Fortress of Owls

by C. J. Cherryh

  They had no official need, however, and escaped the display of banners and all the commotion that went with them. On what had become a windy, damp morning it was no procession, only a snugly cloaked faring-forth, down the streets where shopkeepers were sweeping debris from their walks, past the small repairs of battered shutters and fallen roof slates and tattered awnings.

  The day was, despite the fierce wind, warmer, and the town had gone from white to brown and unlovely. The jewelry of ice had crashed in ruin from the eaves

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  of buildings up and down the street and lay in dull heaps.

  Everything was muddy water and piles of ice and dirty remaining snow, all the way to the gates. The gutters ran full, and great puddles of cold water stood in the lower town, through which the horses went with disdain.

  Outside the gates and to the west lay the establishment of the stables, the pigs, the geese, the cattle, all manner of pens and sheds, and some of those pens were covered in water.

  South were orchards and sheep pasture, and near the walls, the untidy small dwellings of the gooseherds and cowherds and kennels and their yards, many of which had standing water.

  The granaries were on a mound, and stood clear. And to the west and north and up the nearer hills, the pastures spread out.

  Those that master Haman claimed for the horses were, by his foresight, the best drained and finest, where the land had streams running from the hills, but no threat from rising water.

  Dysarys and Cassam, his and Uwen’s heavy horses, had pride of place in the stables, and when they came within sight of the stables, there they were in the first two paddocks, out to tramp about on this muddy morning. They were Cefwyn’s gift, and had their own grooms from the day they were foaled: when the horses came, so the grooms came to Amefel, and there was some little ado while they turned Liss and Gery, their light horses that had been on call in the fortress stables, out to the paddocks for their turn at sunlight and room to run, and ordered the boys to brush down and saddle Gia and Petelly, their other two mounts, for the trip back up the hill.

  That brushing down was no small task, for the horses out in the pens had all coated themselves in mud this morning.

  Well-groomed hides stood up in

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  winter coat and caked points, and the stablehands were brushing and combing their charges in pens all along the row.

  More, Lusin and the household guard, too, had sent for their second horses, and a sorry-looking lot they faced in exchange, to the stablehands’ great embarrassment.

  “As we didn’t know ye were comin’, m’lord.”

  “Saddle ’em. An’ no mud on the gear,” Uwen said gruffly, and without any grace for the weather. Haman would say much the same: horses should have been inside this morning, kept ready. “Suppose there’d been Elwynim across the river. Suppose we’d had to saddle, an’ ever’ man in the Guard callin’ for his horse, an’ them muddy as pigs! Get to it!”

  Boys ran.

  “They’ll roll,” Tristen said, seeing Gery do exactly that, turned out in the paddock. She waved her feet in the air, then rose triumphant, with a fine muddy coat.

  “Horses,” Uwen said in disgust, but there was little he loved better in the world than being in the stables and having his hands on a fine horse.

  Dys and Cassam, however, were clean and brushed, first among all the horses, and had no more than spattered legs.

  They were ready to ride, to Tristen’s great pleasure, and with no ado at all. The guards’ were not.

  “Get us some horses,” Lusin protested, “with His Grace bound out and us afoot. Damn the mud.”

  “We’ll not be far,” Tristen said. “No great need. Uwen will be with me.”

  “M’lord,” Lusin said unhappily.

  “At my direct order,” Tristen said. “We’ll be riding just down the lane.”

  Lusin was not happy, but in a trice they had saddled Dys and Cassam and he and Uwen were out down the safe land between the rows of paddocks, an unprece 372 / C. J. CHERRYH

  dented lack of guards, a privacy Tristen found pleasant. Dys and Cassam were in a fine, cheerful mood, for they used the light traveling harness, not the heavy fighting gear, and that meant it was exercise and frolic, not work: both were tugging to have more rein as they reached the end of the paddock lane.

  “Oh, we’re full o’ tempers this mornin’,” Uwen said. Indeed Cass was taking Dys’ excited mood, throwing his head, working his mouth at the bit, both horses tending to a quicker pace as they made the turn. “Hold there, ye scoundrel.”

  The great feet spattered puddles far and wide as Dys took to a quicker and quicker pace, and Cass did, and step by step it was riders and horses in the same wild rejection of discipline, mud flying. They made a wild charge past fences and to the very end of the paddocks, far, far past the lane.

  “To the trees,” Tristen called out, his heart cheered by the lack of troubles they had found. The wind stung his face and his eyes, tore at cloaks and manes, and had a bracing edge of cold.

  “We told Lusin,” Uwen began, but the horses’ excitement swept them on, and it was only a little distance more. Off they went, as far as the skeletal gray trees, and the turn there that led to the west…the west, and riders on the road.

  There were no pennons, no color about them; and they were not Ivanim. Tristen drew in quickly, and Uwen beside him, at once in sober attention, Dys and Cassam fighting the rein now, for they had well-taught notions what to do with strangers confronting them, and now the high spirits were for a charge and a fight.

  But the riders, three men, who looked as if they had ridden far and slept rough, never changed their pace, though it was sure they had seen they were not alone.

  “M’lord,” said Uwen, “I’d have ye ride back. At least FORTRESS OF OWLS / 373

  stand fast an’ let me ride to ’em an’ ask their business.”

  “No,” Tristen said. They had their swords with them, if no shields. They never left the Zeide gates unarmed or unarmored.

  “Ye got that plain cloak, m’lord, an’ no color nor banner showin’.”

  “Let’s find out their business all the same,” he said, “and let them explain who they are.”

  They came a little farther, then, until at a stand of beeches on one side and a flooded patch across the road, they had come within hail. “I’ll bespeak ’em,” Uwen said, Tristen saying nothing. “Hullo, there! Ye’d be men out o’ Bryn, or what?”

  Then the riders did stop, on the other side of the flooded patch. “Messengers,” said the foremost, and raked his hood back, showing a bearded face, and it in want of trimming and shaving. A rough sort, they all looked. “We’ve come to meet with the Sihhë-lord in Amefel.”

  “An’ to whose pleasure, if it ain’t his sendin’?” Uwen replied.

  “As it ain’t! What business have ye?”

  “With him, I say.” The speech was not a common man’s, not Amefin, nor like any but Her Grace’s, and hearing that lordly tone, Tristen slipped his cloak back, showing the blood red of Amefel and the black Eagle beneath.

  “You?” the man asked, suddenly respectful. “Your Grace?”

  “Tristen,” he named himself. “Duke of Amefel. Messengers from whom? Not from Bryn.”

  “Elwynor, Your Grace.”

  “My men had orders to gather in weapons.” He saw a sword at a saddlebow, and for the rest there was no knowing what the men hid: armor at very least, perhaps heavier armor than his and Uwen’s, but he trusted to his own skill.

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  Yet his remark brought no threat. Instead, the leader of the band dismounted from his weary, head-hanging horse and went to one knee in the mud at the edge of the puddle.

  “They said at Althalen Your Grace had given them leave to make a settlement, and we’ve come to ask shelter for all the men in our company, our arms to serve Your Grace.”

  “Ye didn’t come by the bridge on this road
,” Uwen said,

  “where His Grace has appointed ye to cross.”

  “No. East. East of Anas Mallorn, such as we could, where we could.”

  “Gettin’ horses across in this weather,” Uwen said in amazement. “A hard thing, that.”

  “A raft and rope, sir, all we had. We crossed to Bryn, but the lord in Modeyneth said we should go to Althalen, and so I sent the company there under a sergeant. But we four came to pay our courtesies and ask…” The officer had taken to trembling, there exposed to the cold, and the others slid down from their horses and caught him up, themselves in no better case. “To ask your lordship for relief for Elwynor,” the man reprised with a fierce effort, “and to swear to your banner, because we will never swear to the likes of Tasmôrden.”

  “So all of us,” another said. “Lord, men, and horses, numbering near sixty, of ten houses, all to your service.”

  “Such houses as they are now,” said the third. “And our lands all cinders and ash.”

  They were no common soldiers, by the sound of their speech: Tristen had learned that distinction, little attention he paid to it when men were as brave as these seemed. They were noble by their actions and by their deeds, and while armed Elwynim were the very presence he had wanted to keep away from FORTRESS OF OWLS / 375

  Henas’amef, considering his duty as duke of Amefel, here were Ninévrisë’s men, at war with Tasmôrden, carrying their quarrel into his borders.

  But here, too, were horses near to foundering and men who had camped or ridden through the storm he had raised. He felt keen remorse for their hardship.

  “There’s food and shelter ahead,” Tristen said, “for you and your horses.”

  “I’ll walk, by your leave,” the foremost said faintly. “I can’t get up again, and my horse can do with the relief.”

  Indeed the man set out walking, wading knee-deep through the water, unsteady in his steps and leading his horse, and so the others walked, leading theirs.

  So Tristen and Uwen rode on either side of them, escorting them all the way to the paddock lane, and the muddy track there.

  “Ho!” Uwen called out as they came down the lane. “Boys for these horses, an’ quick about it! See to ’em and mind them legs! These horses has come through that storm an’ through flood!”

  Boys appeared from sheds and shelters, and so, too, did Lusin and the rest, from the grooms’ shelter, near the wall.

  The bedraggled Elwynim managed to walk that far, where Aswys and other senior grooms marshaled a warm place, dry blankets, and a cup of warmed wine apiece, even fresh bread and butter…at which the grimy-handed visitors could only stare in exhaustion and desire, too weary even to eat more than a few bites.

  But Tristen, wrapped in a warm cloak and having dry boots, as these men did not, sat by the fire and listened, with Uwen; to the account of men whose news was as they feared, that Ilefínian had gone down in looting and confusion, and that very little of Elfharyn’s force had escaped the walls at all.

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  These men’s company, losing touch with any coherent resistance, had run from east of Ilefínian to the river, and escaped with their weapons and their horses, by great resourcefulness, expecting to live like bandits in the hills of Amefel and to get a message to Ninévrisë, to learn whether they might have refuge.

  “But from the new lord in Bryn we heard different things,”

  said the foremost, whose name proved to be Aeself, a lieutenant, a nephew of Elfharyn’s line. “We heard in Modeyneth about the old wall and Your Grace and Mauryl Gestaurien, and so we came to offer all we have, ourselves and our weapons and our fortunes such as they are.”

  All they had was very little, except weapons and exhausted horses, but not of little account was the courage and the persistence that had carried them this far, to a town that, before, had seen the heads of Elwynim messengers adorn its gates.

  “Sleep,” Tristen said, for he judged these men had had no rest last night. “Come to the Zeide when you have the strength, and borrow horses for the ride up. You’ll show me on maps where you crossed.” It was in his mind that what these men had managed, more might do, and not only Ninévrisë’s men.

  They lacked sure knowledge of such crossings as scattered intruders knew to use.

  To Uwen he said: “Find two riders to carry a message to Althalen. Tell them their men came here safely.”

  “Better send more grain from here,” Uwen said. “Wi’ horses to feed, they’ll need it, and it’s quicker than sendin’ to Modeyneth.”

  “Do so,” he said.

  “Tents,” said Uwen. “And axes and good rope; that too. ’At’s a whole damn village they’ve become, m’lord, and now there’s a company.”

  No longer the domain of mice and owls, Tristen FORTRESS OF OWLS / 377

  thought, and as he was taking his leave, Aeself, falling to his knees, insisted to swear, and gave his oath to him.

  “Take my pledge,” Aeself said, “to be your man in life and death, and gods save Elwynor.”

  “So with the rest of us,” said Üillasan, oldest of the three, and went to his knees and took his hand and swore.

  But Angin, the last and youngest, said, “To the hope of the King To Come…for I’ve seen him.”

  That brought sharp looks, even from Uwen.

  “I’d have a care there, m’lord,” Uwen said for Tristen’s ear alone, “and not take that oath from him. It ain’t wise, an’ it ain’t loyal.”

  “What Uwen says I regard,” he said to the young man.

  “All of us think it,” said Aeself, “and damn us if you like, the boy’s said it for good and all, my lord. You are our lord.”

  He saw the distressed looks of the Guelenmen who guarded him, and Uwen’s look, and the shocked faces of the grooms, Guelen and Amefin together.

  “I was Shaped, not born,” he said bluntly, “and some say I’m Sihhë and some say I was Barrakkêth. That may be. But I say my name is Tristen, and while I say so, not even a wizard’s wish can turn me to any other creature.”

  “What my lord wills,” Aeself said, and so the others said, in exhausted voices, wrung thin by cold and hardship, men sinking to the last of their strength.

  “Take care of them,” Tristen said to the grooms, for it seemed added hardship to send them to horseback again, and up the hill, when they were only now warm and eased of sodden armor: here in the grooms’ quarters were men skilled in medicines and armed with salves and every comfort for men or horses.

  “Send

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  them up the hill when they’re well and able.—Are our horses ready?”

  “That they are, m’lord.”

  “An’ as for what they said and what they wished to swear,”

  Uwen said gruffly, “an’ all ye witnessed, the wine come over

  ’em, is all. Talk, an’ ye’ll have me to deal with.”

  “The wine came over ’em,” Aswys said. “’At were the case.

  Isn’t a man here heard aught else or remembers it, or I’ll skin

  ’im, m’lord.”

  Heated wine might have brought out the oaths, so Tristen said to himself, and held in his heart what Uleman had said of him, and what Auld Syes had said, and now these men.

  But the Elwynim might hail him king or High King or whatever else they wished: things were true in a wizard’s way of speaking that were not true to ordinary Men, and the converse, as well. He had been Barrakkêth and he was not, while he was Tristen, Mauryl’s heir, and that was what he chose. Sihhë-lord Barrakkêth might have been, and lord of all the lands the High Kings ruled, but he had never been king, in the sense the later lords had been.

  “If it were true I was Barrakkêth,” he said to Uwen and Lusin and the rest on the way back to the gates, while they were still outside the streets of the town and alone, “if that were true, still, Barrakkêth was never King. What the Elwynim think doesn’t change that.”

  “Wine an’ truth,” Uwe
n said, riding bay Gia beside Tristen, on honest, shaggy Petelly. “They meant it wi’ their hearts, an’

  think they’ve sworn. So thank the gods His Reverence is in Guelessar. Their lord dead, one an’ the other, an’ the Elwynim lookin’ for their King To Come for the last sixty years, so who’s to say? That old prophecy’s been rattlin’ about for sixty years lookin’ for a likely place.”

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  “This is not that place.”

  “Ye’re Sihhë an’ you’re a lord, an’ ye must say that’s uncommon in Ylesuin, m’lord.”

  “Duke of Amefel, Cefwyn’s friend, and Her Grace’s. Mauryl’s heir. Emuin’s, someday. That’s enough.”

  “Ye should say so often enough the Elwynim hear it,” Uwen said, “beggin’ pardon, m’lord, but I’d be damn careful to say so, because the Elwynim’s apt to get notions.”

  The people who on festive days called him Lord Sihhë in the streets saw nothing unusual in his coming and going on this day, and lacking the signs of an official procession, they only paused in their business and bowed as he passed.

  A handful of children ran along beside, untrustable and noisy, at which Petelly also looked askance. Such were the hazards of Henas’amef. It had assumed a beloved, homelike character, even its obstacles and hazards: he loved it, he decided, and the men in the stable threatened that love…threatened him as much as they helped Her Grace.

  He had to make them understand that. They wanted from him what he could not give, and wanted to give him what was not his to hold…what he had never held. This was his Place in the world, his, Crissand’s, the two of them, as Barrakkêth had valued Crissand’s remotest kinsman, long, long ago—so he fancied, yet remembered nothing, saw nothing further Unfold. Three riders from the north could threaten his peace this winter, and ride in on the wings of storm, but he drew a deep breath and willed his land quiet, and his visitors safe, and the war far from the people he battered with rain and wind—far gentler enemies than otherwise threatened them.