He recalled their last council before the barons had left. He said to himself as they rode side by side looking for that encounter, Tristen knows strategy Certainly he knows the sword. Uwen says he knows the lance, that he will ride Dys, and that he has no doubts of him. The Sihhbrought the heavy horses with them to the land: how should he not know them?
Tristen counseled us no earthen walls. He spoke out against fortifications. Everyone will die, Tristen said, and we didnʼt heed him when he was counseling us, damn it, on the one answer I could never find in Tashnenʼs book, the one question I most wanted to know, and I didnʼt hear what he was saying.
Tashnen didnʼt write it in his book because the Sihh of his age knew that answer. It was the art of siege Tashnen invented against enemies who used other Sihh tactics as a matter of course. Tashnen had all prior lore books burned at Althalen and why should he write down the use of magic innate in his kind? Other texts would have held that whatever a manʼs born with, thereʼs always a cleverer way to use it: that would have been his object in writing: what he wrote down was the new thing, not the old. Why should we expect a Sihh or any man to write down the obvious?
What held me from hearing Tristen?
Are we all so blind? Or is it another blow his enemy has struck us, through Orien Aswydd?
What did one do, he went on asking himself, without that knowledge innate (Emuin had said it) in Tristenʼs kind?
Strike at flesh and blood? That he could do. The other possibilities he did not even see. And in his blindly following a Sihh text, he had not regarded Tristenʼs warning he had seen only the dangers of Tristen confronting him in council; and in his infatuation with Sihh skill in war, he had sent men to an untenable, fatal position against wizardry.
He had let his brideʼs kinsman make a deadly mistake. Tasien had acted the best he knew against his enemy, in the absence of any trust of Guelen kings. But as King, he certainly could have argued with Tasien with more force, rather than accept Tasienʼs plan as he had done and (gods forgive him) embroider it with his own boyhood fancies.
Trenches in the herb garden. Good blessed gods, why had he not used his wits?
But without sending Emuin, or Tristen, neither of which was possible what could he have done against a wizardous attack? What could he do against the one he knew was coming at them all?
And how did he break the news of Tasien to Ninvris?
In a plume of sunlit dust the remaining scout from the south came riding up over the swell of land. The Ivanim! that man called out as he came near. I saw their banners, and the sun on their helms!
Even as that rider came, the sun was picking up color in the west, and they all could see a second plume of dust on that horizon, farther away, behind the first.
That is Umanon, Cefwyn speculated aloud, his heart lifting.
Idrys, quick as his own thought, pulled back in the column and gave orders, and two more scouts immediately rode away from the column and overland in that direction, this time to welcome the lostlings in.
Within the hour the riders from the south had crested the rise along the road, a rolling tide of the swift-moving Ivanim light horse, and behind them, their slower-moving allies of Imor, a dark mass of riders and warhorses at lead. The banners were plain in the sunset, and Tristen drew a deep, glad breath when he saw it.
Two of them, Cefwyn said in Tristenʼs hearing. Now, gods save us, if now Pelumer will come in
Olmern had perhaps succeeded, Tristen thought when Cefwyn made that wish. He could in no wise tell for certain, but he felt none of the hostile influence to the northeast, and that said to him that their enemy had not gone that way. The way they had left open to Asyneddin had cost them dearly, those two bridges eastward of Emwy district, which Cefwyn had hoped would make an incursion from the forest-edged west the only answer if Asyneddin wished to cross quickly into Amefel. Tasien was gone. The Elwynim had crossed and committed themselves. No second rebel force could threaten Henasʼamef without coming by way of Emwy, and without passing them.
That portion of the plan was, he hoped, working. Cefwyn had designated reciprocal messengers that daily came to Henasʼamef from the east reach of the river, upstream, and one would have reached Henasʼamef last night. After that, Efanor should have sent the regular relay out north to the river and sent another courier west after them, bringing Cefwyn word of the riverside and Sovrag.
Cefwynʼs system of messengers, Tristen thought, was very well done; it had freed him personally of the necessity to try to reach Emuin, which was the most dangerous thing he could do short of speaking to Hasufin himself. Cefwynʼs couriers had gone out from the army directly north this morning, to reach Sovrag directly and to bear Ninvrisʼs second messages of reassurance and encouragement to the Amefin riverside villages, jointly with Cefwynʼs, to assure them they were not abandoned, that Sovrag was not a threat to them, and to urge the villages to report to them directly overland in the now remote chance Lord Asyneddin should cross somehow on that matter, the defense of the province might have turned.
But now the bonfires they had lit on the hills had brought them Cevulirn and Umanon, and that was another wonder of Cefwynʼs forethought: the simultaneous muster of the barons and their being able to join Cefwynʼs column on the move had all relied on measuring distances, which Cefwyn had done in advance, and knowing very accurately how fast the various forces could move, granted they saw the signal fires and moved at all.
If one had no way into the gray space, it was a very clever way of doing things. It was a way of getting around wizards and it was important to know how that could be done. He marked it always to remember, and never to become complacent in what he saw.
And the gray place was constantly urging at him. It was full of shadows and lights and whispers. Now with the sun taking the light from the land and making the hills gold, and with their allies riding toward them, he felt that the missing pieces that had to exist had now come together.
But he did not have that feeling of inevitability about Pelumer that he had had all along about Cevulirnʼs coming and Umanonʼs. Marnaʼs dark edge was Pelumerʼs route and he had no wish to look deeply or long in that direction.
Cevulirn came riding up in the sunset with the White Horse flying, leading his own warhorse with him, as every man in his company had a remount with him and his lance and shield and a small amount of provisions packed on the warhorseʼs saddle.
That was the way the southern horsemen had done forever, constantly changing from mount to mount. So Cefwyn advised him as the riders came, and it unfolded in Tristenʼs thoughts that it had indeed been that way, that on their longest marches they had two and even three horses in their string. He saw it so vividly that a Name almost came to him, and he felt comfortable with the Ivanim, and knew their thinking, for reasons he did not clearly know.
Cefwyn told Cevulirn his place in line and his place in camp from memory a precedence in line behind the Amefin, whose province it was, and ahead of Umanon, whom he had beaten in Cefwyn told Cevulirn where his warhorses should be, and where his wagon was and where his tents would be, which they had brought for him.
Your Majesty leaves no work for the scribes, Cevulirn said with the mild lifting of a brow. It had seemed a point of amazement among the barons in all the preparations that Cefwyn did remember such things in very certain detail.