“It ain’t ordinary the captain should be unfind-able,” Uwen said, “and right now I’m inquirin’ in the lower stables.”
“As if they should have fled?”
“Or should be attendin’ of their horses or pretendin’ so,” Uwen said. “It’s the only thing a soldier’s got need of, wi’out orders to be out an’ away from the garrison. If they ain’t drinkin’ or about the town… an’ if they ain’t at the stables, there’s the whole damn town to search.”
“Inquire,” he said. The gray space might have told him something, if he had well known the men they were searching for. Ranging through the whole population of the town and finding soldiers was like searching for certain kinds of pebbles in a pile of them… it would mean sorting a good many other pebbles in the process, disturbing them and discovering more of their privacy and peace than seemed just, and taking time, that, too.
“Do you have the Guard searching for them?” he asked.
“I ain’t ask’t it, let alone ordered. It’s their officers, m’lord. I’m inquirin’ by way o’ the Amefin guard an’ the staff. An’ talkin’ to the undersergeants, the while, just getting the look o’ men I used to know, m’lord, an’ I do know some of ’em.”
“But not all?”
“The Guelen Guard comes from more ’n Guelessar, m’lord. Panys, Murandys. Murandys’province. Any second and third son, as ain’t apt to inherit, that man’s apt to come to the standing companies. The lords’ kin’ll go to the Dragons or the Prince’s Guard, but the common lads… an’ them as ain’t quite lads, like me… they’re for the Guelen Guard. An’, aye, some of these I marched to Amefel with; an’ some I knew when His Majesty was here; an’ some I knew for scoundrels, too, the senior sergeant bein’ no better.”
“But some you don’t know?”
“A good many’s come in since summer’s end, when His Majesty marched home to Guelessar an’ Parsynan came in. Some are good men an’ one an’ the other I’ve me doubts of. All’s Quinalt, but some’s too Quinalt, if ye take my meanin’, m’lord, an’ don’t like Amefin.”
“Set the garrison in order,” he said. “Marching them to the river’s not all the answer. Have the captain and the highest sergeant gone off and left no oneword where they are? Or are men not telling?”
“Seems, m’lord, they left no instructions of who is in command, ’cept as there’s seniority. The man who’s second senior, heain’t informed where they are, an’ I think I believe ’im. An’ Your Grace is right: it ain’t the way it ought to be.”
“Did Anwyll allow such things?”
“Captain Anwyll didn’t interfere much.”
“You command the garrison,” Tristen said. “And all the Zeide. Set them in order.”
“Them’s His Majesty’s troops,” Uwen said distressedly. “I can’t just dismiss His Majesty’s officers, m’lord. I ha’nt the authority, wi’ all goodwill. I begun in the Guelens and came to the Dragons, unlikely as ever was; and then I could ha’ ordered ’em: a Dragon sergeant can order a captain of the common companies. But I left the Dragons an’ come wi’ you, m’lord, which means I’m provincial an’ not a king’s man anymore. An’ if them troops hadn’t got a captain, I could, if you ordered, in your province. But not so long’s there’s a king’s captain in charge. Anwyllcould have ordered ’em. But ye sent him to the border.”
That His Majesty’s troops did as they pleased and did wrong to Amefin folk within a stone’s cast of the Zeide was not tolerable to him; in his mind the captain had forfeited his command the night he had obeyed Parsynan’s word against his. When he and the senior sergeant disappeared at the same time, leaving no orders behind them he knew what to call it: irresponsibility was a Word he had learned in one place and another. Treason, he had learned very well, here in Amefel.
And with the town’s well-being and Amefin justice resting on the garrison’s proper conduct, Anger rushed up, twice in two days, now.
Uncommon, he thought. And that, the anger, he carefully lifted out of its place to examine later, in some quietness of heart. To have anger give the next orders was unwise, even if it was just.
— Do you hear? he asked Emuin, across the insulating weight of stone. Do you know that the captain and the sergeant have disappeared, and do you count it coincidence, good sir? Shall I be angry about it?
There was no answer, as he had in his heart expected none. Oh, Emuin heard. Unquestionably he heard. Emuin was settling into his chamber, poking up the fire, which had gone to embers, and gave him attention, but no answer.
He had, he recalled, said to the patriarch himself that he guessed the source of the advisement about the trinket-sellers.
And was it unreasonable that the patriarch should have sent word to the sergeant, who might have told his captain? He himself had had little dealing with either man, and it was still the matter of a search after pebbles among pebbles; but he began to suspect that the pebbles in question were no longer in this heap.
“Perhaps they’ve taken horses,” he said to Uwen, who waited quietly for his answer, “and then you would have authority.”
“I am askin’ that,” Uwen said, “an’ word ain’t come yet.”
“Only from the bottom of the hill?”
“There’s a lot of shiftin’ about, especially wi’ the Ivanim in wi’ sixty-odd horses an’ them needin’ room; master Haman’s got lads movin’ horses out to the far meadows and makin’ winter shelter. It’s over an hour’s ride out an’ back to some of them places, an’ till we’ve counted, an’ horses tendin’ to wander off in copses an’ stream cuts for windbreaks, even when ye built ’em a fair shelter…”
“We won’t know by evening,” he said, “unless the captain turns up before that.”
“I asked the gate-guards, too. An’ they just ain’t sure whether the men is in or out. They don’t much notice the soldiers comin’ and goin’. I put it to ’em they should notice such things an’ look sharper. They areunder my command, and I apologize for that, m’lord.”
Ifthe captain had taken horse and gone, there was no question wherehe had gone: to Guelessar, to Parsynan, to unfriendly ears.
“We won’t know, then, until we hear from Haman,” Tristen said. “And the lords are coming, within the hour?”
“Aye, m’lord. Word’s passed.”
He had been remiss in letter-writing. Idrys had bidden him write often, very often; and now in Uwen’s report he thought he should write that days-delayed letter.
“Go do what you can do,” he said, “but be back when I go down to the hall.”
“Aye, m’lord.”
So Uwen went off to find those he was now sure were unavailable and well away, and Tristen sat down at the desk with dragon legs and under the brazen loom of dragon jaws, and took up pen to warn Idrys directly of all that had happened. He was all too aware now that along with the Dragons he had dismissed all his most reliable Guelen messengers, except his private guard. The Amefin guard would not be able to traverse Guelessar unquestioned or unremarked, and might not so easily reach Idrys. He had retained not a one of the Dragons at hand; and under the circumstances, trusting the Guelens to report ill of their own officers seemed folly. There was Gedd. He might well send Gedd.
Uwen, however, might well find an honest man or two in the unit of which he had been a part as late as midsummer. Not all of them had marched home, of those who had fought at Lewenbrook; and, Cevulirn’s help notwithstanding, he could not afford to dismiss the Guelen Guard. Honest men must be the heart of what he should have done by now and must now urgently do with the Guelens: depose or assign elsewhere officers who had carried out the massacre. Now that the sergeant and the captain had fled, if that was indeed their course, then all the harm their reports could do would have been done… and he was increasingly convinced that they had fled, and that the Quinalt had warned them.