beads on its wire; and Harry thought that Kentarre was not so much older than herself. "Indeed, we do wish it. And if any of us remain afterward, we will follow you back to your king, whom we have not seen for generations, for in this thing perhaps all of what there is left of the old Damar must come together, if any of it is to survive."
Harry nodded, thinking that perhaps Kentarre's people would be convinced to go without her when the time came, for Corlath was likelier to be pleased to see them without his mutineer in their midst; but such thoughts were superfluous till they found out if any of their number would survive a meeting with the Northerners. Kentarre turned and stepped briskly back into the woods.
"The filanon," Senay murmured again.
"The which?" Harry said.
"Filanon," she repeated. "People of the trees. They are archers like none else; it is said they speak to their arrows, which will turn corners or leap obstacles to please them. They are legends now; even my people, who live so near their forests, have believed that they no longer exist, even if the old tales are true, and once the filanon, with their blue-hung bows, did live high in the mountains where no one else went." She paused a moment, and added, "Very rarely one of us has found one of the blue beads; they are thought to be lucky. My father has one that his father found when he was a little boy. He was wearing it the day the gursh - boar - gored him, and he said that it would have had him in the belly, and killed him, if the blue bead had not turned the beast at the last."
Jack said, "Tell me, Captain, do you always take in the loose wanderers you find in the woods if they offer to fall in with you?"
Harry smiled. "Only when they tell stories that I like. Three weeks ago I was talking to a ... wise man who told me that ... things would happen to me. I am inclined to believe that this is one of them. Besides, Narknon likes her."
Jack nodded. "I prefer to believe you. Although I have my doubts about your tabby's value as a judge of character." He blinked at her once or twice. "You're different, you know, than you were when you still lived with us Outlanders. Something deeper than the sunburn." He said this, knowing its truth, curious to see its effect upon the young woman he had once known, had once watched staring at the Darian desert.
Harry looked at him, and Jack was sure she knew exactly what was passing through his mind. "I am different. But the difference is a something riding me as I ride Sungold." She looked wry.
Jack chuckled. "My dear, you are merely learning about command responsibility. If you were mine, I'd promote you."
They finished their noon meal without seeing anything more of Kentarre; but as they mounted, many of them looking nervously around for more tall archers to burst from the bushes upon them, the materialization suddenly took place. Kentarre stood before Harry with a dark-haired man at her elbow; he carried a bow too, but among the blue beads at its grip was one apple-green one; and his tunic was dun-colored. Then Harry without turning her head saw that the path was lined with archers; she nodded blandly as if she had expected them to appear like this - which in fact she rather had - and moved Tsornin off. Kentarre and the man fell in with her and Jack and Senay and Terim, and the rest of the archers followed after the last horses had passed. Kentarre walked with as free and swinging a pace as Sungold.
There were about a hundred of her new troop, Harry found, when they stopped again. With them were about twenty hunting-cats: bigger-boned, with broader flatter skulls than Narknon's, and more variety of color than Harry had seen among Corlath's beasts. Narknon herself kept carefully at Harry's heels: even the indomitable Narknon seemed to feel discretion was the better part of valor when faced with twenty of her own kind, and each of them a third larger than herself.
Harry and her company found a little rock bowl, sheltered from the northwest wind that had begun to blow that afternoon, and all of them clustered in it, around several small fires. The archers unstrung their bows and murmured to or over