A few months onwards, the water level had dropped so low that one could wade through the canals. Washing clothes had nearly become impossible, for the master was smart enough to reserve rainwater for drinking only.

Yet Wieke could not do the laundry in water so murky that it would make clothes dirtier rather than cleaner. The current had become even weaker and the smell alone was enough to nearly make her vomit.

They knew what was happening. The defensive structures erected by the prince’s army were more than just that. They were dikes… What was a Marsh Dragon without a marsh?

She clenched the worn off rosary and said her prayers. Her stomach was aching, yet more than starvation she feared the troops out there in the fields.

She knew the stories from people who had lived before the ceasefire or those who fled the occupied lands. The war was terrible and had devastated the Netherlands for nearly sixty years now, only briefly interrupted by the ceasefire during which she was born. How lucky she had been, only to know the violence from hearsay…

Now every day they could hear the cannons being fired and again and again there came reports of fallen fortresses. The whole summer they had been locked up behind the walls and heard how the beast encrouched on them. Yet today it seemed closer than ever. Even here, within the walls, she could hear the war drums and the cries of the men and horses.

Maarten was up there, on the walls…