Текст книги "Fortress of Eagles"

Автор книги: C. J. Cherryh

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“M’lord?” Uwen asked from behind him. “Is aught amiss?”

He was embarrassed, realizing Uwen had asked him at least once before. “We should leave the wagons and cross,” he said, and having said it, he found the whole world tumbling into a new order, not a good one, not a bad one, only that when he said it, he was backin the reckoning of things, and he had hung outside them, pondering the shapes, all the night.

“M’lord?”

Anwyll had ordered things without him this morning, assumed he was in charge and that the camp would break immediately. That was beginning. Poles were falling. Canvas was being rolled.

“I shall be lord of Amefel over there,” he said to Uwen, with a nod toward the far side of the stream, “and over there we shall go on ahead of the wagons. Anwyll may not wish us to do it. But I think half the men and the drivers had as soon keep beside their warm fires and sit here at the ford waiting for master Emuin. So tell the captain if he objects, he will gain nothing but packing up and getting a soaking. If he agrees, all the men might stay warm and dry and comfortable. Over there where I am lord, I will order it.”

Uwen looked a good deal set aback, perhaps turning all the conditions of that over in his mind a second time. But then he nodded. “Aye, m’lord, better warm an’ dry.”

Uwen left to relay the order, and Tristen stood and waited.

He was relieved to have decided. The king’s courier would be there today, and he had no doubt at all that the rumors would fly, rumors ranging from an unanticipated royal visit to the garrison being strengthened for a winter campaign—and the province viewed the Guelen Guard with as much suspicion as the Guelen Guard viewed the province.

All these possibilities. But there was only one truth. There was only one act that satisfied the magic that was pulling on him. Only one decision sent the stone rolling back into the place it fit.

Anwyll came walking toward him in some distress, with Uwen trailing behind. “Your Grace,” Anwyll began. “I beg Your Grace consider… we have wagons and gold in our charge…”

“And soldiers to defend them.”

“And the need to defend Your Grace. His Majesty gave me orders…”

“On the other side of the brook, I command. The men will only get wet and be unhappy. Or have to leave the wagons, which they ought not to do. Or will you prevent me?”

“I have orders to defend Your Grace.”

“But none to prevent me.”

“No, Your Grace.”

“Then there’s no good taking down the canvas, sir. The wagons and all the baggage can wait for master Emuin. We shall need men with us, enough here to guard the wagons, and we’ll take the best horses with us.” Now that he had seized command, the necessities of command took shape in him with perfect certainty. “No wagons, equipage like the Ivanim. One of the sergeants to bring in the column with master Emuin.”

A deep breath. A moment’s consideration. “Yes, Your Grace.”

It was done, then. Anwyll went off; Uwen, too, with increasing enthusiasm for moving quickly. To equip like the Ivanim meant every cavalryman with his remount at lead, and though it was not the Guelen habit, the Guard who had been at Lewenbrook knew what was meant. Anwyil had offered no objections to that aspect of his orders at all, and in a very short time, with a brief commotion in the camp—shouting up and down, personal baggage stowed in wagons and horses traded about until those men to go had no encumbrance but their weapons and the fastest and best horses to carry them—they were ready.

That meant Dys and Cassam and their grooms stayed behind, too; they were not the horses for a race. Uwen chose Liss and Gia. Tristen chose high-spirited Gery for the start of their ride, and Petelly to go at lead.

“Banner-bearers!” Anwyil ordered. “Forward!” And the standard-bearers rode first into the cold, ice-rimmed water. Tristen followed, with Uwen, Anwyil overtaking them to make a third as they crossed. Water came not quite over the stirrups, splashed and chilled where it struck. Horses’ breath steamed in the early sunlight as the bottom began to rise, as they rode dripping out of Assurnbrook into Amefel.

“Your Grace,” Anwyil said, when they had reached that ground, “you are now in your province.”

“And will be in Henas’amef tonight,” he said, but it seemed to him Anwyil doubted that part of it.

Time after that, however, seemed to him at last to move at an acceptable rate, not creeping along at the somnolent pace of the wagons. The road led up the brushy shore, past the ruins, to the Amefel he remembered, a gently undulating meadowland, low wooded hills all about.

In another hour the road itself, overgrown with dry weeds and likely little used since summer’s end, showed droppings of sheep and goats, occasionally those of cattle, traces of varying ages. At one and another place throughout the morning the sheep-traces they met crossed the road and led off to well-worn trails. Shepherds and farmers used the common land and paid their taxes to Henas’amef, and such tracks went to villages full of peaceful folk, little concerned with the affairs of lords and kings except as it affected their taxes, their sheep, their sons being called to war or left at peace.

Such things mattered, in the accounting he had to give hereafter.

If it meant replacing the lord viceroy without the show and ceremony the viceroy might have preferred, still, everything that protected the villages and the shepherds in these hills was reeling and slipping, and had been since the lightning stroke let the rain into the Quinaltine.

“Ye seem so grim, lad,” Uwen said when they were at a momentary rest. “Is summat amiss?”

He considered the question, standing, staring, with his hands on Gery’s side. He shook his head then. “No. Less so now. But the messenger will be there by now.”

“Aye, m’lord, that he will. Is that a concern?”

He considered that, too, and nodded slightly. “It may be. I feel things out of balance, Uwen, but steadier than they were.”

Uwen gazed at him as Uwen would when he was considering a difficult point.

“Lad,” Uwen said, “is there wizards afoot?”

It was a third good question. “Always,” he said. “Always, for me, there might be wizards.”

CHAPTER 4

The banners flew, in the hands of men who had chosen to bear them, in the land they protected. Far away a curl of smoke reported some blacksmith’s fire, some sign of work across the land: it was an odd time for cooking fires.

Just after noon they reached Maudbrook, which would have been their stop tonight, had they kept the wagons with them, and where Emuin would camp, likely tomorrow night. The thick planks thundered beneath them as they passed easily over Maudbrook Bridge… not a bridge for the wagons: the wagons when they came would use the ford and cross far more slowly.

It was a succession of hills after that, sheep-grazed, tree-crowned, rocky and rough. The streams were a brisk jog across, the brushy sides of the road offered no surprises more than a flight of startled birds and the occasional fox or scuttling hare, invisible but for a whisk of gray. Deer stared from the far distance, alarmed at such haste, but unsure what they ought to do.

They reached the next bridge, a wood-and-stone one, had a cold supper sitting on the margin beside it, with fresh water to drink if they walked down a little. The fires of a village in the distance this time were more numerous, evening fires, chimneys sending up advisement of other folk at supper.

It was Ardenbrook, so they all agreed, and this streamside would have been their second camp in Amefel, with yet another night on the road to spend and another day’s travel before them, if not more, asking nothing of the villages. They had in one day’s riding made up two days as the oxcarts measured time, even pressing hard; and the men might rightfully look to sit and have their supper, such as it was, with a warm fire for the night. A full two days closer to Henas’amef than anyone in the town could expect, they had gained time on the king’s messenger. Tristen saw the weary horses, saw the looks of men who hoped that they might have had the order to make camp.

“We go on,” he said, and said it louder, so all the men could hear, not only Anwyll. “We go on. We will camp in sight of the town, if then. It is needful.”

There was no muttering, only looks, fearful looks and weary looks, and he had no complaint from Captain Anwyll, either, only a shake of the head as if he thought better, knew better, had intended better, and was dissatisfied.

The horses, too, laid back their ears, puffing against the girths, unwilling, now, to be taken another distance on the road. Petelly was the horse for this last, hard effort; and he sighed and hung his head and stood on three feet, weary and uncooperative.

But back to the road again it was, with the sun lowering in the sky. They struck a steady pace, went on until the sun was a recent memory on the horizon.

Then, in that last wan light, the landmarks were all familiar ones, and the men’s spirits began to rise again as a sergeant pointed out a stone outcrop, another saying he knew the lightning-blasted tree at the bottom of the hill, and that there was a sheepfold in the hills yonder, and they were not, after all, that far from the capital.

Petelly suddenly knew where he was, Tristen became sure of it. At a time when the other horses, out of Guelen stables, had become weary, sullen, and inclined to go slower and slower, Petelly suddenly put his ears up and redoubled his pace, nostrils wide, knowing there was a stable, and grain. Gia and Gery, likewise stabled in the citadel this summer, seemed to take the notion from Petelly, and they picked up speed. The other horses, horselike, took their pace from them until the whole company was moving far, far faster than would have been likely after a long day’s effort.

There was a twisted tree remembered from the summer’s end, the milestones beneath a knob of a hill.

And over a steep roll of the land they first caught sight of another shadowy height, the ancient citadel, under a dim sky, itself under a smudge of evening fires. Purer lights gleamed from the crest of that hill, lights which would be the tall, unshuttered windows above the inner walls of the citadel. The defensive walls obscured the rest, but not the few lights outside the walls, the scattered gleam of some lantern in the stables.

The bare branches of the orchards that stood on this approach screened them from view. They had come from the east, but had swung southerly, the East Gate of the town being all but unused and what men named the East Road passing to the south, joining the South Road before the walls.

“We’re just a wee bit behind the gate-closing,” Uwen said, which it was, clearly. And after a moment more: “Will ye go ahead in, m’lord? Or camp?”

“Go in,” Tristen said, with hardly a thought in it. They were here. They had come closer than he had planned. Now the stone rolled entirely, solidly, fate-guided back to its place.

“I’d take just the banners on, m’lord, and ye hold back with the troop till we have the gates open. Ye might sit and have a sip and stay warm the while an’ come in like a lord.”

Henas’amef was a more cautious, a more wary town than Guelemara. The gates had used to shut at the first dimming of the light, and still did, as seemed. The king’s messenger had delivered word of his arrival, surely; but even so, riding up out of the night, a hundred men were an unsettling sight. Couriers would have to run back and forth between the town gate and the citadel informing the viceroy, who would have to send down to open the gates, and all the while this was going on, the town would be in doubt and their own company would have to stand outside on horses that would see no reason not to go aside to the stables outside the wall, stables which Petelly in particular well knew were at hand. It was in all points, on an ordinary day, more sensible to camp until daylight.

But he burned to be inside the walls, to have uncertainties settled, no matter the inconveniences to all concerned. And he sought a quieter course, one which a slight persuasion might affect.

“You and I and the banners,” he said to Uwen.

“Your Grace.” Captain Anwyll had maintained a glum silence for the last bitter hour, but now he protested. “In His Majesty’s name, I counsel you, no. Never entertain such a notion. Make camp, wait here. His Majesty would never approve Your Grace riding up alone. The town is known for rebellion.”

“Uwen, I say. The two of us and the banner-bearers.”

Uwen said, soft-voiced: “I’ll do what ye wish, m’lord, but the captain’s givin’ good advice.”

“I say we go ask them to open the gates.”

“If there ain’t no untoward event of His Majesty’s message to the viceroy, aye, then maybe us two were enough. But that ain’t sayin’ what else could go amiss, m’lord, in the dark and wi’ rumors loose, as may be. The town’s a chancy ride i’ the dark. Listen to the captain.”

“You and I and the banners,” he said, making up his mind. “If they open to us straightway, we’ll be inside, and the gates will be open. Then, Captain, or if not, you’ll come. I wish no commotion of the town, and I prefer they not see all of us.”

“I fear there will be a commotion, at this hour,” Anwyll said. “Or worse. Follow Lewen’s-son’s advice, if not mine: let him go, him and the banners, no more. Or send me. It is not cowardice that urges caution, Your Grace, it is reasonable concern for your safety.”

“When you see a light from the open gates, Captain, or if you see us riding back, come in quickly.”

“Your Grace, —”

“Come in quickly, I say.”

“As Your Grace wishes,” Anwyll said glumly.

And, having been reined back, Petelly had it in his head at the moment that he was going to the stables whatever the outcome of the discussion. Tristen spent not another word on argument with the captain or the horse, but climbed down off Petelly’s back, put up the coif, put on his helm. “Bring him with you as you can,” he said, and entrusted Petelly to a guardsman to bring along. He unslung his shield from his back and stripped off the weather-cover, which was plain black. So was the shield face black, but with the pale Star and Tower of Ynefel, the sign of wizardry, the scandal of the Quinaltine. There had been no time to change it.

Meanwhile all around him, at Anwyll’s order, a hundred men quietly settled their equipment in order, changed to their war-trained horses, and armed themselves to follow him in due course.

A last test of Gery’s cinch, a judicious tightening, by his own bare hand, trusting not even Uwen’s offer to settle his equipment. Then he put on the right-hand gauntlet, set his hand in the shield grip and his foot in the stirrup, still judging the girth as it took his armored weight. Gery had not swelled against the girth, rather took him up in good order, but with a little shiver and a pricking-up of the ears at this breaking-forth of warlike equipment.

There was, however, no nonsense from Gery at this hour, none of Petelly’s breaking forward unbidden. None of their horses had called out in the evening quiet. The orchards—a hazard Cefwyn had forborne to cut down despite the threat of war inside the province– screened their approach toward the town gates despite the lack of leaves, and the dark east and clouded south had been constantly at their backs during the last of the sunlight, so they had never for any moment stood out against the sky. Unlike Guelemara, Henas’amef had few outbuildings, only the stables and a few barns and huts where herdsmen dwelt. Now the surrounds of the town were almost entirely dark, the stars brightening overhead.

Banners unfurled, first the white Sihhë Star shining in the gloom of near night, then the Star and Tower. Third and centermost, the Eagle flew, black on deepest red, a banner more ominous and wholly dark in this twilight than the two Sihhë standards. One-handed, managing Gery with his knees and with his shield hand holding the reins, Tristen tightened the last two buckles on his side as they went.

Then three other riders overtook them: Aran, of Tristen’s own four guards, came up, and two more guardsmen came with them.

“To guard your backs, m’lord,” Aran said, when Tristen glanced at that arrival in displeasure. “By your leave, m’lord.”

The well-ditched road ran beside the orchards on one hand and stone-fenced sheep-meadow on the other. Then plowed fields replaced pasture as their road, the East, joined the main South Road. Shortly after that, the West Road swept in beside a sheep wall to make it all one road.

From there, they were on the last long straight approach toward the main gate of the town, the banners flying and snapping in the dark. They crossed the ring road, which went around the town walls and came racing up to the great South Gate, near Cevulirn’s camp of this summer, the site now a barren field.

The horses fetched up, stamping and blowing in their impatience. “Ho the gatekeepers!” Lusin shouted out at the lofty town gate, all but obscured by the Tower banner as they confronted the gate and the likely scrutiny of the gate wardens. “Ho there, for His Grace of Amefel! Open the gate! Let His Lordship in!”

“Aye!” came a thin-voiced shout back. “Aye!” But no opening of the gate ensued. Lusin rode by and thumped the wood hard with his shield. That drew an answer.

“ Just a moment, just a moment, there!”

No bell had rung yet to advise the higher town, but it might ring at any moment. Tristen expected it, as Gery stamped and blew in impatience. Came a sound of steps from inside, not at the bar of the sally port, which might signal the intent to open, but a heavy, panting thump of a heavy man running up the stairs inside the gatehouse. The thumping ascended all the way up to the stubby right-hand tower of the pair that supported the gate.

“Who’s there?” The shout came down from the crest of the wall. Then, faintly: “Begging your pardon, who isHis Grace of Amefel?”

“Lord Tristen,” Uwen shouted up. “By the grace of His Majesty in Guelemara, Duke of Amefel, Lord Warden of Ynefel and Lord Marshal of Althalen! Ye’ve had the king’s messenger man, have ye not? Have ye not?”

“Aye. Aye, we have had a king’s messenger. But no word to us!”

“Well, there is now, man! Bear a light, there, bear a light down and unbar the gate, in your own duke’s name!”

Another thumping, as the man ran down the stairs.

“The gods’ mercy,” Tristen heard then distinctly from the other side of the gate, at the very center, with a clatter this time right behind the barred gate, a whisper half-voiced. “Gods’ mercy! Do we open?”

“Aye, ye open!” Uwen roared out. “And be quick about it! His Grace has rid clear from Guelessar, he’s weary and he’s hungry and in his patience wi’ good men, he ain’t near angry yet, but I wouldn’t keep your lord standing out here like some tinker on the road. There ain’t anyone but His Grace to give ye yea and nay here and hereafter, man, don’t natter about it! Shame on ye! Open this gate!”

“We has to do it,” came a faint voice. “We has to do it. Run up to the hill quick and see what’s toward! It’s himself and the king’s men. We has to!”

Something was wrong, Tristen was sure now, and Uwen had wisely laid the matter at the guards’ feet: open, open without question or face an angry new lord. He took a firmer purchase on his shield grip, made sure of his reins, not knowing what he might have to do to get the gate open, but open it must: matters otherwise could worsen, step by step.

Nothing so small as the sally port, but the main gate itself began to move, with the thump of pawl and ratchet. The gate swung, and in a moment’s confusion Gedd rode into the widening crack, the Eagle banner obscuring all view as he forced it wider still with his horse. Tawwys and Aran rode in with swords in hand, and in the same moment Uwen sent Gia side-passing smartly right against the other wing of the gate, shoving it wide for Lusin and Syllan and a great wall of obscuring black banners. Tristen sent Gery straight through the middle, leading the men behind him in with a rush.

The banner-bearers had no shields, no swords; but the gate wardens, in the lanternlight from the open gatehouse door, scrambled well back, showing no inclination at all to move toward the three pikes leaning in the corner.

“Your Lordship,” one of the gate-guards said, looking up at him as he held Gery at a restless halt. “Your Grace,” said the other guard, and they both fell to their knees. All battle was over. The gates were wide-open, and the light that splashed across the ground and across that open gate was a clear and ample signal to the guard troops under Anwyll’s command, out beyond the orchards.

But the guard who looked up at him in the lantern-light was a face that entrained a memory.

“Is that Ness?” Tristen asked.

The men both looked up at him, wide-eyed.

“Yes, your lordship,” Ness said, wide-eyed and openmouthed besides—a good man, a fair man; he had known Ness in the summer.

“Get up. Both of you. And answer me. Is the town willing for me to be here? Or not?”

“Your lordship.” Both of them had scrambled up, muddy-kneed, bowing again. “Your Grace,” the other said. Both seemed entirely terrified.

“Earl Edwyll has got the citadel,” Ness said in a rush. “The viceroy has got the garrison. Earl Edwyll put us back to wardin’ the town gates, your lordship, against the king’s men come in, and here we are.”

“In mortal trouble,” the other said, “saving Your Grace remember us.”

“Edwyll is holding the Zeide gates?”

“The South Gate. And the lord viceroy is holding the stable-court and its gate. But all the gates up there on the hill is shut, Your Grace. We sent a man up to whichever is in charge, being on the earl’s orders, which was to shut the town gate again’ any asking, and no regard to king’s men.”

“But then us not knowing where the right is,” the second man said, “and not being properly the earl’s men, neither, as might be, here you was, m’lord, with the banners and all, and we flung up the bar soon as we could think on’t. The whole town’s awake behind their doors, ain’t budged since afternoon except getting water and such, knowing all hell’s up on the hill. But they were saying it’d be three days till you’d arrived, m’lord, and there ain’t no water in the South Court ’cept the town give it him. And Lord Cuthan weren’t coming to anybody’s rescue, saying Earl Edwyll ain’t any aetheling more than any of the rest of them. But the viceroy ain’t asked him to help the Guelenmen.”

“Hush,” Ness said. “Lord’s affairs ain’t our affairs and there ain’t no more aethelings.”

“Well that we came ahead,” Uwen remarked in a low voice.

Well that they had come, indeed, Tristen thought. The town gates were breached, and the guards here had surrendered in an instant. By all they could see and hear, too, there had been not a sound to alarm the town, nor any general sympathy shown the rebel earl except the gate wardens sending a messenger up the hill, which accounted for the third pike leaning against the wall. It was still within likelihood that they might apprehend the man Ness had sent if he risked a noisy chase up a cobbled hill, but only by exposing his men to death or capture in doing it, and only at risk of provoking the general commotion they were trying to avoid.

Meanwhile the gate wardens alike looked uncertain as men might be who had opened their town gate on their own advice and now heard the low thunder of a hundred riders on the road coming toward them. The three banners above them, shadowy and transparent across the lanternlight from inside the gatehouse, were there by the king’s will, while the Amefin earl the guards had named had clearly chosen a declaration of rebellion against Cefwyn, imprisoning the king’s garrison on the hill and declaring his ownership of the place.

And Earl Edwyll was in a defensible position. The north side of the fortress was a blind wall except for the small, high-walled garden, which had no gate and was only accessible from the lower corridor. The other faces of the citadel, east, south, and west, each had a courtyard, each divided from the next by walls, and there was indeed no water on the hill except the one spring in the West Courtyard. The viceroy’s men, having seized that area, had secured the only infallible supply of fresh water for themselves… and the horses for escape and grain to feed them, as well as the scullery with its stores of food.

“There is the wine and the ale, too,” he remarked to Uwen. “The garrison has that, if it has the kitchen storerooms, and the lower hall is between the two for a battlefield.”

“Gods ’a-mercy,” Uwen said. Uwen knew the lay of the courtyards and the existence of the spring as well as he did. It was on the one hand a ludicrous situation, the battle of the stable-court against an upstart and foolish earl in ill-timed rebellion; and on the other, honest servingfolk and townsmen who had no desire at all to be in the midst of a battle had been put in jeopardy of their lives up there.

“Ye’ll set those gates well back, there,” Uwen said to the gate wardens, and waved a signal at Gedd and the standards. “We’ll be holding the way open. Up standards and smartly so. Guards! Bear a light, there!”

The gate wardens hurried, not without anxious, backward looks as the distant rumble of cavalry on the move echoed off the very walls. Anwyll and the rest were riding for the gate at breakneck speed, not knowing how they had fared. But as the gate-guards brought out the lantern and light spread full over the walls and the banners, the riders checked their full-tilt charge and spread out along the ring road just outside. Out of the dark came the noise of breathless, excited horses coming to a halt, and atop them as they arrived, a darkness glittering with the sheen of armor and weapons. In the faint light from the gate the Marhanen colors on Anwyll’s coat shone brighter than the rest.

“Your Grace!” Anwyll called out.

“Captain,” Tristen said. “One squad comes up the hill with me for the Stable Gate, one for the Zeide’s East Gate by Woolmarket, one by Bell Street for the South Gate, the third to hold here and assure us of this gate. But don’t trouble these guards! They’re honest men. Captain, take command at the South Gate, do no harm to the town, and be ready to come in when I open the doors!”

“ Yes, Your Grace.” There was no more demur. Anwyll knew the town intimately, and called for the sergeant who knew the streets. “Cossell! Three squads, East Gate! Brys, three squads, follow His Grace!”

“Banners!” Uwen shouted, setting their own men in order, and with no more ado Tristen started Gery moving uphill as his banner-bearers raced to the fore. The man to whom he had given Petelly’s lead was in the squad with them, and Petelly created a small stir among the armed men going with them, wanting to get forward… Petelly, who knew nothing of king’s men or the desperate bid of rebels against the king. He was an Amefin horse, and knew what justice was: his stable and his grain were at the top of the hill.

They rode through the street with a clatter of iron-shod hooves echoing back and forth off the houses and off the high and low walls of the town. As they went, shutters cracked in prudently shut houses, and here and there cautiously opened.

Then, quietly, emboldened, the people alongside them opened doors for a general look, and came out onto their steps, or stared down from the upper windows.

“Lord Sihhë!” someone shouted through the dark streets. It was the name the town had called him before, the name that would have scandalized the Quinalt in Guelemara. “Lord Sihhë! ” other voices shouted, and ahead of them shutters cracked open, and doors opened. Light broke faintly onto the street from closely held lamps and firesides, and the white Sihhë Star glowed on the banners. “Lord Sihhë!” people shouted, and poured into the streets, some running dangerously close to the horses. More and more doors opened, a few householders bearing lights sheltered from the wind. The Gate-street Tavern turned out a befuddled, cautiously enthusiastic knot of patrons and servingmen in their aprons.

“Lord Sihhë!” The cry went all along. “Lord Sihhë!” The town cheered him as they had cheered him when he returned from Lewenbrook. “Lord Sihhë!” echoed off the walls and brought commotion and lights to the dark side streets. Now the Sihhë Star and the black Eagle alike showed in fitful gleams from doors and lanterns. “Lord Sihhë!” the people cried.

They were glad to see him, and that was so rare a notion it confounded his warlike expectations and broke quite unexpectedly through the guard he had for two months set about his heart, setting it to beating larger than war or fear could bring on him. He had arrived where he was supposed to be, he had no doubt now. He had come, moreover, where he was needed, and as swordsmanship and the ordering of armies had Unfolded to him, so he knew what he had to do: secure every street by which their enemies might come down the hill and seal all the gates from which new enemies might arrive at their backs. He knew, too, the worth in this people that rushed to the streets… usetheir help, gain their goodwill, bring them what they hoped to find, but he had to keep them from breaking into mischief and harm.

And to do that, he had to bring the banners up the hill quickly to make the citadel sure with whom they were dealing, in the darkness of night, and he must notrely wholly on the viceroy he was riding to save.

Not rely, for one thing because the king’s forces might already be overwhelmed; but most of all because the king’s Guelen troops might inflame resentments in the town. He had sent his forces sweeping up like shadow through the streets, on the cries of people that had never loved the Marhanen kings. Lord Sihhë! Lord Sihhë! Lord Sihhë! they cried, and he could not mistake the sentiment behind it. It was all too easy to let slip a hatred of Guelen overlords that would not easily be reined in.

Lights broke out now in the side streets as they went, lights spread all along the rows of shops and houses. He saw in an intersection of streets one of the other Dragon squads going up the hill beside them, swift-moving riders silhouetted against the lamplight, there and then gone as they pursued their way uphill in a scattering of accompanying lanterns in the upper town. Their going acquired a voice, a shouting, a roar. Common townsfolk brought sticks and staves to his aid and marched in a growing band behind them as they neared the very gates of the citadel, still shouting, Lord Sihhë! Lord Sihhë!