Demansk felt a surge of pride; this whole great city, this expression of human will and intelligence and capacity for order and civilization, was the casual daily accomplishment of a Confed army. If they were ordered to move, they’d take it all down before breakfast muster—no use presenting an enemy with a fortress—and do the same again the next evening after a full day’s march. And if they were here for a couple of months, it would be a city in truth—paved streets, sewers, stone buildings.
Then he turned and looked at Preble. I hate sieges. Sieges were an elaborate form of frontal attack, which was a good way to waste men at the best of times. With a siege, all the Confed army’s advantages of flexiblity and articulation were lost. Against an Emerald phalanx . . . well, you didn’t have to run up against the pikepoints. Draw them onto broken ground, have small parties work in along their flanks, disrupt them—then they were yours. Islanders were like quicksilver; if you could get them to stand still for a moment, a hammer blow spattered them, no staying power. But behind a stone wall, even a townsman with a spear could become a hero. You had to go straight at him, and climbing a ladder left you virtually defenseless.
If we can get the causeway close, we can batter the wall down with catapults. The problem with that was that the defenders could shore it up, or build a secondary wall within while you were battering—ready to mousetrap you as you charged in over the rubble. Or we could undermine, use sappers . . . The butcher’s bill is still going to be fearsome. And if it takes too long, we’ll get disease, sure as the gods made the grapes ripen, we’ll have disease. That really frightened him. He’d seen dysentery go through armies like the Sword of Wodep too many times.
“Sir!”
An aide came trotting up. “Sir, Justiciar Demansk—we’ve got a . . . a person, sir, who claims to have urgent news.”
Demansk’s eyebrows went up towards the receding line of his close-cropped grizzled hair. “A person?” he said.
“Claims to be a relative of yours, sir.” The aide’s aristocratic features curled slightly in disdain. “On the off chance that they might have some information I didn’t have them whipped out of the camp, sir.”
The Justiciar lowered the hand he’d been shading his eyes with as he peered towards Preble. “By all means, let’s see this . . . person . . .” he said.
Anything that could distract me from this would be welcome. Even a dancing ape.
A small slight man came trotting up the log stairs of the tower, with an Islander woman at his heels. No, wait a minute, he thought. He looked at bare legs and arms, at the way the stranger walked. That’s not a man, it’s a woman in armor. What looked like Emerald light-infantry kit, bowl helmet with cheekguards, linen corselet with brass shoulderpieces and probably iron scales between the layers of cloth. A trooper was carrying a sword and shield and pair of light javelins behind them, puffing along. . . .
This was out of the ordinary. Then the stranger took off her helmet, and long tawny-auburn hair fell free, nearly to her waist.
Demansk’s eyes went wide. “Helga!” he said . . . almost sputterings.
“Father!”
* * *
“What are they doing?” Enry Sharbonow said, squinting.
“They’re getting ready to build a causeway,” Esmond said. He pointed. “See, they’ve got a good hard-surfaced road right down to the water’s edge. They’ve almost certainly got local pilots and fishermen who can tell them exactly what the shoals are like. Now they’re starting. See those lines of log pilings, a hundred yards apart? Those mark the edges. Between them, they’ve got working parties, their troops and whatever civilians they can round up, unloading those oxcarts full of rock—boulders, up to sixty pounds. See how they’re passing them hand to hand? They’ll pile those up until they get above the surface, compact them, then cover with a layer of smaller rock. By the time it’s safely above high-tide level, they’ll have a section of first-class paved road.”