“Hold my city,” she said. “Keep my people alive so that they may enjoy victory.”

“A victory so dear won that we will have nothing but the shell of a city and the husk of a nation,” Random said. “There is hunger in the streets. And the plague is spreading again.”

Prior Wishart came up, having overseen the loading of the last of the Order’s chargers. “I leave you fifty knights,” he said. “I cannot spare more. Even that is almost half of my Order.”

The queen put her hand on Ser Gerald’s arm. “I would say this to no one but you,” she said in a low voice. “But it would be better to lose Harndon than to lose everything. You are the rear guard, sir knight. Hold here if you can.”

Behind him, Master Pye called out as an immensely heavy bronze tube was swung up on a network of ropes.

Prior Wishart put his hand on his queen. “Madame,” he said. “Even as you command your rear guard, I beg your leave to ride with my vanguard. We are few but we have remounts and I fear for Lissen Carak. I fear everything: betrayal, siege, battle, magic. Please let me go.”

She gave him a queer look and returned the pressure on his arm. “Bide, my lord. I have a plan for you, and will take care of my fortress at Lissen Carak, too.”

“Belay!” he roared. Two hundred men paused; a heavy hawser was tied off to a bollard. The old master leapt down onto the deck of the barge and eyed the bronze tube. “Cast her off!” he called. The men grunted; the tallow-greased blocks squealed as they took the immense weight. The oxhide and canvas cradle holding the tube seemed to groan, and then the whole contraption swung a finger’s breadth, and then another. A nimble apprentice took a sharp knife and, at a nod from his master, cut a yarn, and the cradle came down a hand’s width, and then another was cut, and another, and the cradle descended in short jerks, a finger or two at a time until the massive thing touched the barge’s supports, and came to rest, pressing the big boat down in the water like a giant’s hand, and the whole vessel groaned, and water came in at several seams.

The queen walked up beside Master Pye, where he stood in the bowels of the barge, watching his apprentices remove the cradle from the massive bronze tube. The tube was decorated from butt to mouth with handles shaped like dolphins and with a muzzle shaped like a dragon’s roaring mouth. Around the breech were cast the words Ultima Ratio Humanum.

“How long, Pye?” she asked.

“Seven more,” he said. “I’m sorry, Yer Grace. This cannot be hurried.”

Her captain, Ranald Lachlan, spoke quietly to Rebecca, his wife. She nodded and approached the queen.