Fortress of Eagles

“I am i

He is lying, Tristen thought, but questions and answers of minor nature mattered very little to him until he might pass the gates and do Cefwyn’s bidding.

Then Uwen shouted out, “His Majesty has made His Grace the duke of Amefel! And he’s come to do justice and defend the righteous men of this province! The clerk has the proper decree! Shall he read it out?”

“Read it!” someone cried, and “Read it!” all the crowd echoed. “Read it, read it, read it!”

“Quiet for the clerk, then!” Uwen shouted, and the clerk who had ridden with them struggled with his reins and the unrolling of a heavy parchment, while people at the rear of the crowd were still calling for quiet.

The clerk cleared his throat and called for light, and someone brought a torch from a bracket and handed it to a guardsman on horseback, who held it aloft as a murmur began again in the back of the crowd.

“Read it!” Uwen said, with all trembling on the knife’s edge of the crowd’s patience, so read it the man did, begi

“Fall back, fall back there!” Uwen cried, and rode a line which the people respected, clearing back from him. The ba

“Guard!” Uwen ordered. “Fall in behind! Form a line!” Uwen gathered a number of the guard in a slow sweep back across the face of the crowd, pressing the crowd back with the presence of the horses, and, moving like a weaver’s shuttle, had the gate sealed off from the crowd while the crowd was still cheering and waving at the ba

“M’lord,” Uwen said, and with a sweep of his arm indicated the way inside for all of them in the center of his circle: the lord viceroy, and the earls and thanes and ealdormen who had joined them. Well-done, Tristen thought, proud of Uwen, and with the same deliberate dispatch he led the way beneath the gate arch, under the portcullis, and into the stable-court of the Zeide.

“File in!” he heard Uwen shouting behind him, and in a series of orders none of which ever left the men at standstill, Uwen drew their guard in after them, until only five were left guarding the outside and holding the line. Then Uwen shouted, “Shut the outer gates!” and ordered the portcullis down after them, a great rattling and clamor of iron, as their last five men quickly rode in, and men in the gatehouse winched the gates shut. They had shut the crowd outside, had shepherded the nobles inside… and were themselves, with the viceroy, in possession of the stable-court of the Zeide—a crooked court with the stables and the grain sheds and a few pens on the left, the scullery yard, too, and then a broader area with a stairs going up to the torchlit landing and the western doors of the Zeide. These were barricaded and braced with timbers. So was the scullery door barricaded, as Tristen could see at the edge of the lanternlight.

So, to the south, was the wide double gate of the curtain wall that sealed them from the South Court, where they reported the rebels to be.

“Search the stables!” Tristen ordered.

“Yes, m’lord!” Uwen said, and gave those orders.

“The stables are ours, Your Grace,” the viceroy said, at his knee… Tristen did not look down to see the man, but by now he knew the voice.

“Nonetheless,” he said. He trusted nothing Uwen had not passed his eye over, and still sca

“Doubtful, Your Grace, but we have the water, the grain, the horses, and a gate. The kitchen stores as well.”

“Well-done in that.” He judged it quiet enough to dismount and stepped down from Gery’s back, passing the reins to a dismounted guardsman. Immediately all the earls and thanes pressed close to him for reassurance and to urge their views on him. “Secure the scullery from inside,” he ordered the sergeant of the guard. “Prepare to enter the halls. No harm to the servants!”

“Yes, Your Grace.”

“We have the scullery fortified,” Lord Parsynan protested. “If Your Grace will wait till morning…”

“I have men arriving at the South Gate,” he said, “and the East.”

“How many men?”

“Fifty.”

“Each?”

“Together.”

“They ca

“Then we must open this one.” This with a glance to the South Courtyard.

“They have fortified it from the other side. Your Grace, the town ca

“There will be no battle,” he said. What he proposed was far under that scale. “We will open the gates, sir.”

“These people will cut our throats!”

“Lies!” Earl Drumman cried. “We are withYour Grace! Open the gates! Let us bring in Amefin men!”

“Folly!” the viceroy said, with a disparaging wave of his arm. “As good let in armed bandits!”

“We shall open thatgate with the men we have,” Tristen said, with a shrug at the curtain wall that separated them from Earl Edwyll’s men. “And we shall open the South Gate.” That was the town-entry gate in the court where the earl’s men were. “Then Amefin men can come in.”

“Your Grace,” the viceroy protested.

“Your Grace! ” the earls began to shout all together, but he had no interest at the moment in their argument with the viceroy. The scullery was unbarred, the sergeant he had sent was about to take men into the fortress itself, and he strode in that direction and shouted further orders.

“Four men to hold the scullery stairs!”

“Aye, Your Grace!” the sergeant shouted back, and the men went in, quickly.

“Stable’s ours, m’lord.” Uwen reported. He had come back afoot and out of breath.

“The scullery is open,” Tristen said, “and we will have those stairs inside.” He envisioned going up that familiar scullery stairway and seeking out the earl in the interior of the Zeide, but for that feeling of opposition he had had a few moments ago. Unease still nagged at him.

And he did not know why he felt uneasy with that western route into the building. But, direct as it was and offering an attack on the enemy’s flank, he would not take it.

“Bring axes,” Tristen ordered, and nodded toward the curtain wall that divided them from the South Court. “We will have open that gate. Thenwe will talk to the earl.”

“You ca

“It would kill very many and ruin the windows, sir.”

“Ruin the windows, good lack!”

“I would not ruin the windows. No, if your lordship please.”

“Your Grace, listen to me!”

“I do listen, sir. But the South Courtyard also has very many places not in view of the windows, where arrows will not reach. If we had enough men, we might take the fortress halls, but we have not. —Uwen, shout it over at the earl’s men to open the gates and come swear loyalty to me. They should have the chance before we open them by force.”