It was muddy going, for the dark and all, and now they had the banners put away and their cloaks close about them. The horses were reluctant, having been given the prospect of a warm stable and that now taken from them: Dys was surly for half an hour, and Cass farther than that, while Crissand's horse and the guards' were entirely out of their high spirits and the horses at lead, those who had carried them all day, plodded.

"Now's the time we look sharp around us," Uwen said to the guards, "on account of if any man's movin' we're the noisiest."

"The Lord Commander will have told them we're coming," Crissand said, meaning the guard at the wall.

"Beyond any doubt," Tristen said, and now in the dark he did resort ever so gingerly to the gray space, listening to the land around them. He heard a hare in a thicket, a fox on its nightbound hunt, both aware of the passage of horses on the road.

And Owl was back, with a sudden swoop out of the dark that startled the foremost horses out of their sulking.

"Damn," said Crissand's captain.

"Men are ahead of us," Tristen said, for he gathered that out of the insubstantial wind: indeed men were moving in the same direction, toward the wall. "Don't venture," he said quietly to Crissand, for Crissand had wondered, and fallen right into the wizard-sight, easy as his next breath. "Someone might hear."

"My lord," Crissand said, and ceased.

It was a fair ride farther to the old wall, where Aeself's archers might be, and a dangerous prospect, to come up on archers at night, and with their badges invisible.

Idrys would have come there ahead of them, at least while the light lasted, and indeed forewarned them. But now there were two groups on the road, and Tristen set a moderately quicker pace, chasing that presence of many men in the dark, one a presence he knew.

It was right near the wall he knew that the other presence in the dark was indeed Drumman; and in that sure knowledge he let the gap close. The men ahead had heard them, and slowed, and stopped; and waited warily.

"Owl," Tristen said, and, rarely obedient, Owl obliged him by a close pass, and by flapping heavily about his shoulder. He lifted a hand to brush Owl's talons off his cloak, and drew a little of the light of the gray space to his hand, and to Owl, who flew off, faintly shining, here and there at once.

A murmur arose in the ranks behind, and even the Amefin blessed themselves; but Owl vanished among the trees and came back again, and all the while Tristen had never ceased to ride at the same steady pace.

Drumman knew, now, who commanded Owl, and waited, a line of riders in the dark beyond a small woods, as Owl came back to him, and then found a perch above.

"Lord Drumman," Tristen said.

"My lord duke!" Drumman said. "Well met. I'd feared you were intruders."

"None have crossed that I know," Tristen said, and took Drum-man's offered hand. "But Aeself and his men are along the river, and Cevulirn should have crossed to the Elwynim side. I need you and your men to hold the camp on this side."

"And not cross!" Drumman protested. "We're light horse, well drilled, and well set."

"Then come with us," Tristen said. He had withheld from the lady of Modeyneth their greatest concerns, but to Drumman he told all the truth of Ryssand's action and Idrys' fears as they rode, and by the time the wall darkened the night sky, Drumman understood the worst.

"Beset by his own," Drumman said, as harshly as if he and Crissand's house had never courted rebels or conspired against Cefwyn at all. It was honest indignation… so thoroughly the sentiments of the Amefin had shifted toward the Marhanen and the Lady of Elwynor.

"By his own, and planning to divide Elwynor between Tasmôrden and themselves," Crissand said. "Which is no good for Amefel. We know where Tasmôrden's ambitions would turn next."

"Fine neighbors," Drumman said, above the moving of the horses. "Fine neighbors they'd be, Ryssand orTasmôrden. What are we to do?"

"Come at the enemy in Ilefínian and reach them before Cefwyn does," Tristen said, but in his heart was Idrys' fear, a traitor nearer Cefwyn than the ones they and Cefwyn already knew. Distance mattered in wizardry and Cefwyn being the point on which the whole eastern assault turned, he had no doubt all the wizardry of their enemy was bent on his overthrow.

They reached the wall, that reared dark and absolute across the road, with gates shut and the will of Lord Drusenan to defend it. It made him think of the maps, and how there was, along the riverside, the village of Anas Mallorn, and other small holdings scattered along the wedge of land before the rock, and all that way Idrys had to go, if he had not found a boat ready and able to take him on the water.

Yet Drusenan's men had long carried on a secret commerce with Elwynor.

A challenge came down to them as they reached the gates, a sharp, "Who goes there?"

"His Grace of Amefel!" Crissand shouted up. "Meiden and Lord Drumman! Open up!"

"Open the gates!" came down from above them.

Then a second voice, Drusenan's: "Welcome, my lord, to our wall! Welcome to the defense of Amefel!"

There was a brisk rub for the horses, and a welcome cup and pallets for a nap for the men, but for the lords, no rest—it was straight to a close council in the restored gatehouse of the wall, warm and lit with a small, double-wicked oil lamp.

In that place they took their cups of ale, declined food, for that they had already had, and spread out the map they brought from Henas'amef.

"The men you sent went through, never stopping but to say you were coming," Drusenan said, "which is as much as we know, my lord."

"Was a tall man with them?"

"A grim fellow, yes, my lord."

"And left with them."

"Went with them, my lord, and all of them pressing hard. And they had the bands, every man of them."

There was no more, then, that he could do, and they nursed their cups of ale over small matters of supply and intent until the bottom of the cup, and then a brief, a desperate attempt at sleep and rest.

But Owl was abroad, still, and when Tristen shut his eyes he found himself in dizzying flight, wheeling above the darkened river, where a bridge stood completed, and men crossed by night.

Owl flew farther, and skimmed almost to the water, and up again, where the rocks rose sheer above the river.

Then back again, where a boat traveled under sail, and a dark man looked out from the prow, restless and worried. He traveled alone, that man, having left the guard behind. He was bidden rest on deck, but he could not sleep, and scanned the dark and rugged shore as the face of an enemy.

It was very far for Idrys to travel, even yet.

Owl flew on, and on, and swept his vision past hills to east and north, and Cefwyn's camp was there, hundreds of tents, all set in orderly rows. He wished Owl to turn and show him Cefwyn, Owl veered off across the land, far, far, far, toward the east, Tristen thought, where the Quinaltine stood, where Efanor kept watch.

Of a sudden Owl turned, veered back again in a course so rapid the stars blurred and the world became dark, became the river, dark water, and cold.

Something was abroad in the night. Owl fled it, and that was never Owl's inclination. For a long time Tristen had nothing in his sight but the ragged, raw cliffs and stony upthrusts of the hills, and then the gentler land of shepherds and orchards, laid bare of snow. The enemy hunted, hunted, pursued.