along beside them, keeping pace. But the hills were at hand: rough outcroppings of grey and rust-red rock, with little but lichen to meet the traveler's first look; but as Sungold picked his way around a tall grey standing stone, suddenly grass appeared before them, and Sungold's feet struck good dark earth, and then they heard the stream. Narknon reached it first; she had none of most cats' aversion to water, and leaped in, sending water in all directions, and splashing Harry playfully when she followed. "I should not have let you come with me," Harry said to her; "but I don't suppose there's any way I could have prevented you. Thank the gods." Sungold was laying his ears back in mock anger and striking with his forefeet as Narknon splashed him too. "And besides, I daresay Sungold would miss you, and I had to bring him."
It was after they had all soggily climbed out of the water again that she heard the hoofbeats; and she whirled around to face them. The faces of her four-footed companions remained undisturbed, and Sungold turned his head mildly to look over his shoulder at whoever approached, but this was no comfort, for they did not understand the awfulness of what she had done, or that the friends who had followed her were friends no longer.
It was Senay and Terim. Their horses showed the pace they had kept worse than Sungold; but they were well mannered and stood quietly, waiting hopefully for their riders to tell them they might stop and rest, and drink and graze, as their brother was doing already.
"Why did you follow me?" said Harry. "Did Corlath send you? I - I won't come back. If you take Sungold away from me, I'll go on foot."
Terim laughed. It wasn't a very good laugh, but there was some weary humor in it nonetheless. "I don't think anyone could take Sungold away from you, unless perhaps by cutting him in pieces; and we are not sent by anyone. We followed you ... "
"We followed you because we chose to follow you," said Senay. "And Mathin sat up and watched us go, and said nothing; and you will not send us back, for we shall follow you anyway, like Narknon." Senay dismounted deliberately, and sent her grateful horse to the water; and Terim followed her.
Harry sat down where she stood. "Do you realize what I've done? What you've done by following me?"
"More or less," said Terim. "But my father has other sons; he can afford to disinherit one or two."
Senay was pouring water over her head. "There are a few who will come to me; we will pass near my village, and I will tell them, and they will follow. There are not many left in the western end of the Horfels; but most of those there are owe allegiance to my father. The best of them, I fear, rode to join Corlath after I left for the trials; but there are some - like my father himself - who chose not to desert the land they've loved for generations."
"That will not help you when he disowns you, like Terim's father," said Harry.
Senay shook her wet hair back and smiled. "My father has too few children to lose one; and I am the only child of his first wife, and he raised me to make up my own mind. The way he did this was by yielding to me when I asked, even when I was foolish. I lived through it; and I know my own mind; and he will do what I ask him."
Harry shook her head. "Do you know where ... we're ... going?"
"Of course," said Terim, surprised. "Besides, Mathin told us, days ago."
Harry was beyond arguing; and, she realized in the back of her mind, she didn't want to argue. She was too warmed and heartened by having two more friends with her in her self-chosen exile; and unlike Sungold and Narknon she could not feel she had compelled this man and woman. "And we brought provisions," Terim said matter-of-factly. "You shouldn't go on desperate missions without food."
"Narknon would take care of me, I think," Harry said, trying to smile.
"Even Narknon can't bake bread," said Terim, unrolling a twist of cloth that held several loaves of the round pot-baked bread the army ate in vast quantities.
They unsaddled their horses in companionable silence, and rubbed the sweat marks with grass, and the horses waded into the stream again and splashed their bellies,