The Alchemist's Revenge

by Martin Archer

  This time, at least, we could answer. The auxiliary and the unknown man began gobbling away at each other. After a while they stopped. The sounds of the rioting were getting louder and louder and seemed to coming towards us. Men and women began periodically running past us, refugees for sure. We could hear their footsteps and see their dim outlines.

  “He is coming down to take the bar off the door,” the auxiliary finally said. “I told him we were peaceful and would guard him, but that if he did not open it, we would break it down.” At least that was what I thought the auxiliary said; he was hard to understand.

  A few moments later, with me holding one of the candle lanterns in one hand and my sword in the other, and John Long doing the same with his sword and the other lantern, there were the sounds of the door’s bar being removed. It opened a crack a few seconds later. I could see it in the lantern light.

  I instantly stepped forward and put my foot in the door so it could not be closed, and at the same time pushed hard using the hilt of the sword I was clutching. There was initial resistance, but then none. Whoever was holding it must have stepped aside; it swung open and hit the nearby wall with a bang.

  A moment later I was inside and could see the man by the light of my high-held lantern. And I could see him even better when Andy came in behind me with the other lantern. He was bearded, fairly young, very anxious, and carrying a young child in his arms. It was as if he thought that holding the child would protect him from being attacked for fear of injuring the child. He backed away and kept the child between us as I hurriedly entered with John and Andy right behind me.

  It was actually quite a smart thing for the man to do, holding the child that is, as it announced his intention to be peaceful. It might well have saved him if we had been forced to batter down the door.

  I led the way as the four of us crowded further on into the little street-level room. The man who let us in backed into a corner still holding the child. In the lantern light I could see that it was some kind of a workshop with a loom, several spindles and a sack filled with some kind of material. The black-bearded auxiliary started to come in behind us—and then whirled around and ran off into the darkness. There was no way we could have stopped him.

  “Goddammit. The bugger has run,” shouted John unnecessarily.

  There was a moment of confusion, but then I headed for the ladder at the far end of the little room. The family obviously used it to climb up to the room or rooms above their workshop. It was almost certainly the family’s sleeping room above their workshop, the room that had the wall opening that looked out onto the street and the entrance to the market.

  I began climbing the ladder. It was well made, not rickety at all, just steep. That was when I discovered how damn difficult it is to climb a steep ladder with a lighted candle lantern in one hand and a sword in the other.

  “Hold this,” I snarled at John as I stepped down and handed him the lantern. Then I went up the ladder slowly, one step at a time, while still holding my sword—which required me to lean hard against the ladder and periodically let go with my left hand in order to quickly grasp the side of the ladder again, but slightly higher, in order to go up another step.

  There was nothing but a hole in the ceiling above me through which the end of the ladder protruded. Beyond the hole was total darkness.

  I was more than a little anxious at what might happen when my head came up through the hole. And then, to top it off, as I climbed I realized that I was sweating profusely, and I somehow became aware of a big drop of sweat on the tip of my nose. It almost caused me to fall when I, for some reason I never will understand, I tried to wipe it off by twisting my head so as to rub my nose on my shoulder. It almost overbalanced me.

  My effort to climb the ladder did not go well. I had the impression there were people in the darkened room above us, but I could not see into the room and time was passing. Even worse, as I climbed towards the hole I realized my sword would be totally useless if someone decided to chop down on me as I came through the opening.

  There was no question about what I needed—I needed to see so I could protect myself by staying away from whoever was in the dark room. Carrying a sword that I could not use to fight them off made no sense. So down the ladder I came in order to exchange my sword for the lantern John was holding. Going down with a sword was somewhat easier than going up, but not much.

  “Take this and give me one of the goddamn lanterns,” I said to John as I held out my sword to him. I was anxious and it showed.

  With the lantern in hand, I once again made a one-handed climb up the ladder. This time I did so while holding the lantern as high as possible above me. The man who had opened the door had not yet said a single word. He just sat silently against the wall whispering to the child in his arms and gently smoothing her hair. At least I think it was a girl; I could not tell for sure in the dim light.

  I took a deep breath to steady myself and slowly and carefully raised the flickering candle lantern up into the room through the wall opening. I kept my head off to one side and under the ceiling as much as possible.

  Nothing happened so I moved up another step. And then another. Finally, I took a deep breath and, holding the lantern as high as I could get it, slowly raised my head into the room—and exhaled with a profound sense of relief.

  Sitting in the corner was a terrified woman with her arms around a couple of children. An older woman with white hair was huddled next to her. They were afraid of me and no threat at all. I was greatly relieved. There was no one else in the room.

  “Hoy,” I said softly with a little smile and a nod of my head. “I am a friend.”

  And then I spoke again more loudly, but still with somewhat of a smile in my voice as I climbed the rest of the way up the ladder and stepped into the room. It was obviously the room where the family slept, watched the activity in the street from the opening in the wall, and talked out of the wall opening to their similarly situated neighbours. The wooden shutters of the wall opening were partially open so they could see and listen.

  “Hoy, Missus, we mean you no harm.”

  I said it gently as I held the lantern high and made a soothing motion with my free hand that they should stay where they were sitting. I wanted to see what was happening in the street so I headed to the wall opening as I motioned for the women and children to stay seated. The wooden floor planks creaked as I walked and there was noise and shouting coming up from the street below us.

  “Bar the damn door,” I shouted down to John and Andy as soon as I reached the opening and looked down at the street and the open area between me and the market.

  “We already have,” came the response.

  Even though I could not see them, the street was obviously full of people shouting and talking. They were mostly men’s voices, and they were almost certainly not refugees seeking shelter.

  Against the light from the lanterns at the entrance to the market I could make out the vague outlines of a large number of people. They were slowly, and somewhat tentatively, moving along the street below me and heading towards the market.

  I immediately placed the lantern I was carrying on the sill of the wall opening. It did not add much light to the street and there was no response from the men who were gathered and talking excitedly on the street below me. More importantly, it was too high above the street to backlight the mob for the archers at the market entrance.

  “Bring up the other lantern and hurry,” I went to the ladder opening and gave my order in a whisper loud enough that John and Andy could hear me. “And keep that damn door barred whatever you do. The street is full of men and they sound dangerous.”

  Less than a minute later Andy came up the ladder and handed me the second lantern.

  I placed the second lantern on the sill of the wall opening next to the one already there. It provided additional light, but nowhere near enough; the lanterns were too high off the ground to backlight the men standing below us. Damn.

  �
��Quick. Take one of the lanterns and go back downstairs and see if you can find a line or something we can use to lower the lanterns down closer to the street.”

  Andy understood the seriousness of the situation. He grabbed one of the lanterns and rushed back to the ladder.

  Suddenly there were great screams and shouts and the sound of running feet on the street below. I knew exactly what it meant—my mates at the entrance to the market had finally seen the approaching rioters and begun pushing arrows at them. Hopefully they were close-packed, the rioters that is; it is hard to be accurate when you are pushing arrows at men you can barely see.

  I shouted more orders at Andy as he started down the ladder. There was no longer any need to whisper.

  “And tell John to send the man and his child up now and to run for the ladder if they start to break in. We can pull it up behind us and shoot arrows down at the buggers.”

  We are safe up here unless they start a fire and try to burn us out, I decided. Then I had another thought—it would be better to pull the ladder up now and pretend no one was here.

  ******

  Things had quieted down outside by the time Andy climbed back up the ladder. He was carrying something that, in the dim lantern light, looked like a large ball of string. John came up right behind him. The man who opened the door had come up with the child before they did. He was now sitting on the floor in the corner with his arms around his family.

  “It was all I could find,” Andy said as he handed the ball to me and moved back to the opening to pull up the ladder.

  The ball had a sticky feel to it. One sniff with my nose and I knew exactly what I was holding—recently spun wool. Of course I did; me mum used to spin wool to feed us after my father fell off the barge he was poling and drowned himself by not being able to breath. That was before the pox took her, my two sisters disappeared, and I went for an archer.

  “It should work,” I said with more assurance in my voice than I felt as I got to work unrolling the ball. It took me a few minutes in the dim light to get enough of the spun wool unrolled, and then a few more to be sure it would be strong enough to lift one of the lanterns.

  My plan was quite simple. I was going to tie a wool line to each of the lanterns and lower it down so it would be closer to the street and better backlight the rioters for the archers in the market. And then I was going to tie it off to something in the room so we three archers could run back to the market and join in the pushing whenever rioters came.

  It was a fine plan and simple as all good plans must be. Unfortunately, somewhere along the line I realized that it would not work because of the family. They could, and probably would, haul up the lanterns or cut their lines as soon as we ran back to the market. Or the rioters might reach up from wagon beds and knock the lanterns down with sticks, or break in the door and cut them down.

  There was no alternative; we would have to stay the night and defend the lanterns. But first we had to hang them, the lanterns that is, not the family.

  ******

  We worked feverishly to hang the lanterns. We brought one of them into the upper room so we could use its light to see what we were doing whilst the ball of woollen yarn was being unrolled. Andy cut a piece of line off what was unrolled and John tied one end to the lantern while Andy was unrolling and cutting another line for the other lantern.

  But where should we tie the other end in order that the lantern would hang above the street? We were flummoxed. There was nothing to which the end of line could be tied. I even briefly considered turning one of our longbows sideways across the window opening and tying the lantern lines to its middle. The weight of the lanterns would hold it in place.

  “Not with my bow,” said John emphatically. “Use your own.”

  It was clear that I would have a revolt on my hands if I tried to use anyone else’s bow except my own to anchor the lanterns. And worse, a rioter on the street might use the branch of a tree or stand on a wagon to pull the lanterns down and the bow along with them. Losing his bow was one of the most terrible things an archer could do. It would cost me my stripes for sure, and I might never get them back.

  The only alternative was for the three of us to stay in the room and dangle the lanterns down while holding on to the lines so they could be quickly pulled up if anyone tried to get at them. So that is what we did. Well, almost.

  Chapter Eight

  The long night.

  John carefully let out line and lowered his lantern lower and lower, until shed light on the men on the street below us and was just out of their reach even if they jumped. I leaned out of the opening and watched as it slowly went down. Then I lowered the second lantern, the one I was holding, and did the same thing. John and I stood at the opening and watched intently. We were ready to instantly pull them up.

  The lanterns certainly had an impact. We could see that the partially lit street was full of men carrying clubs and knives. A few of them had swords and spears, but not many. There were even a few women. They all looked up. But, to our great surprise, they were not alarmed. Several of them pointed and cheered.

  “My God,” John said softly so only I could hear. “The bastards think we are helping them by lighting them up for our lads to see.”

  But were they only rioters, or were they something else? Perhaps it was my imagination because I could only see dim shapes, but the mob below us appeared to be somewhat organized with orders being shouted at them by a couple of men who appeared to be wearing priest’s robes. And then, of all things, I had a terrible urge to pee.

  There was no time to look for the family’s piss pot.

  “I have to pee,” I announced to no one in particular as I handed my lantern line to Andy.

  Andy took my place at the wall opening and looked down while I moved a couple of steps to the right and pissed against the wall of the room. I was feeling much better when I took the line back from Andy and resumed my place.

  It did not take long before our fellow archers at the market entrance reacted to being able to see the gathering rioters. We did not see or hear the archers begin pushing out their arrows, but we certainly knew when it started and had a close view of the results.

  One moment everything was relatively quiet below us; the next there were screams, curses, and confusion. Andy pushed into the window openings so all three of us could look down and watch. We rarely saw the blur of the arrows as they landed in the mob gathered below us, but we certainly heard the thuds and the cries of surprise and distress as they hit.

  And then it happened—there was a loudly shouted order and the mob below us began running out of the street and towards the market entrance with great shouts and cheers. There were hundreds of them.

  Some of the mob went down to the arrows coming out of the market, but within seconds the shouting mob had reached the market and began pouring into it. They got in even though archers at the entrance had taken a fearsome toll—in the dim light we could see shapes lying on the street and in the open area in front of the market that were clearly dead and wounded rioters.

  “Quick, we have to help them.”

  John had shouted as soon as the storm of arrows began biting into the crowd below us. There was barely room for two of us at the opening and John and I were already there.

  We both handed our lantern lines to Andy who was standing behind us, our bows came off our shoulders, and we stood on either side of the opening and began trying to pick off the moving shapes below us that we could see outlined in the dim light. It would have helped if we had more light to see the men below us and something to stand on so we could better look downward out of the opening. But we did not.

  “Damn. My string broke. Step in,” John suddenly shouted after we had each pushed out four or five arrows. His bowstring had frayed or broken. He stepped back so Andy could take his place whilst he quickly took a spare out from under his cap and began restringing his longbow.

  Taking John’s place did not happen instantly because Andy could no
t hold the lantern lines and push out arrows at the same time. He temporarily solved the problem, and caused the lanterns to jump up and down and bang together, by wrapping the lines around his leg and holding the ends in his teeth so the lines would not unravel.

  We were late to the fight and the wall opening was narrow. In the end, I stood on one side of the opening and pushed arrows at the late arrivals who were following the rioters’ thrusters into the market whilst Andy, and then John once again, stood on the other side of the opening tried to take those they could see on the street below us.

  I am not sure when the people below us began to realize that arrows were coming out of wall opening above the lanterns, but they finally did—about the time they began running away down the street.

  A few of the wounded and their helpers moved tightly up against the wall directly under us in hopes we would not be able to get clean shots at them. It did not work—I stepped back to give John enough room to get his bow all the way out of the wall opening and shoot straight down at them.

  Whilst John was leaning well out the opening to push at the men directly below us, I counted my arrows. It did not take long. There were only two in my quiver. A moment later John pulled in his head. “I am all out, and the buggers are at the door with an axe,” he shouted.

  Andy handed the lantern lines back to John and moved into the wall opening to take John’s place. He similarly leaned out of the opening so he could shoot straight down at those at the door. I looked around to reassure myself that we had long ago pulled up the ladder and there was no other way anyone could get up to us.

  “Christ, you are right,” Andy said as he leaned out and pushed an arrow straight down—and damn near fell out of the opening as he did. There was a particularly loud scream and the sound of pounding on the door below us abruptly stopped.

  ******

  We had no idea how long it was before we only had two arrows left between the three of us. I nocked one, John the other. Andy was standing at the ladder hole in the ceiling with his sword. At that point, all we could do was listen to the battle sounds coming from the market and watch in the dim candle light as looters hurried away with their arms full of goods from the market and wounded rioters periodically staggered or were carried out of the market’s entrance in an effort to get away from the fighting.