“Lord Prism,” the young man said. “How can I help?”
The sun had barely cleared the horizon, and all the drafters who were capable of drafting without hurting themselves or losing control had gathered at the wall. The local workmen seemed stunned to be surrounded by so many of them.
“What’s your name?” Gavin asked. He didn’t think he’d even seen this young man before.
“Aheyyad.”
“So you are an artist,” Gavin said.
Aheyyad smiled. “Not much choice, with the grandmother I had.”
Gavin tilted his head.
“Sorry, I thought you knew. My grandmother is Tala. She knew I was going to be an orange and an artist by the time I was four years old. She forced my mother to rename me.”
“Tala can be very, ahem, persuasive,” Gavin said.
The boy grinned.
A boy going to the Freeing at the same time as his grandmother. There was a tale of woe just under the surface there, a family’s grief, the loss of two generations at once, but no need to prod that now. All things are brought to light in time. “I need an artist,” Gavin said. “Can you work fast?”
“I’d better,” Aheyyad said.
“Are you any good?” Gavin already knew that Aheyyad was or Corvan wouldn’t have sent him. He wanted to know whether the young man would be bold or tentative when faced with something so vast.
“I’m the best,” Aheyyad said. “What’s the project?”
Gavin smiled. He loved artists. In small doses. “I’m building a wall. Work with the architect to make sure you don’t screw up anything functional, but your task 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.