; or all but Jack, who was shaving. She admired the steadiness of his hand as he bent over a ragged bit of mirror propped against a rock on the ground. She stopped just before the shadow of the cave began. "Stay out of the wind while you can," she said. "It's not ... the right sort of wind."

Terim looked up, as if he could see the shape of the wind itself, and not only the way it shook the leaves and bounced pebbles from the rockfaces. "The Northerners send their wind to chill us," he said.

Harry remembered the creeping touch on her face the night before. "Yes," she said slowly. "To chill us - but I think also to discover us. I prefer that we tell it no more than we must."

At midmorning Harry saddled Sungold, unrolled the tops of her boots and lashed them to her thighs, settled her leather vest with particular care across her shoulders, and Gonturan against her hip. Shield and iron-bound helm hung ready from the front of the saddle; Sungold turned to look at her. The saddle looked strange, unbalanced, without the bulky knapsacks strapped around it. Draco chewed his bit, and Tsornin pointed an ear briefly at the sound.

Shortly before noon Harry sent Kentarre and her archers and their big soft-footed cats out beyond the Gate, into the last trees on the mountains' shoulders rising above the haggard valley. Harry watched anxiously, for the covering of stunted trees was not good, and she felt that every blue bead would be visible; but the archers disappeared as if they were no more than thrown pebbles. Harry was sure that whatever approached them knew the Gate was held against them - knew and smiled at the tale the wind brought; but she could do no more.

Jack saw them for the first time just before Kentarre led her archers away. He was staring through a narrow black spyglass; his hands were as steady as they had been with his razor. Harry could keep hers from chafing and plucking at each other only by thinking about it constantly; she clamped them on her sword belt. They felt damp. Harry had been watching those coming toward them all morning and it took her a moment to understand Jack's sudden grunt of comprehension. The fog had flowed into the mouth of the valley, and now it resolved itself into a mass of dark moving shapes which still seemed to cast more shadow than they should, for they were very near.

"Mount," said Harry.

The wind chuckled wildly as it tore at their hair, and pinged madly off metal as helms were settled in place, and dragged at the fingers of gloves, and sword tips, and horse tails. Sungold stood with his nose in the Gate; Draco stood at Harry's knee, stolidly, ears pricked. Harry could feel Tsornin tremble, but it was impatience; and she bit her lip in shame for herself and pride for her horse. Terim's horse tossed its head anxiously and switched its tail; Terim's face beneath the helm was unreadable. Narknon reappeared from wherever she had spent the morning, licking her chops; she hadn't been satisfied with porridge this morning. She polished her whiskers carefully, then came to the head of the column, to sit between Tsornin and Draco. "Narknon, my dear," said Harry, "why don't you go sleep by the fire for now, till ... till we come back? This isn't your sort of hunting."

Narknon looked up at her, perfectly aware that she was being addressed; then she lowered her gaze again and stared out across the valley.

"The filanon's cats went with them," said Jack. "You'll hurt her feelings if you try to leave her behind."

Harry said fiercely, "This is not the time to make silly jokes."

"On the contrary, Captain," replied Jack. "This is exactly the time."

Harry swallowed and looked out at the Northerners again. At the front of the army before them was a rider on a white horse. The horse was magnificent, as tall as Sungold, with the same proud head and high tail; red ribbons fluttered from its forelock and crest. His reins were golden glints against its snowy neck; and the rider's heavy sword was a great golden bar at his side. Beside him a dark rider on a mud-colored beast carried a banner: white, with a red bird on it, a bird of prey with a curved beak.