Perhaps he could learn from men like Corio and Nicar. Esk kar resolved to remember this practice in dealing with his men.
“Captain of the Guard,” Corio began in a formal manner, “I told you I would answer your question about building a wall to defend Orak. My sons and I have worked long into the night and this morning to answer that question.” He nodded to his assistants and they removed the cloth from the table.
Trella gasped while Sisuthros slapped his sword hilt in amazement.
Esk kar just stared. The map of yesterday had come to life as a model of Orak, only larger, and now it revealed the village and its surroundings. Little blocks of wood represented rows of buildings; the palisade was made of twigs; the river of pale green pebbles. The whole structure stretched about four feet long by three feet wide. Thin, flat strips of wood painted green indicated the farmlands. Corio pointed with his measuring stick, explaining what each miniature item represented.
“This is Orak today,” Corio went on. “Now we’ll change it.” Like magi-cians, his sons began moving things around, removing some features, adding others. In moments, they’d transformed the model. The tiny blocks that represented houses and farms outside the palisade disappeared, a green cloth covering them. A taller wall represented by thin strips of wood set on edge replaced the original palisade, now surrounded on all sides by a narrow cloth ribbon, dyed the brown of the earth to represent the ditch Corio had proposed. The docks vanished, the gates changed to bigger and thicker sticks.
“A wall can be built, Esk kar.” Corio touched the model’s wall with his pointer for emphasis. “The wall will be fourteen feet high around three sides of the village and sixteen feet high on either side of the main gate.
We’ll flood the marshlands and, using water from Trella’s wells, keep the ditch in front of the wall wet and muddy at our need. The distance from the bottom of the ditch to the top of the wall will measure at least twenty — five feet.”
A rare compliment from any master, to give credit to a slave, especially the slave of another. “All this can be built in five months time?”
“It will be a close thing, Captain, but, yes, I believe so, providing everyone works on it as you promised. We must start at once, tomorrow, gathering the things we’ll need, such as wood from across the river and from the forests up north. Only willow and poplar trees grow around Orak, and they’re too soft and too small for our needs. We’ll need hundreds of logs of all sizes, including large ones for the main gate my son will build for you. Most of these will have to come down the river by boat. Messengers and traders must be dispatched at once to buy them. Then stones must be taken up from the riverbed. Fortunately those are close at hand and in good quantity. Next we must set up a site to make the sun — dried bricks in huge numbers. They take weeks to harden properly, so we must start soon with them. We’ll need every shovel and digging tool we can find as well as sand from the hills to the south, wagonloads of sand. And slaves, of course, to do the digging and the other heavy work.”
“Then we start tomorrow,” Esk kar said, staring at the miniature Orak, studying where the wall ended and the marshland began. It looked remarkably like what he’d envisioned from the hillside only a few days ago.
“You must show this to Nicar and the Families. He will be pleased, I’m sure.”
Esk kar turned to Sisuthros and gripped his subcommander’s arm.
“Sisuthros, you see what must be done. A strong hand will be needed to make sure the lumber arrives, the stones moved, the bricks made. Both slaves and villagers must be pressed into work as soon as Corio is ready and kept at it until they drop from exhaustion. Everyone must do his share, even the women and children. There must be no villagers hiding in their huts while others labor. I’ll give you ten soldiers to start. It will be a difficult task, but I’m sure you can accomplish it.”
Sisuthros nodded, fascinated by the model and now eager to undertake the assignment he’d questioned only this morning. “I’ll do it, Captain. It will be worth it to see the faces of the barbarians when they see Corio’s wall blocking their path.”
“Come, there is more. Follow me.” Corio went outdoors, then along the side of the courtyard. Two apprentices waited there.
“These boys built a model of the wall, so that you can get an idea of the scale you’ll be using.”
Using common river mud, the boys had built a wall, about three feet high and four feet in length. At the front side, dirt had been scooped out to represent the ditch. On the back of the wall a platform made of wood rose almost as high as the wall itself.
Corio squatted down and pointed to a doll. The figure held a tiny wooden sword on high and had been positioned in the ditch before the wall. “That’s how high a man will be, standing before the wall. They’ll need long ladders to reach the top.”
He shifted his position to the other side of the wall. “Inside, the wall will be braced every twenty feet by a support wall, which will also carry the weight of the fighting platform. That platform, which we call a parapet, will be built of rough planks and will be four feet lower than the wall and ten feet across. That should be wide enough to allow men to pull a bow or swing a sword or even for some to move along the wall as others fi ght.”
Esk kar joined Corio, squatting down beside him. “How high will the parapet be inside the village?” Esk kar wondered how he was going to get men up and down so that they could fight. Another detail he hadn’t thought about before.
One of the apprentices giggled, apparently at Esk kar’s ignorance, and received a sharp smack across his arm from the measuring ruler Corio still carried. “Keep your mouth still, boy.”
Corio looked annoyed, clearly embarrassed by this flaw in his presentation. All of Corio’s staff must have been warned not to laugh or say anything should any of the ignorant soldiers, particularly their barbarian captain, fail to understand what they saw or be unable to do a simple sum in their heads.
But Sisuthros had the same question. “Yes, Master Corio, how high will it be? We’ll need to move men up and down very rapidly, and they’ll be carrying heavy loads. And we’ll need clear space at the base so men can move quickly from one point to another.”
“The parapet will be ten feet high. We will put wooden ramps or steps inside so your men may mount the wall. We can use lifting poles to haul heavy stones to the top so that you can hurl them down at the attackers.”
“Not wooden ramps, Corio,” Esk kar commented. “At least, not anything that will burn easily. We’ll be getting fire arrows shot over the wall. I want nothing nearby that can burn or even make smoke.”
Fire was always a major hazard in the village, even in the best of times.
The walls of the huts might be made of river mud, but their roofs could be any combination of cloth, wood, or straw, and most burned easily. Cooking fires set roofs ablaze often enough. During the siege, if the villagers detected smoke, many would panic. The defenders would have to be prepared for fi re and smoke, Esk kar decided. Yet one more detail to think about.
“A good point,” Corio conceded. “We’ll build everything using as little wood as possible.”
“Master Corio, if I may,” Trella began, “perhaps we can coat anything inside the walls that might burn with a layer of mud. And we can have women and old men standing by with water buckets to fi ght any fi res that break out. But besides fire arrows, won’t there be many arrows shot over the wall into the village itself?”
“Trella’s right,” Sisuthros agreed. “Arrows will be landing everywhere.
We may need to shelter some of the ground just inside the wall. It may be safest right under the wall.”
Corio nodded thoughtfully. “There will be many such things to consider in the next few weeks.” He stood up and turned to Esk kar. Esk kar rose with him.
“I’ll work with Sisuthros starting tomorrow.” Corio’s eyes looked directly into Esk kar’s. “We’ll give you your wall, Captain. Now you must make sure you have the men to defend it.”
9
Five days later, much had changed. Esk kar and Trella had moved into Drigo’s house. The lower story of the spacious home contained five good — sized chambers, in addition to a large central space that could be used for meeting or dining, and a separate area for cooking. The upper fl oor, which Esk kar took for himself and Trella, held only two large rooms, one for sleeping and one for working.
With all that extra space, Esk kar provided quarters for Bantor and Jalen. Bantor had a wife and a daughter of
