Fortress of Owls by C. J. Cherryh Page A

when they’ve seen to their own fields.”
    â€œWe will not have Amefel for a battlefield again,” Tristen vowed, with all knowledge Cefwyn was going to war and that he must. He would not have the war cross the river. He was resolved on that.
    â€œGods grant,” Crissand said fervently.
    Sun flashed about them when Crissand said it. It had been a moment of cloud, which passed… and indeed now there was certainly no tardiness in the heavens, though the wind was still. Spots of sunlight came and went with increasing rapidity across the land, glorious patches of light and gray shadow on the snow.
    The talk was, albeit puzzling to him, also enlightening, even in this first part of their ride, of the things Crissand and the other lords had suffered, and what the villages needed. They had a certain shyness of each other at the first, and Crissand seemed to worry about offending him, telling the truth as Crissand would, but everything Crissand said, he heard. From orchards and sheep they talked on about this and that, gossiped about various of the lords, but none unkindly: Drumman’s ambition for a new breed of sheep, Azant’s daughter’s two marriages, her widowed at Lewenbrook, only seven days a bride—but not the only tragedy. Parsynan, so he had no difficulty understanding at all, had done nothing to mend the situation in the villages, nothing to recover Emwy from its destruction, nothing to help Edwyll’s heavy losses, only to collect taxes for the coronation levy and further punish the villages that had helped win the day.
    â€œThen the king’s men came counting granaries and sheep again,” Crissand said, “and that was the thing that pushed my father toward rebellion, my lord. We’ve no villages starving yet, but by next year they’d be eating the seed corn, and that, that, my lord, there’s no recovering. So the Elwynim offer tempted my father, and the king’s men made him angry. That’s the truth of it. I don’t excuse our actions, but I report the reason of them.”
    â€œI’ve yet to understand all Parsynan’s reasons,” Tristen said, “but at least by what I’ve seen, he built nothing. And I want the repairs made and no great amount spent, and no gold ornaments, and none of this. Yet they want to carve the doors, which is a great deal of expense, and more time, yet everyone, even the servants, say I should do it… while the villages want food. Is that good sense?”
    â€œOur duke shouldn’t have plain doors,” Crissand said, “and if he understands the plight of the villages and sees to it they have grain, there’s no man will complain about the duke’s doors.”
    â€œI need troops to the riverside more,” Tristen said in a low voice, still discontent with the delays for wood-carving, more and more convinced he should never have been persuaded to agree to it at all. “Any door would do to shut out the cold. I need canvas, I need bows, and I need horses and food.”
    â€œTo attack Elwynor, my lord?”
    â€œTo keep the war out of Amefel. And the armory. There’s another difficulty. Parsynan did nothing to maintain it; Lord Heryn kept it badly; Cefwyn set it to rights, and when the master armorer left to go with the king, Parsynan set no one in charge of it, and there’s no agreement between the tally and what’s there. I brought a good man back with me, Cossun, master Peygan’s assistant, and he can’t find records there or in the archive.”
    â€œI fear there was theft,” Crissand said. “I even fear my men did some of it. But those weapons we have …” Crissand did not look at him when he added, “… even today. But Meiden wasn’t the only one to take weapons. The garrison made free of it, if my lord wants the truth. The Guelen Guard.”
    â€œYet where are the weapons?”
    â€œSold in the town, and pledged