"In the past when King Rafe has travelled he has brought with him only a small number of men, enough to protect him from an assassin, perhaps, but not an army. In the past, we have not been at war, or threat of war, with the Kreign or their like. When King Rafe left yesterday he took with him the better part of the men who are normally stationed at the castle, a force of many hundreds of men. We are left here with a mere tithe of our normal forces. If this were to become known to the Kreign or their allies, the castle would be an open target. The force that has remained here is small, and consists mainly of those who are too old and frail to survive the weeks of travel to the meeting place. A determined and well-trained enemy could take control of the castle in a matter of hours.
"It was to try to keep this a secret that most of the King's men left in small groups under cover of dark last night and yesterday morning. King Rafe did not want it to become well known how weakly guarded the castle was to be in his absence. We, now, must continue the masquerade, so that anyone who comes to the castle will believe that the bulk of our forces are here, ready to defend us. The four of you were chosen because you have insights into the way that the castle runs that others do not. Also, I believe you to be trustworthy. Let us eat first, and then discuss our problem."
They all fell to, and for some time the only sounds were the satisfied sounds of men eating a meal that was much better than that which they were accustomed to. When they had finished, Sharra set down her fork and looked expectantly at Ashanta. "Well, Highness," she said, "what do you have in mind for us?"
Ashanta gulped. This had seemed so straightforward when she had been thinking about it earlier, without any actually people to talk to. "Well," she began, "we need to fool strangers into thinking that the castle remains well defended. That means making it look like there are a lot more people here than there are, I think, and that those who are here are more like men at arms and less like stable boys and scullery maids. The castle needs to appear to be running in much the same way as it always does, even though many people are gone. I ask for your help in figuring out how to do this."
"Surely we would like to help, Highness," ventured Muerth, "but what good can we be? I'm no man at arms, and it is hardly likely that I could fool anyone into thinking that I am. Men at arms are not fat old men who can hardly walk and who would sooner eat a horse than ride on one."
"That is true," acknowledged Ashanta, "but I do not wish for anyone to think that you are a man at arms. I want your knowledge of the way the castle runs. Are we having enough food sent in to supply the castle at full strength? Can we set the Great Hall in such a way that it seems to a visitor to be in full use? The king did not take kitchen staff with him. Are there men in the kitchen, or even women, who could dress as men at arms for dinner or to take a turn standing at the castle walls? They need not fight or even speak, just look fierce."
Muerth nodded slowly, "Aye, Highness, I see what you mean. With all the men gone, we would only need to order perhaps one part in four of our normal foodstuffs. Normally our needs decrease when the king is gone, but only a little. A spy among the villagers could easily realize that the best part of the strength of the castle is gone."
Ashanta nodded. That was what she had expected to hear from Muerth. "So the next question then, is what do we do about it? Is the best solution to just increase the amount of food we buy from the village to something that is closer to normal levels? What will we do with the rest of it? I hate the idea of just wasting the food, especially when I know that there must be people in the village who have use for it."
Brandit raised a hand tentatively, and Ashanta had to giggle. Did she seem like a schoolmaster? "Highness, there are always people who are coming to the castle gates asking for food. Sometimes we have some left over, and we give it to them. Sometimes we don't and they go away without anything. I believe that we could easily use up most of the surplus food by handing it out in dribs and drabs to the pilgrims and travelers and the poor who come to our gates. They are usually not local villagers, so there is no reason that that they would communicate with each other and learn of the sudden increase in the amount of food available."
Sharra broke in, excitedly, "We might also make a donation of food to the shrine. I believe that it would seem quite normal for you to make a donation for the safety of your husband and the success of his mission. And the priests and priestesses could use the food, since they are not permitted to work."
"So then, we've solved the problem of the excess food," announced Ashanta. "Perhaps the amount of food eaten by the servants and others living in the castle will increase a little bit too. I saw Misha this evening, and she is little more than skin and bones. It seems to me that a royal castle should provide more food to its servants if we want them to continue to work hard. Otherwise, the servants become the spy, and it is much more difficult to keep secrets from them than it is from the villagers."
"We still have to address the issue of the way that the castle looks, Highness," reminded Lingqui gently, "Otherwise anyone who comes into the castle will be able to tell that something is wrong. Now, normally when the king is away you eat in your chambers, but everyone else continues to eat en masse in the main hall. That should be continued, I think, but we need a way of making it appear that there are far more people there than are actually there."
"Usually, the only people eating in the main hall other than the king and queen are the men at arms and the ladies in waiting," pointed out Muerth. "The men at arms are almost all gone, except for a few left to guard the castle, and I think most of them must needs be on the walls, keeping watch, at mealtimes and every other time as well. So we need men to join the ladies in waiting in the great hall. There are many male servants, and in fact female servants, who could be dressed in the clothing of the men at arms for meals. It will not, perhaps, fool anyone who is paying attention, but it should at least give them pause."
"Yes," said Ashanta, "That seems to mostly solve that problem. Are there enough of them to fill in all of the empty places though?"
Brandit shook his head, "By my estimate, and Muerth here may have a better one, there are only enough servants to fill in about half of the empty spaces. We should, then, rearrange the tables in the Great Hall to give the impression of it being full when it is not. I suggest that we remove half of the tables and turn the rest diagonally to their current position. That will give the Hall the illusion of fullness, even though it is nearly empty compared to its usual state."
"Will you supervise the rearrangement of the Great Hall?" asked Ashanta.
"Certainly, Highness," replied Brandit.
"Now, what other things might need to be changed to make our illusion more believable? Sharra, Lingqui, do you have any observations to make?"
Sharra thought for a moment, lips pursed, before venturing slowly, "The courtyard needs to seem busier, somehow. Normally there are many people in the courtyard, cooks preparing fowl and fish, knights and men at arms practicing swordplay and horsemanship, children running and playing. Now the castle courtyard is nearly dead, and all of the tradesmen must come through it in order to deliver their goods to the castle."
"Could we make the tradesmen deliver to the castle gates, and bring in the goods on our own?" wondered Ashanta.
"We could," agreed Lingqui, "but there would be no better way of assuring everyone who came to visit the castle that things are very different than the norm here. After all, they know that normally the tradesmen bring their own goods up to the castle, and suddenly they aren't being permitted to do that. Why, the smallest child would become suspicious at that."
"Lingqui is right," broke in Sharra, unafraid to interrupt the court fool. "We must make the courtyard appear busier, not keep the people out of it."
"Well then," said Ashanta, "I await your suggestions on how exactly we might make this happen."
"I think," ventured Brandit, "that the courtyard could appear somewhat less busy than usual. After all, I think that it is quite commonly known that the king is gone. He rode out quite openly with a armed guard yesterday morning, looking very much as if he were preparing to be gone for some weeks or months. I believe that everyone knows that the king is not here, and so they would expect some slowing of the activity in the castle. So long as the courtyard appears to have things going on, I believe that is sufficient."
"Muerth," said Sharra, "how busy are the servants in the castle, now that the king and his men have left. Could we use some of them to make the courtyard appear busy?"
"I don't rightly know," admitted Muerth, "I can tell you that the kitchen staff is far less busy than normal, because we are cooking for far fewer people, but I don't know about the rest of the servants. It is unfortunate, perhaps, that Highness has not asked the head housekeeper to her dinner."
"I did not know whether I could trust the housekeeper," put in Ashanta, "She has been here for only a few months, and though I have had no problems with her, I do not yet know whether I will." She sighed, "So what we need to do thus far is threefold: first, make the Great Hall look as if it is full at mealtimes; second, make the castle courtyard appear to be a busy place, bustling with activity; and third, make the guard upon the walls seem as large and competent as in would be if King Rafe were here."
"What we really need are more people. Even if everyone could be in three places at once, we still would not have enough people to fill all of the jobs," observed Sharra. "It is too bad that there are not others that we could call on without making it obvious to everybody that we have less than our normal complement of people."
"Perhaps," broke in Lingqui, "we don't need to actually have people doing all of these things. Does it matter whether there are really fifty people on the walls or ten, so long as people who glance casually at the walls think that there are fifty people up there? And does the courtyard need to have hundreds of people in it, or just look like it has hundreds?"
"But how can we make it look like there are hundreds of people in the courtyard if there aren't?" demanded Ashanta. "It's not like they can all just be standing around. They need to be doing things!"
"We can use dummies on the walls, though," pointed out Brandit. "We wouldn't even need full bodies, just heads on sticks, and the people who are on duty up there can move them around from time to time. The parapets are sufficiently tall so that you can only see the tops of people's heads most of the time anyway."
"Perhaps we can do something similar with the courtyard," suggested Muerth. "The people need to be active, but so long as there is a decent sized contingent of people bustling about, no one will notice that the others are not doing much. The weather is nice for now. I will encourage everyone to spend their rest periods in the courtyard, and assign some of my most energetic helpers to bustling about the courtyard, even though they won't actually be doing anything but bustling."
Ashanta looked at them, "Well, I don't know whether or not that will work, but it seems to be the best we can do with what we have. Let us all work to make things as we have said. To the extent that it is possible, please do not let the others know what we are trying to do here."
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