He damned them for fools if they had not retreated.
But he could not help them—he had to reach the King’s force, a disarrayed mass, banners askew in the midst of a furious assault of light-armed riders, and to that sole objective he put the spurs to Danvy, swearing. He had no time to attend Tristen’s folly: he was about to lose a friend, and maybe the other heir of Ylesuin—but his father’s lines had been folded in, packing men in on each other so that lances and well nigh swords and shields were useless at the center, around the King. He wrung the last from Danvy to come in hard with what men could stay with him, to batter his way toward the center of that closing entrapment, to open it up and give the King’s men a chance to use their weapons on the envelopment he knew was now coming around both their forces, separately and fatally if he could not break that knot around his father.
Danvy hit shoulder to shoulder with another horse. Cefwyn took a hit on the shield and shoved and swung blindly, felt the sword bite as
!,
Danvy staggered, recovered, and stumbled his way over yielding bodies.
After that, he hacked and shoved whatever was in his path until it became a solid press of horseflesh and bodies and he could go no further.
He was in danger of being cut off, now, from his own companions.
Danvy went almost to his knees on a body, recovered his footing, and a blow came down on the shield, an axe stuck fast in the gap. He struck back at what target he could see past the encumbrance, wrestling with the axe-wielder for possession of the shield until the man’s sheer strength dragged him into clear sight of the man and half out of Danvy’s saddle.
One of his men hacked at his attacker, who left the axe and reeled aside. Danvy struggled for footing and Cefwyn tried to clear his shield, laying about him half blind and encumbered, until it was red badges all about him, red banners, and he knew the King’s men as well as his own guard were bringing their forces to bear.
Danvy jolted hard then as a horseman careened into him, and Danvy stumbled and went down. Cefwyn sprawled, rolled from the path of oncoming hooves and staggered up, still owning his sword by its wrist thong, still with the remnant of his shield on his arm. He had wet haze in his eyes, blurring the riders coming down on him.
I die here, he thought with strange amazement, and, clearing the drip of blood from his eyes with a shake of his head and a pass of his sleeve, realized he had lost his helm and the half-shield was the defense he had-his own lines had been driven back and it was only the enemy in his view.
He braced his feet among the dead, facing that gray and brown wall of horsemen coming at him, every detail astonishingly clear, as if the last moments of living must be stretched thin till they broke, till a prince had a chance to know he had led his kingdom’s forces to disaster.
A red horse plunged between. Tristen’s black form cut across his view, Uwen close on his heels ... Tristen swung the red mare about; and Uwen was trying to reach him as Tristen rode Gery head-on into the oncoming riders.
A blade swung. Unengaged, Cefwyn watched helplessly as Tristen ducked under and kept riding, the edge passing over his body by the narrowest of margins—he was going deep in among the enemy; and Uwen accounted for the man who had missed him.
“M’lord!” a voice cried near at hand; a second horseman rode across in front of him and slid to a stop. The guardsman leapt off, and Cefwyn swung up to the offered saddle, took a new grip on his sword and braced himself for the onslaught about to come down on both of them.
But it had fallen back. Among those motley horsemen, from the dead or the living, Tristen had found a blade and wielded it, shieldless, turning the red mare with his knees this way and that, the blade swinging dark and deadly in the light, as enemies went down. Tristen kept pressing, a dark and terrible force cutting into the enemy’s ranks, methodically taking man after man, forcing the red mare further. There began to be space about him—a rider in black velvet, and with a single man beside him and no shield at all.
“Sihhé! Sihhé!” the shout was ringing out from the enemy ranks now. They had seen, Cefwyn guessed, the emblem he bore. But Tristen gave no mercy to the rout that began around him. The red mare did not cease to weave and seek openings in the retreat and the sword did not cease to take lives. The arm was unerring, hewing down men, no move wasted. The clash of blades that did oppose him became a distant music, and the turning movements assumed a strange beauty, like a dance, the movement of a natural force of destruction that swept the enemy back and back.
The scene hazed, with a sting of salt in his eyes. Cefwyn struggled for breath, left with no enemies, no battle for him to face. He sat the saddle, arms limp, battered beyond the strength to lift sword or shield, and he realized a remote sting and swelling in his leg as his strength ebbed. He tasted copper, realized that he had been hit, and that the pain had yet to reach him—but the leg obeyed him when he signaled the horse with his heel, and turned, looking for the King.
More riders thundered up. He looked about in horror, lifted an arm that weighed double, and saw then the White Horse of Cevulirn sweeping onto the otherwise silent field.
A horseman came up beside him. A hand seized him, stayed him in the saddle, and he could not see the man until he blinked his vision clear.
“Idrys.” He recognized his black-armored would-be rescuer, who, late to the field of combat, held him ahorse until others could dismount and come about him. “No,” he protested, not willing to be lifted down. He refused their ministrations and, laying his sword across the saddlebow because he had no strength or steadiness to sheath it, he rode with Idrys for escort this way and that among the corpses and the knots of men still ahorse.
He saw the Dragon banner, then, and put the horse to as much speed as it could make over the trampled, littered ground, realizing that men around that banner were standing silent and with heads bowed. He saw Efanor among the men kneeling there—Efanor would have come in with Cevulirn’s men—and by Efanor’s grief-stricken demeanor he foreknew the worst.
He dismounted—Idrys was instantly at his elbow to take his arm, to help him limp forward to where his father lay. The Dragon Guard had fallen thick about their King. He walked over bodies of men whose names he might know well if he looked. But his father’s white hair was the only thing truly clear to his eyes—their father was only exhausted, he said to himself: their father was hurt, not dead; their father was a force of nature, a fact of their lives—he could not die.
But why feel the sting? he thought then. In death, no different truth than in life. Father loved him, never me.
Father practiced Grandfather’s tactics down to his dying breath, and gave Efanor his one victory, his sole recompense to be by one year not the heir.
But no man on the field chose to regard that last gesture as negating the sworn succession. Cevulirn, the Duke of the Ivanim, was a southern man, and his own. And Efanor had knelt, and kissed his hand, and owned to the legal truth—righteous priestling that he was; though he had been nowhere—nowhere when their father was fighting for his life, not priestly Efanor.
But that was manifestly unfair. He had sent Efanor for Cevulirn.
Efanor had followed his orders. He had brought Cevulirn—too damned late. Efanor had come to the field with Cevulirn’s men, on a horse he’d just worn down with a ride back to reach the Duke of the Ivanim and then, anxious for appearances, would not, he would personally swear to it, have sensibly bidden Cevulirn leave him ignobly on the road and make all haste to their father’s rescue without him.
Which was also unfair to suppose. He was looking for someone to blame.
Idrys steadied him. Someone had found a linen pad to tuck into the gash on his leg, and a bandage to wrap about his leg, over the reinforced leather. The pain as the man jerked a knot taut hazed his vision, then lessened, over all, as the wound found firm support.