‘It’s always me,’ Wilful grumbled and did as he was told.
The rest continued to ride around the base of the fortress. Two other engines released, and both times the captain sent Wilful off to mark the fall of shot.
‘Tough nut,’ Sauce said, suddenly.
‘Some of our enemy have wings,’ the captain replied and he nodded heavily, because he was in full harness and couldn’t really shrug well. ‘But yes. With our company on the walls and all the defences up we should be able to hold until we starve.’ He looked beyond her. ‘We’ll lose the Lower Town first, then Bridge Castle.’ He shrugged. ‘But the – the king will come first.’
With that, he leaned his weight forward and led them at a slow, lumbering canter across the fields to the Bridge Castle.
Milus met him, also fully armoured, at the tower gate. Behind him, on the bridge, were a dozen heavy wagons laden with goods and fifty or more men and women all pale as parchment. Merchants.
‘Come for the fair,’ Milus said. He made a face. ‘They say there’s five convoys behind them.’
The captain turned and looked at Michael, who grimaced. ‘We don’t even have all the farmers in,’ he said. ‘Fifty, you say? And their wagons?’
‘And I’ll bet they don’t have any food,’ the captain said. ‘I’ll guess they have carts full of cloth and luxury goods, because they’ve come to
The older knight narrowed his eyes. ‘I can take all of ’em,’ he admitted. ‘And thirty more like ’em. But I’ll need more grain, more salt meat, more of everything to do it. Except water. We’ve plenty of that, out of the river.’
Back up the hill he went to report to the Abbess. A heavy military wagon was raised from the cellars and reassembled, then loaded to heaping with food and provender, and hand-hauled down the steep slope, teams of men on gate winches letting it down a few feet a time. The captain disarmed, handing his harness to his squire. His hips were screaming, and once it was finally off he felt light enough to fly away.
Even as they increased the supplies to the lower fort, more merchants arrived. Some were angry at the interruption of trade, and some were clearly already terrified. The captain went back down the hill and wasted the morning trying to calm them. He finally told them to send a deputation up the hill to the Abbess.
Then he made the climb back up to the fortress to hide in his Commandery, a small cell with a door directly onto the courtyard and a pair of arched windows separated by a fluted column. Open, the windows let in a spring breeze carrying the scent of wildflowers and jasmine, and he could see fifteen leagues to the east over the low hills.
Today, instead of turning to the parchment scrolls full of accounts that awaited him, he unbuckled his sword and hung it on the man-high bronze candelabra and leaned his elbows on the sill of the leftmost window.
Booted footsteps announced Michael. ‘Your armour,’ the young man said quietly.
The captain turned to see two archers with a heavy wicker basket, and his valet with an armload of dressed lumber. While he watched, the archers argued about which pre-cut peg went in which hole and the valet stared off into space while idly providing the correct piece, even when the archers asked for the wrong thing. Before the sun had moved the width of a finger, they had assembled a rack for the captain’s armour, man sized, a little taller than the man himself, and Michael dressed the heavy wooden form carefully. A good arming rack could speed a man into his harness by precious minutes. And with every inch of the fortress convent crammed to capacity and past it with soldiers and refugeees, his office was his sleeping room.
When the archers and the valet went back out, the noise vanished and the captain returned to his window.
‘Will that be all, ser?’ Michael asked.
‘Well done, Michael,’ the captain said.
The younger man jumped as if he’d been bitten. ‘I – that is-’ he laughed. ‘Your valet, Jacques, did most of it.’
‘The more credit to you that you give him credit,’ the captain observed.
Emboldened, Michael came forward and, very slowly, leaned into the right hand window. His stealthy progress was not unlike that of a convent cat the captain had observed that morning, which had been intent on stealing a piece of cheese. He smiled. It took Michael as long to rest in the window as it had for the three men to build the armour rack. ‘We’re fully provisioned,’ Michael said carefully.
‘Hmm. No commander facing a siege ever admits being “fully provisioned”,’ the captain said.
‘So now we wait?’ Michael asked.
‘Are you a squire or an apprentice captain?’ the captain asked.
Michael stood up straight. ‘My pardon, ser.’
He grinned wickedly. ‘I don’t mind an intelligent question, and especially not when it helps me think. I do have to think, young Michael. Plans don’t just come full-blown into my head. Next we’re going to use a powerful magic, something potent, grave and dire. The Archaics used it well and often. All the histories describe it, and yet no romance of chivalry ever mentions it.’
Michael pulled a face that told the captain he’d wit to tell when he was being baited.
‘What spell?’ he asked.
‘No spell,’ the captain advised. ‘But it’s a kind of magic nonetheless. We’re provisioned and armed, we’ve repaired our fortifications, and the enemy are not yet at the gates. So what shall we do?’
‘Compel the rest of the peasants into the walls?’ Michael asked.
‘No. That’s done.’
‘Build outworks?’
‘We lack the force to man them, so no.’ The captain paused. ‘Not so bad, though.’
Michael’s frustration was obvious. ‘Summon a tame daemon?’ he asked.
The captain scratched his pointed beard. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Although if I knew how to I might.’
Michael shrugged.
‘Two words,’ the captain encouraged him.
Michael shook his head. ‘Higher walls?’ he asked, knowledge of his own inadequacy making him sound petulant.
‘No.’
‘More arrows?’
‘Not bad, but no.’
‘Find allies?’ Michael asked.
The captain was silent a moment at that, looking east. ‘We have already summoned our allies, but that’s not bad at all,’ he said. ‘A very useful thought, and one that I may pursue.’ He looked at the fashionably greenclad scion of the aristocracy and added. ‘But no.’
‘Damn,’ Michael said. ‘Can I give up?’
‘As squire, or as apprentice captain?’ the captain asked. ‘You started this, not me.’ The captain picked up the short baton of office that he almost never carried. It had belonged to the previous captain, and had some history and authority to it – enough that the captain suspected it might have a touch of phantasm about it. ‘You have thirty-one lances, give or take; sixteen elderly but competent sergeants and one well-constructed, if elderly, fortress on good ground. You must defend a ford, a bridge, a constant flow of terrified merchants and a vulnerable Lower Town with inadequate walls. Tell me your plan. If it’s good enough, I’ll claim it’s my own and use it. There are stupid answers but there’s no right answer. If your answer is good, you live and make a little money. If your answer is bad, you fail and die and just for extra points, a lot of harmless people, some actual nuns and a bunch of farmers will die with you.’ The captain had an odd look in his eyes. ‘Let’s hear it.’
Michael had sprouted enough hairs on his chin that it might honestly be called a beard and he played with them for a while. ‘All in our current situation? Fully provisioned and so on?’
The captain nodded.
‘Send messengers for aid. Enlist allies from local lords. Button up the fortress, tell the merchants to go hang themselves, and prepare for the enemy.’ Michael looked out over the woods to the east while he thought on.
‘Messengers sent. Allies cost money and our profit on this is slim as it is. We were in pretty desperate straits before we got this job. And those merchants represent a source of cash to us. I leave aside the morality of the thing. We can make them pay for protection and split the money with the abbess. Fair is fair – it’s her fortress and
