Fortress in the Eye of Time (71 page)

“You confess there is one honest man in council? You confess that Tristen is telling the truth?”

“As he knows it,” Idrys said, as if the irony of that were wasted on him. Likely it was not. Cefwyn waved a dismissal, sank wearily into a chair.

He had left himself nothing but war, from the time he had accepted the lady Regent's hand.

 

The Elwynim lords and their men were saddling up in the stableyard, the afternoon of Cefwyn's charge to them, and there were horses waiting for Cevulirn at the west door. Sovrag was off to the river, he said, to see to his boats; he had left at noon with two ox-carts loaded with cordage and pitch and another with seasoned wood. The lords of the south were all breaking camp and leaving with the same suddenness with which they had arrived, and Uwen said if one didn't want to wait forever while master Peygan the armorer took care of the other business that His Majesty had set underway, it was a very good idea to get master Peygan started as soon as possible, the proper outfitting of a young lord for war taking a fair long time.

Uwen had known Peygan for years: Peygan had come from the capital with Cefwyn and had taken over an armory in disarray—so Uwen said on their walk across the yard. “The place was full of rats what ate the leathers, and the old armorer was drunk by day and night, with accounts all in a muddle, gods, ye'd be amazed.”

“What happened to him?” Tristen said.

“Oh, he took out the day we arrived and nobody's seen 'im since. The old fellow wouldn't complain, that's what I guess. That rascal Heryn was making of them books what he liked, and the old armorer knew he should have taken the business to the King, but he drank, instead, being afraid to report the state things was in. The armorers, ye may know, m'lord, is all Crown men, master and 'prentices, alike, so's ye ain't dealin' with anyone of Heryn's lot, here.”

“They belong to the King?”

“Same as all the arms stored here, m'lord, in name, at least. The lords is to manage it all, and the King's armorers is to keep accounts. And accounts gets kept, now. They don't put nothing over on master Peygan. If something's broke it don't go on the rolls.”

They walked up the steps, and into a place which had fascinated him and frightened him from the first day he had seen it, a place with Words echoing of War, and Iron, and Blood, a place with rows and rows of orderly weapons, displayed on the walls and in the racks, banners hanging in still array.

He wished to turn on the step now and rush out of the place, and not to take anything it offered. He disliked the mail shirt he was bidden wear, although it had saved his life. He had no desire to have any armor heavier or more extensive than he did—and most of all he dreaded the dark and metal feeling of this place.

But Uwen was to draw armor of a guard issue better than he had ever worn, which pleased Uwen mightily; Uwen was carrying a paper to that effect, which Idrys himself had given him, commissioning him into the Dragon Guard: and Uwen's enthusiasm made him think differently from moment to moment, that it was not the armor that threatened to smother him, but the constraints of purpose it imposed—and that it was not the weapons that frightened him, but the skill in his own hands.

“Heavy armor,” Uwen said. “Plate and chain. If happen somebody bashes ye square down on the shoulder, m'lord, as do happen in a close tangle, or if ye catch a lance-point, a lot
better you should have plate. The King,” Uwen added, “wouldn't be limping about now if he'd had a good Cuisse in that melee, 'stead of them damn light-horse breeches.”

It was a language of its own. The names of the pieces and of the weapons did come to him, and he knew that Uwen was right, for a man who did not look to ride hard or fast.

“But,” he said, while they waited for attendants in the darksome and echoing hall, “are
you
happier with it, Uwen?”

Uwen laughed. “M'lord, I'm a Guelen man. We was always the center of the line, heavy horse and foot. It ain't but since I turned gray they sent me to protect young lords who fly off in the dark wi' naught but a mail shirt and a stolen horse.”

He did not think Uwen should joke about that. He knew he had been rash and he wished that Uwen would not follow him if another such moment came on him—that was the consideration Cefwyn had laid on him, by giving him Uwen.

Peygan came, welcomed them, looked at Uwen's paper and gave it to a boy who gave it to a clerk who was setting up in the entry. Master Peygan looked him in particular up and down, muttered, “Tall, sir,” and with a well-used piece of cord took various rapid measurements of his limbs and across the back of his shoulders.

“I've little that
will
serve,” Peygan said, then. “At least—that I'd have confidence in. His Majesty gave strict orders, and I must say, it will not be gold or gilt, Lord Warden, nor pretty nor even matched. I cannot swear to that. But quality and a right fit I do swear to.”

“I've no objection, sir,” he said. “As best you can, sir—light. I wish to see.” He rarely objected to others' choices. But this frightened him, despite Uwen's assurances.

“A challenge, Lord Ynefel.”

“Yes, sir. If you please. And whatever Uwen wants—I'd have him safe.”

Peygan rubbed his chin, scratched his unruly hair—it was liberally grayed, like Uwen's; and Tristen stood watching while Peygan measured Uwen, too.

“Hmm,” Peygan said, and walked off.

So he sat down to wait with Uwen for most of the next two hours, while the master armorer, clearly working on a number of requests at once, fussed and marked this and that strap his assistants would bring him, and a man Uwen said was Peygan's son sat at a bench using an array of curious implements and mallets on the fittings Peygan had marked.

In time, Peygan came back bringing an armload of pieces, and cast them on a nearby bench.

“It's old,” Peygan said, of a fine piece of brigandine. “Still solid, though they say—” Peygan seemed hesitant. “They say it's Sihhë work, Lord Warden.”

His fingers did not tingle when he touched it. It was black, and showed wear, and was not like what the Guelenfolk wore. But it felt right.

“M'lord,” Uwen said dubiously. “She's pretty, but a lot's come and changed. She ain't modern.”

“Neither am I,” Tristen said. “Isn't that what they say?” He liked weapons no better, but this was the only piece that made him feel safer.

“Mostly,” said master Peygan, “there's no such silk these days. They say it came from oversea. There's some as is afraid of the piece, truth to tell.”

He did look, in that gray place, but it showed not at all.

“There is no harm in it,” he said. “Though such things seem to come and go.” It felt comfortable to the touch. He could not say the same of the mail shirt he wore. “I'd try it.”

Uwen was less pleased. But he said, “I am very sure, Uwen.”

Uwen gave a tilt and a shake of his head. “Might be, then, m'lord.”

The straps and laces of the silk-woven brigandine were worn, and wanted work. And Uwen was still to fit out. So they waited. The armory was echoing with the comings and goings of Peygan's boys, who were, by now, with the afternoon's work in full clatter and bustle about them, counting out to Guelen and Amefin sergeants and attendants the
equipment they requested, and counting in what tents and wagons and other such things the departing lords were leaving behind.

At a table near the door, master Peygan's clerks kept careful account of what went out and what went in. Carts pulled up at the door and bundles of pikes went in, long arrows by the score, as well as buckles, girths, bits, harness, pennons and odder items of equipage: all of it came in from the armory storage, and from the armory's outlying storage, and the whole flowed in past the clerk, who kept a painstaking and amazingly rapid account in various codices stacked on the table by him, while stacks of requests accumulated beside him, and a junior clerk, reading the requests, sent a score of stout armorer's boys running with apprentice clerks to read the orders.

It was a tangle, lords' pages demanding their equipment be taken to shelter immediately, since there were clouds overhead, threatening a shower, and master Peygan's clerk informing said pages that nothing would go into or out of storage without it being written fair and wide in request, which went on the stack.

Meanwhile Amefin companies were being equipped for weapons-drill, and someone was complaining about a box of buckles that had gotten set down and swept up with someone's equipment.

A clerkish young man came out lugging an armful of odd plate up to them, then, and said they were to have bards for two horses, and would he approve what he had found so he could put it with their gear.

Tristen had no idea. He had never handled horse armor, but Uwen said that it was very fine, he was sure, but they were mistaken in the number of horses unless they wanted a spare.

Meanwhile another boy came with a tablet and said he had to draw the arms for the man who was going to paint the shield, and was the device correctly displayed?

That, Tristen could answer, and had the Star set a little
larger and the Tower a little smaller above it; so the youth went off busily to inform the painter. Uwen said that likely they would stitch up a caparison for his horse and all—the horse Cefwyn had given him being still on his way in from the country, from what they knew. But the standard he would have carried before him would be the one they had unfurled in hall.

It was an amazing amount of activity, and they were often crowded upon, where they sat, so Tristen took the notion to tell the clerks where they were, and go out to the smithy which stood next door.

So they went out into the cool air and in again to the heat and smoke. He liked to watch the smiths work: he was always entranced by the sparks and most of all by the metal when it was hot and all but transparent. He hung about as long as he had an excuse, but the smiths and the wheelwrights were as harried as the armorer, since several of the lords, independently, it seemed, had been postponing work on various transport in the thought it would last until they got home. Now they were leaving the wagons here in the care of the drivers and the Crown would not count them in unless they were received in good order, so the drivers were frustrated, and felt they were put upon by someone.

It was the most amazing lot of racket, not alone the hammering, but the shouting and the arguing. And things growing hot there, and the wind shifting and carrying smoke into their eyes, they went back to the relative quiet of the armory, to sit and wait again on the bench against the wall, where at least they would not be impeding the traffic coming in and out the door.

It was a lot of standing and sitting and waiting, it was now toward supper, and he had hoped to have it over and done long since. He thought of asking Uwen to go for a book—but watching him read was dull for Uwen, so he sighed and thought otherwise.

“I've seen a lot of odd doings,” someone near them was saying, “but I never thought I'd see the Elwynim for allies.”

“In the winter.” He knew that voice. It was Lord Pelumer. He had, Tristen thought, come in while they were gone. Pelumer was talking to someone behind a rack of equipment. “I make no secret I don't like it at all,” Pelumer said.

“Wizardry, is what it is—grave-dust and cobwebs for an ally. Give me a man that has somewhat more natural in his veins, to my preferences. Ghosts and now this Elwynim bride? You have the King's ear. Urge him against this folly.”

“Oh, this is the man that has the King's ear. I'm certain I don't, nowadays, sad to say.”

Uwen had started to get up. Tristen prevented him with a touch on his arm. And he recognized the first voice, now, as Sulriggan's.

“If we deal with the old man of the tower, even dead, what can we look for?” Sulriggan was asking. “This Tristen is Sihhë. There's Sihhë blood all through Elwynor. Gods know what they'll do. Did you mark the bride's eyes, Lanfarnesse? Gray. Gray as I stand here.”

“I confess I mislike the turn things are taking,” said Pelumer. “We were neighbors to Althalen, we in Lanfarnesse. Marna Wood covers a great deal that the east has forgotten. But we remember. Some things there are that cannot be made friendly, even by their own will. I count the new lord of Ynefel as one of them.”

It stung. He knew not what to do or say. Clearly they did not know he was present. Clearly they had said things they would not have said to his face and could not be comfortable with if they knew he had heard them.

Then someone said, a whisper that sounded like one of the boys that ran errands, “He's
here
, m'lords. Be careful what you say.”

“Here?” He imagined them looking around, and he knew nothing now that would help matters, except to indicate to them that, indeed, he did know. So he rose from the bench, which was along a rack of axes, and confronted them with, he hoped, a mild if not friendly expression.

“Sirs,” he said. “Good day.”

“Spying on a body,” Pelumer said indignantly.

“Hardly by intent, sir.”

“I make no secret I don't like the plan you advanced, sir. I'll say that in polite discourse. I don't like assuming it will be Emwy and I don't like to start a campaign in this season.”

“It will be by the new moon, sir. I might be wrong. But I believe that will be the time.”

“He believes that will be the time,” Sulriggan said. “Do you hunt?” Sulriggan asked. “Do you gamble? D' ye have any common pleasures, lord of the cobwebby tower? Or do you spend all your time chasing up and down the roads and making mysterious predictions?”

“I read, sir. I feed the pigeons. Such things as that.” He knew that he was being baited. He saw no reason to hunt or to gamble or to be like Lord Sulriggan, which seemed to be all that Sulriggan approved.