“Good enough,” rumbled Forent. “I’ll have the stakes brought out again. Haven’t had to use them here since the third day of the occupation, but it won’t hurt at all to have a reminder. I’ll have them set up on the docks, in plain view of the whole city.”
“How did the evacuation itself go?” asked Thicelt. “That must have been pure chaos.”
“The gods, yes! It was a madhouse. Still”—he gave Demansk a look of admiration which any Vanbert patriarch would have basked in—”the whole thing went pretty much exactly the way Father predicted. I was surprised, to tell you the truth. I thought . . .”
He let the disrespectful notion trail off. Even—a rarity, this, to be treasured!—had a guilty look on his face.
Demansk barked a laugh. “I was guessing, Trae, not predicting. An educated and informed guess, true enough. But the whole thing was still a gamble.”
Demansk rose, went to a side table, and poured himself a goblet of wine. This would be the first cup of wine he’d allowed himself since the occupation began, weeks ago. But the news of how Trae had handled the mutiny was cause enough for celebration. Demansk was struggling not to let his pride show too openly.
My son! Damn me who will, but this too was my doing. I always knew Trae had the brains—the gods know he’s good-humored—but I was never sure he had the steel.
When he turned back, however, his expression was simply one of mild satisfaction. The august patriarch. Approving of his offspring, of course, but still finding it necessary to correct minor errors.
“Albrecht went berserk, didn’t he, when he got the news I’d taken the archipelago? I knew he would, the stinking pig. So he ordered an all-out assault across that causeway he’s been building for the past year. The kind of frontal attack that produces casualties worse than anything.”
Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Forent wincing. The ex-sergeant knew exactly what Demansk was talking about.
Demansk resumed his seat. “Let me explain a little secret of siegecraft to you, Trae. The thing that usually breaks the defenders’ lines, at the end, is when the men on the fortifications start panicking. Not for themselves, but for their families. They know they’re going to lose, you see, and so they desert their posts in order to try to find their own folks in the city. And save them—the gods alone know how—from the horrors of the ensuing sack.”
Trae was watching him intently. Possibly for the first time in his life, Demansk’s youngest son had not a trace of his usual cockiness. “That’s what your evacuation prevented,” continued Demansk. “Once the Islanders on Preble understood that there was a chance of saving their families—a chance which got better the more fierce a resistance they put up—most of the men would have stayed at their posts. And fought like demons.”
“Truth,” uttered Nappur. “There really aren’t all that many cowards in the world, when the crunch comes down.” He winced again. “I don’t even want to think what kind of casualties Albrecht’s soldiers suffered. But I’ll tell you this—anyone Trae didn’t evacuate from Preble was dead within a day. Including household pets. That would have been a massacre.”
“I got off mostly women, children and old folks,” agreed Trae. “Not too many men of fighting age.”
“And you were expecting?” growled Thicelt. “No one’s ever accused we Islanders of being pussies, you know, whatever else they say about us.”
Demansk finished his wine. For a moment, he considered a second cup, but dismissed the idea. Pleased or not, he still had a titan’s work ahead of him.
“Let this be a lesson to you, scion of mine. If at all possible, always leave your enemy with an escape route. A cornered rat is dangerous, always is. Whereas a rat huddling in a hole, after you’ve taken the house, is just a nuisance.”
He toyed with the empty cup in his hands, for a moment. “What Albrecht should have done is immediately offered Preble the same kind of terms I gave the Islanders elsewhere. News of my conquest of the archipelago will have reached the defenders of Preble too. They’d know, then, that further resistance was hopeless.”