Harl

Harl nearly follows a beloved voice into death and learns that bravery can include being pulled back.

Appearance

Harl is fourteen winters old and already taller than most southern soldiers.

In The Highlander

Harl is the youngest member of Eira's Red Stair patrol and its banner-bearer. When Varkhul spoke in the voice of his lost brother he nearly stepped towards it, but he also caught Frey at the cliff edge, and Eira insisted that both were true. The pass court sentenced him to carry water.

He is the book's clearest picture of a young person recruited by meaning. Branok Stoneheart noticed him before anyone important did and made him feel taller, and Harl absorbed Branok's language of burdens. He was put into a rigged shardback rite and saved by Eira, joined a mock containment oath sworn to a kitchen knife, was bitten by a snow eel and freed by Dagna and Kelda, and learned splints from Brynna. He and Kelda went from feuding to friendship. Eira drilled him in the yard until his anger became attention.

Under Branok's command he copied route dispatches with pride, and Eira told him to copy orders exactly rather than improve them in his head. He stood among Branok's road recruits at Eira's oath, but sought her out the night before to ask whether refusing Branok meant refusing them. He knelt for Dagna after the duel, brought cloth to the injured singers after recognising one of their attackers, and asked to go south with Eira. She refused, telling him to guard the banner closer to the ground. The book leaves him at Wolfmere, torn but thinking.

After the books

Survives the crisis and carries a smaller, more survivable measure of shame and courage. He and Kelda turn a ridiculous snow-eel rescue into a memory that does not have to become trauma.