Conrad hesitated. “Just begun, Sir? I don't quite understand.”
“Do you think I'm going to leave my enemies like this?” He pointed at the castle. “Strong in their position while we roam, defenseless, around the countryside like a pack of wounded dogs, or, God forbid, go to sleep? What do you think their first action would be? We have just burned their homes to the ground! They would set upon us, kill at will, and retreat into their fortress faster than a hunting hawk!”
Conrad swallowed.
“No, no. I have other plans.” With energetic gestures, the commander encircled the whole of the surrounding countryside.
“Command the men to dig a ditch that surrounds the castle, just out of bow range. Then, while half of them keeps watch, tell the other half to cross the river and go into the forest. Fell as many trees as you can without your arms falling off and bring them back here!”
“Trees, Sir?”
“What are you, Conrad, a brainless worm? We will erect fortifications around the entire castle of Luntberg. Palisades, spikes, watchtowers. We will watch them with as much vigilance as a fox does a rabbit hole!”
“But,” Conrad dared to object, “a rabbit always comes out of its hole someday. Lady Ayla may not.”
“True.” Sir Luca rubbed his hands together. “But a rabbit may have many exits to its burrow. She has none. Go and do as you are bidden!”
Without further argument, Conrad bowed and left to seek his men.
Sir Luca grinned up at the dark castle evilly. He would get his revenge. Maybe not today. Maybe not tomorrow. Maybe not even in a week or two. But once the inhabitants of the castle ran out of food, it would get interesting. When they ran out of animals to kill and devour, it would get amusing. And when they ran out of boot soles to chew, it would get marvelous.
He would fling a weapon at them that was a hundred times more terrible than the missile of a trebuchet: hunger.
*~*~**~*~*
“Excuse me, Sir. Have we met before?”
The question startled Reuben out of his raging melancholy. He threw the old knight, Sir Isenbard, a piercing look. “Don't think so. I think I would have remembered somebody that annoying.”
The other man pursed his lips, but said in reply only, “I do not mean that we have been formerly introduced. I only fancy that I saw you once before, many, many years ago.”
“Couldn't have been that many,” Reuben grunted. “I'm not an old greybeard like you.”
“You most definitely aren't. Tell me, Sir, were you never taught to respect your elders?”
“I was. Couldn't see the point of it, though, really. They all were too damnably stupid and easily beaten.”
“Ah!” The old knight clapped his hands together. “Now I remember! Weren't you at the great tournament in Schweinfurt, in the year of our Lord 1229?”
Reuben had to muster all his self-control not to twitch at these words. Damnation! The old fool had seen him! What was worse, he had seen him before the dungeon. Before the event that turned Reuben's life upside down and made him into what he was today.
“I doubt that very much,” he said with as much disdain as he could muster. “I'm a merchant. What would I want at a tournament but to sell wine to cheering fools and disappointed losers? And I have people who do that for me.”
“A merchant?” The old man eyed Reuben's massive figure—6 feet 7 inches of pure muscle, a hard-jawed face, and a mess of long black hair—with disbelief. “Forgive me, but you don't look very much like any merchant I have ever seen.”
“And you,” retorted Reuben with a smirk, “don't look like any fool[3] I've ever seen. You're missing the colorful costume and the hat with bells on it. Appearances can be deceptive.”
The eyes of the old knight almost popped out of their sockets.
“Very good!” Reuben clapped. “You look slightly more like a fool now! When the siege is over, I can procure a costume for you, if you wish. I'll even sell it to you at half the usual price, since you're obviously so talented.”
“I wonder how you have survived to your current age, with a tongue as insolent as yours,” the old knight said icily.
By killing anyone who tried to cut it out, grandfather, Reuben thought, but he said nothing. He had accomplished his goal. The aged man was now fully concentrated on his anger and wounded honor instead of thinking about where he might have met Reuben before.
Though, Reuben thought to himself dryly, trying to hide who he was from this old wreck would be a wasted effort. After all, Ayla knew. One who knew was enough. One who knew was one too many. Surely, she would have told the entire castle of his true identity by now.
But then, why hadn't the castle guards come to fetch him yet?
As if in answer to his question, he heard a sound: the heavy boots of at least a dozen guards approaching. Closer and closer they came, until they were stopped by the guards before the door. Reuben's heart was hammering fiercely, and he gripped the candlestick with iron strength, not bothering to conceal his feelings. The old knight looked at him strangely as he saw emotions battle on the face of the younger man.
What did the guards want? Reuben wasn't sure, but he feared he knew. Had Lady Ayla finally decided to fulfill her promise and present him with a knotted rope?
“Halt!” The guards outside the room demanded of the newcomers. “What brings you here?”
“Orders from Lady Ayla,” Reuben heard another guard reply. “We are to bring the convalescent to her immediately.”
What Rats Cannot Climb
Burchard found Ayla in a quiet corner of the back yard, sitting on a barrel, her face wet all over.
“There you are!” he exclaimed, staring at the wetness on her face. “What is the matter with you?” He looked up at the perfectly clear night sky. Still, it wasn't raining. “Wait a minute…you…you haven't been crying, have you?”
She shrugged and tried to conceal her face behind her hand. “Maybe a bit,” she whispered.
“Why, though? What's the matter?”
A half-hysterical little chuckle escaped her. “You mean, apart from the siege and the powerful noble who wants to force me into marriage?”
“Well…err…If you put it like that…”
Nonplussed, Burchard scratched the hairy back of his head. He had never been very good at dealing with emotions—probably because he didn't have that many himself, he thought. What did one do with a weeping female?
Ah, yes!
Hurriedly, he reached into his pocket and pulled out a wrinkled, but reasonably clean, handkerchief, which he held out to his mistress.
“Here, Milady.”
“Th-thanks.” Ayla took the piece of linen and blew her nose as ladylike as was possible. Afterwards, she dried her eyes and wanted to hand the handkerchief back to her steward, but he refused.
“Keep it.” He looked at her closely, frowning. “You look like you're going to need it again soon enough. Honestly, Milady, what is the matter? You have been through plenty and have never reacted like this before.”
She shrugged again, hesitating for a moment. Finally, she said, “Well, I think it all caught up with me, that's all.”
The steward's expression softened. Ayla was such a resilient personality, he sometimes forgot she was only a girl of seventeen years.
“Then I will go away and not bother you just now.”
“What is it that you wanted, Burchard?”
“I wished to tell you that Sir Rudolfus wants to speak to you about our supplies. Do you remember? You put him in charge of storing and rationing. But if you are too distressed right now…”
“No, no.” She interrupted him with a wave of her hand. Determinedly, she blew her nose again, this time not at all ladylike, and rose from the barrel she had been sitting on. “I have not the time for foolishness. Lead me to him.”
*~*~**~*~*
Sir Rudolfus was waiting for her down in the cellar. As Burchard opened the door for her and held the torch he carried aloft so she might pass, Ayla caught a gl
impse of the young knight's long, eager face and big red ears.
Well, she thought. Here's one, at least, who doesn't seem to be particularly upset about the fact that we're all doomed to a slow death. But maybe he's juggling too many numbers in his head to think of that.
“Good day, Milady, good day,” he welcomed her, gesturing for her to come nearer with the slate pencil he held in one hand.
“It is the middle of the night,” observed Ayla.
“Is it?” Sir Rudolfus blinked at her and scratched himself behind one of his big ears with the pencil. Then he brightened, pointing at the dark vaulted ceiling of the cellar and the torches burning around them on the walls. “Kind of hard to tell down here, isn't it, though?”
“You've been down here all night?” Ayla asked, incredulous.
“Of course, of course. There were a lot of things that needed cataloging and assessing.”
Absent-mindedly, Ayla wondered whether he had noticed that, above his head, there had raged a great battle and that hundreds of people had only just managed to escape into the castle with their lives. Probably not. Oh, well, she had ordered him to busy himself down here, so she could hardly fault him for being immersed in his work.
“So, how do we stand?” she asked.
“Hmm?” Sir Rudolfus was already busy perusing the wax tablet in his hand again, scribbling down notes and calculating numbers.
“I asked, how do we stand, Sir Rudolfus?”
“Hmm…on two legs, I should imagine…forty-one plus three hundred thirty-seven equals three hundred seventy-eight, minus twenty-one…”
“Sir Rudolfus!” Ayla clapped her hands, and the sound echoed loudly enough to get his attention.
“Oh, err…yes, Milady. Was there something you wanted?”
“I thought there was something you wanted. You had me called here to talk over our situation regarding our provisions, did you not?”
“Of course!” He nodded eagerly, beaming at her. “Thank you for reminding me.”
“You have finished assembling everything we have and taking stock?”
“Indeed, I have. If you would like to follow me, Milady, and you, Burchard, please hold the torch aloft…”
He led them to a back area of the cellar, where countless crates and barrels were stacked onto each other. Big sausages and slices of salted pork hung from the ceiling and sacks of flour had been arranged atop the crates. Everything was arranged in the most neat and orderly manner imaginable.
“We have twenty sacks of flour, five barrels of wine, five barrels of mead, thirty-two sausages, ten pieces of salted pork, and ten crates full of smaller receptacles holding honey, herbs, pickles, and various other foodstuffs. And, you see, I have stored everything in impeccable order and sorted all we have according to importance, and where that is not distinguishable, after the letters of the alphabet. Here, we have herbs, and in the next crate, there is honey, and in this one…”
“What is this?” Ayla interrupted. She had only just noticed that everything that was piled up in the cellar had not been placed on the floor itself but on a wooden platform, which again was resting on several wooden supports formed on both sides like an upturned letter “L.” Following her outstretched finger with his gaze, Sir Rudolfus brightened even more.
“Oh! I'm so glad that you asked me about this, since it is one thing I am particularly proud of. You see, it occurred to me that, during the siege, rats might wish to partake of our food, which, considering our limited supplies, would not be a very good thing.”
“Not be a very good thing?” Burchard grunted, incredulous. “It would be catastrophic!”
“Quite so!” Sir Rudolfus confirmed delightedly. “So I hit upon this idea: placing all the food on a platform in the middle of the room and putting the platform on supports which are not straight, but are slimmer at the bottom than they are at the top. You see, rats could run up a straight support, since they can run up a wall for a few feet. But, unlike spiders and other insects, they cannot walk on the ceiling, and thus will fall off the support when it widens above them.”
“Meaning?” asked Burchard, who stared at Sir Rudolfus as if the man were a rat himself—and a two-headed one at that.
“Meaning that our food is safe from all vermin!” Sir Rudolfus exclaimed delightedly. “I learned this little trick from a merchant from eastern Europe, who had seen farmers in Russia store their corn in this way. Isn't the human mind a wondrous thing?”
“Wondrous indeed,” Ayla confirmed, making a mental note not to underestimate this lanky youth again. He may not be any use in battle, but he most certainly had brains. Looking at the immense mass of supplies stashed behind the excited Sir Rudolfus, she had to admit to herself that she was beginning to see a tiny glimmer of hope. Maybe they could just sit this out, wait in the castle until the Margrave's men got tired of waiting and left.
But then she reminded herself that, while there might be a great deal of food, there were also a great many hungry mouths to feed right now. And the most vital question had not been answered yet.
“All this is very well, Sir Rudolfus,” she said. “You have told me exactly how much food we possess—but I still have to ask you: what does that mean for us?”
“Milady?” Sir Rudolfus blinked at her wordlessly, as if he was still somewhere in Russia with its ingenious peasants, and found it hard to return to reality.
“How quick will we starve?” Ayla put it in plain words and felt a shiver run down her back.
“That depends on the amount of food consumed by each person every day, as well as the exertion they experience, any illnesses that should occur, and a number of less relevant factors that could, however, taken together, have significant impact.”
“How about you give me an educated guess based on the average amount of food a person needs? How long before we starve, Sir Rudolfus?”
“One month, sixteen days, three hours, and twenty-seven minutes, Milady,” the young knight answered like a shot from a crossbow.
“Twenty-seven minutes, Sir Rudolfus?”
“Well, it might be twenty-eight. The human body is notoriously imprecise.”
“I see. Thank you.”
Ayla tried to remain composed, but the shortness of the time that still remained was terrifying to her. Gazing at the giant pile of food in front of her, she thought, In one month, sixteen days, three hours and twenty-seven minutes I will be dead—knowing that the only man I ever loved has betrayed me…
No—that isn't true! I never loved him. And it might be twenty-eight minutes.
“And if we ration the food?” she asked, clinging to hope.
“I had already included rationing into the calculation, Milady,” Sir Rudolfus answered with a bright smile, no doubt pleased by his foresight.
“Oh. Well, then I suppose there is nothing more to be done here. You will see to it that the food is justly distributed?”
“I will, Milady.”
“Then I shall—” she cut off in mid-sentence when she suddenly heard noises.
“Lady Ayla! Lady Ayla!” Breathless cries could be heard from upstairs. Feet ran towards the cellar door, accompanied by the scrape of metal and the jangling of mail.
“Get behind me!” grunted Burchard and, without waiting for her consent, shoved Ayla behind his bulk, gripping his torch as though it were a sword.
Ayla snorted. Who was he trying to fool? Burchard was no swordsman, and if enemies had infiltrated the castle, he would be no better in a fight than she! Well, maybe a tiny little bit better, considering he was three times as big as she, but certainly not much.
She tried to move around him, to see what awaited her. Her heart hammered as the sound of heavy boots thundering towards the door came ever nearer. Why would soldiers come running? She glanced at Burchard's grim face. It was obvious what he thought. Could it be? Could the Margrave's men somehow have gained entrance into the castle?
Down, Down, and Away
The heavy footsteps stopped at the
top of the stairs. Ayla retreated another step—but when the cellar door was pushed open, the figure appearing in the doorway was no enemy soldier. It was one of Ayla's own guards, and a grin of joy and excitement shone on his face.
“Milady,” he called down into the cellar. “Milady, I just passed the chamber upstairs, you know, the one we put this merchant in when we found him…”
Ayla’s heart went from hammering to frozen in an instant. What had Reuben done?
“And…?” she asked, her voice quivering.
“And I heard voices! Sir Isenbard is awake! He's finally awake, Milady, isn't that wonderful?”
Joy flooded Ayla’s heart, warming it, bolstering it, and, for the moment, making all her sorrow and heartache forgotten. Isenbard was awake! Finally!
“How is he?” she demanded eagerly, stepping around Burchard, who did not stop her this time. “Is he hurting? Is he able to move? How does his speech sound? Is he completely conscious or only half aware?”
“I do not know, Milady. I only heard him utter a few words, then I ran as fast as my feet could carry me to inform you of his recovery.”
“You did right,” she assured him.
“Will you go and attend to him?” The soldier sounded hopeful. He was obviously burning with the desperate wish to have his old commander back on his feet and in fighting condition. “Shall I inform him of your coming, Milady?”
She wanted to say yes. She had already opened her mouth and formed the first syllable with her lips—then she remembered Reuben. Abruptly, she shrank back. No! She couldn't be in the same room with him. Not now. Not after what he…
Quickly, she shook her head. “No. I, err…will have to constantly keep an eye on him, and I’m too busy right now to always be climbing stairs. Send a few men up there and have him brought to me in the main hall immediately!”
*~*~**~*~*
“Bring the convalescent to Lady Ayla? Which one?” asked the guard. “This fellow, Reuben?”
Reuben's grip tightened around the iron candlestick. Swift as a panther, he jumped to his feet and raised his makeshift weapon, prepared to strike down the first man who dared to enter. The old knight at the other end of the room blinked at him, obviously not quite understanding what he was doing, standing behind a door with a raised candlestick in his hand.