Arm and out! Arm and out! came from the bells, and Crissand's captain rode a thick-legged gray into the half-light of the yard, carrying a furled dark standard to the steps where they stood.

Crissand came to the edge of the steps and took it in his hand, looking up.

"My lord! This one, for the lord of Althalen and Ynefel! This one, with the others!"

"Unfurl it," he said, knowing which standard it was, and in the wind that began with dawn Crissand unfurled the Star and Crown of the Sihhë Kings, the banner Tasmôrden had tried to claim, and now would see carried against him.

One more Tawwys brought and saw spread against the wind, the Tower and Checker of the Lady Regent, until the standards that should go before a great army flew and cracked on the wind. Shewas with him, as she had helped draw him out of the gray space: she sat now by her fireside, wrapped in her own efforts, which were for the wards of the fortress, and for the watch Efanor had undertaken. With Emuin's sure aid she settled herself to watch all the accesses of the place, and nothing might pursue its occupants here, nothing might pass her awareness. She was the Tower, and she prepared to stand siege.

Paisi appeared at the top of the steps, smallish and wide-eyed, and scampering down the steps to the alarm of the horses.

"Careful there," Lusin chided him, and set a heavy hand on Paisi's shoulder, staying him short of the last dive in among the milling horses.

"Master wishes ye know he's watchin'!" Paisi shouted out. "An' bids ye sleep o' nights!"

Tristen waved at him, understanding, but coming no closer, for the men afoot and the horses being brought filled the smallish yard, and those of them that were mounted had to move to give the others room enough. His guard had mounted up, staying close with him, and new men, all of Meiden, carried the standards.

Dys and Cass would join them outside the walls, among the remounts, and Uwen was off on Liss. It was only Gery that awaited them here, and Tristen mounted up and took up his shield from Aran's hands, the red one, with Amefel's black Eagle. But he did not ride alone: Crissand joined him, on a thick-legged, sturdy gray, while his house guard under his captain waited just outside the Zeide gate, where there was room.

"Let us go," Tristen said, and Gweyl, in Uwen's place until they had regained him and Gedd, relayed the order to send the banner-bearers out before them.

They rode out under the menace of the gate into the chill, clear dawn, out into the town. The bell tolled above them, signal to all the town, and it waked every sleeper and brought shutters open and shadowy bundled figures to the streets.

Lord Sihhë! the people shouted, gathering everywhere along the main street of the town, some wrapped in blankets, straight from their beds and into the chill that frosted breath. All the way to the lower gates the townsfolk stood and shouted out, Lord Sihhë and Meiden!

So they shouted out for the other lords of Amefel as they, too, turned out with their house guards, joining them from side streets, and so a handful of enterprising boys shouted from the top of the town's main gate as they rode out, a last salute of high, boyish voices: The High King! The High King!

So they had shouted. Was it now or then? The High King and the king of Hen Amas!

The banner then seemed green, Aswydd green, and the dragons reared in defiance and threat as they had loomed above him in the hall.

"Lord Sihhë! Lord Sihhë! Lord Sihhë for Amefel and Meiden!"

So the shouts faded, and, beyond the town gate, they turned first on the west road past the stables. They rode over the traces of other riders, past emptied camps. They were not the first, but the last of the army to ride out.

But with them came the signal for all the lords to move, to force war on Tasmôrden from the south—and to save the king.

CHAPTER 7

The army of Amefel moved at the brisk pace of the horses, so that they had progressed well out from Henas'amef before the sun rose above the hills—while signal fires lit on those hills advised all the outlying lands they were called to arms and must converge on the riverside by country trails and back roads and whatever served.

The whole land was now in movement. All the baggage that might have delayed them, even the equipage of the heavy horses, with the tents, all of that had gone to the river, the last of it following Cevulirn's passage, they needed no shelter with Modeyneth's hospitality halfway, and that left the Amefin nothing to do but make speed.

And sure enough, as the sun stood at noon, two riders appeared out of the distance and the folding of the hills.

Tristen had no doubt who it was. He knew Uwen by his riding and Gedd by his company. They came up on one another with all deliberate speed, and as they met, Uwen swung in close with him and Crissand.

"The Lord Commander's on 'is way," Uwen said first, "an' sent us back before he got to the river, but we told 'im all what he was set to hear, an' we come back fast as fast."

"The fires are lit," Tristen said. "I've taken precautions and left Emuin and Her Grace in charge, with Lusin. The Amefin that will march are marching."

"No delays as I can see, m'lord. I rode as far as Modeyneth. Lord Drusenan's gone to the wall, and roused out a good lot of archers to riverside, as ain't been needed yet, thank the gods, nor will be, if Lord Cevulirn's across."

"Good news," Tristen said, for Drusenan had promised archers, and if Cefwyn pressed too hard and fast from the east or if the enemy came south from the beginning without that encouragement, then archers on the southern bridges might serve them well.

But wizardry had now a third place to attack, and that was Idrys, riding hard toward the river… while Cefwyn, blind and deaf to magic, knew to watch Ryssand but not men closer to him. Still, the advantages wizardry had in Cefwyn's direction were all too attractive—for it was to protect Cefwyn that Tristen found himself constrained to take actions he would not of his own will take, when his heart told him to cast everything to the winds and follow Idrys to Cefwyn's camp.

He could not go as fast as his thoughts could fly: if magic alone would serve, he could have gone to Ilefínian before dawn, and stood face-to-face with Tasmôrden and the enemy. He could, he was sure, go aside now to the ruins of Althalen and have a way from there. Oh, there were ways and ways to reach Ilefínian, but only one to reach it with an army; and as much confidence as he had in his own strength, it was not enough to fling himself alone into the heart of his enemy's power: the temptation was there, the urge was there, but he trusted neither, fearing traps, not yet seeing enough into Ilefínian to know what he might face.

So he kept his pace at Uwen's side and at Crissand's, and they whiled away the time as they rode with Uwen's account and Uwen's questions, what had they done, who was in authority in Henas'amef and what time they hoped to make. Idrys had questioned Uwen and Gedd very closely, elicited every detail from Gedd, where he had lodged in town, when he had moved, when he had known men were following him and what he had done.

"Yet he gave no names," Crissand asked. "He gave no indication who it might be that he fears."

"Not a one," Uwen said. "Naught that we can do, 'cept by wish-in', which m'lord does, I'm sure."

"That I do," Tristen said fervently, "and wish him speed."

"Speed to us, too," Uwen said, and, turning in his saddle to glance back at the Amefin troop he had driven uphill and down, until men and horses alike had grown used to hard moving. "Ho, ye men, not so sore as ye'd ha' been wi'out ye rid through them hills, is't?"