The parley ended not with a truce, but with a promise of suffering. Lysa and Ren retreated from the battlements, the general's words echoing in their ears. The castle was no longer just under siege; it was a cage, and they were the tormented mice. The general had no intention of ending the fight quickly; he was here to break them.
"He could have taken us," Ren said, his voice a hollow whisper. His boyish face was gone, replaced by a cold mask of dread. "He let us live."
"For now," Lysa replied, her voice hard and brittle. Her fear had been replaced by a white-hot fury. "He wants to watch us bleed. He wants us to watch our men die, one by one. But we will not give him the satisfaction. We will not break."
The second assault was not the battering ram of the previous day. It was a methodical, grinding torment. The trebuchets did not hurl stones at the walls; they hurled fire. Baskets of flaming pitch and burning oil rained down upon the outer buildings, their roofs catching fire and sending thick, black smoke into the air. The King's soldiers did not rush the gates; they began to build a massive siege tower, its construction a slow, deliberate act meant to be seen from the battlements.
The general, his scarred face a mask of cold satisfaction, watched from his command tent. He was not in a hurry. He was here for a different kind of victory. He wanted them to feel helpless. He wanted them to watch as their home burned and their men fell, their fate sealed by a man who was no longer fighting for a king, but for his own wounded pride.
"They are rats in a trap," he said to Joris, his second-in-command. "They will try to fight back, but it will be useless. Every arrow they fire, every rock they throw, will only remind them of their helplessness. I want them to know who their master is."
Lysa, however, had no intention of playing his game. She was no warrior, but she was a leader, and a strategist in her own right. She watched the siege tower rise, a slow and terrible monument to her inevitable defeat. She watched as the men below her, their faces streaked with soot and fear, fought to put out the fires. She watched as their few bows and arrows proved useless against the King's legions.
"Ren," she said, her voice quiet but firm. "Get our men to the courtyard. Get every bucket, every barrel. We're going to use what we have to fight fire with fire."
Ren, for the first time in days, saw a spark of hope in his sister's eyes. "What are you doing?"
"He wants to play a game," Lysa said, a grim smile touching her lips. "Then let us play. He is fighting a war of pride, but we are fighting for our lives. We will remind him of that."