“Many of the country people have come in from the manors within three days walk,” he said. “The castles . . .”

Would only have space for some of them even crammed to the gills, because we built them to hold down the folk of the countryside, not shelter them, Tiphaine thought mordantly.

A castle’s perimeter had to be kept as small as practical; every foot of parapet that you needed to hold made it weaker, other things being equal. That was why a city like this required a huge garrison in comparison to even the largest keep, though its walls might be just as high and strong. She had some ideas about helping with that.

“So we’re putting them to work,” he said. “They welcome it. Everyone knows we have to pull together.”

“You got in most of the harvest?” she said.

“Most of the fall-sown grain, and the garbanzos and field peas,” he said. “We’re threshing as fast as we can and getting it in sacks and under cover, but a lot’s still in loose piles on the floors of churches and whatnot. Plenty of fodder, since we’ve sent so much livestock west, but it’s bulky, we don’t have enough presses for the loose hay that’s normally kept in the fields or barn lofts. And a fair amount of vegetables for pickling and drying. The early fruit is coming in, cherries, apricots, peaches and pears—we’re guarding the workers in the fields and risking enemy raiders, and preserving all of it we can, my lady wife and the other gentlewomen have organized supplies of extra jars and sugar and heating pans and are leading the effort. We’re slaughtering everything but the breeding stock of our remaining beef herds and swine and drying, salting and smoking the meat wholesale.”

Tiphaine nodded in sober approval. Food was always one of the most important factors in war; when you came right down to it, fighting was manual muscle-labor as hard as any in the fields, and like farming it also depended on the energy of huge numbers of draught animals who had to be fed as well. If an army didn’t get enough to eat it mutinied or disappeared or just plain died, and hauling food from far away was a nightmare unless you had water transport or at least rails. A city or a castle under siege had to have rations too, and fruit and vegetables were important to prevent scurvy.

You could live a long time on bread and cheese, beans and a little dried fruit and pickled meat.

“But we’re going to lose the rest of the fruit and the apples. Worse, the vintage,” the Count said, wincing slightly. The local wines were famous and a major cash crop. “And it’s not all that long before we have to plow and sow the fall grains.”