“Doesn’t it usually smoke?” I said, sniffing busily.
“Not while we’ve been here,” he said.
I was cheered by this. “Then it shows I’ve done something,” I said, and my crying stopped.
“If you feel better,” Kars Adon said, “I think you should come with us. We are having to move from here. Kankredin is coming up the River, they say, in a great wall of water. As he hasn’t sent word to me, I’m assuming he’s my enemy, too, now.”
“He is,” I said. “He wants to be King himself.”
Kars Adon twisted his mouth at that. “Thank you. I should have seen that. I could have seen that even when my father was alive, now that I think.” He fidgeted a moment with the hem of his cloak, and then he said, “I owe your family a great debt. If it had not been for your brother, I would still be crouching like a mouse in the hem of Kankredin’s gown, dreaming of—of glories … and risking getting trodden on. Hern made me see how ridiculous that was.”
Hern would be glad of that, I thought.
“You’d better come to our camp,” said Kars Adon. “I can show you some gratitude now, at least.”
“Oh, but I can’t!” I said. “My weaving’s down in our King’s camp, and I have to get it and finish it before Kankredin gets here. You wouldn’t believe how important that is!” I took a look over the edge of the turf, down to the tiny slip of the lake below, but I had to snatch my eyes away.
“Is your King down there?” Kars Adon asked, suddenly very eager. I thought he had not noticed my talk of weaving at all, but I found later that I was wrong.
“Yes,” I said. “We got to the lake down there this afternoon.”
Kars Adon was delighted. “Then that alters everything,” he said. “We stay here. I shall send someone down to talk to your King, and they can ask for your weaving then. I think Hern would say that was the right thing to do. You come with me.”
He wrapped his cloak around him against the wind and walked away up the turf. He walked with a strong limp; I had been right about that. When I did not come with him at once, he called to me, “Are your brothers with the King?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Then everything will be all right,” he said, and walked on.
I caught him up easily because of his limp. As we walked round the mountainside together, I asked him if he had been wounded.
His face was pink, and he shook his head. “I was born this way,” he said.
In the trees beyond the shelving turf, we were met by six lordly-looking Heathens. They had that grave, anxious look Heathens always seem to have, but I think they were truly anxious. One asked, “Shall you give orders to strike camp now, lord?”
“I’ve found a better way to settle our troubles,” Kars Adon said. “The native King is at hand, and we shall face Kankredin together.” He motioned me to walk with him and limped swiftly down the hillside, with the lordly ones following. From the conversation they had as we went, I gathered that the lordly ones had been trying to persuade Kars Adon to leave the place for days, because of Kankredin. They were frightened white by Kankredin, even more than Robin is. It began to give me a sense of how strong Kankredin is, their fear. But it was also quite plain that it stuck in Kars Adon’s gorge to flee from Kankredin. He had been looking for an excuse to stay, and he had found it in what I had said.
The lordly ones kept saying that prudence was safety, and who could face the mage of mages? Kars Adon limped on without answering until we came to a trodden path leading out from among the pine trees when he flung over his shoulder, “I was prudent once before and nearly lost the clans. Now I shall trust to our Grand Father.” That silenced them.
The Heathen camp spread beneath us. It was very large. Numbers of flags flew over many tents in one of the most favored valleys I have ever seen. It was warm, facing south, and flowers grew there in such profusion that they scented the evening.
“As I promised your brother, I have mustered all the clans that remain,” Kars Adon told me, and his chin lifted. I could hear imaginary trumpets. “I want to make my kingdom in this dale.” I did not blame him. It is a beautiful place, and no one else lives there.
When we came down among the tents, the first thing I saw was a group of dark boys in rugcoats making up to three Heathen girls in clinging dresses. They were being very polite about it—offering to carry the girls’ water-pots and so on—but I was a little shocked. We went round a tent, and there was the same thing in reverse. Some very forward girls in rugcoats were coaxing away at two Heathen boys to give them a ride on their horses.
Kars Adon saw me look. “Your people have been coming here for days now,” he said, “fleeing from Kankredin. I made treaties, as I told you I would. You think Hern would approve?”
I did not know what Hern would think. Treaties sound very grand, but the practical result is an awful lot of giggling and a very strange camp. Polite, quiet Heathens looked at us without seeming to look. People of my race crowded and stared. Some of my people were not at all clear they had made a treaty. Kars Adon was hissed by some, and some sat about staring and made no attempt to look after themselves. Most of these, Kars Adon explained, had been too near Kankredin. “I think he has hurt their souls,” he said. “They think they are our prisoners. We have to feed them.” He sighed. “I often wish that your brother was here to persuade them.”
We went to Kars Adon’s tent—he had found a great white one big enough to act a play in, from which his garish flag flew proudly—and there we had supper. It was plain food, nothing like the food our King insists on, and confusing. Heathens have the whole meal out upon the table at once, but you do not help yourself. Everything is carried to you by boys. I saw Ked among the serving boys, but he kept to the other end of the table. He is still terrified of me.
I sat eating with a most peculiar mixture of feelings. I was shy, but I felt at home in a way I never did with our King. When I realized this, I began to think I was a traitor, and yet, I told myself, the camp was full of my people, and my grandfather had placed me where I would meet Kars Adon, as if he had intended it. Kars Adon spent the whole time telling me of his plans, and this was oddest of all. “You do agree?” he kept saying. “Do you think Hern would like that?” It was all Hern. It is strange to think that Hern has made as big an impression on Kars Adon as Kars Adon has on Hern. They did not talk together long. But each has gone away thinking deeply of the other and, as it were, trying to live up to what he imagines the other to be. Kars Adon seemed to me to credit Hern with ideals that Hern never had. But how can I tell? Hern has certainly credited Kars Adon with the same, and here was Kars Adon doing his best to achieve them.
After supper Kars Adon sent his lordly ones to the end of the tent and said he must talk privately with me. “Would your King agree to a parley?” he said. “If I offered him a treaty, would he agree to face Kankredin with us?”
The way our King was placed, with fifty men and Kankredin coming up the River, I could not see he had much choice. “I think if you sent someone he could trust and listen to,” I said. I did not think he would listen to one of the lordly
ones.