Cherryh, C J - Fortress 02- Fortress of Eagles (37 page)

Begone
! he willed it, with all his force.

The opposing force was gone then, was not
in
the gray place, was nowhere that he could detect—like an enemy in full rout, and not unscathed.

An Amefin noble appeared from the crowd… he did not know the name, but a man conspicuous in fine dress and rich furs pressed forward to catch his stirrup, all oblivious to the conflict.

“Lord!” that man cried, and before he could take alarm he saw another man, and another, pressing forward to bend the knee as he sat on horseback. “I am Drumman of Baraddan,” the first man said.

“A loyal man.”

“Azant of Dor Elen,” said the next, a man with a scarred face. Uwen had meanwhile come close to him with his sword in hand, and another guardsman attempted to push them back, but they cast themselves to their knees in a body, each—and several at the same time—proclaiming his name, his degree, and his unfailing loyalty to the Crown.

“We none of us conspired with Edwyll,” one protested. “We never agreed.”

He knew them by sight if. not by name, the other lords of Amefel, Cherryh, C J - Fortress 02- Fortress of Eagles the earls, the thanes he had been accustomed to see in the hall. And now ealdormen of the town of Henas’amef came forward.

The crowd cheered, and pushed back its own borders. “Hush, hush,”

some urged, and others yelled ruder expressions until they made a sort of astonished silence in the area, apart from the din of voices in the streets.

“We are loyal men!” the earls protested, each and every one, but some scattered voices hooted and called out questions, among them, at one ealdorman’s protestation of loyalty: “Tell His Grace about the silver!”

“I am innocent!” the ealdorman in question cried, appalled and staring wildly around at the crowd.

He is lying, Tristen thought, but questions and answers of minor nature mattered very little to him until he might pass the gates and do Cefwyn’s bidding.

Then Uwen shouted out, “His Majesty has made His Grace the duke of Amefel! And he’s come to do justice and defend the righteous men of this province! The clerk has the proper decree! Shall he read it out?”

“Read it!” someone cried, and “Read it!” all the crowd echoed.

“Read it, read it, read it!”

“Quiet for the clerk, then!” Uwen shouted, and the clerk who had ridden with them struggled with his reins and the unrolling of a heavy parchment, while people at the rear of the crowd were still calling for quiet.

The clerk cleared his throat and called for light, and someone Cherryh, C J - Fortress 02- Fortress of Eagles brought a torch from a bracket and handed it to a guardsman on horseback, who held it aloft as a murmur began again in the back of the crowd.

“Read it!” Uwen said, with all trembling on the knife’s edge of the crowd’s patience, so read it the man did, beginning with: “By the grace of the gods and the holy Quinalt…” and going on to: “I Cefwyn king do grant…” The order was set forth in the high court language, and precious few of the townsfolk understood the words, Tristen feared. But when the clerk came to the part that said, duke of Amefel, the crowd cheered. At each occurrence of the words
duke of Amefel
after that, the townsfolk cheered, and by the end of the reading, in the part that required the lord viceroy to turn over all documents, records, persons, and property of the province to His Grace the duke of Amefel, there was pandemonium in the adjacent streets.

“Fall back, fall back there!” Uwen cried, and rode a line which the people respected, clearing back from him. The banner-bearers followed him, visible to all the crowd, even those far behind, and with the torches and lanterns lighting them if nothing else.

“Guard!” Uwen ordered. “Fall in behind! Form a line!” Uwen gathered a number of the guard in a slow sweep back across the face of the crowd, pressing the crowd back with the presence of the horses, and, moving like a weaver’s shuttle, had the gate sealed off from the crowd while the crowd was still cheering and waving at the banners.

“M’lord,” Uwen said, and with a sweep of his arm indicated the way inside for all of them in the center of his circle: the lord Cherryh, C J - Fortress 02- Fortress of Eagles viceroy, and the earls and thanes and ealdormen who had joined them. Well-done, Tristen thought, proud of Uwen, and with the same deliberate dispatch he led the way beneath the gate arch, under the portcullis, and into the stable-court of the Zeide.

“File in!” he heard Uwen shouting behind him, and in a series of orders none of which ever left the men at standstill, Uwen drew their guard in after them, until only five were left guarding the outside and holding the line. Then Uwen shouted, “Shut the outer gates!” and ordered the portcullis down after them, a great rattling and clamor of iron, as their last five men quickly rode in, and men in the gatehouse winched the gates shut. They had shut the crowd outside, had shepherded the nobles inside… and were themselves, with the viceroy, in possession of the stable-court of the Zeide—a crooked court with the stables and the grain sheds and a few pens on the left, the scullery yard, too, and then a broader area with a stairs going up to the torchlit landing and the western doors of the Zeide.

These were barricaded and braced with timbers. So was the scullery door barricaded, as Tristen could see at the edge of the lanternlight.

So, to the south, was the wide double gate of the curtain wall that sealed them from the South Court, where they reported the rebels to be.

“Search the stables!” Tristen ordered.

“Yes, m’lord!” Uwen said, and gave those orders.

“The stables are ours, Your Grace,” the viceroy said, at his knee…

Tristen did not look down to see the man, but by now he knew the voice.

Cherryh, C J - Fortress 02- Fortress of Eagles

“Nonetheless,” he said. He trusted nothing Uwen had not passed his eye over, and still scanned the yard for detail. “Does the earl hold the scullery and the lower hall, as well as the South Court?” It would need more men than they had at their disposal to hold off attacks over all the citadel.

“Doubtful, Your Grace, but we have the water, the grain, the horses, and a gate. The kitchen stores as well.”

“Well-done in that.” He judged it quiet enough to dismount and stepped down from Gery’s back, passing the reins to a dismounted guardsman. Immediately all the earls and thanes pressed close to him for reassurance and to urge their views on him. “Secure the scullery from inside,” he ordered the sergeant of the guard. “Prepare to enter the halls. No harm to the servants!”

“Yes, Your Grace.”

“We have the scullery fortified,” Lord Parsynan protested. “If Your Grace will wait till morning…”

“I have men arriving at the South Gate,” he said, “and the East.”

“How many men?”

“Fifty.”

“Each?”

“Together.”

“They cannot breach the gates.”

“Then we must open this one.” This with a glance to the South Courtyard.

“They have fortified it from the other side. Your Grace, the town Cherryh, C J - Fortress 02- Fortress of Eagles cannot be trusted. You must not commit yourself to a battle here.”

“There will be no battle,” he said. What he proposed was far under that scale. “We will open the gates, sir.”

“These people will cut our throats!”

“Lies!” Earl Drumman cried. “We are
with
Your Grace! Open the gates! Let us bring in Amefin men!”

“Folly!” the viceroy said, with a disparaging wave of his arm. “As good let in armed bandits!”

“We shall open
that
gate with the men we have,” Tristen said, with a shrug at the curtain wall that separated them from Earl Edwyll’s men. “And we shall open the South Gate.” That was the town-entry gate in the court where the earl’s men were. “Then Amefin men can come in.”

“Your Grace,” the viceroy protested.

“Your Grace! ” the earls began to shout all together, but he had no interest at the moment in their argument with the viceroy. The scullery was unbarred, the sergeant he had sent was about to take men into the fortress itself, and he strode in that direction and shouted further orders.

“Four men to hold the scullery stairs!”

“Aye, Your Grace!” the sergeant shouted back, and the men went in, quickly.

“Stable’s ours, m’lord.” Uwen reported. He had come back afoot and out of breath.

“The scullery is open,” Tristen said, “and we will have those stairs Cherryh, C J - Fortress 02- Fortress of Eagles inside.” He envisioned going up that familiar scullery stairway and seeking out the earl in the interior of the Zeide, but for that feeling of opposition he had had a few moments ago. Unease still nagged at him.

And he did not know why he felt uneasy with that western route into the building. But, direct as it was and offering an attack on the enemy’s flank, he would not take it.

“Bring axes,” Tristen ordered, and nodded toward the curtain wall that divided them from the South Court. “We will have open that gate.
Then
we will talk to the earl.”

“You cannot
talk
to the earl!” Lord Parsynan said. “And I beg Your Grace trust only his Guelen troops and not open the South and East Gates to let in even your own men. Twenty-five men on a side is folly! They can never hold the rabble; the entire town will pour in behind them and loot the place if they do nothing worse! Listen to me, Your Grace! If we must move, take the upper floors, the high windows. The courtyard is open from above. Assault from the secure position! Rain archery down from the windows!”

“It would kill very many and ruin the windows, sir.”

“Ruin the windows, good lack!”

“I would not ruin the windows. No, if your lordship please.”

“Your Grace, listen to me!”

“I do listen, sir. But the South Courtyard also has very many places not in view of the windows, where arrows will not reach. If we had enough men, we might take the fortress halls, but we have not. —

Uwen, shout it over at the earl’s men to open the gates and come Cherryh, C J - Fortress 02- Fortress of Eagles swear loyalty to me. They should have the chance before we open them by force.”

“They are traitors!” Parsynan said. “There is no pardon!”

“Uwen,” he said, and Uwen left him in haste to follow his orders.

“The man laid hands on a king’s herald!” Parsynan cried. “No, Your Grace! Death is the penalty, and Edwyll well knows it. So do all these men! Your Grace
cannot
pardon these men.”

“They were not wicked men,” he said, fixing Parsynan with a stare, and heard in the distance Uwen’s shouting near the gate. He knew in his heart the viceroy had the right of the law in ways he had lately understood in Guelessar… but when had old men grown so desperate in Amefel as to make such a useless gesture, taking the citadel of Henas’amef, or half of it, as if the king or the king’s men would not come to take it back? He said, defending the earl he had known, however distantly: “They were not rebels, sir, until these few days.”

“Yet does he answer you?” Parsynan asked. “Does he open the gate? No, nor will. They are all in collusion. I beg Your Grace trust none of them and by no means open the outer gates!”

“We are loyal men!” Earl Drumman said. “We were always loyal men!”

“Your Grace,” Lord Parsynan said sternly, “you cannot pardon treason.”

“Your lordships,” he heard at his left, and a breathless Guelen guardsman pointed to the building. “Our men is up there, engaged.

The earl’s trying to come into the west wing by the upstairs and Cherryh, C J - Fortress 02- Fortress of Eagles attack our men with axes.”

And from his right, Uwen: “M’lord, the earl’s men shout through the gate that they’ll carry word to the earl. I don’t hear ’em rushin’

to open up on the other side. And they’re still shootin’ across the wall. They just ain’t hearin’ ye.”

“Let us bring down the gate,” he said. And to Lord Parsynan: “Sir, your men to the fortress hall. Keep it
open
, sir. That is essential.”

“Your Grace, prudence would suggest—”

“They are breaking through the fortress halls, sir, at this moment. I suggest you take your men there as you suggested and try to come through the halls. I’ll meet you at the south doors, inside.” He strode off in some haste toward the curtain wall, sweeping Uwen with him as Parsynan shouted protests at his orders, and then cursed his own men, bidding them rally to the kitchen stairs.

Uwen snagged a man by the arm to give quick orders. The man left running as an arrow hit the pavings and almost clipped his heels.

It was not the only arrow to fall. It was all blind fire coming from the other side of the wall, uncaring what it hit—a hazard primarily to men trying to open the gate. But if he could breach the South Courtyard, he could let in Captain Anwyll to assist him, and the South Courtyard doors to the Zeide itself would give them command of the center stairs, where all halls met inside. That was where he had told Lord Parsynan to meet him… and if they did not hold that intersection of stairs and prevent movement between the two wings, they would see bloody battle rage in the three floors of the palace.

Cherryh, C J - Fortress 02- Fortress of Eagles More, while the viceroy had possession of all the water, the earl had the smithy and its hammers and bars, as well as the armory. That meant the earl’s men in the South Court had no shortage of weapons or arrows, as well as materials with which to bar doors against them, and if he could not press them hard from this side, and soon, they might end by having to besiege the south doors and break door by door into every connected chamber and corridor in that end of the Zeide, including the new great hall, where arrows might again be a fear. It would be folly to seek a battle in that crowded, many-staired interior, and fighting would likely be largely in the dark.

More, he did not
want
to bring harm and death into the place from which he would command the Amefin, and he felt, as strongly as if it were Unfolded to him, that the courtyard was the path they had to take, there, under the safe and open sky, not inside. He led men already on the verge of exhaustion, and if the pace slowed overmuch and their bodies chilled and their spirits began to flag, then the strength would run out of them like water.