couldn’t remember the last time he’d done so, however.
Now, he had chosen to break his silence. With a dire accusation indeed. Chieftains who made mistakes did not remain chieftains for long.
Not when they could so easily be replaced.
“Who do you speak for?” Morget asked.
“Myself alone,” Thurbalt said, which was cautious but proper.
“When you speak for all, you tell me.” Morget had to be cautious himself. Questioning Morg’s decisions wasn’t sedition, not among the clans. But gathering men of like opinion, muttering in darkness, spreading mistrust- these things had a way of quickly moving from speech to action. “I obey the will of my clans,” Morget finished. It was an old formulation, a figure of speech. It could also be a promise.
In the morning, the file marched through a plain of frost-hard fields that extended to the horizon in every direction, where birds circled endlessly looking for one last forgotten seed or bit of fallen grain. Morget, lost in his thoughts, saw little of it, and was only brought up from his reverie when a messenger came back from the van to tell him Morg wanted him.
Jogging forward, Morget wondered idly if Morg had heard the whispers in the night. This might be a chastisement-or a challenge to his honor. Perhaps things would come to a head far sooner than he’d expected.
Yet when he reached the van, he saw Morgain dancing with arms raised high, giving thanks to Mother Death. Some of the berserkers had joined her. Morg stood high up in the crotch of a dead tree, one hand shading his eyes.
“I thought you’d like to see this, Mountainslayer. Come up, to me.”
Morget clambered up the creaking branches to perch next to his father. “What is it?” he demanded. “I haven’t broken my fast yet.”
“No time for surly words, my boy,” Morg said. He could not hide the excitement in his voice. “There! Look! Surely your young eyes see it better than mine.”
Morg looked. And there it was. Across the plain, no more than four hours’ march away, stood a strangely regular shape, a form of straight lines and shining brick that circled a cloven hill. A wall. A city wall.
The wall of Ness.
Part 4
Interlude
In theory there were no officers in the Army of Free Men. There were serjeants, of course, because no army can function without men to scream at the soldiers and give them their orders. But there were no lieutenants, no captains, and no generals.
There was of course Ommen Tarness, the Burgrave of the Free City of Ness. The man who had organized the army in the first place and its de facto leader. Yet he went to great pains to remind the men that he was a common soldier like any of them, and that if they accepted his commands and followed his decrees, it was simply because they recognized he had the best ideas and the most meaningful contributions to their effort.
Together with a cadre of the army’s finest scouts, he went in person to spy on the barbarian horde when it arrived at Ness. Like a common scout, he lay in the mud on a hill a half mile away so he could see what the army would face in battle.
Of course one had to be practical about such things, so he had a bear hide to lie in, while his fellow soldiers had to suffice with moldering blankets. His wineskin was full of fine malmsey as well, and he had dried venison to chew on while his men sufficed with weak ale and pemmican. And of course he wore-as always-his golden coronet, which marked him out in any group of men.
“There,” one of the scouts whispered, and pointed down the hill. “That’ll be the first of them.” The scouts had been lying in their perch since before dawn. The sun had been up for three hours with no sign of the enemy-they were certainly in no hurry.
Before the van of their force the barbarians sent vedettes ahead-mounted sentries who watched every side of the road as if they expected some sudden ambush. One rider wheeled his horse around right below the wall of Ness, well within bowshot. When no one tried to shoot him, he let out a piercing whistle that the scouts could hear quite plainly, even from so far away. The rest of the vedettes moved to take up positions on the sides of the road. They stayed watchful, even though no trace of resistance had been offered.
Perhaps they were as surprised as Tarness. What he could see of the city beyond its defensive wall looked much as it always had. Smoke rose from a hundred chimneys. Shutters were open to catch the morning air and dispel the night’s closeness. Tarness could even see people moving about the streets, going about their everyday tasks.
It was as if no one inside was even aware that they were about to be besieged. “I expected slightly more of Pritchard Hood,” Tarness said. There were certain things one did when facing a siege, things that should have been done long since. The wall showed no trace of hoardings, nor were any ballistae or onagers set up on its wide battlements. The gates were closed up tight, but so were the sally ports-small doors set into the more massive gates, through which defenders could emerge to harass the incoming horde. There was no sign at all of such a force, however. There was not so much as a delegation of parley to speak with the barbarians when they arrived.
Down in the road, Morg and his children came now on horseback, and behind them an honor guard of berserkers. The red-painted faces of the manic warriors were slack with exhaustion, but they jogged to keep up with the ambling horses. They had their weapons over their shoulders in good order and looked ready for anything the city might throw at them.
“Strange. There should be flags flying on Castle Hill,” one of the scouts said.
Tarness frowned. The man was right. Not so much as a pennon flew at the top of the city. In fact, the more Tarness looked at his old palace and the barracks where his guard resided, the more he got the feeling something was missing. He couldn’t make out much detail from so far away, but he got the impression that the walled enclosure from which he’d previously ruled the city was deserted.
The main force of the horde came down the road on foot, thousands of reavers and berserkers and thralls in no particular formation. They carried packs on their backs or drove wagons loaded with supplies. Tarness saw bundles of long stakes and countless acres of deer hide for tents, a round score of anvils, casks, and barrels by the hundred to hold mead and beer, flour, dried meat, turnips, and pickled fish.
Tarness had been a general for a very long time, far longer than any of his men suspected. He was struck by how orderly the wagons were loaded, and how well supplied the horde was. Most armies lived by foraging-the Army of Free Men lived on the produce of the land, for instance, on whatever game its soldiers could catch and whatever supplies of grain they could requisition from local farms.
When you intended to lay siege to a city, though, you couldn’t just send out all your men each day to hunt and gather for themselves. The land around the besieged city would be picked clean in the first few days and you’d be forced to send your foragers out ever farther in search of food, stretching your lines until you could no longer effectively storm the city should the opportunity arise. The barbarians had a reputation as reckless fighters, but apparently this Morg the Wise had more foresight than some civilized generals Tarness had fought against.
While the scouts watched, the barbarians set up their camp a quarter mile away from the city walls. Far enough away to avoid any missile fire from the walls, but close enough so no one could escape the city without being caught. The camp went up with remarkable speed, as if the barbarians had done this a thousand times before. Small knots of men set about erecting a thousand tents, while others dug neat latrine pits well clear of the main camp. Others set up makeshift forges for the blacksmiths who would keep their weapons in good repair, or built stone ovens to bake bread to feed the camp. The work was done well before nightfall, when most of the horde turned in to sleep. Others stayed at watch around blazing campfires or stood picket duty at the edge of the camp.
It was all done with such efficiency and trim as Tarness had never seen before in any civilized army. It would
