‘Hmm. No commander facing a siege ever admits being “fully provisioned”,’ the captain said.
‘So now we wait?’ Michael asked.
‘Are you a squire or an apprentice captain?’ the captain asked.
Michael stood up straight. ‘My pardon, ser.’
He grinned wickedly. ‘I don’t mind an intelligent question, and especially not when it helps me think. I do have to think, young Michael. Plans don’t just come full-blown into my head. Next we’re going to use a powerful magic, something potent, grave and dire. The Archaics used it well and often. All the histories describe it, and yet no romance of chivalry ever mentions it.’
Michael pulled a face that told the captain he’d wit to tell when he was being baited.
‘What spell?’ he asked.
‘No spell,’ the captain advised. ‘But it’s a kind of magic nonetheless. We’re provisioned and armed, we’ve repaired our fortifications, and the enemy are not yet at the gates. So what shall we do?’
‘Compel the rest of the peasants into the walls?’ Michael asked.
‘No. That’s done.’
‘Build outworks?’
‘We lack the force to man them, so no.’ The captain paused. ‘Not so bad, though.’
Michael’s frustration was obvious. ‘Summon a tame daemon?’ he asked.
The captain scratched his pointed beard. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Although if I knew how to I might.’
Michael shrugged.
‘Two words,’ the captain encouraged him.
Michael shook his head. ‘Higher walls?’ he asked, knowledge of his own inadequacy making him sound petulant.
‘No.’
‘More arrows?’
‘Not bad, but no.’
‘Find allies?’ Michael asked.
The captain was silent a moment at that, looking east. ‘We have already summoned our allies, but that’s not bad at all,’ he said. ‘A very useful thought, and one that I may pursue.’ He looked at the fashionably greenclad scion of the aristocracy and added. ‘But no.’
‘Damn,’ Michael said. ‘Can I give up?’
‘As squire, or as apprentice captain?’ the captain asked. ‘You started this, not me.’ The captain picked up the short baton of office that he almost never carried. It had belonged to the previous captain, and had some history and authority to it – enough that the captain suspected it might have a touch of phantasm about it. ‘You have thirty-one lances, give or take; sixteen elderly but competent sergeants and one well-constructed, if elderly, fortress on good ground. You must defend a ford, a bridge, a constant flow of terrified merchants and a vulnerable Lower Town with inadequate walls. Tell me your plan. If it’s good enough, I’ll claim it’s my own and use it. There are stupid answers but there’s no right answer. If your answer is good, you live and make a little money. If your answer is bad, you fail and die and just for extra points, a lot of harmless people, some actual nuns and a bunch of farmers will die with you.’ The captain had an odd look in his eyes. ‘Let’s hear it.’
Michael had sprouted enough hairs on his chin that it might honestly be called a beard and he played with them for a while. ‘All in our current situation? Fully provisioned and so on?’
The captain nodded.
‘Send messengers for aid. Enlist allies from local lords. Button up the fortress, tell the merchants to go hang themselves, and prepare for the enemy.’ Michael looked out over the woods to the east while he thought on.
‘Messengers sent. Allies cost money and our profit on this is slim as it is. We were in pretty desperate straits before we got this job. And those merchants represent a source of cash to us. I leave aside the morality of the thing. We can make them pay for protection and split the money with the abbess. Fair is fair – it’s her fortress and our steel.’ The captain’s gaze was out the window, on the distant woods.
The sun moved in the sky.
‘I give up,’ Michael admitted. ‘Unless it’s something very simple like more rocks for siege engines, or more water.’
‘I think I’m glad that you can’t find it, lad, because you have a brain and your family has a lot of war craft. And if you don’t see it, perhaps they won’t see it either.’ The captain pointed out the window.
‘They? The Wild?’ Michael asked quietly.
The captain scratched at his beard again. ‘Active patrolling, Michael. Active patrolling. Starting in about six hours, I’m putting our lances out in fast-moving patrols. In all directions, but mostly east. I want to be familiar with the terrain, to relocate our foe, and then I’m going to ambush, harass, irritate, and annoy him and his minions until they go elsewhere looking for easier prey. If they choose to come here and lay siege to us I intend to have them leave a trail of blood – or whatever they have for blood – through that forest.’
Michael was looking at his hands, which were trembling. ‘You intend to go out into the Wild?’ he asked, incredulous. ‘Again?’
‘If the initiative is in the woods, I’ll seize it in the woods,’ said the captain. ‘You think the enemy are ten feet tall and made of adamantine. I think they have a corps of men as servants, archers and woodsmen, who have so little war-craft that I can see the smoke of their dinner fires from here.’ The captain put a hand on his squire. ‘And ask yourself – why is the main body of our enemy to the east?’ He looked out. ‘Gelfred is out there right now,’ he said quietly.
Michael whistled. ‘Blessed Saint George. Have they passed us by?’
The captain smiled. ‘Well guessed, young Michael. Our enemy has bypassed us – a tribute to our preparations and our little raid. But there’s a reason you don’t bypass a fortress, and I’m about to teach him. Unless,’ he smiled, and just for a moment, he showed his youth. ‘Unless it’s all a fucking trap.’
Michael swallowed.
‘Anyway, his human allies are right there as well – to the east. Don’t point. I suspect that some of the birds are spies.’ The captain turned away.
‘Then they can see everything we do!’ Michael said.
‘Everything,’ the captain said with evident satisfaction. ‘Go to the refectory, find some parchment, write me a list of all of your notions for the defence of this position, and then go polish something.’ He smiled. ‘But first, get me some wine.’
‘I was afraid,’ the squire blurted. ‘In the fight with the wyvern – I was so afraid I could barely move.’ He breathed heavily. ‘I can’t stop thinking about it.’
The captain nodded. ‘I know,’ he said.
‘But it will get better, won’t it? I mean – I’ll get used to it. Won’t I?’ he asked.
‘No.’ The captain shook his head. ‘Never. You never get used to it. You shake, vomit, foul your braes, piss yourself, whatever you do, every fucking time. What you get used to is the power of the fear, the onset of the terror. You learn you can face it. Now get me some wine, drink a couple of cups yourself, and get back to work.’
‘Yes, m’lord.’
There was a constant flow of men and materiel up and down the hill, from the top of the fortress to Bridge Castle. The war engines on the towers lofted practice rounds into the fields, and trusted corporals took patrols out into the farmland – careful, wary patrols on fast horses. The closest farmers had responded well enough to the alarm bells and yesterday’s summons, and Abbington, the biggest of the hamlets, was clear, but the more distant had only sent children to ask for more information, and none of them had brought in any of their precious grain unless the soldiers had brought it themselves. The patrols either went to fetch in the timid or led out farmers who had believed it was merely a drill.
And the more prosperous yeoman had other questions.
‘Who is going to pay for our grain?’ demanded a strong middle-aged man with an archer’s forearms and a handsome head of brown hair. ‘This is my treasure, ser knight – my precious store. What we scrimp and save up over the winter turns to silver when the merchants come in the spring. Who’s paying for it now?’