Norge struggled to recover his essential equanimity. “I think we should do that right away, my lord Prince. If we don’t, we might get stuck here for the night. The armies need us. And I can’t ask my guards to stay with that many corpses.”
The Prince nodded. “I will instruct men to string lines to keep the horses together.” Followed by his soldiers, he strode away into the snowfall and disappeared as if the flakes swept his reality away.
Rather aimlessly, Norge commented, “The Tor is resting. I’ll go get him. But I don’t think he’ll be able to ride.”
No one answered. Scowling uncharacteristically, the Castellan went back into the manor.
Master Barsonage cleared his throat. “It was a natural mistake, Geraden. We all made it. What do we know of Master Eremis, but that Esmerel is his ancestral home? What is more reasonable than the assumption that he built his power here – held his prisoners here?”
“Yes, it was reasonable,” Geraden said in a bleak tone.
“No, it wasn’t.” Terisa hadn’t intended to speak; she didn’t know what she was going to say until she said it. “King Joyse told me to think.” Her mind was full of the Perdon and the Tor, and the implications of snow. “Esmerel was too obvious.
“We had to come here. We didn’t know where else to go. But we should have known he wouldn’t be here.”
“And now we’re stuck,” Geraden finished.
No one argued with him.
Guards brought horses up to the portico. The mounts already had snow caked in their manes, on their withers; the flakes were so thick and cold that the horses’ heat turned them to ice as they melted. But the wind kept the hoods and shoulders of the guards clear.
Men began to file out of the house. After a while, Castellan Norge and Ribuld brought the Tor to the portico. Physically, the old lord had never looked worse. His limbs were as frail as a child’s; his hands shook as if the chill had already reached his bones; his skin was the color of moldy potatoes.
Nevertheless the glare in his eyes was unquenchable. His outrage at what had been done to the Perdon sustained him when his body and his ordinary courage failed.
As long as she ignored the rest of him and watched only his eyes, Terisa was able to keep her grasp on hope.
Norge was right: the Tor couldn’t bear to be mounted again. But Ribuld stayed with him, and the Castellan assigned other guards to his side; shuffling heavily, he moved away into the snow. Like Prince Kragen, he seemed to vanish from the world almost immediately.
At a word from Norge, Terisa, Geraden, and Master Barsonage climbed onto their beasts. Led by guards who were connected with lines to other guards, invisible in the impenetrable snowfall, they rode away from Esmerel to search for their encampment.
Swirling snowflakes burned her eyes. They prickled on her cheeks like bits of premonition; hints sharp enough to cut, cold enough to numb the damage they did.
Despite the caution of the riders, they reached their part of the camp sooner than she would have believed possible. The men of Orison and the Alend soldiers had laid out a protected position for their commanders near Esmerel and the head of the valley, away from the exposed foot of the wedge; so Terisa and Geraden, Master Barsonage and Castellan Norge didn’t have as far to go as the rest of the guards. And tents had already been set up for them: Master Harpool and his companion had apparently been at work with their mirrors for some time, translating equipment and supplies from Orison.
Master Barsonage and Geraden hurried to join them.
From horseback, Terisa saw bonfires and torches around her, some of them as much as twenty or thirty feet away. Maybe the snowfall was thinning. Even so, it was at least four or five inches deep. And – unless her sense of time had failed completely – sunset was still an hour or so away. Even if the snowfall was thinning, there might be a foot or more on the ground before night.
A guard urged her to dismount and enter a large tent which had been raised for the Tor and Castellan Norge; but she stayed where she was, trying to read the suggestions in the snow, until the Tor himself reached the camp. Then she got down and went with him into shelter.
A servant took his cloak, then brought food and wine, which the old lord rejected with a grimace. Supported by Ribuld and another guard, he lowered himself into a camp chair. He had snow in his eyebrows, snow on his head. His cheeks were the color of worn out ice. Ribuld knelt in front of him, offered to pull off his boots; he declined that comfort as well. “I must go out again soon,” he murmured. “There is no escaping it.”
“My lord Tor,” Ribuld said in a tone Terisa hadn’t heard him use since Argus’ death, “you don’t need to go out. Prince Kragen and Castellan Norge will come to you.”
“Ah, true,” sighed the Tor. “But if I remain here, who will give the King’s guard my blessing? I must visit every campfire tonight, every squadron, so that every man will know his bravery is valued and his loyalty, precious.
“No, Ribuld, I will wear my boots. I do not mean to take them off again.”
Ribuld bowed and withdrew to stand with Terisa. Around his scar, the veteran’s face was tight with unexpected grief.
“Ribuld—?” she tried to ask; but she couldn’t find the words she wanted. All she knew about him was that he had been Argus’ friend; he liked and served Artagel; he seemed to enjoy suggestive conversation. And he had killed Saddith to save Lebbick. He would have saved Lebbick from Gart, if he could.
“My lady,” he said, almost snarling to control himself, “my home’s in the Care of Tor. Not far from Marshalt. I fought for the Tor – that’s how he knows my name – and for the Perdon, too, before I joined the King’s guard.” He looked at her as if, like her, he couldn’t find the right words.
Maybe she understood. “Take good care of him,” she replied softly. “He needs you more than Geraden and I do.”
The twist of Ribuld’s expression could have meant anything.
Terisa left the tent and went to see if Master Harpool required help.
As she and the Masters finished translating the last of the tents and bedrolls, the snowfall abruptly lessened. She felt cold to the bone; her face was wet and numb; her fingertips left trails of moisture down the frame of Master Harpool’s glass. Nevertheless the easing of the snow caught at her attention like a call of horns—
—the call for which her heart had always been waiting.
She jerked her back straight, lifted her head, spun around before anyone else noticed the change.
Yes. Blowing down from the head of the valley, the wind parted the snow like curtains, let the gray light of early evening through the clouds. As if without transition, Esmerel and the valley became a winter landscape before twilight, a scene which needed only sunshine to reveal its surprising beauty.
Perhaps the horns – and those who sounded them – were on the far side: the far side of the manor, where the defile brought the brook gamboling over its ice into the valley.
Now Geraden joined her, looked around. Several of the Masters breathed thanks that the snow was stopping. Guards expressed the same sentiment less delicately. None of them could hear the premonition in the air whetted with cold, the implication as penetrating as splinters.
“Get the Tor,” she said as if the horns had lifted her out of herself, despite the fact that she couldn’t hear them, could hardly remember them; maybe she had never heard them. “Get Prince Kragen. Tell them to hurry.”
“Terisa?” Geraden asked. “Terisa?”
She ignored him. She didn’t need reason: intuition was enough. She was fixed on Esmerel and couldn’t look away.
Master Barsonage sent Imagers into motion. Someone shouted for the Castellan. Infected by an urgency they couldn’t explain, guards began to obey, began to run. She had that much credibility with them, anyway.