With that, the thief disappeared from the battlements.
Morg looked almost saddened that his offer had been rejected. Had he seriously believed the westerners would even consider it? No warrior could have borne the shame of just walking away from a battlefield. Of course, Malden was no warrior-Morget knew that from personal experience.
The Great Chieftain turned and headed back into the camp, with Morget trailing after him. They headed directly for Morget’s tent, where Balint waited for them. Outside the tent Morg sighed deeply. He stared down at the frost-withered grass and seemed to be convincing himself of something. Morget left him to his thoughts, knowing he’d already pushed his father enough that day.
After a while Morg nodded to himself and pushed his way into the tent. Morget followed close behind.
“Nice chat with the locals?” Balint asked. “Did you achieve much?”
The Great Chieftain sat down on a stool and bowed his head. “I must take this city, and soon,” he told the dwarf. She nodded, her eyes suddenly bright with excitement. “I want to keep the wall intact. I don’t want to set the place on fire with balls of burning pitch either.” He sighed deeply. “Other than that, I’m open to suggestions.”
Chapter Eighty-Four
“Get me out of this ridiculous stuff,” Malden growled, trying to yank the gauntlet off his left hand. It felt like some of his fingers would come off with it if he pulled too hard. Slag hurried forward with a screwdriver to help Malden out of the armor, but Cythera just stood back and laughed at him.
Velmont couldn’t stop peeking over the wall. It was as if the Helstrovian thief had never seen a horde of barbarians before.
In fact he hadn’t. Malden had given strict instructions that no one was allowed up on the walls without his permission. He’d said it was so no one would become a target for some sharp-eyed barbarian bowman, but really he just hadn’t wanted anyone to see what they were up against and lose heart.
A piece of steel dug hard into his side. It felt like it drew blood. “Quicker, if you please,” Malden snarled.
“You want it done fucking right, or you want me to take half your skin off?” Slag asked. When Malden had decided to actually hear what the barbarians had to say-it was that or listen to their scold shout himself mute-it was decided that he had to look like an actual knight. The problem had been that the Burgrave, when outfitting his Army of Free Men, already took every complete set of steel armor in Ness. The few pieces Slag was able to scrounge had been of different sizes, and some showed the signs of repeated and ill use. The Burgrave had left these pieces behind for good reason. Getting Malden into the armor was torture-getting it off would be worse.
“You told him for certes,” Velmont said, in the voice of a man who has just seen a ghost. “You told him good. Did you e’en hear him, though, what he offered?”
“To let us all walk out of here? It was an empty promise,” Malden said. Slag started disassembling the complicated pattern of rivets holding his breastplate together. Ignoring the constant pinching of his skin, Malden tried to focus on the Helstrovian. Velmont didn’t just look scared. He looked like he was about to soil himself. “Morg might have kept his word and let us walk out of the gate. He said nothing about what would happen to us afterward. Most likely he would have enthralled us all. Even if he meant to let us free, then what? We don’t have any food left to carry with us. We could starve out there in the fields, with no place to go. Alternatively we can stay here and starve where it’s warm.”
“You could’ve asked for time to ponder,” Velmont said. “Bought us some breathin’ room, at the very least-” He shook his head and seemed to recover himself. “Sorry, boss. There’s just so many of ’em. I don’t like our chances, is all.”
Malden could hardly disagree with that.
Velmont came over to help Slag with the greaves, and soon Malden was naked on the battlements, freezing in the wind. Cythera draped a cloak around him and led him down to the level of the streets. As they made their way back toward the Lemon Garden, Velmont and Slag gave him reports on where they stood. The food shortage was the main topic of conversation. Even with strict rationing, the people of Ness would be without so much as a crumb in two weeks. Malden had already recruited a legion of oyster rakers and fisherman to try to drag food up out of the Skrait, but eight hundred years of cultivation had left the river a poor pantry. Short of food dropping from the heavens (or, slightly more likely given the city’s religious bent, flowing up from a crack in the earth, stinking of the pit), people were going to starve.
“Galenius tells us that starvation is the most effective weapon in siegecraft, far more powerful than any catapult or ram,” Malden said, thinking out loud. He had learned this in one of his frequent sessions with Cutbill. The former guildmaster of thieves was reading to him from the Manual of Fortifications like a mother telling stories to her toddler to help him sleep. The contents of the book, however, had left Malden with more than one sleepless night. “The siege of Hollymede, four hundred years ago, lasted two and a half years. There were a hundred thousand men and women inside the city walls when the siege began, and only six thousand still alive when the gates were opened-and the invaders never fired an arrow or bloodied a sword. Of course, many of the deaths were the result of disease and thirst. We have plenty of small beer on hand, and if we have to we can drink water, but we’ll need to watch for outbreaks of plague. Velmont, make a note of that-I want a committee of the public health set up. Any sign of disease must be taken seriously. Report to me if anyone gets so much as a running nose.”
“Mother and I can help with that, a little,” Cythera said. “Much of learning how to be a witch is the study of health and sickness.”
Malden nodded appreciatively. “Slag-how many archers can I muster right now? If the barbarians decide to scale the wall in the night, will we be able to repel them?”
“Depends how serious they are, lad,” the dwarf admitted. “If they all came at once? Not a fucking chance. If it’s just a few we might be all right.”
He turned to Cythera next. “Has Coruth been keeping an eye on the Burgrave and his free men? Galenius makes it sound like the only way to break a siege is with help from outside. We need them to move, and now.”
Cythera sighed. “I wish I could tell you otherwise, but the truth is, Tarness is building a winter camp, thirty miles north of here. He’s staying close, but he shows no sign of moving to rescue us.”
“The bastard!” Malden swore. “He’s getting revenge for what we did to Pritchard Hood, most like.”
“Or,” Slag said carefully, “he simply knows he hasn’t got an arsehole’s chance of beating Morg, and he doesn’t want to lose everything just to make a demonstration.”
Malden sighed. “All right. We’ve done what we can. Galenius is also quite clear on the fact that the most important skill a besieged general needs to learn is when to sleep. We might be here quite a while, and we all need to keep ourselves as rested and sharp as possible. I’ll see you two in the morning.”
Velmont and Slag glanced at each other and shared a discreet smile.
Malden shrugged it off. He didn’t care who knew that he and Cythera spent every night together now. He loved her-he’d always wanted the world to know that. He’d only kept it secret so long because he knew Croy would kill him if he ever found out.
That seemed the least of his problems now.
Cythera turned down the sheets of their bed upstairs at the Lemon Garden and warmed it with coals in a covered pan. Malden watched her in this simple domestic task and found his heart nearly broke. He’d never expected her to be a real wife to him. Not the way most men seemed to think of their spouses-as free labor they could exploit mercilessly, and beat if they ever complained. That was something he’d never wanted, and especially not from Cythera. He’d never thought she would cook for him either.
He’d never thought she would mend his hose. Or share a roof with him. Or hold him in her arms when he woke screaming in the middle of the night, terrified the barbarians were already inside the walls.
He’d never thought she would truly so much as love him.
Yet here she was, warming his bed. Literally. In a moment she would do it again, figuratively. “I love you,” he said, because it was the only thing he could feel at that moment.
“I love you, too,” she said with a smile.
It couldn’t last much longer. Already Coruth was preparing for Cythera’s initiation. And witches didn’t marry. No one would give Malden a proper explanation for why they couldn’t, but everyone knew it. Witches lived alone,
