That stung. That fairly stung, and he knew not whether it was filial duty, personal alarm or heartfelt outrage that sent him out in his father’s own kind of unheralded haste, the other lords unconsulted and unadvised, save Cevulirn, who had the light horse that might avail something quickly enough.
But what did he say to the others? Pardon, my lords, but my father calls me to task for summoning you to do my father’s business?
Pardon, my lords, but my father the King believes a man whose father before him cheated his own people?
Pardon, my lords, my father believes all men cheat, and if they cheat in ways he knows about he trusts them more?
Is all this because I have called Heryn’s account due, which my father has tolerated for years?
Gods, was that my mistake, Father? Have I stumbled on something you allowed, all to keep the Amefin cowed under a thief and his usurers?
The horses hit a traveling stride as they made the road outside and went along the walls past Cevulirn’s camp, sending up a cloud of dust in this dry spell that gritted in the teeth even of the foremost. Men of the White Horse, encamped near the gate, turned out to stare.
“Tell the captains,” Cefwyn bade the Ivanim with them, calling them forward, “tell them all you know, bid them saddle a hundred horses against your lord’s arrival, and follow as you can. This may be a chase for no reason, but it may not.”
“Aye, m’lord Prince,” the sergeant said, who rode briefly alongside him, and dropped away again, to bear messages where they needed to go.
Peasants working in the fields stopped and stared as they passed.
Along the wall-road, the camp of Lanfarnesse turned out men to shout questions at them, asking what proceeded in such haste.
Granted Heryn fell quickly under arrest, they had left Pelumer as senior of lords in the Zeide: Pelumer, then Umanon and, third, gods help them, Sovrag. Pelumer’s chiefest and most immediate duty would be to keep Umanon and Sovrag from each other’s throats; and gods knew where Idrys was, but he would gladly dispose Idrys to duty between Umanon and Sovrag, if Idrys could not rapidly overtake them. The Guard Captain, Kerdin Qwyll’s-son, had the command second to himself now, a man no stranger to Amefin roads: Guelen patrols had been sent full-circuit of Amefel and its neighboring districts, keeping watch on the King’s subjects—and learning the lay of the land.
Ambush? He looked on his brother, on that damned fancy-footed horse, that had already worked up a lather getting down from the town.
Efanor would be heir if something befell him, and, for all the boyhood loyalty they had sworn and all the love they’d vowed to hold to—he had to ask himself what would be the case if it were not Elwynim that Heryn had supported, all along, but another, more agreeable prince? A prince who could appreciate Heryn’s gold dinner plates and his high-blooded horses, a prince who had never slept in mud, never faced a bandit
He did not want to think that Inéreddrin would sacrifice his own heir to keep Heryn from saying what that arrangement was: he did not want to think his father knew the extent and evil of Aswydd’s pilferage, the way he still, on the strength of a childhood only intermittently rivalrous, did not want to think that Efanor himself was secretly in Heryn Aswydd’s friendship.
But he dared not confront anyone around him with such possibilities—except Idrys, damn him, who might have agreed with him, but who was not here for reasons he hoped were duty elsewhere. He was worried for Idrys’ safety. He knew that Idrys might be the first to suffer in a plot to bring him down. He could not discuss matters with his brother. He did not want the Guelen guard and Ivanim alike to witness the Marhanen at each others’ throats.
The hills enfolded them softly on all sides, the same craggy tree-crowned hills that they had passed on a much more leisurely ride to Emwy, and again at the end of a nightmarish ride by night. When they crossed the old Althalen road (though no one spoke the name) where it joined the road to Emwy district, they began to ride over the recent tracks of a fair number of riders—their father had a hundred twenty men with him, Efanor said, and that was where, if their father had wished to pass by Henas’amef unnoticed and unreported, he would have picked up the Emwy road.
By then they had passed beyond cultivated fields and into pasturages, and into the pastures of remote and smaller villages. They aimed the horses for a brief pause for breath and a limited watering at a stream that crossed the road, and came in on ground trampled by horses and now occupied by sheep. The shepherd was waving his staff and calling his clogs to gather the flock back again. The sheep bleated in panic and scattered from their horses down the narrow banks of the streamside.
“Have you seen riders today?” Cefwyn called out over the racket, as he got down from the saddle.
“Aye, m’lord,” the shepherd said, with his clogs yapping and his sheep in a panicked knot, climbing over one another at the high bank, “yea, m’lord, I seen a great lord wi’ red banners, a great lord, like he was a king .... “
“That he is,” Cefwyn said shortly. “How long ago, man?” and the man glanced at the sun and swung his stick at a growling dog.
“Oh, not so long. I was up to there on the height, m’lord, an’ I was bringing the sheep down—but ’is silly ewe had got herself down a bank, an’ I come down and around the long way, m’lord .... “
The tracks of horses, filled with water where the sheep had not trampled, told their own story. “Not that long,” Cefwyn called out, having walked a little distance up the stream and had a close look. He kept Danvy moving, not letting him fill up on water. But Efanor had not gotten down, and had let his horse stand, instead arguing with the reins—which itself annoyed him. Blessed chance his lordly brother Efanor would ever ask an Amefin shepherd the evidence of his eyes, or understand the man’s brogue if he did. The brother who had adventured in the sheep-meadow with him had gone; the younger prince of Ylesuin had rather argue with his horse than soil his boots, or deign to company with him and read the clues with him. He did not understand, or want to understand, Efanor’s state of mind at the moment. “We can overtake them before Emwy,” he said, rising into the saddle. “The horses have rested all we can afford.”
But banners at a distance was not the only thing the shepherd had seen today; he was looking straight at the emblem Tristen wore, and, on the sudden resolution of their remounting, tried to approach him. But Uwen prudently turned Tristen toward the horses and set himself with his back to the man, affecting not to see his approach.
Then Tristen looked back, on his own, staring at the shepherd, who, thus confronted, reached for amulets of gods knew what sort at his neck—until Uwen maneuvered the red mare between, put the reins in Tristen’s slack hand and gruffly bade him mount at once as Tristen went on staring.
Not one of his fits, Cefwyn prayed, not a lapse in front of Efanor, and not a shepherd going on his knees to an outlawed symbol. They were near Althalen, and cursed ground, and he damned the whole miscarried day, as he rode Danvy between, to head off unwanted peasant adorations.
“Uwen,” he said, leaning from the saddle to catch Uwen’s attention,
“well done. Keep him from all mischief, either speaking or doing. Hear me. Althalen is very near this road. Do not, do not let him ride apart from us, and do not indulge his fits or his fancies if you must take the reins from him by force.”