Edited: 7/14/2024
"Good," the man panted. "Good. This- they can't get to us here." He dropped out of the deep purple dragon's saddle and sprawled on the ice sheet. The purple dragon sprawled on her back like a panting dog, absolutely exhausted.
The Rider's friends joined him. The ice was so massive and thick, it hardly bobbed under their weight. Braxtus's dragon landed last, slumping at the edge of the massive sheet.
Now that Harry knew what to look for, he could still smell that sour scent clinging to the Riders and dragons, the sulfurous and ashen smell. After what had happened last time, Harry warily let himself dream and did not try to shut it out. At least for now, this seemed important.
They all seemed terrified to fall asleep. Harry understood the sentiment. Eventually exhaustion won out and the man was the last to nod off.
Harry felt a sense of vertigo when the Rider went to sleep. Time lurched forwards, and he wasn't able to see what happened while everybody was sleeping.
Suddenly, he was startled by a roar that split his ears.
Dozens of Urgals surrounded them, dark, horned silhouettes in the night, yellow eyes the only distinct feature under the moonless black sky. Harry spotted one of them crouched next to the grey dragon, bent over where his elfin Rider had been sleeping. Harry spotted the silhouette of a barbed sword stuck into the ice, impaled through the elf's chest.
The grey dragon turned and blasted the Urgal. A torrent of grey fire immolated the murderer in an instant, spilling against the ice sheet and melting a furrow in the surface. The grey dragon screamed again in heartbreak.
Harry felt the scorching heat of the flames and the brilliant flash of light. The remaining four Riders roused themselves disoriented and half blind from the light of the grey dragon's fire. He fought like a wild animal, thrashing and biting and spitting bursts of fire, howling as the Urgals responded.
He could hardly see a thing. Bursts of fire illuminated the Urgals in flashes, like a slideshow of death. He saw spears thrust into the grey dragon, arrows fired in the darkness, clashing metal as the Riders managed to awaken to fight.
A sustained blast of flame let Harry see the Urgals' expressions, glassy-eyed and emotionless. The lone pale yellow dragon went down next. Harry heard barked commands in the Ancient Language, more flashes and screams, but he couldn't piece anything together in the chaos.
"Garjzla!" Harry heard the lead Rider shout. A purple werelight appeared in the air over the scene. Blood had drenched the snowy top of the ice sheet, frantic dragon talons carving grooves and smearing trails in the ice. The ice sheet began to bob under all the frantic activity. There were at least forty more Urgals attacking, a dozen already laid dead on the ice.
The purple color was poor at actual illumination, but the Rider didn't seem to notice or care. He drew a sword (plain steel, Harry noted. Not like Zar'roc) and raised his palm, the silvery mark on it glowing as he barked out violent verbs like 'hit,' 'cut,' 'thrust,' and 'break.'
It seemed like the Riders would regain control of the situation when the human woman screamed. "BELOW!"
The lead Rider paled, looking utterly ghostly in the purple light. The whole ice sheet bucked, causing everybody, dragon, Rider, and Urgal alike, to stagger. Then something massive breached the surface of the bay.
It was as big around as a skyscraper, an ivory spire jutting from its head and its mouth agape, big enough to swallow the still-young dragons whole. The spire punched through the middle of the ice sheet and impaled a dragon straight through the torso. A flash of colored light burst from her chest, blowing scales and flesh outwards and killing her instantly. The ice sheet shattered from the middle, falling apart into dozens of smaller pieces that were hurled to the sides as the creature breached, leaping into the air.
The Rider clung to his sheet of ice as it teetered wildly in the frigid water, dunking him and shocking him enough to break his grip on the icy edge. He was forced under the sheet, panicking as water filled his lungs.
"Audr," he choked out, bubbles flowing from his mouth. His entire body smushed against the sheet as if a marionette on a string somebody had just yanked like a ripcord. He slipped against the uneven underside and rose over the surface, hacking and coughing.
Harry gazed up at the unfathomably huge silhouette in the air. It blotted out the stars, a black shape like some kind of whale or narwhal a thousand times larger than any living species. It seemed to hang in the air for ages as gravity struggled to overcome such a colossal amount of mass and inertia. Then it came plummeting down, a hundred thousand tons of flesh, blood, and bone, like the sky itself was falling on the shattered ice sheet.
Two dragons were caught beneath its body as it slammed into the water like little gem-colored kites under a whale. The reentry plunged a huge volume of water into the bay as the monolith of flesh fell back in, dragging a hundred swimming pools of water down beneath it. The void of water formed a cone a hundred feet deep and thrice as wide around, sucking more Urgals and ice sheets down into the depths of the bay.
The surrounding water rushed to fill the void, slamming together in a gout of water that crushed more than one Urgal to death, the plume blasting a hundred feet into the night sky. A tidal wave raced out from the reentry point, flipping ice sheets and drowning Urgals. The water bucked and tugged. Submerged ice sheets came shooting back out of the water and plunging back to the surface, falling all around the disaster area. It was like an icy, watery volcanic eruption.
Only the Rider had survived, crawling on top of a heaving chunk of ice, hacking up water and shivering violently. "Who's still alive?" he shouted, his voice cracking. He looked down at the heaving water expectantly.
His royal purple dragon emerged from the depths, swimming up to a larger ice sheet and dragging herself onto 'land,' however dubious the prospect. The Rider gave a sigh of utter relief. The ice sheet bobbled under her weight. The Rider muttered 'dry' under his breath in the Ancient Language, banishing the freezing water from his clothes.
They both flopped onto their ice sheets, exhausted but relatively unharmed. The waves still churned and bobbed their platforms. The Rider seemed to take a moment to mourn for his lost fellows. The dragon looked like she was just trying to catch her breath.
Harry saw it coming before it happened. The Rider was too far away to help, to do anything but warn his dragon. An Urgal crawled onto the ice sheet with the purple dragon, propping himself up with his spear. Harry should have been too far away to see it – his vision wasn't that good – but somehow he knew and he saw that the glassy-eyed stare was gone from the Urgal's eyes. Maybe the water shocked him awake, or he got hit on the head, or whatever it was, the Urgal was lucid and awake and suddenly, he found himself in front of a dragon with a spear in his hands.
With one brutal thrust through the neck, the Urgal dealt a lethal blow.
"NO!" The Rider screamed. He picked up a chunk of ice and hurled it towards the Urgal. "Thrysta," he gasped. The ice curved midair as it accelerated, tracking the Urgal's skull unerringly. It embedded itself in his skull, killing him instantly.
Without hesitation, the Rider jumped into the choppy water, even knowing what had just emerged from beneath. He paddled over heedless of the freezing temperature and the debris, the bodies floating up from below around him. He dragged himself onto the dragon's ice chunk, sobbing.
Harry watched uncomfortably as he pulled out the spear from her neck, chanting a couple of words over and over again like a mantra, weakening as he poured every bit of energy he had into her. "Waise heill. Waise heill."
Energy sapped out of him and into the dragon's wounds. The skin and scale grew back over the wound, but it wasn't enough. Harry knew, and the Rider knew too. The inside of her neck was too mangled, and the Rider clearly knew little more than those two words.
Be healed.
The Rider cradled her head in his arms, sobbing as she slipped away. And as she died, Harry heard him whisper a name.
"Jarnunvosk."
Harry made breakfast. Going through the motions cleared his mind of the tumultuous dreams. Knowing the dragon's name changed everything. Brom had told him who that dragon was paired with. Until then, Harry had been rooting for the Rider. He was still conflicted on when he'd actually have to stop.
Plus, cooking protected his dwindling supply of stasis meals.
The bedroom door opened a few minutes later. Arya emerged looking bleary. She stood in the kitchen, archway observing Harry as he tossed onions and shredded cheese into the eggs, sifting the skillet with practiced motions.
The toast popped.
Arya startled. Her eyes darted towards the toaster. Harry plucked the slices out with half a thought and a spark of wandless, formless magic. The toast plated itself and a stick of butter floated over it, drawing butter on like a crayon.
Harry gestured for a set of dishes and silverware to come marching out of the cupboards, setting themselves on the table. Another gesture plated the breakfast. He summoned glasses and filled them from the tip of his wand. Arya's eyes narrowed as he conjured the water, watching the wandtip intently for some kind of trick.
"No meat?" Arya broke the silence.
Harry shrugged. "The food's grown with magic. Maybe there's a good way to farm meat with magic I haven't thought of."
"You never bought any?"
Harry shook his head. "I don't have any moral objections to eating meat, I just haven't had the opportunity to buy a bunch. Are you a vegetarian?"
Arya bit into her toast. "Elves generally do not need meat to survive. So we do not eat it."
"I'll keep that in mind when making you food."
Arya ate quietly for a while.
"Have other women lived in this tent with you before?"
Harry frowned. "No, why?"
Arya gave him an assessing look. You do not behave as most human men do around women. You had women's clothing on hand and were respectful when working to heal me in an area most men would find…distracting."
Harry blushed. "It's called professionalism."
"And the women's clothes?" Arya challenged.
"Conjured from memory."
Arya paused. She pinched the fabric of her shirt as if to reassure herself it was real. "Odd. Cotton." She touched the hems. "Are you an expert weaver?"
"No?" Harry was confused.
"You created four-way stretch-knit fabric with flawless selvedges." Arya rubbed her finger along the hems. She reached under her shirt. Harry's face grew warm. "How-? Ah. Stretch weave inside the strap's sleeve. But the sleeve stretches- what is it made of?"
Harry shrugged helplessly. "I'm not an expert. Maybe spandex? The instructions I gave were for a nice bra that would fit you. Magic did the rest."
Arya frowned. "You didn't actually know what your magic would produce? Where would the spell get the information to complete its task? You didn't use the Ancient Language, it should have been impossible for you to create anything you do not know inside and out with wordless magic."
Harry shrugged again. "The platonic ideal of a bra, I guess. Influenced by my experiences with bras. To me, that's just a regular old bra you'd get from Harrods."
Maybe he shouldn't be telling her how his magic worked. It seemed unwise to give details to someone who had no second thoughts about killing sixteen men the instant she was free. But then, Harry thought darkly, she had plenty of justification.
Just thinking about it made his blood boil. To do that to another human being – elf, whatever – there was no excuse. It was unforgivable. He only wished Arya had been more discerning in her vengeance. Not every person who did evil was given a choice.
He guessed he held himself a better judge of character than Brom. That, or he valued his secrets less than Brom did. If Harry really felt threatened, all he had to do was apparate back to the castle and wait out the storm. He had a free escape. For many others, the stakes were much more real. There was no teleporting away when you got in over your head. You could run away on horseback and hope to lose your pursuers. But that was it. He would keep others' secrets with the same zeal they kept their own. Basic respect demanded nothing else.
For his own secrets, it didn't change much if Arya knew the truth about him. That he'd come from a different world, or that he wielded a different brand of magic. He would rather be known for who he was than try to hold up an elaborate fiction to deflect attention.
How odd was that? Harry recognized the irony in it. Years ago, he'd insisted to Hagrid that he was Just Harry.
Arya rubbed the fabric again. She held her glass of water up to the light, swirled it in her cup, then drank it slowly, as if it were fine wine she wanted to discern the recipe to.
"Where did you get the energy for this?" she asked. "The information, everything? Creating so much matter from nothingness would have killed even me."
"Nobody knows," Harry said. "Wizards haven't even thought very hard about it, to be honest. I think the revelation that matter should be impossible to create or destroy under the laws of nature, that only came recently to muggles. Wizards probably never thought making stuff from nothing was funny until the muggles discovered it, and even now they probably just think the muggles are wrong." He indicated the glass of water. "There's pretty good evidence that we're right."
"Who are you?" Arya asked finally. "Who sent you? How did you know where and when to find me? How did you stave off Durza, and how were you able to hide yourself so perfectly? Why did you come to save me?"
Harry was still wary. The enemy of his enemy was not always his friend. Umbridge came to mind Garrow's predicament also weighed on his mind. Brom was coming off sixteen years of retirement, and Eragon and Saphira were both still totally unknown to the Empire. Brom had kept some of those secrets from even Heod, and old and close friend he knew was trustworthy.
He took a moment to decide what he was willing to share, and how to put the pieces together to make a narrative that Arya could follow which wouldn't give too much away.
"I started having dreams," Harry said guardedly. "An elf lady being tortured by a Shade. I thought they were just nightmares, but I recently learned how to scry, and I was able to scry you. I was just in Teirm when I first learned. I couldn't scry Durza, but I heard a group of gossipping merchants who thought Durza was headed to the Surdan border to punish them for supporting the Varden. That, and when I scryed you, you were about to be transported to Uru'baen. I knew it was now or never."
"So it was out of pure altruism that you risked your life for me?" Arya asked, rising from her seat. Harry was immediately on guard. He put his hand in his pocket and touched the Elder Wand. But he needn't have bothered. Arya crossed to the sink and started washing dishes.
"Scourgify," Harry uttered. The whole kitchen was rendered spotless. "Yeah, I did," Harry said irritably. "When you get mysterious, magical dreams about a woman being tortured that you might be able to save, do you just roll over and go back to sleep?"
"I am- was bound by duty." Arya's voice was tight and miserable. "Were you not?"
"Just traveling with friends. They didn't need me to stay."
"Other magicians?" Arya asked quietly. "Enemies of the Empire?"
Harry snorted. "Yeah. You could say that."
The silence stretched on for a moment.
"We should keep moving," Arya said, headed towards the arch to the living room. "Even if we managed to fool Durza, being in Gil'ead early will deflect more suspicion than if we arrive right as the search parties go out."
Harry made Arya better riding clothes. Tougher pants and a coat, along with a sports bra (Harry had been uncomfortable enough with the up-and-down motion of riding himself, and he didn't have a couple of bags of loose flesh attached to his chest).
He made her the rest of a wardrobe and cleared out the boxes of books from the spare bedroom. He wasn't sure where to put them, and didn't have spare containers to expand for storage. So they went into the living room, stacked against the couches and walls. He'd try to buy a bunch at Gil'ead, if it was safe.
He wanted to be working on another broomstick, but there were no trees to be found on the great and barren plains. Nor did they have the time for Harry to sit around growing and watering a tree with magic, let alone the evidence such an activity would leave behind for pursuers and trackers..
The single-passenger nature of broomsticks bothered Harry. For short trips of all wizards who all already owned broomsticks and for some reason couldn't use apparition, broomsticks were okay. They were loads of fun for sport, but decidedly lackluster as a primary form of transportation. Floo, apparition, portkeys, they all beat broomsticks handily. Even some muggle transit probably beat out broomsticks. Harry was still a relative novice at broomstick enchanting, but he was pretty sure none of them could carry as many passengers as a 747 jumbo jet, nor could they comfortably cruise for twelve hours at just below the speed of sound and cross the Atlantic in one go.
Now that Harry needed to transport a passenger and also had a long distance to cover, those flaws were increasingly making themselves known at a very inconvenient time.
After they broke camp and started out, Harry made use of one of their advantages. He threw the Cloak over himself and kicked off.
"I'm going to keep an eye out," he told Arya, pulling back the hood. "I'll be able to see them for miles."
Arya nodded and spurred the spotted mount first. They'd nearly emptied both horses' saddlebags to give them more stamina. Harry had also given Arya two more doses of Draught of Second Wind for an emergency.
More preparation would have made all the difference. Harry kicked himself for being so unprepared. If he had just bought horseshoes in Teirm and enchanted them with swiftness like his boots, if he had made a third broomstick or even had the wood and twigs to build one, if he knew how to make flying carpets or another invisibility cloak (Demiguise hair notwithstanding), if, if, if.
If he had been a little better at anticipating what he'd end up needing in the future, they would not be running for their life from Durza. They'd have left him in the dust.
He could have turned Arya into a ferret like Malfoy and flown with her in his pocket. Though he'd have chosen a more dignified animal. If he'd actually been able to attend 7th year transfig where human transfiguration was covered. He could ask Morgan – and he would – but he needed to know now, not in the speculative future.
He swallowed thickly. Morgan had been right. Wasted time did find a way to bite him in the arse. He spent a whole year building a gigantic useless castle, to the detriment of his education. Now the gaps being a 7th year dropout had left were leaving him without critical tools, and he no longer had the time or privacy to close them. Unless he wanted to explain his ability to summon the dead to the terrifying elf lady he was traveling with.
Horseshoes of swiftness were a no-brainer solution to an extremely predictable situation. He could have bought and killed some goats in Teirm if he'd known Arya was going to be poisoned.
Angela not having bezoars in stock was really screwing him over.
Harry pulled up the hood of the Cloak, tapping his broomstick with a disillusionment charm. "Back in a mo'."
He climbed high into the sky. Only Durza had a hope of spotting the disillusioned broom against the cloudy sky. Higher and higher he went, until he had to use warming charms to keep from freezing, and the bottoms of the clouds were only a few hundred feet over his head.
Down below, Arya was a strange four-legged dot leading a smaller dot behind her. The grasslands spread out in a flat bowl all around, all the way out to the distant horizon. The road connecting Gil'ead to Uru'baen was a raised limestone ridge cutting straight through the grass. At its end was Gil'ead.
From so high and so far, it looked like a toy set, a pretend castle modeled out of tiny bits of painted clay, wood, and colored plastic. It sat nestled in the midst of a wide belt of farms carpeting gentle hills and little tributaries that split off of Isentar Lake, a broad blue horizon behind the city that Harry could not see the end of, even from his impossible vantage point.
Search parties had indeed been sent out. In a broad curving line, horsemen and dogs spread out from the eastern side of the city. Much sparser than the eastward hunters, more parties searched to the west of the road. They were hardly more than specks against the grass, visible only because the terrain they stood against was flat and featureless. Harry looked straight down to where Arya was, a speck with the two horses. He took a moment to gauge how quickly Arya and the search parties were moving, then dove back down.
"They sent out search parties," Harry said, throwing off the Cloak. "They're mostly headed in our direction. Some went west of the road, just in case we crossed back over the road to throw Durza off. We'll have to cross through a party to reach Gil'ead. If you and them keep the same pace, that'll probably be in two or three hours."
Arya nodded. "They are just humans, expecting a nearly crippled elf and an invisible magician. They will pose no real threat, so long as we dispatch them before they can call for help."
"What?" Harry demanded. "You want to kill them all, just for doing their jobs?"
Arya gave him a look like he was stupid. "I would rather not go back to Durza," she said tightly. "You must have seen enough to know that you do not want to, either."
"Yeah, but to kill them?" Harry was unsettled. The way she arrived at murder as the solution so effortlessly. "We can just sneak through."
"They have dogs," Arya pointed out. "Those dogs will have my scent." She gestured at the horses beneath her. "They will most likely have the descriptions of the horses we stole. The hounds will smell me even if I wear your cloak, and you will be recognized when they see the horses."
"I'll figure something out," Harry promised. "We're not killing a bunch of people just because we can't think of something easier off the top of our heads."
Two hours never passed quicker than when a deadline was approaching. Harry had flown back up to watch the two parties' progress, and to clear his head to think. He coasted back down when the toy figures below were still far enough to be past each other's horizons.
Harry told Arya his plan. The elf was unhappy. "If this looks like it will fail, we do it my way."
Harry shook his head. "Then I'll stun them all and wipe their memories, then send them on their way."
Arya said nothing. Her demeanor said that she had pointedly not agreed.
By the time the horsemen appeared on the horizon, Harry was ready. He pocketed the pair of toy horses. Arya was somewhere nearby, holding both the sword she took from the soldier she'd killed barehanded, and the one Harry had taken from Durza. Harry had a conjured bow slung over his shoulder. He wore rough huntsman clothing and had a big knife at his hip. He'd scourgified himself and his clothes clean of Arya's scent, then rolled in the grass and dirt for a minute to get as dirty as huntsmen were expected to be.
"This is never going to work," Arya stated, her voice emanating from thin air.
Harry scowled. "It costs us nothing to try."
He heard only the wind for a moment. "It's your skin."
Harry waved to the search party and walked towards them. He made sure not to seem in any hurry, trudging along through the knee-high grass.
They saw him and changed course to intercept. Harry met them fifteen minutes later. At the horizon, the farms he'd seen from the sky were just visible, patches of lumpy brighter green and gold, dotted with blocky farmhouses and barns.
"Hail!" the lead rider called to Harry. He waved back. The horses and dogs trampled to a halt, the horsemen encircling him. The dogs didn't seem very friendly. A man holding both of the leashes reigned the pair in. He barked an order at them, though Harry lost it in the handler's thick accent. The dogs snuffled him for a moment before losing interest. The captain of the search party seemed disappointed.
"What brings you to this forsaken patch of empty grass?" the captain fished.
Harry shrugged. "No purpose."
"Then why aren't you living in a city or village?" he pressed.
Harry gave the captain a sour look. "They've got all sorts of rules around the cities, don't they? When and where to hunt, people always scaring off the game–" he shrugged again. "Easier to just move between the spots in the Plains with enough water for game. Nobody bothers me there."
Harry squinted at the captain. "Why are you folks out here? You all never wander so far from the city."
The captain reined in his restless horse with a wide tug. He narrowed his eyes. "We're looking for a saboteur magician and a dangerous escaped prisoner. An elf. Did you come from the south or west? See anything?"
Harry shook his head. "From south. Not a soul out there but me."
"There's a bounty for her return," the captain said enticingly. "Enough to make a man rich for the rest of his life."
Harry shrugged. "I didn't see a thing."
The captain gave him a long, scrutinizing look. Equipment jangled atop his restless horse. Harry wrinkled his nose from the smell of five unwashed men and their horses surrounding him.
"Search him," the captain said abruptly.
Three men dropped from their horses. Only the captain and the dog handler remained on either side of him. Harry let his irritation show as the men were rough and careless with their search. They took his bow from his back and took the quiver, too, dumping the arrows across the grass. Harry looked up at the captain with annoyance. There was no malice in his gaze, just scrutiny.
They took the hunting knife from his waist and turned out his pockets. There was no wand in them, despite how naked he felt without it. Another one grabbed his pack to rifle through. "No provisions?" one asked, holding up the bag. "You're about to starve."
"I always find something to eat." Harry nodded to the man holding the bow.
The one who went through his pocket came up with the transfigured horses. Harry realized with some consternation that they were made of plastic. He had not thought about what material to make them from, but plastic certainly was something they wouldn't recognize.
"What're these?" he insisted. He passed them up to the captain. "What were the descriptions of the horses we were keeping an eye out for?"
"Dappled grey and chestnut," the captain said, narrowing his eyes. He looked down at Harry, then back at the toys, touching the strange material and bending the limbs. "What are these? Not wood or ceramic or metal.
"Plastic."
The captain rubbed its grooved mane with a thumb. He clearly didn't know what plastic was (obviously) but seemed unwilling to admit the gap in his knowledge. "Odd thing for a woodsman to carry."
"Sentimental," Harry said tightly. "My sister gave them to me. She lived in Yazuac."
The captain's demeanor flipped. "Oh. I'm sorry to hear that." He handed down the pair of horses. "Would you say you're a fair woodsman?"
Harry pocketed the horses and shrugged. "I survive."
The captain hummed thoughtfully. "The Empire could always use good men. You'd be a ranger, I'd wager. You could help us get back at the kinds of people who do what happened at Yazuac."
Harry was careful to put a bit of conflict in his body language. "Maybe one day. If I joined up now, it'd be for the wrong reasons. I'd rather join in service to others than indulgence in personal vengeance."
He could tell he'd perked the captain's suspicion again. "You're wise for a wild man. And well spoken."
Harry summoned up his more positive feelings for Dumbledore and let the melancholic emotions tinge his expression. "I had a great mentor. I can keep an eye out for this escaped prisoner and saboteur if you like."
The captain almost didn't recognize the change in subject as Harry steered the confrontation to a conclusion. He nodded. "I wouldn't try to recapture them, just an honest piece of advice. They killed sixteen men and fought off a Shade to escape. If you see them, run the other way and bring us the news. Trying to claim that bounty is a fool's errand."
Harry indicated that he would do so. Heart beating faster, Harry offered his hand to the captain. "When I want to enlist, who do I ask for?" he said. "Yours seems like a decent squad to join."
The captain shook his hand. Harry worked a silent, wandless charm. The man slapped his forearm. "Damn mosquitoes," he scowled. "Lord Hudson is the quartermaster for Gil'ead's divisions. If you're serious about joining me, ask for Captain Tabard."
"Like the garment?" the corner of Harry's lips twitched.
Tabard grinned. "Not a name you're like to forget. What's yours?"
"Harken," Harry told him.
"Are you a good listener?" Tabard joked. Harry shook his head ruefully.
"My mother had no idea the kind of man I'd grow up to be."
Captain Tabard rallied the rest of his men to get up. One of the men in particular seemed reluctant to surrender the hunting knife back to Harry, but a stern glance from Captain Tabard saw him handing it back over. Harry suspected if he'd had anything of real value on him, some of it would almost certainly be missing. As it was, he had to stoop down and fish through the grass to collect all the arrows to his quiver.
"Onward!" Captain Tabard shouted, and rode onwards. Harry stood in place and watched them recede until they were far off in the distance. He scooped up the rest of his things.
"That went well, I think," Harry said aloud.
"You're an accomplished liar," Arya's voice came from thin air. "You sold your ruse well." She tossed him his backpack. Harry vanished the conjured one along with its conjured contents and fished through his real one for an empty vial to deposit the thing he'd palmed from the guard. A single hair. He went back into the bag and drew out a bottle of murky fluid.
"Being another person gets easier with practice."
Arya handed over his wand. Harry relaxed the moment he felt the knobbled wood touch his palm. The Elder Wand brought that cold strength to just beneath his skin.
"I'm bloody well happy that the Varden's not trying to start a real war," Harry said in relief, "Because I don't know if I could kill somebody like that, just for doing his job."
Arya said nothing.
"I've heard so much about how evil the King is, how neglectful and careless he is with his Empire, but then I meet people like that and it reminds me; everybody chooses who they're going to be, even if they're cornered by circumstance." Harry found himself echoing the sentiment Dumbledore often preached. The guard at the gate in Teirm came to mind. No matter how easy it was to be evil, people still chose to be good for the pure sake of it.
The silence stretched on from Arya for a minute. The rippling grass and gentle breeze brushing past his ears stood out to him as he waited for a reply.
"You are very compassionate," Arya said carefully. "And kind. Admirable, remarkable, but dangerous. The world will not reciprocate your good nature." There was a hint of bitterness in her tone. Harry's mood abruptly soured as he was reminded that there were also creatures out there like Durza. The trick was getting at those ones instead of the ones who were just doing their jobs.
Once they were through the ring of search parties, the land abruptly turned to farms. Hardly a flat patch of ground was not covered in rows of crops or grazing land. Even the tough and rocky bits of soil had some meager, scraggly stalks growing, as if some optimistic farmer had planted them just in case.
Harry scanned the grazing land. It was mostly cows, chickens, and some pigs. "We need goats," he said. He put his wand flat on his palm. "Point me, goats."
They followed the Elder Wand in a wide circle around the city, trotting on a pair of unsaddled and unremarkable horses among the farms and beasts of burden. Towards the western side, the dirt turned from predominantly farmland to grazeland. Rocks and gravel, windswept patches of bald earth, and groupings of weeds dotted the landscape, partitioned by many weak fences that seemed more for the purpose of demarcating land for humans than keeping animals in place.
A particularly tough patch of terrain hosted two farms that had what they were looking for. Goats, grazing and exploring, munching on whatever green growing things they could get their teeth on.
Harry looked for a campsite. He turned the horses back to toys and pocketed them, leading Arya to a promising little hill. It was on the border between properties. One side had a grassy slope that rippled in the gentle breeze, the other was a craggy surface where a giant chunk of stone had breached out through the soil.
Glancing over his shoulder at the farmsteads, Harry crouched on the craggy side and cast Hermione's wards around the hill. He set about making a temporary home for two.
"Defodio," he muttered, placing his wand against the rocks. The craggy side split and deformed under the gouging charm, forming a tunnel. Harry kept the passage narrow through the rocks, then widened the tunnel inside as he hollowed out a dugout beneath the hill.
Inside, Harry added conjured planks for the ceiling and floor, and arches to support the hilltop above. The hill was not tall enough by itself to stand up straight beneath, so he excavated the floor until the headroom was comfortable. At the far side of the dugout, Harry cleared out another alcove to pitch the tent in.
Arya threw off the Cloak, casting a critical eye over Harry's efforts. Lamely, Harry threw up a hearth and lantern. He tossed the tent packet and snapped his fingers. It popped up in the corner. He lit the hearth and lantern and cast air freshening charms to add oxygen and purge the smoke. He tidied up the place, tweaking the rooms, cleaning up corners and putting in furnishings, turning the whole place into a veritable hobbit hole.
"Well?"
Arya took a moment to chew on her thoughts.
"You must take home with you wherever you are."
"Come here," Harry begged, staring down the obstinate goat. "Look, food. Come on. I'm just going to steal a couple bits from your body."
The goat stared.
Harry stared back.
"Bla-a-a-a."
Harry threw up his hands. "Fine. Caprifors."
The goat froze mid-bleat as he was transfigured into a plastic toy goat. Harry flicked his wand and conjured a replacement. Exactly the same, minus the magical 'legitimacy' bezoars needed. Harry glanced back at Arya. The elf was following him around wearing the Cloak with the hood down, visible as a floating head. She looked bemused. Even though he was disillusioned, Arya had no trouble tracking him once she'd first spotted him.
The moon was a waxing crescent, enough light to see by but not enough to be spotted in. Arya's eyesight had to be unreal to keep track of him like that. Her head was under no concealment and Harry could barely track her.
Harry lured and replaced one more goat before slinking away to the other farm. Arya put up the hood and vanished while Harry snagged a pair from the other farm. Oddly enough, he never lost track of where the Cloak was. Like a sixth sense in the back of his mind, Harry knew the Cloak was in the farmhouse by the barn.
A moment later, Arya returned.
"Success?" Harry whispered.
Arya deposited a heavy goat feed bag from within the Cloak with a muffled thud. With a flick and a thought, an identical duplicate of the sack blinked into existence. Arya ran the conjured bag back to rehide in the farmhouse.
He slunk back to the craggy side of the hill. Turning sideways, he slunk through the fissure covered by illusory stone. Down the tunnel to the left was the tent. To the right, a primitive operating room. Harry set the first toy goat on the table and spread open the medkit. Arya reappeared at the mouth of the tunnel. She hung the Cloak up on a hook by the door.
"They call this surgery?" Arya eyed the lights, table, and curtain. She glanced at the tray of knives and wrenches. Harry shifted uncomfortably, aware that she had probably been hurt by very similar implements.
He scourgified his hands, then his wand, then his hands again. He conjured gloves and pulled them over his hands. Harry untransfigured the toy goat and deftly stunned it before it thrashed itself off, before it finished the bleat he had caught it in the middle of. He hit the animal with another scouring charm and blasted it with warm water before employing the depilatory charm to strip the goat's belly hair off, leaving clean, rosy pink skin exposed to the hopefully clean(ish) air.
Harry cut the goat open. Arya watched impassively as he checked each of its four stomach compartments for bezoars. He found three. They went into a tray while he sealed the goat back up with Snape's healing charm.
"The muggles do." Harry heard his voice echo oddly in the confines of his bubblehead charm. "I'm sure the wizards have a spell to do this instantly without so much as touching the goat. But I don't know it. Most mediwitches and wizards think cutting into people is barbaric."
He remembered the aghast expressions of the St. Mungo's doctors at the mere notion of stitches. Apparently, the only notion they had about surgery was that it was some kind of barbaric muggle insanity. Harry swapped out the first goat with the second, setting the retransfigured toy off to the side.
"I'd like to think that my people would not disdain the only option of those without magic," Arya said. But I have not been away long enough to be so deluded. We use magic as well."
Harry sealed up the belly of the second goat, dropping the bezoars into the tray with a series of soft clinks. "Are they snooty or racist?"
Arya laughed, a clear and joyous note he hadn't expected from her generally shut down demeanor. "Both," she admitted. "It is hard not to be racist with such a preponderance of evidence. We are proud of ourselves, and we measure success with metrics that favor us and the way we live." Arya frowned. "Those assessments are not always fair."
Harry nodded. "The wizarding world did the same. They ignore the many incredible ways muggles actually beat them, or twist their interpretations to make achievements seem like weaknesses."
Arya's interest was piqued. "What have your 'muggles' done greater than magic users?"
Harry swept the Elder Wand across the wooden ceiling of the dugout. It melted away as the illusion took its place, blackish purple dotted with motes of light covering it. Arya breathed out softly in awe, beholding the night sky even from underground. He pointed at the crescent moon. "Without a single spell, muggles managed to fly to the moon and walk on its surface. They left footprints that will last forever. Wizards have never done something half as impressive."
"Repeat that in the Ancient Language," Arya demanded. Harry obliged her.
She still hardly believed him when he finished, her eyes wide with wonderment. "How?"
"Billions of dollars, two powerful empires competing over this as a vanity project, and tens of thousands of the most brilliant minds on Earth working on a single goal." Harry smiled fondly. With all the wars and sickness, crime and poverty and abuse, knowing that such a thing had happened, that it was possible, and that humanity had done it, it never failed to put a silly grin on his face.
"That is an achievement many of my people could do to hear of." Arya watched him heal and retransfigure the last goat. "Do you know the story of how it happened?"
Harry hesitated. Some details about his origins were impossible to conceal by telling her, but then, being from a different planet wasn't an immediately dangerous secret, and it was extremely unlikely that anybody who heard of it would think it was anything but an outrageous lie. Arya wasn't exactly in a position to betray his secrets, either.
"It all started at the end of World War II. Much of Europe had been destroyed by the fighting, and the Americans had recently finished up defeating the Japanese in the Far East, fighting in the enemy's territory. When the dust settled, two superpowers remained mostly intact, stuck in an incredibly tense standoff. They were the USSR and the USA…"
"...I know there were others, but those two are the ones everybody remembers." Harry's throat was sore. He sipped from his canteen, laid on his back on the bunk across from Arya's. "Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin. The first humans – the first anything to set foot on the Moon. So long as the muggles have that, anything magic can do seems to pale. I think even if magic managed to put somebody on Mars, or even some other planet around another star or even galaxy, everybody would know and respect the fact that Neil and Buzz did it first, and they did it without magic."
Arya was quiet for a long time. Harry heard the slow rise and fall of her breathing, and the quiet murmur of the hearth out in the living room through the door. He'd begun to think she was sleeping when she spoke.
"My people often hold the belief that a task done with magic is worth less than one wrought by hand. In this case, you needn't worry an achievement like that would be given less consideration. I would never have believed you without the Ancient Language, and even now I cannot discount the possibility that you are simply delusional." She crossed her arms over her chest, clasping her own shoulders.
"Many things stand out to me, but this in particular; I know none of these places. These nations, the wars, even the weapons. Is Alagaesia on Earth?"
Harry shook his head, rubbing his hair against the pillow, before realizing that Arya couldn't see the motion. "No," he said finally. "It's not."
"Then did you get here with a rocket, or by magic?" Arya asked. Harry was taken aback by the acuity of the question. She'd put it all together instantly.
"Magic, I think," Harry said. "Definitely not a rocket. But maybe something other than magic, too."
"Can you get back?" Arya followed up.
Harry let out a long, gusty sigh. "Yeah," he said finally. "Probably. But I don't think I will for a long time."
"Your world is so much worse?" Arya picked up one of the bezoars and held it up to the lantern hanging from the roof, examining it with clinical intrigue.
Harry conjured a chair and sat. "No. I think it's generally better. Just…I dunno. A lot happened. I don't actually know how to get back easily. But I haven't been motivated to try."
Arya nodded along with him. "I understand. I left Du Weldenvarden years ago to be an ambassador for my people." She twisted her shoulder and pulled back the stretchy neck of her shirt to show the top of the tattoo. "It is the Yawe, a symbol to represent my choice to put the needs of my people before my own. Mine was not a happy departure. I do not visit as often as I could."
Harry touched the scar on his forehead. Arya caught sight of the motion. "Something similar?"
Harry shook his head. Then he reconsidered. "Not usually. I didn't choose to have it, but it definitely became the symbol of a certain expectation from people."
Arya hummed. "Well. We got your bezoars. Do your people just swallow them whole?"
Harry resisted a grin. "Works well enough." It had almost certainly saved Ron's life. Arya eyed him with suspicion, then glanced back down at the disgusting pellet of undigested plant matter. Shrugging, she swallowed it and shuddered. Nothing immediately obvious happened, not like when Ron had literally been choking and foaming at the mouth and abruptly stopped, but Arya did seem to breathe a bit easier. "Well?"
"Time will tell," she said, impassive again. "What plans do you have now?"
Harry remembered his frustration at being poorly prepared earlier. "I was thinking of going shopping."
Arya asked him to sleep in his own room rather than hers. Harry obliged. He expected to dream. Now that he knew it was Galbatorix he had been watching the whole time, he wanted to know more. He wanted to see the Fall, to know how it had all happened, what Galbatorix did to win, and how the Rider Order managed to fail. He wanted to see where Galbatorix went and what he did after his lowest point.
Instead, he got normal dreams. He dreamed he was chasing after a bunch of goats with pockets full of bezoars around the Great Plains, dodging the Empire's men and their job offers. When he woke the next morning, he was no wiser as to Galbatorix's motives for tearing down the Rider Order than last night.
Some answers, it seemed, he would not be handed so freely.
"Are you feeling better?" Harry asked while he made breakfast. Morale in the tent was still low. No papers and no news meant neither of them had any information on the whereabouts of Durza or the progression of the search. At least Arya didn't expect it. For Harry, having so little idea of what was happening was frustrating. Arya shrugged. "Do you want to come shopping with me today?" She shrugged again.
"Must we take the risk?"
Harry considered. Teirm had been fairly safe. He wouldn't have used magic in public, but they'd managed to avoid detection even after the scrying incident. It sounded ludicrous; going shopping while there was a manhunt out for them. But Harry needed stuff. He needed bags to expand to hold Jeod's books, boxes and drawers to expand for another pantry of stasis meals, hopefully he could find horseshoes to enchant, as well as clothes to enchant for Arya. It was either learn to make it himself (while lacking the facilities to do so) or buy it with unlimited gold.
And the more he thought about it, the more confident Harry was that it would be safe. Durza hadn't seen him or smelled him. Arya could go under the Cloak. She'd killed all the witnesses who'd heard his voice, all except Durza, who should be halfway to the Hadarac by now searching for a trail. And Durza had only heard him say two words. Gil'ead had no reason to expect they would go back there. Nobody would expect him, and nobody would recognize him either.
It would be just like he'd done around the Forest of Dean. Pop into a muggle supermarket, buy/steal whatever they needed, leave the cash at the register. Only this time, his face wouldn't be plastered across every newspaper in the country. He could just walk in and ask.
They ate quickly. Harry donned his peasant disguise and snuck out from behind the hill. Arya grabbed the Cloak and put it on on the way out, following silently behind him. Harry handed her the Elder Wand. He still felt horribly vulnerable without a wand, but at least he wasn't helpless, courtesy of Brom's lessons and insistence he learn how to use wandless magic. The Elder Wand probably wasn't the sort of wand he could accidentally break, but knowing he wasn't utterly crippled without it brought some peace of mind. And he didn't want to explain to some overzealous guard searching him why he had an ornate stick in his pocket.
Harry brought a bag with a couple gold coins and a generous handful of silver and bronze he'd gotten in change in Teirm, when he was pretending to be a rich person and paying in gold wasn't so noteworthy. He set off towards the south gate.
The guards at the gate were not exactly on high alert. Evidently it never occurred to any of them that the escaped prisoner would be trying to enter the city. Carts and people clustered around the handful of guards while they worked their way through the queue, interviewing people for the usual stuff: purpose for visiting, city/town of origin, names, occupations, and so on. They inspected carts of goods and issued warnings and so on. Harry ended up in the queue for twenty minutes as the line crawled ahead.
When it was finally his turn, Harry nodded to the guard interviewing him. "Name?"
"Harken."
"You come from…?"
Harry gestured behind him in the general direction of the Great Plains. "I wander. I grew up in Yazuac, but now I live off the land."
"Why do you want to get into GIl'ead?" the guard gave him an appraising look. "I expect woodsmen have no use for cities."
Harry touched his pouch. "The Urgals got my family, but they managed to leave me their savings. Hidden in their house beneath the floorboards. The last I have of them, I figure I'd buy myself a steel knife or proper bow to remember 'em by."
The guard narrowed his eyes. "It doesn't sound like you paid inheritance tax." He grinned, showing off an incomplete set of teeth. He stepped forward and cut the pouch loose from Harry's belt and opened the neck, scooping out a handful and letting it trickle back in. The glimmer of gold made his grin wider.
"I'll make sure this gets to the Empire," the guard said, pocketing a fistful of gold. "King Galbatorix appreciates your contribution."
The coins did not mean much to Harry personally, he was simply caught flat-footed by the audacity of the guard doing that in front of his colleagues and all the other people waiting to enter Gil'ead behind him.
"Move along," the guard chuckled, when Harry opened and closed his mouth at the sheer gall. "Or you'll pay some more taxes for wasting my time."
Wordlessly, he passed under the gate and into Gil'ead.
At first glance, it was very different from Teirm. Teirm was a trade hub where wealth collected and rich people made their fortunes. Even the poorer people there were fairly well off, sharing in the prosperity of the busy port. Harry hadn't even had to ask for a job to be offered one. Shipping was Teirm's bread and butter.
Gil'ead's business was war.
Everywhere he looked, soldiers walked purposefully in the broad, cobbled streets. Butcheries and bakeries formed a veritable block of buildings near the west gate. Fletchers and yeomen sat under the awnings of long, low open buildings, turning out bows and arrows. As he passed, a couple of men carried a huge crate full of arrows between them. They both wore the Empire's red and black with gold.
It was almost enough to make Harry second guess his decision to shop. He could not think of many worse places to be caught than here.
Harry approached a bowyer sitting on a stump and sanding the contours of a nice, plain-looking bow. He wasn't interested in archery personally, but Eragon had a bow. Archery seemed to fit better in the ranged niche than swordplay as far as replacing his magic when he could not afford to use it, and Harry was willing to experiment and see if he could substitute magic for skill with some kind of enchantment on the bow. If not, he could fob it off on Eragon.
"Is it for sale?" he asked.
The bowyer stopped and looked up with furrowed, bushy white brows. His face was creased and weathered, and his hands were heavily calloused and tanned.
"This?" he held up the bow. Harry nodded.
"This isn't a business, boy," the bowyer said. "I don't buy supplies and sell bows, the Empire gives me supplies and I make them bows."
"Is that a no?" Harry asked.
The bowyer sighed. "How much are you offering?"
Harry paused. "How much do people usually pay for bows?"
He scowled. "How should I know? People don't buy my bows. I'm just hired by the Empire to make 'em."
"Would you say you're pretty good at your job?"
He chuckled and tugged his snow white beard. Curled wood shavings were caught in the wiry hair. "I've been doing this longer than you've been alive. What do you think?"
Harry picked a crown out of his pouch. The bowyer's eyes were caught. "I'm not rich, but that's not going to make my year like it would for a farmer."
He added a second golden crown. The bowyer sighed. "You know, I really shouldn't. The Empire is very lax in a lot of places, but its military isn't one of them."
Harry feigned discomfort and added one last crown. "I'm not rich either, and I don't expect to be able to replace this gold. Is this bow going to last?"
The bowyer finished up the bow and stamped it with a red-hot iron, a little '#27' that blackened a tiny groove in the wood by one of the tips. He added brass caps to the ends of the limbs and picked a strand of something out of a pot next to him. "If you take care of it," he said. "Keep the wood oiled and leave it wrapped when you aren't using it. Don't leave it strung, either, or you'll wear out the zippiness of the limbs. As long as you do that and don't sit on it, it'll last 'till you're as old as me."
The strand went bound to a little hook and groove on the upper tip. With a practiced motion, the bowyer hooked the other end of the bow beneath his boot and deftly strung it, testing the elasticity with a few tugs. "Don't let the string out without an arrow behind it either," he lectured. He took two of the three crowns from Harry's palm. "And when you're my age and it does break, use the last crown to buy another from a younger bowyer. That one'll last until you're too old to use it right."
He handed over a tube for the bow. "You'll want forty finger arrows and a thirty-six finger quiver."
Harry put the last crown back in his pouch and shook the bowyer's hand. His palm was tough and scratchy. "Thanks. I'm Harken."
"Mordrin," the bowyer said. "Don't wave that in front of a soldier's face. They'll have questions for both of us."
Harry promised that he wouldn't and headed on. Arrows were easy enough to pick up. He already had a quiver to stuff them in as part of his disguise. The shafts were way too long for the bow he had, but he could fix that back in the dugout.
"Still there?" Harry whispered out of the corner of his mouth. He needn't have bothered; that sixth sense was still there in the back of his mind, telling him that the Cloak was just a couple steps behind him.
"Yes," came the whispered reply.
Harry wandered further into Gil'ead. The tall buildings were in the middle, same as Teirm. Castle and keep in the very center, but there the similarities ended. The rich people district was in the middle and a bit towards the lake side of the city. The whole walled part of Gil'ead was set around two parallel roads on the east and west, with a thoroughfare connecting them in a grid, a bit like an 'H.'
Most of the west side of the 'H' was military stuff. Harry crossed into the barracks section. It was just men, everywhere. Plenty of them in undershirts, plenty more wearing armor or doing drills1 in muddy yards at the shouted instructions by captains and sergeants. Past the crossroads, the sound of hammering on steel was a constant ringing in the air as smithies churned out arrowheads, knives, swords, spearheads, armor, and the more boring stuff like bolts and nails apparently required to keep an army running.
Horst's smithy hadn't been what he'd expected, but neither was this. It was basically a factory without the machinery. Sectioned into blocks of forges, all the systems that might've been run with muggle technology were done with sheer organized manpower. People ran back and forth carrying charcoal, ore, finished products, tools, barrels of water, everything.
Harry did his best to peer at the crates of stuff coming and going. Eventually he caught sight of what he was looking for and changed course.
"D'you reckon I could buy a couple sets off you?"
The smith working at the anvil looked bewildered. He wasn't much older than twenty and very much seemed like a novice. "I could ask the cap'n-"
Harry shook his head and flashed a crown at the guy. The smith turned furtive, eyes wide. "Truly?"
"Eight horseshoes," Harry said. "Two full sets."
Shrugging, the smith handed over the requested items, grabbing a stack of them off a pole. He tucked the crown under his apron and checked to see that nobody had spotted it. Harry dumped the lot of them in his pack.
Harry didn't like the way the horseshoes clinked in his bag when he walked, but he didn't dare silence them with magic. If they were discovered, Harry would have no choice but to grab Arya and apparate away, perhaps the most blatant way possible to reveal that ability to the Empire.
He headed down the crossbar of the 'H,' which took him right in front of the central keep. Behind it, the manors and their walled gardens were cordoned off from the rest of Gil'ead. Harry found it distasteful.
A line of men jogged past in sweaty undershirts, led by a spry sergeant barking at anybody who lagged behind.
"Shift your sorry carcasses!" he shouted. "I'm ten years older than the lot of ya and twice as fast. Last one cleans out latrines until next tomorrow's loser takes your place!"
Harry slunk past. A different guard stopped him. "You there," he called. Harry froze. "What business have you got with the east side?"
"Checking out the markets," Harry said honestly.
The guard frowned. "Rangers aren't given leave on weekdays. Who's your CO?"
"I'm not enlisted," Harry said with mounting frustration.
"Nice try," the guard said. "If you want to sell that cock-and-bull shit to somebody, don't carry your fucking bow around."
"I bought it-" Harry tried.
"The Empire's issued weapons aren't for sale." The guard approached him. "You know the penalty for truancy. Name and CO, now."
Harry tried to come up with something, but the guard saw his hesitation and turned to call for his colleagues. Cornered, Harry risked a bit of wandless magic.
Confundus! He thought furiously, staring daggers at the man. The guard lost his train of thought. He turned back a bit lost, frowning at Harry, who was still looking at him expectantly.
"What do you want?" he asked.
"Nothing," Harry said quickly. "Just passing through."
"Oh. Well, carry on then."
He left the guard in the middle of the thoroughfare looking a bit lost. He took a moment to resume his post, by which point Harry was nearly to the other side. As he was about to round the corner, he spotted a robed woman trotting out to speak with the guard.
He felt a chill run down his back. They'd noticed the confundus. The woman glanced around, but she couldn't find him in the throng. Harry took a turn and headed towards the lakeside.
"That was sloppy," Arya whispered in his ear, once they were far enough to be in no danger.
"D'you have a better plan?" Harry snapped. "Go with him, maybe?"
She was silent for a moment. "No, but stick to the crowds. Durza heard your voice. We need to leave soon."
"He heard two words," Harry corrected in a whisper. "And neither of them are likely to come up in conversation."
He shut his mouth. A woman across the street was giving him odd looks for apparently speaking to himself. Harry broke eye contact and put his head down. He hurried along down the road.
The east side of Gil'ead seemed to be the civilian quarters. The stalls sold produce and mundane products like knives, rakes, plows, blankets, shoes, clothes, and so on. Harry was able to buy things much easier, though every person bartered like their lives depended on it, and Harry was extremely careful never to show more than one or two silvers at a time.
His bag filled with what amounted to basically junk, but important junk nonetheless. He didn't know exactly what he'd need or what he'd use everything he bought for, but it was a fair bet that he'd need stuff eventually. He tried to be quick and purposeful, he let himself get fleeced repeatedly just to hurry things along. Even with that, Harry could sense Arya was getting annoyed and he was overstaying his welcome.
He began to head back to the west gate.
On the way, his attention was drawn. Arya followed next to him as he let his curiosity draw him in. Her annoyance mounted.
Harry stopped at the signs of a scuffle happening near the corner of the thoroughfare. People were gathered around a raised platform. Harry cursed the fact that he couldn't wear glasses without arousing suspicion. The platform was just a bunch of vague shapes and colors from so far away.
Harry slipped into the crowd and pushed forwards heedless of Arya's ability to invisibly navigate the press of people. He felt her give up and circle around to the front. Harry winced.
It was only when he got closer that Harry could make out the grim details on top of the platform. A still body swayed from her neck, her hands still bound behind her back in death. But the scuffle was something else. A man forcing a boy's arm onto a stump. The boy was struggling and sobbing. Harry was jostled by surrounding bodies, onlookers eager to get to the front for a better view. The crowd was very nearly silent, even as it pressed on him from all directions.
"Sir, I didn' mean it, I swear I'll give it back, you can come and watch-" the boy babbled. The guard drew a cleaver from his belt and impassively, as if butchering a farm animal, brought it swinging down on his wrist.
Harry flinched at the gruesome noise. An agonized, guttural scream rang over the square.
"Bring up the next one," the man called to the side. Harry pushed his way to the front. He felt Arya approach next to him. The guard tossed the severed hand into a wicker basket. The boy staggered to his feet clutching his stump of a wrist.
The next boy had mousy brown hair and dirty skin and rough clothes. His face was white as a sheet, staring at his one-handed friend aghast. The guard shoved him over the stump.
"What are they punishing them for?" he whispered, horrified.
"Thievery," a man next to him said gruffly.
Harry focused on the boy's features. He was gaunt and thin, nearly starved. He'd bet just about anything the kid had tried to steal food for himself. "So what?" Harry hissed back angrily. "A kid wants to feed himself, nicks a bloody potato or something, and they're just going to cripple him for the rest of his life?"
"Shouldn'ta stolen," the man said, as if this was the most obvious conclusion Harry ought to have come to.
The guard on the platform raised his cleaver again. Harry's feet moved of their own accord, stepping forwards when an invisible hand stopped him.
He felt Arya get half an inch from his ear and whisper nearly inaudibly. "Don't."
Harry screwed his eyes shut and turned away from the scream.
"What's a'matter?" the man next to him asked. "Never seen justice doled out before?"
"Justice," Harry spat. "Chopping off kids' hands-"
"Thieves' hands," he corrected a bit smugly.
Harry shook his head in disgust and left. He couldn't watch. He pushed back through the crowd and looked towards the thoroughfare, determined not to listen as he weaved between adults standing around the outer edge of the crowd, paying only a bit of attention. It wasn't as if Azkaban was so much kinder – maybe it was worse – but that was so senseless. So obviously wrong. "We need to leave," Arya whispered in his ears. "You're drawing attention."
The third scream never came. Despite himself, Harry found himself edging closer to hear what the guard was saying. It came in fits and snatches over the heads of the onlookers.
"-can shoot a bow?"
"Yes sir. Very well, sir."
"Know…rough living?"
"I can learn, sir."
"Darrick, take him to the Rangers' barracks. Welcome to the military, kid. I'd ask somebody what the price of desertion is before I got any ideas about running away."
A pause. "I will, sir."
The guard looked around. "Any left?"
There was a moment of silence, then one last boy was pushed up the stairs to the platform. "Please sir, I can shoot a bow too. Send me to the Rangers," he begged.
"I don't believe you," the guard said coldly, wrestling the boy's arm onto the stump. Harry walked stiffly and quickly down the thoroughfare, but he was not quick enough to escape hearing the scream ring out a moment later.
He got no more than halfway across the road when it grew congested as everybody stopped to gawk at something. A hush fell over the crowd and people squeezed to either side of the road, compacting all the onlookers against the buildings, into alleys, and squished up against each other. He was caught in the masses and swept up in the tide. Harry sensed Arya had managed to avoid the throng, and had backed up to the mouth of the other side.
A sense of apprehension grew tense over the thousands of people. Harry heard a single set of hoofbeats riding up the thoroughfare. He craned his neck to see over a blonde woman carrying her baby in her arms.
Harry felt his heart beat faster when he saw who it was. Durza came riding in on his bleached white horse. It really was a dramatic scene; horseback riders sat above the heads of all the people on foot. There wasn't really an equivalent for Harry to compare to in his past experience. Cars were the nearest thing on Earth, but even they weren't as tall as a rider on horseback. Maybe one of those obnoxious lifted SUV's, but in his mind he separated out cars from people as different entities.
Durza's entire torso was above the head level of the crowd. He looked dirty and disgruntled and furious. His bone white steed bore him up to the main gate of the keep when the robed woman from earlier approached him. That set his nerves on edge. Arya would be safe under the Cloak. Did he dare apparate? The Shade would be searching, did Harry trust Durza wouldn't have enough to go on to recognize him?
Durza pulled his horse up short and glared down at her without a word. She murmured something to him too faint to hear.
"You seem to be under the misapprehension that because I can use magic, magicians in this city are somehow my responsibility. They are your responsibility, and if you cannot be responsible for them, you will be replaced." Durza's voice was impassive.
The woman mumbled something else, half defiantly. Durza gave a rich and scornful laugh.
"Ask the Forsworn how irreplaceable they were. What is your name again?"
She whispered a final parting message. Durza perked up. "Oh?" the Shade cocked his head as if listening to something. A moment later, Harry felt somebody brush up against his mind.
Instinctually, he flinched back. Fifty feet away, Durza's head snapped towards him with a feral grin. He cantered directly towards him.
Harry felt a stab of fear. He tried to back up into the alley behind, but the crowd had frozen in place and made it impossible for him to muscle through. He fixed the dugout in his mind and focused. It was much harder without a wand. Durza's crimson eyes locked onto him. The crowd parted between them with quiet shuffling steps, allowing the Shade to approach.
"You, boy. Why do you fear me?"
Harry knew the only possible way Durza could identify him. He kept frozen and feigned terror. It was not difficult to sell the emotion. The Shade smiled to himself, showing off rows of teeth sharpened to points.
"Foolish question. I want to hear your voice. Say-" he paused as if in thought. "Expecto patronum."
Harry knew the jig was up. He twisted on his heel, ready to slip into the void–
He bounced. Anti-disapparition wards.
Durza grinned with sharpened teeth.
"Slytha," Harry heard. He saw nothing. There was no bolt of light to dodge, no effect to grit his teeth and overcome, he was simply forced to sleep by an instant and overpowering flash of weariness.
AN: Edited on some very valid feedback I appreciated. I had my own reasons for why Harry went into Gil'ead and why he thought it would be safe, but I didn't have him narrate them and assumed you would all deduce them instead. And Harry should know better than to dawdle, since he's done this before on the Horcrux Hunt.