“Of course.”
“I think this could be the key, sir.”
Seske scowled at the map for several moments, adjusting first his spectacles, then the light from the lamp over his head. “I’m not sure what you’re getting at. We’ve already considered trying to poison them out, but as any fool knows the water flows out from the aquifer, making it impossible to foul their water source.”
“That’s not what I mean at all, sir. Remember, I’m talking about a raid. Take a look at the two spots I indicated. What do you see?”
Seske sighed. “Absolutely nothing. I’ve stared at a drawing just like this for hours a day all damned summer.”
And telling me you found something where I did not would imply that I’m a fool, Seske’s tone warned. Tamas stifled a frustrated groan. Seske was a fool, but Tamas was a mere sergeant, and showing up his commanding officer wasn’t going to land him a promotion.
“It’s not obvious, sir,” Tamas dissembled, “but as you can see, there’s only a few dozen yards between the fort well and where the spring comes out of the rocks. That’s not very far for a man to hold his breath.”
“Are you suggesting that we send men through the spring and up the well?”
“Against the current? No, sir. What I’m suggesting is that the well offers an easy escape route. If we sent, say, fifteen men over the walls with rope and crampons in the middle of the night, those men could spike the Gurlish cannons, set fire to their powder stores, maybe even kill a few guards, and then escape down through the well once the alarm is raised. It may not sound like much, but the advance we made earlier today was so very close. If we disabled even a portion of their cannon we could mount another charge and get men over the wall and into the fort.”
“Not very gentlemanly,” Seske muttered. “Underhanded tactics like this make us no better than the Gurlish.”
“Perhaps,” Tamas said, “But, sir, it could crack Tilpur. And the officer who cracks Tilpur would earn the favor of the king himself.”
Seske looked at the map, then at Tamas, then at Pereg. “Tell me,” he said to Pereg, “this is a joke?”
“It’s not a joke, sir,” Pereg said. “It’s sound reasoning.”
“That’s because you’re a strategic potato, Pereg.” Seske slapped the map with the back of one hand. “Assuming a group of men can scale the walls, and spike enough cannons to make the effort worth it, it’s still a suicide mission. Any fool can see that. They’d have to be either bloody arrogant or damned desperate to volunteer for the mission.”
“I’d like to suggest someone who’s both, sir,” Tamas said.
“Eh? Who’s that?”
Tamas smiled. “Me, sir.”
“I told you to get me crampons.”
“Begging your pardon, Sarge,” Farthing replied, “but this isn’t the bloody Mountainwatch. We’re in the middle of a desert.”
Tamas turned his spare pair of boots over in his hands, examining Farthing’s work. “This is just a chain looped around the toe and heel.”
“It’ll do in a pinch,” Farthing said.
“Will it do to climb a wall? And this isn’t a pickax, it’s a bayonet with the tip bent at a right angle.”
“With a strap to hold your wrist if you lose your grip,” Farthing pointed out proudly. “It’s not a bad job in just a few hours, if I do say so myself.”
“And how many sets do you have of all this?”
“Five crampons and two sets of pickaxes, Sarge.”
Five. Tamas needed twelve to fifteen men for this raid to be effective. Five soldiers would have to work quickly, with no hope of fighting their way out if they got cornered. But it would have to do. No, he thought, reconsidering. This might be better. Five men would move far more silently than fifteen. “I’ll take one set,” he said. “Draw lots for the rest.”
“Begging your pardon, sir, but I wouldn’t send you up there with my equipment without coming myself,” Farthing said. “Draw lots on the other three. I’ll go.”
Tamas glanced down at the chain wrapped around the toe of his boot. “Glad to hear you’d stake your life on this stuff. All right. The moon is waning. We go tomorrow night. Pray for fog.”
A clear sky, it turned out, wouldn’t be a worry. Clouds raced over the desert the next morning and by evening thunder had forced the army to hunker down beneath their tents, every stitch of equipment lashed down, only the unfortunate infantrymen on guard duty showing their faces as night fell. Wind buffeted the camp, sporadic sheets of rain soaking the cracked soil and forcing men to move their tents to higher ground to avoid flooding.
Lots were drawn, and Tamas led his fraction of a squad across the no-man’s-land between the Adran artillery and Tilpur. He was accompanied by Farthing, Lillen, Krimin, and Olef, the latter two being the unit’s cook and musician, respectively. They left just after dark and crept across the desert, hiding beneath scrub bush during the worst of the lightning.
By the time they reached the base of the fort the rain had become a torrent. Tamas’s heart was in his throat as he looked up at the thirty-five-foot walls, slick and foreboding.
This was worse than suicide.
“Here,” Farthing said, passing out strips of tanned hide. “Bite this between your teeth. If you fall, bite harder and hope the ground is soft. If you scream we’re all dead men.”
Tamas gestured for the squad to gather around, faces huddled near his. He pointed up at the walls, hoping that he wasn’t dragging four soldiers along with him to their deaths. “You see those walls?” he asked, his voice swept away by the downpour. “Those are our worst enemies tonight. They determine whether we rest beneath the godforsaken Gurlish plains for eternity or go home as heroes and I, personally, would rather have the latter.”
The soldiers chuckled, but he pushed on, his voice solemn. “This,” he said, “is not idle arrogance. This is not men marching in a straight line toward grapeshot and sorcery. This is five shit-upon infantrymen looking to end this damned siege on their own terms, and not the terms of their so-called betters.” He paused, shielding his eyes from the rain. “Because we could go home, a winter spent in Adopest only to come back here and march into the face of death once more. Or we can do what five thousand men cannot and take this damned fort. Are you with me?”
Four fists thumped against their chests in a silent salute.
“I’d rather have you four than all the Adran army,” Tamas said, realizing as he did that he meant it. “Let’s climb.”
Farthing, by far the most experienced climber, went first. Tamas waited until the count of sixty before he sprinkled a black powder charge on his tongue and followed Farthing up.
He used the bent bayonets as pickaxes, questing with the tips for cracks in the masonry, securing each foothold meticulously, working his way up inch by agonizing inch. Within minutes his muscles burned, even strengthened as they were by the powder, and his arms and legs trembled at the unaccustomed exercise.
He bit down hard on his bit of leather, feeling the weight of the weapons and tools hanging from his belt. A shudder ran through him at each heavy gust of wind, making his body sway dangerously. He dared not look up into the pelting rain, nor down lest he succumb to a wave of dizziness.
Every moment he expected a loose bit of masonry to send him tumbling to the ground or the shout of a guard above, followed by the raising of an alarm. The chains beneath his toes slipped as he climbed, his picks scratching too loudly against the stone.
He paused every so often, pushing outward with his sorcerous senses, looking for black powder. The towers to his left and right each contained concentrations of powder, clustered together like fireflies at dusk on a warm Adran spring. The guards, it seemed, were content to take shelter and assume the storm would stall a nighttime attack.