Attack came: there was no question—and they had not reached the chosen battlefield. Cefwyn’s heart leapt and plummeted, seeing the guardsman rode perilous in balance, the dark stain of blood on his red surcoat, an arrow jutting from his back.
“Form the line!” Cefwyn shouted, and already the banner-bearers halted and spread out across the meadow: they wanted all the open land they could take, the devil and Tasmôrden take the woods where heavy horse could not have effect.
They might have met the ambush attack of some bandit, some startled peasant farmer; or it might herald the presence of an enemy whose surprise was spoiled.
The scout came riding up, scarcely staying in the saddle, and managed his report:
“Enemies in the valley next, a line, a camp…” The man had used all the wind he had, and sank across his horse’s neck.
“Tend this man!” Cefwyn ordered, and shouted orders next for the banners to advance and compact the army again into a marching line spearheaded by heavy cavalry. “Panys!” he shouted at Lord Maudyn. “Take the left as we come through.” They had a barrier of woods yet to pass to reach that place the scout described, which by the condition of the scout might mean hidden archers on either side of the road. “Shields! Lances!”
Here was the battle he had come for. Tasmôrden had come out of his walled town, fearing, perhaps, that its surviving population was too hostile, its secrets were too well reported; and so they were: Ninévrisë had told them to him in great detail, and swore, too, that such townsmen as still lived could never love this lord, of all others.
The sun was shining, the hour toward noon: there was no impediment to the fight they had come for… and Tasmôrden came out to fight, relying most on traitors to do their work.
So Cefwyn instructed his Guard: “Watch my back!” They knew from whom to guard it; and there was no more time for musing. A page brought his shield and another his lance, young men themselves armed and well mounted, young men whose duty now was to ride with messages, and so he dispatched them down the line to advise the hindmost to arm and prepare, and the baggage train to draw up and bar the road with the carts, save only a gap through which they might retreat if they had to ride back through the woods: an untidy battle if it came to that, but the saving of some if the encounter went badly, the saving of part of an army that might come home to Ylesuin, to Efanor’s command… if it came to that.
He took the precautions, but he had no intention of losing. His grooms brought Kanwy up, his heavy horse, and with the groom’s help he dismounted from Danvy and mounted up on a destrier’s solid force, settled his shield, looked on the descent of a low hill and the strand of woods that ran from the road to the left slope, screening all the land in that direction, away from the ridge: they had climbed gradually for two days. Beyond this, his maps told him there was one great long slope before they reached the end of the ridge, a long ride down to the valley where he most expected Tasmôrden to meet him, beside what his best map, Ninévrisë’s map, warned him was wooded land.
He had fought in worse land, on the borders. They had come downhill out of the brush into a Chomaggari picket barrier, and had had to climb over it. Such hours came back to him, and with the high beating of his heart, the confidence that the Elwynim, aside from their bandit allies, were not disposed to such ambushes: it was heavy horse they were bound to meet ahead, lines that mirrored their lines: the shock of encounter and the skill of riders to carry through.
The king of Ylesuin, however, did not carry the center of the charge, not today.
Leave that to Ryssand and Murandys.
CHAPTER 6
One moment Tristen’s company crossed a wide meadowland in the bright sunlight; and in the next, slate gray ribbons of cloud raced across the heavens, broader and broader, until, rapid as the drawing of a canopy, the sun gave up a last few shafts.
“Gods!” Crissand said, for it was not only the gray space which changed so easily, but the world itself which had shifted, and Men and horses faltered in their march, dismayed. From the confidence of a world that could change but slowly, they had entered a territory where magic met magic and the sun itself was overwhelmed.
A sudden gale buffeted the foremost ranks, and lightning cracked and sheeted across the hills. From ranks behind them came wails of dismay: seasoned veterans and country lads who had run to the banners of the High King met hostile magic and wavered in their courage as the lightnings gathered alarmingly above their heads.
Tristen flung up his hand and willed the lightning elsewhere. It took a tree on the wooded ridge to their left: splinters flew in a burst of fire.
Owl came winging to him, and swung a broad, self-satisfied circle, on a light breeze.
—Well, well, said the Wind. We are quick to seize the advantage, are we not? And confident?
—Owl! Tristen would not distract himself in debate with his enemy. He let Owl settle on his fist, and sent out one burning message through the gray space to all he loved and trusted, nothing reserved now: Ward yourselves! Let nothing in or out!
“Damn!” Uwen said on the heels of the lightning strike. “That were close!”
“Do you hear it?” Tristen asked him, and then thought, foolishly, no, of course not. Crissand and Cevulirn might have heard the Wind speak. But Uwen did not. The army stood in ignorance, blind to its real danger, its confidence shaken by the lightning.
One rider came up from the ranks in haste: Aeself drew his frantic horse to a halt and pointed to the horizon ahead.
“Ilefínian!” Aeself said. “Just beyond the hill, my lord! The end of the ridge!”
“Then move ahead!” Tristen said, for when he ventured to know what Aeself said was there, he felt the truth of the threat in the gray space, a tightly warded opposition, so wrapped about with magic it was hard to see at all as that near him. He set Dys in motion, and reached out in the gray space for Crissand and Cevulirn both, settling his own protection on the likeliest targets of hostile magic. Such as they knew how, they warded him, and Uwen, too, while Owl lofted himself again and flew outward and back, a long gliding passage that ended on Tristen’s outreaching hand as they crested the hill.
Here the stony ridge ended in a long, forest-girt plain, and a last outrider of that ridge, a hill rose within the valley. On that hill, towers and town walls rose from skirts of winter-bare pasturage and fields.
Lightning sheeted across the sky, a wall of brilliant light, west to east, and against it that distant fortress stood clearly to be seen, above its strong town walls. It was a Place as Ynefel was a Place, ancient and deep-rooted, and in the fire across the heavens it unveiled itself in all its power. Tristen felt it and shivered in the crash of thunder.
Far to the south, the Lady Regent herself knew they had come to her capital.
To the west, Efanor, at his prayers, knew.
And in the ranks, the Elwynim behind them knew, and raised a shout that drowned the thunder.
“The king!” someone cried, and other voices shouted it: “The High King and Elwynor!”
But others shouted, “Lord Sihhë!”
And clearer to him than all the voices was a sense of foreboding presence beyond the ridge that pointed like a spearhead toward Ilefínian, the knowledge of lives at risk the moment Men and horses set themselves in motion.
Cefwyn was in danger, Tristen thought in anguish. He had brought his army where he wished, to the end of the ridge, and in sudden clarity he knew Cefwyn was on the other side, he knew the enemy lay in wait, where he could come at them from behind, but he could not turn aside. Cefwyn was in reach of Tasmôrden’s forces, in peril from his own men… but worse—he was within reach of Ilefínian, where the danger was wrapped not in iron edges, but in an ageless, malevolent will.