fortress of dragons.html (58 page)

"Auld Syes brought you. She may bring others. Until there is a King, I
can
say what is and what's to be, and I set you in charge of all the Elwynim that come to my banner."

"I am no experienced man—"

"I say what is."

"
Yes
, my lord." So Aeself said, and Tristen turned to a clearing filled with men and horses, and more men and horses within the trees.

Their company had become an army, between dark and dawn.

"We go on!" Tristen said. "Everyone to your horses! Cefwyn needs us!" And turning from Aeself, he encountered Crissand, and pressed Crissand's arm, for he saw confusion on Crissand's face: the dawn showed it to him, a silent, but heartfelt distress.

"Auld Syes said it: aetheling. King of Amefel. —But Uwen I keep for myself."

"My heart you keep, my lord! Have no doubt of it!"

He clapped Crissand on the arm. In the next moment he heard Uwen shouting at the men:

"Arm an' out, arm an' out, you lads, and get them horses ready. We're off to give Tasmôrden 'is comeuppance."

It was a voice to give courage, a voice that had soothed his night fears and his darkest hours: give Tasmôrden his Comeuppance…

there was a Word that by no means Unfolded to him, and yet did, as an outcome wider and more true than justice a king might deal out…

it was justice for the Shadows that had joined them in the night, justice for Crissand's father and Cefwyn's messenger, for the old archivist and the soldiers dead at Emwy and on Lewen field… justice fortress of dragons.html

for very many wrongs: not a justice of death for death—rather the settling of balances back into true and the world back to peace.

Men moved, horses snorted and pulled at their tethers: the whole clearing seethed with an army setting itself rapidly in an order of march.

So Tasmôrden had moved, carrying the threat against Cefwyn, to deal hurt where their enemy could, to gain an advantage, a hostage, a distraction.

The five first Sihhë had retreated to the ice to avoid this very conflict as long as possible: had met it once in its ascendency and brought down Galasien. In its slow working, in retaliation, the enemy had seized Althalen… and lost it, destroyed Ynefel, and lost it.

Now it bided the second assault against its domain, beneath all the movement of armies and threat of iron: five Places in the land, where Shadows seethed, a Working of wizardous sort: five points of attack to confront five Sihhë-lords who afflicted it. Ynefel was last to fall to this onslaught: the old mews in the Zeide was the next to last, where now Emuin and Ninévrisë stood guard over Orien's restive spirit. The third was Althalen, where Uleman now warded the way; the fourth he had set Efanor to watch, to shut the very first door it might ever have used…

All these ways it had had once at its command, and one by one he had denied it use of them, if the wardens he had set in place could hold firm the Lines.

All but one was shut, that in Ilefínian's fortress, the way Crissand had discovered, when Tasmôrden had lost his banner.

And it Unfolded to him with the breaking of the dawn that their enemy might have arranged them to come to this conflict: but equally they were here because of what they were. There was no turning back now. The Sun King and the Lord of Shadows had come together to set the world and the gray space in balance as best they knew how, while their enemy meant to confound it entirely, and they had no choice. Whatever the grief it brought either of them, whatever the loss or the pain, they had come to do what neither wizardry nor magic yet had done, and not, this time, be held in check, one power with the other.

Halfway had not sufficed, and Mauryl had surely known it when he fortress of dragons.html

Shaped him out of fire and Shadow.

And he had known when he looked the first time at the aetheling, that he had found something essential to what he was. Mauryl's spell had finished its Summoning, and he was here, finally, where all along he had needed to be, wizardry and magic opposed to the Wind that had torn Ynefel's stones apart.

CHAPTER 4

The hills that had been only knowledge on a map became a forbidding rampart of stone and bristling evergreen distantly visible on the left hand, a rough land out of which small bands might come to spy or to harry the approach of an invader on the road that led to Ilefínian. Cefwyn had scouts out well ahead looking for just such a force, but they reported there was no sign of enemy presence.

It was troubling not to meet opposition: leaving unexploited the advantage that rocky ridge posed to its native lord was certainly not what Cefwyn would have done, were he defending Ilefínian, but then, Tasmôrden had failed all along to do those things that a prudent commander would have arranged—first of all not having a force at the bridge to have hindered their crossing, and archers in the woods to make their advance far slower than it had been for two days now.

And in that consideration Cefwyn heard the reports of the scouts and frowned, wishing his enemy would do predictable things that had to be fought: the man's brutal dealing with the villages was a terror to Elwynor. Pretenders to the throne and the Regency for a time had been thick as the leaves in this land. It was worth remarking that all the other pretenders were dead, including Aséyneddin, who had perished at Lewenbrook, and that this man was at last report among the living.

That argued that the man was not the easy mark he had seemed all winter, and it suggested that taking too many of Tasmôrden's gifts too recklessly might lead to the one gift an opponent should not have taken.

fortress of dragons.html

On the other hand, Tasmôrden might have a distraction from the other side of that ridge. Cefwyn hoped so. He imagined Tristen's army approaching from that quarter and making Tasmôrden's sleep entirely uneasy. Tasmôrden might have expected a Guelen army to move far slower and diverted resources to the western flank of that ridge to deal with Tristen and Cevulirn, who would come up from the south with the speed of light cavalry. That would trouble Tasmôrden's dreams, if there was wizardry in question. So it was possible, Cefwyn said to himself, that he was simply that lucky.

But he refused to rely on it. He kept looking for the traps. He traveled as quickly as he could, strewing baggage behind him in one camp after another, against every rule in the Guelen book of war, following the will-of-the-wisp of Sihhë tactics and accepting the tactics he had refused when he had had Tristen at hand to advise him. No, he had said repeatedly, and now he followed that advice headlong, constantly aware of Ryssand at his back and Idrys gods knew where… too far, for his comfort; but Ninévrisë was safe. Against all likelihood of success, he had persuaded her away to safety and left himself free to fight… if he could only find the enemy in front of him.

His reasoning and his thus far fruitless expectations of what Tasmôrden should do to prevent him of course supposed that Tasmôrden owned the land through which they marched, and that was not necessarily the case. Those previous pretenders had dislodged the honest peasantry, rent the country asunder in civil war, and left men outlawed, bandits both by trade and by necessity ranging the countryside at will, so Maudyn reported to him.

And if he were a bandit leader, instead of Tasmôrden, he would sit up in the hills in the rocks and watch all the armies come and go, siding with the winner whenever that came clear. At the very least a heavy-armed cavalry was no likely pickings, at least until there had been a battle.

Above all else he kept waiting for the blow to fall. He expected no deep thinking or strategy from hungry outlaws, but he did expect it from a man who styled himself High King and heir to the Sihhë kingdom. He counted it possible that Tasmôrden could raise no support in the east, where all along Ninévrisë had maintained she had the loyalty of people too frightened and too weak to fight Tasmôrden fortress of dragons.html

on their own. But he had seen no Elwynim, either, come out of the brush to rally to the banner he flew at the head of their advance, and by now he doubted he would see any until he had at least damaged Tasmôrden. In a practical sense, he doubted Tasmôrden had much fear of scattered peasants.

They came on a village, mere shells of houses, which the scouts reported vacant, and it was clear by what they saw that the people who had lived there had reason to stay low and quiet if they lived, perhaps hiding in those hills yonder… or gone across the river to Tristen. It was no recent ruin. Vines overgrew one charred doorway.

Weeds grew in the street.

"Gods know which pretender did this work," Lord Maudyn said.

"Shame on him, whoever it was," Cefwyn said, and added, with a chill in his blood and a thought of his own land: "
Here's
the sad end of a civil war: vacant streets and fallow fields. Who had the good of this work?"

"Not the sheep and the shepherds," Maudyn said.

A courier rode up beside them, presented courtesies, advised him Osanan was slowed by reason of a cart and a loose wheel.

Slowed by reason of Ryssand's courtship, Cefwyn suspected uncharitably, but he acknowledged the report.

The lords with him and those with Ryssand had all been uncommonly courteous one to the other when they met in council in the evenings.

They had pored over maps together in frosty amity and heard reports of the scouts. Ryssand's partisans asked why Tasmôrden had not confronted them, and then the pretense had slipped aside ever so little as he looked straight at Corswyndam Lord Ryssand, to see whether Ryssand himself seemed to know the answer to that question.

But he had not caught Ryssand looking as if he knew: he was forced in marginal charity to suppose the consultation between Ryssand and Tasmôrden was somewhat more distant.

He had pretended forgiveness once Ryssand had joined their line of march, Ryssand had pretended contrition, and so they got along, and spread out the maps by lanternlight and pretended to have reconciled, though he doubted Ryssand believed it, for he surprised dour looks from time to time when Ryssand was thinking, and when he himself fortress of dragons.html

presented the half of his plans to draw Tasmôrden out of his walls and meet him at a brookside near Ilefínian.

So he did plan, if Tasmôrden did not march out sooner and fall on their marching column before they cleared the end of the ridge, or if arrows did not begin to hail down on them from the heights, a natural archer's advantage. He had in fact dispatched a squad of the Prince's Guard to hold that position and warn him.

But the meaningful councils had been of himself and Lord Maudyn, with Gwywyn and Anwyll and the Guard officers, when he had sent out that squad to take the heights just before dawn yesterday.

Maudyn and Gwywyn were his most knowledgeable advisors, men who had spent their lives at such questions as supply and the lay of the land. They laid their plans in event of this and that ambush, on maps Ninévrisë had corrected, her own handwriting, her own blessing on the maps, as if she continued to advise him even though absent: her notes were on the backs of the stout parchment, and wedged between the representation of a forest and that of a brook.

But unlike Tristen's magical letter it could not speak to him with her voice and advise him what to do next.

It could not unfold the true sight of the ridge, for instance, to inform him how high and sheer the sides of it; or how deep the forest, or whether trees screened them from the rocks, trees that might stop arrows, or whether they would be exposed to fire if that squad failed its mission.

The map of this land was what he had to rely on, while he asked himself continually what in the gods' sweet name he could do if Tasmôrden turned out to have wizardry to help him.

Give him an open, flat field and a fair fight, that was all he asked, but he doubted Tasmôrden would oblige him. Chase Tasmôrden all the way to Tristen's army… that was his fondest hope, so he might catch Tasmôrden between the hammer and the anvil and be sure of him.

The bandits, the Saendal, who served Tasmôrden, would fight: here were men who would hang if they were captured. And since pretenders had succeeded one another, each killing the best of their enemy's men, there could scarcely be a remnant with Tasmôrden much better than the Saendal bandits.

fortress of dragons.html

It did not encourage surrender, if the tide turned: they would fight like rats in holes, escape if they could, but his own plans were to provide no hole through which they could bolt: the land had troubles enough of the sort that had made that village a weed-grown desolation. He intended to tame this unruly land to bring it gently to Ninévrisë"'s hand, a wedding gift, a gift—the thought was still new to him—for their own heir to come.

The bloody Marhanen, as the south called him, would earn the name twice over before this war was done; well, that was nothing new. But his lady of the violets would not start her reign dealing with Saendal bandits.

That, however, was skinning the deer before the hunt. There was Ryssand yet to deal with… whose betrayal might not come off if Ryssand saw the war going against Tasmôrden, and he did not intend to provoke tension if it were avoidable. It was sure Ryssand would be no truer to one lord than to another, and if they looked to sweep Tasmôrden before them, why, Ryssand might discover he was loyal after all.

Yet Ryssand might be the true reason Tasmôrden forbore to attack: that they awaited a place and a time Ryssand would strike.

And if Ryssand did strike, it would be in such a place Ryssand thought he could escape if things went badly.

Closer they marched, and closer still to Ilefínian, to solid walls, and to the friend and patron of Parsynan and Cuthan.

Closer to a refuge at need… and an assurance of safety for a traitor otherwise in jeopardy of his life.

If Tasmôrden were sure of Ryssand and Ryssand had never told Tasmôrden his king had suspicions of him, there was another reason Tasmôrden need not stir out and put himself to great effort: the war would come to him and the victory fall into his lap almost without bloodshed.