Fortress of Owls

by C. J. Cherryh

  “If that should happen,” Tristen said, “by no means receive armed men into your camp. Have them draw off to the east on the shore, and not up the hill, under any circumstance: occupy that, and be sure. If they obey orders, they may camp and not stir out of that camp. And should it happen, advise me of it as quickly as you can. You can change horses at Modeyneth: Drusenan would provide you what you need.”

  Anwyll looked much more content with that instruction, yet a little anxious all the same. “I understand so, Your Grace. And welcome news.” Over all, Anwyll looked more content than he had been in coming here, and seemed particularly friendly toward Cevulirn’s presence, as if, Tristen thought, Anwyll had not quite trusted his orders; but now seeing the duke of Ivanor, had more confidence in what he was bidden do.

  That was very well: whatever comforted Anwyll could only make him a surer captain in this post; and until late hours and by lanternlight, with the snow sifting down from the heavens, they sat in Anwyll’s tent and talked of Bryn’s wall and of extending the river-watch all along the border.

  “In both cases,” Cevulirn said, “no prevention to any small force bent on mischief, and going through the hills, but no great force can cross.”

  FORTRESS OF OWLS / 261

  Such forces needed heavy transport, and therefore needed roads, and well-maintained ones, with gravel and rock to fill the soft places. And that, too, Tristen knew as he knew that it was not the kind of warfare he and Cevulirn would use, if there were not Cefwyn’s express order in the way.

  “The men of Nithen district in Elwynor were forced to join Tasmôrden’s army,” Tristen said, “and so may others be with him by no choice of their own. Such men may well find occasion to slip across by ones and twos. Question carefully any Elwynim you find, man or woman, and treat them kindly. But be wary. Limit what they can see here. If you get the chance, learn where Cuthan has gone, whether he joined Tasmôrden, and doing what; and what the situation is in Ilefínian, and what kind of force Tasmôrden has. All that manner of thing.”

  And after their small gathering dispersed to their beds,

  “Captain,” Tristen lingered to say.

  “Your Grace.” Anwyll’s shoulders were at once drawn up, wariness as quick as an indrawn breath.

  “The highroad passes by Henas’amef on its way to Guelessar,” Tristen said. “Don’t send Idrys dispatches by the riverside. There’s no gain in speed and a great risk to the couriers.”

  “I assure Your Grace…there is no disloyalty …”

  “I know there is not, sir, and I regard Idrys as a friend. He’s an honest man, as I know you are, and I know you are his man. Send to him what you will, with my goodwill. I ask only your courier gather messages from me as well, so we need not have two men risking life and limb on the roads in bad weather.”

  Anwyll showed himself overwhelmed, and if manners had allowed it would surely have sat down. “Your Grace, I have never reported anything against you.”

  “Yet have reported to Idrys.”

  262 / C. J. CHERRYH

  “Yes, Your Grace.”

  “I know you have your own orders. The Dragon Guard is mine only for the season. You should know Uwen has sent home certain of the Guelen Guard, men who wished to be released. I’ve had him take command himself, for the while, until I can muster a force to defend the province.”

  “Which officers were dismissed, if Your Grace please to say?”

  “The captain and the senior sergeant, both, and certain of the other officers whose names I did not inquire.” He found himself on the edge of his knowledge of what, as duke of Amefel, he could order; and had ordered, by those senses of danger which sometimes ruled his actions. Nothing had Unfolded to him in so doing except the small, steady unfurling of logical steps: take command, hold command, shape it until it fit the hand and the man that must lead it. “I said to the Lord Commander that Uwen Lewen’s-son would be my captain. So he is. And the garrison is what is his to command, since king Cefwyn set me over it.”

  “The Lord Commander so advised me,” Anwyll said, with a resolute look. “And I am to command the Dragons, over which I am instructed Your Grace has no authority.”

  That was Idrys’ caution, which far from offending, had a warm and familiar feeling. He smiled, hearing it.

  “Fair,” he said. “Yet you came here.”

  “I’m instructed to obey reasonable orders, in the king’s interest.”

  “And will you name officers for the Guelens? Uwen gave me a list. He says he can’t appoint new officers, but you can. Who do you think is the best man?”

  “Wynned.”

  “Will return when his mother mends, which I wish she does soon. He seems a good man.”

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  “A wall in Bryn’s lands and a guard captain dismissed. Your Grace, I had as lief not become adviser to this. And I will send to the Lord Commander, I advise you so.”

  “Idrys wishes me to do what keeps the king safe…have this province strong and ready, and not to admit a flood of Tasmôrden’s men or to have Her Grace’s men slaughtered against the river.” It was very clear to him, clearer than all the debates they had had in councils before this, now that he had seen this place by the river, and that identical, snowy shore. “Did you approve the Guelens’ officers, the things they did?”

  “No, Your Grace, I didn’t, nor do. If they were my command, they’d be set down.”

  He became aware, though how he was not himself sure, that the captain thought himself superior to the Guelen officers, and well he might: it was the truth. But Anwyll was wellborn, and Uwen was always daunted and quiet when Anwyll was about, falling back on his claim he was a common man.

  And that was also behind his decision to send Anwyll to the river, that there was a certain reluctance in the man to deal with Amefin, Teranthines, Bryaltines, common sergeants, or peasants. It seemed a fault in him, one hard to lay hands on or to catch with the eye.

  As now, Anwyll was sure he would have dealt differently with the Guelens, yet would likely defend them against any charge laid against them in the town.

  He gazed at Anwyll, and Anwyll seemed entirely disquieted.

  “What they’ve done was wicked,” Tristen said. “I don’t quite know all that the Quinalt means by wicked, but to kill prisoners was wicked. The men they led aren’t bad soldiers, Uwen says so, and he should know, having been one.”

  264 / C. J. CHERRYH

  Again that small hesitation, as if what Uwen said and Uwen thought was not, perhaps, what Anwyll thought.

  “Wynedd is a good man,” Anwyll said. “I have no trouble naming him. And Ennyn to hold as his second. I’ll write out orders and place them in your hands.”

  Anwyll continued to be troubled, and wished he were not in Amefel. Tristen took that thought to his tent afterward.

  “I’ve no doubt Anwyll will write to Idrys tonight,” Tristen said when he joined Cevulirn in the soldiers’ tent they had claimed for the night, all their guard sleeping the night in the mess tent which, against a shed now devoted to equipment, had a solid wall for a windbreak.

  Cevulirn occupied his half of the tent, sitting on his pallet, their only light from the general fire outside.

  “Should he not?” Cevulirn said.

  “He should. But I mean so urgently he’ll likely slip a rider out before morning, and I only hope he sends him by the Modeyneth road. He doesn’t trust me, and I wish I could mend that. He doesn’t quite trust Uwen, either, or doesn’t think he should command the garrison, and to that I don’t agree.”

  “You should have no illusions, Amefel: he is Guelen, wellborn, and Quinalt, and sees much that troubles him.”

  “He’s Idrys’ man, and I do trust Idrys.”

  That drew a silent, rare laughter from the gray lord of the Ivanim. “As I think Idrys trusts you, but beware of that trust of his.”

  “Why do you say so?”

  Cevulirn, looking at him in the almost-dark and leaping light of t
he fire outside, was all shadows and FORTRESS OF OWLS / 265

  surmise. “Because, lord of Amefel, Idrys trusts you on grounds of your honesty and your friendship for His Majesty, and if he ever doubts the friendship, or the honesty, or the gift Mauryl Kingsbane gave you, that trust will go with it. And you will never know at what moment. That’s the difficulty of trusting loyal men.”

  “Why do you call him that?”

  “Mauryl? Or Idrys?”

  “Kingsbane. King maker, in the Red Chronicle.”

  “Bane to Elfwyn, at very least. Kingmaker, Kingbreaker.

  Words.”

  “Wizards’ words mean things.”

  “That they do,” said Cevulirn. “And so I say again, Idrys is aware what they called Mauryl Gestaurien, and he thinks on it daily, I do assure you, Amefel.”

  “I shall never betray Cefwyn.”

  “You,” Cevulirn said, “are Mauryl Kingmaker’s Shaping. And you are Lord Sihhë of the grateful Amefin. With the best will in the world toward Cefwyn, and all love, do you deny either?”

  Perhaps it was a chill draft that wafted through the tent, but it was like Mauryl’s questions. They sat in shadows, and shadows flowed all about them. He trembled when Cevulirn said that; and the trembling would not let him, for a long, long moment, utter any objection.

  “I know your heart and your intent,” Cevulirn said relentlessly, “and with the best will to His Majesty in the world, I will answer your summons this Wintertide, and bring the lords of the south with me. That, too, will trouble the good captain, beyond any news the two of us have brought him. But I don’t trouble my sleep over the fact. Anwyll for all his good traits is a Guelenman to the least hair on his head. So I am Ivanim, and southron, and have blood of the Sihhë in my veins. And good Guelen will I never be, lord of Amefel, but a strong friend of His Majesty and friend to you, yes, I shall be.

  266 / C. J. CHERRYH

  For that matter, Idrys himself is southron, Anwyll’s Guelen loyalty notwithstanding; a man, a Man, and not of the old blood, nor will he trust me or the entirely, but trust him, I say, and write him often and keep him apprised of what you do.

  Above all His Majesty must not lose faith in the south, and just the same as that, neither must Idrys. There. Do I go too far?”

  “No. No, sir, you do not.”

  He understood, both that he was right about Cevulirn, and that he was mapping a dangerous path through Guelen resentments. The northern barons wanted nothing more than to find a cause against him. They would not like the river camps, would far less like his breaching of the king’s law to build the wall near Modeyneth.

  Bring your men, he wished to say to Cevulirn, tonight, the two of them alone to hear, and plan. Bring me the army, and we’ll cross the river and bring aid to Ilefínian.

  But the words would not come. When it came to defying Cefwyn’s direct order, he had a sudden vision of blood, of fire, and if he were not anchored by Cevulirn’s still-waking presence and Cevulirn’s next, unanswered question, he might have gone wandering to learn what he was almost certain of just now, a desperate, a sinking feeling.

  “What’s wrong?” Cevulirn.

  “The gates,” Tristen said, for he saw tall gates and fire and figures moving in the light.

  “What gates?” Cevulirn asked, for there were none here.

  Tristen drew a sharp breath, seeking the place where he was instead of the riot of fire and the clash of arms. “The gates have come open. At this very moment.”

  “Where?” Cevulirn asked. “Whose gates?”

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  “Ilefínian has fallen.”

  Cevulirn heard him in utter silence.

  “We are too late to prevent it,” Tristen said. “I don’t know how I should know, or how I do know, but I think someone has opened the gates.” He thought, more, that a breath of wizardry had pressed the situation, working quietly and for the merest instant flaring forth. He thought it the more strongly when he had formed the thought, and then flung a defense up in the gray space, strongly, nothing subtle.

  Then the smothering feeling lifted.

  “Now the birds will come,” he said, thinking on Auld Syes.

  “That was what she foretold. We should send to Cefwyn ourselves. Tonight.”

  No question it must be one of Anwyll’s men, to hope to get to Idrys.

  “Your lordships?” Anwyll asked when they called on him, and he came, roused from bed and with a cloak clutched about him in the dim forechamber of his tent.

  “Ilefínian has fallen,” Tristen said, with Cevulirn at his back, and both of them determined.

  “Did Your Grace receive a courier?” was Anwyll’s reasonable question.

  “No,” Tristen said, “but I’m sure it’s so. Deck the bridge.”

  “Your Grace—” Clearly Anwyll had had his wits shaken, and smoothed hair out of his eyes, trying to compose arguments.

  “You mean to let them across?”

  “The ones to come first will be Her Grace’s forces.”

  “His Grace thinks Tasmôrden’s men are in the town,”

  Cevulirn said, “and if that’s so, devil a time holding them from the ale stores.”

  268 / C. J. CHERRYH

  “Aye, my lord, I understand, but no messenger, as you say…”

  “Disarm any soldiery,” Tristen said, “and send them under escort to Modeyneth. He’ll escort them to refuge. I need a rider to go to Guelemara, to His Majesty, to tell him.”

  “Word from the watchers on the river northward may get there first, Your Grace.”

  “And if something befalls the messengers, no word at all.

  There must be a messenger.”

  “Yes, Your Grace.”

  “For seven days leave the decking in place on the bridge.

  Then take it down again.”

  “Yes, Your Grace.” Anwyll had the look of a man utterly confounded. “And what if the Elwynim come, the wrong Elwynim, and the bridge is decked?”

  “You can hold them, Captain,” was Cevulirn’s short answer.

  “There’s more than enough force here.”

  “Your Grace,” Anwyll answered, passion rising. “We did not plan to stand with the bridge open! We need archers!”

  “We’ll have them here,” Tristen said, “from Bryn.”

  “Amefin, Your Grace.”

  “This is Amefel,” Cevulirn said. “Amefin are in good supply here.”

  “Your Grace.” Whatever Anwyll had been about to say he thought better of, and collected himself. “I’ll have you a rider immediately, Your Grace.”

  Tristen penned a letter in haste and gave it to Anwyll’s messenger. Anwyll added another dispatch, and the rider left. There was little to do then but return to beds and rest what of the night remained, he and Cevulirn, in quiet converse for the better part of two hours into the dark, coming to no conclusion but that they must set a force here sufficient to hold, and that FORTRESS OF OWLS / 269

  archers and a muster of Bryn to the wall-building and the defense of the bridge was inevitable.

  And if Elwynim arrived who had a disposition to fight their war on Amefin soil, there was a hard choice, separating the two sides and being sure, as Cevulirn said, that the ones they might let abide in Amefel accepted the authority in Henas’amef.

  “I’d hoped still a small force might have reached through and broken the siege,” Tristen said in the shadowed dark, all the troubling visions roiling and leaping in the firelight that came through the flap. “But that won’t happen now. Now it’s Cefwyn’s war, the sort he wanted.”

  “I’ll post my guard here,” Cevulirn said. “It’s the only reasonable choice. A handful, but the best. They can use the bows.”

  “I thank you,” Tristen said into the dark, having no idea else where he could lay hands on more troops this side of Assurnbrook, besides the troubled Guelens. And for a moment the small glow that was Cevulirn in the gray space was a greater one, and the bond of wizard-craft
touched one and two out in the camp, smaller lights, but true.

  Then, quietly, secret in the deep of night, Tristen set himself to wish such fugitives well and guide them to the river.

  And he began to wish snow about Ilefínian, thick, blanketing snow, not so far as the river, where fugitives might strive to cross, but all about the sack of the town, a white blanket to cover the ugliness of death and fire and wounds.

  A pure and pristine white, to cool angers, drive men indoors, and give Tasmôrden an enemy that would not yield to the sword.

  He did so, and it seemed he was not quite alone in his effort, that in utter silence something in Cevulirn 270 / C. J. CHERRYH

  answered, and something in Henas’amef reached out to him, and something in the tower there waked and listened.

  Ilefínian is fallen, was the burden of the night. And on the road, two riders, Anwyll’s, and the one Anwyll had sent for them, on to Modeyneth, to Henas’amef, and to Guelessar.

  C H A P T E R 4

  In the morning was time enough to discuss explicit orders with Captain Anwyll, who had heard the news in the middle of the night with doubt and anger.

  But Anwyll had not failed his instructions, and had ordered the bridge decking restored at first light. His men, the elite Dragon Guard, accustomed to clean quarters and the finest fare, swore and struggled and pressed into service the oxen that should this very day have been moving the long-purloined carts back to Guelessar. The drivers were angry, and protested, and were pressed into service, handling the oxen, so Anwyll reported. Where there was not snow and ice, there was mud.

  The drivers would be angrier yet to hear they needed remain to take the decking off in another sevenday, Tristen was well sure. They would need the oxen for that, and the carts would not move.

  That the Ivanim guard, who were fair shots with a bow, would also remain until the bridge was closed and undecked again, however, improved Anwyll’s mood marvelously.

  And that Cevulirn’s lieutenant would remain to lead those men heartened Anwyll even more so, for by that establishment of another senior officer, not all the burden of decision and judgment was on him. Cevulirn’s lieutenant was veteran of numerous independent actions, as Anwyll was not; he was brisk, decisive, and