Yet to advise you of these things should I fall, which gods forbid, I have my one opportune messenger at hand and dare not keep him. I have learned to trust my doubts and to make friends of them, and of all courses before me, I am most uneasy with the thought of remaining silent regarding Lord Tristen's instruction and his actions here, whether by magic or wizardry or whatever agency. If wizardry comes against us here, we believe our task is to prevent it.
Meanwhile I have heard nothing from Ryssand nor of Ryssand.
The good gods bless you and Her Grace. The gods attend your steps and guide you day and night. The gracious gods bring you success and honor.
I send you my devotion and my love.
The last was crabbed into a bend around the edge of the parchment… Efanor had made the message scroll itself as small as he could, so that Anwyll might tuck it away unseen… remarkable, Cefwyn reflected… remarkable and shameful, that they were brought to this pass of secrecy, all for Ryssand and Ryssand's daughter.
Wizardry, Efanor said. Wizardry. Tristen in Guelemara, when other and reliable reports, even Ninévrisë's dream, he remembered now, though for a moment he had forgotten it, had said he was in Henas'amef.
What in hell was he to think?
"Did His Highness mention anything to you of Lord Tristen coming to Guelemara?" he asked Anwyll, and saw Anwyll's surprise.
"No, Your Majesty, no such thing! It was Lord Tristen's intent to go to the river."
"To the river, but on the other side of that cursed rock," Cefwyn said half to himself, for it was that impassable barrier which kept him from going aside to Tristen's camp and making one their plan of assault on Ilefínian. Weathered knolls of barren stone and deep pockets of earth bearing tangled brush in the crevices made it land unfit for goats, let alone any hope of joining their forces either side of the river, not until they were most of the way to Ilefínian, which sat at the point of that spear of a ridge.
And had Tristen indeed followed his silly pigeons over thatand appeared to Efanor in the capital?
Efanor had surely dreamed. Had a vision and convinced his priestly supporters. Tristen was on the other side of that great range of hills; and Ninévrisë would confirm Tristen in his plan to go to the river and cross and bring him whatever support he might need… to Tasmôrden's extreme discomfiture. Pray for that, brother!
If there were that much force to this wizardous threat Efanor named, surely then Ninévrisë would have read it in her bespelled scrap of a letter and told him so: it was, then, nothing so extreme— only one of Efanor's dreams, that before now had set him to religious excesses. The kingdom was in danger and his brother, with all his other excellent qualities, saw visions.
So whatever had happened in the capital, whatever unholy threat Efanor foresaw, whatever the truth of visions… he left that to priests as out of his reach and beyond his advice. What he had more to fear in his vicinity was the equally unholy union of enemies, Parsy-nan and Cuthan, Ryssand and Tasmôrden, all conniving together, and now Ryssand coming up behind him.
Therewas the thought to make him anxious. He very much doubted Ryssand would do anything so overt as to attack his own king's baggage train, and it was equally difficult to think that Ryssand could plan anything so reckless as an assault on his back… but it was not impossible to think.
Ryssand had buried a son, dead at Cevulirn's hand in this exchange of rancor and wedding proposals. Artisane still fluttered around Efanor and had still hoped, so appearances were, down to the day the army marched.
But considering how Ryssand came chasing after the army with his own muster… his own very large muster, which might have with it not only Murandys but Nelefreissan and Teymeryn and all the northern lands… did not fill him with confidence.
Could they all, allthe north intend to strike at him? Did they conspire together, so blindly hateful of his rule that they would gamble on Tasmôrden's often-bartered promises—or was Ryssand, even Ryssand, innocent and coming to the defense of the realm?
He watched the last of the Guelen Guard come off the bridge, last of the standing regiments, and saw the first of the provincial forces, the contingent with young Rusyn, ride after… no great number of foot, except those Panys had brought.
The army he had fielded after all was, as Tristen had once advised him, nearly all horse. It was not near the number of men the lords could have raised in the peasant levies, if they had called in the infantry, as they had planned—he had foregone that, at the very last, had overset long-held plans as the carts delayed and their information from across the river painted him a mobile, smaller enemy than Aséyneddin had led against him. The army he had gathered still would not move as fast as the light horse Tristen and Cevulirn alike had recommended, but they would move and regroup faster than heavy infantry.
And if thanks to Ryssand they had now to abandon all but a few tents in favor of rapid movement into Elwynor, so be it and damn Ryssand: the weather was tolerable and they could manage. They could forage. Without Ninévrisë, he no longer hoped overmuch for a great rising of folk loyal to her banner: their best information portrayed a land cowed and beaten by conflicting warlords, no man daring raise his head. But all the same he carried her banner aloft and hoped to receive some support from the locals, if only in their declining to face him for Tasmôrden.
And at the worst of Ryssand's treachery, they still could survive long enough to reach Ilefínian, against every principle of Guelen warfare that declared the baggage train had to set the rate of march and that they must not leave it vulnerable to attack. For what he did now, he cast back to older models, to Tashanen, to Barrakketh himself: they must not extend themselves so fast and so far from their lines they lost control of the roads on which they marched and the supplies which moved on those roads, but they had to risk the tents… there was no kingdom to go back to if he retreated now, and no hope of victory if he enmeshed himself in Ryssand's schemes. Defeat Tasmôrden, and he would have a far more tractable Lord Ryssand to deal with. Fail to defeat Tasmôrden… and he would die here. That was the truth.
And the less visible truth was that the few carts they had and Lord Maudyn's extensive, well-set camp were neither one the most reliable source of supply. No, in fact: the most reliable road and the supply he knew beyond a doubt they could count on was not what he played hop-skip with in evading Ryssand and not what he had spent a winter laying out. It was (granted Tristen had not flitted off with his pigeons) the supply Tristenhad established on the other side of what he had come to think of as that damned rock.
In Amefel. That was where Ninévrisë was, that was where Tristen was, that was where Emuin was.
It was where Cevulirn was, and Sovrag, and Pelumer, and gods, even that poker of a man, Umanon of Imor. They were the same company as had stood against the Shadow at Lewenbrook. There was supply at Anwyll's former camp, and thathe did not doubt.
Therewas the solid support he could trust.
As for the wagons and the carts and the pack train he had… he sat his horse at Anwyll's side and watched that line of men and carts across the river, hastening about its business of gathering up the camp and following the army.
"You said Ryssand was at the north road," he remarked to Captain Anwyll. "Approaching this road, or already on it?"
"Approaching, Your Majesty. I saw his banner at a distance."
"His and no others?"