Drusenan’s wife came out to meet them before they had even reached the hall, treading carefully on a walkway of straw that crossed the hoof-churned mud. Her skirts were muddy about the hems: it was not her first such crossing of that yard; and she came with her sleeves girt up and an apron about her, and it well floured and spattered and stained.
“Lord,” she said, “welcome! Will you stay the night?”
“We’ll press on,” Tristen said, “but an hour to rest the horses, that we can spare, and food for us if you have it.”
“Stew and porridge, m’lord, as best as we have, but the pots is most always aboil and nobody knowing when the men’s comin’ in, we just throw more in, the more as comes to eat it. And there’s bread, there’s always bread.”
That brought a cheer from the front rank to the rearmost, and they were as glad to be down from the saddle as they were of the thick, simple fare in the rush-floored hall, with the dogs vying for attention and the women hurrying about with bowls and bread.
Bows leaned against the wall, near the fire, near the cooking tables, near the door, with quivers of arrows, all the same, all ready, and no man’s hand near them: it was the women’s defense, if ever the war spilled across the river and beyond the wall.
He was determined it would not.
They sat with Drusenan’s lady, for a moment paused in her work, and heard a brisk, fair account of every company that had passed, its numbers, its condition, and the time the women had wished them on their way.
“A tall, dark man, among the rest,” Tristen said, for that aspect of the Lord Commander there was no hiding.
“That one, yes,” the lady said, “and no lingering. Took a pack of bread and cheese and filled their water flasks, and on they went, being in some great hurry… we didn’t mistake ‘em, did we? Your Grace isn’t after ‘em.”
“Honest men,” Tristen said, “without any question, on honest business.”
“It’s comin’, is it?”
“It won’t come here,” Tristen said. “Not if we can prevent it, and if the wall can.”
“Gods save us,” the good woman said, and was afraid, it was no difficulty to know it… afraid not so much for this place, but for Drusenan and the rest. “Gods save Amefel.”
“Gods save us all,” Uwen echoed her.
“And you and yours,” Crissand said quietly.
“We should move,” Tristen said, for by her account Idrys’ band was early on its way and Cevulirn would have his request to cross and camp. “They won’t linger and we shouldn’t.”
There was not a man of them but would have wished to linger the rest of the hour, but it was down with the remnant left in bowls, and here and there a piece of bread tucked into a jacket, a half cup of ale downed in a gulp, against a hard ride to come, and no sleep but a nap along the way.
Drusenan’s lady brought them outside into the dark, she and all the women and the girls, some of them down from the guard post, with their bows. The women saw them onto their horses, with only the light from the open door.
It was muddy going, for the dark and all, and now they had the banners put away and their cloaks close about them. The horses were reluctant, having been given the prospect of a warm stable and that now taken from them: Dys was surly for half an hour, and Cass farther than that, while Crissand’s horse and the guards’ were entirely out of their high spirits and the horses at lead, those who had carried them all day, plodded.
“Now’s the time we look sharp around us,” Uwen said to the guards, “on account of if any man’s movin’ we’re the noisiest.”
“The Lord Commander will have told them we’re coming,” Crissand said, meaning the guard at the wall.
“Beyond any doubt,” Tristen said, and now in the dark he did resort ever so gingerly to the gray space, listening to the land around them. He heard a hare in a thicket, a fox on its nightbound hunt, both aware of the passage of horses on the road.
And Owl was back, with a sudden swoop out of the dark that startled the foremost horses out of their sulking.
“Damn,” said Crissand’s captain.
“Men are ahead of us,” Tristen said, for he gathered that out of the insubstantial wind: indeed men were moving in the same direction, toward the wall. “Don’t venture,” he said quietly to Crissand, for Crissand had wondered, and fallen right into the wizard-sight, easy as his next breath. “Someone might hear.”
“My lord,” Crissand said, and ceased.
It was a fair ride farther to the old wall, where Aeself’s archers might be, and a dangerous prospect, to come up on archers at night, and with their badges invisible.
Idrys would have come there ahead of them, at least while the light lasted, and indeed forewarned them. But now there were two groups on the road, and Tristen set a moderately quicker pace, chasing that presence of many men in the dark, one a presence he knew.
It was right near the wall he knew that the other presence in the dark was indeed Drumman; and in that sure knowledge he let the gap close. The men ahead had heard them, and slowed, and stopped; and waited warily.
“Owl,” Tristen said, and, rarely obedient, Owl obliged him by a close pass, and by flapping heavily about his shoulder. He lifted a hand to brush Owl’s talons off his cloak, and drew a little of the light of the gray space to his hand, and to Owl, who flew off, faintly shining, here and there at once.
A murmur arose in the ranks behind, and even the Amefin blessed themselves; but Owl vanished among the trees and came back again, and all the while Tristen had never ceased to ride at the same steady pace.
Drumman knew, now, who commanded Owl, and waited, a line of riders in the dark beyond a small woods, as Owl came back to him, and then found a perch above.
“Lord Drumman,” Tristen said.
“My lord duke!” Drumman said. “Well met. I’d feared you were intruders.”
“None have crossed that I know,” Tristen said, and took Drum-man’s offered hand. “But Aeself and his men are along the river, and Cevulirn should have crossed to the Elwynim side. I need you and your men to hold the camp on this side.”
“And not cross!” Drumman protested. “We’re light horse, well drilled, and well set.”
“Then come with us,” Tristen said. He had withheld from the lady of Modeyneth their greatest concerns, but to Drumman he told all the truth of Ryssand’s action and Idrys’ fears as they rode, and by the time the wall darkened the night sky, Drumman understood the worst.
“Beset by his own,” Drumman said, as harshly as if he and Crissand’s house had never courted rebels or conspired against Cefwyn at all. It was honest indignation… so thoroughly the sentiments of the Amefin had shifted toward the Marhanen and the Lady of Elwynor.
“By his own, and planning to divide Elwynor between Tasmôrden and themselves,” Crissand said. “Which is no good for Amefel. We know where Tasmôrden’s ambitions would turn next.”
“Fine neighbors,” Drumman said, above the moving of the horses. “Fine neighbors they’d be, Ryssand or Tasmôrden. What are we to do?”
“Come at the enemy in Ilefínian and reach them before Cefwyn does,” Tristen said, but in his heart was Idrys’ fear, a traitor nearer Cefwyn than the ones they and Cefwyn already knew. Distance mattered in wizardry and Cefwyn being the point on which the whole eastern assault turned, he had no doubt all the wizardry of their enemy was bent on his overthrow.
They reached the wall, that reared dark and absolute across the road, with gates shut and the will of Lord Drusenan to defend it. It made him think of the maps, and how there was, along the riverside, the village of Anas Mallorn, and other small holdings scattered along the wedge of land before the rock, and all that way Idrys had to go, if he had not found a boat ready and able to take him on the water.