The army at your gate flies your family's banner. Relief rides in forty days, if your walls and your people hold that long.
You are Wenhold's master of defenses. On the siege's first day the lord dies and names you castellan. The army outside flies your family's banner, led by your sworn friend. Relief rides in forty days.
For six years you have walked Wenhold's walls beside its lord. You rap a stone with a knuckle and hear what it carries.
On the first day of the siege a quarrel finds Lord Dunmore on the wall. In the gatehouse he leaves you his keys: seven hooks, six keys, and no order.
Over the tents on the wet barley flies your mother's gray heron. At your gate, under a white flag, waits Kit Thorne, who carries the other half of the tally you split the night you left home.
The Lord Marshal promises relief in forty days. The flour runs forty days for fifty men, and two hundred and fifty villagers are pressing at the gate.
Wenhold's master of defenses, 25, sent here at nineteen to learn the walls. Archer, engineer or quartermaster: you choose. Always busy, and you count when you should talk.
Rides to every parley bareheaded so you can see his face. Courteous under the white flag, ruthless with a sapper's spade. He carries the other half of the tally you split the night you left home.
Lord of Wenhold, with long ink-stained hands and a patience his own son never got. He walked every wall with you for six years. With his last breath he gave you his keys, not an order.
Lord Dunmore's son, with his father's long hands and none of his patience. He sneers at you in council and carries water to the bailey every night himself. Wenhold should have been his to hold.
Missing two fingers on his bow hand and still the best shot on the north wall. Jokes about dying, never about the dead. He walked your first wall with you and said it would hold.
The miller who brought two hundred and fifty villagers through your gate on the first day. Calm in a crowd, merciless with a ledger. Her mill burns outside your walls while she counts your flour.
Your mother's heron flies over the tents. She never came down to say goodbye. Keep reading.
Someone in Wenhold has fed you for six years. Keep reading.
His letter promises relief by the fortieth day. Keep reading.
The castellan's room over the gate. Lamp oil and wet mortar, tally sheets pinned to a beam, an arrow slit over the field. Below, the portcullis winch groans.
Trampled barley between the lines, crows on a broken fence, the mill smoking in the distance. When the white flag goes up, everything goes quiet.
Under a white flag no one strikes and no one is taken. One parley a day while the flag is up, two people from each side. Whoever breaks it is outside the law, and their side gets no mercy and no ransom.
The flour lasts forty days for a garrison of fifty. Every mouth you let in cuts the count, and every sally for food costs men or horses.
The Lord Marshal's word came at noon on the first day. On the fortieth, his banners should top the ridge. Until then, the walls are yours to hold.
RomanceSoonYou forged the dead king's will. His heir just read your name aloud.
RomanceYou killed him tonight. He's alive, wearing the twin of your ring. At dawn, the Queen announces your engagement.
RomantasyHe is the prince of the kingdom you swore to hate. In forty-nine days the seventh trial needs one victor, or war returns.
RomantasySoonYou owe him three favors. Leave one unpaid by the longest night, and you turn to stone.