Honor among thieves

Chapter Eighty-Three

“Halloo! Halloo! Ness! People of Ness! Is someone in charge up there? There must be someone in charge. The people of Skrae can’t clean their bottoms without someone telling them how to do it. Halloo! Oh, cowards! We’d like to speak with you, cowards!”

Hurlind the scold had been shouting up at the walls outside King’s Gate all day. He was growing hoarse, and still no one would come out and address him. There had been a few attempts early in the day to throw garbage down on the scold, but that just encouraged the clown.

Morget itched with the desire to slap Hurlind down into the mud-just to get some quiet. He didn’t dare, however. Hurlind was operating under Morg’s direct order. The Great Chieftain wanted to talk to the leaders of Ness. Convince them, through reason, that it was in their best interest to surrender.

“That’s unlikely to work,” Balint pointed out. The two of them sat in Morg’s tent, brooding. Outside, a thin freezing rain was falling. It didn’t seem to bother Hurlind.

“You think them unreasonable people?” Morget asked.

“Hardly. They’re smarter than you lot. Of course, a bucket full of spotty turnips is, too. No. They’ll have heard what happened at Helstrow. Of the way dead King Ulfram tried to make parley with Morg, and got skewered up the shitpipe for it. No, they won’t come out and play nice.”

“Let us then, you and I, discuss better ways,” Morget said. “We took Redweir quick enough.”

“By sapping? Sure, we can try sapping,” Balint said with a shrug. She seemed to have accepted the collar around her neck, finally. She rarely ever complained about her thralldom anymore. “The walls here are better built than at Redweir, though. Thicker, better reinforced, and they go down deeper, in proper casements. Turns out a Burgrave can afford better engineers than a bunch of impotent monks.”

“So it can’t be done?”

“I didn’t say that,” Balint admonished. “But it’ll take longer, and we’ll need to dig multiple tunnels. It’ll take a week or so.”

“What could you do in the meantime? What other ideas have you?”

“We could build siege engines,” she said. “I don’t have the tools or the skilled laborers here for proper mangonels or siege towers but I could probably build some simple trebuchets. Won’t bring down the wall, but we can make the people inside wish they could crawl up their own arseholes.”

Morget nodded in interest. “Could they be rigged to throw balls of flaming pitch? We could burn those wooden hoardings off the walls.”

“Now there you’re thinking, old son. Why, I know some recipes for-”

At the flap of the tent, someone cleared his throat. Morget jumped up at once and grabbed his axe. It was the Great Chieftain, Morg himself, eavesdropping on them.

“All good ideas,” Morg said. “It might come to that. But for now, I want you two to stop this talk.”

“You don’t want us even thinking out loud?” Balint asked. “We weren’t planning anything for real yet.”

“For now I want to try a more gentle option,” Morg told the dwarf.

Morget’s eyes narrowed. “Great Chieftain. There are murmurings in the tents. They have been calling you Morg the Merciful again. It is my duty as your man to give you warning.”

“And so you have. I give little credence to men who whisper. Those are men afraid to act. When they talk openly of revolt, tell me again,” Morg said. “Now, come with me, Mountainslayer. Ness has finally agreed to talk.”

Father and son tramped through the mud of the barbarian camp. This had all been fields once, fertile fields full of waving grain. Now it was a great brown soup that sucked at their boots and threatened to swallow the camp entire.

There was little of the romantic in the investment of a siege. Everywhere barbarians were bending their hands to construction work-building enormous bread ovens, constructing crude mantlets, fencing in paddocks for livestock. The vast majority of the horde languished in their sodden tents, however, getting drunk. They knew they might be here all winter and wanted to get started on warming themselves now.

“Father,” Morget tried again as they wended their way through the randomly placed tents, “they say you’ve lost your fire. That you won’t fight-and if you won’t fight, they want someone else for Great Chieftain. Someone who will crush this place.”

“If it comes to that, I say good luck to them. You’ve besieged how many cities, Mountainslayer? One? And it fell within a week. I’m very proud of that, my boy. But until you’ve sat outside a curtain wall for six months, getting fat and lazy but always wondering if today is the day, the day you have to try your iron against that of some desperate man who just wants to defend his children… well. Don’t try to teach your grandmother how to skin a deer.”

They came to the end of the camp. A broad open space two hundred yards across separated the camp from the city wall-enough distance to make archers think twice before wasting arrows on potshots. Morgain and her riders were the only ones daring enough to enter that disputed zone. Now Morg led Morget into the yellowed grass and together they looked up at the wall.

“That right there,” Morg said, “is what separates us from the westerners. They can build things like this wall. That’s where their strength lies.”

“There’s none in their arms, we’ve proved that.” Morget laughed. “Great Chieftain, we have no need of walls! Tents are enough for your warriors.” Walls had always been the emblem of the great injustice that locked the clans away on the dry and harsh eastern steppes. The people of Skrae had pushed them first from their walled cities, then back beyond the Whitewall Mountains, where they’d been all but imprisoned until the day Cloudblade fell. In the stories the scolds told, walls were objects of hatred and derision. “Walls! I’d tear this one down with my own hands, if I had the time.”

Morg sighed. “Look at it. Really look at it. Right now it looks like cowardice and frustration. But imagine, if you can, what it would be like to own that. To be able to stand behind it and never worry about enemies raiding your camp again.”

It was impressive, Morget had to admit. Twenty-five feet of closely fitted stone, mortared together and then dressed to give protection to the mortar. No amount of strength-of-arms could penetrate that defense. They would have to find a way in through stealth, or engineering, or, as Morg seemed to want to try, promises. “They called down a few minutes ago,” he told his son. “They’re going to send someone to talk to us. Finally.”

“Talk. They wish to talk,” Morget muttered.

“Yes. If one wishes to offer terms of surrender, one must be able to speak,” Morg pointed out. “Oh, don’t get too excited. I doubt they’ll give in so easily. They’ll want concessions, and we’ll need to prove we bargain in good faith. But if we could take this city without losing a single berserker, I’d not balk at the price.”

“There’s more glory in breaking our way in by force,” Morget pointed out.

“Glory. Yes. Tell me, Mountainslayer-if we bring down that wall, what do we gain?” Morg asked.

Morget hated it when his father asked him leading questions. It meant there was a lesson to be imparted. His face burned even as it was flecked with cold winter rain. “We could storm inside, slaughter the inhabitants, and take the city for our own.”

“And hold it for how long? The Army of Free Men is sticking close. Right now they’re afraid to engage us, but what if we stole their city? Do you think they would hold back then?”

“I would relish the chance to destroy them!”

“Ah,” Morg said, “but would you get that chance? Once we were inside, we would become the besieged. We would be the defenders. And if the wall is damaged at the time the Burgrave arrives-if there is a massive hole in one side of our only protection-how will we defend ourselves? I want this place intact, Mountainslayer. I want it in the same condition I found it. Otherwise we gain nothing by taking it. I’ll remind you, it was your plan to come out here in the first place.”

Morget seethed but said nothing. The whispering in the tents was growing louder every day. When it became open muttering, he would move.

But not until then. Morget trusted his own arm. He trusted the steel of his axe. But he was wise enough to know that without the support of the clans, his own strength would not be enough to get him what he wanted.

“Halloo!” Hurlind shouted again. “You in there! Come show us some sign you haven’t forgotten us. You’ll break our hearts! Halloo! Show yourselves or we’ll write songs about how craven you were. Do you want your children to hear songs like that? Do you want history to remember you as cowards?”

Morg pointed upward. There was definitely movement atop the wall now. A man was coming forward. He wore a coat of plate that covered him head-to-toe in steel, and a great helm with a gilt cornucopia welded to its top. He seemed to have trouble walking, as if unaccustomed to wearing so much metal.

The man bent forward at the wait, so he could look down over the side of the wall. Then he fussed with his helmet, as if trying to get a better view through its eyeslits. Morget heard him cursing, his voice hollow and echoing inside the helmet. Then the man of Ness shrugged off the great helm with a sigh of disgust, and for the first time Morget saw his face.

“Malden?” he shouted upward.

The little thief stared back down at him. “Morget? Fancy meeting you like this.”

“Imagine my surprise, at being hailed by a thief,” Morget shouted back.

“It’s Lord Mayor Malden now.”

“They put you in charge?” Morget boomed out a violent laugh. “Malden! I must admit, it’s very good to see you up there! I was worried this place would be defended by an actual soldier!”

“Is that some kind of jibe at my expense? I never could figure out your wit, Morget. But then, I never went looking for it with a magnifying glass. Look, what do you want? You-the other one-you’re Morg, right? The barbarian king?”

“We don’t have kings,” Morg said, with the air of a man repeating words he had spoken a thousand times before. “The clans rule themselves. They call me their Great Chieftain.”

“Morg the Wise! Morg the conqueror of North Tyndale, Morg the Master of Helstrow, Morg, friend of dogs! Morg whose sword is not magical, but who needeth not such toys to-”

Morg shut Hurlind up with a pointed glance.

“So you’re the famous Malden?” the Great Chieftain asked when he had quiet again. “Well met, friend. Morget’s spoken often of you. He said you were instrumental in helping to bring down Cloudblade. Without you he might have stepped into a trap under the mountain and hurt his foot.”

“Oh, now you’re just insulting me,” Malden said. “I’m ever so deeply offended.”

Morg grinned. It looked like he found Malden entertaining. Morget had always found the little man annoying himself. Such a weakling. He’d never understood why Croy had chosen this rodent to carry an Ancient Blade.

Morg bowed low to the thief. “Forgive my transgression. I’ve come to make you an offer.”

“Please don’t be surprised when I tell you to go fuck yourself,” Malden called down. “But I’ll do you the honor of hearing the offer before I reject it.”

Morg nodded happily. “All right, then! We all know each other. Perhaps we can talk like rational beings. Malden, you’re in trouble. I think you know that. If we have to take this city by force, my clans aren’t going to be polite about it. They’ll rape your women, cut ears off your men, and eat every animal they find inside your walls. That’s just their way.”

“So I’ve heard,” Malden said. “That’s why I didn’t invite you in to break fast with me this morning.”

Morg shrugged. “I won’t be able to stop them if it comes to that. I can’t tell them what to do, not in the heat of victory. What I can do is give you another option. You can open your gates now. You can march out with whatever you can carry on your backs. I’ll give my word that no citizen of Ness will come to any harm.”

“I’ve heard about your word as well. Ulfram V trusted your word. Every man in Skrae knows your secret, Morg: you cheat. That’s the only way you can win.”

“I won’t make this offer again,” Morg pointed out.

“Good,” Malden said. “Then I won’t have to tell you to dine on my shit again. I’ve never enjoyed profanity.” With that, the thief disappeared from the battlements.

Morg looked almost saddened that his offer had been rejected. Had he seriously believed the westerners would even consider it? No warrior could have borne the shame of just walking away from a battlefield. Of course, Malden was no warrior-Morget knew that from personal experience.

The Great Chieftain turned and headed back into the camp, with Morget trailing after him. They headed directly for Morget’s tent, where Balint waited for them. Outside the tent Morg sighed deeply. He stared down at the frost-withered grass and seemed to be convincing himself of something. Morget left him to his thoughts, knowing he’d already pushed his father enough that day.

After a while Morg nodded to himself and pushed his way into the tent. Morget followed close behind.

“Nice chat with the locals?” Balint asked. “Did you achieve much?”

The Great Chieftain sat down on a stool and bowed his head. “I must take this city, and soon,” he told the dwarf. She nodded, her eyes suddenly bright with excitement. “I want to keep the wall intact. I don’t want to set the place on fire with balls of burning pitch either.” He sighed deeply. “Other than that, I’m open to suggestions.”