Blackstone (Book 2) (19 page)

“Spoilsport.” Resigned, the former assassin turned and
jogged off, the fastest pace he could manage in these crowded conditions.

Wolf watched him go with a slight frown wrinkling his brow.
The kid didn’t really think he could handle that many opponents at once, did
he? Granted, they weren’t properly armed or trained, but still…. Shrugging this
off, he went back to staring over the wall. How had they managed to creep in
this close without anyone noticing? That really worried him.

“Fei!”

“What?”

He pointed a finger down toward the ground in an exaggerated
motion.

Cocking his head in puzzlement, Fei leaned further out, his
torso nearly horizontal to the ground. When he saw what Wolf was gesturing to,
he started swearing long and creatively. Wolf just grinned at him, no longer
worried about anyone sneaking past. Fei’s pride wouldn’t allow him to make the
same mistake twice.

Assured that Fei would now keep a proper watch, he turned
and went to the other side of the wall, moving closer to their trap so that he
could ensure that nothing went wrong over there. People good naturedly shifted
so that he could have room to lean up against the wall and look out.

Rune, in spite of what he said, had gone back down to ground
level and was fighting anyone stupid enough to climb through the breach. Even
as he watched, the boy took down one man with a sharp kick to the face before
spinning in the air like a dancer and landing another kick to back of a man’s
skull. Watching Rune fight, he could honestly believe that the boy didn’t have
to obey the rules of gravity.

The man on Wolf’s right pointed a finger and jutted his chin
toward the ground. “He need help?”

“Naw,” Wolf assured him…what was the man’s name again?
Asher? “Boy’s fine.”

Asher let out a low whistle. “Never seen a man that can
fight like that. Where he from?”

“Sateren.”

“In Wynngaard?”

“Yup.”

Asher nodded sagely, as if that answered everything. “How
many trying to get into that breach?”

“About three dozen,” Wolf answered, only to pause and
recount. “Well, there’s probably two dozen left now.” Rune and the archers had
quite efficiently whittled that number down.

“That’s not enough to spring the trap for,” Asher said
slowly with a frown.

“We won’t,” Wolf assured him absently. Turning, he looked
toward the north-easterly section of the city. “Unless the army turns around
and comes back our direction, we won’t need to use it.”

In a way, Wolf hoped they wouldn’t need it. He hoped that
instead, the army would wear themselves out trying to get into the walls, and
it wouldn’t come down to their desperate plan.

Siobhan somehow got drafted into a
supply coordinator. She went from one end of the city to the other, talking to
the commanders of each section and getting an estimate of how many arrows,
spears, and caltrops they needed. Then she would hoof it back to the
blacksmiths scattered all over town, relaying the message. Before the end of
the day, she was footsore and had quite the sunburn across her nose. She was
morosely aware that the main reason she had been volunteered for this by
Darrens and Hyun Woo was because it was her enforcers that were commanders and
Beirly was the man in charge of the smithies. She was automatically the person
that everyone would listen to, so thereby had the job by default.

Ducking through the door of the
smithy, she blinked and paused to let her eyes adjust to the dimmer lighting.
When she could see properly again, she searched out Beirly, finding him bent
over an anvil and hammering something, sparks flying. “Beirly!”

He struck once more before his
head come up. “Shi! Got orders for us?”

“I need,” she pulled out the scrap
of paper with her notes on it from her belt pouch before rattling off, “Five
hundred arrows, one hundred spears, and as many caltrops as you can turn out.
They said they could easily use a thousand of them but weren’t sure how much
time it takes to make them.”

“Time-wise, we can turn out one
every five minutes or so,” he answered, pulling off his gloves before
approaching her. He held out his hand for the list, which she gave over. “It’s
material we’re lacking. Not sure if I can make that many with the ore we have
on hand.”

That would be a problem. It was
something they hadn’t thought to ask Winziane for and now that the army was
literally pounding on their walls, they had no way to even get it here. At
least, not in time to do any good. “Do what you can.”

“Will do,” he responded with a
sloppy salute. “But what’s it like out there? We’re only hearing bits and
snatches in here.”

“Well, they tried attacking the
southern wall first, which is Wolf and Fei’s section.”

Beirly shook his head in pity. “Those
poor fools. Didn’t get far, I bet.”

“You’d win that bet. Anyway, they
retreated and went around to the other side and attacked the northern section.”

Cocking his head, Beirly said
slowly, “Isn’t Markl and Ryu Jin Ho in charge there?”

“Sure are. While I was up there on
the wall with them, things were getting heated.” Markl had been nervous about
her being up there, too, but she’d stayed well out of the way to avoid getting
hit by all the arrows flying about. “They were retreating from that section when
I left. Ryu Jin Ho says that from the way they were reacting, it seems they’re
dispirited. They’re not making the same sort of headway here that they have the
previous three cities.”

“True,” Beirly agreed with a sage
nod. “The other times they attacked, it was a quick and easy victory for them.
So does he think they’ll give up?”

“He gives it fifty-fifty odds.”
Siobhan personally hoped they did. As soon as they had Converse secure, they
could go and reclaim Goldschmidt. “But whether they leave or not, we’ll need
everything I just ordered. It’ll come in handy when we march for Goldschmidt if
nothing else.”

“Roger that.” Clapping his hands
loudly, he called back toward the other smiths working, “We have orders to
fill!”

She waved him on and retreated
back outside, heading for the opposite end of the city, which was the southern
wall. Siobhan wanted to know if the army really had given up or had simply
retreated for now. While she was heading that direction, though, she had every
intention of stopping in at the clinic and checking on Conli, Sylvie, and
Denney. Last she’d seen, Conli had drafted both of them to help. Even though
the walls hadn’t been breached, he was still getting a steady stream of
patients coming in.

When Conli had been tasked with
creating a clinic, he had wisely chosen a location toward the center of the
city so that everyone could reach him fairly quickly. There were two inns
designated as hospitals, Conli in charge of one, and a physician named Landgrave
in charge of the other. As Siobhan stepped onto the porch, she saw that both
inns had the front doors wide open and people were sitting on the cots
scattered around inside, waiting to be treated.

They had a line already?

Disturbed, she went inside, looking
for her people. In this sea of brunettes, Conli and Denney stood out and
Siobhan spotted them easily. They were in the far back of the main room,
gathering up supplies in a basket, Conli giving out instructions to his niece
in a calm tone. Sylvie was a little harder to find, at least she was until she
stood up. Catching her eye, Siobhan waved her over, not wanting to try to
navigate this labyrinth of cots and injured people. With the way she felt right
now, her balance was questionable, and she’d surely trip over something.

Sylvie, of course, had no problem
weaving her way through all of the mess. She even looked graceful doing it.
(Siobhan was going to figure out how she pulled that trick off one of these
days.)

“Siobhan,” she greeted in relief.
“Finally, someone that can give us an idea of what’s truly going on. We’re
getting pieces of it here. What’s happening?”

Repeating what she had told
Beirly, Siobhan told her everything she knew, ending with, “I’m heading to Wolf
and Fei’s section next. My news is about a half hour out of date right now and
I’m not sure what’s happened since I left the northern section.”

“So, Markl…?” Sylvie asked in
concern.

“Fine,” she assured her. “Just
fine. He’s staying properly behind a shield while giving orders.”

Sylvie’s eyes fluttered shut in a
gesture of relief. “Thank mercy.”

“But I’m surprised by how many
wounded are in here.” Siobhan looked around in dismay. If it was like this
already, what happened if that army really did manage to breach the walls?
Granted, that didn’t look likely at this point, but the possibility was still
there.

“Most of them have been shot, a
few burns from the smithies where they pushed themselves too hard, and a few
from heatstroke.”

Heatstroke? Well, granted, it was
a warm day and if someone was working in front of a roaring fire all day, it
would be easy to overheat. “Nothing serious, I hope?”

“Nothing critical, anyway. We’ve
been able to treat and bandage all of it. Conli’s only had to do surgery twice,
to get a barbed arrow out.”

Siobhan winced at the thought.
Barbed arrows were nasty. “Well, pace yourselves. Make sure to take a break and
eat. The army might have retreated for good, or maybe just for tonight, but
either way, you should be able to rest for at least a few hours.”

“I’ll pass it along,” Sylvie
promised.

Satisfied that things were going
well enough here, she waved at the other two in the back, who returned the
gesture, before she went back out. Siobhan knew that she wouldn’t rest well
until she knew for certain what was happening outside the walls. Despite the
fact that she was beyond tired and footsore, she picked up her pace a little.

When she reached the southern
wall’s main stairs, it was relatively quiet up top. Oh, people were talking,
and there was runners going back and forth, but it wasn’t nearly the bedlam of
activity that she associated with fighting. Had the army not come this
direction, then? Hope rising in her chest, she put more strength into her legs,
climbing up with as much speed as she could muster. When she reached the top,
she pushed through and leaned her torso against the stone, looking out.

The army had indeed retreated away
from the walls, but only as far as they needed to in order to stay out of range
of the archers. They were milling about, talking with each other, although of
course she couldn’t hear a word from this distance. Siobhan waited for several
minutes, breath caught in her throat, waiting to see what they would do.

“They aren’t leaving,” Fei said
from behind her.

Jumping, she snapped around to
find him right next to her, his eyes trained on the army as well. “Fei! Warn a
woman. I nearly had heart failure.”

His grin was fleeting but
mischievous and she knew he’d done that on purpose just to tease her. Normally
she’d get revenge, but at this moment seeing him relaxed enough to joke
actually put her at ease.

Forgiving him just this once, she
jerked a thumb at the army. “You’re sure they’re not leaving?”

“They’ve been acting like that for
a good twenty minutes now. If they were going to abandon Converse, they’d have
done it by now.” His eyes narrowed into a thoughtful frown. “I don’t think the
army has a commander, as such, but someone over there is certainly giving them
directions. They don’t move with quick precision, like a trained soldier would,
but they do move altogether. It just takes a while to get them to change their
course.”

Well, he would know the
difference, as he had been trained by some of the best. Siobhan trusted his
opinion on this. “So what do you think they’ll do?”

“Stay the night, try again in the
morning. Their morale is low right now after two failed attempts. Also, the
light is failing. They don’t have time to try a third attempt today.”

Not quite the answer that she had
hoped for, but better than the alternative. Everyone was beyond tired today and
at their limits. It would be best to have at least a night of rest before they
went back to fighting the next day. “So what happens now?”

“We don’t think they’ll try
anything else today.” Fei inclined his head to the left. “Wolf-ren is setting
up a night guard now, so that we can rotate watches and have a chance to rest.”

“Should I send up food or blankets
or anything?”

“Someone else is already doing
that for us.” Fei gave her a study from head to toe before adding, “And you look
as tired as we do. I think you should go back and rest first.”

She really couldn’t argue against
that. “I need to report back to Darrens, but I’ll do that. See you both back at
the inn, then?”

He nodded in affirmation. “As soon
as we’re done here. Hopefully, the fools will rest tonight and wait until the
morning to attack.”

“I second that.”

ӜӜӜ

Her quick report to Darrens turned
out to be anything but quick. Darrens had his own sources of news for what was
happening, so by the time she made it to headquarters, he already knew and in
far more detail than she did. He only asked her questions about weapons
supplies before pointing her to a chair.

All of the major commanders of
Converse had been summoned to him, Wolf and Fei arriving minutes after she did.
Darrens directed people to sit with the simple direction of one finger pointing
to available chairs around the large table he had designated as his temporary
desk. Hyun Woo already sat at his side, as well as Ryu Jin Ho, Markl, and
Tran. 

Once everyone was seated, Darrens
cleared his throat to get their full attention. “Alright, I’ve been getting
field reports throughout the day, so I more or less know what happened. What I
want answered is this: how well are our plans holding up?”

“Well,” Hyun Woo assured him with
quiet confidence. “We have not needed to implement even half of what we have
planned.”

Darrens looked relieved at this
response. “So what plan do we have for tomorrow?”

Hyun Woo did not immediately reply
but instead looked at his students, waiting for them to answer.

Wolf glanced back and forth
between Tran and Markl before offering, “We didn’t use our trap at all today.
We didn’t get enough people drawn into it to warrant springing it, so I held
off.”

“And I didn’t lead my team in from
the coast because of that,” Tran added with a sour expression. The way his eyes
cut to Wolf suggested he was not happy to have stood in standby mode all day.

“I think tomorrow we should try to
draw them into the trap.” Fei steepled his fingers in front of his face, eyes
on the maps strewn across the table. “We do not wish to simply fight them to a
standstill here, but to squash them utterly. If we do not, we will have to
fight a similar battle in the future.”

“Wars of attrition are to be
avoided at all costs,” Hyun Woo agreed.

Siobhan watched this conversation
play out and could tell that even though there was no smile on Hyun Woo’s face,
internally the man was beaming. His students had learned well, and were
obviously learning more as they put what they had learned to use into actual
combat.

Markl lifted a finger, calling
attention to himself. “So tomorrow, I need to make it absolutely impossible for
them to come anywhere near the northern section of the city? Drive them south,
toward the trap?”

Wolf grunted agreement. “It’d be
easy to do if we layered that section with all the caltrops and left my side
clear of them.”