Deservedly.

Chapter 13

One of the men said he knew the way, and that he had ridden patrol here, so, he said, he could lead them around the woods and they would come to the road again before it entered the trees.

“We’ll have our reinforcements,” Cefwyn said to Idrys, “by morning.

No use our riding south to the road and back again. We’ll have these horses staggering under us, riding there. Make camp!”

“We are not armored against arrows or shepherd Slings, m’lord Prince. I want you safe away. We’ll fire the haystacks. That will keep these people busy: you ride out of here, m’lord Prince! If Lewen’s-son fell, we’ve no one in Henas’amef to ask our whereabouts until tomorrow late. We do not know their numbers—but I can busy them and ride clear.”  “Then we both can!”

“No, my lord Prince! Do not be risking the King’s heir after some ragtag troop of women in a sheep pasture! There are battles worth a prince and there are those not, and this is not, m’lord. I pray you use the sense your uncle had not, and live long enough to reign!”

There was silence for a time. Uwen might have made it through, Tristen thought. There might be help coming. But it would still be late.

And Idrys and the prince stared at each other, glowering.

Finally Cefwyn said, “I’11 not draw off men you may need. We’ll go by the eastern valley. I can find that in the dark. You overtake us on the road. That is an order, sir. No lingering. I need you. I’ll take Tristen, and two men beside.”

“The wizardling is not a man, not in wit, not in experience—he’s a risk, m’lord. A maid ten years old would do more than fly back down the road for rescue! A blushing maid might have stayed with her escort!”

“Sir, —” Tristen said, stung.

“Tristen,” Cefwyn said. “Nydas. Lefhwyn. That is my word, Idrys.”

“And Brogi,” Idrys said. “At least three men, m’lord Prince. And six more, for safety.”

Tristen bit his lip, unable to protest. Cefwyn said, shortly, “Later, master crow,” and put his horse to a quicker pace as Idrys and others dropped back to ride back to the village.

But six more than two men followed them; Tristen followed, not wanting to leave Idrys’ assessment of him unchallenged, but not having any argument against it, either. He had not done well, losing his way in the woods. He had fallen into that gray place, and he had thought he was facing the right direction, and he had ridden out in the wrong one. He did not know now whether he had turned face about in that Place, or had simply lost his sense of which side of the road Gery had gone to, and gotten turned wrong in the terror of the moment. He felt the fool—as Idrys had clearly said he was. But he had resources he had not used. He might call to Emuin, if things were going wrong.

But Emuin was very far away, and could send them no soldiers, nor any other help that he knew. Emuin had said the gray place was a dangerous place to linger. He wondered if Cefwyn knew of it, or if Cefwyn could go there, or if any of the other men could; he wondered whether he should tell Cefwyn that possibility or whether Cefwyn was privy to Emuin’s doings with him, or should be.

Meanwhile their case was not desperate: ground flew under them, green grass and gray stone and black earth, over meadowland interspersed with rocky knolls perhaps too small to have names. The map still echoed Words to him, Words running in red and black and brown, with fine lines that blurred and ran and tried to find accordance with the land.

Wrong, something said to him. Wrong, wrong, this map; but he had been wrong once about directions: Idrys had said he was a fool and a difficulty to whatever party included him. And he had no way to say Idrys was wrong.

The horses could not long sustain the hard pace Cefwyn had set riding clear of the village and its stone pens. It was across the fields and pastures they went, away from the rocky hills to the north, and Cefwyn set a slower pace, still in no good humor, speaking to the men Idrys had sent only to indicate direction and prospects of reaching the point they sought, using a certain hill as a landmark. The man who claimed to know this land maintained that the road by which they had come lay due south of that mark.

That was wrong: it was south after some long distance east, Tristen thought: but he found it prudent still to hold his peace. Cefwyn was not in a pleasant mood, and south would do for a while, at least to get them toward the road.

They rode/:or a long while, until they had come where they thought they should find the hill, and failed to see it; and the man was begging Cefwyn’s pardon just as they actually came in sight of it, and became sure where they were.

I know, Tristen thought. Owl’s flight over the map in his dream had shown him all this place. It had shown him where hills should be, and the brooks that emptied into each other until they met on Lewen plain, somewhere the other side of the village, if they were going as far as the river.

Which they were not. They were still going directly south, which would lead them into rough land, Tristen thought. It would not be quicker. But no one asked his opinion, and Cefwyn was still short-tempered. He thought Cefwyn had a very good reason to be, counting the men lost and his argument with Idrys.

He was thinking about that, and they were passing quite close to the hill in question, a hill remarkable for a treeless top capped with stone—a bald hill, the men called it, and had a name for it: Raven’s Knob—when they rode across a dark trail in the grass, left to right across their path. He saw it, wondered about it, as the only feature of disturbance in grasstops otherwise as smooth as velvet, a track such as their own horses made.

Someone, Tristen thought, had made a recent passage through the meadow and away from the track they took. The trail they had left went up around the shoulder of Raven’s Knob.

Cefwyn saw it too, and while they proceeded, one of the lead men rode out for some distance off their course and looked closely at that trail before he rode back again and rejoined them on their way.

“One rider,” the man—Brogi—said. “Maybe two, Your Highness.

Light horse, gone over the Knob and down the other side, by what I mark. I’d not be disturbin’ things further without your order, Your Highness. That’s a lookout over all the valley, that place is.”

It was not good news, a fool could gather that much, too. Cefwyn frowned more darkly than he had, since, surely, Tristen thought, men on horses no matter what their business ought properly to be on the roads and not following sheep-paths across the land, unless they were trying to avoid something, as they were.

There had been no horsemen in the village. But he could not say whether there had been in the woods.

“It were made a few hour back,” Brogi said, further. “I’d take oath on that, Your Highness.”

“Perhaps it was Uwen,” Tristen ventured in a quiet voice. “He said leave the road if need be.”

But making camp and lingering seemed the worst of all choices—sitting where their enemies could come up on them in the dark. He was glad at least Cefwyn was of a mind to go somewhere, if he would not go back to walls and doors they could lock.

Besides, he did not know that he was right; his notions were often right—but Names and impressions were coming to him now from moment to moment: bits and fragments of the map, details of land and cover shaping themselves from what he saw as if of a sudden the land around them had become that map of Cefwyn’s, and he could see beyond the hills, guessing which way villages lay, and where the river was.

Cefwyn’s men were still not exactly right about the direction, but the way they were going seemed the shortest they could manage without going through the low hills to the west, closer to the deadly woods: Cefwyn kept them proceeding as quickly as the horses could carry them, over ground stonier and less easy as the shadows lengthened.