Shadowborn by Alison Sinclair Page B

been long enough for him to put three bullets into it, and it had not been strong enough to survive those.
    “That’s the aim,” said Stranhorne. “My engineers tell me there’s a good chance we’ll be able to drop the first and second stories into the cellar.”
    There is a reason, Ishmael thought, why intellectuals make a plain working man nervous. “And get out alive?”
    “It’s not a suicide plan,” the baron said, though there was an edge in his voice that said even if it were, he would carry it through.
    “The difficulty is,” the baron said, “to work best, we need to be sure that if they do force entry, it’s through the east gate. I don’t know whether they’re capable of punching holes in the walls, but if they come in through the north gate, we’re going to have to leave to the east, which will put us behind their lines, or break out through that bricked-in entry to the west. I’ve got a couple of engineers up there preparing t’blow it.”
    “Y’ever heard Lord Vladimer on th’subject of plans that depend on enemy cooperation?”
    “No,” Stranhorne said. “But, then, I’ve not been in the habit of making them.”
    Except for the danger in which they all stood, Ishmael could have wished Vladimer were here. If anyone knew how to arrange enemy cooperation . . . “Whichever way we leave the manor could be encircled. We might have to fight our way through. Mycene was cautioning me about the difficulty of an unplanned retreat.”
    Stranhorne tipped his head back, listening and sensing the mass of stone buttressed above their heads. “I’ve read the histories of the civil war, and of the wars in the four and five hundreds. I knew there’d be some difference between sitting at leisure in my armchair and fighting a war, but this . . .”
    This was not the time for Stranhorne to lose confidence in himself. “Every hour we buy gives time for the Crosstracks and th’inner Borders to prepare, and gives time for reinforcements to come.”
    “Did they tell you that only about a thousand people have made it in so far?”
    He could not have told that from passing through the bedlam of the ballroom. “No,” Ishmael said. “They didn’t.”
    “I tell myself that if the Shadowborn were moving that fast, they may not have found or caught most of these people. But there is another explanation—that they may simply have slaughtered them.”
    Numbers or magic, Ishmael thought. Either will do. He could not simply exhort Stranhorne not to despair, or try to chide or shame him out of it. Nor could he leave him in this mood.
    “If it’s the manor they want, we can hold numbers,” he said, at his most stolid. “If it’s not the manor, if they roll past us, then we can muster and attack to their rear, though no leader of any sense would leave a force numbered and armed as we are”—not to mention vengeful—“at their back. So if they’ve any sense, they should make sure the manor has fallen first before they move on, and we should hold until reinforcements come from Strumheller.” Assuming by the direction of the Call that Strumheller has not been similarly besieged, Ishmael thought. They should not count on timely aid from the north, not with Sejanus Plantageter down and the regency council in control.
    “If it’s magic,” Ishmael said slowly, “and we’re speaking of mistakes, those of us in the city should have put this before the Lightborn Temple as soon as we began t’wonder at it. If it’s magic, and they force an entry, then your plan’s as good as any. I’ll be less than no help t’you against magic. I . . . held this back, thinking not to risk it reaching Shadowborn ears”—and because of his own cursed cowardice in speaking of it—“but I did something in Minhorne that likely finished me for magic. Bad overreach, means I try to tap my vitality and I drain it to th’dregs. Nearly done so twice already. I’ve still got th’touch-sense and maybe I’ll still sniff out