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They had not their full load of baggage: a good deal of it he had sent out to Lord Maudyn ahead of time, and all winter long, in the lack of carts, Maudyn had moved it by repeated trips, tempting the enemy to reach for it… but no such thing had happened.

So, indeed, now he committed them to the other side, and tempted fate and the gods twice by leaving his quartermaster to manage the crossing: trust the drivers not to hurl themselves and their teams into the river by too much haste, and his quartermaster not to crowd up on the bridge—he knew his quartermaster, a steady officer of the Dragons: that man was no fool, to bring more than one heavy wagon onto the bridge at a time, and would not, not if pikes had to prevent it. To cross in haste to defend Maudyn was a contingency they had foreseen: that the Elwynim enemy was not the reason of their crossing was beside the point—the man would not fail him.

And as he came off the bridge and onto the soil of Elwynor, he had clear view of the banners of Ylesuin and Panys set among the rocks and the height that bordered the road.

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"Ride on!" he ordered Gwywyn, just behind him, and he drew himself and his bodyguard aside from the road, keeping view of the bridge, reassured in the orderly progress of disciplined troops, the Dragons setting the example and the quartermaster's guards marshaling those who came behind into a calm, rapid order.

It was the lords' contingents that worried him: there were the men who might grow anxious and press forward. An armored man that fell into those deep, cold waters was a dead man, no question about it; and he had worried for the provincial musters if they came to any trial at arms about this crossing. His cleverness in setting the army across and leaving Ryssand behind his cart train could bring disaster on them if some unit panicked.

But for the foremost hazard of their crossing, he was just as glad to move at speed: if ever Tasmôrden had a real chance at a hard, early strike at them, the best chance for him was during their crossing. He had needed to be very sure of Lord Maudyn's scouts to have camped as they had, with the army in sight, but Lord Maudyn's men in reach.

He had expected an attack to come on Lord Maudyn in the winter, or again when the decking went on. He had most dreaded an attack at their arrival, but last night, when they had camped with Lord Maudyn on one side of the water and himself on Ylesuin's side, there had been no threat and they had seen no reason to press a crossing and encampment into the dark.

The forces of Ylesuin would have had the leisure to straggle onto Elwynim soil at a stroll had they wished. That in itself prompted a leader in opposition to question his own perceptions and Tasmôrden's qualities as a leader of men.

Dared they trust, as Maudyn reported, that Tasmôrden indeed still lingered among the plundered luxuries of Ilefínian, his troops ranging the wine shops, so dissipated they could not field a squad of cavalry?

Or dared he think that Tasmôrden's lack of response was because Tasmôrden chose to let Ryssandish and Guelens fight a war of their own… that he delayed in hope of Ryssand's arriving forces.

"Your Majesty."

Anwyll had found a horse and crossed among the Dragons, a man at loose ends, lacking a command and lacking orders.

"Stay close." Trusted men were rare, and by conscious decision he fortress of dragons.html

trusted Anwyll at the same level as he trusted his own guard: if there were perfidy in this man, he counted on Tristen to have smelled it out and never to have trusted him with messages. That was his first thought.

But his second asked whether Tristen was infallible. Had Tristen not sent him that precious lot of Guelens, and the head of the Amefin Quinalt, who had wreaked such havoc?

Then he recalled Efanor's letter, unregarded in his possession since Anwyll had brought it to him. He had tucked it into his belt, another abuse of the scroll, and when he drew it out he found its parchment and its seal alike cracked but not yet separated, a small roll almost overwhelmed by the honors of its seal and binding… no question of its origin as he pulled the ribbon free, for he knew the seal as he knew his own, Efanor's authentic seal, with a deliberate imperfection in it, a flaw at the edge, as his own gillyflower seal bore a small mark in one petal.

But why a white satin ribbon, the like of which the Holy Father used, and why was it not the red of the Marhanen?

He broke the seal and unrolled the little scroll in the stiff wind that came down the river.

I take the captain for a reliable man
, Efanor had written,
and send
him on with the carts which I fear now are too late to serve. Tristen
has been here in Guelemara and has banished some sort of darksome
unpleasantness from the very altar of the Quinaltine
.

Tristen in
Guelemara
, Cefwyn thought, dumbfounded and dismayed at once. Had Tristen marched for the capital? And
darksome
unpleasantness
?

… Neither I nor the Holy Father fully understand the means of his
visitation, but he pursued some irruption of evil influence daring the
vicinity of the altar, and established a line of defense which he drew
on the stones. He said that I must guard this place and walk this line
and pray continually…

There were several wonders in this cramped, tightly written letter…

not least of which others was the word
pray
within Tristen's instructions.
Pray
, was it, now?

And Tristen had not marched in at the head of an army, either, if that fortress of dragons.html

failure to
understand the means
meant something magical.

Flitting hither and thither like the irreverent pigeons?

To Guelemara, was it now?

Then why not here, friend of my heart? Come to me here! Oh, gods,
could I wish you by me!

And where have I sent Nevris
? To
what care
?

But he had no magic, no wizardry: Emuin's most careful questions in his boyhood had found not a trace, not a breath, not a whisper of wizard-gift in him. The Quinalt and Teranthine gods were the only recourse of a magic-blind man, and he had no faith Tristen would hear him
or
the gods.

Yet Tristen had flitted his way into the Quinaltine, had he? And surely Ninévrisë was safe with Emuin in Henas'amef, if Emuin had not taken to flying about the land in his company.

And
praying
? If it were not his brother who had written that word, he would not have believed the letter, but it was, and freely so, Efanor's cursive hand.

This I do
, Efanor had written,
continually, with the Holy Father and a
number of the priests on whom we rely. I fear to say in this letter all
that I understand and even more so do I fear to say all that I suspect.

Against what enemy we contend we remain largely uncertain. I fear
this lonely watch exceedingly and at times feel there is indeed some
looming threat behind that Line, although my eyes can plainly see the
holy altar beyond it
.

I ask myself whether the hallow here
—
if hallow it be
—
might have to
do with the untimely death of the late Patriarch, so bloody and recent
in these precincts
.

Well enough, Cefwyn thought to himself: Efanor dared not lay in writing that they had knowingly hanged a corpse for another man's sin; and for that reason might the old Patriarch be looking for his killer? Shadows, Tristen had called them.

But at other times
, Efanor wrote,
I have worse fears and recall all
that I have heard regarding the events at Lewen field, as if this
presages some attempt at sorcerous entry into Guelemara, at this
holiest of sites, and some threat against the capital and the Holy
Quinaltine itself. I have hesitated to write to you, knowing the
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immense concerns which face you in your undertaking, and indeed,
you left me to attend such matters, as within my competency. I pray
you know I shall continue to stand my watch
.

Yet to advise you of these things should I fall, which gods forbid, I
have my one opportune messenger at hand and dare not keep him. I
have learned to trust my doubts and to make friends of them, and of
all courses before me, I am most uneasy with the thought of
remaining silent regarding Lord Tristen's instruction and his actions
here, whether by magic or wizardry or whatever agency. If wizardry
comes against us here, we believe our task is to prevent it.

Meanwhile I have heard nothing from Ryssand nor of Ryssand.

The good gods bless you and Her Grace. The gods attend your steps
and guide you day and night. The gracious gods bring you success
and honor.

I send you my devotion and my love.

The last was crabbed into a bend around the edge of the parchment…

Efanor had made the message scroll itself as small as he could, so that Anwyll might tuck it away unseen… remarkable, Cefwyn reflected… remarkable and shameful, that they were brought to this pass of secrecy, all for Ryssand and Ryssand's daughter.

Wizardry, Efanor said. Wizardry. Tristen in
Guelemara
, when other and reliable reports, even Ninévrisë's dream, he remembered now, though for a moment he had forgotten it, had said he was in Henas'amef.

What in hell was he to think?

"Did His Highness mention anything to you of Lord Tristen coming to Guelemara?" he asked Anwyll, and saw Anwyll's surprise.

"No, Your Majesty, no such thing! It was Lord Tristen's intent to go to the river."

"To the river, but on the other side of that cursed rock," Cefwyn said half to himself, for it was that impassable barrier which kept him from going aside to Tristen's camp and making one their plan of assault on Ilefínian. Weathered knolls of barren stone and deep pockets of earth bearing tangled brush in the crevices made it land unfit for goats, let alone any hope of joining their forces either side of the river, not until they were most of the way to Ilefínian, which sat at fortress of dragons.html

the point of that spear of a ridge.

And had Tristen indeed followed his silly pigeons over
that
and appeared to Efanor in the capital?

Efanor had surely dreamed. Had a vision and convinced his priestly supporters. Tristen was on the other side of that great range of hills; and Ninévrisë would confirm Tristen in his plan to go to the river and cross and bring him whatever support he might need… to Tasmôrden's extreme discomfiture. Pray for
that
, brother!

If there were that much force to this wizardous threat Efanor named, surely then Ninévrisë would have read it in her bespelled scrap of a letter and told him so: it was, then, nothing so extreme— only one of Efanor's dreams, that before now had set him to religious excesses.

The kingdom was in danger and his brother, with all his other excellent qualities, saw visions.

So whatever had happened in the capital, whatever unholy threat Efanor foresaw, whatever the truth of visions… he left that to priests as out of his reach and beyond his advice. What he had more to fear in his vicinity was the equally unholy union of enemies, Parsy-nan and Cuthan, Ryssand and Tasmôrden, all conniving together, and now Ryssand coming up behind him.

There
was the thought to make him anxious. He very much doubted Ryssand would do anything so overt as to attack his own king's baggage train, and it was equally difficult to think that Ryssand could plan anything so reckless as an assault on his back… but it was not impossible to think.

Ryssand had buried a son, dead at Cevulirn's hand in this exchange of rancor and wedding proposals. Artisane still fluttered around Efanor and had still hoped, so appearances were, down to the day the army marched.

But considering how Ryssand came chasing after the army with his own muster… his own very large muster, which might have with it not only Murandys but Nelefreissan and Teymeryn and all the northern lands… did not fill him with confidence.

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?

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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.