Fortress of Eagles

“Listen to me!” Tristen shouted over their tumult. “Listen to me!” He rode further, forcing a way across the face of the mob. “You!” He pointed at a large man, a strong man. “Go to the South Gate! Bid the earl surrender the king’s messenger, and give over command of the citadel to me!”

That man turned and began to force his way back through, cleaving the crowd, gathering up others in a movement that swept like a current back and back as some began to follow the man to the south.

“Listen!” Tristen shouted. “Listen to me!”

Then a curious silence fell… a murmurous silence proceeding back through the crowd, until for the mere space of a breath he could make himself heard even to the buildings around the small gate square.

“The king has granted me Amefel!” he cried so all could hear. “He has called his viceroy home!”

A cheer went up which he would not have encouraged, at the news they were to lose the king’s representative. “Listen to me!” he cried again, and waited for the little silence he could next obtain. “I wish to go into the fortress tonight and not have any harm done to anyone, and I wish to have nothing broken or taken, only to sleep peacefully in my bed tonight, which is in there!” He pointed to the fortress itself, and waited for the tumult to die. “The lord viceroy will gather what is his and his men’s property and depart in good order by daylight! I shall begin to set things in order in Henas’amef and in Amefel as soon as the sun rises. Do harm to none, and no harm will come to you or to your houses tonight, I promise to you all!” He saw his chance, the only safety he might obtain for his men, and waved a signal to the Guelen Guard captain inside. “Open the gate, Captain! Open it now!”

The people broke out in wilder cheering, then, and waved their sticks in the air, and lifted up their lanterns, some of which went out in the bitter wind. He was not sure whether the king’s men would regard his mere word, and if he had the power to urge his way as Emuin claimed he did, he willed the few men of sense inside to open that gate and to do so quickly, before a new rumor ran through the crowd or before some random press of bodies from the street below broke the strength of those holding the crowd back from him and from his men. They might, horses and all, be swept against the bars and crushed, if they did not hold that line.

And on the trembling moment, the lord viceroy’s men inside desperately and with a deafening rattle ran back the massive chains of the last, the outermost gates that separated them from the mob.

“Stay!” Tristen shouted above the din, and fixed the leaders of the crowd with a sweeping gesture of his arm as he wheeled Gery with the pressure of his leg. The gates behind him gave way and no one in the crowd surged forward. The people only cheered and cheered; and the front line even ceased to strain as people climbed up on the stonework of adjacent buildings to call out news to comrades below.

The people cheered long past the time the viceroy himself, Lord Parsynan, came out the gates to them and tried to speak to him above the commotion. Some in the crowd called uncomplimentary names, and insulted the garrison guard. One rock flew and struck the cobbles, but Uwen and the Dragon Guard with him held firm and kept the space clear. People jammed the approaches to the gate, and lights borne by that crowd went on and on down the hill. From horseback, Tristen could see them as the viceroy, afoot, vainly tried to voice complaints of Amefin rebellion and treachery, but scarcely a word could he hear. People near the gate filled windows, stood on balconies, even climbed up on the stonework of houses as high they could find purchase, all shouting, “ Lord Sihhë! Lord Sihhë!”

“Your Grace!” The viceroy, Lord Parsynan, was a round, stubborn man, and not easily set off his dignity, but he grew desperate enough to come to the point. “Your Grace! The king’s garrison welcomes you on His Majesty’s authority, as we hear he has given!” There was to have been far more ado, Tristen was sure, in his setting the lord viceroy out of office, but under the circumstances the lord viceroy was doing the wisest, the safest thing, and the thing he strongly willed the man to do, for what it was worth in the world, even to his appearing before the crowd. It was wicked, Emuin had hinted, and he had no idea whether his will even moved the man, but give way to mewas the burden of his wish, along with strike no blows.

“We have the paper, m’lord!” Uwen said, urging Gia shoulder to shoulder with Gery. “We ha’ the clerk to read it, an ye will!”

CHAPTER 5

Among the few encumbrances they had brought with them on their ride from Assurnbrook was that proclamation, and with it, a copy of the letter from Cefwyn to the lord viceroy— or rather such documents were in the hands of the disheveled clerk who had ridden with his company.

But there was far too much shouting and cheering at the moment for anyone to hear the proclamation. Men jostled close, pressing against the horses and pressing them dangerously toward the barred gates of the fortress, and Tristen could not immediately see the clerk among the other riders attempting to maintain order in the lanternlit and riotous dark. In his fear he wished himself inthe fortress, and he wished the Amefin forces attacking the viceroy to cease their attack… he wished so, because he was afraid for the men with him and, afraid, too, for the people of Amefel, who meant him nothing but good.

And, setting aside Emuin’s cautions, he knowingly bent great force on that notion: magic, Emuin called it, to secure that quiet, and peace for the sake of lives. Silence, he willed, and, Hear me. Believe me.

And in that moment, in a curious, difficult-to-catch way, almost like his sense of the gray place, he felt resistance. Something or someone struggled against his determination.

He had not expected wizardry here, not now. He was off his guard. Thissubtle thing opposed him, and in the next breath he lost his sense of Gery’s motion under him and swayed in the saddle, not from weakness, but foolishly, from the horse’s unexpected movement.

Begone! he willed it, with all his force.

The opposing force was gone then, was not inthe gray place, was nowhere that he could detect—like an enemy in full rout, and not unscathed.

An Amefin noble appeared from the crowd… he did not know the name, but a man conspicuous in fine dress and rich furs pressed forward to catch his stirrup, all oblivious to the conflict.

“Lord!” that man cried, and before he could take alarm he saw another man, and another, pressing forward to bend the knee as he sat on horseback. “I am Drumman of Baraddan,” the first man said. “A loyal man.”

“Azant of Dor Elen,” said the next, a man with a scarred face. Uwen had meanwhile come close to him with his sword in hand, and another guardsman attempted to push them back, but they cast themselves to their knees in a body, each—and several at the same time—proclaiming his name, his degree, and his unfailing loyalty to the Crown.

“We none of us conspired with Edwyll,” one protested. “We never agreed.”

He knew them by sight if. not by name, the other lords of Amefel, the earls, the thanes he had been accustomed to see in the hall. And now ealdormen of the town of Henas’amef came forward.

The crowd cheered, and pushed back its own borders. “Hush, hush,” some urged, and others yelled ruder expressions until they made a sort of astonished silence in the area, apart from the din of voices in the streets.

“We are loyal men!” the earls protested, each and every one, but some scattered voices hooted and called out questions, among them, at one ealdorman’s protestation of loyalty: “Tell His Grace about the silver!”