of his speed she brought him back to a gentle canter, circled once, and sent him after Corlath, who had paused and was watching her antics. They stopped beside Fireheart and his rider, and the two stallions nodded to each other. Harry expected a lecture on frivolity, or something, and lowered her eyes to Sungold's withers; but Corlath said nothing. She looked up again as she heard the ring of metal on metal; Corlath had drawn the sword that hung at his side.
She watched, surprised, as he held it, point up, and the sun glared fiercely on it. She remembered that this morning, as he rode into camp, he had been carrying it, the first time she had ever seen him armed with anything more ostentatiously threatening than a long dagger, or the slim short knives all the Hillfolk carried to cut up their food and perform any minor tasks where something with a sharp point was necessary. She'd forgotten about it as soon as she'd noticed Sungold; and now that she saw it more closely she decided she didn't much like the look of it. This was obviously a war-sword; it was much too unwieldy for anything but serious hacking and hewing.
Corlath took the deadly thing in his left hand and handed it to her, hilt first. "Take it." She grasped it, warily, and when Corlath let go it did not knock her out of the saddle, but it tried. "Lift it," he said. And as she tried, "You've never held a sword."
"No." She lifted it as if it were a snake that would crawl up its own tail and bite her. Corlath edged Isfahel out of harm's way as her arm and shoulder experimented with this new thing. She swung it in a short half-arc, and Tsornin came suddenly to life, and bounced forward on his hind legs, neighing. "Ouch," she said, as he came to earth again; his ears were tipped back toward her, and all his muscles were tense.
"Sungold's a war-horse," Corlath said mildly. "You're giving him ideas."
She turned to glower at him, and he rode up beside her and took the sword back. There was a gleam of humor in his eye as he returned her glower; and they turned back toward camp together. He said something that she didn't quite catch, and as she turned to him to ask him to repeat it, Fireheart leaped forward into a gallop that flattened out to full stretch at once. After a moment's shock she recognized the challenge, and Sungold bolted after them, and gained ground till her face was flicked by Fireheart's streaming tail, and then Sungold's nose drew even with Corlath's toe; and then they were sweeping into the camp, and the horses steadied down to a canter, and then a walk. Their nostrils showed red as they breathed, and Sungold turned away from the camp, asking for more; but Harry said, "I don't think so," and Sungold heaved a sigh and followed docilely at Fireheart's heels. It was only when she dismounted that she realized she was still barefoot. Corlath and Harry had breakfast together, on one square of the long table. Harry did not speak, except to Narknon, who was inclined to be sulky; and Corlath's attention was for the men who came to speak with him, about the minor things that had gone wrong in his absence, and about messages they had received for him; and Harry understood much of what they said, and wondered if Corlath cared that it was no longer entirely safe to talk secrets around his Outlander. After they had eaten, a man of the household entered the zotar and handed the king a long thin bundle wrapped in linen. He bowed and retired; and Corlath shook the thing free of its covering and held up another sword. This one was appreciably smaller than the one he himself wore, but Harry still watched it with dislike. Corlath ran a quick hand over the scabbard with the linen cloth and then offered her, again, the hilt. She took it reluctantly, and rather than drawing it smoothly out, she backed up awkwardly, so that it rang free with a sullen clunk.
"You'll have to do better than that," said Corlath; and she was sure that he was amused.
"Why?" she said, anger beginning to uncoil itself somewhere deep inside her and make its way to the surface. "Why? What have swords and - " she gulped, for she loved Sungold already -