Текст книги "Fortress in the Eye of Time"

Автор книги: C. J. Cherryh

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Текущая страница: 42 (всего у книги 47 страниц)

Except finding a standard-bearer. And the standard was important, even if he had only seventeen soldiers, counting Uwen, in all his company, who needed to find it on the field. He knew Cefwyn intended it be carried conspicuously, because of what it was—and someone had to carry it, which was not far different from a death sentence. Asayneddin would want to bring it down early.

“The standard,” he said on a deep breath. And Uwen said, with his ordinary calm, “Not your trouble, m’lord. We’ll find somebody. Is that the order?”

“We are going, my lord?” Tassand asked—the servants had come into the bedchamber doorway, following the page, and stood there, four solemn faces, as gentle, as modest, as kind-hearted a set of men as he had ever dealt with. “Is it now?”

“Yes,” he said. It seemed that the floor dropped away from under him, as, with that one word—he ordered everything into motion, and every choice that he had, or imagined he had had—was gone.  Or begun. He was not certain.

“No sleep for us tonight,” Uwen said cheerfully. “Doze in the wagon, we will, or ahorse, or wherever, tomorrow. I’ll tell Lusin he can go down in the cold and the wind and rouse out the drivers. This damn little courtyard, we’ll have wagons atop each other if we don’t move fast. Tassand, let’s get it moving. —Lad,” he said to the page, who still waited, “I don’t think m’lord has a reply, except he’s ready and we’re going.”

The fires are lit, the note had said, because Idrys had told Cefwyn his fears regarding Orien—and on that surmise the message to summon the lords and the villages was flaring across the land not as quickly as wizards could warn one another, but still as fast as men could light fires, and as fast as the lords could turn around and come back again, only scarcely arrived and with no time to prepare—but this time traveling without wagons.

At least, he said to himself, at least and in spite of his tardiness even to think what assumptions must change once he knew what Orien had done—Cefwyn had implicitly believed him. But wizardry had failed him, or he had failed, perhaps because of failing with the Book, perhaps simply that the wizardry working against them was stronger, he had no idea.

Chapter 32  

It was a night impossible to sleep, the courtyard rumbling with heavy wheels—and on a short and fitful rest, Tristen rose well before daylight, with the whole Zeide awake at that unaccustomed hour. He took a cold breakfast while the servants gathered up the leather bag of armor, which he would not have to wear until things were more dangerous than Henas’amef’s streets. A wagon was supposedly in the courtyard, at the west stairs, and it and three others made such trips with whatever of the lords’ baggage had to be gotten down the hill in the dark. His servants and his guards took turn about carrying items down the stairs: one of the guards already on horseback and Tassand, who did read, at least as far as lists, would ride the wagon down and check everything against the tally-tablet, being sure the men helping loaded it off into the right wagon in the line.

It was their last load, his personal equipment and Uwen’s. He put on his mail, and a padded black coat, new, since the night at Althalen-gathered up his Book with the mirror tucked into it, put it where he reckoned it most safe, next his belt, and laced up the coat. He took the sword from beside the fireplace, where it had rested since he had brought it home, except Uwen had taken its measure and the armory had sent a sheath for it, with a good leather belt, which he buckled on.

Last of all he slung a heavy cloak about his shoulders, and put on his riding-gloves, of which Uwen had said he would be very glad in the chill air.

There was nothing to do, then, but to watch the servants put out all the candles and put out the fire, and for all of them to take a last look at a home no one knew if they would see again, in a gathering that might never come together again.

Then it was down the stairs amongst the servants with Uwen and Lusin, one of the guards who had been with him longest, to the courtyard, where they were bringing horses up, by precedence.

Outside the town walls, on the lords’ former campground, was where their personal wagon and their drivers would be waiting, also in their order of precedence—a long line, since the Guelen guard and the Amefin contingent had not only their own baggage, but also the baggage train of the absent lords and their armies under their escort.

Their wagon was already loaded with the gear and trappings from the pasture-stable, which Aswys himself had accounted for, and seen loaded—at least that was the prearrangement, if Aswys had been able to get to the wagon.

“He’ll be there,” Uwen said. “He’s a King’s man. They’ll let him through. Hain’t no trouble at all, m’lord, compared with the ranks tryin’ to find their gear in a thunderstorm.”

Heavy-axled wagons had been rolling for half the night, as anyone trying to sleep could attest, the most of them loading once, at the granary, as they understood, and not to unload again until they reached their final encampment: a certain number would distribute grain to the individual wagons at the first camp, and immediately turn back to Henas’amef, to reload and go out again. Supply for that many horses when the hazard of attack precluded letting the horses out to graze was a very great difficulty; and feeding that number of men over the same number of days, plus the supply of firewood when foraging might be dangerous made necessary another number of wagons—and heavy wagons traveled at the same speed as a man could leisurely walk, no faster, often slower. That meant that the ground a man on a light horse could cover in a day was three to five times the rate at which loaded wagons would travel, and if an experienced rider on a well-conditioned horse needed make the distance only once rather than three or four days’ sustained effort, the rider might push it to six times the distance a wagon might cover over a number of days, granted the day-after-day wear on the wagon teams, the wheels, and the axles did not create further delays.

The supply had to be there: it was no good for scattered units of horse to arrive and run into battle without the infantry, or for the infantry without their weapons or food to eat or shelter from the chilling rains. It was, Cefwyn had said it, and the words had made absolute sense, not a skirmish, but full-scale war: and that was right, in his own thinking.

So the Guelen and the Amefin went necessarily at the speed of the baggage train and the Amefin foot. With the signal fires flaring out across the land, they counted on Amefin villages coming to the muster, and all of them counted for their very lives on the southern light horse in particular being able to use their speed—counting that each lighthorseman had two horses. Umanon, with the other heavy horse contingent, would not make Cevulirn’s speed overland, but the Imorim heavy horse had good roads, and Lanfaruesse, which had primarily infantry and longbowmen, had the shortest distance to come.

That, at least, was the reckoning they had made in their session with Cefwyn as late as yesterday, with a detailed list of every wagon, with the wagon-bed measured and the wagons and their teams rated as heavy or light, horse or ox. They had hoped for dry roads. They did not have them—but the rains had been light.

But if he was right, if he was right, the faster they could reach the river, the greater were Lord Tasien’s chances of survival and of their holding the bridge. They had already reinforced Tasien’s garrison; and if they could hold the bridge, as Lady Ninévrisé had said in council, the greater were the chances her partisans across the river might rise against Asdyneddin and make it a civil war, not a war between Elwynor and Ylesuin: that was their best hope, the one that shed the least blood on either side and ended the war before winter set in. Those were Cefwyn’s hopes, at least, and Ninévrisé’s.

But Tristen did not, himself, believe that they had that chance—not with the likelihood that Hasufin had found more than Aséyneddin to listen to him; one did not know that there were no wizards in Elwynor—there very likely were.

Orien would have told their enemy everything, by means he should have days ago accounted of. And that meant there could be far worse happening: Sovrag’s nephew had escorted lord Haurydd into Elwynor-and possibly Aséyneddin had discovered that indirectly from Orien.

Aséyneddin could locate Haurydd and discover the names of those people Haurydd had relied on meeting.

In that event, there would be no chance of Ninévrisé’s friends inside Elwynor laying any sort of plans before Asayneddin came against them.

And there might be no help for Cefwyn from that quarter, if ever there might have been.

The wagons rumbled on iron-shod wheels over the cobbles, and dogs yapped and men shouted at each other.

Uwen was in his own. He was able to sort out the horses for Lady Ninévrisé’s borrowed staff, two young Amefin ladies of good reputation and their fathers, very minor nobles, who had been given good horses of the King’s stable, to bear the four of them—the King’s servants managed the lady’s tents, baggage, and provisions, and the ladies and their fathers, who would, with Ninévrisé’s four guards, take charge of her establishment in the camp, had no staff to manage and very little to do but find the horses with which none of the four, town gentry, had any skill whatsoever, the ladies being there for Ninévrisé’s reputation and the ladies’ fathers being there to set the seal of noble propriety on the household.

Banners were being uncased and unfurled, with the least hint of light in the sky. The grooms began to lead the horses out. Uwen went off with one of the servants and came back with his horse and Petelly, ahead of a scar-faced man who, bearing a furled banner, also led a horse up. That man said, in a voice low and somewhat shy, “I’m Andas Andas’-son, m’lord.

I’m to bear your standard, His Majesty said. I served eleven years in His Majesty’s Dragons. The sergeant there knows me.”

“He’s a good man,” Uwen said under his breath. “A fine man. I know

‘im those eleven years. He’ll keep matters straight.”

“Then thank you,” he said, “Andas Andas’-son.” He knew he all but knew that this man would not leave the field; and did the man not know it?

No more would Uwen leave him. No more would his servants. Or the others. He did not understand. Least of all could he understand the determination it took to take that post, for a lord who was not his own.

He made up his mind if Andas’-son lived and ever he could do good for him, he would do it. But it was no favor Andas’-son had been granted.

The groom brought Petelly and he rubbed Petelly’s nose and patted his neck as Petelly cast a white-rimmed eye about the proceedings and cocked ears toward the racket. The steam of their breaths commingled in the light of a lantern a man carried past. He felt calmer himself with Petelly under his hands. He climbed up and from that higher vantage, out of the shadows of wagons and horses and men and the flare of lanterns, saw the dawn well begun, a faint glow about the peaked roofs of the Zeide, and above the high walls.

At that moment a shout went up. Cefwyn and Efanor had appeared in the doorway, held up joined hands in the lantern-light, embraced with more than formal warmth, then parted at the steps. Efanor was staying as defender of the town, taking command of the Guard that stayed, and Cefwyn was moving to take horse, as Idrys rode close to the base of the steps.

Then Ninévrisé and her ladies came down, and grooms brought those horses up; Cefwyn mounted up on bay Danvy, and Idrys joined him as Ninévrisé and her ladies were assisted into the saddles. The Dragon banner unfurled, red and shadow and gold, transparent where it crossed the lantern-light. Cheers went up all about. The Tower of the Regent billowed out, and cheers went up at that, too.

Petelly was growing excited, working the bit and looking about at this and that movement. Tristen kept him as close to his place in line as he could manage until Uwen had mounted up; the grooms, Aswys’ lads, handed them up their shields, which they would carry through the town.

Then the two of them rode over to the place he was assigned, with the King. He could not see Cefwyn, but he saw Ninévrisé, and saw Cefwyn’s personal guard. Erion Netha and Denyn Kei’s-son were with them, Erion carrying the short lance the Ivanim favored; and Denyn with the curved sword and small buckler common among Sovrag’s rivermen. The several Guelen guard with them were armored as they were, as light cavalry, but bearing heavy horsemen’s shields.

Of a sudden another cheer went up. He had no idea why, until he saw the Tower and Star billow out, eerily pale in the light that broke above the walls—his own banner had unfurled.

A horn brayed across the din, and the three standard-bearers began to move out the gates, down through the town, no mad haste in this ride, but solemn deliberation. The bells of the town began to peal, ringing from every town gate and from the citadel, a clangor that started every bird still drowsing in the towers.

Townsfolk that gathered along the street waved and shouted. Boys broke from the crowd as the banners passed, and ran along beside them—boys too young to have been mustered to the Amefin lords, boys clutching bows and carrying old swords, boys some of them with no weapons at all. The young lads coursed their route and stayed with them, though he saw mothers and fathers shout at them to come back. Tristen saw a band of them break from the crowd as the banners passed, and as they rode under the gate and turned to the right, along the long, long line of wagons, the boys burst forth from outside the gates and ran alongside the foremost riders.

Dogs joined the chase. Several stray sheep wandered through, among the wagons, right across the path of the horses, and, with the dogs behind, jogged back through the line in front of them.

Outside the town gates, the nearby rural and town levies mustered in the dark, and there came a flood of Amefin infantry behind a few horsed lords.

The Eagle standard of the Amefin swept in just behind their rank, with the several earls and their separate standards, and behind those the pennons of the various sections with their lieutenants and sergeants in command.

They passed their wagon in line near the head of the column: Dys and Cass were with it, along with Aswys and two of his boys on horseback, and Tassand and the other servants. Lusin and the other fifteen Guelen guards, the four shifts that had stood at his door, all on horseback, rode in to their assigned place behind the King’s guard, the King’s Dragon Guard being under Gwywyn, who rode behind the leaders. But Lusin and the rest were directly under Uwen’s command, since Uwen’s armoring and commission as a Guelen officer and, at least by honor, as Tristen now understood, a captain over the almost nonexistent forces of Ynefel and Althalen.

Uwen had said when Cefwyn had given him the horses that he could not figure how he had gotten to such a station, being a man of the villages, not of the court, and seemed quite overwhelmed by it. Now he had a command.

But Tristen thought most of any honor he simply wanted Uwen and all his folk to come through alive—and Uwen’s rise to fortune occasioned him a guilt he himself did not understand, not because the wish to have Uwen safe was wrong, he decided, but because he had so much he should be thinking about and understanding rather than worry, as he could not help but do, about a household and the men who depended on him.

He was not the same as the lords of the south, he told himself, as he rode beside Cefwyn and Nin6vrisi in the rank of Kings, with their three banners snapping and cracking in the dawn wind ahead of them. He was not the same as Cefwyn, who was born to be a king; he had no attachments for good or for ill the same as they. He had stolen them, he had borrowed them, he had put up the pretense of being a Man, even though he had had but one thing to do from the hour that Mauryl had called him into the world, a dangerous thing, and he had no justification for allowing Men to form such attachments to him, where their dangers were more than they could know. Uwen—had been so confident, had known so well where things ought to be, and what had to be done to move men and horses: he was a calming presence this morning for all the household, and yet Uwen with all his common sense was only giving orders that someone once had given to him, and that the soldiers knew how to obey, anyway.

But, he thought, Uwen more clearly than any of them had an inkling he was facing some danger very different from anything they knew, and Uwen was not spreading fear around him: Uwen had calmed him when he had faltered this morning, when the attachments he had made had suddenly added up and overwhelmed him; and Uwen did all that he did with a kind of courage he did not know if he possessed.

He had said it as clearly as he saw it himself, that if they could defeat Hasufin’s allies on the field, they might deprive Hasufin of agencies to do his bidding—but the cost of that, he saw all around him, this morning: men who were not at harvest, boys who had no notion what they were facing—Ninévrisé and Cefwyn who were arguing about her presence on the field. Ninévrisé had suddenly said she would not stay in camp when it came to a battle, and Cefwyn had relied on her to do exactly that,

“Which is why,” Cefwyn said with asperity, as they rode nearby, “I gave four damned fine horses to get you an escort.”

“We should not be thinking of defeat,” Ninévrisé said, “my lord.”

“I am not thinking of defeat! I am thinking of men who may die satisfying your whim, my lady, to view a battle.”

“I have men at risk at Emwy, —my lord! I owe it to them to come as far as I can!”

“As far as you can come is the camp, woman, without diverting precious reliable men to guard you! You will not give an order on the field!

Leave it to men of experience!”

It went on, several exchanges more, but nothing was resolved. Tristen agreed with Cefwyn: he wanted Ninévrisé safe in camp, too, and would have told her so, but resort to the gray space was dangerous, and he did not wish to do it—or to intervene between Ninévrisé and Cefwyn. It was another attachment he could not spare the thought to maintain now.

Ninévrisé was one more life to fling at the lives Hasufin flung at them.

But she was not Emuin, and whatever her father had been, Ninévrisé had nothing of his ability.

Nor had he. He had not had the strength to reinforce the old man at Althalen, and he was responsible for far more than just the fires being lit days earlier than Cefwyn had expected. He had swept up Cefwyn and all his men into Mauryl’s struggle and carried them from Nin6vrisi’s war into her father’s, and into Emuin’s, and into Mauryl’s.

He did not know, in fact, if Mauryl’s struggle would end on Lewen plain—and did not know, in fact, whether he himself would. It seemed he had little use to Mauryl after that was done, and for all that he knew the magic Mauryl had used to bring him here would be finished, too, win or lose, as Uwen would say.

He had had time to think of very many terrible things during the hours of preparation. Now he watched the road above Petelly’s ears and past the moving barrier of blowing silk—black, white, red and gold. And, Ninévrisé and Cefwyn being largely occupied in argument, he found it needful to say little at all, except to Uwen.

He won the dispute. Cefwyn thought so at least, since Ninévrisé conceded it might not be the wisest thing to advance with the line, but that she might take up an observation point, and be ready to send messengers to advise the officers immersed in battle of any unanticipated flanking movement: she did know whereof she spoke. She had studied, she said. She had read the same writers on the topic. She had read Tashfinen.

“I considered,” she said, “that it behooved me to know what I do and what I ask when I send men in certain numbers to certain tasks, my lord King.”

“You constantly amaze me,” he said.

“I trust you will never be amazed by my competency, my lord.”

What did a man do with such a woman? His lady mother had not answered his father in such terms. “I see I have years of discovery ahead.” Clearly a man dared not let Ninévrisé gain an ell. “—And I commend your zeal to know, my lady, but were you any man of my association, and you had not commanded in the field, you would stand on that hill with no men but your personal guard.”

He expected a spark. He received a calm nod. “Very well.”

“I am adamant,” he said.

“Justly so, my lord. Do you take advice?”

“From my captains, my armorer, my grooms, my servants and my pages, my lady, where warranted.”  “And your wife?”

“Oh, I do. I do. See—that’s Sagany Road ahead, Sagany and Pacewys villages, their standards.” He waved as a peasant contingent joined them—he reached down from Danvy’s back and waved to the men, nodded to acknowledge their bows, and, a custom which had appalled the Guelen Guard early on in his tenure, offered his hand to a bright-eyed young man on horseback, their local gentry, the Thane of Sagany, the only horseman in their company. Fingers touched, and horses drifted apart again. “Lord Ardwys. Fall in behind Lysalin’s pennon.”

“Your Majesty,” Ardwys said, said, “Your Grace,” to Ninévrisé and,

“M’lord,” to Tristen; and drew off to join his men in waiting.

At every major side-road, now and again at mere sheep-paths, boys and men had been joining their march. Behind the men of Sagany Road, a handful of women and grandfathers wept and waved handkerchiefs-and, Cefwyn thought, things which afforded the pious less comfort.

Countryfolk pointed at the banners and waved. A clutch of old men with their dogs and their sheep stood by the ditch along the road and doffed their hats and stood respectfully.

“We are outnumbered,” Idrys said under his breath.

“Hush, crow,” Cefwyn said in thickest Guelen accent. “Manners.”

“Gods, I would you were safe in the capital.”

“I would I had more Guelen. But the countryside had no special love of the Aswydds and their taxes. They cheer us, do you hear, Idrys?”

“So far, my lord,” Idrys said. “Well that the page has your shield, I say.

I wish you would not do that.”

“Pish,” he said, and grimaced and rubbed his leg, which had ached in that reach after the young thane’s hand.  “Shall we rest?” Ninévrisé asked.

He shook his head. “Not yet.” He had the marked places in his head as he had learned the village lords’ names, each and all. He had come to know this cursed road in his sleep and in his bad dreams. “Tristen.”

“My lord King.”

“How do we fare?”

“My lord?”

“In time?”

“I see nothing worse, my lord. I see nothing. I would not look. It would tell him where we are.”

“Aséyneddin,” Cefwyn said.

“Through him, yes, Aséyneddin.”

Tristen had said very little; and wished not to, he thought. He could not escape the notion that Tristen was listening, if not—doing—whatever wizards did. Uwen dozed in the saddle at times. The King, unfortunately, could not.

Nor would Tristen, it seemed. But cheerful converse with him was impossible—and if wizardry of some kind was going on, either with his gray-eyed bride, who kept rolling a set of beads and silver amulets through her fingers, or with Tristen, who simply rode scanning the horizons of this world or some other, he had no wish to disturb them.

Their column lengthened constantly with such arrivals. By noon, so Tristen heard, the hindmost must finally be clear of the town walls, but they would be obliged to stop in mid-afternoon, only to assure that the hindmost wagons made it in before full dark, the hindmost being the grain transports that would go all the way to Emwy. The lords’ equipment, the warhorses, and the weapons were interspersed into the infantry marching order in the entirely unlikely event of an attack while they were well within their own territory: the tents for each unit came in wagons not far removed from those units.

It was a fair day, a light wind, by afternoon, and by mid-afternoon, as the plan was, they made camp on a high spot beside the road—Massit-brook, the map showed running along the road, a ford that might be, the drivers said, a hard pull for the heavy wagons that came hindmost: the order went out after the first of them had crossed it and the first wagons had come up the far side, for arriving contingents to take shovels and move rock and ease the slope on both sides. Men grumbled, but the assigned units set to work, while sergeants paced off the aisles of the camp and men drove spears into the ground to mark the lanes.

It was all, all like a Word, Tristen thought. Everything that was done found place and fitness in his mind: the King’s pavilion went up; and the Regent’s; and his wagon turned up with two Amefin boys, who, casting themselves at his feet, swore they would wash pots and fetch and carry, as they said, for the great lord.

“We want to be soldiers, m’lord,” one said. “I’m fifteen. Me cousin’s the same.”

“They seem very small,” he said to Uwen.

“Aye,” said Uwen. And gruffly, “If you steal a damn thing, you little fools, I’ll feed you to the fishes. Haul that tent down! Spread the canvas out! —Thirteen summers. At very most. And they’d not go home if we sent them.”

“Do you know them?”

“Oh, gods, I know them,” Uwen said with a shake of his head. “I sees

‘em in the mirror ’a mornin’s. And like enough they’ll come home if any of us do. —Look sharp, there. Stand back and watch how the tent is folded. If ye’d be soldiers ye’ll do it just the same in the dark of the mornin’ or a sergeant’ll take ’is boot to ye and ye’ll carry it on your bleedin’ backs a day’s march. —Ye need ’era, m’lord. Your servants has got too many to provide for to be heftin’ the canvas or the water-pots.”

I cannot bear two more lives, he thought with a rising sense of panic.

But he said nothing. He went to see to Petelly and Dys, but Aswys and his boys had Petelly unsaddled and already led away to the edge of the camp, so he strayed back again to watch the spectacle of the tent being raised, with the two boys now joined by two others, hammering at stakes and pulling at guy-ropes and poles.

Uwen and the guards had the business of the tent in hand, and needed no advice from someone who had never seen a tent raised. So he stood with arms folded, as more wagons rolled in and disgorged canvas in a measured cascade of bundles down the row between two spears. Amefin guardsmen cheered and catcalled, and seized their tents and began at once to unfold them, with a marvelous economy of effort.

He was not the only lord to have importunate help: boys of the town and the villages had come with the wagons, and even a stray dog that refused all attempts to drive it off—it belonged to a boy and it would not go.

Another wagon deposited firewood at the intersections of lanes in the camp. Men and boys ran and seized up armfuls, as if there would not be enough.

His two boys came back with sufficient, and began to make a fire. So in the newly raised tent he sat in a folding chair from his own apartment, and had a leisurely cup of tea while the wagons came in.

The camp grew very soon in directions he could not see, as if the pace of the order of march had translated directly to the pace of the distribution and raising of tents. The outer edge and the horse-camp would continue growing as the supply wagons rolled in, but they would have the most of the men in camp and those who had walked farthest with the army camping earliest, and those who had joined them latest camping last. The camp had taken shape first around the spears marking the rows, then in a division established next by standards, those of the lords set by quarter, and those of villages set as they came in proper intervals, so that men would know where tents were to be set. Campfires were lit, men were having tea, preparing their own meals by units, a block of tents together.

So were the lords in command: there was one mess for the combined guard, the King’s Dragon Guard with a tent of their own adjacent to the three lords’ tents, with Lord Commander Gwywyn, and Lord Captain Kerdin directly in charge not only of the regulars but of such of the Prince’s Guard as had come with them. By Annas’ direction his servants took themselves in with the King’s staff and the high command to prepare supper.

By the time the sun approached the horizon it was only the heavy wagons coming in, and the first of the distributions of grain was being made, sacks dumped off a wagon beginning not with the King’s tent, but from the established edge of the camp and on, as the wagon rolled and the men aboard heaved grain sacks off into the waiting arms of men belonging to those tents, and a youthful scribe sat atop the stacks at the front of the wagon ticking off the sacks on a tablet.

It was all quite remarkable to watch. It went very quickly, considering the number of men involved, many of whom had not had drill; but there were enough soldiers who did know, who yelled instructions or imprecations as appropriate.

Cefwyn offered supper to them in his own tent, and Uwen and Idrys, and the lady and her two ladies all came, which was a fair number for a tent to accommodate. They brought their own folding-chairs, and the dining table was the map-case set on two chests, adequate only to hold the cooking-pots from which they served: the young ladies were very tentative, and had no idea at all how to manage, but Ninévrisé was well at home, and laid a slice of hard bread into a bowl and had Annas put the stew on it.

Then the ladies thought that it was proper to do that, too.

They were, Tristen thought, as young as he had been when he arrived among the folk of Amefel.

It was a simple, hasty stew; but it came very welcome after no sleep and a day of leave-takings and moderate confusion. So did a cup or two of wine. Tristen marked how Cefwyn’s face was drawn and how his hand would steal surreptitiously to his leg. But after a little wine the pain seemed to ease.