Dawn of Empire (24 page)

The young subcommander hadn’t looked pleased with the assignment.

Sisuthros wanted to fight, not help build a wall.

Telling the guards to wait in the garden, Esk kar, Trella, and Sisuthros entered Corio’s workroom. Inside, a large plank table awaited them, its surface covered by a thin cotton cloth. Corio, his two sons, and assistants surrounded the table. This time Trella stood at Esk kar’s left, an equal par-ticipant in the proceedings.

Corio seemed in a fine mood, no doubt because of his earlier meeting with Nicar and his elevation to noble family status. Corio extended greetings to all, then introduced his sons and apprentices. Esk kar noticed Corio pointed to each of them with great care, even the youngest, giving honor to all of them. Their chests swelled with pride as he announced their names.

That’s how one builds loyalty, Esk kar realized, by showing respect for one’s people in front of others. Perhaps he could learn from men like Corio and Nicar. Esk kar resolved to remember this practice in dealing with his men.

“Captain of the Guard,” Corio began in a formal manner, “I told you I would answer your question about building a wall to defend Orak. My sons and I have worked long into the night and this morning to answer that question.” He nodded to his assistants and they removed the cloth from the table.

Trella gasped while Sisuthros slapped his sword hilt in amazement.

Esk kar just stared. The map of yesterday had come to life as a model of Orak, only larger, and now it revealed the village and its surroundings. Little blocks of wood represented rows of buildings; the palisade was made of twigs; the river of pale green pebbles. The whole structure stretched about four feet long by three feet wide. Thin, flat strips of wood painted green indicated the farmlands. Corio pointed with his measuring stick, explaining what each miniature item represented.

“This is Orak today,” Corio went on. “Now we’ll change it.” Like magi-cians, his sons began moving things around, removing some features, adding others. In moments, they’d transformed the model. The tiny blocks that represented houses and farms outside the palisade disappeared, a green cloth covering them. A taller wall represented by thin strips of wood set on edge replaced the original palisade, now surrounded on all sides by a narrow cloth ribbon, dyed the brown of the earth to represent the ditch Corio had proposed. The docks vanished, the gates changed to bigger and thicker sticks.

“A wall can be built, Esk kar.” Corio touched the model’s wall with his pointer for emphasis. “The wall will be fourteen feet high around three sides of the village and sixteen feet high on either side of the main gate.

We’ll flood the marshlands and, using water from Trella’s wells, keep the ditch in front of the wall wet and muddy at our need. The distance from the bottom of the ditch to the top of the wall will measure at least twenty -

five feet.”

A rare compliment from any master, to give credit to a slave, especially the slave of another. “All this can be built in five months time?”

“It will be a close thing, Captain, but, yes, I believe so, providing everyone works on it as you promised. We must start at once, tomorrow, gathering the things we’ll need, such as wood from across the river and from the forests up north. Only willow and poplar trees grow around Orak, and they’re too soft and too small for our needs. We’ll need hundreds of logs of all sizes, including large ones for the main gate my son will build for you. Most of these will have to come down the river by boat. Messengers and traders must be dispatched at once to buy them. Then stones must be taken up from the riverbed. Fortunately those are close at hand and in good quantity. Next we must set up a site to make the sun - dried bricks in huge numbers. They take weeks to harden properly, so we must start soon with them. We’ll need every shovel and digging tool we can find as well as sand from the hills to the south, wagonloads of sand. And slaves, of course, to do the digging and the other heavy work.”

“Then we start tomorrow,” Esk kar said, staring at the miniature Orak, studying where the wall ended and the marshland began. It looked remarkably like what he’d envisioned from the hillside only a few days ago.

“You must show this to Nicar and the Families. He will be pleased, I’m sure.”

Esk

kar turned to Sisuthros and gripped his subcommander’s arm.

“Sisuthros, you see what must be done. A strong hand will be needed to make sure the lumber arrives, the stones moved, the bricks made. Both slaves and villagers must be pressed into work as soon as Corio is ready and kept at it until they drop from exhaustion. Everyone must do his share, even the women and children. There must be no villagers hiding in their huts while others labor. I’ll give you ten soldiers to start. It will be a difficult task, but I’m sure you can accomplish it.”

Sisuthros nodded, fascinated by the model and now eager to undertake the assignment he’d questioned only this morning. “I’ll do it, Captain. It will be worth it to see the faces of the barbarians when they see Corio’s wall blocking their path.”

“Come, there is more. Follow me.” Corio went outdoors, then along the side of the courtyard. Two apprentices waited there.

“These boys built a model of the wall, so that you can get an idea of the scale you’ll be using.”

Using common river mud, the boys had built a wall, about three feet high and four feet in length. At the front side, dirt had been scooped out to represent the ditch. On the back of the wall a platform made of wood rose almost as high as the wall itself.

Corio squatted down and pointed to a doll. The figure held a tiny wooden sword on high and had been positioned in the ditch before the wall. “That’s how high a man will be, standing before the wall. They’ll need long ladders to reach the top.”

He shifted his position to the other side of the wall. “Inside, the wall will be braced every twenty feet by a support wall, which will also carry the weight of the fighting platform. That platform, which we call a parapet, will be built of rough planks and will be four feet lower than the wall and ten feet across. That should be wide enough to allow men to pull a bow or swing a sword or even for some to move along the wall as others fi ght.”

Esk kar joined Corio, squatting down beside him. “How high will the parapet be inside the village?” Esk kar wondered how he was going to get men up and down so that they could fight. Another detail he hadn’t thought about before.

One of the apprentices giggled, apparently at Esk kar’s ignorance, and received a sharp smack across his arm from the measuring ruler Corio still carried. “Keep your mouth still, boy.”

Corio looked annoyed, clearly embarrassed by this flaw in his presentation. All of Corio’s staff must have been warned not to laugh or say anything should any of the ignorant soldiers, particularly their barbarian captain, fail to understand what they saw or be unable to do a simple sum in their heads.

But Sisuthros had the same question. “Yes, Master Corio, how high will it be? We’ll need to move men up and down very rapidly, and they’ll be carrying heavy loads. And we’ll need clear space at the base so men can move quickly from one point to another.”

“The parapet will be ten feet high. We will put wooden ramps or steps inside so your men may mount the wall. We can use lifting poles to haul heavy stones to the top so that you can hurl them down at the attackers.”

“Not wooden ramps, Corio,” Esk kar commented. “At least, not anything that will burn easily. We’ll be getting fire arrows shot over the wall. I want nothing nearby that can burn or even make smoke.”

Fire was always a major hazard in the village, even in the best of times.

The walls of the huts might be made of river mud, but their roofs could be any combination of cloth, wood, or straw, and most burned easily. Cooking fires set roofs ablaze often enough. During the siege, if the villagers detected smoke, many would panic. The defenders would have to be prepared for fi re and smoke, Esk kar decided. Yet one more detail to think about.

“A good point,” Corio conceded. “We’ll build everything using as little wood as possible.”

“Master Corio, if I may,” Trella began, “perhaps we can coat anything inside the walls that might burn with a layer of mud. And we can have women and old men standing by with water buckets to fi ght any fi res that break out. But besides fire arrows, won’t there be many arrows shot over the wall into the village itself ?”

“Trella’s right,” Sisuthros agreed. “Arrows will be landing everywhere.

We may need to shelter some of the ground just inside the wall. It may be safest right under the wall.”

Corio nodded thoughtfully. “There will be many such things to consider in the next few weeks.” He stood up and turned to Esk kar. Esk kar rose with him.

“I’ll work with Sisuthros starting tomorrow.” Corio’s eyes looked directly into Esk kar’s. “We’ll give you your wall, Captain. Now you must make sure you have the men to defend it.”

9

–-

Five days later, much had changed. Esk kar and Trella had moved into Drigo’s house. The lower story of the spacious home contained five good - sized chambers, in addition to a large central space that could be used for meeting or dining, and a separate area for cooking. The upper fl oor, which Esk kar took for himself and Trella, held only two large rooms, one for sleeping and one for working.

With all that extra space, Esk kar provided quarters for Bantor and Jalen. Bantor had a wife and a daughter of eight seasons. After meeting Bantor’s wife, Trella hired mother and daughter to help run the house.

Bantor’s family was more than grateful to get out of their wretched hut, all Bantor could afford.

A clerk, provided by the Noble Nestor and skilled in writing the symbols, arrived the morning after Esk kar and Trella moved in. The clerk kept track of expenses, but returned to Nestor’s house each night, where he no doubt reported everything of interest.

Gatus’s two boys and their friends began spending their days at the new headquarters and right away became runners, relaying messages at Esk kar’s or the subcommanders’ need. Nicar contributed an older woman slave as a cook. He’d planned to put her on the auction block, but she would have fetched little. Instead, he made her a gift to Esk kar. The grateful slave took over the cooking, and soon Esk kar and Trella began to enjoy bread and vegetables fresh from the market, to go with the occasional chicken.

To men used to communal living in the filthy and crowded barracks, the house seemed vast and luxurious, but Esk kar knew that soon more commanders would be eating and sleeping there. Meanwhile he ordered each commander to sleep three nights in a row in Ariamus’s quarters. This would keep them close to the men, not only to keep an eye on the soldiers but also to stay aware of what they thought and felt.

The main house had a smaller, single

-

story building adjoining it,

where Drigo housed his guards and slaves. It had five separate rooms, each large enough for four or five men. Esk kar decided to keep a force of ten soldiers near him at all times, should the villagers or even the Families grow troublesome. He had to put men there anyway, since the old barracks could at best provide beds for fifty men. Gatus helped pick the ten soldiers, making sure only the steadiest and most reliable men moved into Esk kar’s quarters.

Esk kar and Trella began to settle into a routine. Each day he trained until midmorning with his men. After a brief break to wash up, he met with his four subcommanders and Trella to plan the rest of the day. They gathered in what had been Drigo’s workroom, the large room outside Eskkar’s bedroom and sanctuary. While Nicar had stripped the house of most of its furnishings, no one had wanted the workroom’s two tables. Esk kar purchased them at a good price. He used the smaller one as his private work table, while the other easily accommodated Esk kar’s meetings with his four subcommanders.

At the initial session, Esk kar had spoken first, according to the custom.

Afterward, Trella suggested he allow the others to speak first. By doing so, he would not be contradicted by facts or new information he didn’t have when he spoke. She added he didn’t need to impress his men with his authority. Esk kar saw the wisdom in her suggestion so the next morning he let Gatus begin.

“The target range has been completed,” Gatus announced. “Since Sisuthros wanted some building materials and we needed the space, we tore down almost all the huts on the northeast side of the palisade. We set up a range of up to three hundred paces, right up to the river’s edge.”

“And the training?” Most of the soldiers could bend a decent bow, but these men needed to train others. That required better than average archery skills, plus the knowledge of how to teach others.

“They’re doing well, but slower than I’d like. I won’t trust the best of them on their own for another week at least.”

Gatus went on to the next topic. “In the last few days, we’ve taken in forty recruits. When I reached that number, I stopped accepting new men, at least until we’ve got these other men trained.”

“Gatus, we need men as soon as possible, so move them along as quickly as you can,” Esk kar said. “But I don’t want half - trained men strutting around Orak carrying weapons, or fools killing themselves or some villager. How long before you can take more men?”

“At least two weeks, maybe longer.” Gatus’s words brooked no argument. “After that, we’ll be able to take in another forty or fifty. Tevana already supplies us with target arrows, though he has requested four tons of bronze, plus a new forge and a dozen other wood and metal - working tools. I think Master Tevana wants to make sure he never has to buy anything again.”

Esk kar grimaced at that, but nothing could stop Tevana or other craftsmen from taking advantage of the situation. If Orak survived, many tradesmen would profit handsomely by their dealings with Esk kar and Nicar.

“And thanks to Trella,” Gatus continued with a smile, “we now have plenty of bows to work with, good ones, too. Tell them, Trella.”