A Wizard's Guide to Defensive Baking

by T. Kingfisher

  “What will happen if we lose?” I asked.

  The Duchess sighed. “If he has control over the Carex, then Oberon will take me prisoner, and most likely have me executed immediately after a trial designed to convince the nobles that we are still under the rule of law and they can continue pretty much as they always have. You…well, it is hard to say, my dear, but you have been a threat and a nuisance to him, and I suspect that he will have you executed if he can catch you.” She tilted her head. “If he does not have control over the Carex, then we will mostly die once they break through our defenses.”

  I nodded. It was what I had expected.

  That my knees went weak and wobbly and I could feel my stomach churning….well, I didn’t say anything about it. The Duchess had put on that royal mask again, being strong and competent and inspiring, and I didn’t want to whimper in front of her.

  “He’ll have to go through me,” growled Aunt Tabitha.

  “And us as well,” said Joshua dryly, “but I doubt that will be a problem once the city is breached. There are simply not enough of us.”

  The runner arrived with his arms full of leather and chain. As Joshua had predicted, there was very little that fit me. I had to settle for a leather cap and a heavy vest made out of leather with metal bits sewn to it that Joshua said was usually worn by the drummer boy. It wasn’t too bad. The vest was a bit like the apron I wore at work, just heavier, and at least my arms were still free.

  Aunt Tabitha, on the other hand, had a full suit of chainmail. A lot of guards are big. They generally weren’t big in quite the same places as Aunt Tabitha, but she made it work.

  It was frighteningly appropriate. If she hadn’t been a baker, Aunt Tabitha would probably have been one of those northern warrior women with the big breastplates that sing opera and carry off the souls of the valiant dead.

  While they were outfitting her, I went back to staring out at the Carex camp. “When is something going to happen?” I asked Joshua.

  “Things have been happening all night,” he said. “One of the big cook tents went up in flames a few hours ago, and they’ve had some trouble with the horses. I assume it’s the men that Spindle told us about, harassing them.”

  I grinned. Spindle’s friends, or maybe a pack of really bad cookies.

  “They should attack at dawn,” said Joshua, as my grin faded. “Or as soon as it’s light enough to see.”

  * * *

  The attack came twenty minutes after sunrise.

  Aunt Tabitha said it had been twenty minutes, anyway. She’s got a pretty good internal clock, always knows when the muffins are ready to pull out of the oven. It didn’t feel like twenty minutes. It felt more like twenty years.

  The sky looked like a raw egg, runny with streaks of red in it.

  “They’re forming up,” said Harold, standing with us on the battlements. Joshua had gone to address the archers off on the left side of the wall.

  I couldn’t really tell what was going on, except that the milling Carex were milling more or less in our direction and forming into a large crowd aimed our way. It looked more like the crowd you get when the circus comes to town than anything military.

  Then they started to move towards the wall.

  “Archers!” cried a voice, and “Archers!” “Archers!” “Archers!” ran along the top of the wall, as the officers picked up the cry and passed it down.

  On either side of our little knot, men with bows stepped forward and set arrows onto the strings.

  “Hoooold!” cried the voice. (“Hold…hold…hold….” echoed past us.)

  The Carex broke into a run.

  “Steady…” murmured Harold, to no one in particular. “Steady, steady, wait until they’re in range…”

  It seemed to take forever. I wanted them to fire and get it over with, shoot the people coming at us waving swords and axes and—I didn’t even know what that was, looked like a ball with spikes on it, who carries around a ball with spikes on it?—but the archers held and held and held and then:

  “FIRE!”

  (“Fire! Fire! Fire!”)

  Arrows rained down, with a hiss like butter on the griddle, magnified a hundred times.

  It didn’t do anything.

  Well, I’m sure it did something, I heard some Carex scream and a few fell down, but if there were any gaps in the crowd, they filled in immediately. It was extremely discouraging.

  There was another volley. The Carex army continued to run towards us. There were so many of them that the ones in back hadn’t even left their camp yet. They could afford to throw waves at us, while the rest sat around the campfire and toasted marshmallows. This struck me as desperately unfair. They could at least pretend we were dangerous. You know, out of common courtesy.

  “Slings!” shouted the voice down the wall. (“Slings!...Slings!”)

  The archers stepped back and drew more arrows. Fifty fighters (none of them guards—I saw women and a few kids barely older than I was) carrying leather slings stepped forward, fitting jars full of angry Bob into their weapons, and began to twirl them over their heads.

  This is it, Bob, I thought hard at my favorite sourdough starter. This is your big moment. I hope you’re good and mad!

  It was an awkward fit. Sling stones are usually a lot smaller than jars. A couple of them fell out and smashed on the wall, and a few more failed to get more than a few feet beyond the wall, but the majority sailed into the ranks of the Carex with the crisp sounds of shattering glass.

  That they noticed. Part of it was the simple fact that if you get clocked over the head with a jar, you tend to pay attention. But Bob was angry this morning, and he’d had all night to stew in his own juices, both literally and metaphorically. The Carex who got hit by jars found themselves with a furious slimy mass that burned like acid and which was trying to crawl under their armor.

  There was a lot more yelling. Gaps opened up in the line as individual Carex stopped running and started trying to yank their armor off to get at the Bobs. Other men slowed down to see why their comrades were yelling and stripping on the middle of a battlefield, and some of them got hit by stray bits of Bob, which immediately tried to go up their noses.

  “Get ’em, Bob!” cheered Aunt Tabitha next to me. “Show those filthy mercenaries what for!”

  “Slings!” (“Slings…slings…”)

  The second wave of Bob hit the enemy. Given how much chaos he was causing, I was starting to wish I’d spent less time on golems and more on making wheelbarrows full of Bob. I still had a jar with me, and a half-bucket or so back at the palace, so if we held them for a full day and they retreated at night, I might be able to whip up some more.

  The slingers stepped back, and the archers, who had picked up fresh quivers, stepped forward. The gaps in the enemy line that Bob had opened got bigger as the archers fired, and the crowd that finally surged against the gate was ragged in places.

  I expected the crowd to fill in, but it didn’t. Some of the mercenaries that had gotten a face full of Bob were down, and nobody wanted to get too close to them. Bob was fully capable of jumping if he was angry enough. He’d almost pounced on one of the guards moving barrels earlier.

  The downed mercenaries were twitching a bit, but that was all. I felt sick. On the one hand, I hated them for burning the fields, for attacking my city, for working for Oberon…but still. Death by sourdough starter. Not a good way to go. You had to feel sorry for them, and I was the one who’d brought it about.

  If you’d just leave, I thought. If you’d just turn around and leave, we wouldn’t have to do this.

  The ranks of Carex opened. A man on a horse rode down the aisle they formed. Behind him were two more men, also on horses. One was carrying a white flag.

  “Now for the farce…” muttered the Duchess.

  “I suppose it’s too much to hope they’re surrendering,” I said.

  “Far too much. I believe that’s Oberon.”

  It was. The former Inquisitor rode u
ntil he stood perhaps twenty feet from the wall and looked up. The horseman who wasn’t carrying a flag rode even closer.

  “Some kind of herald,” murmured Harold. “And definitely Oberon.”

  “Shoot him!” I hissed, practically hopping up and down. “We’ve got archers! Shoot him!”

  “He’s under a white flag,” said the Duchess wearily. “You don’t shoot people with white flags.”

  “But it’s Oberon!”

  “Believe me, Mona, I am entirely sympathetic to your feelings, but we don’t shoot people with white flags, in hopes that someday, if we’re under a white flag, they’ll return the favor. Rules of warfare.”

  “His Lordship Oberon, Inquisitor of the City, would address the Traitor Duchess!” shouted the herald. His voice was loud and carried across the walls.

  Men along the wall booed.

  The Duchess rolled her eyes and stepped up to the battlement. She cupped her hands around her mouth and shouted “If Oberon wants a traitor, he should look in his own mirror! I am the Duchess, rightful ruler of this city!”

  The men cheered. The herald’s horse sidled and stamped its feet.

  “His Lordship makes you the following offer: That you now, at once, open the city and lay down your arms, that all aggression against our Carex allies ceases, that the Duchess be handed over—”

  “I can save you the trouble!” called Joshua, from farther down the wall. “His Lordship can stuff it in his arse!”

  “We will never surrender!” shouted the Duchess. “We will never submit to the rule of a traitor, backed by hired killers! We will fight for our city to the last man!”

  Great waves of cheering broke over the walls. Men waved their swords and bows in the air. Under the chorus, the Duchess muttered, “At least not until sometime this afternoon, when it’s that or have the city burned down around our ears.”

  Aunt Tabitha snorted.

  The herald turned and rode away.

  Thirty-Three

  The Duchess caught my eye and her lips twisted in something that vaguely resembled a smile. “It wouldn’t help if we surrendered, Mona. The Carex would pillage the city anyway. Oberon may think he can keep them on a leash and use them as his army, but once they’re inside the walls, they’ll tear the city apart looking for food and gold, then squat in the ruins. And when the army gets back, they’ll be the ones laying siege to the walls. The best we can do is reduce their numbers and make them pay for every inch of ground they take.” She sighed. “The Golden General will make a good ruler. Probably a better one than I’ve been. I only pray that there will be enough left for him to rule.”

  Oberon rode away down the aisle, with the herald and flag-bearer. The crowd of Carex closed around them.

  I peered over the edge of the battlements. “Err…now what do they do?” None of the surrounding buildings were tall enough for them to reach the top of the wall, or anything like it. The city laws were very strict about that. And there wasn’t much point in attacking a stone wall with a sword, although some of the Carex were pounding on the wall with their sword hilts anyway.

  “They try to break down the gate,” said Harold. “They’re bringing up the battering ram now.” He pointed to a thick line of men with shields over their heads to ward off arrows. They were carrying a very large log. The end of the log was a big ball of steel, molded into the shape of a fist.

  “It’s a Knocker,” said the Duchess. “Dear me. I knew they probably had one, but I’d hoped I was wrong.”

  I didn’t ask why it was called a Knocker. It was pretty obvious. The Carex were going to knock on the gates, and then knock them down.

  “There’s an iron portcullis, isn’t there?” I asked. “Shouldn’t that hold up?”

  Harold shook his head. “Oh, it might hold up. The mortar likely won’t. Something like that can knock the portcullis right out of the wall holding it or bend it so far out of shape that they can wiggle past.”

  Thunk! The Knocker hit the gate.

  “Doesn’t look like it did much…” I craned my neck, trying to see. Aunt Tabitha grabbed my collar and hauled me back.

  “Just wait,” said Harold.

  Thunk! A faint shudder went through the stones of the wall.

  Thunk!

  Thunk!

  Thunk!

  “I really don’t like this,” I said to no one in particular, as dust sifted down from the top of the wall. It felt like the Knocker was going to bring down the whole wall, not just the gate.

  “Me neither,” said the Duchess.

  Thunk!

  Thunk!

  CRUNCH!

  “That was a bad sound.”

  “Oh, yes.”

  Skreeeee-crunch!

  “Almost through the portcullis,” said Harold.

  I had expected the gates to last a lot longer. Until mid-morning at least. We had to hold them off for two days minimum if the army was going to show up and save us all, and in half an hour, they were most of the way to breaching the walls.

  This was bad.

  “At least they’re not coming over the walls,” said Harold, answering my thoughts. “Knockers are heavy equipment to lug around. They can’t afford to drag any more siege equipment with them.”

  The archers kept firing. The slingers flung stones. The air hissed with arrows, punctuated by the crunching thud as the Knocker chewed away at the gates.

  Crunch!

  Crunch!

  Every time one of the men holding the Knocker fell, another ran up under a shield to take his place. I wished I had an ocean of Bob to drop on their heads.

  Joshua ran up, jogging with his head down to stay below the nocked bowstrings of the archers. “Mona? They’re almost through. It will be time for the golems in a moment.”

  I moved to the other side of the wall, looking down into the courtyard. My ears buzzed and my feet seemed a long way away.

  “Yes,” I said distantly. “Yes, of course.” I picked up the bowl full of dough.

  Crunch!

  Crunch!

  CRACK!

  The wood splintered. The next blow went right through the gates and I looked down and saw the metal fist of the Knocker emerge into the square.

  Joshua had suggested the arrangement of golems—three in front in a semi-circle around the gate, four in the back in a larger circle. I grabbed the three balls of dough in front—red, blue, and black—and thought Forward. Stop those men!

  The golems stepped forward. Their barrel feet clopped loudly on the stones, audible even over the shouts of the Carex. The enemy poured through the splintered gate, past the men holding the Knocker, into the square…and stopped.

  Well, they’d probably never seen a twelve foot tall man made out of bread before. Let alone seven of them.

  The golem with the red band on its arm lifted its club and smacked the warrior in the lead on the head. He fell down.

  The mercenaries looked at their leader and at the golem. They did not look up the wall, thankfully, where they might have seen a fourteen-year-old girl scowling ferociously into a bowl full of bread dough.

  To give credit where it is due, the Carex did not stay surprised for long. There was a reason that they were the most feared mercenaries in the land. They might not use magic themselves, but they understood when they were facing it, and while they were afraid of it, they didn’t back down.

  Neither did the golems.

  Red, Black, and Blue swung their clubs, knocking warriors into each other, into the walls, and sending them rolling across the cobblestones. I was absurdly proud—there was weight behind those blows. I’d always been impressed at the strength of the gingerbread men in relation to their size, and my golems were just as strong. They might only be made of bread, but the way they moved, they might as well have been made of stone.

  The first group of Carex through the door didn’t even make it past the first three golems. The second group, rather than engage, tried to charge past them—and found themselves running into the arms o
f Green, White, Orange and Purple.

  Well…not arms so much as knees…

  The third group of Carex paused at the gate and seemed to be having a heated discussion with one another about the best way to proceed. The archers picked off a few more.

  I grabbed the ball of dough belonging to Red.

  Down in the square, Red dropped its club, took two heavy strides forward, and grabbed the end of the Knocker.

  It couldn’t quite pick the battering ram up—even magic bread has limits—but it hauled the Knocker into the square. The men on the other end yelled and squawked and hung on, until they realized that they were being dragged inside the walls. Having seen what had just happened to the other Carex, they prudently let go. Red dragged the Knocker inside and dumped it against one of the walls.

  “You know, I always wanted one of those,” said the Duchess.

  Red picked up its club in time to meet the next wave of Carex.

  This time they’d gotten smart. They went for the golems’ knees, just above the barrel. I imagine that they were thinking (and probably rightly so) that if they could hack through the bread there, the golems would be down and helpless.

  It was a pretty good plan. However, as you probably know if you’ve ever tried to cut a loaf of bread, you can’t just stab it with a sharp knife. Stabbing it doesn’t do a whole lot, except get your knife stuck in the crust. You need a serrated blade and you need to saw back and forth with it to slice the loaf off. It takes a little time.

  I sank my fingers into the dough. Generally when I had the cookies do this, it was a dance number to amuse the customers, but…

  “Are they doing the can-can?” asked Harold in disbelief.

  “Battle can-can,” said the Duchess wisely. “Very old tactical maneuver. Used to defeat the waltzing berserkers of West Quillmark, as I recall.”

  “You just made that up.”

  “Well, obviously.”

  The golems could do a pretty good high kick. It got their legs out of range of the Carex and generally took the swords along with them. Red had a sword stuck through its left knee, and Blue had two swords in the right, and Black took the prize with three swords and one axe buried partway up the thigh. Since bread really doesn’t care if there’s a knife stuck in it, this didn’t slow them down at all.