Fortress in the Eye of Time

by C. J. Cherryh

  “There was no warning of this whim of our lord father’s?”

  “None.”

  “I believe your word, brother. Forgive my doubting nature.”

  Forgive that the desire of their father’s heart was for Efanor to succeed him as King of Ylesuin, and forgive that no few of the northern and eastern lords their father played off one against the other likewise wanted Efanor to succeed to the Dragon throne, for much the same reasons as Lord Heryn would doubtless prefer Efanor.

  How could he say to Efanor, They do not love you. They believe you a fool. Wake up from your pious dream. You have duties besides your own salvation. The kingdom needs a prince with his wits about him.

  And yet that blunt challenge of Efanor’s just now had re-wakened hope in him. The younger brother he had known in childhood had played their grandfather’s game right well, by seeming not to have an opinion. Facing every direction was surely Efanor’s chief attraction to certain lords, as his piety attracted priests. But he had known his brother’s real nature, before manhood added reticences and other considerations, and—dare he remotely hope?—possibly even the veneer of his piety. If that were in any degree a pretense,

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  Efanor might be many things, but not, toward the ambitions of the northern barons, at least, a fool.

  Desperate as they were to overtake, they could not push the horses to the limit and have anything left for fight or pursuit: already the column was threatening to string apart, the slower horses and the heavier riders making the difference. They held to their sensible pace, slacked back a little at intervals, then picked up the pace and kept moving, steadily, riding with all the skill they had. The sun declined another hour at such a rate, and it was a question in Cefwyn’s mind whether they dared assume their father had gone to Emwy, and whether they might save more time going overland and through the haunted precinct; or whether the easier going of the road would make up for the distance. He gambled on the road as the better choice, and they went another hour on.

  Then as they came atop the rise, with the turn toward Emwy a ridge away from them, there appeared a haze of dust above the hills. Cefwyn saw it at the same moment Efanor and several of the other men called out. There were riders ahead. They could believe it was the King’s party. But they still dared not ask the horses for more than they were giving.

  They kept moving, and the interval lessened. They were on the rise of the hill between them and the other force, the horses hard-breathing on the climb when, under the noise of their own horses, they heard the hammering of arms that was like no other sound on the gods’ earth.

  “Ambush,” Cefwyn exclaimed, and bitter fear was in his mouth, for here in one place were both Princes of Ylesuin, and the King was under attack. “Efanor, take ten of your guard and ride clear!”

  No, Efanor began to say. But:

  “Brother,” he said sharply, “ride back to Cevulirn on the road, and take Tristen and his man with you. Too many of the Marhanen are at risk here. Come for us with that force. You can trust Cevulirn.”

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  Efanor dropped back then, and Cefwyn turned his head and shouted at Uwen to take Tristen and ride with him. He saw them fall behind, and turned his attention forward, for they were coming over the hill, with the woods and the road and the embattled forces perhaps two, three hundred in number, before them.

  He rode hard then, hard as he dared to have his guard around him as he came down toward the fray. He saw light horsemen, well-armed, with no colors evident, attacking the bright scarlet of the Dragon banner. He set his shield on his arm, he drew his sword, and rode into the oncoming horsemen, Kerdin and other men with him.

  The meeting was a blur of motion, of bone-jarring impact to wrist and elbow as his sword struck, a flash of bodies in the press, racket of arms and the squall of angry horses on every hand as they plunged into the motley-armed lines.

  Like quicksilver, the bannerless attackers melted aside from their charge and let them see the center, where red and motley engaged in a crush that threatened to overwhelm with numbers the knot of men and red banners. There was the King his father.

  There was the danger.

  Cefwyn hauled on the reins to turn Danvy to that quarter and plied the spurs, wishing to the gods at this moment for Kanwy and not Danvy under him. The light horses were faster in pursuit, and they would not have been here in time—but they could not deliver the shock of heavy horse in driving straight for that embattled center, where the King’s banner was, and where the enemy would resist—while the hostile outriders skewed aside from them and let them through. He knew he was riding into a trap and a trick older than the Amefin hills, to fold in on them when they reached that center, but for his father’s life, he had no choice.

  “Sound our presence!” he bade Kerdin. “Loud as you can!”

  He hoped to gain his father’s attention and have his father try to fall back toward him, but he dared not stop his own charge for fear of losing momentum and bogging down in a separate envelopment.

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  Danvy stumbled and regained his feet on the rutted roadside as Cefwyn pushed him for more speed, and more attackers, nightmare sight, came down from their right flank, down off a hillside.

  Then he had view of a red horse, black rider, sweeping along the side of that hill toward those threatening riders—it was Tristen, with Uwen close behind: perhaps Efanor as well, was his instant, frightened thought. He damned them for fools if they had not retreated.

  But he could not help them—he had to reach the King’s force, a disarrayed mass, banners askew in the midst of a furious assault of light-armed riders, and to that sole objective he put the spurs to Danvy, swearing. He had no time to attend Tristen’s folly: he was about to lose a friend, and maybe the other heir of Ylesuin—but his father’s lines had been folded in, packing men in on each other so that lances and well nigh swords and shields were useless at the center, around the King. He wrung the last from Danvy to come in hard with what men could stay with him, to batter his way toward the center of that closing entrapment, to open it up and give the King’s men a chance to use their weapons on the envelopment he knew was now coming around both their forces, separately and fatally if he could not break that knot around his father.

  Danvy hit shoulder to shoulder with another horse. Cefwyn took a hit on the shield and shoved and swung blindly, felt the sword bite as Danvy staggered, recovered, and stumbled his way over yielding bodies. After that, he hacked and shoved whatever was in his path until it became a solid press of horse-flesh and bodies and he could go no further.

  He was in danger of being cut off, now, from his own companions. Danvy went almost to his knees on a body, recovered his footing, and a blow came down on the shield, an axe stuck fast in the gap. He struck back at what target he could see past the encumbrance, wrestling with the axe-wielder for possession of the shield until the man’s sheer strength dragged him into clear sight of the man and half out of Danvy’s saddle.

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  One of his men hacked at his attacker, who left the axe and reeled aside. Danvy struggled for footing and Cefwyn tried to clear his shield, laying about him half blind and encumbered, until it was red badges all about him, red banners, and he knew the King’s men as well as his own guard were bringing their forces to bear.

  Danvy jolted hard then as a horseman careened into him, and Danvy stumbled and went down. Cefwyn sprawled, rolled from the path of oncoming hooves and staggered up, still owning his sword by its wrist thong, still with the remnant of his shield on his arm. He had wet haze in his eyes, blurring th$$$ers coming down on him.

  I die here, he thought with strange amazement, and, clearing the drip of blood from his eyes with a shake of his head and a pass of his sleeve, realized he had lost his helm and the half-shield was the defense he had—his own lines had been driven back and it was only the enemy in his view. He braced his feet among the dead, facing that gray and brown wall of horsemen coming at him, every detail astonishin
gly clear, as if the last moments of living must be stretched thin till they broke, till a prince had a chance to know he had led his kingdom’s forces to disaster.

  A red horse plunged between. Tristen’s black form cut across his view, Uwen close on his heels…Tristen swung the red mare about; and Uwen was trying to reach him as Tristen rode Gery head-on into the oncoming riders.

  A blade swung. Unengaged, Cefwyn watched helplessly as Tristen ducked under and kept riding, the edge passing over his body by the narrowest of margins—he was going deep in among the enemy; and Uwen accounted for the man who had missed him.

  “M’lord!” a voice cried near at hand; a second horseman rode across in front of him and slid to a stop. The guardsman leapt off, and Cefwyn swung up to the offered saddle, took a new grip on his sword and braced himself for the onslaught about to come down on both of them.

  But it had fallen back. Among those motley horsemen, 368

  from the dead or the living, Tristen had found a blade and wielded it, shieldless, turning the red mare with his knees this way and that, the blade swinging dark and deadly in the light, as enemies went down. Tristen kept pressing, a dark and terrible force cutting into the enemy’s ranks, methodically taking man after man, forcing the red mare further. There began to be space about him—a rider in black velvet, and with a single man beside him and no shield at all.

  “Sihhë! Sihhë! ” the shout was ringing out from the enemy ranks now. They had seen, Cefwyn guessed, the emblem he bore. But Tristen gave no mercy to the rout that began around him. The red mare did not cease to weave and seek openings in the retreat and the sword did not cease to take lives. The arm was unerring, hewing down men, no move wasted. The clash of blades that did oppose him became a distant music, and the turning movements assumed a strange beauty, like a dance, the movement of a natural force of destruction that swept the enemy back and back.

  The scene hazed, with a sting of salt in his eyes. Cefwyn struggled for breath, left with no enemies, no battle for him to face. He sat the saddle, arms limp, battered beyond the strength to lift sword or shield, and he realized a remote sting and swelling in his leg as his strength ebbed. He tasted copper, realized that he had been hit, and that the pain had yet to reach him—but the leg obeyed him when he signaled the horse with his heel, and turned, looking for the King.

  More riders thundered up. He looked about in horror, lifted an arm that weighed double, and saw then the White Horse of Cevulirn sweeping onto the otherwise silent field.

  A horseman came up beside him. A hand seized him, stayed him in the saddle, and he could not see the man until he blinked his vision clear.

  “Idrys.” He recognized his black-armored would-be rescuer, who, late to the field of combat, held him ahorse until others could dismount and come about him. “No,” he protested, not willing to be lifted down. He refused their ministrations and, laying his sword across the saddlebow

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  because he had no strength or steadiness to sheath it, he rode with Idrys for escort this way and that among the corpses and the knots of men still ahorse.

  He saw the Dragon banner, then, and put the horse to as much speed as it could make over the trampled, littered ground, realizing that men around that banner were standing silent and with heads bowed. He saw Efanor among the men kneeling there—Efanor would have come in with Cevulirn’s men—and by Efanor’s grief-stricken demeanor he foreknew the worst.

  He dismounted—Idrys was instantly at his elbow to take his arm, to help him limp forward to where his father lay. The Dragon Guard had fallen thick about their King. He walked over bodies of men whose names he might know well if he looked. But his father’s white hair was the only thing truly clear to his eyes—their father was only exhausted, he said to himself: their father was hurt, not dead; their father was a force of nature, a fact of their lives—he could not die.

  Men gave back from him as he arrived, and he saw what he did not want to see, dark blood welling from the gut, a wound beyond any physician’s skill. Efanor was white-faced, tears making trails beside his mouth. Cefwyn fell to his knees with a gasp of pain, leaned on Efanor’s shoulder, and for a moment their father looked on both his sons kneeling over him.

  The King’s feeble hand reached out and closed on Efanor’s.

  “My son,” Ináreddrin said.

  No look, no single glance to spare for him. Cefwyn bided silent as in that instant the light faded from Ináreddrin’s eyes and the strength from his hand. The watching circle of men waited.

  A moment more. A last breath. Quiet, and that sudden relaxation no sleep could counterfeit.

  “Help me up,” Cefwyn muttered angrily. He had lost his sword—dropped it, forgotten it, he cared not except he had nothing to lean on to get up, and was trapped, kneeling in the dirt. He reached out his hand for Idrys and Idrys raised him up by a heavy effort as the pain of grief in his heart and the 370

  numbness in his leg together all but overwhelmed him. He had a desire to lay about him, striking anyone, everyone remotely witness to his father’s spite, to his father’s lying there in the shameful dirt, among the mortal dead.

  But there was no enemy. There was no argument. He was the object of attention now. Guelen guard and Ivanim together, Cevulirn, among the others, all looked to him to know what he thought, what he was, what he would be and do next.

  Then Cevulirn bowed the knee, and went down, stiffly. Others knelt. Someone—he was not certain who—took the battle-crown from his father’s blood-stained head and offered it to him in a grimed fist.

  Cefwyn took it in one hand. It was a gold band. He could bend it if he chose. He could cast it in the mud and grind it under his foot and bid them have Efanor. But he took it in both hands, solemnly set it on his brow—it rested on the cut, and hurt, but he was all but numb to it. There were no cheers.

  Efanor had risen, and stood by, doing nothing, only looking down at their father, tears running on his face. The King’s guard and his own awaited some first move, some gesture of omen, some order to bring the world into sense again. He reached, cold-bloodedly conscious of his choice, and took his brother’s hands, which he woodenly held as Efanor knelt, as Efanor dutifully, going through the play, kissed his hand, as Efanor rose and looked him in the face. He made his eyes distant and void of anger as he kissed Efanor’s bloody cheek in turn and let go his hands, which were cold as ice. Their father’s dying slight seethed in him with bitter, burning jealousy, and armored Efanor with self-righteousness and sacrifice before these men, in whose witness—damn them all—he would shed no tears.

  But why feel the sting? he thought then. In death, no different truth than in life. Father loved him, never me.

  Father practiced Grandfather’s tactics down to his dying breath, and gave Efanor his one victory, his sole recompense to be by one year not the heir.

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  But no man on the field chose to regard that last gesture as negating the sworn succession. Cevulirn, the Duke of the Ivanim, was a southern man, and his own. And Efanor had knelt, and kissed his hand, and owned to the legal truth—righteous priestling that he was; though he had been nowhere— nowhere when their father was fighting for his life, not priestly Efanor.

  But that was manifestly unfair. He had sent Efanor for Cevulirn. Efanor had followed his orders. He had brought Cevulirn—too damned late. Efanor had come to the field with Cevulirn’s men, on a horse he’d just worn down with a ride back to reach the Duke of the Ivanim and then, anxious for appearances, would not, he would personally swear to it, have sensibly bidden Cevulirn leave him ignobly on the road and make all haste to their father’s rescue without him.

  Which was also unfair to suppose. He was looking for someone to blame.

  Idrys steadied him. Someone had found a linen pad to tuck into the gash on his leg, and a bandage to wrap about his leg, over the reinforced leather. The pain as the man jerked a knot taut hazed his vision, then lessened, over all, as the wound found firm support.

  “G
et me to a horse, Idrys,” he said, and with a sweeping glance about him at the Ivanim, and to Cevulirn, he said, “Well that you heard my message and followed. I thank you.”

  “My lord King,” said Cevulirn, and sent a chill through his blood.

  “I heard late,” Idrys said on his other side. “Your message did reach me.” Idrys’ hands were gentle as he helped him.

  “Is Danvy gone? Did he go down?” He heard himself sounding like a small boy asking after a favorite pet, knowing as a man knew, that miracles did not happen on a field of battle.

  And he remembered then, upon that thought of miracles—or of damning wizardry: “Gods, Tristen. Where’s Tristen? ”

  “He’s well, Your Majesty,” Idrys said calmly, coldly. “I’ll have men look for Danvy.”

  “Stay,” Cefwyn said thinly, and caught a breath, insisting 372

  to stop at an ankle-high hummock on which he could stand and where Cevulirn and his father’s officers could both see him and hear his orders. “Take up the King. Make a litter. We’ll carry him—” He lost his breath and his clarity of thought both at once and stood shaking like a leaf.

  “To the capital, Your Majesty?”

  The notion dazed him, as for the first time he considered that he had personal and royal obligations suddenly far wider than Amefel. The capital: Guelemara. Halls safe from Elwynim assassins.

  And, at least for a while, safe from a rebellion in Amefel. Or from any incursion across its borders.

  But this was a murder from which a King who meant to reign long—could not retreat.

  Delegate their father’s funeral, in the capital—to Efanor, with the Quinalt orthodoxy free to stage everything to their satisfaction, and say what they liked?

  Let Efanor go home to the capital? Let him stand alone with the Quinalt to bless the proceedings and the northern lords to stand with him, bees around Efanor’s sweet-smelling, pious influence, with their lips to his ear?