With neither Gene nor Tahyang there to give orders, they had been at a loss as to what to do. Once someone specified the work, they set to it eagerly.
Working together, a dozen or so men completely blocked and reinforced the windows and walls facing the square on the second and third floors. They would withstand stones for a while. Meanwhile, however, the dining room built onto the kitchen had been smashed to pieces. A wall had broken open, and the roof had collapsed. Apparently, its structure had been weak because it was a later addition. Rosa ran to the kitchen entrance and called the men.
“The dining room’s broken through! We have to block the door!”
Five came running, Harat among them. They dragged over a table and blocked the doorway into the dining room. Rosa brought an axe and handed it to Harat.
“Chop a few chairs into pieces. We’ll use them to block the front and back windows.”
As the axe blows echoed, other men hurried over to see what was happening. Rosa put wooden fragments into their arms and led them to the windows, demonstrating how to fit them in. The sharp-eyed Luke had already blocked the windows opening toward the stables with two other men. Once they were all back in the first-floor hall, Rosa spoke.
“The initial sealing is done.”
“Sealing?” Hal asked.
Hal was fairly quick-witted. As one of the men who had stayed longest in the House of the Hawk, he had a veteran’s authority. Rosa was conscious of that too. It was time to explain.
“A siege begins by closing everything off. At present, we don’t know who the enemy is or how many they have. We can’t go outside until we’ve assessed the situation. There are barely sixty of us. We have to preserve every man. So far, they’ve only attacked from the square with bows and catapults, long-range weapons. That’s why we reinforced that wall and blocked windows where arrows could come in, and the doors to the bell towers. Next, we have to prepare for close combat. People have been developing hundreds of ways to withstand a siege for a thousand years.”
Hal looked a little surprised by Rosa’s clear explanation. Another man asked, “But what’s a siege?”
“Shutting the gates and holding a castle. Have you never done it?”
Rosa deliberately looked at him as though she could scarcely believe the question. Hesitantly, he replied, “Is this a castle?”
“So you mean we can hold a siege only in a castle? This is merely a house?”
Several men tilted their heads. Rosa drove the point home.
“So, since it isn’t a castle and we can’t hold a siege, should we surrender?”
“That’s not what I mean, but we don’t even know who the enemy is…” Terry interrupted.
“If we don’t know who they are, I doubt they’re throwing stones and arrows because they mean to invite us to a ball.”
Some men grinned, failing to grasp the atmosphere. They still did not share Rosa’s tension. In other words, it had not occurred to them that they might die.
Organizations and patrols might fight in the back alleys, but Delphinad was fundamentally a peaceful land. It had not been caught in a great war for decades. Even enemies had any number of ways to settle a matter without fighting to the death. The people of Delphinad had lived steeped in that way of thinking.
Rosa did not look at enemies that way. She had grown up in a land that scattered thousands of lives across the plains over some snow-covered ridge. Back home, no one had escaped losing family to war. Her own uncle had died in battle.
The enemy’s identity was not important at all. Having brought even a catapult, they were hardly likely to come forward afterward and propose a gentleman’s agreement. They must have invested in something they wanted. Naturally, they would not leave before recovering their cost.
Reaching that thought, Rosa suddenly frowned. Perhaps the enemy was someone like herself. Someone who knew war.
Hal spoke.
“Yes. In any case, we have to hold out at least until we know who they are. Of course, this is the middle of Delphinad. Once the governor’s office hears, the guards will come running. But you don’t want to show those cheese-smelling guards the sight of us being beaten like fools, do you? This is the House of the ShadowHawk!”
It was a short-term prediction, but it conveyed the need to act immediately. The men were quickly roused and shouted.
“Of course!”
“Who do they think they’re attacking?”
“Should we go straight out and sweep them away?”
Then Luke’s voice sounded from above. He leaned over the third-floor railing.
“Your courage is admirable, gentlemen, but if you go out now, I suspect you’ll be hanging in a butcher’s shop in the blink of an eye.”
“What?”
Their eyes rose toward him. Luke twirled something in one hand and dropped it. It was an arrow. Cloth was tied around the shaft. Rosa almost snatched it up without thinking, then stopped herself and looked at Hal.
Hal picked up the arrow. Unwrapping the cloth, he found words written in black ink. It still spread damply, as though freshly written. Slowly, he read.
“Sixty against five hundred. If you understand what that means, hanging yourselves side by side from the rafters will spare you needless pain.”
A cold silence spread. Terry muttered, “Five hundred?”
Neups, standing at the back, went to the main entrance and looked outside through the gap between the doors. Then he turned to the men, his face hard.
“This isn’t a joke.”
Before long, the arrows stopped.
The surrounding houses were as quiet as though empty. There was no sign of life, not even a curtain fluttering. None of the windows stood open. The neighbors who ordinarily went about so noisily had vanished. Many had fled. Those who remained hid in their houses’ attics and watched events unfold. The lively bustle of a square approaching noon had disappeared without a trace.
Hawk Square lay at a five-way junction. The streets were not wide, but houses stood close on either side. Behind the House of the Hawk too, buildings of two or three stories crowded shoulder to shoulder, forming narrow alleys. Yet the tallest structure in the neighborhood was still the House of the Hawk. It had three floors, but its construction made it as high as four.
Armed soldiers had literally sealed the mouths of the five streets. In formation, the enemy stood with an assurance that suggested they would soon advance and take the House of the Hawk apart piece by piece. Around a hundred archers occupied the front. At the mouth of Saltcart Street, a catapult used only in war displayed its dreadful presence.
It was absurd. This was the Shipwrights’ District, with many poor inhabitants, but it was still Delphinad. No war had broken out, yet heavily armed soldiers had brought weapons of war to surround a whole neighborhood. Whoever they were, they must be utterly out of their minds. The guards under the governor’s office could not possibly stand by and watch.
They believed that without doubt. But for half an hour, the guards did nothing. It was very strange. The neighborhood residents thought so, and the patrolmen thought so even more. As time passed, hope that they would soon arrive grew alongside fear that perhaps they would not.
Would the Hand of Ilmoram come to help? Perhaps the leadership would like to, but there were not five hundred full members in the organization. They had other patrols under them, of course, but unless it were a much smaller fight, there was no reason for them to want to involve themselves in something so unpleasant.
Some could not accept the very fact that such a thing was happening in the heart of a great city. They argued that things could not be as serious as they looked. Whatever anyone thought, though, the five hundred or so armed enemies arrayed beyond the square were reality, not illusion.
“Quickly! Hurry!”
Meanwhile, the House of the Hawk was working more frantically than at any moment since its birth. Sheets were torn and braided into ropes. Water and oil were boiled in the kitchen. Every sack that had held grain and the like was brought out, filled with earth, and piled before the windows. The earth came from the stable floor inside. When that ran short, they added horse dung. Soon the horses stood bewildered on the clean stone floor.
All of it followed Rosa’s instructions. That did not mean the men had accepted her command. She was the only one with experience of war, so they had taken her advice. There was still no commander. They had not been properly organized. The patrolmen, born and raised in a free city, did not know it, but Rosa knew very well that they could never win like this.
Presently, a standard-bearer rode out in front of the square. Wearing full armor as though at war, he carried a long banner. But there was no design on it.
“Surrender. If you do not, that house will be ground to powder, down to its foundation stones.”
On this side, it was not even clear who should reply. They merely looked at one another. The standard-bearer continued.
“ShadowHawk. Come forward. We will fight you in this square. One against one!”
They were no longer sure whether it would be better or worse to reveal that the ShadowHawk was not at home. None knew what to do. One man murmured, “Shouldn’t we at least find out who they are?”
He could hardly have heard, but the standard-bearer soon shouted.
“We are General Nikephoros’s Fifteenth Regiment. The ShadowHawk entered the general’s manor and insulted him. We have come to exact payment. We give him until the noon bell. If the ShadowHawk does not come by then, we will consider war declared. There will be neither prisoners nor negotiation.”
Knowing who they were made the men look even more incredulous. The war hero General Nikephoros had mobilized an army and surrounded a back-alley patrol’s lodging for such a trivial reason?
There were barely ten minutes until noon. The standard-bearer returned to his ranks. Rosa called Hal.
“I need to speak to everyone. Will you stand beside me?”
Hal understood at once.
“Wait.”
He called two more veterans, Onil and Creses. Rosa took a place halfway up the stairs to the second floor. Hal shouted first.
“Everyone! Look this way! Someone with experience has something to say. Listen!”
Not every man, but a fair number looked at Rosa. Folding her arms, she spoke.
“As you know, we have no ShadowHawk here. So negotiations have failed before they begin. That leaves war. An absurdly small war, of course, but the people caught in it die just the same. ‘No prisoners’ doesn’t mean they will let you run. It means they won’t leave one of us alive.”
The men bit their lips, rolled their shoulders, or stared into the air. A few looked directly up at Rosa. To her eyes, half of them still had not understood the situation.
“Once the fighting begins, I think we can hold out for about three hours. After that, one of three things has to happen. The guards arrive. The ShadowHawk returns. Or the gods send an angel blowing a pipe. Which do you think is most likely? I’d say the third.”
A few men who had understood less laughed. The rest scowled or wrinkled their noses. One shouted, “On what grounds do you say three hours?”
“I think explaining it to beginners will take longer than just waiting three hours, but I’ll tell you anyway. First, we have far too few weapons for a siege. Second, we have no archers. Third, you don’t know what war is. Fourth, we have no commander. Saying it aloud, even three hours seems too generous. I’ll amend it to thirty minutes.”
The men did not look pleased. Some turned their heads, plainly thinking, What does a woman know, lecturing us?
Rosa continued.
“But we have advantages too.”
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