“Leave it to me, Your Majesty,” Cevulirn said, and gave orders more rapidly and more astutely than he had managed. He had babbled. He had given not commands, but reasons. It was not a way to order soldiers, or lords who might be tempted to give back contrary reasons and not actions. It was not his father’s way. It was not a king’s voice he had, or a king’s confidence-inspiring certainty on the field.

But the things he ordered were being done. He tried to think what he might have omitted to do. The crown worked at the wound on his head when he clenched his jaw or when he frowned, and was its own bloody misery.

“Efanor,” he said, and his brother came to him. Red-eyed, Efanor was, pale of face, still leaking tears, like the little boy who’d suffered tragedies enormous at the time—the little brother who’d been his constant ally in the house. On an impulse he embraced his brother, as he had rarely done since they’d become men. “Efanor, with all my heart—I would we had all come even moments sooner.” He said it consciously and publicly to remove any sting Efanor might have felt in his late arrival, and to remove any doubt Efanor had had of his acceptance. But Efanor was stiff in his embrace.

“My lord King,” Efanor said through the tears. The face had hardened in that instant of that embrace. The voice had gone cold. It was clearly not a time to press Efanor on anything, least of all with an appeal to familial loyalties which Efanor had ample familial reason to doubt. He had loosened his hold on his heart once: he could not risk it twice, or he might break down in the witness of these men, and perhaps Efanor felt the same. He made himself numb, incapable of further grief or astonishment, in favor of calculation that told him that trouble for Ylesuin was far wider than the loss on this field. He felt sweat on his face, that began to dry and stiffen on his cheeks, and he did not let expression fight against it.

“I will grieve for this tomorrow,” he said then. “Forgive me, Efanor.”

“You have no tears.”

“I shall have. Let be.”

“Where is your Sihhé wizard, Cefwyn king?”

He was still dazed, conscious of Efanor’s attack on his associations, and of the bitter nature of that attack—and at the same time keenly reminded of the question of Tristen’s whereabouts. Looking about, he saw no sign of him.

“My lord King,” said Idrys, “we can make a litter for you, too, if you need. You need not ride.”

“No,” he said. “Where has Tristen gone? Where is he?”

“Majesty,” Idrys said, “we’re searching for him. No one’s seen him since the fighting.”

“The man saved my life, damn it—saved the lot of us! I want him found!”

The buzz of flies hung in the air. Men coughed, or cursed or grunted in pain, bandaging their hurts. Men and horses wandered at apparent random through trampled, bloodied grass, seeking order and direction. One such whisper through the grass and accompanying jingle of bits brought him Danvy. A man had found him, Danvy showing a cut on his shoulder but nothing that would not heal, nothing that even precluded him being ridden home, and he wanted not to part from Danvy again: he patted Danvy’s neck and gathered up the reins, guilty in recovering a creature so loved, so dear to him, amid other, more grievous losses to the realm.

A man helped him into the saddle. Other men were mounting up.

Their dead were too many to take with them, the danger in the area too great to detach more than a squad of Cevulirn’s cavalry from their main body to stand watch over them against village looters. He had heard Idrys give necessary orders for the removal of weapons from the dead, so as not to meet them coming back in hostile hands—and to search for clues of allegiance among the fallen enemy.

But that was Idrys’ concern and Idrys was giving all the orders for those that stayed: Cevulirn and Efanor were ahorse. Still he saw no sign of Tristen, and could not ask again, petulantly, like a child: Idrys was doing all he could to be sure of the area, and who was in it, and if Tristen and Uwen were among the fallen or the wounded, the men staying behind would advise him and do more than he could do.

The Crown meanwhile had other obligations too urgent, among them to secure his own safety, and Efanor’s, as the only two Marhanen, and them without issue. “Shall we move?” Efanor asked him, prompting him to issue orders which no one but he could give, and numbly he said,

“Let’s be on our way.”

So the King’s litter began to move. The elements of Cevulirn’s men and the Guelen guard sorted themselves into order, the King’s Dragon Guard with their tattered red standards, the men of the Prince’s Guard, who now—he realized with faint shock—must attach to Efanor as heir to the throne (but not Idrys, he swore to himself: Efanor should never inherit Idrys). The two red-coated Guard units came first, with the gray and white contingents of Toj Embrel and Ivanor at large riding under their own banners and under their own lord.

At some length Idrys overtook him, and rode beside him, apart from Efanor, who rode with Gwywyn.

“You are not fit to ride,” Idrys grumbled. Idrys’ face, whitened by the road dust, was a mask. “You should have taken the litter. The bleeding is worse.”

“Where were you?” Cefwyn snapped. His leg hurt him, now, swelling against the bandage, muscles stretched by sitting the saddle.

“Heryn almost eluded us. He led me a chase. We did overtake him.

And he dispatched another messenger. Heryn’s man babbled treason-and will say more.”

It was news that flooded strength into him. Vindication. Proof, for his father’s men. For all the realm besides. He drew a deep breath. The hooves scuffed deadly slow in what had become a warm day, belying the clouds in the west. The flies pursued them. The band about his head seemed a malicious and burning fire.

“He will believe me,” he said, thinking of Efanor. “My brother will believe me now.”

“My lord?” Idrys asked.

But he chose not to answer. He had said too much, in that, even to Idrys.

They came up behind a pair of horsemen on the road, riding ahead of them so slowly that even at their pace they were gradually overtaking them. Cefwyn watched them from his vantage at the head of the column, and knew who they were, long before the interval closed enough for anyone to see the red color of the mare, and the black of her rider, and the stocky figure of the man on the bay.

“Your Majesty.” It was Gwywyn. “Shall we ride forward and find them out?”

“No,” he said, “I know who they are. Let be.” So the Lord Commander fell silent riding on one side of him with Efanor, and Cevulirn arrived beside Idrys on the other, to hear the same. They drew steadily nearer.

“Majesty,” his father’s Lord Commander whispered, justifiably apprehensive, for there was indeed an eeriness about the pair, who had never looked to know what rode behind, as if a king’s funeral cortège and the procession of his successor were nothing remotely of interest to them.

The stocky man looked back finally. The other did not, but rode slumped in the saddle, dark head bowed.

He is hurt, Cefwyn thought in anguish, and yet—and yet—in the trick of the setting sun and the dust the two horses raised in the trampled roadway, it was as if two ghosts rode before them, beings not of this time or place, nor accessible to them.

Not Elfwyn, he thought. Whatever soul Mauryl had called—it was surely not Elfwyn’s unwarlike soul that had ridden to save their company. It was not the last Sihhé king whose hand and arm and body had found such warlike skills as drove armored enemies in panicked retreat.

Sihhé! their attackers had cried, falling back in consternation. He would never forget that moment, that the enemy about to pour over him had given way for fear of two men, one of them having ridden out unarmed but for a dagger.