is to make this wall scary. You can commandeer any of the old drafters to help you. I’ll give you some drawings we have of Rathcaeson. If it can resemble those, do it. You’ll tell the blues how to hold the forms. I’ll fill them with yellow luxin. I’m doing functional things first. We can attach and integrate whatever you design in two or three days.”
“How big can I make… whatever I make?”
“We’ve got a couple leagues of wall.”
“So you’re saying… big.”
“Huge,” Gavin said. Having the artist only design the forms would also keep the young man from having to draft anything at all, which with how close Aheyyad was to breaking the halo would possibly save his life.
It took until noon before they were ready to start the drafting. Gavin had asked all the old warriors to look at the plans of the wall, and not a few of them had come up with suggestions. Those suggestions had covered everything from expanding the latrines—and making sure the raw sewage could be routed onto their enemies by emptying the pots suddenly through chutes out the front of the wall—to reworking the mounts for the cannons and adding furnaces to heat the shot at several of the stations. Heated shot was wonderful for setting fire to siege engines. Someone else suggested texturing the floors and providing gutters not only outside for rainwater, which had already been considered, but also within the wall itself for blood.
Many good suggestions, and quite a few bad ones. The wall should be bigger, smaller, wider, taller. There should be space for more cannons, more archers, more beds in the hospital, the barracks should be within the wall, and so on.
At noon, Gavin was rigged back into his harness and lifted off the ground. The others swarmed around him, drafting forms, steadying his harness. Then he set to work.
Chapter 70
It wasn’t until two days later, as Kip and Liv came within sight of King Garadul’s army, plopped over the plain and fouling the river like an enormous cow pie, that he realized how deeply, incredibly, brilliantly stupid his plan was.
I’m going to march in there and rescue Karris?
More like waddle in there.
At the top of a small hill, they sat on the horse, which seemed grateful for the break, and scanned the mass of humanity before them. It was immense. Kip had never tried to estimate a crowd, and never seen one this large.
“What do you think, sixty or seventy thousand?” he asked Liv.
“More than a hundred, I’d guess.”
“How are we going to find Karris in that?” he asked. What did I expect? A sign, perhaps? “Captured drafter here”?
Most of the camp was chaotic, people pitching lean-tos against wagons, those who had tents screaming at each other over who got which spot, children running around, clogging the spaces between tents and wagons and livestock. The sky was still light, though the sun had gone down, and campfires were being started all over the plain. Kip could hear people singing nearby. Men were swimming and bathing in the river, downstream of where some soldiers had hastily erected a corral. The animals dirtied the water, but no one seemed to care. Other men stood on the bank, urinating directly into the water. The color of the river upstream and downstream of the camp was distinctly different. People were carrying buckets of water everywhere, taken directly from the river.
Maybe I’ll only drink wine.
More importantly, the smell of meat cooking permeated the air.
Kip’s stomach complained. They’d gone through his food faster than he’d thought—mostly, he had gone through it faster—and now he had nothing. Well, except for a stick of danars I stole with half a year’s wages on it.
Oh. That.
“We split up,” Liv said. “You head directly for the center of the camp. I imagine that’s where the king will have his tents. She’s important, so they might be keeping her close. I’ll go look for where the drafters are camping. A captured drafter will probably be watched by other drafters. She’s got to be in one place or the other. We’ll meet back here in, say, three hours?”
Kip nodded his acquiescence, impressed. He would have been lost on his own.
And almost instantly, she slipped off the horse and was gone. No hesitation, no second-guessing. Kip watched her go. He was hungry.
Leading the big, docile horse, tugging and pulling the beast as it tried to munch grass to the right and left, Kip approached at one of the larger fires.