Juminus, during his efforts to organize the defense to his horror, found that neither the manor nor the workshop's storage had any spare shields.
Sure the two places had a lot of weapons like bows, quite a few spears, swords, etc.
But unfortunately no shields.
And the reason was simply that shields were neither made here nor much needed.
It was envisioned that in the worst-case scenario, the walls of the manor would act as their shields, with the bodyguards holding off the attackers using choke points inside the mansion for long enough until reinforcements from the city could relieve them.
So in such a case, it was assumed that a good number of crossbows and large stocks of bolts were more important so that even the servants could be equipped with them and shoot down on the enemies through the windows and verandas.
Hence, only the bodyguards were given the large wooden shields, with only a few spare ones kept in storage, mostly for practice purposes.