The practice of war often relied upon both patience and deception, and the exercise of the latter invariably relied upon a concerted use of the former. Every year the encroachment of winter froze his hands a little more—the numbness in his fingers, the tingling in his joints, the constant ache in his wrists. The only real practice Rutger got anymore was in exercising his patience.
For many years he had trained in the yard with the younger men, and occasionally he had been called to be their oplo. But more often than not, he was simply one of the experienced swordsmen whom the trainer called upon when he needed to make an example of a student’s failure to properly follow the lesson. For Rutger, since the teeth of winter had started gnawing away at his joints, holding his sword poorly was something he had gotten very good at.
His mind, however, compensated for his lack of martial dexterity, and he studied assiduously the records maintained by Tyrshammar’s lord, learning the more subtle arts of combat—the devious ways in which a commander can forestall engaging an enemy, the violent methods of reducing the number of combatants one must face before ever having to draw one’s sword, and the artful practice of patience. Of waiting for your enemy to blink first.
Fog had rolled into the valley overnight, a damp layer that had clung to the wreckage of the city. His joints ached fiercely, and he had wanted nothing more than to sit by a roaring fire, cradling hot stones wrapped in an old scrap of leather, but the phantasmal fog had made it easier for the Shield-Brethren to slip into the chaotic squalor of Hünern. The sun had slowly burned off the fog without stirring up any wind, and the day had collapsed into a slow, torpid afternoon. After the death of Andreas and the following riots, the city seemed content to lie still, licking its wounds.
The Mongol compound was surrounded by walls built of bricks made from sun-baked mud—the choice of a foreigner clearly, though the weather had been unexpectedly mild over the last few months. A palisade of logs would have been a better permanent solution, but perhaps the use of mud was simply a reminder to all that the Mongols never intended to stay long. The Mongols had cleared a wide pomerium, though had not bothered to dig much of a ditch along the base of the walls. There was one gate—two panels of oak planks covered with hides and iron studs—and it stood between a pair of narrow towers, both made from a combination of brick and lumber. Each tower housed two Mongol guards, and they had spotted Rutger and his wagon almost as soon as he emerged from behind the Black Wall.
He was coming from one of the main routes through the area of Hünern that Hans had called the Lion Quarter, and his route was one taken every day by merchants as they brought their meager wares through the ragged city to the open markets near First Field and the arena. A man and a cart were not unexpected along the edge of the pomerium closest to the ruins of Hünern, and as he had anticipated, his presence did not unduly alarm the watching Mongol guards.
The wagon trundled and bumped along beneath Rutger, its wheels thudding over the uneven ground as he kept the horse moving at a slow, ponderous pace. It hadn’t taken much to disguise himself as a poor laborer, filthy haired and rag-clad, and truth be told it was even less difficult to feign physical weakness when every bump of the wagon made his joints complain. He kept watch on the towers, however, taking stock of the presence of the guards and their attentiveness.
Or lack thereof, which only increased the chance that his plan might actually work.
The odds were against the Shield-Brethren. The Mongols had too many men, and they were all sequestered within a highly defensible compound. A frontal assault would be so damaging to his numbers that they would fail before they even breached the wall. The only possible solution was to trick the Mongols, and given their paranoia—panic and dread in equal parts—such a trick would require as much luck as it would deception.
If it all came down to luck—regardless of how much favor the Virgin gave them—they were already dead, and Rutger tried to keep those thoughts far from his mind.
He expected at least ten guards at the gate—the Mongols ate, slept, shit, and patrolled in groups of ten. Four in the towers meant at least six more inside the gate. Would there be more? He didn’t know, and Hans’s only insight was that there were usually two arban—the Mongol word for the ten-man squad—scattered near the gates during normal circumstances. There was also more foot and cart traffic then, and Rutger would have put more men on the gate himself, but would he keep that same level of security if the gate were closed?