Fallen Ward (Deepwoods Saga Book 3) (2 page)

“That’s something of a record, though,” Hyun Woo said, as if not wanting anyone to get the idea in their heads that retaking Goldschmidt would be that easy. “In the course of history, we only know of that one battle where the siege was over so quickly.”

Siobhan was still impressed. Hours? Days? When she saw how well her people had defended Converse, she’d been afraid that retaking Goldschmidt would be a nigh-impossible task. A gnawing worry had been hovering in the back of her mind, as she was not sure if they could ever go back home until the enemy forces just got bored of being there and decided to return to Orin.

“So…you think that retaking Goldschmidt is possible. Without a significant loss of life.”

“I do,” Hyun Woo assured her gently, eyes kind. “Do not worry, Siobhan-jia. But you must help me.” He turned his head, taking in everyone in the room as he repeated, “You must help me. I do not know your city of Goldschmidt well. I barely know it at all. How long can a force of, say, three thousand men survive in your city without trade bringing in fresh food?”

“With the sea augmenting their stores with fresh meat?” Darrens lifted a hand, wobbling it back and forth as he guesstimated. “I would say several weeks. It’s a large city, after all. If they find the warehouses of canned goods I have, then possibly three months.”

Ryu Jin Ho exchanged a confused look with Hyun Woo. “Warehouses of canned goods?” Ryu Jin Ho parroted.

Siobhan groaned in realization. “Of course! I’d forgotten about those.”

Darrens gave her a grim nod before explaining, “In my father’s time, we had a terrible drought. I was only about ten, so I don’t remember it much, but we lost a good population of the city to starvation just because there wasn’t any food to be had. It took nearly five years before we recovered from it, another five after that before the economy became stable again. The price of food had gone sky-high. After that, we laid in provisions, made sure that we had enough food set aside to feed a respectable portion of the city for several months. We were afraid of what might happen if another drought hit us.”

Lirah’s eyes were on the ceiling as she slowly asked, “Didn’t we use part of that during that terrible ice storm when I was a child?”

“You were six,” Darrens said in mild surprise. “I didn’t think you remembered that. Yes, sweets, we certainly did. The warehouses have come in handy several times since my father created them. Until now, that is.”

“So food is not our quickest route,” Gaurav summarized with a grimace. “What other way?”

A silence fell as people thought.

“Water,” Grae said softly. Even in the absolute stillness, his voice was barely audible. “You said that water would be a good way to force them out.”

Both strategists snapped around, giving him their absolute attention. Grae almost flinched at their reaction, looking nervous to have all eyes on him. He cleared his throat before continuing hesitantly, “There’s only one water source to the city.”

“There’s several,” Darrens disagreed, more in confusion than anything else.

“The water comes into Goldschmidt in several ways, either by canal or water fountains,” Grae half-agreed. He looked very ill at ease arguing with his head guildmaster, but forged ahead regardless. “But the source of the water is just outside of Goldschmidt. I know. It’s the only one that I can use to activate my paths.”

Siobhan smacked her forehead as the obvious became clear. “Of course. The water you use has to be from a true source, otherwise it doesn’t have the power it needs, right?”

“Right,” he agreed, relieved he had gotten his point across and he didn’t have to talk anymore.

Taking over for him, Siobhan turned to the rest to explain eagerly, “I know exactly where this is. It’s about five hundred feet from the western gate. The source bubbles out into a stream, but the way it’s fed into the city is through an open canal. Most people think it’s just one long river or something because grass grows up alongside it, covering the stonework. But it’s the only source of fresh water for the city. We can easily dam it up.”

Hyun Woo looked between her and Grae with a hopeful expression on his face. “You are certain of this?”

“Dead certain,” she assured him. “Grae has to know the source of any water he uses for a path. It directly affects the power he can draw on for the path, after all. He’s traced every waterway in Goldschmidt at least once a year to make sure his water source is still clear and hasn’t changed. If anyone in the city will know, it’s him.”

“Then that is the element we must block.” Satisfied, Hyun Woo sat back in his chair. “A man cannot go more than three days without water. We will force them out very quickly.”

Wolf rubbed his hands together, a feral smile of anticipation curling his mouth up. “So, Master, how should we do this?”

“With cunning,” Hyun Woo answered, tone mild. “And with stealth. But most of all, with intelligence. They still outnumber us, but they cannot out-fox us. This is a lesson we shall teach them. First, however,” he gestured to everyone in the room with a small circular motion of his hand, “I need the collective knowledge of everyone in this room. You must tell me, in detail, about the walls around Goldschmidt. Tell me its weaknesses, tell me its strengths, and give me an idea of how to approach the walls without them seeing us. For if we are to succeed, they cannot know we are there until it’s far too late.”

“There are no weaknesses to the walls.” Darrens normally would have said this boastfully, but at that moment, he sounded resigned more than anything. “Even the gates are made of hard timber, two feet thick, and reinforced with iron grating. You cannot go through the walls. Only over them.”

“Guildmaster Darrens, surely there’s some chink to the walls,” Jonathan protested. “I mean, one side of your walls is only a hundred feet from the coastline, and ground near water is famous for erosion. You’re saying that area doesn’t have any problems?”

“Not at the moment.” Lirah sounded just as resigned. “We fixed the bad sections two years ago and they’re still holding strong.”

“And the area surrounding Goldschmidt is entirely flat, except the dry river bed,” Emalee added in a light voice. “With the aid of an eyeglass, I believe you can see a good mile out in every direction.”

“Which includes the coastline,” her husband agreed, sounding even more depressed. “How important is it that we can approach without them seeing us?”

“Perhaps vital. I am not yet sure.” Ryu Jin Ho turned to Grae. “As you explained to Cha Ji An, in order to make a path, you must know the land very well. This dry river bed, you know it?”

“Intimately,” Grae answered with a supporting nod. He seemed more comfortable talking directly to just one person. “I use it often as a source of stones to build paths with. It’s not particularly deep, but a crouching man can hide in it.”

“Where does it connect?”

“It doesn’t, not above ground,” Grae said. “I think it once connected to the sea, but the land changed at some point in the past, and now it’s permanently dry. It stretches out for about a half mile away from the southern gate before it peters out.”

“Still, this sounds promising. How many people can fit inside?” Ryu Jin Ho persisted.

“Not many.” Grae looked at his fellow guild members with a helpless splay of the hands. “How many would you say?”

“Two, three hundred if you really crammed people in,” Wolf responded promptly. “And that would take the whole length of the river bed to do it. It comes very close to the gate, though. If we can somehow trick them into opening it, we’d have the perfect means to get men quickly inside.”

“Three hundred will not be enough.” Ryu Jin Ho let out a contemplative hum and sank back into his chair, absently staring at the table top.

Gaurav apparently couldn’t help but ask, “If your city is that well-fortified, how did you lose it in the first place?”

“We were overwhelmed with sheer numbers,” Rune responded darkly. “We didn’t have enough to keep them from scaling the walls, and once they were inside….”

“Makes sense,” Jonathan allowed. “I wish we’d had time to get people in to help you before Goldschmidt fell. Defending is certainly easier than attacking.”

There was a glum round of nods, but it was already done and no one wanted to dwell much on what-ifs.

Seeing that everyone was thinking, but not knowing what else to suggest, Siobhan prompted, “Wolf? Didn’t you say that you had an idea you wanted to run past Grae?”

Wolf sat up abruptly, snapping his fingers. “I did. Grae, can you build a path that will take people just to the wall of the city?”

Gasps sounded around the table as people realized the full import of that question.

Grae once again shifted uneasily under the weight of their attention, but focused steadily on Wolf as he responded, “Of course. I can’t take more than a few hundred at a time, though. And once I’m there, I’m stuck. I can’t take the path back to Converse without being in full view of the walls.”

“But this can be done?” Hyun Woo looked more excited by this idea than the suggestion of damming up the water.

“Yes, it can.” Grae rubbed the back of his head and added sheepishly, “Although it’ll take me about a week to build a path to do it with. Nothing I have here in Converse will do the job. And what you’re asking is tricky—it’ll take fine calculations on my part to do it right. Otherwise I’ll ram people directly into the walls instead of just outside them.”

Hyun Woo nearly vibrated in his chair, words tumbling over each other as he asked, “How close can you get? How many can you take?”

“With the evergreen pattern, I can take approximately three hundred men. That’s a rough estimation, you understand, and I’ll have to do calculations to make sure that’s right. But I believe I can get them within five feet of the walls.”

Both strategists looked dangerously close to bear-hugging the stuffing out of Grae, they were that excited.

Siobhan was equally excited, as this idea hadn’t even occurred to her. Thank heavens Wolf had thought of it, as Grae likely wouldn’t have thought of the paths in a military way either. “Grae, couldn’t you transport more with your coral pattern?”

“The ground here isn’t rich enough for it.” Grae’s mouth pursed in an unhappy line. “Otherwise it’d be perfect for this situation. The evergreen pattern is the largest I dare use.”

“Three hundred is not enough, but I understand that we have more than one Pathmaker in this city.” Hyun Woo looked at Rune with a questioning eyebrow.

“Three, actually.” Rune gave an abashed shrug. “Including me.”

“Nine hundred altogether.” Hyun Woo rubbed his hands together in an idle gesture of thought. “Pathmaking cannot be used at night, is that correct?”

“It can’t be used without strong sunlight,” Rune responded. “So not even in dawn or sunset hours.”

“That does complicate the use of this.” Hyun Woo looked pleased but frustrated all at once. “We have nearly sixteen hundred men here who are capable of fighting. I need to transport all sixteen hundred to Goldschmidt, otherwise our task becomes even more dangerous and prone to disaster.”

“Three hundred of those can be snuck into the dry riverbed at night,” Tran suggested. “I know the land like the back of my hand. I can guide them there.”

“That still leaves four hundred that I must somehow get to Goldschmidt.”

“We can get some of them there by ship,” Jonathan volunteered. “Converse does trade up and down the channel all of the time, no one would pay any attention to merchant ships traveling up along the coast. If we time it right, we can get them there just at the turn of dawn, give them time to get to the walls before any lookout has enough light to see by.”

Tran backed this by saying, “We can manage to offload two hundred that way. We already have a force trained to offload quickly because of the recent battle. We’d have time to get two hundred to the city walls before a lookout could see them. The light is always bad on that section of the city anyway, because of how the sun rises.”

“That leaves two hundred.” Darrens shared a look with everyone around the table. “Any other ideas?”

Siobhan raised a finger in the air. “Why don’t you let me take them in?”

Rune couldn’t tell who was more surprised. Siobhan had said it so naturally, as if it were a foregone conclusion that she’d go, that no one seemed to know how to respond at first. He glanced at Wolf-dog’s face, seeing how he took it, but one look was enough to see that the other Wynngaardian wasn’t ‘taking’ it at all. Wolf-dog seemed torn between shouting her down or shaking sense into her.

When she didn’t get an immediate response, Siobhan continued as if that awkward silence had never descended. “I know we’re still working out timing, and making plans, but it’s pretty clear to me that you’re going to need every commander at this table to lead people into the city. That leaves you short at least one commander to deal with the water, doesn’t it?”

“It does,” Gaurav grudgingly admitted.

Siobhan asked the table at large, “Well, who else can you send? How many of your commanders know exactly where that water canal is?”

Hyun Woo studied each man before turning to her and admitting, “It appears only the men of your guild know.”