They had no official need, however, and escaped the display of banners and all the commotion that went with them. On what had become a windy, damp morning it was no procession, only a snugly cloaked faring-forth, down the streets where shopkeepers were sweeping debris from their walks, past the small repairs of battered shutters and fallen roof slates and tattered awnings.

The day was, despite the fierce wind, warmer, and the town had gone from white to brown and unlovely. The jewelry of ice had crashed in ruin from the eaves of buildings up and down the street and lay in dull heaps. Everything was muddy water and piles of ice and dirty remaining snow, all the way to the gates. The gutters ran full, and great puddles of cold water stood in the lower town, through which the horses went with disdain.

Outside the gates and to the west lay the establishment of the stables, the pigs, the geese, the cattle, all manner of pens and sheds, and some of those pens were covered in water.

South were orchards and sheep pasture, and near the walls, the untidy small dwellings of the gooseherds and cowherds and kennels and their yards, many of which had standing water. The granaries were on a mound, and stood clear. And to the west and north and up the nearer hills, the pastures spread out. Those that master Haman claimed for the horses were, by his foresight, the best drained and finest, where the land had streams running from the hills, but no threat from rising water.

Dysarys and Cassam, his and Uwen’s heavy horses, had pride of place in the stables, and when they came within sight of the stables, there they were in the first two paddocks, out to tramp about on this muddy morning. They were Cefwyn’s gift, and had their own grooms from the day they were foaled: when the horses came, so the grooms came to Amefel, and there was some little ado while they turned Liss and Gery, their light horses that had been on call in the fortress stables, out to the paddocks for their turn at sunlight and room to run, and ordered the boys to brush down and saddle Gia and Petejly, their other two mounts, for the trip back up the hill.

That brushing down was no small task, for the horses out in the pens had all coated themselves in mud this morning. Well-groomed hides stood up in winter coat and caked points, and the stablehands were brushing and combing their charges in pens all along the row.

More, Lusin and the household guard, too, had sent for their second horses, and a sorry-looking lot they faced in exchange, to the stablehands’ great embarrassment.

“As we didn’t know ye were comin’, m’lord.”

“Saddle ’em. An’ no mud on the gear,” Uwen said gruffly, and without any grace for the weather. Haman would say much the same: horses should have been inside this morning, kept ready. “Suppose there’d been Elwynim across the river. Suppose we’d had to saddle, an’ ever’ man in the Guard callin’ for his horse, an’ them muddy as pigs! Get to it!”

Boys ran.

“They’ll roll,” Tristen said, seeing Gery do exactly that, turned out in the paddock. She waved her feet in the air, then rose triumphant, with a fine muddy coat.

“Horses,” Uwen said in disgust, but there was little he loved better in the world than being in the stables and having his hands on a fine horse.

Dys and Cassam, however, were clean and brushed, first among all the horses, and had no more than spattered legs. They were ready to ride, to Tristen’s great pleasure, and with no ado at all. The guards’ were not.

“Get us some horses,” Lusin protested, “with His Grace bound out and us afoot. Damn the mud.”

“We’ll not be far,” Tristen said. “No great need. Uwen will be with me.”

“M’lord,” Lusin said unhappily.

“At my direct order,” Tristen said. “We’ll be riding just down the lane.”

Lusin was not happy, but in a trice they had saddled Dys and Cassam and he and Uwen were out down the safe lane between the rows of paddocks, an unprecedented lack of guards, a privacy Tristen found pleasant. Dys and Cassam were in a fine, cheerful mood, for they used the light traveling harness, not the heavy fighting gear, and that meant it was exercise and frolic, not work: both were tugging to have more rein as they reached the end of the paddock lane.

“Oh, we’re full o’ tempers this mornin’,” Uwen said. Indeed Cass was taking Dys’ excited mood, throwing his head, working his mouth at the bit, both horses tending to a quicker pace as they made the turn. “Hold there, ye scoundrel.”

The great feet spattered puddles far and wide as Dys took to a quicker and quicker pace, and Cass did, and step by step it was riders and horses in the same wild rejection of discipline, mud flying. They made a wild charge past fences and to the very end of the paddocks, far, far past the lane.

“To the trees,” Tristen called out, his heart cheered by the lack of troubles they had found. The wind stung his face and his eyes, tore at cloaks and manes, and had a bracing edge of cold.

“We told Lusin,” Uwen began, but the horses’ excitement swept them on, and it was only a little distance more. Off they went, as far as the skeletal gray trees, and the turn there that led to the west… the west, and riders on the road.

There were no pennons, no color about them; and they were not Iyanim. Tristen drew in quickly, and Uwen beside him, at once in sober attention, Dys and Cassam fighting the rein now, for they had well-taught notions what to do with strangers confronting them, and now the high spirits were for a charge and a fight.

But the riders, three men, who looked as if they had ridden far and slept rough, never changed their pace, though it was sure they had seen they were not alone.

“M’lord,” said Uwen, “I’d have ye ride back. At least stand fast an’ let me ride to ’em an’ ask their business.”

“No,” Tristen said. They had their swords with them, if no shields. They never left the Zeide gates unarmed or unarmored.

“Ye got that plain cloak, m’lord, an’ no color nor banner showin’.”

“Let’s find out their business all the same,” he said, “and let them explain who they are.”

They came a little farther, then, until at a stand of beeches on one side and a flooded patch across the road, they had come within hail. “I’ll bespeak ’em,” Uwen said, Tristen saying nothing. “Hullo, there! Ye’d be men out o’ Bryn, or what?”

Then the riders did stop, on the other side of the flooded patch. “Messengers,” said the foremost, and raked his hood back, showing a bearded face, and it in want of trimming and shaving. A rough sort, they all looked. “We’ve come to meet with the Sihhë-lord in Amefel.”

“An’ to whose pleasure, if it ain’t his sendin’?” Uwen replied. “As it ain’t! What business have ye?”

“With him, I say.” The speech was not a common man’s, not Amefin, nor like any but Her Grace’s, and hearing that lordly tone, Tristen slipped his cloak back, showing the blood red of Amefel and the black Eagle beneath.

“You?” the man asked, suddenly respectful. “Your Grace?”

“Tristen,” he named himself. “Duke of Amefel. Messengers from whom? Not from Bryn.”

“Elwynor, Your Grace.”

“My men had orders to gather in weapons.” He saw a sword at a saddlebow, and for the rest there was no knowing what the men hid: armor at very least, perhaps heavier armor than his and Uwen’s, but he trusted to his own skill.

Yet his remark brought no threat. Instead, the leader of the band dismounted from his weary, head-hanging horse and went to one knee in the mud at the edge of the puddle.

“They said at Althalen Your Grace had given them leave to make a settlement, and we’ve come to ask shelter for all the men in our company, our arms to serve Your Grace.”

“Ye didn’t come by the bridge on this road,” Uwen said, “where His Grace has appointed ye to cross.”

“No. East. East of Anas Mallorn, such as we could, where we could.”