Dreiroede of Hamvelt, probably the greatest siege engineer who had ever lived, had laid it out at the very height of his powers and influence. The town itself was pressed against the riverbank, and what had once been a fishing village was now dwarfed by the system of fortifications that surrounded it. Seen from a distant overlook, as Winter was seeing it now, it resembled a massive exercise in geometry, sketched onto the land by some idle deity. On the west side of the river, around the town, six points of a great star were traced by a ditch and a massive earthen rampart, pockmarked with embrasures for defending artillery. A seventh point, like a massive spike, stretched on the other side of the river, with additional protection provided by a swampy moat created with water diverted from the Piav. Between the points of the star were the outworks, ravelins and lunettes, from which the defenders could create a vicious cross fire and slaughter the crews of any cannon trying to breach the walls.

It was Dreiroede himself, who had been as expert in attacking fortresses as he had been at building them, who had insisted that there was no such thing as an impenetrable fortification. Given sufficient numbers, artillery, and willpower, any fortress could be reduced; bastions could be toppled, outworks seized, and eventually a breaching battery established close enough to the wall to blast a hole in it and permit an infantry assault. The fortress builder’s art was therefore all down to buying time—angled walls of earth would deflect cannonballs rather than shatter beneath them, overlapping rings of defense would each cost time and lives to penetrate, and defending cannon could sweep the attackers back from the defenses until they were finally silenced. The strength of a fortress was measured in time, how many months the defenders could be expected to hold out without relief.

Antova, his greatest work, was a year-strong fortress. Any attacker was supposed to have to batter the walls for at least that long before gaining entry, while deflecting the efforts of the garrison and surviving a cold and hungry winter. In the meantime, relief forces would be approaching, and the attacking army risked being caught between them and the fortress like iron between a hammer and the anvil.

Janus was evidently not concerned. From where she stood, on a height in the mountain foothills, Winter could see blue-uniformed troops hard at work digging trenches. The Army of the East now numbered some thirty-five thousand. Di Pfalen’s routed army had nowhere near the numbers Dreiroede’s calculations required—even the strongest fortress required soldiers to man the walls—but even so the massive construction with its killing fields and siege guns seemed a daunting prospect. And to the north, approaching with the slow inexorability of a glacier, came Hamvelt’s greatest living soldier, Field Marshal Jindenau, with another thirty thousand soldiers.