Banners were being uncased and unfurled, with the least hint of light in the sky. The grooms began to lead the horses out. Uwen went off with one of the servants and came back with his horse and Petelly, ahead of a scar-faced man who, bearing a furled banner, also led a horse up. That man said, in a voice low and somewhat shy, “I’m Andas Andas’-son, m’lord.
I’m to bear your standard, His Majesty said. I served eleven years in His Majesty’s Dragons. The sergeant there knows me.”
“He’s a good man,” Uwen said under his breath. “A fine man. I know
‘im those eleven years. He’ll keep matters straight.”
“Then thank you,” he said, “Andas Andas’-son.” He knew he all but knew that this man would not leave the field; and did the man not know it?
No more would Uwen leave him. No more would his servants. Or the others. He did not understand. Least of all could he understand the determination it took to take that post, for a lord who was not his own.
He made up his mind if Andas’-son lived and ever he could do good for him, he would do it. But it was no favor Andas’-son had been granted.
The groom brought Petelly and he rubbed Petelly’s nose and patted his neck as Petelly cast a white-rimmed eye about the proceedings and cocked ears toward the racket. The steam of their breaths commingled in the light of a lantern a man carried past. He felt calmer himself with Petelly under his hands. He climbed up and from that higher vantage, out of the shadows of wagons and horses and men and the flare of lanterns, saw the dawn well begun, a faint glow about the peaked roofs of the Zeide, and above the high walls.
At that moment a shout went up. Cefwyn and Efanor had appeared in the doorway, held up joined hands in the lantern-light, embraced with more than formal warmth, then parted at the steps. Efanor was staying as defender of the town, taking command of the Guard that stayed, and Cefwyn was moving to take horse, as Idrys rode close to the base of the steps.
Then Ninévrisé and her ladies came down, and grooms brought those horses up; Cefwyn mounted up on bay Danvy, and Idrys joined him as Ninévrisé and her ladies were assisted into the saddles. The Dragon banner unfurled, red and shadow and gold, transparent where it crossed the lantern-light. Cheers went up all about. The Tower of the Regent billowed out, and cheers went up at that, too.
Petelly was growing excited, working the bit and looking about at this and that movement. Tristen kept him as close to his place in line as he could manage until Uwen had mounted up; the grooms, Aswys’ lads, handed them up their shields, which they would carry through the town.
Then the two of them rode over to the place he was assigned, with the King. He could not see Cefwyn, but he saw Ninévrisé, and saw Cefwyn’s personal guard. Erion Netha and Denyn Kei’s-son were with them, Erion carrying the short lance the Ivanim favored; and Denyn with the curved sword and small buckler common among Sovrag’s rivermen. The several Guelen guard with them were armored as they were, as light cavalry, but bearing heavy horsemen’s shields.
Of a sudden another cheer went up. He had no idea why, until he saw the Tower and Star billow out, eerily pale in the light that broke above the walls—his own banner had unfurled.
A horn brayed across the din, and the three standard-bearers began to move out the gates, down through the town, no mad haste in this ride, but solemn deliberation. The bells of the town began to peal, ringing from every town gate and from the citadel, a clangor that started every bird still drowsing in the towers.
Townsfolk that gathered along the street waved and shouted. Boys broke from the crowd as the banners passed, and ran along beside them—boys too young to have been mustered to the Amefin lords, boys clutching bows and carrying old swords, boys some of them with no weapons at all. The young lads coursed their route and stayed with them, though he saw mothers and fathers shout at them to come back. Tristen saw a band of them break from the crowd as the banners passed, and as they rode under the gate and turned to the right, along the long, long line of wagons, the boys burst forth from outside the gates and ran alongside the foremost riders.
Dogs joined the chase. Several stray sheep wandered through, among the wagons, right across the path of the horses, and, with the dogs behind, jogged back through the line in front of them.
Outside the town gates, the nearby rural and town levies mustered in the dark, and there came a flood of Amefin infantry behind a few horsed lords.
The Eagle standard of the Amefin swept in just behind their rank, with the several earls and their separate standards, and behind those the pennons of the various sections with their lieutenants and sergeants in command.
They passed their wagon in line near the head of the column: Dys and Cass were with it, along with Aswys and two of his boys on horseback, and Tassand and the other servants. Lusin and the other fifteen Guelen guards, the four shifts that had stood at his door, all on horseback, rode in to their assigned place behind the King’s guard, the King’s Dragon Guard being under Gwywyn, who rode behind the leaders. But Lusin and the rest were directly under Uwen’s command, since Uwen’s armoring and commission as a Guelen officer and, at least by honor, as Tristen now understood, a captain over the almost nonexistent forces of Ynefel and Althalen.
Uwen had said when Cefwyn had given him the horses that he could not figure how he had gotten to such a station, being a man of the villages, not of the court, and seemed quite overwhelmed by it. Now he had a command.
But Tristen thought most of any honor he simply wanted Uwen and all his folk to come through alive—and Uwen’s rise to fortune occasioned him a guilt he himself did not understand, not because the wish to have Uwen safe was wrong, he decided, but because he had so much he should be thinking about and understanding rather than worry, as he could not help but do, about a household and the men who depended on him.
He was not the same as the lords of the south, he told himself, as he rode beside Cefwyn and Nin6vrisi in the rank of Kings, with their three banners snapping and cracking in the dawn wind ahead of them. He was not the same as Cefwyn, who was born to be a king; he had no attachments for good or for ill the same as they. He had stolen them, he had borrowed them, he had put up the pretense of being a Man, even though he had had but one thing to do from the hour that Mauryl had called him into the world, a dangerous thing, and he had no justification for allowing Men to form such attachments to him, where their dangers were more than they could know. Uwen—had been so confident, had known so well where things ought to be, and what had to be done to move men and horses: he was a calming presence this morning for all the household, and yet Uwen with all his common sense was only giving orders that someone once had given to him, and that the soldiers knew how to obey, anyway.
But, he thought, Uwen more clearly than any of them had an inkling he was facing some danger very different from anything they knew, and Uwen was not spreading fear around him: Uwen had calmed him when he had faltered this morning, when the attachments he had made had suddenly added up and overwhelmed him; and Uwen did all that he did with a kind of courage he did not know if he possessed.
He had said it as clearly as he saw it himself, that if they could defeat Hasufin’s allies on the field, they might deprive Hasufin of agencies to do his bidding—but the cost of that, he saw all around him, this morning: men who were not at harvest, boys who had no notion what they were facing—Ninévrisé and Cefwyn who were arguing about her presence on the field. Ninévrisé had suddenly said she would not stay in camp when it came to a battle, and Cefwyn had relied on her to do exactly that,
“Which is why,” Cefwyn said with asperity, as they rode nearby, “I gave four damned fine horses to get you an escort.”
“We should not be thinking of defeat,” Ninévrisé said, “my lord.”
“I am not thinking of defeat! I am thinking of men who may die satisfying your whim, my lady, to view a battle.”