The people of the Hills had been her own people's foes for eighty years and more, for she was born and bred a Homelander; how could Jack—even Jack—speak of envy?

Her smile froze, and her tunic napped against her back and hips, for she had, somehow, lost her sash, and she had hung Gonturan from Sungold's saddle, so as to look, she hoped, a little less like immediate war. Lost her sash. A Hillman would never lose his sash. What was she? Damalur-sol. Ha. She laid a hand on Sun-gold's shoulder, but when he turned his head to touch her with his nose she was not comforted, for he had lived all his life in the Hills. She wished bitterly that her brother had told her of Tom Lloyd, months ago. That was something she might have understood, and Tom was kind and honest.

She swallowed and looked at Jack again, and he saw memory shining in her eyes, and he smiled sadly at her, and was sorry for any further pain his thoughtless words had given her. "Child," he said quietly, "choices are always hard. But do you not think yours is already made?"

Harry's fingers combed through her Hill horse's mane, and she said, "There never was a choice. I ride the only way open to me, and yet often and again it seems to me I am dangerously unfit for it." She laughed a little and shakily. "It seems to me further that it is very odd that fate should lay so careful a trail and spend so little time preparing the one that must follow it."

Jack nodded. "It is not the sort of thing that is recorded in official histories, but I believe that such thoughts have come not infrequently to others—" he smiled faintly—"ensnared as you are."

Harry's hand dropped back to her side and she smiled again. "Colonel, I shall try not to take myself too seriously."

"And I shall try not to talk too much." They grinned at each other, and knew that they were friends, and the knowledge was a relief and a pleasure and a hope to each of them, but for different reasons. Then Jack looked her over again, as if noticing the travel stains for the first time and said in a deliberately bright tone: "You look like you could use a bath … My God, that sword: you're carrying a king's ransom casually across your pommel."

"Not casually," said Harry somberly.

"Questions later," Jack said, "but I will hope that you will answer them. First food and rest, and then you will tell me a very long story, and it has to be the true one, although I don't promise to believe it."

"I am not quite alone, " said Harry, smiling again. "Will you let two friends of mine past your formidable gate as well?"

"Not so formidable," said Colonel Dedham. "I wish I'd arrived a minute earlier and seen that jump. I don't believe it."

"It's true, sir," said Tom.

"I believe it's true, I just don't believe it," said Jack. "No doubt all of your story will be just as impossible. And just to start with, what is that?" he said, pointing at Narknon, who still had not moved.

"She's a hunting-cat, a folstza. She adopted me soon after … I left here."

Narknon, deeming the moment right, stood up slowly, and opened her big green eyes to their fullest extent, batted the long golden lashes once or twice at Jack, and began to pace toward him, while he gamely held his ground. Narknon paused a step away and started to purr, and Jack laughed uncertainly; whereupon the cat took the last step and rubbed her cheek against the back of his hand. Jack, with the look of a man who throws dice with the devil, petted her and Narknon redoubled the purr. "I think I'm being courted," said Jack.

"Narknon has an excellent sense of whose side it is most expedient to be on," said Harry. "But—"

"Yes, we will let your companions come in in the traditional fashion. Unbar the gate, there, Shipson, and be quick about it, before anything else comes over it. I don't like the new standing orders, and they obviously aren't much good besides." Jack looked up from Narknon, who was now leaning her full weight against his legs and tapping her tail against the backs of his thighs, to gaze again at Sungold. "A real Hill horse. Can they all leap over Outlander forts before breakfast?"

"No. Or they may, but most of their riders have more sense than to try it. Particularly after a journey such as we've had." The excitement of seeing Jack again, and the reassurance of the warmth of his welcome, drained away from her, and she remembered that she was exhausted, and the sense of coming home to a place that was no longer home oppressed her further. "I'd like the bath and the food, and we all have to have sleep. But most of the story will have to wait; I'll tell you what I must, but … we don't have much time."

"You are here for a purpose, and I can guess some of it. I'll try not to be stupid."

The gate opened, and Terim and Senay rode quietly through and stopped by Sungold's flank and dismounted. Harry introduced them, and they bowed, touching their fingers respectfully to their foreheads, but without the last flick outward of the fingers that indicates that the one addressed is of superior rank. When she said in Hill-speech, "And this is Colonel Dedham, whose aid we are here to seek," she was pleased with the way her Outlander friend in his turn bowed and touched his fingers to his forehead, only glancing at her with mild inquiry.

"I am sorry," said Jack as he led the way to his quarters, "but I speak only a little of your Hill tongue. I must ask you to tell me what I need to hear in my own language, and apologize to your friends for the necessary rudeness of excluding them." This was spoken in heavily accented but perfectly adequate Hill-speech, and Terim and Senay both smiled.

"We understand the need for speed and clarity, and it would not have occurred to us to take offense," said Terim, who had a king's son's swiftness for turning a diplomatic phrase; and Senay simply nodded.

So Jack Dedham cleared off the table in the second of the two small rooms that were his, the table in question accustomed to duty as a dining-table and writing-desk, as well as a convenient surface to set any indeterminate object down on; and his batman brought breakfast for three. The three ate their way through it with enthusiasm, and the man, grinning, brought second breakfasts for three. "Make it four, Ted," said Dedham. "I'm getting hungry again."

When they were finished, and Harry was staring into her teacup and realizing with uneasy chagrin that she'd rather be drinking malak, Jack filled his pipe and began to produce thick heavy clouds of smoke that crawled around the room and nosed into the corners. "Well?" he said. "Tell me in what fashion you have come to seek my aid."

Harry said, staring at the worn tips of her Hill boots, "The Northern army will be coming through the mountains … soon. Very soon. Corlath's army is camped on the plain before the wide gap—the Bledfi Gap, we call it—the Gate of the North, you know, in the Horfel Mountains—"

Jack said from a cloud of smoke: "The Gambor Pass, in the Ossander range. Yes."

"We want to plug the northwest leak, the little way through the mountains above Ihistan—where an undesirable trickle of Northern soldiers could come through and—"

"And raze Istan, and go on to harass Corlath."

Harry nodded. "Not just harass; there are not many Hillfolk to fight."

"That explains, no doubt," said Jack, "why there are only three of you—and a cat with long teeth—for the northwest leak, as you call it."

Harry smiled faintly. "It was almost one of me, alone."

"I would hazard, then, that you are not precisely here under Corlath's orders."

"Not exactly."

"Does he know where you are?"

Harry thought about it, and said carefully, "I did not tell him where I was going before I left." Her ribs missed the pressure of a sash.

Dedham blinked a few times, slowly, and said, "I assume I am to conclude that he will be able to guess where you've gone. And these two poor fools decided to throw their lots in with an outlaw? I am impressed."