Fortress in the Eye of Time

by C. J. Cherryh

  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 Ninévrisë 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

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  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—Ninévrisë and Cefwyn who were arguing about her presence on the field. Ninévrisë 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,” Ninévrisë 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 693

  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 Ninévrisë 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 Ninévrisë and Cefwyn. It was another attachment he could not spare the thought to maintain now. Ninévrisë was one more life to fling at the lives Hasufin flung at them. But she was not Emuin, and whatever her father had been, Ninévrisë

  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 Ninévrisë’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, Ninévrisë 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 Ninévrisë

  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

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  said. She had read the same writers on the topic. She had read Tashânen.

  “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 Ninévrisë 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 Ninévrisë

  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 695

  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?” Ninévrisë 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 ver
y 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, 696

  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 midafternoon, 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 midafternoon, as the plan was, they made camp on a high spot beside the road—Massitbrook, 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 697

  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 ’em, 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.

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  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 699

  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 Ninévrisë 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.

  Idrys came in, and had his supper; from outside came the smell of fires and cookery. Someone in the distance had a pipe, and played it quietly and well. They sat in warmth and pleasant company and discussed the day and the weather and their situation, while now and again reports came in—Gwywyn and Kerdin managed that, and Idrys, on whose shoulders a good deal of the effort of ordering the march had rested, stretched out his long legs in front of him, drank two cups of wine and relaxed.

  Gwywyn came in once to report that the outriders had met the returning messenger from the outpost at Emwy ruin, nearest Tasien’s camp: and, their intelligence consequently extending all the way to the river, they could state with assurance that the field beyond Emwy was clear and their line of march toward Emwy and Lewen plain was secure: Aséyneddin had not crossed the river—and that was very good news.

  That brought a third cup of wine, and there were far lighter expressions. The lady said then she was for bed, and so they all said.

  “We shall break ca
mp before light,” Cefwyn reminded them, and they were beginning to take their leave of him, and went out into the dark, Ninévrisë to the north and himself to the south.

  But just then came a rider thundering down the road and, 700

  by the sound of it, to their very door. The guards shouted angrily outside, and the rider kept going past the tent, hoofbeats fading in the distance.

  Cefwyn had started from his chair. Idrys had been quicker, and at the door of the tent a Guelen guardsman was on his way in.

  “Your Majesty,” that man said, distraught and angry.

  But in just that small interval—came another such rider thundering past, and another angry outcry from the guards, as the rider passed.

  Cefwyn cursed and walked past Idrys’ questions and the guard’s attempt at explanation—and stopped still in the doorway of the tent.

  Tristen came and stood at Cefwyn’s shoulder. The only oddity he could discover was his own banner, which had stood alone a short distance from the Marhanen Dragon and the Eagle of the Amefin of Henas’amef.

  Two poles now stood imbedded in the earth, bearing village standards of the Amefin, at angles crossing his own black banner.

  Another rider came speeding through the camp, village standard flying from the spear he held.

  “Damn,” said Idrys, and would have gone out.

  “No,” said Cefwyn sharply; and to his guards, “No altercation.”

  That man came by and flung his spear—and another standard joined the Sihhë banner.

  Came a body of men afoot, right behind him, and four more of the Amefin standards went into place about the Tower and Star. Without seeming to notice the guards or them watching, they planted their standards, troubling themselves to straighten and make firm the standards hastily set. Then they turned and walked away.

  “Plague on them!” Idrys muttered; and Tristen felt cold and isolate—somehow at fault for what he understood as a shifting of allegiances of the Amefin—to his banner, which he neither wanted, nor knew what to do with. He thought that 701