Attrition is the manner of sieges. It had not been the plan of the Lord’s House for Lookout. Haven’s superior technology had brought the army to a complete standstill, outnumbering the inhabitants of Lookout more than four to one.

The challenge of a siege is who is willing to suffer most for victory. The Lord’s House venerated suffering, believed it to be the only path to salvation. The people of Lookout, almost all of them freed from slavery and imprisonment, actually knew suffering.

Even with their ballistae, the skirmishers outside of Lookout could only do so much. They could destroy the supply line from Outer Light, but they could not deal with the third army, who marched across the sand some six months into the siege.

Five thousand soldiers dragged more than six hundred more of those portable walls and hundreds of pack animals laden with supplies for the siege.

Ato’s fifteenth birthday present to herself was hitting a priest from the Lord’s House through the sternum with a ballista. She hadn’t known he was on the far side of the wall, but she thought it counted.

Tengu’s present was a new spear, longer and sharper than the one Ato still carried from Rhatal. Emen’s present was to stop arguing when Ato wanted to fight. Ora’s present was an embroidered set of light clothes bearing the same loops for affixing armour that were found on Ora’s dress.

Ryoko’s present was a pat on the shoulder and a serious nod. Ato was starting to think that Ryoko was bad at birthday presents.

Four thousand, six hundred soldiers, five hundred walls, and less than half of the pack animals made it to the siege at Lookout. Since the Lord’s House viewed animals as not only less than humans, but even less than women, they had not done a very good job of keeping theirs safe from raids.

From the occasional messages flashed from the tower at Lookout, or sent by telegraph from Haven when the skirmishers stopped at the Sand Crawlers’ base, the siege at Altok was going much better.

Not only was Wasolan being much less cautious than the Lord’s House, they were sending troops from the fighting with Kzara to reinforce the old Independent Cities, rather than retreat. Not to mention that they had sent far fewer soldiers to a far larger town.

Even in their turtle formations, the armies of the Lord’s House had all but completely encircled Lookout. The stalemate persisted. When that second army had joined the siege, they had tried yet again to approach the walls with their catapults. The catapults, walls, ballistae, trebuchets, and archers had seen them off very quickly.

And so everyone was back to waiting. The reinforced trebuchets that the Lord’s House had dragged from Outer Light had fared no better against Lookout’s weighted wires, and so there was nothing to be done.

The bright side was that Lookout was still nowhere near running out of food. People were getting bored with dried meat and fermented vegetables, but there was plenty more to eat.

Despite the increased size of the supply runs from Outer Light, very little food made it all the way to Lookout. The skirmishers may not have been as numerous as the soldiers, but they were getting quite a lot of practice.

Ato got Ryoko the very best twenty-second birthday present a woman could ask for: incendiary ballista shot. Ato was far from the only person who had been working on it over the course of the siege at Lookout, but she was the first among the skirmishers to successfully make one.

The Lord’s House had finally shifted from portable walls to entirely portable structures about a month earlier. These wheeled sheds weren’t completely impervious to the portable ballistae in the same way the portable walls hadn’t been completely impervious to the stationary crossbows.

Altok got Ryoko the very best twenty-second birthday and nine days birthday present a woman from Altok could get. After five months, Altok had finally made the decision to break through Wasolan’s withering siege forces.

The siege at Altok had been a matter of attrition just as much as the siege at Lookout, but it’s purpose had been vastly different. As more troops were sent from the war with Kzara to reinforce the siege and the old Independent cities, the tide of the way had started to shift.

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Kzaran forces were on something of a rampage through the far western edges of Wasolan, taking towns, villages, and even two cities by the time Altok had finished building telegraph lines out to Haven and Outpost.

There was only so much eight-six people and two ballistae could do against a force of seven thousand and its well-defended supply lines, even able to engulf a wheeled shed in flame near impossible to put out.

Jules and her newest forces added nearly three hundred more skirmishers to the effort and, less than a month later, Altok joined in with another five hundred of their own.

Haven was still chronically low of steel, and the supply of quarrels for the stationary crossbows and ballistae was running short. Until a caravan arrived from Altok carrying nearly ten tonnes of iron, a gift for all the help with Wasolan.

Now losing their defences at a distressingly rapid pace, the besieging forces at Lookout made the worst possible decision and set to an all-out attack on the walls. They managed to break one stone block, and crack three more. For their efforts, they lost nearly three thousand soldiers to Lookout’s siege weapons and the nine-hundred skirmishers harassing them from the sand.

The Lord’s House withdrew just about as quickly as they could, abandoning their wounded and most of their defences. They had little enough in the way of supplies that it was no added trouble to carry them.

A lot of those freed from the Lord’s House wanted to let the retreating soldiers go without any more fighting. Everyone else disagreed. Tengu and Jules recalled that, during the war between the Lord’s House and Oszrath, the Lord’s House had only ever managed to mobilise about twenty-thousand soldiers at once.

They were getting very close to losing half that number to Haven.

‘Let’s play pretend,’ Ato had said to Ora. ‘You pretend to be a wealthy woman, tens of thousands of dollars to your name.’

Ora, who had had her arms crossed and a severe frown on her face, only nodded.

‘An acquaintance comes to you,’ Ato continued. ‘Someone you know, someone you’ve worked with before, who you’ve lent money to before and been paid back in full, but not in money.’

Ora had taken a deep breath. ‘They’ve come to ask me for more money?’

‘They’ve come to ask you for more money,’ Ato agreed. ‘But you’ve heard something about them recently.’

‘Did they lose half of their military to a tiny nation in a barely habitable wasteland?’ Ora grumbled.

‘Did they?’ Ato asked. ‘Say you’ve heard that they lost, certainly, but less than a quarter of their troops are lost.’

‘I would still be disinclined to lend them money,’ Ora said. ‘A wasteland is not very appealing.’

‘Oh, they won’t pay you with wasteland,’ Ato had said. ‘They will pay you with good, useable land. Probably people and mines and the like as well.’

Ora took a deep breath. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I get it. I would be much less inclined to give them money if they lost half their fighting forces compared to less than a quarter.’

Ato had patted Ora on the knee. ‘You don’t have to come with us,’ she said. ‘But you understand what we’re doing.’

Ora went with them.

Ryoko had stopped adding notches to the hilt of her sword when she reached a hundred. She had done her best to stop keeping track, and she wouldn’t admit that she knew how many people she’d killed with the sword.

The back plate of Ato’s armour was decorated with a growing and increasingly complex geometric pattern of straight lines. If she’d known of any tattoo artists, it would have been etched into her flesh.

Ora did not kill a single retreating soldier. She earnestly didn’t know how many people she had killed in her years with Tengu.

She was prepared to draw her sword when Haven and Altok’s forces reached Outer Light and smashed straight through the gates with their looted catapults and battering rams.

Ato did not understand the distinction between a proselytiser and priest, but she took Ora’s word that they were different. No proselytiser found the opportunity to escape Outer Light or surrender to the invading army.

Haven took everything except the buildings from Outer Light. Any soldiers with enough sense to surrender were released back into the Lord’s House. Four hundred slaves and nearly twice as many wives, and a good two hundred children, left with the invaders to the freedom offered by Haven and the wastes.

By the time the army got back to Lookout, there were more hostages than residents. Those wounded soldiers unable to return to the Lord’s House under their own power were locked up in a series of huge, wooden barracks outside the town’s gates. They were a conundrum that everyone decided to deal with tomorrow.

Any plans the Lord’s House may have had to continue the fight against Haven were put on hold when Oszrath decided to break its peace agreement with the Lord’s House. Despite their disagreements, Narmen joined in not much longer.

‘I think if my acquaintance had fucked up this badly, I might pretend I didn’t know him,’ Ora told Ato.

‘I think that’s the first time I’ve heard you swear.’