Fortress in the Eye of Time (81 page)

But then his eyes lifted to the horizon, toward the north
and east, and the morning seemed not so bright there—he was tempted to look with the vision he did have, terribly tempted; but he thought it was exactly what he should not do.

They rode in that direction on a road that could not lose sight of that shadow, and it was impossible to forget it. It distracted him from the light mood the others set, and his distraction seemed at times to make them anxious. But they asked no questions, perhaps fearing the answer he might give.

 

“Do you see any shadowing on that horizon?” he asked of Uwen when they stopped for rest. He hoped that it might be some natural thing. If autumn could surprise him, then other things still might, and Words might arise he had never met.

But Uwen looked where he looked and said only that he saw a hint of cloud, but that it was not all that black.

He went to Ninévrisë while they were paused, and said, looking at the grass at their feet, “M'lady, if it comes to you today to have a look into that other place, resist it. Resist it with all your might.”

“Why?” Ninévrisë asked in alarm. “What do you see?”

“Nothing imminent,” he said. “Only be prudent.”

Natural men could not see it; and Cefwyn could not; and even Ninévrisë failed. So he rode with the knowledge to himself, alone, as slowly, subtly, to his eyes, a line of shadow began to reach along the horizon, like a smudge of smoke, a presentiment of night.

It seemed, to his eye, closer, and wider.

They met the contingents of four more villages. They were, Cefwyn said, approaching an end of Amefel where villages had been once, but where now were far fewer—where forest rimmed the horizon and where roads ran more scarcely.

By Cefwyn's reckonings they should have begun to pick up the southern lords this morning. And they had not; the levity with which they had begun diminished through the day, and when they saw the sun pass mid-afternoon and they were neither at their campsite nor seeing any sign of their allies
either ahead of them or to the south or behind them, concern began to work among them, and Cefwyn and Idrys cast frequent, anxious looks toward the south as he did to the west.

“We might wait a day for them,” Idrys said. “We might well, m'lord King.”

But Ninévrisë said, “Lord Tasien cannot wait,” and Tristen added, “We dare not,” because that was the truth he could not doubt.

A
ll about them now were meadows and forest-crowned hills, low rolls of the land that rose toward Althalen—treacherous land, which, like that around Raven's Knob, could mask an entire army. They had had that message last night that their way was clear—but that condition could have changed ahead at any hour an Elwynim army appeared on the riverside.

Cefwyn shifted his weight in Danvy's saddle both to ease the throb of his healing wound, and to see whether, by standing a handspan higher, he could see significantly more. They were behind their schedule. He did not want to order the column stopped prematurely, short of their planned camp; but he was beginning to ask himself was it wise not to stop sooner, and whether they had not overestimated their rate of march altogether, which would affect their ability to meet their other contingents and which might turn very serious indeed, if their army was going to move more slowly than their plan all along the march. The heavy horsemen rode today with their shields and weapons, but not in their full battle armor, and the heavy horses all traveled under saddle, in the hands of their grooms, though they as yet carried no riders and did not carry their full armor or caparison. That had been the plan they had made, that once they passed beyond the first encampment and especially as they rode in the vicinity of Althalen, they would count themselves in hostile if not imminently threatening territory. The light horse had carried riders all day, the destriers at least a slight weight all day; the infantry had marched with shields and spears since noon rest instead of having them transported in the baggage—and they might have to revise that plan to make the speed they needed. But going without defense was increasingly a risk, in territory uneasy in more
than the sense of Althalen's haunted precinct. In the rolling land not only was the rear of the train out of sight in the distance, hours behind the front ranks, simply because of the length of the column, but even nearer ranks were often lost to view in the rolls and windings of the road. The wagons for baggage and supply had a small rear guard and the whole line of march, foot as well, was interspersed with horsemen who could ride for help in the event of attack, which could otherwise have cut off the tail of the army without the head even aware an attack was in progress.

If the enemy could cut them off from their equipment, their tents, their supply—they would be in a very grave situation, in which many of them would never survive retreat and regrouping near Henas'amef. It was not a risk to run lightly, to have the men lighter-armed, because there had been incursions such as Caswyddian's, and the Regent had camped at Althalen completely unknown to men searching the hills. It was rough land out there. Tristen warned that Aséyneddin did know their intent and their schedule, and they were racing with all the skill and strength they had against an enemy doing the same with the help of Tristen's mysterious enemy, an enemy capable of killing Mauryl Gestaurien, chilling thought.

They had to start earlier tomorrow morning. They had to reach Lord Tasien's encampment at Emwy Bridge in order to hold Aséyneddin in Elwynor; at very least, if they were too late, they had to do something to keep from meeting Aséyneddin on ground Aséyneddin or his wizardly ally chose.

Wizardry.
Sorcery
, rather. It was the first time he had ever used that word advisedly; if it ever applied, that dark art which Emuin had named in the necessary lessons of a prince of a land with such a history, it should apply to this ghost, this—whatever it was that Tristen feared.

But they faced mortal enemies too, and it would be fatal to panic, to tire his forces, or wear down either the horses the heavy horsemen used for travel, or the warhorses who would, over much shorter distance and under all the weight of their
armor, carry them into battle. Nor dared he have wagons and draft teams broken down under rushed and imprudent handling: that would be as fatal as losing them to the enemy.

He looked across at Tristen to ask what he thought…and saw that Tristen gazed as often he did toward the west, toward Marna.

Toward Ynefel, Cefwyn thought. Now the nature of Tristen's lapses seemed transparent, which they had never been to this degree before, with walls to mask their direction.

“If it will satisfy you,” Cefwyn said to him, fearing that attention of his to the west, “once we have settled with the Elwynim matter, next spring, I shall agree we must concern ourselves with Ynefel. So I plead with you, my friend, as you swore to
be
my friend, delay what you can delay. Sovrag's boats can provide you and what forces you need a safe way to Ynefel, if go you must. No walking that end of Marna. You may have done it once under Mauryl's protection, but never think of going there alone. Never think of leaving us. I shall stand by you at your need—but now I have need of you. You are my eyes toward that enemy. If you fail me I am blind. Do you understand that?”

Tristen looked at him, lifted his hand to the northwest, between forest edge and plains. “He will meet us
before
Emwy.”

It was possible Tristen had heard nothing of what he said. “Are you certain?” he asked Tristen.

“Yes,” Tristen said distantly. Then: “Yes. I have feared so all day. Now I know. I wish not.”

It meant Tasien's annihilation, almost certainly. Cefwyn's heart sank, and he glanced aside to see who rode in hearing of them. Idrys was. Ninévrisë was speaking with one of the Guelen guards he had assigned to guard her, and could not have heard. “More of Mauryl's visions?”

Tristen shook his head. “Mine, sir.”

“Is Lord Tasien fallen, then?”

“I think he is, sir. I feel it certain. I have feared it for hours.”

The news was maddening. He did not want to believe it.

“Then Aséyneddin has crossed the river. That is what you are saying.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Don't say it to Her Grace, and don't say it to anyone yet. Even Uwen. Not until I say so.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Across the river.—Then,
damn
it.—” He looked where the scouts had ridden over the hills to the south. “Where is Lord Cevulirn?—And when will we find him?” he asked, with his father's irreverence for visions and, still, a hope that wizardry would fail or find exception. “Vision me that vision and save my scouts the hazard.”

Tristen gave a visible shiver, a drawing in of the shoulders. “No. I would not venture to say, lord King. I don't see them. But I do see a shadow on the land…westward and north, that is not good. That is not at all good.”

“A shadow. Wizardry, you mean.”

“It is, sir. But it's all the same a Shadow.”

Cefwyn scanned the western horizon and saw nothing. “You can see bad news but not good? Is that it? Or what
do
you see?”

“Things that a wizard touches. My enemy is
with
Aséyneddin. He is
at
Ynefel.”

“One's at the bridge, one's in the heart of Marna! How can he be two places at once?”

“I don't think he's at Althalen. I hope, sir, I do hope for Althalen to be safe. If it isn't—”

“If it isn't, we're destined to camp there tonight. We rely on camping there and passing that place without being engaged. If there was a possibility of this, you might have told me before now!”

“I would have told you, sir, if I thought he was there. I don't think so. And going overland is far slower.—But where Lord Cevulirn is, I don't know.”

Wizards. It was enough to give a man pause. And when Tristen was rapt in thought he forgot all instructions of protocols, all agreements, all that was between them—he
simply told what he believed; and increasingly he did believe it. He had a sudden vision of himself, a man of practical Marhanen blood, pursuing Tristen's will-o'-the-wisp enemies across two provinces of ancient superstitions, elder gods, and demonstrable wizardry.

Scratch an Amefin and wizard blood bled forth. And if he fought for Amefel against what tried to claim its ancient soil—it was most reasonably a war of wizards. By his own choice, a Sihhë standard, black and ominous, fluttered beside the Marhanen Dragon. By his own choices the Amefin rural folk, emboldened by the fall of the Aswydds and the impotence of their own lords, had flocked to Tristen's standard. He could bear with that.

But in Guelessar and the northern provinces were honest and good and loyal men who would shrink in horror from what their King had allied with, even if their King won.

If their King lost a province—and retreated into the heartland of Ylesuin, with sorcery let loose in Amefel and the Elwynim in its employ—he would have failed his oath to his own people. The wailing of slain children had haunted his grandfather to his dying hour. In the gods' good name—what might haunt him hereafter?

“A rider,” Tristen said, and he saw it at the same moment: a scout coming back full tilt down the hills toward them.

More bad news? he asked himself. He braced himself for it. Idrys swung closer, clearly seeing it. Gwywyn and Ninévrisë came near.

The man—of the Prince's Guard, as all their scouts were of that regiment—slid to a walk alongside them. “Your Majesty,” the scout breathed, while his horse panted and blew. “Your Majesty,—dust on the south—all
along
the south, m'lord. My companion rode ahead to see.”

“Fall back and find Qwyll's-son. Have him inform the ranks. Pass it back by rider.”

“Yes, m'lord.” The man drew rein and fell back in the line.

“It may be Cevulirn,” Cefwyn said. “That would be
very
good news.”

“Certainly better than such sightings on our north,” Idrys muttered. Idrys had been close on Tristen's other side, close enough to have heard his exchange with Tristen. And Idrys believed bad news before good. Always.

“Coming from the south, they must be ours,” Ninévrisë said.

Tristen said, solemnly, “They
are
ours, my lady. But
we
are to their north. Best they be certain who
we
are.”

Tristen said such a thing. Something else had clearly unfolded to him, in only so few days.

Possibilities unfolded to the Marhanen King, too.

What if it were the writer of the
Art of War
Mauryl had brought back? His mentor of that long-ago text, riding unguessed beside him?

It was too cursed poetic. And, no, Tashânen was an engineer and a strategist.

He recalled their last council before the barons had left. He said to himself as they rode side by side looking for that encounter, Tristen knows strategy—Certainly he knows the sword. Uwen says he knows the lance, that he
will
ride Dys, and that he has no doubts of him. The Sihhë
brought
the heavy horses with them to the land: how should he not know them?

Tristen counseled us no earthen walls. He spoke out
against
fortifications. Everyone will die, Tristen said, and we didn't heed him—when he was counseling us, damn it, on the one answer I could never find in Tashânen's book, the one question I most wanted to know, and I didn't
hear
what he was saying.

Tashânen didn't write it in his book because the Sihhë of his age
knew
that answer. It was the art of siege Tashânen invented—against enemies who used other Sihhë tactics as a matter of course. Tashânen had all prior lore—books
burned
at Althalen—and why should he write down the use of magic innate in his kind? Other texts would have held that—whatever a man's born with, there's always a cleverer way to use it:
that
would have been his object in writing: what he wrote
down was the new thing, not the old. Why should we expect a Sihhë or any man to write down the obvious?

What held me from hearing Tristen?

Are we all so blind? Or is it another blow his enemy has struck us, through Orien Aswydd?

What
did
one do, he went on asking himself, without that knowledge innate (Emuin had said it) in Tristen's kind?

Strike at flesh and blood? That he could do. The other possibilities—he did not even see. And in his blindly following a Sihhë text, he had not regarded Tristen's warning—he had seen only the dangers of Tristen confronting him in council; and in his infatuation with Sihhë skill in war, he had sent men to an untenable, fatal position against wizardry.

He had let his bride's kinsman make a deadly mistake. Tasien had acted the best he knew against his enemy, in the absence of any trust of Guelen kings. But as King, he certainly could have argued with Tasien with more force, rather than accept Tasien's plan as he had done and (gods forgive him) embroider it with his own boyhood fancies.

Trenches in the herb garden. Good blessed gods, why had he not used his wits?

But without sending Emuin, or Tristen, neither of which was possible—what
could
he have done against a wizardous attack? What could he do against the one he knew was coming at them all?

And how did he break the news of Tasien to Ninévrisë?

In a plume of sunlit dust the remaining scout from the south came riding up over the swell of land. “
The Ivanim!
” that man called out as he came near. “I saw their banners, and the sun on their helms!”

Even as that rider came, the sun was picking up color in the west, and they all could see a second plume of dust on that horizon, farther away, behind the first.

“
That
is Umanon,” Cefwyn speculated aloud, his heart lifting.

Idrys, quick as his own thought, pulled back in the column and gave orders, and two more scouts immediately rode away
from the column and overland in that direction, this time to welcome the lostlings in.

“Thank the gods,” Cefwyn breathed, certain now that they had found at least two of their missing contingents.