Текст книги "Fortress of Eagles"

Автор книги: C. J. Cherryh

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Текущая страница: 13 (всего у книги 24 страниц)

He allowed himself one glance, and saw Cefwyn standing on the steps as he imagined he would see him. Then he turned Gery’s head away and led his column across the face of the assembled nobles.

He had a thousand questions for Cefwyn, oh, a thousand thousand questions… but there had been no time before now to ask, and now that their necessities drew them too far, too fast apart, he feared there might never be. Brother was a Word, but not a word that could bridge the moment. He saw Efanor amid the crowd of nobles, Efanor with his priest beside him, and he saw how Efanor signed a pious wish for him. He knew Efanor wished him well despite all his fears and his jealousy, and he felt a small pang of regret for Efanor, for Efanor’s faith in absent gods, and most of all for Efanor’s failing of Cefwyn’s love… he knew that he was himself the thief of Cefwyn’s affection; and forgiven by Efanor at oh, so great an effort. He saw Cevulirn besides, and imagined warmth in his narrow eyes, at least approval of the choice.

But he saw nothing but cold stares else, on the part of the dukes of the north. They were constrained to be there, detesting his presence the while, and he was sure they were in some remote fashion responsible for his departure: he had heard the story about the lightning, the Quinalt roof, and the coin and knew none of them could guide the lightning, but they were skilled at guiding spiteful words. He understood their rules, now, rules set forth in all the chronicles of the Marhanen reign, and how the barons had supported Selwyn Marhanen, one of their own, to be king over them not because they loved him best, but because he was the only one they all feared, the only one who could hold them from fighting each other. Was it not still the same?

He understood, too, the structure they had woven, the realm of Ylesuin, how all the barons’ influence over their own people and all their rights with the king were posed alike on agreements that rested on oaths, and oaths as they saw it rested on the Quinaltine’s validity; they would not keep their word unless they feared the gods’ wrath on them, and therefore they believed that no one else would keep his word unless he was similarly afraid. They were not Cefwyn’s friends. They were certainly not men Cefwyn would ever call brother, and yet they each desperately sought closeness to the king, each seeking any chance to outdo his neighbors. They feared Cevulirn because Cefwyn loved him; feared Emuin for many of the very same reasons. And Ninévrisë… oh, greatly did they fear her influence.

So how much more must they distrust Mauryl’s heir… and how ready were they to see omens in the lightning last night… omens of overthrow and attack on themselves, and most of all, evidence of forbidden wizardry.

(It was no damned wizardry, master Emuin had said this morning. Why not ask those who know, good loving gods? No, no, no one consults a wizard. Everyone in town takes advice from His Holiness on the matter, when if His Holiness had a smidge of wizardry, he would never have a hole in his roof, now would he?)

He could all but hear Emuin’s voice echoing down the stairs… as in the square, now, before him, the banner-bearers moved to the lead in a clatter of hooves on cobbles. He saw the half-burned bonfire… rain had put an end to it.

Uwen moved up beside him in a small burst of speed as he eased off Gery’s reins. There were thirty men behind them, a clattering column of soldiery, as they left the square and entered the town.

Master Emuin might avow there was no wizardry in the stroke. But it had been a large and incontrovertible hole above them in the ceremony—workmen had put that canvas over it last night, a task the hazard of which Tristen could scarcely imagine, going up in the dark and the rain, and with the lightning still playing in the clouds. So much men dared, relying on the gods, and on the luck Uwen so often invoked.

But was it only blind chance that had dislodged Mauryl’s Shaping and set him on another Road? He dared not guess, and he thought that Emuin protested too loudly: Emuin knew, must know, must be aware of the damage done in his leaving Cefwyn’s side. And did Emuin deny there was wizardry abroad?

Now the sun speared down into the street ahead and people fell back from his path, not cheering, precisely, a few making a faint pretense of it, and the children skipping along for a better view. Red Gery danced sideways as well as forward, excited at the noise of trumpets and the flutter of banners ahead. The men behind him were a night without sleep: no few had drunk too much before they had the news and had struggled to work through the night in spite of aching heads. The king’s entire household had stayed awake, cobbling together a ceremony with no advance warning: Cefwyn had done everything possible to show him honor, arranged the ceremony of his swearing as elaborately as any swearing before him—and precisely because they had done it not two months ago for the northern lords, it had come off in good order, right down to the trumpeters, who this time had not made a false start in the middle of the Patriarch’s dismissal of the assembly.

So, with a document, an oath, and a blessing, he was lord of a province, and with his banners flying in full view of Guelemara he was riding away to a place he had regretted leaving in the first place. If only it had meant returning to an Amefel preserved in time, an Amefel the way it had been, with Cefwyn free and themselves in all the company they had had there, he would have been deliriously happy.

But the world had changed since summer, in far more than the fall of leaves. He had asked what winter would bring, and now with a nip in the air despite the sunshine, he saw it bringing change, change, and change, himself swept along across dirty cobbles and past doors still adorned with.autumn garlands, moving toward another season of doubt, and hoping for reunion in the spring, on a battlefield.

One unanticipated, utterly foolish pleasure, however, dawned on him amid all the other assaults on his heart in this short ride down the street: this morning he no longer went in unrelieved black. He had become lord of a color, a banner, an emblem, lord of a living land, with people in it, and cattle and horses and orchards and all manner of things that were not true of Ynefel and Althalen. And, against the brown and gray dying of the trees and the threatened white of winter, he bore no quiet color, either, but red, red darker than the Marhanen scarlet: red of rubies, red of old blood, red of roses at dusk.

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 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’ 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 hewas dead, too, and here he rode down the middle of Gate Street, perhaps far beyond Mauryl’s wishes—or perhaps not.

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 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 magicabout 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 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 mustbe 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 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 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, and to buy the mare before they left. He was determined Uwen should have his honor, andthat horse, in front of every man in Amefel.

“There she is,” Uwen said. “ Thereshe 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 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.

“They’ll sink to the axles if they slow down,” Uwen judged. “Get ’em into line will they, nill they, m’lord, an’ no stopping. That lane’s a damn bog.”

“Say so,” he bade Uwen, after which Uwen rode immediately aside to talk to Captain Anwyll, and after that, back in line to shout orders to move the standards and the Guard ahead at a trot, making room for the wagons. In that way the vehicles came in with no hindrance and no slowing down.

“All the wagons are here, except master Emuin’s,” Captain Anwyll reported then, riding up in the line from the crossroads. “He sends word he’ll join us at our lodgings tonight.”

“Tonight.”

“As best he can, Your Grace. He said he was served by fools.”

Emuin had not come to the swearing this noon, nor remotely wished to, Tristen was sure. He had last seen master Emuin raving at the servants who carried his chests of fragile phials and his aged and brittle-edged piles of documents, his stacks of codices and venerable scroll-cases down the perilously winding stairs to the upper hall, where his baggage waited. Emuin had sworn all his borrowed help was feckless, vowed that he could move no faster by the king’s whim or any other, and threatened, when last he had seen him to inquire, that if the servants or the king’s officers came one more time to ask when he wanted the carts and mules assigned to him to be in the courtyard, he would invent a spell for toads. Emuin had not finished packing by daybreak, nor by midmorning, and now that Anwyll reported his carts had not made it down the hill during the lull in street traffic during the ceremony, as they had last arranged, Tristen began to be more concerned.

“I set ten guards to escort the good father at whatever time he sets out,” Anwyll said, “in event that the night might overtake him on the road. They have a tent.”

For that forethought he forgave the captain his presence. “Did he have the parchments down?”

“I didn’t go up, Your Grace. The way was clogged with baskets. There was no moving on the stairs.”

“Well you did leave men with him,” Tristen said.

Six mules, an oxcart and a wagon were allotted for master Emuin’s baggage alone, and if their effort were to come raveled, if there were any adverse Working, it struck him as ominous, that Emuin was late.

But on the other hand it was certainly no wonder that the old man had fallen behind in his packing when it was a miracle the rest had gotten on the road. He, who had no scrolls or codices or boxes of powders, had three mules only to carry his armor and his clothing and an ox-drawn heavy wagon for his tent and field equipage. He had thought down to the last, when they told him it had indeed gone onto the wagon, that he might leave the heavy tent and chest stored in the armory, since that equipage would only have to be transported back again to Guelessar when the army marched in the spring—but he had a sometimes restive province to defend, and now more than a remote chance that Tasmôrden might breach the long river border, or attempt his defenses this winter—and if he had to go into the field in the cold of winter, then it was better to do it under canvas.

And that meant he had to have the tent which would serve as a headquarters; and if he had that, then all the tents that belonged to a company of two hundred, with their gear, had to come: more carts, more oxen, more gear. The Dragon Guard, Anwyll informed him, did not camp in the field like the rangers of Lanfarnesse. There were horses, tents, cooking pots.

And since they had that encumbrance, then came Dysarys’ and Cassam’s caparison and armor in their heavy canvas weather casings, the horse-armor not being for ordinary wearing; and if those, why, then other things. The horse gear made a considerable bulk in itself, not only that belonging to Dys and Cassam, but also the spare saddles for Gery and Petelly, Uwen’s Gia and now Liss: the brushes, the ointments, the warming blankets, all of that, and the personal gear belonging to the horse grooms. Then because the mounted guards had their own farrier and his equipment, and the medicines, spare tack, tools and blankets for all the four hundred horses of the troop of two hundred men—they added sacks of grain, since they had no time for the wide grazing otherwise needful for the horses and the oxen over the several days they would be on the road. They hoped for hay or easy grazing at least two of their nightly stops, else they would have carted that with them, too.

There was also the company physician and the store of bandages and physic for all the guardsmen themselves; and two hundred men’s winter gear and clothing.

And far from least came the quartermaster and the precious chest that contained the guardsmen’s pay and the funds for supply in the province.

Before all was done, that section of the train which supported the Guard and their light horses numbered no few ox-drawn wagons, each with its drivers and their modest amount of baggage. And last in the train of wagons and carts (he had seen it arrive) Tassand and the servants rode in a covered mule cart, the sort that ladies favored: the king’s household had provided it, none of the servants being inured to days in the saddle, and it lent the last quaint touch to what had indeed as well have been the movement of an entire army toward Amefel.

Too, he had accepted Idrys’ offer of an armorer to go with him, Cossun, until last night the juniormost assistant of master Peygan himself. So he had promised that man, too, a living, besides providing him a horse, a cart for baggage, and two armorer’s apprentices and their personal equipment.

So many had proved unexpectedly willing to join him, of men who had known him in Amefel this summer… Gossan, a man who otherwise would never be a master of his craft, had surely weighed the dark repute of Amefel as well as the chance of war reaching the walls of Henas’amef this summer, and made a dangerous choice in a handful of hours. All who joined him had done so, perhaps in hopes of bettering their lots in life… a chance which came in war to soldiers, sometimes to craftsmen through hard work and good luck, and very, very scarcely in the case of a clerk.

He had so many hopes going with him today, even when every stride Gery made was carrying him away from Cefwyn’s close friendship. Cefwyn needed loyal men… and by utter chance or someone’s intent, he found very many of them going with him.

But Emuin, who had never doubted an instant he must come, but who would not advise him, delayed for powder pots and parchments.

CHAPTER 2

Your Majesty this, Your Majesty that, yes, Your Majesty, as you will, Your Majesty… and watching from the upper floors, out the window, His ill-tempered Majesty had a perfect view of the Quinalt roof with its canvas patch… of monks struggling with ladders, of the Quinalt square with its ordinary scatter of business. No one minded the wrath of the gods and the dreadful omen of the lightning now that the imagined threat of the young Warden of Ynefel was gone from them. The barons no longer needed feel besieged or distanced from the throne. The stranger in their midst had departed back into Amefel, where almost any impiety might be tolerable, oh, and at long last, His Majesty’s wizard tutor was going with him, an untidy presence lingering from Selwyn’s harsh reign, lingering far past need, in certain opinions.

Tristen’s going had left a certain untidiness behind, a tower emptied, pouring bundles down the stairs, a fine set of apartments stripped of presence.

It had left another kind of emptiness behind, too, and Cefwyn’s heart ached for it. He discovered he had not taken advantage of the time he had had. He had not said to the barons, as he ought, Damn you all, and done as he pleased from the very beginning of his reign. No, no, with all the wisdom he had observed in his father (and now he questioned it) he had tried to keep alive his father’s alliances. He had come into his capital with a southern victory and a foreign bride, and let the attacks come at Tristen because he knew Ninévrisë had no defense.

But, gods, he had not understood the persistence of those attacks, or their cleverness, or that they would dare this much. He had made a clever move of his own, sending Tristen south—but he had not prepared himself for the look Tristen had given him when they stood apart, there on the Quinalt steps. He had not recalled the bitter lessons of his grandfather, of betrayals, and the harm that a word could do. He had not recalled the bitter lessons of his father, how absence could estrange two hearts… and now he worried about it.

But he would not be so set about hereafter. And he had not at all given up Tristen, or Emuin, or any of his friends. They were where they needed to be. If a king could push and prod wizardry into working for him, then he had made a necessary move, and moved wizards where fools would threaten them at their peril. Let him get the reins of power firmly in his hands, and then he would remember every favor and every score that wanted remembering. His grandfather, entombed in the Quinaltine yonder, had had the barons in fear of him when he was alive. He, like his grandfather, had faced armies. Could he not, in his turn, daunt a paltry handful of court gossips? The servants, the court, the Quinalt… no one would have dared tempt king Selwyn as his barons had tempted him. And they were not as clever as they hoped.