As the shield dipped lower and lower, Teodorq’s sword flicked up and over its rim more and more often. Slashes began to appear on the Harp’s torso and arms. Once, on his thigh.
Paulie grunted. “So that’s how he wants it. Better not ever try it on me.” But Méarana did not understand what he meant.
And then Teodorq made a mistake.
Méarana had not seen a single slip or error in his performance. He spun his two swords, slashing and poking with left hand and right in an intricate ballet with no misstep.
Now he was open, and the Harp lunged with his point. Teodorq danced back, but it was not enough and the point pierced his arm. He did not drop Goodhandlingblade, though he backed away another two steps. He grinned at his opponent, and his opponent grinned back. Then, he stuck both his swords in the ground. And the Harp, after a moment longer, did the same.
“Boss!” Theodorq called to the chief of the Harps. “I cannot kill this man of yours, because that would deprive your people of a mighty champion! You must melt honey and butter on his head, and put mead in his mouth! He must have a new name from this day forward! I will call him Sword-friend and, should he ever come to my country, I will feast him and we will spar once more for our honor!”
When this speech was translated, the longest Méarana had ever heard the Wildman utter, the assembled warriors broke into an ululation. Dovovan whispered, “I told you Teodorq was more clever than you gave him credit for. Did you like how he handled that warrior?”
Méarana nodded. “I liked how he handled the other four.”
Paulie, standing behind them, spoke up. “That poor savage never stood a chance. He ain’t never seen men like Teddy or me. He knows how to use a sword, that one does; but he don’t know how to use his tongue. So the one was sharp, but the other dull; and it was the weapon he did not look for that skewered him.”
“But,” Sofwari pointed out, “there are worlds where that trick with the locator unit would have gotten him burned as a witch. There are cultures where putting down his sword would have gotten him killed. I saw some, out along the Gansu.”
The Wildman shrugged. “A man learns to sniff out the ways of other men.”
“How?”
“Experience.”
Sofwari thought about that. “That’s a hard teacher.”
“Yah,” said Paulie. “You only get to see the graduates.”
The captured boys were given food and drink and set on the path back to their own country. The oldest, a lean scar-faced lad who looked to be about fourteen standard years, turned about before they left. “We will come back to this place. And then we will kill you for the deaths of our fathers and the rapes of our mothers.” But the Harps only jeered him, although some nodded and extended a welcome.
“It is only right,” the war chief said, “to return the seeds to the ground in the hope of a future harvest.” His henchmen drew their swords and waved them about, in case anyone was unclear on the scythes that would mow that harvest.
After that, Méarana and her people were led to New Town, where they were feted and praised, and where Méarana improvised a lay celebrating the sword fight between Teodorq and the Harp, whose name she learned was Crow-feeder. Those who had been there added color commentary for the benefit of friends and women. Méarana changed the ending a little bit. She had both men recognize at the same moment the heroism of the other, so that both plunged their swords in the ground at the same time. It made a better story that way, and flattered Crow-feeder. In her version, too, the other four warriors had not shrunk from fear of the talking swords, but because Crow-feeder dismissed them in order to fight alone. The war chief of the Harps recognized the alterations and gave an approving nod. In another year, when the song had been sung enough times, even the participants would believe it had happened that way.
A week later, a party of Harps escorted Méarana and her companions up past Second Falls onto the Kobberjobble Escarpment. The Harps called the peaks the “shining mountains” because the snowcapped peaks still caught the sun’s rays even after he had set over the horizon. Having no notion of the geometry of spheres and rays, they believed the glow to be a property of the mountain peaks themselves.
Here, the party transferred to yet another set of canoes, lighter than the war canoes they had been using. This was the ancient homeland of the Harps and the villages and stockades were more substantial and showed evidence of long habitation. The walls were more than a fence of poles, but were plastered over with something like stucco, which gave them an ochre appearance especially striking in the setting sun.
The utility of the lighter canoes was demonstrated the first time they had to make a portage. The Multawee ran over numerous cataracts on its journey across the high meadows, and each time, the canoes had to be unloaded and carried around the obstacle.
Crow-feeder led the escort, which consisted of his personal following, now swollen because of his performance in the Fight at First Falls. Also with them was Watershank, because his knowledge of the loora nuxrjes’r was their sole channel of communication, and a young woman named Skins-rabbit. She had been captured from the Emrikii of Dacitti in an earlier war and was being returned to them now as a tactical offering of good will. She knew both the tanga cru’tye of the Harps and the murgãglaiz spoken by the Emrikii.
“What a tangled path when we find these Emrikii,” Sofwari said. ‘We have to think in Gaelactic, our earwigs will render that in the loora nuxrjes’r, Watershank will translate that to the tanga cru’tye, and Skins will translate that to murgãglaiz. Any rabbit of thought that makes it through that bramble will surely be skinned by then.”
Some of the villages they glided by were abandoned, and Méarana recalled that Harps were moving down into the Foothills, driving out the Bears and others who lived there. Méarana thought that a great injustice on the Bears, but Watershank told her that the Tooth of the Bear had earlier taken the land from the Tooth of the Raven, who now lived in a valley farther to the east. “It is the way of the world,” he said. “One day, your people will come, and will drive out even the mighty Nuxrjes’r.”
“That might be a very long time,” Méarana said.
But Watershank shook his head. “In my time, or my childrens’ childrens’ time. But come, it will. Beside your might, we are as nothing. And those who have power, use it; unless stayed by fear or impotence.”
Méarana would have argued further, but Donovan said, “Once the Ardry learns that a forgotten road runs from the Confederation into the Wild, can he afford to stay out? What if the Confederation rediscovers the road? In the end, the choice is not whether these folk remain free to slaughter each other’s children and cut the throats of travelers, but whether they will be ruled by the Ardry or by Those of Name.”
They had portaged around any number of cataracts and falls as they wended their way through the old Harplands, but when after a week, they came to the base of the Longfoot, they saw why none of those had possessed even so much as a number. Longfoot Falls was called Third Falls because there was nothing else on the river to match her, save her two downstream sisters. Unlike Roaring Falls and Second Falls, however, Longfoot did not tumble straight down. Here, the mountainside was steep but, save near the crest, not sheer. Instead, the Longfoot sluiced half a mile down the mountainside, jouncing and splashing and leaping from its bed like a child on an amusement park waterslide before plowing into the Gryperzee at its base. The rocky slopes were barren, save to the south of the slide, where twisted “crumb-wood” trees grew no more than chest high and slewed their limbs toward the east.