He handed his stick down to the groom with an order to keep it for him, and took the cloak the guard handed up, steadying Synanna’s foolery with his feet and his knees: his right leg hurt with the pains of hell as he slung the cloak about him and used his knee to steady Synanna from a compensatory shift sideways.
More, the horse was sore, having been ridden that breakneck course for Emwy the last time out of the stable. Consequently he had his ears back and was going to take every chance to have things his way on this outing. The horse was looking for excuses as he rode to the gate with five of the guard clattering after—and the King’s standard-bearer riding to catch up, still unfurling the King’s red banner, at which Synanna threw his head and acted the thorough fool under the gate arch.
Another horseman overtook them there and fell in beside him: Idrys, on black Drugyn, this time having heard the summons. The standard-bearer and the bearer of Idrys’ personal banner made it to their position in the same general flurry of riders. “I had the report,” Idrys said.
“Gods know what this regards,” he said. They passed through the town streets and on the cobbles Synanna wanted to drop into his worst gait, which took work to prevent; it hurt, and stopping it hurt, and he was in far less pleasant a mood as he reached the lower town and saw the town gate standing wide—to welcome the Elwynim, one supposed. He was not thoroughly gracious as first Cevulirn and a small number of riders, with the White Horse standard and pennons and all, rode up and joined them at that open gate.
Then Umanon and three of his lieutenants arrived, making a collection of banners enough to make a brave show for a King whose wounded leg and whose temper could not stand much more of Synanna’s jolting trot.
But his two loyal lords might have shut the gates and met the damned Elwynim where they could not get a good look inside or a head count on all the camps down that lane.
“Pass the word to all the watches,” he said to the gate-guards. “No foreign banner and no foreign courier is to pass this gate until an officer of the Dragon Guard comes down himself and takes charge of them. Do you hear that?”
“Yes, Your Majesty,” came the answer; “Yes, Your Majesty,” came in awestruck tones at his back as he rode out westward with his growing company.
And there on the muddy road, plain as a horse in a henyard, were the Elwynim, with the banners of three earls behind the black and white and gold Tower banner of the Regent of Elwynor.
And with them, the pennons of six squads of the Ivanim light horse.
That was much better; Cevulirn’s men were escorting the visitors in.
There was Uwen Lewen’s-son, up at the fore. And best of all, Tristen, thank the blessed gods: he had no idea how all three elements had gotten together, but he was both vastly relieved and disquieted anew, and for the same reason.
Synanna went into his bone-jarring trot in his momentary lapse. He corrected it, and in the abating of pain, and past the cracking satin of his own red banner, saw a black-haired woman in a mail shirt and a billow of mud-spattered blue skirt that blew back on white linen—a woman, his startled gaze informed him, who rode preceded only by the Regent’s standard-bearer, ahead of the other banners; more, the Regent’s crown flashed in that mass of dark hair—and he knew that hair, that heart-shaped face that had resided for months in a keepsake chest in his bedchamber.
“The Regent’s daughter, in the flesh,” Idrys said, coldest reason. “No sign of the lord Regent. And with Ynefel. What have we knocking on our gates, m’lord King?”
“I’11 wait to see,” he muttered, while his thoughts were flitting wildly to Tristen’s safety, bridges spanning the Lenfialim, the missing messenger, the whereabouts of the lord Regent Uleman, the young lady’s distractingly pretty and apparently unconscious display—and her reasons for approaching the gates of Henas’amef.
To pursue a royal marriage by passage of arms? He did not think it likely. But she was certainly far deeper into Amefel than any lordly delegation reasonably ought to come without his leave. It was an extravagant challenge of his good nature, which the Elwynim might guess was not good at all at the moment.
And Tristen showed up in this business?
Trust Tristen’s naive confidence. And damn Idrys if he dared remind him now he had predicted Tristen’s blithe honesty could be his bane someday.
Their two parties reached a distance at which their banner-bearers mutually stopped for protocols, and he rode up even with his banner, with Idrys riding beside him and Cevulirn and Umanon and their standard-bearers staying behind him. The young woman similarly advanced to the Regent’s standard, and one man rode to her side.
“We’ve come to speak with the King,” that man called out.
“Stay back,” he said to Idrys, and raised the wager by riding forward of Idrys. Only his banner-bearer advanced with him.
There was consternation on the opposing man’s part, a frown on the lady’s face as her captain put out a hand, clearly wishing her to make no reciprocal advance. But the young woman rode forward alone, and the Regent’s standard-bearer advanced with her.
“I am King Cefwyn,” he said as she stopped her horse within a lance’s length of him. The portrait-painter had not lied, never mind the mud and the mail coat: the image that had haunted his more pensive evenings was facing him in life, a face pale and wind-stung and afraid, and a resolve not giving backward a step.
“The lord of Ynefel has made himself our hostage,” she said, “against your grant of safe conduct for me and my men back across the border.”
“I shall certainly grant that. I would be obliged, however, if you returned me the lord of Ynefel and accepted my simple word to that effect, gracious lady. Am I correct? Do I recognize you, or have you a sister?”
“I am the Regent.” The voice quavered slightly. “My father is dead, last evening, Your Majesty. I have come to ask your forbearance for our presence in your lands, and your permission to fortify a camp in your territory.”
So Emuin was right. It was a sad event for the lady to report, a grief more recent than his own. It was, moreover, a very precise military term, doubtless her advisors’ idea, which she had been told to ask in its precise wording. He wondered if she understood it.
“To fortify a camp,” he echoed. His view of blowing skirts and white, mud-spattered linen was competing with the consideration of Elwynim in view of his very vulnerable town. “I give you my sincere condolences, and ask why fortified, Your Most Honorable Grace.”
“I understand that Elwynim crossed the river against your father the King up in Emwy district.”
“Yes,” he said, not seeing how this answered his question. “They did.
In collusion with the Aswyddim. We recovered shields from that field, and wounded now dead, three of them of Lower Saissonnd.”
“Caswyddian,” she declared without hesitation. “Lord Caswyddian of Saissonnd. A rebel against my father—a rival of Aséyneddin.”
He had heard rumors, he knew that name and had marked it down as a man who would pay in Heryn’s fashion, did he turn out to have been on that field at Emwy, or to have known of it—and did he ever fall into his hands; but he did not wish to tell her what he had heard or how much he knew. “So you bring Elwynor’s troubles onto Amefin soil, and want to fortify a camp, making us, I suppose, your allies of a sort, certainly as Aséyneddin will see it. That could cause us trouble. And, forgive my suspicion, Your Grace, but of how many men do you propose to make this camp?”
“These men—” There was the least tremor in the lady’s chin, the first thorough fracture in her composure. “—these fifteen men, sir. Thirty-three were camped with my father. A band we think was Caswyddian’s attacked us last night and half my men stayed to guard our retreat, so that I might remain alive to make this request—in which regard, I would ask you, if you would, if you would be so gracious, should they chance into your hands—place them under the same safe conduct.”