Incompetency

If looks could kill, the man standing before Caius would already be a lifeless heap on the ground. The siege of Harmway wasn't going disastrously—far from it, in fact. In a week and a half, the invading army had managed to avoid outbreaks of disease, a feat that any seasoned general would count as a minor miracle. The city was locked down tight, with no ships slipping past the naval blockade. By all accounts, things were proceeding as planned.

But the devil was in the details. The island's population, never more than a few thousand due to Harmway's unforgiving geography, worked against them. The small city nestled within the fortress walls could sustain itself for longer than Caius liked to admit, stretching their meager supplies to outlast the siege. It wasn't a thriving metropolis filled with mouths to feed—it was a hardscrabble outpost of survivors accustomed to scarcity, which meant that whatever food they had stored, it could last them quite a bit.