Could they all, all the north intend to strike at him? Did they conspire together, so blindly hateful of his rule that they would gamble on Tasmôrden’s often-bartered promises—or was Ryssand, even Ryssand, innocent and coming to the defense of the realm?
He watched the last of the Guelen Guard come off the bridge, last of the standing regiments, and saw the first of the provincial forces, the contingent with young Rusyn, ride after… no great number of foot, except those Panys had brought.
The army he had fielded after all was, as Tristen had once advised him, nearly all horse. It was not near the number of men the lords could have raised in the peasant levies, if they had called in the infantry, as they had planned—he had foregone that, at the very last, had overset long-held plans as the carts delayed and their information from across the river painted him a mobile, smaller enemy than Aséyneddin had led against him. The army he had gathered still would not move as fast as the light horse Tristen and Cevulirn alike had recommended, but they would move and regroup faster than heavy infantry.
And if thanks to Ryssand they had now to abandon all but a few tents in favor of rapid movement into Elwynor, so be it and damn Ryssand: the weather was tolerable and they could manage. They could forage. Without Ninévrisë, he no longer hoped overmuch for a great rising of folk loyal to her banner: their best information portrayed a land cowed and beaten by conflicting warlords, no man daring raise his head. But all the same he carried her banner aloft and hoped to receive some support from the locals, if only in their declining to face him for Tasmôrden.
And at the worst of Ryssand’s treachery, they still could survive long enough to reach Ilefínian, against every principle of Guelen warfare that declared the baggage train had to set the rate of march and that they must not leave it vulnerable to attack. For what he did now, he cast back to older models, to Tashanen, to Barrakketh himself: they must not extend themselves so fast and so far from their lines they lost control of the roads on which they marched and the supplies which moved on those roads, but they had to risk the tents… there was no kingdom to go back to if he retreated now, and no hope of victory if he enmeshed himself in Ryssand’s schemes. Defeat Tasmôrden, and he would have a far more tractable Lord Ryssand to deal with. Fail to defeat Tasmôrden… and he would die here. That was the truth.
And the less visible truth was that the few carts they had and Lord Maudyn’s extensive, well-set camp were neither one the most reliable source of supply. No, in fact: the most reliable road and the supply he knew beyond a doubt they could count on was not what he played hop-skip with in evading Ryssand and not what he had spent a winter laying out. It was (granted Tristen had not flitted off with his pigeons) the supply Tristen had established on the other side of what he had come to think of as that damned rock.
In Amefel. That was where Ninévrisë was, that was where Tristen was, that was where Emuin was.
It was where Cevulirn was, and Sovrag, and Pelumer, and gods, even that poker of a man, Umanon of Imor. They were the same company as had stood against the Shadow at Lewenbrook. There was supply at Anwyll’s former camp, and that he did not doubt.
There was the solid support he could trust.
As for the wagons and the carts and the pack train he had… he sat his horse at Anwyll’s side and watched that line of men and carts across the river, hastening about its business of gathering up the camp and following the army.
“You said Ryssand was at the north road,” he remarked to Captain Anwyll. “Approaching this road, or already on it?”
“Approaching, Your Majesty. I saw his banner at a distance.”
“His and no others?”
“That was all I saw, but there were very many men, Your Majesty.”
That Ryssand had been still in the distance when Anwyll passed, that was good news.
He sat his horse watching and watching as group after group crossed the bridge, and in good time Lord Maudyn rode up to find him, from his camp where they might well have been expecting for some time to receive him and to pay him some courtesy of welcome.
Instead Lord Maudyn, good-hearted man, had ridden to him.
“Your Majesty,” Maudyn said, and Cefwyn was glad to see him, and offered his hand across the gap between their horses.
“Well done,” he said to Maudyn Lord of Panys. “Very well done. Did you hear that Ryssand is coming?”
Maudyn’s countenance assumed a bleak quiet, and then Maudyn cast a curious look toward the bridge, where the first of the baggage carts waited to cross, behind Osanan.
“The baggage train will cross, one by one,” Cefwyn said. “Which may be hours, to move all that. And Ryssand can wait. My baggage has to stay close with the army. If he’s late, so be it. We’ll be moving on to the next camp; there’ll be no settling here.”
He was satisfied now that the carts were beginning to roll. Ryssand would arrive too late to join the crossing of the provincial contingents. He would have to wait, he and those with him, until the last of the baggage train had rolled across the bridge, and that could be very slow, where it involved ox teams, and axles heavy-laden with canvas and iron.
It was time for the scouts to move out and be sure of their night’s camp, that much closer to Ilefínian.
Ryssand could cross today and spend his next hours getting his baggage train across. Ryssand might overtake him today. He might not.
It was time to give the orders to the scouts, and to look to where they would stay this night, in weather fair enough to enable a camp without the tents. It was graven in stone that Guelenmen camped under canvas and made a solid camp at night, that Guelenmen moved at a deliberate pace dictated by the slowest oxcart in the baggage train: Ryssand would not expect this.
He might simply unhitch the teams and let the carts stand on the road, such as it was, completely filling it, so that the forces trying to pass them must struggle through the brush and limbs that fringed it. Perhaps amid the trees and thorn vines, Ryssand might gather he was being slighted.
More to the point, so might the lords with Ryssand see where Ryssand’s leading had gotten them, and then weigh how angry they were willing to make their king, in enemy territory, when Ryssand was being outmaneuvered by oxcarts.
Let them ask themselves then in a second moment of sober reflection how far they could trust Tasmôrden to do what he had promised and to refrain from attacking them: Tasmôrden’s promises and representations might ring somewhat hollow in their ears once they found themselves chasing their king deeper and deeper into Tasmôrden’s reach.
One outraged, angry man might be a fool far quicker and far longer than his contentious allies.
That was what Cefwyn hoped, at least, as he turned Danvy to ride between Maudyn and Anwyll.
“We’ll go on,” he said, “gain as much ground as we can.”
“Prudence, Your Majesty,” Maudyn said.
“Do you trust your scouts?”
“To report what they believe, without question. But—”
“Do they believe the way is clear?”
“Yet to push ahead, against a walled town, Your Majesty, so precipitately, and without the preparation—”
“You’ve made the preparation. We have a camp, do we not, on this side of the Lenúalim?”
“Absolutely so, Your Majesty.”
“Dug in, canvassed, well set, and provided with a rampart.”
“So we have, Your Majesty.”
“Then the gods for Ylesuin and devil take all traitors! These are horses, are they not?”
“Indubitably, so, Your Majesty.”
“And capable of setting us closer to the enemy faster than the oxen could.”