Fortress of Eagles

by C. J. Cherryh

  And Earl Edwyll was in a defensible position. The north side of the fortress was a blind wall except for the small, high-walled garden, which had no gate and was only accessible from the lower corridor. The other faces

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  of the citadel, east, south, and west, each had a courtyard, each divided from the next by walls, and there was indeed no water on the hill except the one spring in the West Courtyard. The viceroy’s men, having seized that area, had secured the only infallible supply of fresh water for themselves…and the horses for escape and grain to feed them, as well as the scullery with its stores of food.

  “There is the wine and the ale, too,” he remarked to Uwen.

  “The garrison has that, if it has the kitchen storerooms, and the lower hall is between the two for a battlefield.”

  “Gods ’a-mercy,” Uwen said. Uwen knew the lay of the courtyards and the existence of the spring as well as he did. It was on the one hand a ludicrous situation, the battle of the stable-court against an upstart and foolish earl in ill-timed rebellion; and on the other, honest servingfolk and townsmen who had no desire at all to be in the midst of a battle had been put in jeopardy of their lives up there.

  “Ye’ll set those gates well back, there,” Uwen said to the gate wardens, and waved a signal at Gedd and the standards. “We’ll be holding the way open. Up standards and smartly so. Guards!

  Bear a light, there!”

  The gate wardens hurried, not without anxious, backward looks as the distant rumble of cavalry on the move echoed off the very walls. Anwyll and the rest were riding for the gate at breakneck speed, not knowing how they had fared. But as the gate-guards brought out the lantern and light spread full over the walls and the banners, the riders checked their full-tilt charge and spread out along the ring road just outside. Out of the dark came the noise of breathless, excited horses coming to a halt, and atop them as they arrived, a darkness FORTRESS OF EAGLES / 301

  glittering with the sheen of armor and weapons. In the faint light from the gate the Marhanen colors on Anwyll’s coat shone brighter than the rest.

  “Your Grace!” Anwyll called out.

  “Captain,” Tristen said. “One squad comes up the hill with me for the Stable Gate, one for the Zeide’s East Gate by Woolmarket, one by Bell Street for the South Gate, the third to hold here and assure us of this gate. But don’t trouble these guards! They’re honest men. Captain, take command at the South Gate, do no harm to the town, and be ready to come in when I open the doors!”

  “Yes, Your Grace.” There was no more demur. Anwyll knew the town intimately, and called for the sergeant who knew the streets. “Cossell! Three squads, East Gate! Brys, three squads, follow His Grace!”

  “Banners!” Uwen shouted, setting their own men in order, and with no more ado Tristen started Gery moving uphill as his banner-bearers raced to the fore. The man to whom he had given Petelly’s lead was in the squad with them, and Petelly created a small stir among the armed men going with them, wanting to get forward…Petelly, who knew nothing of king’s men or the desperate bid of rebels against the king. He was an Amefin horse, and knew what justice was: his stable and his grain were at the top of the hill.

  They rode through the street with a clatter of iron-shod hooves echoing back and forth off the houses and off the high and low walls of the town. As they went, shutters cracked in prudently shut houses, and here and there cautiously opened.

  Then, quietly, emboldened, the people alongside them opened doors for a general look, and came out onto their steps, or stared down from the upper windows.

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  “Lord Sihhë!” someone shouted through the dark streets. It was the name the town had called him before, the name that would have scandalized the Quinalt in Guelemara. “Lord Sihhë!” other voices shouted, and ahead of them shutters cracked open, and doors opened. Light broke faintly onto the street from closely held lamps and firesides, and the white Sihhë Star glowed on the banners. “Lord Sihhë!” people shouted, and poured into the streets, some running dangerously close to the horses. More and more doors opened, a few householders bearing lights sheltered from the wind. The Gate-street Tavern turned out a befuddled, cautiously enthusiastic knot of patrons and servingmen in their aprons.

  “Lord Sihhë!” The cry went all along. “Lord Sihhë!” The town cheered him as they had cheered him when he returned from Lewenbrook. “Lord Sihhë!” echoed off the walls and brought commotion and lights to the dark side streets. Now the Sihhë

  Star and the black Eagle alike showed in fitful gleams from doors and lanterns. “Lord Sihhë!” the people cried.

  They were glad to see him, and that was so rare a notion it confounded his warlike expectations and broke quite unexpectedly through the guard he had for two months set about his heart, setting it to beating larger than war or fear could bring on him. He had arrived where he was supposed to be, he had no doubt now. He had come, moreover, where he was needed, and as swordsmanship and the ordering of armies had Unfolded to him, so he knew what he had to do: secure every street by which their enemies might come down the hill and seal all the gates from which new enemies might arrive at their backs. He knew, too, the worth in this people that rushed to the streets… use their help,

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  gain their goodwill, bring them what they hoped to find, but he had to keep them from breaking into mischief and harm.

  And to do that, he had to bring the banners up the hill quickly to make the citadel sure with whom they were dealing, in the darkness of night, and he must not rely wholly on the viceroy he was riding to save.

  Not rely, for one thing because the king’s forces might already be overwhelmed; but most of all because the king’s Guelen troops might inflame resentments in the town. He had sent his forces sweeping up like shadow through the streets, on the cries of people that had never loved the Marhanen kings. Lord Sihhë!

  Lord Sihhë! Lord Sihhë! they cried, and he could not mistake the sentiment behind it. It was all too easy to let slip a hatred of Guelen overlords that would not easily be reined in.

  Lights broke out now in the side streets as they went, lights spread all along the rows of shops and houses. He saw in an intersection of streets one of the other Dragon squads going up the hill beside them, swift-moving riders silhouetted against the lamplight, there and then gone as they pursued their way uphill in a scattering of accompanying lanterns in the upper town. Their going acquired a voice, a shouting, a roar. Common townsfolk brought sticks and staves to his aid and marched in a growing band behind them as they neared the very gates of the citadel, still shouting, Lord Sihhë! Lord Sihhë!

  They met a West Gate shut fast, three sets of bars, inner and outer sets swung shut from the side, the portcullis dropped between. A troop of the Guelen Guard was drawn up inside, afoot, in the stable-court, red coats gleaming faintly in lanternlight, the same as 304 / C. J. CHERRYH

  the colors of the Guard with him. An overeager rush of townsmen ran for the bars with staves and kitchen knives.

  “Here, here!” Uwen shouted out. “Way for His Grace!” And the people shouted out, “Way for Lord Sihhë!” and they gave back, pushing and shoving one another to clear a space for him.

  From Gery’s back and above the heads of the mob Tristen could see the viceroy’s forces holding in good order. They had fortified themselves behind the triple hedge of iron bars, but it was not an enviable position for the Guelenmen despite the viceroy’s command of the stores and the water.

  “Ho the guard!” Uwen called through the bars as their horses paced and stamped the cobbled space outside—a knot of Guelenmen themselves, in a ring of Amefin townsfolk on the verge of riot. “His Grace Tristen, Duke of Amefel, the grant of His Majesty Cefwyn by the gods’ grace king of Ylesuin! Ho the garrison, in the duke’s name and His Majesty’s! Where’s His Majesty’s viceroy?”

  An officer on the other side of the gate moved his horse nearer the inmost bars. That
man gave an order, imprudently instructing the men in the gatehouse behind the bars to open the inner gate, and to raise the portcullis. At the first clank of the pawl, the mob behind them pressed forward, with only the inward-swinging gates to hold them back. They were strong gates; but the weight of men outside was perilously great.

  “Keep back!” Tristen shouted, and rode Gery a half circle about, making a line beyond which the crowd pushed and shoved at each other to clear his path.

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  “In His Majesty’s name!” the viceroy’s officer shouted out from inside, near the remaining, inward-tending screen of bars.

  “Of Your Grace’s goodwill, the viceroy bids Your Grace know he has not officially received His Majesty’s messenger. The earl has arrested the courier!”

  “Ye’re relieved!” Uwen shouted against the noise. “His Majesty’s made a new duke in Amefel, which is His Grace Tristen of Ynefel and Althalen, who wants to know where is the lord viceroy?”

  “His Lordship does not talk to rabble.”

  “To the duke of Amefel, I say, and with His Majesty’s seal on’t! Open the damn gate, man, before it falls down.”

  “His Lordship will not step down until we have seen the king’s seal!”

  “Good lovin’gods,” Uwen began, directing himself to Tristen.

  A stick flew, and struck the bars. The people shouted to open the gate, and pressed forward. Uwen turned Gia about. “Quiet there! Ware the horses!” He turned and with Gia’s shoulder pushed the crowd further back, as a sudden ragged surge of the mob compacted the ranks of the guardsmen with them against the side of the gate. “Back! Back, there, ye fools!”

  Uwen was in acute danger. All their company was in danger, from the very forces that came to their support: the hindmost ranks were pushing forward, thinking the gate was open. Tristen turned Gery to come near Uwen, and from him, people still fell back, the front rank pushing at the others to gain him room, pushing with all their force against the tide trying to roll in on them, shouting, “Lord Sihhë himself! Give way, give way!”

  “Listen to me!” Tristen shouted over their tumult.

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  “Listen to me!” He rode further, forcing a way across the face of the mob. “You!” He pointed at a large man, a strong man.

  “Go to the South Gate! Bid the earl surrender the king’s messenger, and give over command of the citadel to me!”

  That man turned and began to force his way back through, cleaving the crowd, gathering up others in a movement that swept like a current back and back as some began to follow the man to the south.

  “Listen!” Tristen shouted. “Listen to me!”

  Then a curious silence fell…a murmurous silence proceeding back through the crowd, until for the mere space of a breath he could make himself heard even to the buildings around the small gate square.

  “The king has granted me Amefel!” he cried so all could hear.

  “He has called his viceroy home!”

  A cheer went up which he would not have encouraged, at the news they were to lose the king’s representative. “Listen to me!” he cried again, and waited for the little silence he could next obtain. “I wish to go into the fortress tonight and not have any harm done to anyone, and I wish to have nothing broken or taken, only to sleep peacefully in my bed tonight, which is in there!” He pointed to the fortress itself, and waited for the tumult to die. “The lord viceroy will gather what is his and his men’s property and depart in good order by daylight! I shall begin to set things in order in Henas’amef and in Amefel as soon as the sun rises. Do harm to none, and no harm will come to you or to your houses tonight, I promise to you all!” He saw his chance, the only safety he might obtain for his men, and waved a signal to the Guelen Guard captain inside. “Open the gate, Captain! Open it now!”

  The people broke out in wilder cheering, then, and FORTRESS OF EAGLES / 307

  waved their sticks in the air, and lifted up their lanterns, some of which went out in the bitter wind. He was not sure whether the king’s men would regard his mere word, and if he had the power to urge his way as Emuin claimed he did, he willed the few men of sense inside to open that gate and to do so quickly, before a new rumor ran through the crowd or before some random press of bodies from the street below broke the strength of those holding the crowd back from him and from his men.

  They might, horses and all, be swept against the bars and crushed, if they did not hold that line.

  And on the trembling moment, the lord viceroy’s men inside desperately and with a deafening rattle ran back the massive chains of the last, the outermost gates that separated them from the mob.

  “Stay!” Tristen shouted above the din, and fixed the leaders of the crowd with a sweeping gesture of his arm as he wheeled Gery with the pressure of his leg. The gates behind him gave way and no one in the crowd surged forward. The people only cheered and cheered; and the front line even ceased to strain as people climbed up on the stonework of adjacent buildings to call out news to comrades below.

  The people cheered long past the time the viceroy himself, Lord Parsynan, came out the gates to them and tried to speak to him above the commotion. Some in the crowd called uncomplimentary names, and insulted the garrison guard. One rock flew and struck the cobbles, but Uwen and the Dragon Guard with him held firm and kept the space clear. People jammed the approaches to the gate, and lights borne by that crowd went on and on down the hill. From horseback, Tristen could see them as the viceroy, afoot, vainly tried to voice complaints of Amefin rebellion and treachery, but

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  scarcely a word could he hear. People near the gate filled windows, stood on balconies, even climbed up on the stonework of houses as high they could find purchase, all shouting, “Lord Sihhë! Lord Sihhë!”

  “Your Grace!” The viceroy, Lord Parsynan, was a round, stubborn man, and not easily set off his dignity, but he grew desperate enough to come to the point. “Your Grace! The king’s garrison welcomes you on His Majesty’s authority, as we hear he has given!” There was to have been far more ado, Tristen was sure, in his setting the lord viceroy out of office, but under the circumstances the lord viceroy was doing the wisest, the safest thing, and the thing he strongly willed the man to do, for what it was worth in the world, even to his appearing before the crowd. It was wicked, Emuin had hinted, and he had no idea whether his will even moved the man, but give way to me was the burden of his wish, along with strike no blows.

  “We have the paper, m’lord!” Uwen said, urging Gia shoulder to shoulder with Gery. “We ha’ the clerk to read it, an ye will!”

  C H A P T E R 5

  Among the few encumbrances they had brought with them on their ride from Assurnbrook was that proclamation, and with it, a copy of the letter from Cefwyn to the lord viceroy—or rather such documents were in the hands of the disheveled clerk who had ridden with his company.

  But there was far too much shouting and cheering at the moment for anyone to hear the proclamation. Men jostled close, pressing against the horses and pressing them dangerously toward the barred gates of the fortress, and Tristen could not immediately see the clerk among the other riders attempting to maintain order in the lanternlit and riotous dark. In his fear he wished himself in the fortress, and he wished the Amefin forces attacking the viceroy to cease their attack…he wished so, because he was afraid for the men with him and, afraid, too, for the people of Amefel, who meant him nothing but good.

  And, setting aside Emuin’s cautions, he knowingly bent great force on that notion: magic, Emuin called it, to secure that quiet, and peace for the sake of lives. Silence, he willed, and, Hear me. Believe me.

  And in that moment, in a curious, difficult-to-catch way, almost like his sense of the gray place, he 309

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  felt resistance. Something or someone struggled against his determination.

  He had not expected wizardry here, not now. He was off
his guard. This subtle thing opposed him, and in the next breath he lost his sense of Gery’s motion under him and swayed in the saddle, not from weakness, but foolishly, from the horse’s unexpected movement.

  Begone! he willed it, with all his force.

  The opposing force was gone then, was not in the gray place, was nowhere that he could detect—like an enemy in full rout, and not unscathed.

  An Amefin noble appeared from the crowd…he did not know the name, but a man conspicuous in fine dress and rich furs pressed forward to catch his stirrup, all oblivious to the conflict.

  “Lord!” that man cried, and before he could take alarm he saw another man, and another, pressing forward to bend the knee as he sat on horseback. “I am Drumman of Baraddan,”

  the first man said. “A loyal man.”

  “Azant of Dor Elen,” said the next, a man with a scarred face.

  Uwen had meanwhile come close to him with his sword in hand, and another guardsman attempted to push them back, but they cast themselves to their knees in a body, each—and several at the same time—proclaiming his name, his degree, and his unfailing loyalty to the Crown.

  “We none of us conspired with Edwyll,” one protested. “We never agreed.”

  He knew them by sight if not by name, the other lords of Amefel, the earls, the thanes he had been accustomed to see in the hall. And now ealdormen of the town of Henas’amef came forward.

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  The crowd cheered, and pushed back its own borders. “Hush, hush,” some urged, and others yelled ruder expressions until they made a sort of astonished silence in the area, apart from the din of voices in the streets.

  “We are loyal men!” the earls protested, each and every one, but some scattered voices hooted and called out questions, among them, at one ealdorman’s protestation of loyalty: “Tell His Grace about the silver!”