Natasha was forced to let Marius handle the fortifications. Cursing up a storm she managed to cut her blanket into strips and apply something like a bandage. Her hands were crusted with dried blood by the time she had finished and it still hurt like the Daemons of the North were gnawing on it. Mechanically she reloaded her carbine and then managed to pull on her mail and gamberson. Lightning struck outside to reveal several men cloaked against weather mulling around. They tried the door, rattling and banging against it, but Marius had wisely pushed a heavy table across the entry way.

"Open up!" of them shouted against the storm, rain slicking off his cloak and making his voice sound reedy and weak.

"Vat do you vant. I ez traying to slayep!" Natasha shouted back.

"We just want to talk!" her interlocutor shouted back, cupping his hands to make a trumpet.

"Ve are talking no da?" Natasha called back. There was a few moments of consultation between the assembled group outside.

"We have word that you are dangerous criminals, there is a bounty for you dead or alive," the leader bellowed.

"You are shet at talcking," Natasha observed. "How much did that Grinvold bisterd offer you?"

"What?!" the leader called back in obvious confusion, his own Riekspiel not sufficient to the task.

"Grinvold, how mach he pays you to keel as?" she rephrased.

"More than enough," the leader growled. "Open the doors and make it easy on yourself!"

"Nyet, I dont zink ve does zat," Natasha replied, she pulled herself to the window, lifted the shutter and fired. One of the men screamed and grabbed the side of his head, part of his ear taken off by the musket ball. Two of them produced pistols and tried to return fire but their powder was too wet. Natasha closed the window and sat down, beginning to reload the weapon.  Before she could finish Marius returned.

"All the doors and ground floor windows are locked and barred," he reported, the horse pistol in his hand. "we should be safe now?" The merchant looked a little green around the gills, though for what reason Natasha wasn't certain. She reached over and shuttered the lantern, no point letting the enemy know where they were.

"Nyet, not safe," Natasha contradicted.

"Eveentually they get brains gods gave ass. Knock hole in walls weeth heemers, syet fears in timbers ayend barn us out. Maybee use piwder and blow hole," she explained.

"That ... dosen't sound good," Marius replied in a troubled tone.

"Not gut," she agreed.

"Bestmeen outside, assholes inside," she elaborated. "Vy does Grinvold vant us deed? Could have jist tald us had no piwder. I buy fram ather mirchents."

"No... he already sold the powder to someone else, sold more than he had probably, word gets out he isn't good for it and he will be ruined," Marius replied, clearly happy to be able to move to more familiar ground than being burned out of a besieged building. 

"How seal more piwder than he has?" Natasha asked in puzzlement.

"Imagine you told a boyar you would sell him ten horses, he pays you..." Marius began.

"Vy vould he pay me vithout seeing hearses?" Natasha objected.

"He is buying them on credit," Marius explained.

"No beyar vould bee hearses he dydint exeeman," Natasha objected again. Marius ground his teeth trying to find words she would understand.

"Fine, imagine a merchant tells you he will come back next year and buy ten horses, you take some of his money to provide the horses but then a boyar comes and offers you ten times the amount and you sell him the horses, thinking you will have time to get ten more before the merchant comes back." Natasha frowned, struggling mightily to follow the logic.

"And if you cant provide the horses no one else will do business with you and you will be ruined. So rather than default where people can see, when the merchant returns the next year, you have him killed. That way no one can accuse you of breaking your word," Marius rushed. Natasha was almost cross eyed by this point.

"Sounds veery cimplicated," she admitted.

"Welcome to the Empire," Marius sighed. A shot rang out from the darkness and one of the windows shattered into fragments, letting in the storm outside.