Danvy jolted hard then as a horseman careened into him, and Danvy stumbled and went down. Cefwyn sprawled, rolled from the path of oncoming hooves and staggered up, still owning his sword by its wrist thong, still with the remnant of his shield on his arm. He had wet haze in his eyes, blurring the riders coming down on him.

I die here, he thought with strange amazement, and, clearing the drip of blood from his eyes with a shake of his head and a pass of his sleeve, realized he had lost his helm and the half-shield was the defense he had-his own lines had been driven back and it was only the enemy in his view.

He braced his feet among the dead, facing that gray and brown wall of horsemen coming at him, every detail astonishingly clear, as if the last moments of living must be stretched thin till they broke, till a prince had a chance to know he had led his kingdom’s forces to disaster.

A red horse plunged between. Tristen’s black form cut across his view, Uwen close on his heels ... Tristen swung the red mare about; and Uwen was trying to reach him as Tristen rode Gery head-on into the oncoming riders.

A blade swung. Unengaged, Cefwyn watched helplessly as Tristen ducked under and kept riding, the edge passing over his body by the narrowest of margins—he was going deep in among the enemy; and Uwen accounted for the man who had missed him.

“M’lord!” a voice cried near at hand; a second horseman rode across in front of him and slid to a stop. The guardsman leapt off, and Cefwyn swung up to the offered saddle, took a new grip on his sword and braced himself for the onslaught about to come down on both of them.

But it had fallen back. Among those motley horsemen, from the dead or the living, Tristen had found a blade and wielded it, shieldless, turning the red mare with his knees this way and that, the blade swinging dark and deadly in the light, as enemies went down. Tristen kept pressing, a dark and terrible force cutting into the enemy’s ranks, methodically taking man after man, forcing the red mare further. There began to be space about him—a rider in black velvet, and with a single man beside him and no shield at all.

“Sihhé! Sihhé!” the shout was ringing out from the enemy ranks now. They had seen, Cefwyn guessed, the emblem he bore. But Tristen gave no mercy to the rout that began around him. The red mare did not cease to weave and seek openings in the retreat and the sword did not cease to take lives. The arm was unerring, hewing down men, no move wasted. The clash of blades that did oppose him became a distant music, and the turning movements assumed a strange beauty, like a dance, the movement of a natural force of destruction that swept the enemy back and back.

The scene hazed, with a sting of salt in his eyes. Cefwyn struggled for breath, left with no enemies, no battle for him to face. He sat the saddle, arms limp, battered beyond the strength to lift sword or shield, and he realized a remote sting and swelling in his leg as his strength ebbed. He tasted copper, realized that he had been hit, and that the pain had yet to reach him—but the leg obeyed him when he signaled the horse with his heel, and turned, looking for the King.

More riders thundered up. He looked about in horror, lifted an arm that weighed double, and saw then the White Horse of Cevulirn sweeping onto the otherwise silent field.

A horseman came up beside him. A hand seized him, stayed him in the saddle, and he could not see the man until he blinked his vision clear.

“Idrys.” He recognized his black-armored would-be rescuer, who, late to the field of combat, held him ahorse until others could dismount and come about him. “No,” he protested, not willing to be lifted down. He refused their ministrations and, laying his sword across the saddlebow because he had no strength or steadiness to sheath it, he rode with Idrys for escort this way and that among the corpses and the knots of men still ahorse.

He saw the Dragon banner, then, and put the horse to as much speed as it could make over the trampled, littered ground, realizing that men around that banner were standing silent and with heads bowed. He saw Efanor among the men kneeling there—Efanor would have come in with Cevulirn’s men—and by Efanor’s grief-stricken demeanor he foreknew the worst.

He dismounted—Idrys was instantly at his elbow to take his arm, to help him limp forward to where his father lay. The Dragon Guard had fallen thick about their King. He walked over bodies of men whose names he might know well if he looked. But his father’s white hair was the only thing truly clear to his eyes—their father was only exhausted, he said to himself: their father was hurt, not dead; their father was a force of nature, a fact of their lives—he could not die.

But why feel the sting? he thought then. In death, no different truth than in life. Father loved him, never me.

Father practiced Grandfather’s tactics down to his dying breath, and gave Efanor his one victory, his sole recompense to be by one year not the heir.

But no man on the field chose to regard that last gesture as negating the sworn succession. Cevulirn, the Duke of the Ivanim, was a southern man, and his own. And Efanor had knelt, and kissed his hand, and owned to the legal truth—righteous priestling that he was; though he had been nowhere—nowhere when their father was fighting for his life, not priestly Efanor.

But that was manifestly unfair. He had sent Efanor for Cevulirn.

Efanor had followed his orders. He had brought Cevulirn—too damned late. Efanor had come to the field with Cevulirn’s men, on a horse he’d just worn down with a ride back to reach the Duke of the Ivanim and then, anxious for appearances, would not, he would personally swear to it, have sensibly bidden Cevulirn leave him ignobly on the road and make all haste to their father’s rescue without him.

Which was also unfair to suppose. He was looking for someone to blame.

Idrys steadied him. Someone had found a linen pad to tuck into the gash on his leg, and a bandage to wrap about his leg, over the reinforced leather. The pain as the man jerked a knot taut hazed his vision, then lessened, over all, as the wound found firm support.

“Get me to a horse, Idrys,” he said, and with a sweeping glance about him at the Ivanim, and to Cevulirn, he said, “Well that you heard my message and followed. I thank you.”

“My lord King,” said Cevulirn, and sent a chill through his blood.

“I heard late,” Idrys said on his other side. “Your message did reach me.” Idrys’ hands were gentle as he helped him.

“Is Danvy gone? Did he go down?” He heard himself sounding like a small boy asking after a favorite pet, knowing as a man knew, that miracles did not happen on a field of battle.

And he remembered then, upon that thought of miracles—or of damning wizardry: “Gods, Tristen. Where, Tristen?”

“He’s well, Your Majesty,” Idrys said calmly, coldly. “I’ll have men look for Danvy.”

“Stay,” Cefwyn said thinly, and caught a breath, insisting to stop at an ankle-high hummock on which he could stand and where Cevulirn and his father’s officers could both see him and hear his orders. “Take up the King. Make a litter. We’ll carry him—” He lost his breath and his clarity of thought both at once and stood shaking like a leaf.  “To the capital, Your Majesty?”

The notion dazed him, as for the first time he considered that he had

There was more to do, quickly, much more, —but first the necessity to move them clear of further attack. “Cevulirn!” he said. “Men of yours to ride ahead on the road, men to lag back, by your grace, Ivanor! We’ve yet to know whether this is all they have in reserve in this cursed place. Either they swam these horses across, or we’ve a bridge decked and in use—and we’re not in strength to find it out now.”