John Flanagan - The siege of Macindaw

Will glared at Horace and decided to ignore him. He turned his attention to Malcolm. "Do you think some of your people could build me something like this?" he asked.

The healer frowned thoughtfully. "Might be tricky," he said. "We've got a few cart wheels, but they're all the same size. Did you want this one so much bigger than the other?"

Now Will switched his glare to Malcolm. Horace put a hand up to his face to cover the grin that was breaking out there.

"It's perspective. Good artists draw using perspective," Will said, enunciating very clearly.

"Oh. Is it? Well, if you say so." Malcolm studied the sketch for a few more seconds. "And did you want them this squashed-up shape? Our wheels tend to be sort of round. I don't think these ones would roll too easily, if at all."

Truth be told, Malcolm had been listening outside the house for several minutes and knew what the two friends had been discussing. Horace gave vent to a huge, indelicate snort that set his nose running. His shoulders were shaking, and Malcolm couldn't maintain his own straight face any longer. He joined in, and the two of them laughed uncontrollably. Will eyed them coldly.

"Oh, yes. Extremely amusing," he said. "Highly entertaining. Why did I train to be a jongleur, I wonder, when we had two comedians like you available? Now I know," he added, with heavy emphasis, "why people call comedians fools."

Horace and Malcolm, with a supreme effort, managed to bring their snorting and laughing under control. Malcolm wiped his eyes.

"Aaah," he said to Horace, "it does you good to start the day with a laugh."

"It's late morning," Will pointed out.

"Better late than never," Malcolm replied.

Will seemed about to say something, but Horace thought it might be time to get to the business at hand.

"Will," he said, more seriously, "why don't you tell us what this thing is supposed to do?" Horace sensed that the idea would be sound, no matter how bad the drawing might be. He had never known his friend to have a bad idea.

"It's to get us closer to the west wall," Will said. "With our ladder."

Horace looked at the sketch again."You plan to push this right up to the wall?" he said. "And this roofed-over section is to protect us from the defenders above, right?" He shook his head. "It'll take too long, Will. They'll have plenty of warning, and as soon as we come out from under the roof here, they'll be ready and waiting for us."

"I know that," Will said. "But as you pointed out, if we try to run from the tree line to the wall carrying a ladder, it'll take far too long – and they'll have time to get back on the wall again to fight us off."

"So? Wheeling this… thing… will take us twice as long. Sure, we'll be protected while we're on the way. But I still don't see – "

Will cut him off. "I plan to get us halfway to the wall," he said. " Then we'll rig it so that one of the wheels collapses."

"What's the point of that?" Malcolm asked.

"Let me take it from the beginning," Will said."We assemble the cart at the tree line. We tie our ladder on top." Quickly, he sketched in a ladder on top of the roof. "Then, in the middle of the afternoon, Horace and I and, say, four of the Skandians get under it and start pushing it toward the wall."

"In the middle of the afternoon?" Horace said. "They're sure to see us! They'll be throwing spears and rocks at us – "

Will raised a hand for silence.

"We'll keep going till we're twenty meters from the wall, then we'll collapse the wheel here. The whole thing will sag over to the side. The defenders will think they hit something crucial or that the thing was badly built. In any event, they'll see we're stopped. Then the other four people run like hell back to the trees. We' ll rig some kind of armor for them to protect them."

Malcolm nodded. "That sounds fair," he said.

But Horace had noticed an omission in Will's plan." You said the other four run back. What about us?"

Will smiled at him. "We stay put, under the cart. They won't know we're there because they won't know how many people were hidden under it in the first place."

Understanding started to dawn in Horace's eyes now.

"So we'll be twenty meters from the wall… with a scaling ladder," he said softly.

Will nodded, his excitement evident. "All we have to do is sit quietly for a few hours. By that time, the wrecked cart and the ladder will have become part of the landscape. They'll be used to it, so they'll begin to ignore it. Then, when Malcolm starts his show to the south and everybody's attention is distracted, we break out and run for the wall with the ladder."

"We could make it before anyone notices," Horace said.

" That's the general idea," Will said, smiling.

Horace came to a halt and set the timber beams he was carrying against a tree trunk. There were plenty of trunks to choose from. The path they were following twisted and turned among a tangle of trees and undergrowth. He wiped his brow with a scrap of cloth and sank to his haunches to rest. "This is heavy going," he said to Will.

Will nodded. "It's slower than I thought it would be. These game trails are so bad they might as well not be here at all." He raised his voice and called to Trobar, who was still moving ahead of the rest of the party, clearing the worst of the undergrowth and vines from the long-disused track they were following. "Trobar! Take a break!"

The giant turned and waved an acknowledgment. He sat cross-legged in the middle of the track. Shadow, his ever-present companion, moved to sit beside him, eyes intent on him. Will smiled ruefully to himself. The name was appropriate, he thought. The dog had become like a second shadow to the huge figure.

Back along the track, the Skandians eased their burdens off their shoulders as well and sat on the ground. There was not enough clear ground for them all to gather around. They simply relaxed wherever they were on the track. Water skins were passed along the line, and the men drank as they eased their aching muscles. Low conversations broke out among the groups.

It was tough going, Will thought. He was used to moving through forests and among trees, and even he found this tangle of trees, vines, bushes and saplings almost impossible to negotiate. They were forced to follow whatever faint game trails they could find leading in the right general direction. But they were trails more in concept than in practice. Even with Trobar moving ahead with a large sickle, hacking away at the worst of the undergrowth, it was a struggle to make progress. The situation was aggravated by the fact that, at any given moment, nearly half their party was laden with the components for what had become known as the Upside-Down Cart. The framework timbers, the roofing planks, the shafts and the wheels had all been disassembled so they could move it through the forest to the western side of Macindaw.

Gundar made his way along the narrow track to where the two friends were resting. He was carrying half of one of the scaling ladders – they had three in all, each constructed in two pieces to make them easier to carry through the forest. He let it fall to one side as he reached them.

"Are we nearly there?" he asked cheerfully. He wiped his forehead with the back of his hand and took the water skin that Horace offered him.

"Just around the next corner," Horace lied, and the Skandian grinned at him.

"Now you can see why we prefer to do our traveling by ship," he said, and the two Araluens nodded agreement.

"In the future, I'm going to do the same," said Will. "This makes the Stormwhite Sea look easy. How are your men managing?"

Gundar regarded him with approval. A good leader was always concerned with his men's welfare.

"Oh, they're complaining, swearing and generally carrying on. In other words, they're fine. It's when Skandians don't complain that you know you've got trouble."