Fortress of Owls

by C. J. Cherryh

  “I don’t know,” he said, the entire truth. “But to war with Tasmôrden, for the king’s sake, and ours, and all the south…that, yes. There will be war.”

  “Lord Ivanor’s ridden home without a word,”

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  Azant said. “And to do what, Your Grace? To bring his men?”

  “And how will we determine the need for this gold and grain?” asked Marmaschen. “Who’ll decide one claim against another? Shall we simply come with a list and say, Your Grace, give us grain?”

  “I’ll ask you the truth,” Tristen said, “and you’ll tell me.”

  One lord lifted his head instantly as if to laugh, and did not, in a very sober, very fearful silence. The silence went on and on, then, oddly, Crissand smiled, then laughed.

  “Lies will find us out,” Crissand said. “Will you not know the instant we lie, my lord?”

  “I think I would,” he admitted, though he had kept from others the truth of the gray space, and what it told him…he judged all men by Uwen Lewen’s-son, and what made Uwen uneasy, he told no one casually. He thought, too, of Cefwyn’s barons and Cefwyn’s court, and how the men there were always at one another’s throats. “But I’d hope none of you would lie to me.”

  There was again that silence.

  “No,” said Crissand cheerfully, “no, my lord, we shan’t lie to you. And you won’t charge Heryn’s tax.”

  “I see no need of a tax, when we have so much gold.”

  “But, Your Grace,” Drumman said, “this wall you want…if you will forgive me my frankness…if I dare say…my men are on their way, with every intent to obey Your Grace’s order.

  But the Guelen king forbade our fortifications and our walled houses. He ordered them torn down. Dare we do this?”

  “Aye,” said Azant. “What will the king in Guelemara say?

  And shall only Bryn have defenses? We have ruined forts aplenty, from the Marhanen’s order. And shall only Bryn raise a wall?”

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  “And will we have a Guelen army on our necks?” Lord Durell asked.

  “No,” Tristen said. “Cefwyn wouldn’t send one. I’m his friend.”

  “His advisers will urge him otherwise, my lord,” said Drumman. “And in no uncertain terms. Your Grace, with all goodwill, and obeying your orders, I’m uneasy in this.”

  “I know they’ll be angry,” Tristen said. “But the king doesn’t like their advice, and he’s far cleverer than Ryssand. He knows his best friends are in the south.”

  “Then gods save His Guelen Majesty,” Azant said with an uneasy laugh, “and long may he reign—in Guelessar.”

  “Aye,” said Drumman, “and leave us our Lord Sihhë.”

  “Our Lord Sihhë,” said Marmaschen, “who spends his treasury instead of ours and bids us build walls…walls I will build, Your Grace. Two hundred men is the muster of my lands, three hundred if you’ll feed the villages through next winter. Do that, and we’ll join Drumman, and raise your wall in Bryn, and then my own.”

  “Three hundred from mine through winter, spring, and summer,” said Lord Drumman.

  “Two hundred from Meiden,” Crissand said, “no trained men: shepherds…but we sling stones at wolves that come at our flocks. Give us some sort of armor and our maids and boys will man Bryn’s wall. That we can do, and will.”

  There was never a doubt Crissand was in earnest, and others named numbers, a hundred from one lord, fifty from another, until the tally was more than Amefel had fielded at Lewenbrook.

  “Now is the need,” Tristen said. “Ilefínian’s people are coming south. But so may Tasmôrden’s. We have

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  to set the signal fires, the way we did before Lewenbrook. This, until we have the Ivanim horse to defend us, and then whatever other help will come to us…they’ll come.”

  “With Ilefínian fallen, and the snows coming,” said Drumman, “there’s likely no grain to be had in Elwynor. There can’t have been a crop last year in the midlands; there’s none this year: all they sowed was iron. Tasmôrden’s stolen for his army whatever the poor farmers put in, his army’s stolen what they could carry, and now he’ll plunder the capital storehouses, none preventing him…whatever the siege didn’t consume, if there’s anything left at all. Hunger across the river is inevitable, Your Grace is right. Grain is what they’ll want, and even innocent villagers can grow desperate enough to turn outlaw. It’s not all quiet, peaceful folk who’ll cross the river in winter.

  There’ll be some bent on taking.”

  “We’ll give them grain,” Tristen said. “As much as they can carry.”

  Worried looks had attended Drumman’s assessment; astonishment attended his answer, slight aversions of the eyes, flinching from the notion; but it seemed reasonable to him.

  “And if we give it, they’ll be fed, and if they’re fed, maybe they’ll be quiet neighbors,” Drumman said. “But can we find that much grain, Your Grace? Can we get it?”

  “We’ll ask the Olmernmen,” Tristen said, in utter sobriety.

  “Cevulirn is doing that.”

  “The king should have pressed across the river last summer,”

  Azant muttered. “Her Grace was willing. The army was willing.

  And, no, he turned aside and went back to Guelessar. Now we empty our treasury to feed Elwynor?”

  “A sack of grain is one gold coin,” Tristen said, FORTRESS OF OWLS / 329

  and if you put it in the ground, it’s a field of grain. Isn’t that so?”

  “If you can get the soldiers off the ground,” Azant said.

  “There’s the matter.”

  “With all the starving peasants of Her Grace’s land at our doorsteps,” Durell said. “Save this grain we give of our own accord, and no recompense from His Guelen Majesty, as I understand. And we’ll have more than hungry peasants before all’s done. We’ll have hungry soldiers, bands of them, with no leaders, no thought but their bellies.”

  That was so.

  “And if there’s famine,” said another lord, “disease, that goes with it.”

  “Then there’s need of medicines, too,” Tristen said.

  “And is our treasury enough for it?”

  “The grandmothers don’t ask much for their cures. But it’s a good thing if we tell them, and pay them.” He had understood this matter of paying folk, finally, so there was bread enough.

  “And if we don’t have enough herbs for their powders, we’ll buy them from Casmyndan, too. Sovrag’s boats can bring them.”

  “And a good store for us, too,” said Marmaschen. “No crops, no store of food untouched in Elwynor, no planting this spring, in all that kingdom. It’s an immense undertaking.”

  “And treasury gold to pay for it, Your Grace?” asked an ealdorman of the town. “Recompense, for what we supply?”

  “And a fair price,” Crissand said. “The merchants know what that is. Fair price, and fair quantity. Weavers to weave: they’ll need blankets and cloaks. Cobblers, dyers, wheelwrights, tanners, and smiths…”

  “For gold?” the ealdorman asked.

  “For gold,” Tristen said, and added, because Crissand was right, “at the prices things are.”

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  “My lord,” said Azant, from the other side of the table. “We know we have our own to save. But I have a question, and trusting Your Grace, I’ll be plain with it. The king cast out Lord Cevulirn, who by all accounts was the only honest man left in Guelemara. All fall long, he’s heard only the Guelenfolk, and shown no regard at all to the blood we poured on Lewen field: he gave us Parsynan, was the thanks we had. I did think better of king Cefwyn, and I know I’m putting my head at risk, here.

  But he’s only proved himself Marhanen, this far. Your Grace says he loves us dearly. Your Grace trusts him. Your Grace says if we commit ourselves and raise this effort, there’ll be Guelenmen carrying the war into Elwynor and flying Her Grace of Elwynor’s blue bann
er all the way. Bear in mind our love for you, my lord, but we don’t so easily love the Guelen king, and we’re not altogether sure the Guelenmen are going to cross the river.”

  He had wished the earls to speak plainly. And this was the truth, from men who had been prepared to join the Elwynim rebels against Cefwyn.

  “My lord,” Crissand had said to him while he chased those thoughts harelike through the brambles of Cefwyn’s court, “my lord, we’ve come here to tell the truth. I said we dared, and Lord Azant’s done it. So now I will.”

  Crissand drew forth a small, much-abused bundle of paper which he had carried close to his person, and he laid it on the table.

  “My father’s letters sent to Tasmôrden I don’t have, though here are drafts of two of them. But all Tasmôrden’s representations to him of whatsoever minor sort, they’re here. I know they set forth names of some of those present, regarding those promises, and they knew I would do this. We trust my lord’s for

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  giveness for any here that may be named; if you would be angry at them, be angry at me, first, and any punishment you set on them, set on me, first. I said I would do that. But I trust my good lord, that there’ll be none.”

  “No,” Tristen agreed.

  “Ask the Bryaltine abbot about letters, too,” Azant muttered,

  “if Your Grace wants a store of them. Aye, I’ve a few of my own, as damning.” He drew another, neater bundle from his breast, and others laid them down.

  They might, Tristen could not help thinking, account for some of the purloined archive, for there was a fair pile of them.

  And the Bryaltine abbot had trafficked with Tasmôrden? The Quinalt father he had known was inimical to him, but that the Bryaltines, who had sheltered Emuin’s faith, might be a difficulty…he had not suspected.

  That meant the Bryaltine abbot was, like Emuin, very good at secrets.

  More than one wizard, Emuin had said.

  Suddenly there seemed more than one side to Tasmôrden’s scheming, and many to his own lords’ duplicity with Cefwyn.

  So the abbot had a glimmering of the gift, in himself, and had carried on treason and never let it be known.

  “Uwen,” Tristen said, “send for the abbot. Crissand. Lord Meiden.” He reminded himself of pride, and courtesies by which Men set such great store. “Do you know what’s in the letters?”

  “Lord Heryn’s dealings with the Elwynim…with Caswyddian,” Crissand said, and so Lord Azant, redfaced, confirmed his own letters were part of it.

  Then Earl Zereshadd broke his long and wary silence, and poured out a tale of Heryn’s dealings. “Caswyddian 332 / C. J. CHERRYH

  sought permission of Lord Heryn to come into Amefel, to outflank the Lord Regent’s forces…he’d already crossed the river, but he asked, to keep good relations; this while Prince Cefwyn was in Henas’amef. The Lord Regent was sending messages to the prince, and Lord Heryn intercepted every one.

  It was an agreement between Lord Heryn and Caswyddian to ambush the prince at Emwy.”

  By the prince Zereshadd meant Cefwyn before he was king.

  And the earls had supported Lord Heryn in his schemes…per-haps, in fact, all of them had conspired with various of the Elwynim pretenders, not necessarily one side, not necessarily one pretender, and perhaps even two or three of them at once, wherever reward offered itself. Deception had been the rule in Heryn’s court, and Cefwyn had known he was living in constant danger. But not the extent of it.

  And once started, the other lords had details to lend, perhaps matters which they had never told each other…in certain instances, provoking angry looks, then rueful laughter. Confessions and tale-bearing poured forth like nuts from a basket, everyone with a piece to tell, all of it with new kernels to glean, but nothing more of the greater doings of Lewenbrook than Tristen already knew: the conspiracy against the Lord Regent Uleman, which had driven Uleman into exile and at last to his grave in Amefel, had had Amefin help from beginning to end.

  On their side of justice, the earls had suffered under Marhanen prohibitions and decrees. The order that had torn down the fortified manor houses was one such, and was the reason most of the earls lived in Henas’amef, in the great houses around the Zeide. The prohibition against the earls keeping above a certain number of common men-at-arms was another, which had left Amefel no standing army and no stores of arms to which anyone

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  admitted…the disappearance of swords and spears after the last muster was suspicious, and the earls quietly said they would ask among their villages.

  The number of men said to be bastard kin within the houses and therefore entitled to weapons turned out exaggerated…but these lords’ houses had paid taxes for generations under the aethelings and the Sihhë and contributed to the building of Althalen and its luxury. Then came the Marhanen tax, and, worst of the lot, there had been Lord Heryn’s extravagance; but they had kept quiet. Lord Heryn had been their own, their aetheling, their claim to royalty and their man accepted by the Marhanen crown.

  “Heryn said,” said Marmaschen, “that the tax went to the king. We see it didn’t.”

  “What could we do?” Zereshadd asked. “There was no other lord we could turn to. So we tolerated his excesses. And gods save Your Grace, indeed, if there’s as much as you say, it may save us all.”

  “There are other reserves,” said Drumman slowly, “since we tell the truth here. More than one of us has laid by against need.”

  That brought an uneasy shifting in the seats.

  “Truth,” Crissand said. “We promised truth for truth. And hasn’t our lord given us the truth?”

  “This is my truth,” Drumman said. “When the Marhanen king ordered the manor houses razed, records were lost; and in the losing of those records, my district preserved reserves with which we hoped one day to rebuild. This timber and stone I will give to the wall. The gold…I will also bring forward.”

  There were grudging nods among the others, as if this was far from an unknown practice.

  “More might be found,” said Zereshadd, and Marmaschen inclined his head with a pensive expression.

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  “Your Grace has allowed Bryn to fortify his northernmost village,” Azant pointed out. Azant was also bordering on the river. “Since each has such ruins in our districts, holdings forbidden us by the Guelen king, and since we have reserves for building…”

  He understood slowly that justice and evenhandedness meant allowing all such fortifications, if he had allowed them in Bryn: that was what Azant was saying…and there was a great silence in the hall, and an anxious look at him and at Azant, as if seeing what he might do with such resistance.

  “First,” he said, “defeat Tasmôrden. First let’s take account of the map and fortify where there’s some chance of the rebels coming across.”

  “We will need to leave the court and take command in our districts,” said Marmaschen in a low voice. “At least at the start.”

  “I’ve very few couriers to carry messages,” Tristen said, “and a scarcity even of guards, if I send Cefwyn more of his men home, as I have to this spring. I’ve no one, until Ivanor comes north. If I raise a levy for my own guard in the spring, men who’ve not exercised at arms, they’re no defense. I need an Amefin guard.”

  “If each of us,” said Crissand, “were to give ten men with horses to His Grace’s service until Ivanor supplies the need, His Grace would have guards and couriers. Uwen Lewen’s-son is a Guelenman, true, but a fine man, and a good captain, and any man of Meiden would be honored to have the post.”

  “Twice ten young men,” said Drumman, “and at my own charge. With horses. And past the time Ivanor may arrive. I’ll not have our lord served by another’s men, for pride’s sake, sirs. I challenge you.”

  “Men I’ll give,” Zereshadd said, “but where shall we get trained men here and trained men there, and now horses, gods save us, and men fit to ride them?r />
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  From under mushrooms? The Guelen king refused us any but our house guard.”

  “Send those you can,” Tristen said, “and they’ll learn.”

  “Give His Grace at least some with the skill,” Crissand suggested, “and the rest, as likely as we can find. His Grace has no house of his own. Where is he to get them, if not from us?”

  “Where will they lodge?” Azant asked. “The Guelens have the barracks.”

  The vision of a second barracks suggested a solution: a barracks might stand…had stood…Tristen drew in a breath, having suddenly a location in the South Court in mind, and wondered where they should find the stone…but on a second, more sober thought, simple timber would serve and make warm walls, and timber stood available on the nearest hillcrest—

  If, that was, they could spare workmen from carving eagles and embellishing doors that were otherwise sound enough.

  “I’ve workmen enough to raise a new barracks,” Tristen said,

  “and the men you send will camp in the guardroom and the stairs and in the lower hall until there’s a place, and help the workmen…and master Haman. We’ll have our allies here by Midwinter, and all their horses.” He drew a breath. “So. Let’s do everything we’ve promised, and see that we’re ready for what comes.”

  “His Reverence is here,” Uwen said, when he had settled in his apartment to sort through the pile of the letters, and indeed he was, a shy presence at Uwen’s side, a shy one in the gray space, unmasked, and honest at the moment, though he had never detected it before.

  Of all priests he knew, save Emuin, who maintained 336 / C. J. CHERRYH

  he was not a priest anyway, this was the only one such he recollected: this one had the gift, a faint one, or one secret by nature. If so, there was some strength in it.

  “We were learning Tasmôrden sent to some of us,” Tristen said. “Did he send to you, sir? Or has any other we might wish to know about? We’ve collected letters, all sorts of letters, which came from the north, and you may have some of your own.”