NINE
Mai rode at the head of an army, or at least she thought she did, until the city of Dean rose into view. What she saw made the troops at her back look like a troupe of travelling performers after a night of carousing. Tired, undisciplined and dirty. Mai barely noticed as the men were marched off to one of the fortified camps ringing the city around. She was too busy marvelling at the construction that had gone into besieging an entire city.
Dean itself was huge, its massive walls rising high above the surrounding plain, dwarfing the moat that seemed a mere puddle at its feet.
A second line of walls encircled the first, though they were thinner and made of timber. Tree trunks had been cut down and their tops sharpened into spikes to make these walls, which were broken by camps and
