It was supposed to keep him constantly apprised of events on the river, and damn it, the system, like any new system, began with problems: the messengers from two of the three sites had come trailing in, one two hours late, complaining of heavy rain, and the other confessing that he had mistaken an intersection of roads in the dark and the bad weather and ridden an hour and more along a road that proved to lead to a sleeping and terrified village.

But the rider from Emwy-Arys never had made it in at all. He hoped it was for as silly a reason, but it was making him increasingly concerned-the man never had shown up, and now, at mid-afternoon, he reckoned he could begin looking for the return of the messenger who had to check on the messenger.

And if that man failed, they could assume that their entire scheme had worked and that something had gone very wrong on the section of border nearest Marna, the section where they had patrols out, the section where his father had been ambushed, and where they had a village of dubious loyalty.

If something had happened to that messenger, (and he was down to asking Emuin whether he could see that matter, once Emuin’s headache subsided) it meant a siege of Henas’amef, he would wager, before snowfall, the Elwynim intending to disrupt the harvest and prevent Henas’amef from storing adequate food, as well as to rampage through the villages during a time when the roads did not make relief easy.

It meant, of course, that the Elwynim disrupted their own harvest by taking men away from the farms, but if in years previous they had had the foresight to hold reserves of their grain, they could bring it from Elwynor, managing the extended supply that Grandfather had declared was the most important item to have secured: Never rely on the farmers for food, was another of Grandfather’s rules; it makes the farmers mad, gives your enemy willing reports, and it never amounts to what you think it will once you most need it.

Grandfather was silent on the problems of feeding the farmers of Amefel while the armies of five provinces and all the enemy camped on their fields and their sheep-meadows—when the Amefin were farmers and shepherds of the chanciest loyalty in all Ylesuin. As well the King did stand on their pastures; holding Amefel otherwise would not be possible.

And damn Efanor’s Quinalt priest, who had been sniffing around the local market, and had this very morning, in these unsettled times, had the town guard arrest a simples-seller who happened to have the old Sihhé coinage for amulets in her stock. Efanor of course supported the priest.

Efanor-    The door opened, a guard holding the door and a windblown, panting page unable to get out his message. “Your Majesty!” the boy said, turning a bow into a hands-on-knees gasp for wind. He had run the stairs, by the look of him. “Your Majesty. The Elwynim—”

It was a cursed bad word on which to run out of breath.

“—with banners and all, coming on the gates, Your Majesty!”

“The whole army?”

A wild shake of the head. “No, Your Majesty. No.” Another space for breath. “With the Ivanim, down by their camp. They’ll be coming in the gates and right through the town next! So the messenger said!”

“Will they?” Cefwyn did not think so. He pushed back from the table and levered himself to his feet. “Boy, run down to the stable, have horses saddled. Taywys—” That for the guard who had brought the boy.

“Advise the Lord Commander, and have men to ride down with me.

Go!” The leg hurt and he did not look forward to the stairs. He had arranged his whole day so that he need not go down those steps today, and now the damned page had gone, the guard had gone, the servants were not at hand, and, needing to dress for outdoors, he was daunted by the prospect of doing it alone: he had begun to measure such small distances as that to the door and back as he had only a fortnight ago measured distances between provinces.

But the whole Elwynim troop could be riding through the gates and measuring his inadequate town walls if he delayed to call Annas and the pages and put on the prudent mail shirt or the elegant velvet coat with the royal crest. If he had to deal with some Elwynim demand for territory or a challenge to combat, he could cut a martial enough figure on horseback with a soldier’s cloak slung about him, and damn what was beneath.

He took the cursed stick in hand, ordered the door guard as he passed to go back and fetch his cloak, and started down the hall without it: he declined to descend the stairs carrying its weight or having it swirling across his view of the steps when his footing was unsure as it was. The one guard hovered while he descended, and the Olmern lad, Denyn Kei’s-son, who had gone back to fetch his cloak, overtook him before he reached the bottom, offering it to him as he went.

“I’11 put it on outside,” he said curtly to Denyn, and to the guard who had dogged him down the steps as if he could have rescued him from behind in a fall: “Don’t flutter ’round me, damn it. If you’d be of use, get in front.” He thought about descending the outside steps without the stick, but he considered the spectacle and, worse, the omen of the King of Ylesuin tumbling down them onto the courtyard, and let prudence rule.

The whole descent took long enough that a horse was saddled and ready for him at the bottom—not Danvy: Danvy was down in pasture, recuperating from his cuts and bruises, and Haman’s chief assistant had given him that damned blaze-faced, showy black Efanor had ridden, when they had saddled everything in the stable to remount Efanor and his company: Synanna, —who was a good horse in most points, but tall; and facing that climb to the stirrup, in which he had to use the help of the guard, he thanked the gods it was his right, not his left, leg wounded.

He handed his stick down to the groom with an order to keep it for him, and took the cloak the guard handed up, steadying Synanna’s foolery with his feet and his knees: his right leg hurt with the pains of hell as he slung the cloak about him and used his knee to steady Synanna from a compensatory shift sideways.

More, the horse was sore, having been ridden that breakneck course for Emwy the last time out of the stable. Consequently he had his ears back and was going to take every chance to have things his way on this outing. The horse was looking for excuses as he rode to the gate with five of the guard clattering after—and the King’s standard-bearer riding to catch up, still unfurling the King’s red banner, at which Synanna threw his head and acted the thorough fool under the gate arch.

Another horseman overtook them there and fell in beside him: Idrys, on black Drugyn, this time having heard the summons. The standard-bearer and the bearer of Idrys’ personal banner made it to their position in the same general flurry of riders.  “I had the report,” Idrys said.

“Gods know what this regards,” he said. They passed through the town streets and on the cobbles Synanna wanted to drop into his worst gait, which took work to prevent; it hurt, and stopping it hurt, and he was in far less pleasant a mood as he reached the lower town and saw the town gate standing wide—to welcome the Elwynim, one supposed. He was not thoroughly gracious as first Cevulirn and a small number of riders, with the White Horse standard and pennons and all, rode up and joined them at that open gate.

Then Umanon and three of his lieutenants arrived, making a collection of banners enough to make a brave show for a King whose wounded leg and whose temper could not stand much more of Synanna’s jolting trot.

But his two loyal lords might have shut the gates and met the damned Elwynim where they could not get a good look inside or a head count on all the camps down that lane.

“Pass the word to all the watches,” he said to the gate-guards. “No foreign banner and no foreign courier is to pass this gate until an officer of the Dragon Guard comes down himself and takes charge of them. Do you hear that?”