Cherryh, C. J. - Tristan 03 by Cherryh C. J

Author:Cherryh, C. J. [Cherryh, C. J.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2011-08-29T17:13:11+00:00

No question it must be one of Anwyll’s men, to hope to get to Idrys.

“Your lordships?” Anwyll asked when they called on him, and he came, roused from bed and with a cloak clutched about him in the dim forechamber of his tent.

“Ilefínian has fallen,” Tristen said, with Cevulirn at his back, and both of them determined.

“Did Your Grace receive a courier?” was Anwyll’s reasonable question.

“No,” Tristen said, “but I’m sure it’s so. Deck the bridge.”

“Your Grace—” Clearly Anwyll had had his wits shaken, and smoothed hair out of his eyes, trying to compose arguments. “You mean to let them across?”

“The ones to come first will be Her Grace’s forces.”

“His Grace thinks Tasmôrden’s men are in the town,” Cevulirn said, “and if that’s so, devil a time holding them from the ale stores.”

“Aye, my lord, I understand, but no messenger, as you say…”

“Disarm any soldiery,” Tristen said, “and send them under escort to Modeyneth. He’ll escort them to refuge. I need a rider to go to Guelemara, to His Majesty, to tell him.”

“Word from the watchers on the river northward may get there first, Your Grace.”

“And if something befalls the messengers, no word at all. There must be a messenger.”

“Yes, Your Grace.”

“For seven days leave the decking in place on the bridge. Then take it down again.”

“Yes, Your Grace.” Anwyll had the look of a man utterly confounded. “And what if the Elwynim come, the wrong Elwynim, and the bridge is decked?”

“You can hold them, Captain,” was Cevulirn’s short answer. “There’s more than enough force here.”

“Your Grace,” Anwyll answered, passion rising. “We did not plan to stand with the bridge open! We need archers!”

“We’ll have them here,” Tristen said, “from Bryn.”

“Amefin, Your Grace.”

“This is Amefel,” Cevulirn said. “Amefin are in good supply here.”

“Your Grace.” Whatever Anwyll had been about to say he thought better of, and collected himself. “I’ll have you a rider immediately, Your Grace.”

Tristen penned a letter in haste and gave it to Anwyll’s messenger. Anwyll added another dispatch, and the rider left. There Was little to do then but return to beds and rest what of the night remained, he and Cevulirn, in quiet converse for the better part of two hours into the dark, coming to no conclusion but that they must set a force here sufficient to hold, and that archers and a muster of Bryn to the wall-building and the defense of the bridge was inevitable.

And if Elwynim arrived who had a disposition to fight their war on Amefin soil, there was a hard choice, separating the two sides and being sure, as Cevulirn said, that the ones they might let abide in Amefel accepted the authority in Henas’amef.

“I’d hoped still a small force might have reached through and broken the siege,” Tristen said in the shadowed dark, all the troubling visions roiling and leaping in the firelight that came through the flap. “But that won’t happen now. Now it’s Cefwyn’s war, the sort he wanted.”

“I’ll post my guard here,” Cevulirn said. “It’s the only reasonable choice.

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