hoardings had to be built at strategic locations atop the wall, then covered in hides and wetted down so the barbarians couldn’t set them on fire. An enormous arsenal of weapons had to be cleaned, sharpened, and rubbed with animal fat to keep off rust. Arrows by the barrelful had to be carved, straightened, fletched, and headed. Everyone who could stand on two legs and fight with at least one arm had to be trained and made ready.
There had been a time, he thought, when even the prospect of hard work or-Bloodgod forbid-sacrifice was enough to start a riot in Ness. Now the entire city was energized with the effort of the countersiege.
“They’re united for the cause,” Slag said finally. “They’re working toward their own buggering salvation, and they know it. Show a little civic spirit yourself, you dumb bastard!” Slag slapped Malden on the forearm and laughed uproariously.
It seemed the dwarf shared the people’s spirit of camaraderie against the common enemy.
“I just wish any of it felt like enough,” Malden admitted. “Most of this will make no difference. The barbarians know how to fight against archers on a city wall. They didn’t batter down the gates of Redweir-we still don’t know how they breached the wall there, but they didn’t go in through a gate. At Helstrow simple trickery and momentum saw them through. If only I had some secret weapon, some power uncheckable to draw on…” He thought of Coruth and how she was training Cythera to be a witch. Magic would come in very useful right about then, but he knew better than to count upon their arcane assistance. History books were stuffed full of examples of lords who’d relied upon witches and sorcerers, and paid for it when magic proved more fickle than iron.
“Lad,” Slag said.
“Hmm?” Malden had been lost in his thought.
“Lad, come over here,” the dwarf whispered. He led Malden around a corner into the shadow of a mews. “Lad-maybe I can give you just that.”
The thief felt like he’d been doused in cold water. “Give me… what?” he asked carefully.
“A power fucking uncheckable.” The dwarf’s eyes blazed in the darkness. “It won’t be easy. Or cheap.”
“You have my full attention,” Malden promised.
“You remember that book I found in the Vincularium?”
“Not really,” Malden confessed.
Slag shook his head. “All right, all right. You remember how Balint managed to bring the place down?”
“Vividly.”
Slag nodded. “I’m going to need a workshop, somewhere in the Smoke will do, some place private. This is not something we can let anybody talk about. No-fucking-body talks. And I won’t make you any promises it’ll work.”
“What do you need?” Malden asked.
“Well, now, let me see… charcoal, for a start, as much as you can get. As much stale urine, too.”
Malden grimaced.
“Don’t look at me like that. Fullers use piss all the time. It’s part of how they make felt. There’ll be barrels of it in every woolery shop in town. And we can start collecting it from the citizenry, too, though we’ll need a good cover story for that. Then there’s the last ingredient I need, and it’ll be hard to come by-brimstone.”
“Don’t tell me you’ve taken up sorcery and need to conjure demons. Though if you do tell me that, I’ll ask you how many demons you had in mind and when we can expect their aid.”
“Maybe something better than that, lad. Just-trust me. I’ll also need workers. Alchemists, apothecaries. I’ll take fucking tanners if they don’t stink too much. Bakers and millers would be good. Anybody who can grind and mix ingredients. I’ll need all manner of equipment. Best I make a list and you have Velmont fill it. Mostly, though, I need time. This is untested stuff. Purely experimental.”
“Time is the one thing I’m short on,” Malden said, “but you’ll have as much as I can spare you, I promise.”
“It’s going to be dangerous, too. I’m likely to burn myself to a cinder working with this stuff. If that happens- promise me one thing.”
“Of course,” Malden said.
“You’ll give me the biggest damned funeral this city ever saw. No expense spared. But you’ll keep the coffin closed. If this goes up in my face, what’s left of me won’t be pretty.”
“That’s a hopeful thought.”
Slag laughed again. Malden had never heard a dwarf laugh so often. “Optimistic to a fucking fault, that’s me. All part of that damned civic spirit, eh?”
Chapter Eighty-Three
“Halloo! Halloo! Ness! People of Ness! Is someone in charge up there? There must be someone in charge. The people of Skrae can’t clean their bottoms without someone telling them how to do it. Halloo! Oh, cowards! We’d like to speak with you, cowards!”
Hurlind the scold had been shouting up at the walls outside King’s Gate all day. He was growing hoarse, and still no one would come out and address him. There had been a few attempts early in the day to throw garbage down on the scold, but that just encouraged the clown.
Morget itched with the desire to slap Hurlind down into the mud-just to get some quiet. He didn’t dare, however. Hurlind was operating under Morg’s direct order. The Great Chieftain wanted to talk to the leaders of Ness. Convince them, through reason, that it was in their best interest to surrender.
“That’s unlikely to work,” Balint pointed out. The two of them sat in Morg’s tent, brooding. Outside, a thin freezing rain was falling. It didn’t seem to bother Hurlind.
“You think them unreasonable people?” Morget asked.
“Hardly. They’re smarter than you lot. Of course, a bucket full of spotty turnips is, too. No. They’ll have heard what happened at Helstrow. Of the way dead King Ulfram tried to make parley with Morg, and got skewered up the shitpipe for it. No, they won’t come out and play nice.”
“Let us then, you and I, discuss better ways,” Morget said. “We took Redweir quick enough.”
“By sapping? Sure, we can try sapping,” Balint said with a shrug. She seemed to have accepted the collar around her neck, finally. She rarely ever complained about her thralldom anymore. “The walls here are better built than at Redweir, though. Thicker, better reinforced, and they go down deeper, in proper casements. Turns out a Burgrave can afford better engineers than a bunch of impotent monks.”
“So it can’t be done?”
“I didn’t say that,” Balint admonished. “But it’ll take longer, and we’ll need to dig multiple tunnels. It’ll take a week or so.”
“What could you do in the meantime? What other ideas have you?”
“We could build siege engines,” she said. “I don’t have the tools or the skilled laborers here for proper mangonels or siege towers but I could probably build some simple trebuchets. Won’t bring down the wall, but we can make the people inside wish they could crawl up their own arseholes.”
Morget nodded in interest. “Could they be rigged to throw balls of flaming pitch? We could burn those wooden hoardings off the walls.”
“Now there you’re thinking, old son. Why, I know some recipes for-”
At the flap of the tent, someone cleared his throat. Morget jumped up at once and grabbed his axe. It was the Great Chieftain, Morg himself, eavesdropping on them.
“All good ideas,” Morg said. “It might come to that. But for now, I want you two to stop this talk.”
“You don’t want us even thinking out loud?” Balint asked. “We weren’t planning anything for real yet.”
“For now I want to try a more gentle option,” Morg told the dwarf.
Morget’s eyes narrowed. “Great Chieftain. There are murmurings in the tents. They have been calling you Morg the Merciful again. It is my duty as your man to give you warning.”
“And so you have. I give little credence to men who whisper. Those are men afraid to act. When they talk openly of revolt, tell me again,” Morg said. “Now, come with me, Mountainslayer. Ness has finally agreed to talk.”
Father and son tramped through the mud of the barbarian camp. This had all been fields once, fertile fields
