give your Corlath a breathing-space; and it's always remotely within the realm of possibility that Sir Charles will believe the letter I wrote him, and the Northerners will find the Outlanders a little more troublesome than they expected for a few more days of preparation. We will stay." The last three words he said in Hill-speech, and Senay and Terim and Kentarre repeated, "We will stay."
Terim said, with his usual buoyancy, "Harimad-sol, you cannot ask us to give up so easily, after we have come so far."
Harry blinked. She looked out over the valley; the Northern mass was beginning to shift forward again. "Very well," she said gruffly. "I suggest everyone eat something and take a few minutes' rest; for Thurra is moving. And ... thank you." She smiled. "Perhaps we will hold out three days."
"And think of the songs they'll sing about us," said Jack.
He handed her a bit of meat in a hard roll, and she began absently to chew it. Her right arm was still nearly useless, but her left hand closed and opened when she told it to, the elbow bent, and the shoulder swung. She squinted up at the mountains around her. The peaks that surrounded the Gate were perhaps four times a man's height from the shallow plateau where she stood; then beyond them the mountains sloped up again, and a little distance from the stony Gate some small trees covered the steep ground and spilled out toward the valley below them. She looked around, toward the forested arm where the archers had stood.
She found she had finished her roll. "I'll be back in a moment," she said. Jack and Richard looked at her questioningly. "In plenty of time to stand against our friends." She picked up Gonturan and awkwardly wiped and resheathed her, and began to clamber slowly up the western side of the Gate. She could only use her left hand, and even its grasp was not strong.
Jack said sharply, "Harry, what have you done to your arm?"
She waited till she was standing on the low crest to answer: "Strained a muscle, I think," she said. "Don't worry." She turned away as Jack opened his mouth; and from where her little band stood, disappeared around a spur of rock.
Richard started after her, but Terim moved in front him as Jack said, "No. If she wants to be left alone, we'll leave her alone. I don't like it either, but she - or the thing that's riding her - still knows a little more about this than the rest of us. Or so I believe."
Richard shrugged, but his eyes stayed on the spot where his sister had disappeared.
"She did promise that we could die together," Terim said cheerfully.
Jack rubbed his face wearily. "I'm not thinking about dying yet." He looked out into the valley, and slowly he brought his glass to his eye. More figures, some riding on strangely jointed steeds and some lumbering along on their own heavy feet, were pouring into the valley; there was no end of them. They roiled up the slope toward the Gate, the slope Harimad-sol had so laboriously pushed them down less than an hour before. He could no longer see the lower half of the rocky bowl at his feet for the creatures that walked upon it. He dropped the glass. "However foolish that may be."
Richard took the glass from Jack's hand and gazed through it. He saw Thurra's white stallion near the front; but there was no standard-bearer.
Harry stumbled up, and up farther; and then her feet found something like a path or a deer track, and she gratefully followed it. She came above the trees again, and looked down. Below her was the valley, full of tiny crawling things; nearer her, but still far away - I hadn't realized I'd come so far, she thought, startled - was a small flat space behind a cleft in the rock, where her people waited. She looked down dispassionately; the thought flickered through her mind that she was too far, and should return at once; but there seemed to be something she should do first. Her numb right hand crept its way up the scabbard of Gonturan till it felt over the hilt to rest on the stone at her peak; Harry found that she was panting for breath. "Lady Aerin," she murmured; and the scene before her wavered, and she blinked, and suddenly she could see as an eagle sees: she recognized the white stallion