When the Saints by Dave Duncan

mean. But thanks to you and your team, there may not be as many bodies as there might have been. I was watching. I congratulate you on a fine job.”
    “Thank you.” She had only done what was needed.
    “First aid is the best part of a siege. Sieges are the nastiest sort of war, you know, but at least the defenders receive decent medical care and aren’t left lying all night in the mud, waiting to have their throats slit in the morning.”
    That did not sound like a hard man ta [a halign="lking, nor even like a warrior.
    “And I congratulate you on a successful defense.”
    He glanced down at her, sideways, and this time there was no doubt about the smile. “I don’t deserve any credit. That was a very dramatic end to the assault, wasn’t it?” He leaned into a merlon to peer down at the shambles in front of the gate. “No, don’t look,” he said, straightening up. “The plunderers are at work already.”
    “The Wends took a bad beating!”
    He leaned back against a crenel and folded his arms, regarding her quizzically. “Yes and no. They lost at least ten times as many men as we did.”
    “That’s good, isn’t it?”
    “Ye-e-e-s.” He dragged the word out. He might have been mocking her, but his smile seemed genuine enough. “But if they had more than ten times as many men to start with—twenty times, forty times as many? Most people would say that Wartislaw can afford to lose ten times as many men as Anton can.”
    “But you don’t?”
    “Not necessarily. Armies are funny things.… The Cardician men are fighting for their families, their homes. They’ll go on to the last drop of blood, and their sons and wives and daughters beside them. The Wends are fighting for money, mostly. A couple of bad maulings like this one and they’re apt to start recalling things they forgot to do before they left home. Their best leaders will have died or been wounded. I’ve seen armies lose faith and just melt away, even mercenary armies.”
    “But they won’t make the same mistake again, will they?”
    He shrugged. “If they knew how little ammunition we have left … You’re not planning to go out there and minister to injured Wends, are you?”
    The thought had not even occurred to her. “Is that normal?”
    “I’ve never heard of it. If their flag of truce gets here before the scavengers deal with them, they can rescue their own. They’d better hurry, though.”
    His manner to her was somehow fatherly but not patronizing, confiding but not gossipy. He was certainly not talking down to her; in fact he was almost speaking in riddles, encouraging her to question more deeply. “Have you ever seen ladders fail like that?”
    His eyes twinkled. “No. Oh, I’ve seen ladders break, but never with such dramatic results. But then, I’ve never seen an assault attempted against a wall so high in such a narrow space. Rash, it was; asking for trouble. They knew that road was a killing ground; they knew the castle’s history.”
    “The ladders’ collapse was unusual, though?”
    He shrugged. “I think so, but I won’t go around talking about it.”
    He was talking with her about it. Why? If it had been Wulf’s magic that broke the first ladder, how many men’s deaths must he now have on his conscience? But how many defenders’ lives had he saved by preventing a sack?
    If it had been Wulf’s doing.
    “We’re all very stubborn, us Magnuses,” Baron Magnus remarked, turning his head to stare across the valley at the snowy mass of Mount Naproti. “Notoriously so. I expect Vlad and I were holy terrors when we were children. Don’t remember. Marek never was. Marek was always owlish, bookish; didn’t give a spit about weapons or training or even horses, much.”
    Madlenka hadn’t seen Marek around all morning. She wondered where he was. A man in holy orders couldn’t fight, but he should have been helping in the infirmary.
    “Anton was,” his brother said thoughtfully. “A holy terror, I mean. Drove