“My father has a fief-minor in sergeantry on a manor of the Count’s, a day’s travel south of the city, my lady. Ferndale Manor.”

That put him in the lowest class of Associate. As an infantry reservist called up a month a year in peacetime he would have a double-sized peasant farm and pay less rent and labor service; his sons would spend a couple of years in the Count’s garrisons as young men. Such families were as close to a rural middle class as the Association had.

“Have you ever handled a crossbow?”

“No, my lady. My father and brothers are spearmen.”

“Your occupation?”

“I helped with all the usual farm chores, my lady. Now in God’s service

I am an orderly at our hospital, and a student of medicine, and assist with clerical duties in the Mother Superior’s office as needed.”

“Excellent, Sister. Lioncel, give the good Sister the crossbow. Sister Fatima, please span and shoot three times.”

Lioncel presented the weapon across his palms with a polite bow. The nun’s eyes went a little wide as she accepted it, and it wobbled slightly as she adjusted to the solid nine pounds of weight. Then she settled it in a rather clumsy copy of Lioncel’s posture and went through the loading procedure. She was awkward, and made elementary mistakes—holding the butt away from her shoulder in a way that would have given her a painful thump if there had been a bolt to launch. But it was obvious that she was handling the basic effort without much strain.

“Thank you, Sister, Reverend Mother,” Tiphaine said, as Lioncel retrieved the weapon, replaced it in the basket and retrieved the sword.

“And there you have it,” she went on to the room at large as he took up his position behind her. “You can quickly identify the natural shots. Bolts are reusable, so there’s no limit on practice. Any laborer, any healthy peasant girl, can load. Have two or three behind the shooter handing forward loaded crossbows. That will augment your firepower quite a bit, especially here with the large circuit of the city walls to hold, and let you use your trained men where you really need them. The enemy are not going to sit down to two-year sieges, or an artillery and combat-engineering duel. If they come, they’ll try ramps, siege towers, and plain old ladders, to swamp you with massed assaults regardless of costs. Shoot the guts out of them, break their hearts with losses, and you can stop them. Then your walls will be the anvil against which we’ll hammer them to death.”

Eventually, she thought but did not say.