Fortress of Owls

by C. J. Cherryh

  272 / C. J. CHERRYH

  confident, as Anwyll was not; and he was capable of distinguishing one band of Elwynim from another, as Anwyll was not, which made Tristen easier in his mind.

  Since the Ivanim lieutenant had set to work, in fact, there was already a different sense of order, men and horses rapidly establishing a more permanent camp with no resources to begin with and abundant resource within an hour, and the Ivanim seemingly everywhere at once, considering winter stabling and timbers they might use for the purpose, if the weather worsened over their week. They accomplished wonders of organization before the morning fires had produced water hot enough for porridge, and by then Anwyll was in far better humor.

  So with farewells to Cevulirn’s men, and setting out by a good hour with only Tristen’s small Guelenish guard force and bodyguard around them, they put the river at their backs in short order.

  They kept the horses not to a courier’s pace, for their armor and arms and heavy saddles were too much weight on the horses for that kind of riding. But all the same they pressed hard, and reached the ruined wall near Modeyneth at midafternoon, where the area around the old wall and towers already showed signs of clearing, timbers cut, fallen stone swept clean of snow.

  The new earl himself was overseeing bands of workers in the brushy woods that had grown up about the old stones.

  “My lords!” it was, when Drusenan saw them; and then a more sober reckoning when he saw how they came, without their guards.

  “Grave news,” Cevulirn said, and reported what they knew, regarding Elwynor and Ilefínian.

  FORTRESS OF OWLS / 273

  “Captain Anwyll of the Dragon Guard will deliver any fugitives to you, and he may ask you to raise a local muster,” Tristen said. He was keenly aware how great a burden he had put on a new man, one time experienced in battle, yes, and a dreadful battle, but not having directed anything more than a village levy on the march. “I’ll ask Lord Drumman to move to your assistance, with carts and oxen, as soon as I reach Henas’amef.

  I need all the oxen I have at the river. Above all, be very certain whoever you set at Althalen bears no weapons. Collect them if you find them. I’ll have none of the war there brought here.”

  “My lord,” Drusenan said in great earnest. “All that you wish, I’ll do. Let me get my horse, and I’ll ride with you to the village.”

  “No stopping tonight,” Tristen said, but the reason of their overwhelming haste, that would send Cevulirn riding hard for the south, he did not confess even to this well-disposed and honest man. Rumors enough were likely to fly and would fly, no few of them to the Elwynim, and whence next, there was no limit of possibilities.

  All the same Lord Drusenan rode with them as far as Modeyneth and some beyond, after a welcome cup of mulled wine and a breath for the horses.

  “I’ve already sent out word to the villages,” Lord Drusenan reported to them, “and told them the state of affairs in Bryn, and our charge from Your Grace, as I’m sure they’ll come to help.”

  “You have Bryn’s town resources to draw from,” Tristen said,

  “and no few men there, with its treasury: I didn’t let it go. I’ll send what I can with Lord Drumman. And horses, which Anwyll may need, if you’ll send them on in good order.”

  Another man, Tristen thought, might have sped straight for the town and the court and bought himself 274 / C. J. CHERRYH

  fine clothes, but Lord Drusenan had not even delayed for a ceremony, owning his modest swearing as binding on him as any in the great hall. He had gone to the wall to clear brush and snow from about the fallen stones and plied an axe until his hands were blistered. His lady, Ynesynë, had set up great kettles in the center of the village, expecting, she said, a hundred men from surrounding villages to come to the work. She had made provision for them to lodge in the stable and in the hall and wherever the village houses could find a little room.

  Besides that, the village wives were packing the village’s sole horse cart with supply for the fugitives in the ruins, while two of the local men had gone ahead with axes, so Drusenan had reported, to prepare shelters and firewood, and added, as everyone did, if only the weather held good.

  It should, it must, it would, unless some wizard opposed him; and he might meet that challenge and hold it, too.

  “I wish the snow will fall north of us,” Tristen said, with great insistence in his heart, for all the while he and Cevulirn had ridden since dawn, he had held that determination, for whatever force it had, and now he was sure it would.

  He wished health and good fortune on the village; and also on Syes’ sparrows, traveling by now afoot to the ruins at Althalen, where other men of the village would guide them.

  “And excuse Anwyll,” he said. “He’s a good man. He has a better heart than one might think. No one of Meiden would have survived at Henas’amef, if not for him coming to advise me what Parsynan was up to. Meiden owes him their lives.”

  “I take your advisement, my lord, and will remember.”

  FORTRESS OF OWLS / 275

  But the new lord of Bryn, understanding their haste to reach Henas’amef by dark, few as they were, had no inclination to delay in debate, only offered himself and two of his young men to add to the guard they had.

  “You’ve enough to do,” Tristen said, as they were getting to horse, “and I fear nothing from bandits. See to the wall, that’s what I most wish.”

  “See the young men exercised in arms as well as building,”

  Cevulirn advised Drusenan, too. “If there’s any place Elwynor might attack early and hard, it’s this road, and that bridge, with the wall building. Tasmôrden won’t like the look of that at all, and won’t like the rumors out of the south of a strong rule here.”

  Amefel, which had used to be the softest approach to Ylesuin, was shored up with stone and soon to be edged with steel and muscled with horses and Ivanim cavalry. And that, Tristen thought, served Cefwyn better than carts and a company of the Dragons.

  They made speed homeward bound after Modeyneth, camped but briefly and late, and that more for the sake of the horses that carried them, were on their way again at the first light of a clear, bright dawn, and laid their specific plans on the way, for the guard they had closest to them were trusted men.

  Cevulirn would write to the other lords, and surmised what force and support they might look for from each…Midwinter Day was the day they set for the lords and their escorts to gather at Henas’amef, a festive day, a time when friends gathered and saw in the new year—could the Quinalt fault a gathering of friends, be they lords with numerous men in their escort? The lords who had fought in Amefel this summer past would gather to give thanks, to share the feast, no less than peasants

  276 / C. J. CHERRYH

  did around their year-fires, and noble families across the land.

  That they might lay their plans then, that, their enemies would know.

  But their coming depended on the will of the lords…and on what the weather might hold.

  And the latter, Tristen thought, might lie within his hands.

  But while he might wish the snow away from them, or a moderation in the weather, he was far from certain he could manage something on the scale of hastening a season.

  Yet wish he did. They had a great deal to accomplish, and instead of a long time to Midwinter, they found the days until Midwinter a very short time for them to bring together all they wished…for what they wished and planned was to have a force capable of striking through to Ilefínian and threatening the rebels’ gains.

  If they could do no more than embarrass Tasmôrden and make him look the fool, that would raise hopes of defying him, and raise men in support of Ninévrisë’s claim…and that would also support Cefwyn’s heavy cavalry and strong force coming from the east…for Cefwyn’s reliance on heavy horse with the roads uncertain as they were alarmed him. Every sense he had of warfare, every sense he gained from the maps said that there was a reason Selwyn Marhanen had not p
ressed into Elwynor from the east, where roads were not up to Guelen standards, where brush was thick along the roads…he had never been there, but he was sure that was the nature of the land, as sure as if he had seen it, and anything he could do to the south to distract Tasmôrden onto two fronts eased his fears for Cefwyn.

  “So the king and the north will have the victory and Murandys may look a valiant soldier,” Cevulirn said FORTRESS OF OWLS / 277

  in a tone of derision. “Let him, only so we have free rein here, and can raise an army out of the stones of Elwynor.”

  “If only Umanon will join us,” Tristen said, for Umanon was the chanciest of their former allies, a heavy horse contingent, in itself, but a valuable one, with their light horse to probe the way. More, Pelumer of Lanfarnesse was not certain, especially if Umanon should hold back. Pelumer, Cefwyn had said, managed to be late to every fight, and they feared he would manage to be late to this one.

  “But Sovrag will come,” Tristen said. “I do rely on him.”

  “The man was a river pirate,” Cevulirn said, “and the Marhanens ennobled him and granted him the district he holds because that rock of a fortress of his was too much trouble to take. And they needed his boats. As we do.”

  “Yet he’s an honest man.”

  “An honest thief, nowadays. A reformed thief. Which turned the Olmernmen,” Cevulirn added, “from brigandage against my lands and Umanon’s toward occasional brigandage in the southern kingdoms, a great improvement for us, if it brings us no angry retribution. That in itself was a wonder. More than that, they’ve even planted small fields. That we never thought to see. I confess I like the man better now than two years ago.

  And he’s learned things from being in Amefel. He’s seen how farmerfolk live fairly well on the land. And he’s learned how to sit a horse, if it’s old and docile.”

  “What do you say of Pelumer?” Tristen asked, intrigued by Cevulirn’s reckoning of the brigand lord, whom he did understand. Pelumer, however, blew both hot and cold, to his observation.

  “Hard to catch,” Cevulirn said of Pelumer. “Both 278 / C. J. CHERRYH

  the rangers of Lanfarnesse and their lord. Apt to take the cautious view, apt not to risk his men. Late to every battle. Yet no coward.”

  Pelumer’s light-armed forces were better suited to moving in small bands among the trees, skills of little use in a pitched battle, as Cefwyn had tried to use them. In some measure he did not blame Pelumer for his reluctance to throw them onto the field: for all Cefwyn’s virtues of courage, he had a hardheadedness about the way to win a battle, which was a great deal of force moving irresistibly forward. Pelumer did not like the notion…nor, he found, did he, and he feared for Cefwyn, locking in that reliance on the Guelen forces.

  Of Umanon of Imor Lenúalim, canny and Guelen and Quinalt, unlike all the rest of the southrons, he had the most doubt. He was the most like Cefwyn in some regards, but independent and interested primarily in his own province. “And Umanon?” he asked. “Will he agree with us, or with Ryssand?”

  “He detests Corswyndam. And since Lewenbrook, he despises Sulriggan.” This was the lord of Ryssand, and the lord of Llymaryn, two of the principal forces in the north. “He’s capable of surprises. And he’s more a southerner where his alliances and his purse are concerned. Nor is he that much enamored of the northern orthodoxy.”

  “The Quinaltines?”

  “The doctrinists among the Quinaltines. A handful of troublesome priests, clustered around the northlands, some in Murandys, strict readers of the book and strict in interpretation…neither here nor there for you or me, here in the south.

  But it’s a reason Umanon doesn’t stand with Ryssand and Murandys. He detests the priests that espouse it, since the orthodoxy, mark you, faults Umanon’s birth.”

  “How might they do that?”

  FORTRESS OF OWLS / 279

  “Oh, that Umanon’s mother and her folk are Teranthines, and stiff in their faith as Umanon is in his. He won’t condemn his mother and his aunt and her house, nor his cousins, who are wealthy men and the owners of a great deal of the grainfields that are Imor’s wealth: he trades grain for northern cattle and the cattle for southern gold, to the seafarers, down the Lenúalim. His dukedom may be Guelen and Quinalt as you please, but the Teranthines are best at dealing with foreign folk and best at trade. They fear nothing, accept the most outrageous of foreign ways.”

  “And wizards? They accept them.”

  “Look at Emuin.”

  “Are there wizards in the wild lands south?” He had never read so.

  “Assuredly. Perhaps even fugitive remnants of the Sihhë. We Ivanim trade along the border in silk and horses, with the Chomaggari, and farther still. And a modicum of wizardry has never troubled us.”

  “You yourself have some gift,” Tristen observed with deliberate bluntness, and Cevulirn regarded him with a sidelong glance. “You use it. You used it during the business at Modeyneth. I think you know you have it.”

  “Our house is admittedly fey,” said Cevulirn, “and I confess it, to one I think will never betray that confidence. We aren’t wizards. But the gift for it is there.”

  “Between the two of us,” Tristen said, “we might have no need of signal fires. I think you would hear me even in Toj Embrel.”

  Cevulirn regarded him a long few moments in silence, and the gray space seethed with Cevulirn’s strong forbidding.

  “I will not,” Cevulirn said, “not unless at great need. I have trusted you, Amefel, as never I have trusted, outside Ivanor.

  And so if you need me, call by any means you can.”

  280 / C. J. CHERRYH

  “I think that I did call you,” Tristen said after a moment of thought on that point, “though not by intent and not by name.

  I needed an adviser, and here you are. And you’ll come back, that I believe, too.” It was in his mind that even his own wish might not be all the reason for Cevulirn’s coming to him, for there were many wizards, Emuin had said, wizards living and dead, their threads crossed and woven, and hard to say which juncture mattered most to the fabric.

  Wizardous elements came together in his vicinity, gathered by common purpose, common loyalties, common necessity…Emuin in his tower, he and Cevulirn; Crissand and Paisi; Ninévrisë in Guelemara and Uleman in his grave at Althalen.

  Not discounting Mauryl…or Hasufin, though both were dispelled.

  We are all here, Tristen thought to himself.

  And all through the journey the sky stayed brilliant blue and the land gleaming white, except to the north, where clouds gathered dark and troubled, and pregnant with winter.

  The sun was low when their reduced band drew in sight of Henas’amef, and it was a welcome sight, with lights beginning to show, peaceful and familiar with its skirt of snowy fields. A curiously warm feeling, Tristen thought, and how many faces it had, in summer, in winter, by day and by twilight.

  Most of all he felt a warm expectation when he saw the Zeide’s tower and knew that a friend lived there, and other friends waited for him and that his own bed was in that upper floor, and that Uwen would welcome him, and Tassand, and all the ones who cared for him. They would do thus, and thus, he imagined, weary of body but happy in the anticipation. All the

  FORTRESS OF OWLS / 281

  comforts of his household would fold him in and care for him, knowing him as he knew them. Crissand might be back, might well be back, from his riding out. They would talk, sitting comfortably by the fire.

  This was homecoming, he said to himself, a homecoming such as ordinary Men felt, a touch of things remembered and familiar after days of difficulty and strange faces and cold fingers and toes, of chancy food and watching sharply the movements of men he did not know.

  They rode through the streets to the easy greetings of craftsmen, with the tolling of the bell at the gate to advise all the town and the height of the hill that the lord of Amefel had come back.

  They had come back with far fewer Ivanim
than before, it might be, but home safe and sound, all the same, and likely to the gossip and interest of every townsmen that beheld them and the banners.

  Where are the Ivanim? they might ask among themselves, and, Was there fighting? But they would see no signs of battle about them, and they would ask until the answer flowed downhill from those in a position to know.

  Best of all was Uwen waiting in the stable-court when they had come in under the portcullis of the West Gate…to do no more than change horses in Cevulirn’s case, as Cevulirn had purposed to ride on even tonight. Master Haman would provide the lord of the Ivanim with horses, and Cevulirn would take a small, reliable escort of the best of the Guelen Guard as far as his hall in the south, at Toj Embrel.

  So Tristen ordered.

  “He’s left his own men at the river with Anwyll,” he added, speaking to Uwen on the matter. “He’ll camp on the road, and we can surely provide him all he needs going home.”

  282 / C. J. CHERRYH

  “Aye, m’lord,” was Uwen’s response to the request, and he rattled off names and sent a boy smartly after horses. Just as quickly he sent a soldier after the men he wanted for the escort, naming them by name almost in one breath.

  So the yard broke into great and cheerful confusion, Haman’s lads bringing out horses and gear, and assisting Lord Cevulirn, who saw to his own pair of grays, and who had precise requests for their feeding and watering, for he would take them on home with him, never parted from those horses.

  But Uwen said, to Tristen alone and with a grim face,

  “M’lord, I ain’t done well, I suspect. His Reverence took off, an’ I couldn’t stop ’im.”

  “Left?” Tristen asked in dismay. “His Reverence left Henas’amef? For Guelessar?”

  “The hour you had the town at your back,” was Uwen’s answer. “He ain’t no great rider, but I give him one of the men to see to ’im. I didn’t know what else to do.”