Fortress of Eagles

by C. J. Cherryh

  “Hazardous,” Idrys said.

  “But filing in with the court, out with the court, bowing when the court bows, attached to my brother’s well-known, pickly piety… Efanor’s convert. And my brother is Marhanen. Efanor will know exactly the stakes. Religious that he is, I shall have him simply to understand this is political—he will still try to secure Tristen’s soul, none could daunt him, but Efanor will see this act as exactly what it is, will know why it is, will defend Tristen as a point of honor. In my brother’s keeping, close by his elbow, there’s no way for Murandys to come at him, not a bit! And in the spring, once we launch our forces into Elwynor, then Tristen will ride with me far from the Quinaltine, for the summer long. By next fall, good gods, he’ll simply do what most converts do, attend only on holy days and at funerals.

  Blessed once is blessed, so far as the commons know and so far as serves His Holiness’s purposes. It’s the door by which we admit the whole oxcart. It’s the gesture His Holiness wants.

  And to get it, we make his Holiness accommodate the halfling Sihhë… never suggest that Tristen is more than that. Halfling is ambiguous enough for any negotiation; and after they admit the halfling Sihhë then they take the whole damned court of Elwynor.”

  Next fall. Next summer had daunted him and he FORTRESS OF EAGLES / 75

  had seen no prospect yet that far ahead of him. Tangled and dubious as it all might be, it did serve Cefwyn, and protected Ninévrisë, and brought him to the spring and through the unimagined summer, even to the fall to come with a use, a purpose, a duty to do. Gray space gave way to imagining a time yet to come, days and months ahead.

  “Your Majesty,” Idrys said. “We should consider this at some length.”

  “Do you have objections?” Cefwyn asked, looking at Tristen.

  It was clearly a request not to hear any. But Idrys’ doubts were not to disregard.

  “There are shadows in that place,” Tristen said. “So you should know, sir.”

  “I don’t doubt there are,” Cefwyn said, and gave a short laugh. “Gods know my grandfather’s crypt is likely the bait for them—he feared the dark excessively. Chandlers have never been so prosperous as in his reign, good faith,” He patted Tristen on the arm. “But do you understand what we are about?

  My brave friend, my very brave friend, if you can do this—if you can do this…and not affright this priest…gods forbid the Patriarch should ever meet the like we met on Lewen field…then we can accommodate Her Grace and her whole realm in the exception we craft for you, who are the Warden of Ynefel, which is and has always been the legitimate title of a Lord of Ylesuin. They have to regard the current Lord Warden, and to treat you as lawful and entitled, and exempt from requirements that bind other lords: we have a precedent, good gods, we have a precedent in Mauryl Gestaurien, what was done can be done, and our penny offering, if we can do this, will create this niggling little exception through which we can settle the whole question of Quinalt doctrine

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  and the status of halflings, hedge-wizards, Bryaltines, sprites, spirits, shadows, ghosts, and gods know what! Good great gods, we have a precedent!”

  “Consult Emuin,” Idrys said. “My lord king, I beg you ask him before you undertake anything with His Holiness.”

  “Ask Emuin to your satisfaction, but if he find no urgent reason against it, and if Tristen can endure my grandfather’s ghost,—dear blessed gods, I would find it convenient if you could walk in with the royal procession.”

  “I will, sir,” Tristen said, and Cefwyn proposed they go aside for a last cup of wine, a seal on their agreement. “Sit with me a moment,” Cefwyn said, and, Idrys being absent about business with his lieutenant, and still less than pleased, the two of them sat beneath the tall windows in the hall, in this set of rooms so very vast the servants always arrived out of breath.

  Night had long since filled the high window above the little table, and candlelight danced on the imperfections of the glass as on the embossings of gold cups that were the ordinary of Cefwyn’s household in these days.

  “You have been very patient in my neglect of you,” Cefwyn said, “and I know how difficult it has been for you in Guelessar—difficult for Her Grace, too, with no assured rank or title, gods know what her people believe is her condition among us. Yet I have had to leave my friends to fend for themselves for a while. It is so important, what we do, simply to assure I have the power to launch this war, this one chance to catch the moment. We have the rebels across the river, building forces by the day. If Tasmôrden moves to take either the bridges or the capital before the winter closes in, he will have all winter to consolidate his hold. He will gain fol FORTRESS OF EAGLES / 77

  lowers and Her Grace will lose them, murdered the day Tasmôrden sets foot in Ilefínian. But I have never needed explain war to you.”

  Uwen and the guards had told him Ylesuin would not wage war in winter. But Tristen himself wished the contrary…nor at all the hesitant, difficult sort of warfare he kept hearing proposed as winter raids. He knew who and where Tasmôrden was: the strongest of the rebel claimants to the Regency of Elwynor camped on the road that led equally to Guelessar or to the Elwynim capital of Ilefínian. Tasmôrden was thus able to go either direction, and to go quickly. Cefwyn hoped Lord Elfharyn in the capital, loyal to Ninévrisë’s father Uleman, could hold the capital, in her name through the winter…and divide Tasmôrden’s attention. But if Tasmôrden ceased to believe their feints at the bridges, and if Ilefínian fell to Tasmôrden quickly, and he was then able to secure himself behind Ilefínian’s walls before the snows, then…then it was a far grimmer situation, with many of Ninévrisë’s people in a way to suffer for it, and many to pay with their lives.

  “We should have camps across the river,” Tristen said to Cefwyn. “We should cross the bridges now. We should make the threat so strong he will have to regard it, and not dare move on Ilefínian.”

  “If Lord Brysaulin can find me wagons. I have had some moved in. But how many others might I rely on? Gods know.

  My chancellor counted haystacks, not wagons.”

  Wagons. Always there was the consideration of moving in force, never striking with the light cavalry, which Tristen would have wished, against this quick-footed enemy. He had believed from the first day in Guelessar that they should move at once and not

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  delay for marriages and swearings and musters and the objections of all the northern barons. He had thought the first time he had heard of Tasmôrden rising against Ninévrisë’s claim to the Regency that they should be straightway across the river on the southern bridges out of Amefel, march to the capital with light horse, receive it from Elfharyn, who would almost certainly yield it to Ninévrisë as soon as she appeared at the gates, and only afterward hold the land by drawing heavy forces across from Guelessar…but, no, Cefwyn had to receive the oaths first. Then it was deep autumn. Then they dared not launch a campaign, because it was bound to be laborious and slow in rainy autumn. Tristen frowned at what he heard now, which only confirmed what he had already thought; and now he saw the map as if it were before him, the bridges that led from Amefel to Elwynor repaired this summer; likewise those that had once led from Murandys to Elwynor in the north repaired this fall. “We might still move. Open an attack from Amefel, now. Cevulirn can carry it. You have the oaths. The north may be unready, but the south could march and the north could move as soon as they can. In the meanwhile Tasmôrden will not have Ilefínian.”

  “We have to move as planned. The eastern and northern barons must come in…”

  “No.”

  “No?” Cefwyn looked wryly astonished, not angry; but only then did Tristen recall that no one said no to Cefwyn these days.

  “No, sir,” he said doggedly, compounding the offense, such as it was, out of his friendship and the fact that for a month he had had no chance to give his

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  views. “Move Ivanor in fr
om the south, out of Amefel. That would save Ilefínian. It lies far closer to that border. Tasmôrden would know a force out of Amefel could come at his back at the river, and he would race to reach the capital to prevent us taking it. We could move faster, with only the light horse, out of his east. If he besieged the town, that would put him between two and even three forces if you brought in the heavy cavalry from the north and the Lanfarnessemen came in from the southwest.”

  He though that Cefwyn would agree. The resoultion seemed there for an instant, the fierce enthusiasm of the summer. But worry and doubt worked there, too, and he saw Cefwyn’s deep unhappiness and disbelief in his own answer.

  “We cannot.”

  “But if we had the Guelen cavalry and the Ivanim, moving quickly—before the snow—would the north object to winning the war, sir?”

  “The south must not be the source for a move across the river.”

  “It only makes sense—”

  “The south is tainted with sorcery, do you see?”

  “Not since Lewen field—”

  “In Guelen minds it is tainted with sorcery. Amefel is full of heretics—in Guelen minds. Her Grace must win based in the east. In the east of Elwynor are folk strongly kin to Guelessar and Murandys, Guelen in all but name, and even some Ryssandim. I know, I know you see the way clear, you do have a strong argument, and if it were all a soldier’s reasoning, Tristen, I would entirely agree with you. It would save lives, and very precious ones, particularly of Her Grace’s best advisers. But it is not a soldier’s reckoning; it never was. It is a king’s reckoning, 80 / C. J. CHERRYH

  and a new king’s at that. I must come at this war from the north and east for the same reason I ask Efanor to make a staunch Quinaltine out of the least likely man in my kingdom. It is appearances, Tristen, all appearances. For very good reasons the north must win significant victories in this war. Then it will be their victory, not the south’s, and because it is their victory, and their northern glory, they will support the agreements we make and help me forge a peace out of this long war. No. It is not all a soldierly reckoning. But it is the one that will have a peace at the end of it.”

  Not if Ilefínian falls first, Tristen thought to himself, seeing a walled city, a towered city as vividly as he saw it in his dreams. And for this instant he dreamed of it in hostile hands, and saw the war dragging on in what might not be easy victories for the Guelenfolk. He saw blood flowing, and knew that the satisfaction of the northern barons would wait into summer, and into greater and greater hazard.

  “Does Her Grace agree with the plan?” he asked Cefwyn pointedly; and Cefwyn frowned darkly.

  “No,” Cefwyn said. “She does not agree. But the plain fact is, we simply must not seem to encourage the tainted south.

  The entire question regards Elwynor’s fate, Elwynor’s freedom, and the treaty. It’s not a great war, it’s a little war, and we must run the risk to give the north its importance.”

  He was entirely appalled. The tainted south, as of Cevulirn, and Sovrag, and Pelumer, even proper and rigidly Quinalt Umanon, who had stood with them at Lewenbrook? The tainted south? Cefwyn spoke in disparagement of others’

  opinions of it, he was sure of that. And, a little war? Men would die, and the longer they drew this out, the more men would die.

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  “The same as the penny,” Cefwyn said, “the same as our agreement with the Quinalt. It is appearances. And, forgive me, I have to command and lead the northern barons in the field. Because of appearances, since the Aswydds, I have appointed no lord in Amefel and left the province vacant. I will elevate none of the Amefin earls to power on that southern border, because I will not have the entire south, with an Amefin duke, playing ducks and drakes with policy by urging their views, meddling with those bridges—or leading armies and forcing a fight. I have a viceroy there, and I keep it so. I will not have help from the south, above all else.”

  “Yet you had Cevulirn stay at court. Is he the tainted south?”

  “Never! Never in my heart. I trust him. I do trust him. He knows the game. He know what I have to contend with. As Idrys knows. As you are most surely learning. We cannot always do what is most soldierly. We have to do what is politic.

  And what is politic is a northern victory, and an advance through these specific villages that will settle appearances for the Guelenmen I lead; gods help me.”

  He was not done with questions. Too much was cast in doubt. “You trust Lanfarnesse. And Olmern.”

  “Lanfarnesse commits to nothing. Olmern… far too unsubtle.”

  Sovrag was only recently a lord, and indeed, would not be at home in the Guelen court. Sovrag had nearly caused a duel in his few days here, except the king had forbidden it. Lanfarnesse, old Duke Pelumer, would protect his own folk first, but even so, Pelumer would have been a strong support to Cefwyn, stronger by far than Murandys.

  “No,” Cefwyn said further. “Believe me in this.

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  Hard enough that I swore all the south to me before I took the northern oaths, hard enough that I came back with a wedding sworn, sealed, and sure before the north ever had wind of it.

  And this last I say to you in secret, a thing that only Idrys knows…only Idrys. Once the wedding is done, once we have the Quinalt seal on that document, we shall indeed advance to the river and set up martial camps, not only on this side, following exactly the path you suggest, and threaten Tasmôrden before the snow lies deep.”

  “And shall we move in Amefel as well?”

  “Not in Amefel. We’ll have men under canvas in the snow, come what may, making sure of those eastern bridges, distracting Tasmôrden and his conspirators from Ilefínian.”

  Driving him inevitably toward Ilefínian, Tristen thought unhappily. Pushing him toward the south. Denying him the bridges made it sure he would go against Ilefínian. And if only someone were there to face him—

  “—bitter work,” Cefwyn said, “hardship for the men; but if we could bring the eastern provinces of Elwynor to welcome Her Grace next spring and rise against Tasmôrden, she might sweep unchecked across the east like a triumphal procession.

  Then we might cross from the south shore of the river, too, and come from two directions, up and down, to Ilefínian. It would fall in a moment.”

  “I might go to the Amefin shore when the army goes to the river;” Tristen said. The prospect of winter in tents did not seem so impossible or so unpleasant to him as a winter idle in Guelemara, taking lessons from the Patriarch. He had longed for employment, for some reason for his existence, and still the notion of next fall

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  wafted in front of him, the thinnest of promises. There were so many mistaken decisions in the wind, any one of which could rise up to bring disaster to Cefwyn’s fortunes. Cefwyn said he must be here, and learn religion, and appear to be Quinalt—but if the army was, in fact, to move, he should be ready to move as soon as the wedding was done. The northern barons’ vanity, their quarrels with each other thus far had not fielded an army, but rather kept the one they did have home until a wider bloodshed of Elwynim and Guelenfolk alike was all but inevitable. On his life he tried not to wish for things, and he distrusted his own desires, but he wished Cevulirn to the fore and Murandys in obscurity. “Far more gladly would I sit in a tent than in the Quinaltine, sir. If it were possible, this I would ask to do, myself, more than anything.”

  “No,” Cefwyn said, though gently. “No. My good friend.

  There you may not, now, not yet. We need no wizard-work on the river shore, I assure you, not at this stage of affairs. We need your agreement with the Quinaltine. Your peace with the Holy Father.”

  “Then when I have peace with the Quinaltine— then I could go down to Amefel. From the south I might cross the river with a small force this winter, a very small, a quiet band, and reach Ilefínian. The Patriarch will wish me gone. So let me go. Give me a single troop and I shall be no trouble t
o you.” The plans, the very detailed plans, were clear to him. The gray space was gone, in favor of a vision so clear to him his heart beat high with thinking of it.

  “No, no, and no.” Cewyn’s hand descended on Tristen’s wrist where it rested on the table. “You must have nothing to do with the taking of the capital, not a thing, do you see? It must not be wizardry that

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  Ninévrisë wins her throne. And that is what everyone would say if you did that on your own.”

  “I am not a wizard.”

  “No,” Cefwyn said, and pressed his hand hard. “No, my brave, my good friend. No. But you are not the lord of Murandys, either, and the Guelen duke of Murandys and the Ryssandim must give Ninévrisë her throne. Then they will support her rights and make peace with her kingdom.”

  He perceived to his discontent that the reason of Cefwyn’s fear was still the Quinalt, always the Quinalt, a fear which he had discovered prevailed over all better sense in Guelessar; the Quinalt, and the like of Sulriggan, whose work he had seen in Amefel. The Holy Father, Sulriggan, Prichwarrin of Murandys, Corswyndam of Ryssand, none of them were friends of his nor ever would be friends of the king. That was the worst harm the Quinalt did, maintaining Sulriggan and his kind in influence because it needed to have a threat in order to bargain with Cefwyn, whom otherwise it could not frighten. For two months it had had the wedding to threaten. Now Cefwyn asked him to defend Ninévrisë by turning its attention on himself, just long enough for the marriage to become a fact. In a soldierly way he understood such a diversion.

  But would the Quinalt improve its actions once the wedding was over? Would it become Cefwyn’s friend simply because Cefwyn flattered it? He thought not.