“Sarge, can I ask you something else?” Farthing said.
Tamas nodded.
Farthing scooted his stool a few inches closer to Tamas and looked around, then lowered his head. “This is bullshit, isn’t it? I mean, throwing us at that big damned fort thousands at a time when they know we won’t make it over the wall anyways. That’s bullshit. Right?”
“Not our place to say,” Tamas said, feeling a knot in his belly. This was bullshit, all right. The orders to pull out likely hadn’t had a last assault written into them, which meant that Gerdin, and hundreds of other poor souls, had died on Seske’s wishes and optimism. It wasn’t any way to conduct a war. Tamas was a sergeant, a powder mage of low birth, and even he could see that. “But,” he added, “if you don’t shut your trap you will end up with more than latrine-digging duty.”
“Yes, Sarge,” Farthing said, falling quiet.
Tamas got up to walk through the orderly rows of tents, looking up at the desert sky. There was a certain rugged beauty in this place, thousands of miles away from home, but it was the stars that did it for him, shining bright without the interference of the street lamps of Adopest. He found a hill where he could see the stars above Tilpur, three miles away.
From this distance the fort looked like an upturned footstool into the desert, with full command of the only freshwater spring for eighty miles in any direction. Rumors were that they had provisions enough for another two years, and being built directly on the spring meant they never had to worry for water.
Tilpur had never once fallen out of Gurlish hands. The Kez had besieged it. The Brudanians. The Adran army had besieged it twice and, if General Seske’s maid was to be believed, this second attempt had fallen short. The finest minds of the Adran officer corps could not figure out how to crack it.
It was too bad, Tamas thought bitterly, that the finest minds of the Adran officer corps were inbred dimwits from the least talented echelons of the nobility.
Though, as much as he hated to admit it, he’d not been able to figure out a way through those sorcery-warded walls either. Were ineffective artillery and suicidal charges really the best options available to a modern army, the pride of the Adran nation?
He let his eyes wander over the distant silhouette of Tilpur and down to the mouth of the spring. It flowed from beneath the forts walls into a year-round river giving birth to an oasis below the southern wall. The oasis stretched for miles, a haven for wildlife and even the Adrans themselves, providing the only bit of respite in this inhospitable place. Tilpur was a prize that every army coveted and none could gain.
All he had to do was get inside their walls at the head of a few hundred infantry and he’d clear the fort in hours . . . the thought trailed off and he stared at the moonlit silhouette, pondering. What if he didn’t even need a company of men at his back?
He sprinted back into the camp where Farthing, Lillen, and all the rest were gathered around the embers of the dung fire.
“Lillen,” he said, after catching his breath, “do you still have that floor plan you drew of Tilpur?”
Lillen crawled into her tent and came back a moment later, handing the rolled-up parchment to Tamas. He spread it on the ground, poring over the detailed drawing before looking over at Farthing. “Do you think you could get me a dozen sets of crampons?”
General Seske was normally a jovial man, never too far from his wine and always able to find some native girl or hanger-on to share his bed. But something – probably the order of withdrawal combined with his failure to take Tilpur – had him in a foul mood when Tamas was finally able to rouse him from his bed at nearly one in the morning.
Seske was in his late forties. His dark skin marked him as a foreigner, but his marriage to an Adran duchess guaranteed him his rank in the Adran army. He ran his hands through his sparse, graying hair before pulling a thin silk robe on over his undershirt. He squinted at Tamas, then at Captain Pereg, who looked not all that more enthusiastic about the hour than Seske himself.
“What is this, Pereg?” Seske asked.
Pereg fidgeted with his bicorn hat. “I’m very sorry to get you out of bed at this hour, uncle, but there’s been an, erm, development.”
“Development? What kind of development? I was having the very best of dreams. So unless Tilpur just tumbled down or Kresimir himself has returned to the realms of mortals, I hope the next thing out of your lips is a damned good explanation.”
Tamas cleared his throat and moved a few things aside to lay Lillen’s drawing out on Seske’s map table. “Sir,” he said, “I’m very sorry to interrupt your . . . sleep, but I think I may be able to give you what you’re looking for.”
“What’s that?”
“A Gurlish surrender.”
“Pereg, who the bloody devil is this?”
“Sergeant Tamas, uncle. One of the best infantrymen under our command.”
“Tamas. Tamas. Why do I know that name?”
“He’s the powder mage, sir.”
Seske harrumphed loudly. “Bah. Powder mages. Nothing better than dogs, if you ask me. No offence, Sergeant Tommy. Purely a professional opinion. I’m sure you’re a good chap. Can’t help what you’re born with and all that. Now tell me, Pereg, why the pit is he in my tent?”
Tamas cleared his throat again. Late hour it may be, but a general should have a better attention span than a petulant child. He kept his expression appropriately reserved. “Sir, I have a plan to break the siege.”
“What’s that you say?” Seske searched his robe until he found his spectacles and put them on, peering at Tamas. “What do you mean?”
“If you’ll humor me a question, sir?”
Seske adjusted his robe, raising his chin to look down his nose suspiciously at Tamas. “Go on.”
“Why have we not sent a raiding party over the walls into Tilpur during the night? Men to spike cannons, slit throats, foul their powder – that sort of thing.”
“Not very gentlemanly.”
“War is seldom gentlemanly,” Tamas said.
Seske snorted. “Because a raid would be bloody suicide.”
“Only slightly more suicidal than a frontal assault with our infantry,” Tamas said, hurrying on before it could occur to Seske to be offended. “But that “slightly” is what matters. Order men on a genuine suicide mission and you’d have a mutiny on your hands. Am I correct, sir?”
“Yes?” Seske said, his eyes narrowing.
“Even a frontal assault or a Hope’s end has a tiny chance of success. A small number of men over the walls at night, however, will only find themselves trapped and slaughtered like dogs once they descended into the fort itself to light the munitions. Once they were inside, the hope of escape would close to none. Except . . . if you’d be so kind and take a look at this.”
Seske shuffled over to the map table and lifted Lillen’s floor plan, examining it in the light of the oil lamp hanging over the tent. “Where’d you get this, Sergeant? Since when do we give quality drawings like this out to the rank and file?”
“One of my infantrymen apprenticed with an architect before signing up,” Tamas said. “The floor plan is her own make, based on reports from our intelligence.”
“Oh, right then. She’s very good.”
“Yes, sir, she is. Now, if you’ll direct your attention to this point here,” Tamas indicated the spot with his finger, “you can see where the fort’s main well descends from the courtyard into the ground here, about fifty feet to reach an aquifer below the fortress.”
“Yes.”
“And, if you’ll look here, you can see where a spring emerges from the rocks just below the fort.”