by Daniel Dydek
“Sir,” Corith replied, straightening as he recognized the tone in Geoffrey’s voice as well. “I have twenty-eight men without scratches; another five are wounded, but should be able to fight if pressed. Another three will take a few days to heal. The city has other men of fighting age; I cannot say how many for certain, but less than we would like. I have not had time to train any as yet.”
“Weapons?”
“Five men with halberds; the rest with swords.”
“Don’t you have any bows?” Pladt muttered, mostly to himself. Corith glanced at the archer, then at Geoffrey; Geoffrey nodded with raised eyebrows.
“Our armory has in excess of a hundred bows,” Corith replied, addressing Pladt. “But the men who had been trained to use them were among the first to die. The beasts came in close quarters too quickly,” he explained.
“Very well,” Geoffrey replied. “Get me two men who can lead the carpenters and the masons and bring them to me; then prepare your troops, only those most able. Do you have horns for sounding alarms?” Geoffrey asked; Corith nodded. “Good,” Geoffrey continued. “Get them, and prepare them to move out with the carpenters. There is a thickly wooded valley just to the south-east where we will be drawing wood. Your men will guard the workers. Spread them out as thin as possible. Their job, Corith, is to sound the alarm and get back to the castle, nothing else. I will not leave them without swords, though I would prefer it, do you understand?” Once again, Corith nodded quickly. “Go; just send the builders to me, and prepare your men.
“Pladt,” he continued without break as Corith turned and hurried away. “Go through the city; employ whomever you must. Find men who can wield a bow and set up a range outside the walls. By the time you find them, I will get you access to the weapons so you can begin training. They will not have to be experts,” he said, noting the look on Pladt’s face. “I believe the same as Haydren: the army that will be coming will be thick enough that targets will not be sparse. As long as they can hit a target and not injure themselves or others, it will be better than we have now. Have you seen Sarah?”
“She was leaving as I walked up,” Pladt replied.
Just then, a young man of about seventeen walked up. “Geoffrey?” he inquired.
“You are?”
“Perry, sir,” the young man responded. “Corith sent me; I can go between you and the masons.”
“You are a mason?”
“Yes sir; Perry the Mason, that’s me. Well, not yet; I have to some years of training left,” he said with a nervous chuckle.
“Very well; we need to fortify the walls, Perry,” Geoffrey said. “The masons will need to do what they can to repair the existing sections, as well as prepare the broken sections to receive wooden fortifications.”
“You don’t want that, sir,” Perry said quickly. “Stone is much stronger; and joining wood to stone is barely strong at all.”
Geoffrey smiled and nodded. “I understand, Perry,” he said. “If I could, I would build up these walls as high as Frecksshire, but we haven’t the time. Can the masons do as I ask, though?”
“Yes sir,” Perry replied. “It can be done.”
“Then go do it. Whoever is your senior mason, let him know I would like to see him outside the main gate by Mid-Morning.”
“Yes sir,” Perry replied, turning and leaving.
Geoffrey turned to Pladt, who stood watching the retreating apprentice. “Why are you still here?”
Pladt turned to him quickly, and then shrugged. “Because I’m lazy,” he said evenly.
Geoffrey shook his head, but grinned. “Get out of here; get those archers and start practicing.”
As Pladt turned and left, another man approached, in his late thirties. He had the unmistakable red hair and black brows of a pure Rinc Nain; when he spoke, his voice was deep and his accent thick and pure.
“Corith sent me,” he said.
“Your name?”
“Peyden,” he replied. “Carpenter.”
“Peyden, you and the other carpenters are tasked with, first, building new gates for the city. There is a valley to the south-east; do you know it?” Peyden nodded once, slowly. “We need to get lumber from there.”
“I know the woodcutters; they will do it.”
“Perfect; once gates are fashioned and hung, we’re going to need to fortify the most damaged sections of the wall, and then build something nearing ramparts on those sections.”
“That is much labor,” Peyden said.
“What doesn’t get done before the next attack may determine whether we survive,” Geoffrey replied. “If you can arrange the woodcutters, I would appreciate it. I will be outside the main gate all day; if anyone has questions, send them to me.”
“Very well,” Peyden said, then he turned and left.
Geoffrey turned, and saw Garoun’s face disappear from a window. The lord’s pride would need rebuilt, but later. Much, much later.
*
Pladt was lost. Well, not entirely lost: he had already managed to find thirty men, and even a few strong women – ten, for Geoffrey would want to know numbers – and sent some to the main gate with instructions on how to begin setting up a range, while the rest he sent around the city to recruit whomever they might know. And he could remember where he had met the last two men; but where he was now, and in which direction the main gate lay, was known by anyone other than himself.
Here, the alleys remained unusually straight, but narrow; overhead, the three-or-more-story buildings began leaning toward one another, leaving one jagged crack of thin blue sky above him. The walls were near enough for him to reach out and touch both sides simultaneously. He enjoyed the feel of rough walls beneath his fingertips; in Werine, he would often find himself wandering random streets, feeling the brush of stone warmed by the sun, or cooled by shade. He knew every quarter of his town – he called it his because he defended it.
He paused, glancing up and down the alley; was there a place just like this in Werine? It almost looked familiar. He shook his head; after spending so much time in Werine, wishing to be somewhere else, here he was thinking he was still back home. He had spent a lot of time thinking about home, about his father and mother, especially since his encounter with the goblin. He was a complete stranger in Frecksshire, unable to even speak the common language, and unaware of the habits of beasts in this area. Few of them were as terrifying as hydras, but he knew the characteristics of hydras – could tell when one was preparing to spit fire. Maybe his father had been right, trying to keep him in Werine; Pladt had always assumed it was for selfish reasons, and maybe it still was. Perhaps it was the caged bird who desired freedom the most, while the free bird barely left its perch. Shaking his head, he continued down the alley.
Ahead of him, the road opened into a square, with three other alleys threading away to the quarters of the wind. In the center, rudely formed where the cobblestones had worn away and dislodged, was a small garden of flowers. A floral mirror of the sun that peered through crowding rooftops, marigolds and lilies and chrysanthemums of orange and yellow shone in the midst of dull gray and brown. Pladt stopped short, transfixed by the beauty struggling in the midst of colorless oppression.
The wind, gusting a bit around the rooftops, could almost be heard as waves breaking against a quay. The voices of men – the foresters, he presumed, hitching up teams to wagons – could be bent, just a little, into the cries of gulls. And just like that, he was back in Werine; in a small square not too far from his house there was a garden, less of an accident than this one seemed to be, but that reminded him just as surely that those who could not restrain destruction by bow or sword could still do so by rebuilding.
Pladt moved slowly to the garden, its fragrance soon overpowering the smell of the gutters. The sticky sweet stamens of the lilies pulled toward his nostrils, dancing through his head and rolling around his tongue as he drank them in. This was defiance stronger than the flight of an arrow, resiliency of spirit more solid than a sh
ield. How many times had kobold or hellhound charged through this square? He could see the trampled lilies on the verge. But day after day, told by the absence of weeds, the gardener returned to fix what had been broken.
Jyunta, the garden of Qalat County, had been ravaged for sure, and more than the verge was mauled by tooth and claw. But now it would be weeded and tended, and on its borders the best of defenses; if not the best, then with Pladt’s help the most fletched.
Pladt turned and walked toward the eastern alley, which he thought might start taking him back toward the main gate. He stopped at the edge of the square and turned back for one more look, to remember it as long as he lived.
Then he turned quickly and strode away.
The alley took him straight along, and was joined frequently by others to his right and left. Passing one, he saw two men who were having a quiet conversation. Scimitars hung at their hips, and they looked to Pladt to be quite capable with them. As he walked over, the one leaning against the wall noticed him, and nodded to his partner, who quickly straightened.
“We need archers,” Pladt said as he approached. “I don’t suppose you two already know how to use bows?”
“Filly does,” said the first, gesturing to his partner. “At least, better than me.”
“And your name?” Pladt asked.
“Arik,” the first replied.
“Very well; go over to the main gate, there’s a range being set up,” Pladt said, pointing vaguely to where he thought the main gate might be. “When I get there, I’ll equip you with bows and train you. Okay?”
Arik glanced at Filly, then nodded once. “Sure thing.”
“Thanks,” Pladt said. He turned away, paused, and then turned back. “Say,” he said quietly: “do you guys know which direction the main gate is from here?”
*
Sarah paced her old room – sparse with only a bed, a maple chest and nightstand, and a table that leaned when she wrote – running through words in her mind. She would have had to leave all her best parchments in Frecksshire. She’d forgotten many of the ones she’d left here, and with good reason: they were gibberish, or stained too badly with too many words blotted out, or too powerful for her to attempt just yet.
Hethikto kohthaka. Maybe simply because of its impossibility, those words kept coming back to her mind. Unless hethikto was not a compound word, but one single word she had never learned – which she doubted – it meant five thousand horse-speed: fast enough to travel the width of Burieng in a blink.
Too powerful! It could not happen. But there it was. It was one of the clearest spells on one of the most blotted-out parchments – all the words legible, except the size of the spell. And what it might be useful for.
She had used five horse-speed against Paolound, so the spell was not entirely foreign: but how and why five thousand? This was the trick, and one that sent her pacing the pale line in her old room. Someone had done something that seemed impossible, but maybe only impossible because of one blotted-out word. No matter how small she could think to make the spell, five thousand horse-speed would kill her – should kill anyone. But it was written down, and nothing around it said “never do this, for you will die.”
It should say that, but it didn’t. Jyunta could fall, and she could be killed with everyone else, and all Coberan go with it; still her first question of the God would be: Five thousand? How is that possible?
Perhaps she should be thinking about Jyunta; but no, she had those spells decided: a few to convince Geoffrey that magic was helpful, and a few comfortable others – basic spells that were always effective.
At the size of a tailor’s pin, five thousand horse-speed would be a minor drain, but not very useful. At least, no more useful than an arrow; and magic should always be more useful than man-made implements.
Hethikto kohthaka. She turned and paced back.
*
The work progressed quickly the rest of the day; Geoffrey saw little of Sarah, and he quickly put her out of his mind. By noon, Pladt had gathered fifteen more men and equipped them with bows, and kept the entire contingent – fifty-five was far more than Geoffrey dared hope the young archer would find – on the range until sunset. As the sun sank toward the horizon, Geoffrey called a halt to the work; the gates had been hung, and the east wall was in as good of condition as it would ever be without stonework. The south wall, Geoffrey’s next project, had been readied for wooden support. But, despite the tireless efforts of the laborers, it would not be finished that day.
A red western sky found Geoffrey on the east ramparts, looking over the work. Only the mightiest catapult would make easy work of the defenses here, and from information given to him by Corith, the beasts would not have catapults.
Pladt, too, stood beside Geoffrey on the wall. He had called a halt to training when the troop’s fingers were too raw to effectively hold the string. He gave them each a salve to cool the blisters and prepare them for the forthcoming battle, then joined Geoffrey on the ramparts.
“Do you think they’ll come tonight?” Pladt asked.
Geoffrey folded his arms as he surveyed the plains around the castle and shook his head. “They would be here by now,” he said.
Pladt grinned; Geoffrey glanced at him with a raised eyebrow. “What?” he asked.
“I think that’s the shortest statement you’ve made today,” Pladt replied. He sobered as Geoffrey returned his gaze to the plains without responding. “Why the change?” Pladt asked gently. “I’ve never seen you take charge like that before, even just before you went in to see lord Garoun.”
Geoffrey shrugged with one shoulder. “I’ve never needed to,” he replied simply.
“I didn’t know you were able to,” Pladt said with a snort.
“I was captain of the Uv Fehn; do you remember them?” He sighed. “If you must know, Pladt, I was afraid of taking charge again. I led those men so far astray, distracted by what I thought was right. They loved me too much to argue with me, and they paid dearly for it.” Geoffrey leaned on his hands on the battlement, and closed his eyes. In his mind, he saw campfires surrounded by men who had loved him, whom he had loved, and who were now dead. He saw them surrounded by friends, and then dying alone, and then looking at him with somber and distressed eyes.
He looked up again, trying to chase the visions from his mind. Pladt was looking at him with eyebrows furrowed in concern. He drew a deep breath, and forced a grin. “But after Sarah prepared me days in advance – however she knew to do that – I knew what I would have to do,” he continued. “It came back much easier than I thought it would.”
Pladt grinned compassionately. “It took me some time to convince Corith that you wouldn’t kill him if he made a mistake,” he said.
“Does he know our mission from the Earl yet?” Geoffrey asked.
Pladt shook his head. “I didn’t tell him; Haydren wouldn’t have had the chance to.” He paused. “I haven’t even seen Sarah.”
Geoffrey caught the undertone. “I’m sure she knows what she’s doing,” he said. “At least in part.”
*
The next morning, work resumed early. Satisfied with their ability to shoot their bows, Pladt took the day to instruct them in measuring distances and reloading arrows as fast as they could. With barely a day of training, the display seemed more a comedy but for the tragedy of what might come by tomorrow. By After-Noon, the south wall was finished, and work was done to the stone to reinforce it along the other walls. Though there were only three Master Masons, their apprentices worked quickly, and the walls to the north and west were not in as much disrepair as the other two.
By Evening, Geoffrey called a halt to the work. Though there was daylight left, he anticipated an imminent arrival by the bestial army; they had taken too long already, and the walls were as durable as they could be made with wood. He preferred, instead, to let the men rest for the coming fight. Corith and his men remained out away from the castle, to sound an alarm when the army approached.
/> As daylight faded, Geoffrey and Pladt found themselves once again on the battlements. Wearied from the days’ work, they sat with their backs against the wall. As they discussed the several accomplishments of the day, and marveled at how swiftly the work had progressed, Sarah strode up the stairs, came, and sat beside them.
“Glad you could join us,” Geoffrey said.
“Good evening,” she returned, as she tilted her head back against the wall and closed her eyes.
“Long day?” Pladt asked.
“Several,” she replied. “It feels almost as if I’ve gone across the width of Burieng and back in two blinks of an eye.”
“I feel like that would kill you, not weary you,” Pladt replied.
Sarah laughed long. Rubbing a hand across her forehead, she looked at him appreciatively. “One day, Pladt,” she said, “remind me to tell you why that was the most appropriate thing you could have said.”
“Thank you,” Pladt said with a curious and amused glance at Geoffrey.
“The walls look strong,” she said with a glance around the ramparts. “And a gate? You spoil us, Geoffrey.”
“Hopefully so the enemy does not,” Geoffrey returned.
“I’m serious; I wasn’t sure you could do it, to be honest.”
“Oh?”
“It’s always harder when you command people who don’t know you; it shows something that they listened to you as they did.”
“It was not without missteps,” Geoffrey replied, leaning back against the wall and closing his eyes.
“Even so, we have walls and a gate where there had been none for weeks. And you got it done in two days.” She shook her head.
“I enjoy accomplishing things of material use,” he replied simply; but Sarah felt the undertone. She shook her head again, this time savoring the moment the fog would roll in and Geoffrey would look at her with thankfulness.
Geoffrey’s eyes opened, and he leaned his head forward. Something was wrong, he could feel it. The winds were eddying uncertainly; he glanced at Sarah, whose expression suddenly mirrored his.