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 Ninévrisé 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 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?” Ninévrisé 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 very 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, 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 mid-afternoon, 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 mid-afternoon, as the plan was, they made camp on a high spot beside the road—Massit-brook, 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 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 ’era, 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.

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.