“Gods bless!” He was all but breathless, stung to life by the thought of Ninévrisë and unbearably angry at the prospect of dying on this hill, nearly in possession of all he dreamed to have. “Could you not have told me you suspected Gwywyn?”
“I also suspected the captain of the Guelens… who does seem innocent. I’d not ask my lord king’s good temper to face one more known traitor in his councils. The half dozen my lord king already knew about seemed sufficient to suggest caution… and I consulted with men of mine, each night. They have their own orders: if Ryssand retreated, he was not to leave this battle.”
“That is Ryssand, crow. He’s left the battle! Where are these men of yours?”
“Uphill, doubtless, where my lord king should be, except he chased downhill and engaged in combat, scattering my men behind him… ‘ware, my lord! They’re about to charge.”
Gwywyn had joined Corswyndam now, and they came ahead: three scoundrels, Cefwyn thought, regretting his shield. He took a solid grip on his sword and reckoned the threat of Ryssand’s horse, which was not Kanwy’s equaclass="underline" a heavy-footed, bow-nosed creature he liked no better than its master.
“What was the lightning down there, by the by?” Idrys asked him. “Wizard-work?”
“Hell receiving Tasmôrden,” Cefwyn said with a deep breath. For a moment he felt scant of wind, felt the ache in his arms, and then found his spirits rising, for his shieldman was beside him, and that was the most help he had had in days. “I give you your pick, crow.”
“I’ll take my own traitor, then, and my lord king can have his.”
“Done.”
Lances lowered. Horses gathered speed.
There was a difficulty in attempting to run through wary opponents, ones who had seen wars before this one, and who had their backs against a barrier neither horses nor lances could pass. Cefwyn waited, waited, and he and Idrys went opposite directions at the last moment, when lances had to strike or lift.
Ryssand tried a sweep of the lance to catch him: Cefwyn flung himself past its reach. Ryssand spun his horse about, its iron-shod feet about to overrun him; but Cefwyn had fought the Chomaggari, with their breed of infighting, infantry half-carried into battle by their cavalry, in among the stones and brush of the southern hills. Ryssand kept turning his horse, his shieldman trying for position, but Cefwyn laid hold of the tail of Ryssand’s surcoat and held on, pulling Ryssand sideways, down on his back and under his own horse’s hooves as the horse backed from its rider’s shifting weight.
The horse dealt the telling blow. The second came on the sword’s edge, and Ryssand’s head parted his body.
With an anguished shout Ryssand’s shieldman forced his way past his lord’s horse and rode down at him, and in a moment stretched long and clear as if by magic, Cefwyn turned on his heel and kicked the butt of the fallen lance into the horse’s path.
The horse went down, the rider spilled, and lay unmoving when the horse gathered itself dazedly to its feet.
Cefwyn caught a ragged breath then, and lurched half-about toward Idrys, who engaged his predecessor on foot in a noisy bout of swordsmanship, Idrys the younger man and the quicker, but Gwywyn a master years had proved.
Gwywyn knew, now, however, that he was alone, and he began to retreat, perhaps fearing some ignoble blow from the side.
He erred. He died, in the next instant, and Idrys shook the blood from his sword.
Cefwyn proffered him the reins of Ryssand’s destrier. “Catch me the guard’s horse. I’m too weary to chase him.”
“Majesty,” Idrys said, between breaths. It was rare to see sweat on master crow, but it was abundant. Idrys looked as if he had run miles, and perhaps he had, but he took the offered reins, and mounted stiffly on Ryssand’s bow-nosed horse.
And now four Dragon Guard and two Lanfarnesse rangers came sliding down from the height of the rocks.
“Damn you!” Cefwyn said to the Lord Commander.
“They were engaged,” Idrys said smoothly, from horseback. “I hurried to my appointment, my lord king. I think more may arrive shortly.—By your leave.”
He rode out. In a moment he had caught the guard’s horse, and led it back.
“My lord king,” Idrys said calmly, handing him down the reins, and by now, indeed, several more rangers stood on the height, and the fighting uphill had come almost to a standstill, a last few of the enemy seeking safety in flight, which Idrys indicated with a flourish of his hand. “Lord Maudyn seems to hold the hill; we have these rocks and several score men of my choosing from place to place along the ridge. I think between us the enemy has met his match.”
CHAPTER 8
The battering of the doors gave way to a crash of wood, a clump and a clatter on the stairs, and a worried shout.
“M’lord!” Uwen called, and came running up the steps, shield scraping on the stones, his face white and sweating: it was a far run in armor, but up he came, with Tristen’s guard and Crissand’s thumping behind him, onto the upper floor of the fortress.
“It’s gone,” Tristen said, meeting him in that unfamiliar hallway, and such was the relief he felt in saying it that the sky outside the windows seemed lightened. Crissand was beside him. There, too, was a glad reunion, Crissand with his father’s guard and their captain.
“The lightnin’ cracked an’ the sky was blowin’ somethin’ fierce,” Uwen said, out of breath. “But then we said that you was in there an’ b’ gods them gates was comin’ down.”
Just so he could imagine Uwen saying it: those great, well-set gates.
“With a ram,” Crissand’s captain said, “since there was this great old tree gone down in the wood’s edge. The lads spied it and we had the limbs off it and up and took it against the gate.”
“But the guards at the gate was confused in the banners,” Uwen said, “Tasmôrden claimin’ the same device. They fell to arguin’ amongst themselves whether it was Tasmôrden back again rammin’ ‘is own gates, or what it all meant… which he’s outside the walls, m’lord, somewhere! But Aeself’s goin’ through the town, street to street, now, tellin’ all the folk that it’s yourself, m’lord, that it’s Amefel come across the river, and they should hunt out the blackguards that’s left.”
There was a sudden tumult of arms within the halls, somewhere close.
“Our own,” Uwen said pridefully. “Them bandits o’ Tasmôrden’s is goin’’t’ ground an’ hopin’ for dark. They’re outnumbered by far.”
The gray space was open again. It was as if with the passing of the Shadow within the fortress that the sky and the land had lightened and spread wide, and Tristen could both hear and see again within the gray space. And the lords of the south he perceived. And the skirmish in the hall he perceived, and the living folk in the town, with Aeself among them. Cefwyn’s forces he perceived.
But Tasmôrden he could not find.
“Cefwyn’s east and south of us,” he said. “We have to tell him we’re here.” He led the way down the stairs, down to the lower hall of a fortress he had never entered by its proper doors. Its walls were stone unplastered in its upper courses, and its floor pavings smoothed more by age than art.
And the wooden doors stood ajar, the bright wounds of the wood and a bar standing askew attesting how force and a stone bench had gained entry for his men.
He set a hand on Uwen’s shoulder, grateful beyond measure, and they went outside, where Lord Cevulirn stood on the steps with Umanon of Imor Lenúalim, directing riders who occupied the walled courtyard.