“They did, my lady, rye and barley, as is customary. Even a few oats. But those men from Varre did trample the fields. See, there.” He waved a hand but he could have been waving at anything. “We heard that they confiscated the grain stores and even burned some, but that last I just can’t believe.”
Sanglant’s gaze had drifted back to the palace and tower on the hill. From this height, he could discern the footprints of more ancient structures where the newer buildings of the wooden palace and stone donjon overlapped the mark of ancient walls. Long ago a Dariyan outpost had stood here and before that a yet more ancient holding constructed with huge stones set in place, so the legend told, by daimones of the upper air. The Dariyans had worked with dressed stone blocks, so Heribert had instructed him, and it was easy to imagine a workforce of men hauling such manageable material up an incline. But massive stones could as easily have flown as been hauled, even on rollers; the story of the daimones building them with magic made as much sense as any other.
“Hoping for a miracle, some folk hung out the feast day streamers when first day of summer dawned,” said the old sergeant.
“I can’t make them out from here,” said Liutgard. She looked at Sanglant. “How do we win back my city?”
He surveyed the valley of Kassel. On the east the steep rise of hills made a natural barrier, which had been breached in Dariyan times with a massive ramp constructed of rubble and faced with stone. “There the Hellweg emerges from the forest,” he said, pointing to a scar in the forest cover where the ridge edge dipped lowest. “We’ll be easily visible as we descend the ramp. There is no other reasonable route down into the valley. So if we ride straight in, they will certainly know in advance that we are coming. Sergeant, how many men hold the palace?”
“Perhaps a hundred.”
“Even with the men we have, we’ll be hard put to take the tower in a frontal attack,” said Liutgard. “It’s built to withstand a siege.”
“Yet if we wait for the rest of the Varren army to come up, we’ll find ourselves caught between the enemy at the heart of the town and that which surrounds us from without. I do not like to think of setting a siege only to be besieged myself. Is there some other way into the tower, Sergeant? A river gate? A crawling space where a small group of men can creep in to surprise the defenders?”