So, a situation with which he was far better pleased, they were riding north to inform the riverside villages that Ivanor was with Amefel, and to let them see with their own eyes that they had a strong force protecting them.

And, second and not the least reason for his going this direction himself, Bryn’slands lay between here and the river. From the small region nearest the town and for a good distance more had been Lord Cuthan’s land, a district foremost in Amefel’s councils, their lord able to secure whatever he wished, even from the viceroy.

Now suddenly these villagers of Bryn were left as worse than lordless men, unrepresented in council; they were left with their oaths of fealty connecting them to an angry and embittered exile across the river… and they were left, as Lord Drumman had said, without any confidence in their new duke’s disposition toward them, whether under a new duke of Amefel they would become the spoils of some angry rival of Cuthan’s who might be granted the earldom, or whether they might simply be neglected and set at disadvantage among the earldoms. At very least, they might doubt the enthusiasm of their new duke for drawing his firmest defense to include them.

That situation of doubt, he and all the council were resolved, could not continue. Lord Cuthan was now formally dispossessed, by vote of the council of peers, nothing coerced, and that settled any claims of succession. So the other earls had taken other resolutions to sever the ties and the claim Cuthan had on them, and had those resolutions witnessed and sealed by the Bryaltine abbot. Those documents also Tristen had in hand, on a very important purpose of their riding out, if not the only one.

Far faster for a troop of riders to traverse this road to the river than it was for laden oxcarts. The deep frozen traces they followed were those of heavy wheels, inconvenient for the horses, who paced beside the ruts. Their course took them among low hills and within view of small woods, cut back from the road. Lord Heryn had removed all potential cover for banditry from roads and from rides: so Crissand had said. Lord Heryn had done most of the clearing, having no forester such as Cefwyn had over the extensive Crown lands, preserving and maintaining the woods, but simply directing where trees might be cut and where wood rights might be let to various earls for money. Removing the woods might have been a mistake, and Tristen wondered what the land might have been before Heryn; but still, the forces Amefel might raise were infantry that were accustomed to stand in lines, not slip through forest. Fighting among trees disordered their ranks and confused their signals: he had no difficulty understanding Heryn’s reasons. The forces Cevulirn lent, too, light horse, were such as might use the Aswydds’ roads to good advantage, riding with lightning speed as the Ivanim did, each with a horse in reserve… overland at need, but at no point through woods.

Still, if he could bring in Lanfarnesse, who used the woods and hills very willingly, he might yet bring force through the wooded lands to the west, assuring Amefel that no Elwynim army could slip in unseen.

And if he could bring in the help of Sovrag of Olmern, who could bring supply right to the bridgeheads by river barge, he could bring daunting force to bear on Tasmôrden’s underbelly, while Tasmôrden’s face was toward Cefwyn. Tasmôrden would not like it, not in the least, to be forced to face Cefwyn and the Guelen heavy horse on Cefwyn’s terms, on the flat ground the maps showed in Elwynor’s middle.

So Tristen said to Cevulirn, divulging his thoughts in this privacy of two riders with their guard some little distance behind.

“Tasmôrden thought he could create distraction here in Amefel,” Tristen said, “and if I have your help, we’ll make it so this border is no choice for him.”

“A very good prospect,” Cevulirn agreed, while the ground passed beneath them at a good, brisk clip.

Tristen rode Petelly, with Gery in reserve; and Cevulirn on the elder of the pair of dapple grays, the best of Ivanim breeding, a horse near white, gloriously beautiful even in winter coat… which no one could say of bay Petelly. All the horsemen behind were Ivanim, wearing colors of gray and green, on horses mostly that Crysin breed that was the pride of the Ivanim, light and quick and docile in handling, intelligent on the trail and willing and brave in the heat of battle. Even Petelly’s willful stubbornness abated in the Ivanim’s influence, and Gery went as calmly as the others at lead. If the Ivanim’s skill with horses was magic, it was a magic Tristen set himself to learn, but he despaired ever of teaching it to his Amefin folk, who were devoted to the earth, kept their feet generally on it, and were only stable in battle as long as they were going forward. Count the Guelens much the same, but heavy-armed and deliberate, a great force once they arrived, but slow. It was the Ivanim which Tristen envied their lord, the Ivanim whose fast-moving help had revised all possibilities.

Crissand, he feared, was jealous, left behind, jealous and concerned, yet proclaiming for himself the visit to Levey. Crissand went alone and was possibly out of sorts, being no help such as Cevulirn could be, having no horse, only a depleted infantry and a store of weapons.

“I’ll assure Your Grace of their loyalty,” Crissand had said, in the dawn, “and take them your goodwill.”

Clearly Crissand had wished to go where Tristen went, and was downcast in his hopes.

“I rely on you,” Tristen had said to him, and, a word he still found troubling to have uttered, “as aetheling when the time comes.”

Then Crissand had looked taken vastly aback, and all vestige of resentment fled his face and his demeanor.

“My lord,” Crissand had said then, and taken himself off to Levey, as stunned to have heard it as Tristen found himself, having said it, riding out with the cavalry he far more coveted, and with Cevulirn, whose alliance gave him a weapon he could wield with far greater subtlety than the blunt, brute force of the Amefin and Guelen foot.

What had possessed him, to have said it?

Yet he had seen the resentment, and felt there was justice in that resentment, and he knew that Crissand had heard the word aetheling the same as he, when Auld Syes had said it. So he brought it into the light, and let Crissand know he had a place with him, and that he was not dispossessed, either of friendship or of inheritance. Crissand had ridden off on his mission with a great possibility in his hands, and he had caught the fear of it as well as the honor.

But now, this morning, having cast thatknowledge into the light, and riding free and with the Ivanim around him, he felt a lightness of spirit he had not felt since summer. He had done the thing he needed do. He had found a missing boy and confirmed a friend’s place in his heart. The snows of winter lay all about, the cold made everything difficult, and yet he soared on a sense of hope, as if this morning important things were at last going as they ought.

They made good time in such good weather, such uncommon cooperation of the heavens. They made change and change about with the horses, after the Ivanim custom… and they went so much faster than the oxcarts he had sent out on the day of meeting Cevulirn that they passed two camps the ox train had used before the sun stood high over the western hills.

“We may yet overtake the captain,” Cevulirn said. “He may not have his camp built yet.”

But toward evening, and without overtaking Anwyll, they reached the place they had aimed for as their way stop… and their first destination, a small huddle of huts in a snowy surrounds of sheep-meadow and forest-crowned hills. The huts centered around a rustic, modest hall with a stubby stone tower at its north end for defense and lookout—its sole truly warlike feature a wooden archer’s gallery around the tower summit. That wooden scaffold might be the only recollection of the summer’s threats, a demonstration that these sheds and huts, yes, and the sheep and the small produce of its summer gardens, would be defended. Bandits or Elwynim intruders might find Modeyneth village too difficult a resource.