“That seems to be all, my lady,” Giedre said, probably the first time anyone had used Madlenka’s title in… how long? An hour? Two?
“We’d better check.” She headed for the spiral staircase, just as Dali emerged from it. He carried his sallet under his arm, but he seemed to be unwounded, and was grinning as widely as any human being ever could, rattail hair plastered over sweat-streaked face. Forget transient visitors like Sir Vladislav Magnus. Officially Dalibor Notivova was in charge of the defenses of Castle Gallant and had just repulsed a major assault. One more for the history books, and perhaps the greatest moment in his entire life.
“Well done, constable!” she said. “Or are you Sir Dalibor now?”
“Not yet, my lady.” Incredibly his grin grew even wider. “But Sir Vlad has promised to dub me-tonight in the hall!”
Not too many years ago, when she was a child and he was a married man, she would have given him a hug over news much less grand than knighthood, but now it could not be. She congratulated him. So did Giedre. Was that a slight blush under her grime and bloodstains? Why did Dali abruptly put his sallet on, hiding his face? Madlenka had not suspected… but she had been too drowned in her own troubles. And why shouldn’t they? Dali needed a stepmother for his children, and Giedre could no longer count on accompanying Madlenka to some far-off land when she married some distant noble. Madlenka was going to be staying right here till the day she died.
Dali thanked them both for caring for the wounded.
“Any left up there?” Madlenka asked.
“Two or three still linger, but can’t be moved. The rest are beyond your help, ma’am.”
Corpses were men’s business.
Madlenka sent Giedre off to the keep, with orders to turn back any stretcher parties she met coming this way. She ran up to the roof to check on those wounded who were not to be moved, and see if Wulf was there. He wasn’t, and had certainly not been among the wounded carried off to the infirmary, so he was probably with Anton, wherever that was.
At least a score of bodies lay around the roof with their faces covered, to show that they were indeed dead and had received the proper rites. Surely Dali or Vlad would arrange to have the corpses removed as soon as possible? There was no sign of the biggest Magnus. Beside the unfinished trebuchet, though, a priest was administering extreme unction to a casualty, and Baron Ottokar was kneeling beside him, bareheaded. As she drew nearer, she saw that he was holding the dying man’s hand, which seemed an oddly touching gesture from so hard a man.
The victim was little older than she; she knew him by sight but not by name. He must have tripped o [avea man.
“I believe that’s all, Father,” Ottokar said, glancing around. “No, there’s one more over there, see?” He pointed to where someone was urgently beckoning, and the priest, having frowned disapprovingly at Madlenka, swished off to attend to another casualty.
Madlenka looked suspiciously at the unconscious man before her. She took his other hand and felt for a pulse. “I think he’s dead,” she said.
Ottokar nodded and laid the man’s arms gently on his chest. “You don’t happen to have a cloth on you, do you?”
She did, a spare bandage already badly bloodstained. She gave it to him and he covered the corpse’s face. Then he rose, and she did too. “How long has he been dead?” she asked.
The baron was very big, although not as huge as Vladislav. He was almost as tall as Anton, but much wider, and he had a broad, stony face, with very cold, dark eyes. On her first sight of him yesterday she had decided that he was both clever and potentially dangerous, and she saw no reason to change her mind now. But his eyes were red-rimmed and his face stubbled, reminding her of Father, the time he had been up all night directing a fire-fighting operation in the town.
“I have no idea,” he said softly. “He might have been dead when I got here.”
“You lied to the priest?”
He shrugged. “But now the holy man can in good faith tell the boy’s family that he died in a state of grace.”
She realized that a small smile was twisting the edges of His Lordship’s mouth. If it was mockery, it seemed to be directed less at her than at his own sentimentality. So there was a gentle side to this man after all? She had failed to find it at the banquet last night, when they had been seated next to each other.
“This is the worst part of battle,” he said, starting to stroll across the deck toward the northern battlements. “Counting the bodies, I mean. But thanks to you and your team, there may not be as many bodies as there might have been. I was watching. I congratulate you on a fine job.”
“Thank you.” She had only done what was needed.
“First aid is the best part of a siege. Sieges are the nastiest sort of war, you know, but at least the defenders receive decent medical care and aren’t left lying all night in the mud, waiting to have their throats slit in the morning.”
That did not sound like a hard man ta [a h
“And I congratulate you on a successful defense.”
He glanced down at her, sideways, and this time there was no doubt about the smile. “I don’t deserve any credit. That was a very dramatic end to the assault, wasn’t it?” He leaned into a merlon to peer down at the shambles in front of the gate. “No, don’t look,” he said, straightening up. “The plunderers are at work already.”
“The Wends took a bad beating!”
He leaned back against a crenel and folded his arms, regarding her quizzically. “Yes and no. They lost at least ten times as many men as we did.”
“That’s good, isn’t it?”
“Ye-e-e-s.” He dragged the word out. He might have been mocking her, but his smile seemed genuine enough. “But if they had more than ten times as many men to start with-twenty times, forty times as many? Most people would say that Wartislaw can afford to lose ten times as many men as Anton can.”
“But you don’t?”
“Not necessarily. Armies are funny things… The Cardician men are fighting for their families, their homes. They’ll go on to the last drop of blood, and their sons and wives and daughters beside them. The Wends are fighting for money, mostly. A couple of bad maulings like this one and they’re apt to start recalling things they forgot to do before they left home. Their best leaders will have died or been wounded. I’ve seen armies lose faith and just melt away, even mercenary armies.”
“But they won’t make the same mistake again, will they?”
He shrugged. “If they knew how little ammunition we have left… You’re not planning to go out there and minister to injured Wends, are you?”
The thought had not even occurred to her. “Is that normal?”
“I’ve never heard of it. If their flag of truce gets here before the scavengers deal with them, they can rescue their own. They’d better hurry, though.”
His manner to her was somehow fatherly but not patronizing, confiding but not gossipy. He was certainly not talking down to her; in fact he was almost speaking in riddles, encouraging her to question more deeply. “Have you ever seen ladders fail like that?”
His eyes twinkled. “No. Oh, I’ve seen ladders break, but never with such dramatic results. But then, I’ve never seen an assault attempted against a wall so high in such a narrow space. Rash, it was; asking for trouble. They knew that road was a killing ground; they knew the castle’s history.”
“The ladders’ collapse was unusual, though?”
He shrugged. “I think so, but I won’t go around talking about it.”
He was talking with her about it. Why? If it had been Wulf’s magic that broke the first ladder, how many men’s deaths must he now have on his conscience? But how many defenders’ lives had he saved by preventing a sack?
If it had been Wulf’s doing.
“We’re all very stubborn, us Magnuses,” Baron Magnus remarked, turning his head to stare across the valley at the snowy mass of Mount Naproti. “Notoriously so. I expect Vlad and I were holy terrors when we were children. Don’t remember. Marek never was. Marek was always owlish, bookish; didn’t give a spit about weapons or training or even horses, much.”