He was talking to Bent, and they were smiling.
She met their looks and glared. ‘What?’
‘Your people look good enough for the Royal Guard,’ Tom said with a rich chuckle.
‘What the fuck does that mean?’ she spat. She looked past him, over the walled balcony that let light and air into the tower from the courtyard. She could see the priest from here, climbing out on the wall. She wondered what he was doing there.
Bent slapped his thigh and roared. ‘Told you!’ he shouted, and went back to his game, and she forgot Father Henry. ‘Can’t even take a fucking compliment.’
She glared at both of them and went to the roof to watch her posts. ‘Where are all the men-at-arms? Captain left a note—’
Tom nodded to her. ‘I’ve got it, Corporal. I’m preparing the sortie.’
Sauce felt a keen disappointment edged with anger. ‘A sortie? But—’
‘You have the duty,’ Tom said. ‘It’s my turn.’
’It’s always your turn,’ she shot back.
He nodded, unrepentant. ‘I’m primus pilus, Sauce. I can take the sortie out until Christ returns to earth – maybe after. Wait your turn. Sweeting.’
She drew herself up. But Bad Tom shook his head.’Nay – never mind me, Sauce. That was ill-said. But I want the sorties. The lads need to see me fight.’
‘And you love it,’ Sauce said. She put her nose very close to his. ‘I love it too, you bastard.’
Tom laughed. ‘Point taken, Corporal.’
She backed off. ‘I want my turn. Anyway – where is everyone?’
‘The boys are all off confessing to the priest. Don’t worry, Sauce. We probably won’t go. But there’s going to be a sortie ready all night, every night, in the covered way.’
Sauce shook her head and went up the steps to the roof-top feeling left out.
Full darkness had almost fallen, and the sounds made by the various species of besiegers would have been chilling if she’d let herself think of them that way, but she didn’t. Instead she stood with the crew on the great ballista – as of today, re-mounted on a complex set of gimbals designed by the old Magus. She tried it herself. Now it moved like a living thing. No Head, the man responsible for the machine, patted it affectionately. ‘The old fuck magicked it, that’s what he did. It’s alive. Going to get us a wyvern, next time one comes.’
She swung it back and forth. It was physically pleasant to move – like playing some sort of game.
‘Sometimes a machine is just a machine,’ said a strong voice, and the old man himself emerged from the darkness. She had never been so close to a real magus, and she started.
‘It’s our good luck that we have fifty skilled craftsmen suddenly among us. A pargeter, who can draw precisely. Blade smiths who can make springs. A joiner who can do fine carpentry.’ He shrugged. ‘In truth, it is an Archaic mechanism I found in a book. It was the craftsmen who made it.’ Nonetheless, the old man seemed very satisfied with it, and he gave it an affectionate pat. ‘Although I confess I gave it a touch of spirit.’
‘Which he magicked it, and now it’s alive!’ said No Head happily. ‘Going to bag us a wyvern.
Harmodius shrugged as if mocking the ignorance of men – while accepting their plaudits.
His eyes lingered on her.
Christ – did the old Magus find her attractive? That was a chilling thought. She wriggled involuntarily.
He caught her movement and laughed. Then stopped laughing. ‘Something is moving down between the forts,’ he said.
She leaned over the tower. ‘Wait a little,’ she said. Then, ‘How did you know?’
His eyes glowed a little in the dark. ‘I know,’ he said. ‘I can make the sky bright for a moment.’
‘No need,’ she said.
Sure enough, there was a low clash, as if of cymbals, and then another.
‘Captain put lines of tin bangles across the fields,’ she said as the ballista spun, No Head pulled its lever and a bolt crashed out into the darkness.
On the next tower, the onager released a bucket of gravel, and suddenly the night was full of screams.
A retaliatory bolt of purple-green lightning shot out of the darkness and struck the tower on which the onager rested. Sparks flew as if a smith was pounding red-hot metal.
‘Christ, what the fuck was that?’ Sauce asked the darkness. Her night-sight was ruined by the green bolt; all she could see was a pattern on her retinas.
Old Harmodius leaned over the tower, and a bolt of fire sprayed from his hand – it passed almost exactly down the line of the green lightning, as far as the dancing images on her retinas could discern.
‘Damn, damn, damn,’ he said. Over and over.
His target caught fire in the distance – a giant of a man, or an oddly misshapen tree. Perhaps two trees.
‘Dear God,’ Harmodius muttered. ‘Again!’ he called.
No Head needed no urging. Sauce watched his crew as they danced through their drill – two men wound the winch, slipped the cocking mechanism into place, removed the winch again, a third carried the twenty-pound bolt as easily as if it was made of straw, dropped it into the charge-trough and pushed it back until the huge nock engaged the heavy string. No Head spun his machine with one hand, gave the burning tree-man a hint of windage, and pulled the release.
Another line of lightning, this one levin-bright – flashed onto the north tower and rock exploded. Men screamed. Her men.
She turned and ran for the stairs. And then paused. She couldn’t be in both towers at the same time.
Behind her the two valets winding the bow sweated to do it as fast as they could, but No Head didn’t look at them or at Simkin, a giant, who dropped the next bolt into the trough with perfect timing, so that just as the string clicked into place on the latch, the nock slid back and engaged the string, and No Head had the weapon aimed.
Harmodius grunted something, and cast fire on the earth. His fire was caught as if by a basket of green light, and cast straight back at them; quicker than thought, his own basket of blue lightning caught it and he threw it back—
No Head pulled the release.
The bolt hit the man-tree squarely in the torso-trunk. There was a roar and a burst of ball lightning like a summer night, and the tower trembled. The ball struck the curtain wall over the main gate and there was a cataclysmic explosion – like pouring water on a hot rock, expanded a thousand times. The curtain wall groaned, buckled and collapsed outward, and the new covered way behind the gate started to take hits.
Someone was alert and still moving on the onager tower, though, because a basket of red-hot gravel – another of the Magus’s innovations – flew from the onager, the pebbles flashing through the air like meteorites.
All the lights went out together, and then there was quiet, punctuated by screams from the plain far below. And moans.
‘Again!’ Harmodius called. ‘Same target. Hit him again! Before he can—’
And then there was a wall of green light across the sky, and the onager tower exploded in sparks and a shower of stars. One long scream rang out across the night – and then the top of the tower leaned out, and out, and fell into the night, taking the onager and four men of the company with it. It crashed to the floor of the valley four hundred feet below, a long rumble like an avalanche.
And then there was only silence.
Sauce had made it to the courtyard when the green fire hit, and she was standing close enough to the gate to be hit by stone chips from the curtain wall. A stone slammed into her shoulder from the broken tower. Up on the main donjon, she could see Harmodius as he leaned out over the wall, with eldritch blue fire coursing over his hands.
The gate had taken a glancing hit and whole chunks of the crenellations had fallen on the covered way, crushing part of the roof. Inside, men and horses of Bad Tom’s sortie were trapped in the pitch black, and there were horse screams of anguish and human shouts.
‘Get torches! Lanterns! On me!’ Sa
uce shouted.
Just under the back end of the covered way, Ser John Poultney was lying under the ruin of his charger, and his leg was broken. Sauce went with a pair of archers – One Lug and Skinch – to get the horse off him. The archers used spears to raise the carcass and Ser John worked not to scream.
The roof of the covered way had taken most of the gate’s collapse, and it hung askew, and the beams were creaking ominously. It was pitch black under the roof, and men with lanterns appeared at last as the first man-at-arms emerged leading a bucking war horse whose off left foot almost killed the just-rescued Ser John. The horse was wild, and more archers grabbed for his reins to hold his head, and then off-duty valets were pouring out of the main tower.
‘Where’s Tom?’ she asked. She plunged deeper into the gloom, and Skinch, usually not a man with any balls whatsoever, followed her. The lantern lit a dozen horsemen fighting their mounts for control in the enclosed space. All of them were dismounted, hauling at their horse’s heads, and the horses would calm for a moment and then go off again as another horse continued to panic in the darkness and the noise. Ser John’s dead horse was not helping – it smelled of blood and fear . . .
‘Get them out!’ Tom roared.
Hooves were flying. The men were in full armour, but the horses were not calming, and soon enough they’d kill their riders, armour or no.
With a whoosh the gate behind Tom exploded in flame. It illuminated the narrow space and the plunging horses, the men’s armour, like a foretaste of hell.
Almost as one, the horses turned and ran from the fire. Most of the men-at-arms were knocked from their feet.
Skinch flattened himself against the wooden wall and Sauce, still in her harness, tried to cover him as the great brutes pounded past, leaping the corpse of the dead horse.
Out in the courtyard the valets were ready, and they lunged for reins, threw sacks over the horses’ heads and spoke to them calmly and authoritatively, like lords speaking to their serfs. They took control of the horses quickly, kindly, and ruthlessly.
The men-at-arms began to get to their feet.
Sauce realised that the fire at the gate wasn’t generating any heat about the same moment that the captain stepped out of the darkness and raised his hands.
The flames went out like a candle in the wind.
‘Tom? Let’s get a head count. Anyone missing?’ he shouted, walking past her. It was dark again, but he seemed to know she was there – he turned unerringly to her. ‘We lost a dozen men in the Onager tower. Go and see if anyone can be saved.’
His eyes glowed in the dark.
‘M’lord,’ she nodded in the pitch black and went back into the relative light of the courtyard, past a dozen angry war horses and the men trying to calm them. Farmers and their wives and daughters were crowding the door yards and windows.
The onager tower looked like a broken tooth. About a third of the upper floor was gone, and Sauce thought the only blessing was that it had fallen out – away from the courtyard – and not in.
The second floor roof had collapsed inward though, showering stones and roof beams on sleeping soldiers. Geslin – the youngest archer in the company – lay dead, crushed under a beam, his broken body horrible in the flickering fire of the fallen floor. Dook – a useless sod at the best of time – was trying to get the beam off him, and was crying.
Sauce put on her best command voice, walled off her panic, and shouted, ‘I need some help up here!’
Archers poured up the ladders to her. Men she knew – Flarch, her own archer, and Cuddy, perhaps the best archer in the company, and Rust, perhaps the worst; Long Paw, moving like a dancer, and Duggin, who was as big as a house. They got the beam up off the dead boy, and discovered Kanny pinned under it, unconscious and with a lot of blood under him. And behind him, wedged into a safe space made by a window ledge, was Kessin, the fattest man in the company.
More and more men came – the Lanthorn men, the Carters from the courtyard, and the other farmers – at unbelievable speed they cleared the heavy timbers and the floor. One of Master Random’s men, who had been working with the Magus, rigged a sling mechanism, and before the sun began to rise, the heavy stones that could be saved from the wreckage were being raised over the lip of the ruined tower and laid in the courtyard.
The captain stood there looking tired, hands on hips above his golden belt, watching the work. He didn’t turn his head. ‘Well done, Sauce. Go to bed.’
She shrugged. ‘Lots left to do,’ she said wearily.
He turned to her with a smile. Very quietly, like a lover, he leaned in to her ear. ‘This is the first bad night of a hundred to come,’ he whispered. ‘Save your strength. Go to bed.’
She sighed and looked at him, struggling to hide her adoration. ‘I can do it,’ she said fiercely.
‘I know you can do it,’ he said, rolling his eyes. ‘Save it for when we need it. I’m going to bed. You go to bed. Yes?’
She shrugged, avoiding his eyes. Walked away . . .
. . . and realised that her bed had been in the onager tower. She sighed.
Lissen Carak – Michael
The Siege of Lissen Carak. Day Eight
Last night the Fallen Magus attacked us in person. The captain said his powers are greater even than those that weave the walls together, and despite our efforts he toppled the south-west tower, where the onager engine was, and killed four men and several boys.
No Head, an archer, hit the Fallen Magus with a ballista bolt. Many men saw the bolt go home.
We now have the help of Lord Harmodius, the King’s Magus, who duelled with the Fallen Magus with fire. Men hid their heads in terror. The Fallen Magus brought down the curtain wall by the postern gate, but Sauce saved many men and horses with her quick response.
Under the manuscript page, No Head and Sauce were crossed out. In their place were the names Thomas Harding and Alison Grave.
Lissen Carak – The Red Knight
In the end, they lost six archers and one man-at-arms. It was a hard blow. The captain looked at their names, crossed them off the list, and grunted.
On the other hand, he had the Carter boys, the Lanthorn boys, and Daniel Favor. And a likely goldsmith’s apprentice named Adrian who was a painter and a lanky youngster called Allan.
He handed the list to Tom. ‘Fix the watchbill. Messire Thomas Durrem—’
‘Dead as a nail,’ Tom said. He shrugged. ‘Gone with the tower. Didn’t even find his body.’
The captain winced. ‘We’re down another lance, then.’
Tom nodded, and chewed on a lead. ‘I’ll find you a man-at-arms,’ he said.
The Bridge Castle – Ser Milus
Ser Milus stood with the seven new men-at-arms. They were, in his professional opinion, good men who needed a swift kick in the arse.
He had a pell in the courtyard; Master Random’s apprentices had levered a huge stone out of the flagging, dug a hole as deep as a man’s was tall, and put in a post – it was handy to have so many willing hands.
He walked around the pell, hefting his own favoured weapon. The pole-axe. The hammer head was crenellated like a castle with four miniature spikes projecting from it. On the other side, a long, slightly curved spike protruded, and from the top, a small, wickedly sharp spearhead. A foot of solid steel extended from the butt, pointed like a chisel.
Ser Milus spun it between his hands. ‘I don’t expect we’ll fight mounted, from here on out,’ he said conversationally.
Gwillam, the sergeant, nodded.
‘Let’s see you, then,’ Ser Milus said. He nodded to Gwillam, who stepped forward. By the Company’s standard, his armour was poor. He had an old cote of plates, mail chausses, and a shirt of good mail with heavy leather gauntlets covered in iron plates. It was, to Ser Milus’ eyes, very old-fashioned.
Gwillam had a heavy spear. He stepped up to the pell, chose his distance, and thrust. The spearhead went an inch into the oak. He shrugged, and tugged it clear with a heavy pull
.
Dirk Throatlash, the next of the convoy’s men-at-arms, strode up and took a negligent swipe at it with his heavy double-bladed axe. He embedded his axe head deeply in the post.
Archers were gathering in the towers, and merchants had emerged to watch from their wagons.
John Lee, former shipman, also had a double-bitted axe. He swung hard and precisely – matching Dirk’s cut and carving a heavy chip out of the post.
Ser Milus watched them all.
‘That’s what you do at the pell?’ he asked Gwillam.
The sergeant shrugged. ‘I haven’t done much at a pell since I was a boy,’ he admitted.
Ser Milus nodded. ‘Want to kill a monster?’ he said to the men. ‘Or a man?’ he asked.
‘Not really,’ Dirk said. His mates laughed.
Ser Milus didn’t even turn his head. There was no warning. One moment, he was leaning on his war-hammer, and the next, he had tossed Dirk Throatlash into the mud, face first, and still had one arm behind his back.
‘Wrong,’ he said.
‘Jesus Christ!’ Dirk wailed.
Ser Milus let him up. He smiled, because now he had their attention.
‘We’re all going to practise at the pell, every day we don’t fight on the wall,’ he said, conversationally. ‘Like it was real. I’ll teach you how. And if you can cut through it – good!’ He grinned. ‘And then you can demonstrate your zeal by helping put in the next pell.’ He pointed to John Lee. ‘You have an accurate cut.’
Lee shrugged. ‘I cut a lot of wood.’
‘Try again. But this time, cut as if you were fighting a man.’ Ser Milus waved at the pell.
The shipman stepped up and lifted his axe, like a man preparing to hit a ball.
Ser Milus nodded approvingly. ‘Good guard.’
The former shipman cut at the pell, and a chip of wood flew. He got the axe back to his shoulder and cut again.
Ser Milus let him go on for ten cuts. He was breathing hard, and his tenth cut wasn’t nearly as strong as the ninth.
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