They came on a village, mere shells of houses, which the scouts reported vacant, and it was clear by what they saw that the people who had lived there had reason to stay low and quiet if they lived, perhaps hiding in those hills yonder… or gone across the river to Tristen. It was no recent ruin. Vines overgrew one charred doorway. Weeds grew in the street.
“Gods know which pretender did this work,” Lord Maudyn said.
“Shame on him, whoever it was,” Cefwyn said, and added, with a chill in his blood and a thought of his own land: “Here’s the sad end of a civil war: vacant streets and fallow fields. Who had the good of this work?”
“Not the sheep and the shepherds,” Maudyn said.
A courier rode up beside them, presented courtesies, advised him Osanan was slowed by reason of a cart and a loose wheel.
Slowed by reason of Ryssand’s courtship, Cefwyn suspected uncharitably, but he acknowledged the report.
The lords with him and those with Ryssand had all been uncommonly courteous one to the other when they met in council in the evenings. They had pored over maps together in frosty amity and heard reports of the scouts. Ryssand’s partisans asked why Tasmôrden had not confronted them, and then the pretense had slipped aside ever so little as he looked straight at Corswyndam Lord Ryssand, to see whether Ryssand himself seemed to know the answer to that question.
But he had not caught Ryssand looking as if he knew: he was forced in marginal charity to suppose the consultation between Ryssand and Tasmôrden was somewhat more distant.
He had pretended forgiveness once Ryssand had joined their line of march, Ryssand had pretended contrition, and so they got along, and spread out the maps by lanternlight and pretended to have reconciled, though he doubted Ryssand believed it, for he surprised dour looks from time to time when Ryssand was thinking, and when he himself presented the half of his plans to draw Tasmôrden out of his walls and meet him at a brookside near Ilefínian.
So he did plan, if Tasmôrden did not march out sooner and fall on their marching column before they cleared the end of the ridge, or if arrows did not begin to hail down on them from the heights, a natural archer’s advantage. He had in fact dispatched a squad of the Prince’s Guard to hold that position and warn him.
But the meaningful councils had been of himself and Lord Maudyn, with Gwywyn and Anwyll and the Guard officers, when he had sent out that squad to take the heights just before dawn yesterday.
Maudyn and Gwywyn were his most knowledgeable advisors, men who had spent their lives at such questions as supply and the lay of the land. They laid their plans in event of this and that ambush, on maps Ninévrisë had corrected, her own handwriting, her own blessing on the maps, as if she continued to advise him even though absent: her notes were on the backs of the stout parchment, and wedged between the representation of a forest and that of a brook.
But unlike Tristen’s magical letter it could not speak to him with her voice and advise him what to do next.
It could not unfold the true sight of the ridge, for instance, to inform him how high and sheer the sides of it; or how deep the forest, or whether trees screened them from the rocks, trees that might stop arrows, or whether they would be exposed to fire if that squad failed its mission.
The map of this land was what he had to rely on, while he asked himself continually what in the gods’ sweet name he could do if Tasmôrden turned out to have wizardry to help him.
Give him an open, flat field and a fair fight, that was all he asked, but he doubted Tasmôrden would oblige him. Chase Tasmôrden all the way to Tristen’s army… that was his fondest hope, so he might catch Tasmôrden between the hammer and the anvil and be sure of him.
The bandits, the Saendal, who served Tasmôrden, would fight: here were men who would hang if they were captured. And since pretenders had succeeded one another, each killing the best of their enemy’s men, there could scarcely be a remnant with Tasmôrden much better than the Saendal bandits.
It did not encourage surrender, if the tide turned: they would fight like rats in holes, escape if they could, but his own plans were to provide no hole through which they could bolt: the land had troubles enough of the sort that had made that village a weed-grown desolation. He intended to tame this unruly land to bring it gently to Ninévris딑s hand, a wedding gift, a gift—the thought was still new to him—for their own heir to come.
The bloody Marhanen, as the south called him, would earn the name twice over before this war was done; well, that was nothing new. But his lady of the violets would not start her reign dealing with Saendal bandits.
That, however, was skinning the deer before the hunt. There was Ryssand yet to deal with… whose betrayal might not come off if Ryssand saw the war going against Tasmôrden, and he did not intend to provoke tension if it were avoidable. It was sure Ryssand would be no truer to one lord than to another, and if they looked to sweep
Tasmôrden before them, why, Ryssand might discover he was loyal after all.
Yet Ryssand might be the true reason Tasmôrden forbore to attack: that they awaited a place and a time Ryssand would strike.
And if Ryssand did strike, it would be in such a place Ryssand thought he could escape if things went badly.
Closer they marched, and closer still to Ilefínian, to solid walls, and to the friend and patron of Parsynan and Cuthan.
Closer to a refuge at need… and an assurance of safety for a traitor otherwise in jeopardy of his life.
If Tasmôrden were sure of Ryssand and Ryssand had never told Tasmôrden his king had suspicions of him, there was another reason Tasmôrden need not stir out and put himself to great effort: the war would come to him and the victory fall into his lap almost without bloodshed.
There was the reason, Cefwyn said to himself the farther they went without sight of the enemy. There was all the reason: Tasmôrden did not put himself to great trouble because he counted on the army of Ylesuin tearing its own throat and opening its veins quite obligingly on his doorstep. If things went completely his way, Tasmôrden might watch from the walls and enjoy the spectacle.
Ask whether Tasmôrden had the mildest suspicion that a man who would lie to his king would lie to him in his absolute assurances: if Tasmôrden were at all wise, Tasmôrden would ask himself such questions and doubt Ryssand’s character.
That was the difficulty of being a scoundrel, he supposed: that to a lord of bandits and mercenaries, Ryssand and Murandys seemed so ordinary.
All day he waited for some sign of the enemy.
At evening they made their third camp, canvas going up like white flowers in the sunset, and after the bawling of oxen and the clatter and squeal of the oxcarts laying down the few essential tents, and after the quick dispersal of the evening’s cold, fireless provender, quiet settled over the camp, the quiet of men ready, after a day’s march, to settle close around the small fires. They had not the luxury of bonfires and a camp under canvas, but canvas strung up for windbreaks and spread as cover for essential gear, and as warm as the days had become and as warmly as the sun beat down on a helm, there was still a winter nip in the air at night and enough damp to soak in.
And with the men settled to their evening’s occupation, the lords of Ylesuin set to their own pursuits, a sparse and plain supper in one of the few tents they had brought, with small ale and a session of politeness between enemies who eyed one another what time they were not putting on placid faces: but tonight Cefwyn brought out his second-best map in plain view and laid out the plans for encounter.
“Here,” Cefwyn said, laying a pen across the map at the ford of that brook, a broad trail of ink, and annotations as to depth and direction. “The long hill, first, and this brook between us and Ilefínian’s outbuildings. Our battle line will be heavy horse to the center, excepting Sulriggan, you, sir, to the right wing. The brook is not above hip deep to a man at flood, save only there may be holes, needless to say; good bottom, so there’s no fear of fording it if we find no bridge there. But I don’t wish to cross it, nor shall we, unless you hear the signal from me. I’d rather let Tasmôrden have his back to the water.”