One thing was suddenly very clear to him.
“You, love, can’t stay in their reach.”
“Elwynor is no Guelen prize! My land, my crown—”
“My heir,” he said in a low, determined voice, and with his arms about her. “My love. My very dear love, you’re the foremost hostage they could hold… your welfare, above all heirs and all else. I love you. I honor your claim and risk all my kingdom to bring it to you. But this warning, if I believe it, changes everything.”
“I am sovereign in Elwynor! You swore—”
“I deny you nothing. I admit every claim. I make myself your debtor when I ask you—I plead with you, for my own peace of mind—to take our son and our heir out of harm’s way.”
“Back to Efanor, who has enough to do to defend his own interests, let alone mine!”
“Efanor has men enough and guile enough to keep you safe. I know my brother. I know my brother as he was before he took to priests, and I swear to you there’s a man there. If he should take the throne, Ryssand wouldn’t like it.”
“I believe it all, I never doubted it, but I won’t leave you.”
“Nevris.” He pressed her head still with his hand, hugged her tightly against him.
“I’ll not go, thinking I’ll never see you again!”
“I swear to you I’ve no intention of dying, love. I’ll deal with Ryssand and Tasmôrden. But I can’t take you onto the field, and most especially I can’t defend myself wondering whether you’re safe back in my camp, or held hostage in Ryssand’s.”
“I’m not a fool!”
“Nor am I! And not being one I can’t divide my attention—don’t argue with me, not in this. You know I’m right. If you’re there I’ll be thinking of you, no other thing. I know you’ll be suffering all the worry I’d suffer if you were there. But that’s your part to suffer, mine to ask it, or I won’t have my wits about me—Hear me! I’m king, and it’s my damned army! Go to Efanor!”
She said nothing. She held to him. He routinely lost arguments when she said nothing. But this time he would not yield, and he waited, and waited.
“I’ll go to Amefel,” she said, prying herself from his arms, and with a rustle of the paper she had abused with her holding him, spread her hand on it, smoothed it.
He had not thought at first of Amefel. But it was fortified. Its people were Bryaltines. Tristen ruled it, and had the loyalty of the people.
It was a better choice. And hardly farther away. Assurnbrook was a deep and treacherous river, once it received the flow of Arreyburn on its way north to the Lenúalim—that was one reason no bridge had ever stood in its shifting sands and soft banks, and the other the fact that Murandys had had no interest in linking itself to Amefel. But Assurnford was not that far south of their camp here, and once across that, Ninévrisë would immediately be in a Bryalt land, safe even in the countryside—not risking the mood of Guelen villages, who, no, would not be pleased that the woman for whom Guelenmen went to war was going back to safety.
He did not mention that hazard, knowing how it would sting her pride: it stung his that his own people were so inclined to hate her. But he did know a better choice when she laid it before him: safe from the time she crossed the Assurn, not having to brazen it out with the banners and Idrys’ authority or slip into Guelemara cloaked and by night, simply to reach the Guelesfort in safety.
“Idrys will see you there.”
“Idrys won’t,” she said. “For one thing, he won’t leave you.”
“He’ll do it if I order it,” he said, “and if he wants Ryssand’s head, which he does. More than that—he serves the Marhanen. And you carry the Marhanen heir.” Then it crossed his mind that where he sent her, Tarien was, and she had to confront that situation. “Tarien’s there.”
“So is Tristen. And Emuin. Tarien doesn’t frighten me. Nothing there frightens me.”
“Then you’ll go tonight. Now. We’ll make as little fuss about this as we can.” Her sickness had troubled her, at the Guelesfort and on the march, and she had endured her misery and forced down soldiers’ fare, refusing to have anything more delicate. He had lost all his arguments until now, and he took no chances. “A soldier’s tent, a packhorse, Idrys and four men and their gear. Can you do it?”
The rain rushed against the walls of the tent. The river would be up, and the crossing at Assurnford itself an ice-cold flood of snowmelt. He knew what a misery that soaking ford might be. But Idrys knew the crossing in all its treachery, and he would get them to safety.
“I’ve no doubt,” Ninévrisë said, and Cefwyn held her tightly, wanting nothing more than to have her with him and nothing less than to see her in a town where no harm would possibly come near her.
“Before the sun’s up,” he said. “With no fuss, no delay. Idrys will want to come back, and I won’t forbid it. I’ll see you after this is over, in Ilefínian.”
“In Ilefínian,” she said. “Don’t worry for me. Guard yourself. Do whatever you need to do. Say I’ve gone to the capitaclass="underline" there’ll be less talk, and if trouble comes after us, it’ll take the wrong road.”
“Wise lady.”
“Promise me: don’t let Ryssand’s men near you. Set him near any engagement: let him bear the brunt of any encounter.—And carry my banner with you.”
They had planned the advance from the river through provinces that might be favorable to Ninévrisë. All those plans were cast to the winds, and her banner by all custom should not fly if she were not there: but custom be damned, he had no difficulty agreeing to it, if it saved them fighting Ninévrisë’s loyal subjects and killing honest men.
“I will,” he promised her. “All I do, I do in your name.”
“I’ll launch rumor north from Henas’amef, with Tristen.”
“See you don’t launch yourself,” he said, for he had a sudden apprehension of her finding Elwynim forces inside Amefel, and the temptation it would be to her.
“Trust me,” she said, “as I trust you to take my capital.”
“I’ve no choice,” he said. “And I swear to you that banner will fly.”
They made a silent farewell then, a lovers’ farewell, with the storm flickering and roaring beyond the tent walls, and the rain pouring down.
After that he waked Idrys, and Idrys listened, expressionless, to the plans they had.
“I’ll be riding back,” Idrys said, as he had known Idrys would say.
“There’ll be no trouble tracking us,” Cefwyn said in grim humor. “I trust you’ll find me, crow: you never do miss trouble.”
CHAPTER 5
After the deluge of rain came the west wind, from the evening of Tristen’s day, blowing the clouds from the sky and warming the last piles of snow, drying the fields and banging at loose shutters. The banners atop the South Gate flew straight out, and the pigeons when they came to the window had hard work to maintain their places.
They were still as many as before: Tristen counted them as he did every day, worrying about Owl’s appetite, and still they stayed safe.
And still Tarien’s babe stayed safe, and slept, as Uwen assured him new babies did, and nursed and slept and slept some more. Gran Sedlyn refused to leave, having mislaid the baby once: she slept close by on the night of that day, and tended Tarien and Elfwyn both. It was passing strange to Tristen that now he must think of a new soul, a creature that had never existed before, but there he was, indisputably a baby.