our steel.’ The captain’s gaze was out the window, on the distant woods.
The sun moved in the sky.
‘I give up,’ Michael admitted. ‘Unless it’s something very simple like more rocks for siege engines, or more water.’
‘I think I’m glad that you can’t find it, lad, because you have a brain and your family has a lot of war craft. And if you don’t see it, perhaps
‘They? The Wild?’ Michael asked quietly.
The captain scratched at his beard again. ‘Active patrolling, Michael. Active patrolling. Starting in about six hours, I’m putting our lances out in fast-moving patrols. In all directions, but mostly east. I want to be familiar with the terrain, to relocate our foe, and then I’m going to ambush, harass, irritate, and annoy him and his minions until they go elsewhere looking for easier prey. If they choose to come here and lay siege to us I intend to have them leave a trail of blood – or whatever they have for blood – through that forest.’
Michael was looking at his hands, which were trembling. ‘You intend to go out into the Wild?’ he asked, incredulous. ‘Again?’
‘If the initiative is in the woods, I’ll seize it in the woods,’ said the captain. ‘You think the enemy are ten feet tall and made of adamantine. I think they have a corps of men as servants, archers and woodsmen, who have so little war-craft that I can see the smoke of their dinner fires from here.’ The captain put a hand on his squire. ‘And ask yourself – why is the main body of our enemy to the
Michael whistled. ‘Blessed Saint George. Have they passed us by?’
The captain smiled. ‘Well guessed, young Michael. Our enemy has bypassed us – a tribute to our preparations and our little raid. But there’s a reason you don’t bypass a fortress, and I’m about to teach him. Unless,’ he smiled, and just for a moment, he showed his youth. ‘Unless it’s all a fucking trap.’
Michael swallowed.
‘Anyway, his human allies are right there as well – to the east. Don’t point. I suspect that some of the birds are spies.’ The captain turned away.
‘Then they can see everything we do!’ Michael said.
‘Everything,’ the captain said with evident satisfaction. ‘Go to the refectory, find some parchment, write me a list of all of your notions for the defence of this position, and then go polish something.’ He smiled. ‘But first, get me some wine.’
‘I was afraid,’ the squire blurted. ‘In the fight with the wyvern – I was so afraid I could barely move.’ He breathed heavily. ‘I can’t stop thinking about it.’
The captain nodded. ‘I know,’ he said.
‘But it will get better, won’t it? I mean – I’ll get used to it. Won’t I?’ he asked.
‘No.’ The captain shook his head. ‘Never. You never get used to it. You shake, vomit, foul your braes, piss yourself, whatever you do, every fucking time. What you get used to is the power of the fear, the onset of the terror. You learn you can face it. Now get me some wine, drink a couple of cups yourself, and get back to work.’
‘Yes, m’lord.’
There was a constant flow of men and materiel up and down the hill, from the top of the fortress to Bridge Castle. The war engines on the towers lofted practice rounds into the fields, and trusted corporals took patrols out into the farmland – careful, wary patrols on fast horses. The closest farmers had responded well enough to the alarm bells and yesterday’s summons, and Abbington, the biggest of the hamlets, was clear, but the more distant had only sent children to ask for more information, and none of them had brought in any of their precious grain unless the soldiers had brought it themselves. The patrols either went to fetch in the timid or led out farmers who had believed it was merely a drill.
And the more prosperous yeoman had other questions.
‘Who is going to pay for our grain?’ demanded a strong middle-aged man with an archer’s forearms and a handsome head of brown hair. ‘This is my treasure, ser knight – my precious store. What we scrimp and save up over the winter turns to silver when the merchants come in the spring. Who’s paying for it now?’
The captain directed all such questions, firmly and quietly, to the Abbess.
As the sun set on the third full day the cellars were bursting with grain. A further hundredweight lay at the foot of the track that ran up the hill to the fortress where a cart had broken loose and smashed to pieces, and now every wagon up or down ran with ropes attached to the gate winches – and the main gate had stood open all day.
The hundredweight of grain had the curious effect of dragging birds out of the sky to eat the free bounty. Archers, led by Gelfred, netted them.
The fortress was so packed with people that there were men and women planning to sleep on the stone flags on straw despite the briskness of the evening. Torches burned all around the courtyard and a bonfire burned in the centre, the flickering orange light reflecting off the towers, the donjon and the sparkling dormitory windows. Chickens – hundreds of chickens – ran about the courtyard and the rocks on the ridge below the gate. Pigs rooted in the convent garbage at the base of the cliff, nigh on two hundred of them. The convent sheepfold, hard against the eastern walls, was also full to bursting and in the last light a man standing in the Abbess’s solar could see the glitter of a dozen men-at-arms and as many archers, bringing in another thousand sheep from the eastern farms.
The captain stood in the Abbess’s solar and watched patrols, the sheep, and the formal closing of the gate. He followed Bent’s craggy form as the big archer changed the watch in the donjon, marching the off-going watch around the whole circuit as he collected them and put fresh men in their places. It was an impressive and efficient ceremony, and it had the right effect on the villagers, most of whom had never seen so many armed men in their lives.
The captain sighed. ‘In an hour’s time a virgin will have been deflowered and a husbandman will have lost his farm at dice,’ he said.
‘You have a virgin in mind?’ the Abbess asked.
‘Oh, I’m quite above such earthy concerns.’ The captain continued to watch, and he was smiling.
‘Because you are worried, you mean. You must be worried that nothing has come at us yet,’ the Abbess said.
The captain pursed his lips and shook his head. ‘I’d rather be a ripe fool, the laughing stock of every soldier in Alba,’ he said, ‘then face a siege by those things. I don’t know where they are yet or why they let us get everyone under cover. In my dark moments I think our walls are already undermined, or they have a legion of traitors inside the walls-’ He raised a hand, making a warding-off motion. ‘But in truth, I can only hope they know as little of us as we know of them. The day before yesterday we were easy meat. Today, if sheer fear doesn’t break us, we could hold for a year.’ He glanced at her worried face.
She shrugged. ‘How old are you, Captain?’
He was clearly uncomfortable with the question.
‘How many sieges have you seen?’ she asked. ‘How many Wild creatures have you faced in combat?’ She turned towards him and stepped forward, boring in on her target. ‘I’m a knight’s daughter, Captain. I know these are not polite questions, but by God I feel I deserve to know the answer.’
He leaned against the wall. Scratched under his chin for a moment, staring off into space. ‘I’ve killed more men than I have monsters. I’ve stood one siege and, to be fair, we broke it in the second month. I’m-’ He turned his head and met her eye. ‘I’m twenty.’
She made a sound between a satisfied hrmmf and a snort.
‘But your divination told you that.’ He straightened from the wall. ‘I’m young, but I’ve seen five years of unending war. And my father-’ He paused, and the pause became a silence.
‘Your father?’ she asked quietly.
‘Is a famous soldier,’ he finished, his voice very quiet.
‘I’ve entrusted my defences to a child,’ the Abbess said, but she pursed her lips in self-mockery.
‘A child with a first rate company of lances. And there is, truly, no better sell-sword captain in Alba. I know what I’m doing. I’ve seen it and done it before, and I’ve studied it, unlike the rest of my breed. I’ve studied them all – Maurikos and Leo and Nikephoros Phokas, even Vegetius. And if I may say so, it’s too late to change your mind
