"That was all I saw, but there were very many men, Your Majesty."

That Ryssand had been still in the distance when Anwyll passed, that was good news.

He sat his horse watching and watching as group after group crossed the bridge, and in good time Lord Maudyn rode up to find him, from his camp where they might well have been expecting for some time to receive him and to pay him some courtesy of welcome.

Instead Lord Maudyn, good-hearted man, had ridden to him.

"Your Majesty," Maudyn said, and Cefwyn was glad to see him, and offered his hand across the gap between their horses.

"Well done," he said to Maudyn Lord of Panys. "Very well done. Did you hear that Ryssand is coming?"

Maudyn's countenance assumed a bleak quiet, and then Maudyn cast a curious look toward the bridge, where the first of the baggage carts waited to cross, behind Osanan.

"The baggage train will cross, one by one," Cefwyn said. "Which may be hours, to move all that. And Ryssand can wait. My baggage has to stay close with the army. If he's late, so be it. We'll be moving on to the next camp; there'll be no settling here."

He was satisfied now that the carts were beginning to roll. Ryssand would arrive too late to join the crossing of the provincial contingents. He would have to wait, he and those with him, until the last of the baggage train had rolled across the bridge, and that could be very slow, where it involved ox teams, and axles heavy-laden with canvas and iron.

It was time for the scouts to move out and be sure of their night's camp, that much closer to Ilefínian.

Ryssand could cross today and spend his next hours getting hisbaggage train across. Ryssand might overtake him today. He might not.

It was time to give the orders to the scouts, and to look to where they would stay this night, in weather fair enough to enable a camp without the tents. It was graven in stone that Guelenmen camped under canvas and made a solid camp at night, that Guelenmen moved at a deliberate pace dictated by the slowest oxcart in the baggage train: Ryssand would not expect this.

He might simply unhitch the teams and let the carts stand on the road, such as it was, completely filling it, so that the forces trying to pass them must struggle through the brush and limbs that fringed it. Perhaps amid the trees and thorn vines, Ryssand might gather he was being slighted.

More to the point, so might the lords with Ryssand see where Ryssand's leading had gotten them, and then weigh how angry they were willing to make their king, in enemy territory, when Ryssand was being outmaneuvered by oxcarts.

Let them ask themselves then in a second moment of sober reflection how far they could trust Tasmôrden to do what he had promised and to refrain from attacking them: Tasmôrden's promises and representations might ring somewhat hollow in their ears once they found themselves chasing their king deeper and deeper into Tasmôrden's reach.

One outraged, angry man might be a fool far quicker and far longer than his contentious allies.

That was what Cefwyn hoped, at least, as he turned Danvy to ride between Maudyn and Anwyll.

"We'll go on," he said, "gain as much ground as we can."

"Prudence, Your Majesty," Maudyn said.

"Do you trust your scouts?"

"To report what they believe, without question. But—"

"Do they believe the way is clear?"

"Yet to push ahead, against a walled town, Your Majesty, so precipitately, and without the preparation—"

"You've made the preparation. We have a camp, do we not, on this side of the Lenúalim?"

"Absolutely so, Your Majesty."

"Dug in, canvassed, well set, and provided with a rampart."

"So we have, Your Majesty."

"Then the gods for Ylesuin and devil take all traitors! These are horses, are they not?"

"Indubitably, so, Your Majesty."

"And capable of setting us closer to the enemy faster than the oxen could."

"But without preparation, and wearing down their strength—"

"We'll rest in time. I've had a letter from my brother and one from Amefel, and I'll not wager our lives there's not wizardryin the stew—wizardry helping Tasmôrden deceive our scouts, make foul seem fair, right seem wrong… no disparagement of your scouts, none! Lewenbrook showed us all what wizardry can do on the field, and gods send we don't see the like of thatagain."

"Gods save us from that, Your Majesty."

"But it's a possibility. Somethingwent on at Lewen field, something beyond Aséyneddin's wizardry, that Emuin never has told me… Tristen, gods save us, tried to explain, but he doesn't seem to know either, and thatworries me."

He had never been so frank in council, not with the good Quinalt lords pricking up their ears and ready to bolt. But to Maudyn and to Anwyll, who had served with Tristen, he delivered the truth that, before, only the inmost circle of his advisors had dealt with. And Lord Maudyn heard it in attentive silence.

"Mauryl died," Cefwyn said, "and sent Tristen in his place. Tristen was there at Lewenbrook, but neither he nor Emuin seems to know what was inthe cloud that rolled down the field. Tristen said he went to Ynefel during that battle—I don't know the truth of that. Emuin was lying abed in Henas'amef, and has no idea. And all along, everyone's assumed because we came off that field alive that Aséyneddin was the center of it all: that he's in hell and that's the end of it. I wonder."

"Lightning struck the Quinaltine," Maudyn said.

"That it did."

"A Sihhë coin turned up in the offering," Maudyn said further.

'' Thatwas a damnable piece of trickery! And it obscured the real fact."

"Which was, Your Majesty?"

"That lightningstruck the roof of the Quinaltine!… and robbed me of Tristen, of Emuin, of Cevulirn, ultimately, all of Ryssand's connivance."

"The lightning surely wasn't Ryssand's doing," Maudyn said.

"That's the point, isn't it? The lightning was something Ryssand couldn't manage. But it happened, and damned inconvenient of it to hit there and not the Bryalt shrine, wasn't it?"

It was too far remote from the lives of ordinary men. Lord Maudyn regarded him as if willing to agree with his king, but unsure to which proposition he should agree.

"I suppose so," Maudyn said.

"It stole Tristen from me. Emuin would warn me that was no accident. Do you think Tasmôrden can move the lightning?"

"I have no knowledge of Tasmôrden himself, except as an earl of Elwynor, a traitor to his lord…"

"Exactly! Exactly so. No knowledge of the man except as an earl among other earls, a traitor among other traitors, no special gifts, no repute, no great allegiance among the Elwynim, would you say?"

"He pays his troops. He hires brigands."

"The Saendal. And pays them with the goods they loot from Elwynimthey've attacked. Is this a man to inspire loyalty? Is this a king?"

"I would say not, Your Majesty."

"I would say not, as well. No king, no great man, no man loved by the people… would you not say a wizard, if he devoted himself to lead his own people to war, might not…" Cefwyn waggled the fingers of his off hand, Danvy's reins lying in the other. "… conjurebetter?"

"Master Emuin hardly fits the model."

"Ah. Master Emuin. Mauryl. Leave aside Tristen. He's his own creature. But wizards, now!"

"I don't follow Your Majesty."