Brigman’s brow darkened, and Roran saw the man’s dislike of him curdle and turn to hate. He wished that he had chosen a more diplomatic response.
“Your tent is this way.”
It was still morning when Roran woke.
A soft light diffused through the tent, lifting his spirits. For a moment, he thought he had only fallen asleep for a few minutes. Then he realized he felt too bright and alert for that to be the case.
He cursed quietly to himself, angry that he had allowed an entire day to slip through his fingers.
A thin blanket covered him, mostly unneeded in the balmy southern weather, especially since he was wearing his boots and clothes underneath. He pulled it off, then tried to sit upright.
A choked groan escaped him as his entire body seemed to stretch and tear. He fell back and lay gasping at the fabric above. The initial shock soon subsided, but it left behind a multitude of throbbing aches—some worse than others.
It took him several minutes to gather his strength. With a massive effort, he rolled onto his side and swung his legs over the edge of the cot. He stopped to catch his breath before attempting the seemingly impossible task of standing.
Once he was on his feet, he smiled sourly. It was going to be an interesting day.
The others were already up and waiting for him when he made his way out of the tent. They looked worn and haggard; their movements were as stiff as his own. After exchanging greetings, Roran motioned toward the bandage on Delwin’s forearm, where a tavern keeper had cut him with a paring knife. “Has the pain gone down?”
Delwin shrugged. “It’s not so bad. I can fight if need be.”
“Good.”
“What do you intend to do first?” Carn asked.
Roran eyed the rising sun, calculating how much time remained until noon. “Take a walk,” he said.
Starting from the center of the camp, Roran led his companions up and down each row of tents, inspecting the condition of the troops as well as the state of their equipment. Occasionally, he stopped to question a warrior before moving on. For the most part, the men were tired and disheartened, although he noticed their mood seemed to improve when they caught sight of him.
Roran’s tour ended at the southern edge of the camp, as he had planned. There he and the others stopped to gaze at the imposing edifice that was Aroughs.
The city had been built in two tiers. The first was low and spread out and contained the majority of buildings, while the second, smaller tier occupied the top of a long, gentle rise, which was the tallest point for miles around. A wall encircled both levels of the city. Five gates were visible within the outer wall: two of them opened to roads that entered the city—one from the north and one from the east—and the other three sat astride canals that flowed southward, into the city. On the other side of Aroughs lay the restless sea, where the canals presumably emptied.
At least they don’t have a moat, he thought.
The north-facing gate was scratched and scarred from a battering ram, and the ground in front of it was torn up with what Roran recognized as the tracks of battle. Three catapults, four ballistae of the sort he had knowledge of from his time on the Dragon Wing, and two ramshackle siege towers were arrayed before the outer wall. A handful of men hunkered next to the machines of war, smoking pipes and playing dice on patches of leather. The machines appeared pitifully inadequate compared with the monolithic mass of the city.
The low, flat land surrounding Aroughs sloped downward toward the sea. Hundreds of farms dotted the green plain, each marked by a wooden fence and at least one thatched hut. Sumptuous estates stood here and there: sprawling stone manors protected by their own high walls and, Roran assumed, by their own guards. No doubt they belonged to the nobles of Aroughs, and perhaps certain well-off merchants.
“What do you think?” he asked Carn.
The magician shook his head, his drooping eyes even more mournful than usual. “We might as well lay siege to a mountain for all the good it’ll do.”
“Indeed,” observed Brigman, walking up to them.
Roran kept his own observations to himself; he did not want the others to know how discouraged he was. Nasuada is mad if she believes we can capture Aroughs with only eight hundred men. If I had eight thousand, and Eragon and Saphira to boot, then I might be sure of it. But not like this. …
Yet he knew he had to find a way, for Katrina’s sake, if nothing else.
Without looking at him, Roran said to Brigman, “Tell me about Aroughs.”
Brigman twisted his spear several times, grinding the butt of it into the ground, before he replied: “Galbatorix had foresight; he saw to it that the city was fully stocked with food before we cut off the roads between here and the rest of the Empire. Water, as you can see, they have no shortage of. Even if we diverted the canals, they would still have several springs and wells inside the city. They could conceivably hold out until winter, if not longer, although I’d wager they’d be right sick of eating turnips before all was said and done. Also, Galbatorix garrisoned Aroughs with a fair number of soldiers—more than twice what we have—in addition to their usual contingent.”
“How do you know this?”
“An informant. However, he had no experience with military strategy, and he provided us with an overly confident assessment of Aroughs’s weaknesses.”
“Ah.”
“He also promised us that he would be able to let a small force of men into the city under the cover of dark.”
“And?”
“We waited, but he never appeared, and we saw his head mounted over the parapet the following morning. It’s still there, by the eastern gate.”
“So it is. Are there other gates besides these five?”
“Aye, three more. By the docks, there’s a water gate wide enough for all three streams to run out at once, and next to it a dry gate for men and horses. Then there’s another dry gate over at that end”—he pointed toward the western side of the city—“same as the others.”
“Can any of them be breached?”
“Not quickly. By the shore, we haven’t room to maneuver properly or withdraw out of range of the soldiers’ stones and arrows. That leaves us with these gates, and the western one as well. The lay of the land is much the same all around the city, except for the shore, so I chose to concentrate our attack on the nearest gate.”
“What are they made of?”
“Iron and oak. They’ll stand for hundreds of years unless we knock them down.”
“Are they protected by any spells?”
“I wouldn’t know, seeing as how Nasuada didn’t see fit to send one of her magicians with us. Halstead has—”
“Halstead?”
“Lord Halstead, ruler of Aroughs. You must have heard of him.”
“No.”
A brief pause followed, wherein Roran could sense Brigman’s contempt for him growing. Then the man continued, “Halstead has a conjurer of his own: a mean, sallow-looking creature we’ve seen atop the walls, muttering into his beard and trying to strike us down with his spells. He seems to be singularly incompetent, because he hasn’t had much luck, save for two of the men I had on the battering ram, whom he managed to set on fire.”
Roran exchanged glances with Carn—the magician appeared even more worried than before—but he decided it would be better to discuss the matter in private.
“Would it be easier to break through the gates on the canals?” he asked.
“Where would you stand? Look at how they’re recessed within the wall, without so much as a step for purchase. What’s more, there are slits and trapdoors in the roof of the entryway, so they can pour boiling oil, drop boulders, or fire crossbows at anyone foolish enough to venture in there.”
“The gates can’t be solid all the way down, or they would block the water.”
“You’re right about that. Below the surface is a latticework of wood and metal with holes large enough that they don’t impede the flow overly much.”
“I see. Are the gates kept lowered into the water most of the time, even when Aroughs isn’t under siege?”
“At night for certain, but I believe they were left open during the daylight hours.”
“Mmh. And what of the walls?”
Brigman shifted his weight. “Granite, polished smooth, and fit so closely together, you can’t even slide a knife blade between the blocks. Dwarf work, I’d guess, from before the fall of the Riders. I’d also guess that the walls are filled with packed rubble, but I can’t say for sure, since we haven’t cracked the outer sheathing yet. They extend at least twelve feet below ground and probably more, which means we can’t tunnel under them or weaken them with sapping.”
Stepping forward, Brigman pointed at the manors to the north and west. “Most of the nobles have retreated into Aroughs, but they left men behind to protect their property. They’ve given us some trouble, attacking our scouts, stealing our horses, that sort of thing. We captured two of the estates early on”—he indicated a pair of burnt-out husks a few miles away—“but holding them was more trouble than it was worth, so we sacked them and put them to the torch. Unfortunately, we don’t have enough men to secure the rest.”
Baldor spoke then. “Why do the canals feed into Aroughs? It doesn’t look as if they’re used for watering crops.”
“You don’t need to water here, lad, any more than a northman needs to cart in snow during the winter. Staying dry is more a problem than not.”
“Then what are they used for?” Roran inquired. “And where do they come from? You can’t expect me to believe the water is drawn from the Jiet River, so many leagues away.”
“Hardly,” scoffed Brigman. “There are lakes in the marshes north of us. It’s brackish, unwholesome water, but the people here are accustomed to it. A single channel carries it from the marshes to a point about three miles away. There the channel divides into the three canals you see here, and they run over a series of falls, which power the mills that grind flour for the city. The peasants cart their grain to the mills at harvesttime, and then the sacks of flour are loaded onto barges and floated down to Aroughs. It’s also a handy way of moving other goods, like timber and wine, from the manor houses to the city.”
Roran rubbed the back of his neck as he continued to examine Aroughs. What Brigman had told him intrigued him, but he was not sure how it could help. “Is there anything else of significance in the surrounding countryside?” he asked.
“Only a slate mine farther south along the coast.”
He grunted, still thinking. “I want to visit the mills,” he said. “But first I want to hear a full account of your time here, and I want to know how well provisioned we are with everything from arrows to biscuits.”
“If you’ll follow me … Stronghammer.”
The next hour Roran spent in conference with Brigman and two of his lieutenants, listening and asking questions as they recounted each of the assaults they had launched against the city walls, as well as cataloging the stocks of supplies left to the warriors under his command.
At least we’re not short of weapons, Roran thought as he counted the number of dead. Yet even if Nasuada had not set a time limit upon his mission, the men and horses did not have enough food to stay camped before Aroughs for more than another week.
Many of the facts and figures that Brigman and his lackeys related came from writing on scrolls of parchment. Roran strove to conceal the fact that he could not decipher the rows of angular black marks by insisting that the men read everything to him, but it irritated him that he was at the mercy of others. Nasuada was right, he realized. I have to learn to read, else I cannot tell if someone is lying to me when they say that a piece of parchment says one thing or another. … Maybe Carn can teach me on our return to the Varden.
The more Roran learned about Aroughs, the more he began to sympathize with Brigman’s plight; capturing the city was a daunting task with no obvious solution. Despite his dislike for the man, Roran thought that the captain had done as well as could be expected under the circumstances. He had failed, Roran believed, not because he was an incompetent commander, but because he lacked the two qualities that had granted Roran victory time and time again: daring and imagination.
Upon finishing his review, Roran and his five companions rode with Brigman to inspect Aroughs’s walls and gates from a closer, but still safe, distance. Sitting in a saddle again was incredibly painful for Roran, but he bore it without complaint.
As their steeds clattered onto the stone-paved road next to the camp and began to trot toward the city, Roran noticed that, on occasion, the horses’ hooves produced a peculiar noise when they struck the ground. He remembered hearing a similar sound, and being bothered by it, during their final day of traveling.
Looking down, he saw that the flat stones that formed the surface of the road seemed to be set within tarnished silver, the veins of which formed an irregular, cobweb-like pattern.
Roran called out to Brigman and asked him about it, whereupon Brigman shouted, “The dirt here makes for poor mortar, so instead they use lead to hold the stones in place!”
Roran’s initial reaction was disbelief, but Brigman appeared serious. He found it astonishing that any metal could be so common that people would squander it on building a road.
So they trotted down the lane of stone and lead toward the gleaming city beyond.
They studied Aroughs’s defenses with great attentiveness. But their increased proximity revealed nothing new and only served to reinforce Roran’s impression that the city was nigh on impregnable.
He guided his horse over to Carn’s. The magician was staring at Aroughs with a glazed expression, his lips moving silently, as if he were talking to himself. Roran waited until he stopped, then quietly asked, “Are there any spells on the gates?”
“I think so,” Carn replied, equally subdued, “but I’m not sure how many or what their intended purpose is. I’ll need more time to tease out the answers.”
“Why is it so difficult?”
“It’s not, really. Most spells are easy to detect, unless someone has made an effort to hide them, and even then, the magic usually leaves certain telltale traces if you know what to look for. My concern is that one or more of the spells might be traps set to prevent people from meddling with the gates’ enchantments. If that’s so, and I approach them directly, I’ll be sure to trigger them, and then who knows what will happen? I might dissolve into a puddle before your very eyes, which is a fate I would rather avoid, if I have my way.”
“Do you want to stay here while we continue on?”
Carn shook his head. “I don’t think it would be wise to leave you unguarded while we’re away from camp. I’ll return after sundown and see what I can do then. Besides, it would help if I were closer to the gates, and I don’t dare go any nearer now, when I’m in plain sight of the sentinels.”
“As you wish.”
When Roran was satisfied they had learned everything they could by looking at the city, he had Brigman lead them to the nearest set of mills.
They were much as Brigman had described. The water in the canal flowed over three consecutive twenty-foot falls. At the base of each fall was a waterwheel, edged with buckets. The water splashed into the buckets, driving the machine round and round. The wheels were connected by thick axles to three identical buildings that stood stacked one above the other along the terraced bank and which contained the massive grindstones needed to produce the flour for Aroughs’s population. Though the wheels were moving, Roran could tell they were disengaged from the complex arrangement of gears hidden inside the buildings, for he did not hear the rumble of the grindstones turning in their places.
He dismounted by the lowest mill and walked up the path between the buildings, eyeing the sluice gates that were above the falls and that controlled the amount of water released into them. The gates were open, but a deep pool of water still lay beneath each of the three slowly spinning wheels.
&n
bsp; He stopped halfway up the hill and planted his feet on the edge of the soft, grassy bank, crossed his arms, and tucked his chin against his chest while he pondered how he could possibly capture Aroughs. That there was a trick or a strategy that would allow him to crack open the city like a ripe gourd, he was confident, but the solution eluded him.
He thought until he was tired of thinking, and then he gave himself over to the creaking of the turning axles and the splashing of the falling water.
Soothing as those sounds were, a thorn of unease still rankled him, for the place reminded him of Dempton’s mill in Therinsford, where he had gone to work the day the Ra’zac had burned down his home and tortured his father, mortally wounding him.
Roran tried to ignore the memory, but it stayed with him, twisting in his gut.
If only I had waited another few hours to leave, I could have saved him. Then the more practical part of Roran replied: Yes, and the Ra’zac would have killed me before I could have even raised a hand. Without Eragon to protect me, I would have been as helpless as a newborn babe.
With a quiet step, Baldor joined him by the edge of the canal. “The others are wondering: have you decided on a plan?” he asked.
“I have ideas, but no plan. What of you?”
Baldor crossed his arms as well. “We could wait for Nasuada to send Eragon and Saphira to our aid.”
“Bah.”
For a while, they watched the never-ending motion of the water below them. Then Baldor said, “What if you just asked them to surrender? Maybe they’ll be so frightened when they hear your name, they’ll throw open the gates, fall at your feet, and beg for mercy.”
Roran chuckled briefly. “I doubt word of me has reached all the way to Aroughs. Still …” He ran his fingers through his beard. “It might be worth a try, to put them off balance if nothing else.”
“Even if we gain entrance to the city, can we hold it with so few men?”