It was their last load, his personal equipment and Uwenʼs. He put on his mail, and a padded black coat, new, since the night at Althalen gathered up his Book with the mirror tucked into it, put it where he reckoned it most safe, next his belt, and laced up the coat. He took the sword from beside the fireplace, where it had rested since he had brought it home, except Uwen had taken its measure and the armory had sent a sheath for it, with a good leather belt, which he buckled on.
Last of all he slung a heavy cloak about his shoulders, and put on his riding-gloves, of which Uwen had said he would be very glad in the chill air.
There was nothing to do, then, but to watch the servants put out all the candles and put out the fire, and for all of them to take a last look at a home no one knew if they would see again, in a gathering that might never come together again.
Then it was down the stairs amongst the servants with Uwen and Lusin, one of the guards who had been with him longest, to the courtyard, where they were bringing horses up, by precedence.
Outside the town walls, on the lordsʼ former campground, was where their personal wagon and their drivers would be waiting, also in their order of precedence a long line, since the Guelen guard and the Amefin contingent had not only their own baggage, but also the baggage train of the absent lords and their armies under their escort.
Their wagon was already loaded with the gear and trappings from the pasture-stable, which Aswys himself had accounted for, and seen loaded at least that was the prearrangement, if Aswys had been able to get to the wagon.
Heʼll be there, Uwen said. Heʼs a Kingʼs man. Theyʼll let him through. Hainʼt no trouble at all, mʼlord, compared with the ranks tryinʼ to find their gear in a thunderstorm.
Heavy-axled wagons had been rolling for half the night, as anyone trying to sleep could attest, the most of them loading once, at the granary, as they understood, and not to unload again until they reached their final encampment: a certain number would distribute grain to the individual wagons at the first camp, and immediately turn back to Henasʼamef, to reload and go out again. Supply for that many horses when the hazard of attack precluded letting the horses out to graze was a very great difficulty; and feeding that number of men over the same number of days, plus the supply of firewood when foraging might be dangerous made necessary another number of wagons and heavy wagons traveled at the same speed as a man could leisurely walk, no faster, often slower. That meant that the ground a man on a light horse could cover in a day was three to five times the rate at which loaded wagons would travel, and if an experienced rider on a well-conditioned horse needed make the distance only once rather than three or four daysʼ sustained effort, the rider might push it to six times the distance a wagon might cover over a number of days, granted the day-after-day wear on the wagon teams, the wheels, and the axles did not create further delays.
The supply had to be there: it was no good for scattered units of horse to arrive and run into battle without the infantry, or for the infantry without their weapons or food to eat or shelter from the chilling rains. It was, Cefwyn had said it, and the words had made absolute sense, not a skirmish, but full-scale war: and that was right, in his own thinking.
So the Guelen and the Amefin went necessarily at the speed of the baggage train and the Amefin foot. With the signal fires flaring out across the land, they counted on Amefin villages coming to the muster, and all of them counted for their very lives on the southern light horse in particular being able to use their speed counting that each lighthorseman had two horses. Umanon, with the other heavy horse contingent, would not make Cevulirnʼs speed overland, but the Imorim heavy horse had good roads, and Lanfarnesse, which had primarily infantry and longbowmen, had the shortest distance to come.
That, at least, was the reckoning they had made in their session with Cefwyn as late as yesterday, with a detailed list of every wagon, with the wagon-bed measured and the wagons and their teams rated as heavy or light, horse or ox. They had hoped for dry roads. They did not have them but the rains had been light.
But if he was right, ifhe was right, the faster they could reach the river, the greater were Lord Tasienʼs chances of survival and of their holding the bridge. They had already reinforced Tasienʼs garrison; and if they could hold the bridge, as Lady Ninvris had said in council, the greater were the chances her partisans across the river might rise against Asyneddin and make it a civil war, not a war between Elwynor and Ylesuin: that was their best hope, the one that shed the least blood on either side and ended the war before winter set in. Those were Cefwynʼs hopes, at least, and Ninvrisʼs.
But Tristen did not, himself, believe that they had that chance not with the likelihood that Hasufin had found more than Asyneddin to listen to him; one did not know that there were no wizards in Elwynor there very likely were.
Orien would have told their enemy everything, by means he should have days ago accounted of. And that meant there could be far worse happening: Sovragʼs nephew had escorted lord Haurydd into Elwynor and possibly Asyneddin had discovered that indirectly from Orien. Asyneddin could locate Haurydd and discover the names of those people Haurydd had relied on meeting.
In that event, there would be no chance of Ninvrisʼs friends inside Elwynor laying any sort of plans before Asyneddin came against them. And there might be no help for Cefwyn from that quarter, if ever there might have been.
The wagons rumbled on iron-shod wheels over the cobbles, and dogs yapped and men shouted at each other.
Uwen was in his own. He was able to sort out the horses for Lady Ninvrisʼs borrowed staff, two young Amefin ladies of good reputation and their fathers, very minor nobles, who had been given good horses of the Kingʼs stable, to bear the four of them the Kingʼs servants managed the ladyʼs tents, baggage, and provisions, and the ladies and their fathers, who would, with Ninvrisʼs four guards, take charge of her establishment in the camp, had no staff to manage and very little to do but find the horses with which none of the four, town gentry, had any skill whatsoever, the ladies being there for Ninvrisʼs reputation and the ladiesʼ fathers being there to set the seal of noble propriety on the household.
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, Iʼm Andas Andasʼ-son, mʼlord. Iʼm to bear your standard, His Majesty said. I served eleven years in His Majestyʼs Dragons. The sergeant there knows me.
Heʼs a good man, Uwen said under his breath. A fine man. I know ʼim those eleven years. Heʼll keep matters straight.
Then thank you, he said, Andas Andasʼ-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 Andasʼ-son lived and ever he could do good for him, he would do it. But it was no favor Andasʼ-son had been granted.