Cherryh, C J - Fortress 02- Fortress of Eagles (28 page)

So many things a color might be, both good and dreadful; but above all else, as of this morning, his colors and his garments need no longer be the black of Shadows. The king’s own tailor and Dame Margolis, the kindly lady who had done such duty for Cefwyn before in Amefel, had marshaled a sleepy, harried band of tailor’s apprentices last night. Guelesfort servants and even the cloth-seller’s wife, sister, sons, and daughters had turned out, working by lamp and candlelight. They had bled from pricked fingers, the Cherryh, C J - Fortress 02- Fortress of Eagles evidence of which was on the last-done fabric of Uwen’s coat; and it was thanks to them that he wore a surcoat of red cloth this morning, with the Amefin Eagle in black on it. It was thanks to them that he had that banner.

And thanks to them and by the king’s grace, red Eagle patches covered the royal Dragon on the man who bore the Amefin standard and who would bear it on their journey… Gedd, his name was, a sergeant of the Guelen Guard, who had fought with distinction at Lewenbrook. Gedd carried the banner of Amefel, and beside him, bearing the banners of Ynefel and Althalen on either hand… those riders were his regular guards, Lusin and Syllan, by the king’s leave and their own choice.

In unforgiving sunlight the coats and patches of all his guard were a slight mismatch: it was the king’s bright Marhanen scarlet with the black Amefin Eagle in a square of ruby red, and every townsman who saw it must know whose service had lent the guards to Amefel, but he had no doubt Cefwyn intended so.

Most of the men Cefwyn lent him would return, in due time; but his own guards would not. Lusin and Syllan, patching the Amefin Eagle to their coats with their own stitches this morning, had recklessly called the Sihhë Star lucky for them and left the king’s service.

“Better prospects for the likes of us wi’ his lordship,” he had overheard Lusin say. “Fools we ma’ be, but this is a lucky badge for me.”

“Ye ain’t regardin’ the priests, sir?” Syllan had asked, and Lusin laughed in a way that said, no, he did not regard the priests’

Cherryh, C J - Fortress 02- Fortress of Eagles warnings.

“The lad ain’t no black wizard,” Syllan said then. “An’ if ye go to his service, I’m wi’ ye, an’ I think the lot of us is in the same mind.”

Hearing that, he had stood there, not knowing whether to admit he had overheard them or not, and finally walked away, hoping his guards would go on in the good luck they believed in, and fearing he could not promise them whatever luck truly meant to them. He knew Luck for a word Men set great store by, and his guards said if a man had lost it, he was in a sad state. But it was a word that never quite Unfolded to him: a word Men used, men like Uwen, who had no power of wizardry or magic at all, and they used it in hopes that all things would chance to their benefit without a wizard arranging it. He suspected that he could wish his guards well and happy to far more effect than they could wish for themselves, and willingly did so as he was riding down with his company to the gates of Guelemara.

But it was fraught with hazard, such a spell. Their going with him set them in harm’s way not only of weapons but of wizards and shadows. He very keenly remembered Lewenbrook, and the young man who had carried his banner onto that field, but not off it. What he wished well, his enemies were most apt to wish ill in any moment of his inattention… and in that thought he was afraid to wish them anything at all. He had all along left them and Uwen as much to their own fates as he could, fearing he knew not what…

Hasufin was dead, which was no surety: Idrys said that
he
was dead, too, and here he rode down the middle of Gate Street, perhaps far beyond Mauryl’s wishes—or perhaps not.

Cherryh, C J - Fortress 02- Fortress of Eagles Now that they had begun this movement, this shifting of power within Ylesuin, the thing had acquired its own momentum, in the king’s orders, Idrys’ orders, Annas’ orders, Emuin’s orders, Uwen’s, Anwyll’s, and his own orders at the last, and it was no less the movement of an army than it had been preceding Lewenbrook: the wagons, as then, had gotten up to the Guelesfort before dawn to load, and the last had gotten down again by the West Gate well before the swearing so they should not impede the processional of the cavalry. The number of wagons and mules and carts, carriages, oxcarts, drivers, artisans and craftsmen, horses and grooms, had been certain almost from the moment one oxcart had been necessary. The oxcart dictated their speed; their speed dictated nights on the road, and those nights dictated all the additional wagons. Alone, with a small troop of the Guard with a change of horses, he could have ridden to Amefel in two days, if he were put to it…

But that was not to be. Annas would none of it, and insisted yes, they must leave in the morning, but they must arrive with all due ceremony, having given due and decent notice to His Majesty’s viceroy—a fair consideration. For the viceroy to maintain his dignity was an important matter; and the viceroy should not be suddenly deposed: the province was restive, prone to rumor, and the appearance of dignity and deliberations in the transfer of authority was essential. There would be a careful exchange of documents and a proclamation read before the people.

Then the viceroy would need, so Annas had proposed, the selfsame carts to carry his own household and his troop of the Guelen Guard Cherryh, C J - Fortress 02- Fortress of Eagles home to Guelessar, leaving Amefel with a new duke, blessed and sworn and sealed by the Crown in Guelemara.

That they had been able to accomplish the documents, the ceremony, the gathering-up of a ducal household, the muster of wagons and guard all in only so few hours preparation—indeed, if people wished to fling the word
magic
about regarding the lightning bolt, he thought his orderly departure and the appearance of the banners should excite even greater comment. Their only grace was that the Dragon Guard was always ready to move and the heavy carts they needed in such numbers were the carts the Guard had already gathered to move equipment to the riverside for the winter camps, gathering which was the work of days in itself.

Preceding the bawling confusion in the stable-court before dawn and the organized and thunderous turnout of cavalry in the square this morning, everyone in the company had seen a numbing, frenzied succession of hours when any single thing going amiss could have delayed everything. Any small matter had become a contention, an argument, a waving of arms and shouting among his servants, his guards, the king’s servants, the king’s guards. And now that everything was accomplished and they rode through the Old Gate into the lower town he began to draw easier breaths. He passed under the gated arch of the Crown Wall, the citadel’s official limit and the oldest defenses of Guelemara, and said to himself that, lightning stroke and all, things today had gone with far, far more ease than he would expect if some hostile wizardry were still at work.

The crowds were less then, and below the limit of the citadel, in Cherryh, C J - Fortress 02- Fortress of Eagles ordinary streets, the wind was chill; the cobbles of the lower town were still wet from last night’s rains and the overhang of buildings shaded them from the sun. Idrys had asked him for good weather, a jest, yet he wondered in a small, guilty thought whether his own wishes had anything to do with the clearing of the sky. He had certainly wished the lightning remote from doing further harm.

Wishes, too, had more potency when something like the lightning stroke had already set the ordinary world askew. Difficult as it was to move things that were well set and deep in their habits, things now were prone to change: like the leaf he had dislodged and let fly a second flight on the hill, things once shaken could be budged again.

One had then to be cautious. Once gone sailing on the winds, leaves were prey to any waft of weather.

Any whisper of magic.

And he
must
be careful for days, until the world settled again.

So he thought, as urchins in their brash innocence waved or chased along beside the column of guardsmen. So they might do on any day of their rides. He smiled at them, thinking such thoughts, waved a black-gloved hand at a small cluster of better-kept children who ducked aside and hid. It might have been any morning they had ridden out for pleasure, except the scarcity of people about their work, except the banners and the number of men behind him.

At the town’s outer gates, the same gates they had gone out and back again so many times for their rides, a handful of the Dragon Guard had already made sure of their way. No last-moment oxcarts barred their way out this morning, no inopportune gaggle of geese Cherryh, C J - Fortress 02- Fortress of Eagles or other flapping fowl met them in the gate. The gate stood open for them as a last curious few craftsmen came out from the smithy and the chandler’s shop nearby.

Then a foolish, yapping dog, escaping all precautions and evading the Guard, ran out to trouble the horses. Gery cow-kicked and threw his head, but the yellow dog was a veteran, one that had attended their morning rides a little distance from the town, and he did so today, driven to complete frenzy by the unusually long column behind them, racing up and down as they passed the thick walls of the gate.

But this time the yellow dog would wait in vain for their return.

Good-bye, he wished the creature, who was a familiar, a known hazard. Fare well and safely back to your own door and a warm fire.

Live long. There are too many dangers. Too much is uncertain in the world, and winds are blowing today you know nothing of, silly hound.

In a single stroke he became sure of it. Wizardry was working in the whole event and a yellow dog had convinced him of it by doing nothing at all out of the ordinary, a measure against which to see all the extraordinary things that had happened in a handful of days, from doubt of his welcome to surety he belonged elsewhere. He drew a deep breath and gathered up the reins of magic as warily as he held red Gery’s, resolved to let nothing else slip.

“Fair day for a ride,” Uwen said, as they passed under the darkness of the last gate arch, and it seemed Uwen had been as worried as he, only then daring speak. “Not a cloud left in the sky, m’lord, and us Cherryh, C J - Fortress 02- Fortress of Eagles almost on our way in good order.”

“Let us all hope for fair weather,” Tristen said. Beyond the town main gate they faced the sprawl of the dwellers outside the walls, the untidy mud of stables and henyards and poor men’s huts, and few here came out to greet them. Their road was straight as an arrow past the maze of unplanned lanes and dwellings, and at gathering speed, until they faced no more of Guelemara than apple orchards, plowed barleyfields with furrows standing in water, and a slop of mud on the roads.

Then:

“There’s Captain Anwyll, m’lord, waitin’ for us.”

Indeed, a band of men and wagons was arrayed beside the crossing, that of the first honest road between the outlying fields and the nearest orchards. The inflowing band stretched out of sight among the apple trees, and they brought the remounts from the stables outside the town walls, a large number of horses. As the head of their column swept past, Tristen looked to the head of Anwyll’s group in a moment of anticipation, immediately slowing his pace and that of the rest of the column to the amble they would generally keep on the road, a pace which allowed the riders behind to close up without being spattered by riders in front.

The influx of horses brought the grooms, too, notably Aswys, with his particular charge, black Dys, and also with Uwen’s heavy horse, Cassam, and the boy that tended him. There was Petelly, a weed among the nobility of horses—and, yes, Tristen was very glad to affirm, there was Liss. He had told Uwen to go to the Guard Master of Accounts, who was getting no more sleep than they last night, Cherryh, C J - Fortress 02- Fortress of Eagles and to buy the mare before they left. He was determined Uwen should have his honor,
and
that horse, in front of every man in Amefel.

“There she is,” Uwen said. “
There
she is. Gods, she moves.”

“She is beautiful,” Tristen agreed.

“Too fine by far for me,” Uwen said for the hundredth time.

“Not too fine. I have three horses. You have two. You’ll be my captain in Amefel, and my right hand. Do you say not?”

“Aye, to standin’ beside ye, m’lord, wi’ my heart’s blood. Better your shieldman than your captain.”

“I say otherwise.”

“M’lord, captain of Althalen’s one thing. The field mice out there don’t much need a captain, and they don’t set great store by ciphering.”

“Ciphering.” This was the first mention of ciphering as an argument.

“A captain’s got to have ciphering, m’lord. Myself, I need to look at a warehouse to know how many men’s provisions is in it, none of this ciphering.”

“But you can reckon the grain for the horses. And the clerks write it down. Is that not ciphering?”

“Oh, aye, on my fingers, but the clerks come back wi’ their accounts writ down and I still need to see the warehouse in front of me. So ye can’t ever make the likes of me into a captain of the Dragons, m’lord, so there, ye can’t, on a fine horse or not. I ain’t but a good sergeant of the Guelen Guard, what’s had more luck than I Cherryh, C J - Fortress 02- Fortress of Eagles was ever due, and I’m more ’n content to be at your side, m’lord.

Ye should take a man like Anwyll.”

He had made up his mind regarding Uwen’s post in Amefel as surely as if it had simply Unfolded. It was so, that was all. On this day of magic trying to escape his will, he still chafed at Anwyll’s being in charge this morning. He was resolved that the man should go back to Guelessar by spring, with compliments to Idrys, since he was sure Anwyll was intended to be Idrys’ eyes and ears in Amefel.

He took no offense in Idrys’ having spies. That was not the issue.

The horses came in without incident. The next ring road about Guelemara, that from Dary village, showed a long line of wagons and carts from beyond the gray-brown haze of the young apple trees, all lumbering toward that crossroads, to intersect with those they had already collected. They were to come in just behind the first hundred of the mounted troop… or so they should, but they were arriving too soon.