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include Hugh, who had come as surrogate for Sir Walter, when he convened a council of the officers of the keep to discuss the Scottish threat. He had summoned the men into the keep itself instead of meeting with them in the hall in the lower bailey. If that was a device to create a sense of urgency in those gathered around him, it did not work with Hugh. The dimness of the building, lit only through the open door and the arrow slits in the walls, gave Hugh a sense of security rather than oppressing him by implying they were reduced to a last hope, and Hugh spoke out boldly against yielding.
    “I have no choice,” the castellan had answered angrily, glaring at Hugh. “We are not manned to fight an army.”
    “But you are victualed to withstand a siege,” Hugh urged. “If you think them too strong, at least make one foray so that some men-at-arms can ride to warn Sir Walter. He will—”
    “Ride all the way to London?” the castellan interrupted, sneering. “And who knows if Sir Walter is there? He might be anywhere. A man could be weeks, even months finding him. And then, having found him, it will doubtless be only to discover that Hugh Licorne is less clever than he thinks in his understanding of Sir Walter’s intentions. Sir Walter is not a man who breaks his oath. I think it more likely that he has decided to hold by his homage to Matilda. And even if Sir Walter has done homage to Stephen, as you seem to believe, Wark could be destroyed before he could return north and gather an army.”
    Hugh’s bright blue eyes blazed, and his lips parted as if to speak again, but he did not. He dropped his eyes and closed his mouth in a hard line. Hugh knew his protest against yielding was not misplaced, for he had not been alone in his opinion of Wark’s ability to resist; the castle marshal had said he felt Wark was strong enough to hold out for several weeks, at least, and the steward reported that they were well supplied. But the castellan had brushed off the advice of his own officers, just as he had more angrily rejected Hugh’s more direct suggestions. He was now pointing out that if a keep were yielded in good condition, it could always be returned intact, whereas if it were destroyed by attacks or even razed for spite, great expense would be involved to restore it.
    Hugh’s wide, mobile lips thinned even more as he held back a hot rejoinder. Seldom was a yielded castle returned without a stiff payment of ransom. It was a moot point whether it would be more expensive to rebuild or buy Wark’s freedom, but the question was irrelevant. Sir Walter was the kind of man who would gladly pay double the cost to rebuild rather than pay ransom for what had been meekly delivered into enemy hands.
    And Wark keep was no fragile house of cards. The huge logs of the palisade and the strong wooden keep, two feet thick at their bases, were well sunk into the motte on which the keep was built and the rampart above the ditch that surrounded the lower bailey. The logs were soaked with winter rain and snow and could not easily be set afire. As far as Hugh had seen, the Scots had brought no mighty siege engines to batter down the log wall, and even if they had, the stones shot from mangonel or trebuchet lost so much power coming across the deep ditch and up the rise on which the wall was set that it would take a long time to damage the fabric. And that was only the outer wall. The keep was set even higher and surrounded by an even more formidable palisade.
    Hugh also knew it was useless to argue when he had no power to enforce his opinion, and he saw that the castellan’s mind was made up. In fact, it seemed to have been made up from the first sighting of the Scots… or had it been made up even before Summerville’s army appeared? The idea should not have occurred to Hugh; for a castellan to yield a castle entrusted to him because he believed it would best benefit his overlord might be excusable, but to arrange in advance of any