Free Behind the Ruins (Stories of the Fall) by Michael Lane

prints.
    “I’m
more interested in what you’ve all heard; what you’ve thought over the winter.
I see people but I don’t think I hear everything they have to say.”
    Tom
cleared his throat.
    “Here
it comes,” said Josie brightly. Tom shot her a poisonous look.
    “There’s
been lots of discussion at the Port all winter long, Grey. People agree the
threat is real, but they’re not convinced we should ride out to meet it. There
have been some good suggestions, and I agree with many of them.” Tom paused but
Grey said nothing, hands folded around his glass of whiskey, eyes half-shut.
After the pause grew uncomfortable, Tom continued.
    “The
Port is walled and has the advantage of the lakeside for supply, so a lot of
the merchants and fishermen have asked why we can’t defend it - bloody the
raiders’ noses and show them there are easier pickings elsewhere.” Tom paused
again. Grey looked at him a moment, took a sip, and settled again into
immobility.
    “Damn
it, we don’t need to go out and get killed when we can pick them off from the
loopholes and make them leave. A hundred men couldn’t storm that wall with
thirty defending it, and we have almost twice that who are decent shots and
have weapons. Why wouldn’t that work? It would work.”
    Grey
scratched in his beard, grown long for the winter. With the bulk of his fur
vest, he had a moth-eaten Santa Claus aura.
    “Fuck
me blue, Tom, is there a question in there?” Grey asked. “If you’re here to
tell me what you’re going to do, then tell me, but don’t look for me to approve
of it when you haven’t thought it through.”
    “We
have thought it through. We have the food and the safety and the guns. We can
hold them off as long as we need to and they will move on,” Tom said, his eyes
narrowing. “But you’re obviously saying I have it wrong, so can you enlighten
me?”
    “See
there’s a question,” Grey said, finishing his drink. He slid the glass to Doc,
who refilled it. Clay had leaned back and was smirking. “You’re not wrong, you
just haven’t thought out all the repercussions. What’ll happen when your little
Alamo is too tough a nut?”
    “They’ll
leave,” Tom said. Clay snorted and the Port manager turned to stare. Grey
nodded at Clay.
    “I
don’t know if I’m on Grey’s train of thought here, but let me run this by you,
Tom,” Clay drawled. “If the raiders can’t get in at you they’ll do a couple
things unless they’re stupid. They’ll burn out what’s left of the city around
you, just to do it. That probably won’t matter much. You’ve got a fair
firebreak of concrete and brick round the wall. What they’ll do after is the
portion that’ll hurt you. They’ll spread out and take the homesteads. You’ll
lose your customers and suppliers, and will be sitting alone in your castle
while the raiders take over everything around you. Even if they move on after
stripping the valley, you’ll still wind up boss of a dead town in six months.
That about it, Grey?”
    Grey
nodded. Henry cleared his throat.
    “My
dad is worried about something similar after he gave the whole thing some
thought. He said we could either fight them or hope they’d treat us fair, but
that no-one ever won a siege.”
    Josie
hissed through her teeth and Grey raised an eyebrow.
    “Well,
I don’t want to be devil’s advocate, but what chance do we really have to beat
these boys if we ride out to meet them? Grey, you prowled around and counted
guns, you talked to everybody you could this fall, what do you really think?”
    “I
think it’s going to be hard. We can’t fight them straight on unless I saw all
there were, and I don’t think that’s likely. But there’s chokepoints we can
make work for us, and we can fool them into making some assumptions that’ll
hurt them, if we do it right and if they make it here.”
    “If?”
Tom asked, looking confused.
    “We
have to make it too costly, and too uncomfortable, for them to want to