Some of our noise gave us away.
We were three quarters of the way through our climb to the lower wall, which was itself perhaps five hundred paces of steep slope above the road. Let me add that the wall itself rose and fell, and we had to climb all sorts of ups and downs to reach it – probably fifteen hundred paces forward to climb five hundred paces up.
There was a horn, off to the north. The gate was that way, almost three quarters of a Roman mile from where we stood. I said the walls were huge; the circuit was perhaps a mile, and we were as far from the gate as our boy could manage. I had wagered that the garrison would be in the gatehouse and the citadel, and not out on the long walls all night. I mean, their paymasters probably wanted them out all night, but soldiers are lazy, or at least I hoped the bastards were lazy.
Not lazy enough. Maybe if I’d known more about the famous Catalan Company and Roger de Flor that night, instead of learning about him later, in Italy, I’d have been more cautious. Anyway, we heard the horn, and then, after climbing another minute, we saw a new signal fire.
I climbed faster, ignoring my burning tendons and tensioned muscles. Up and up, a switchback, a little sheepfold. I tripped over a low wall and fell, down and down, and hit hard, my basinet ringing on a rock. But I had fallen forward into a defile and not back off the mountain, and after a minute my head cleared and I picked myself up.
No one waited for me.
Men were shouting in Catalan, right above us, and suddenly the walls shut out the stars. There were men with torches almost above us. I say suddenly because I have no memory at all of those last hundred paces. One moment I was picking myself up from my fall – wincing where my left knee now hurt and noting that the flange that protected my left knee was bent – the next moment, somehow, I was at the base of the great wall.
An arrow from a light crossbow bolt rang off my basinet, skipped off my pauldron like a punch in the shoulder, and shattered against the stones at my feet.
In a well-planned escalade, you arrive at the foot of the wall unnoticed, on flat ground where you can assemble and put up your scaling ladders, which you do in perfect silence. You beat the garrison to the top of the wall, and the town is at your mercy.
None of that happened.
Instead, heavy rocks began to appear out of the darkness. Gospel Mark took a stone right in the helmet and went down.
‘Slings!’ shouted someone.
I heard the little stones slapping against the ground and ricocheting off into the night.
‘Ladder!’ I barked.
‘Going as fast as we can,’ spat Rob Stone.
Another archer fell.
I took another hit in the pauldron, my left shoulder this time, and the pain was immediate and intense. I swore.
It was terrible: the darkness, the hail of stones, and crossbow bolts flying through the air like javelins from Jove himself.
All the archers were assembling the ladder. It struck me, suddenly, that this was insane – the ground sloped so sharply away from the walls that there was nowhere to put a ladder. And there were thirty men above us. The whole fortress was alarmed.
‘Forget the ladder,’ I snapped at Rob. ‘Can you hit them?’
Stone turned and picked up his war bow, which lay already strung at his feet. He raised it, fitting a heavy arrow, and both bow and arrow shaft shone silver in the moonlight. A stone struck by his feet, the moonlight danced off a man’s helmet up on the wall, and in one movement he raised his heavy bow, spread his shoulders and loosed.
His arrow went home; the shriek told its own story. That one arrow changed the night.
Men who are not being shot at have all the time in the world to pelt you with rocks, to whirl big slings at odd angles, to take their time with the placement of a crossbow bolt.
Add any return fire and those same men will behave very differently. In ten heartbeats, the hail of stones became an occasional snap, crack of a stone hitting the rock at our feet. The slingers stopped altogether after one of the Gascon archers feathered a slinger who leaned way out over the wall, as he had to to whirl his sling, and he fell at our feet, his neck broken from the fall, still screaming in shock.
I stopped watching and got to work on the ladder. The moonlight was full of tricks, but we couldn’t light a torch because Nerio would think we were signalling him to attack.
Rob Stone said later that the shot-stour was won and lost by moonlight: the men on the wall had the moon behind them, so the men at the foot of the wall could see them silhouetted against the light of the sky. That’s not my impression; my feeling is that the Catalans had it all their own way for a few minutes and had no heart for losses – two of their men had been killed and they all hid behind the pylons and crenellations.
I was still trying to fit wooden rungs into the ladder-sides while l’Angars and Fiore tried to get the ladder’s folding legs extended.
Someone on the wall lit a torch. He did it behind the crenellations, but the effect was to bathe the back of the wall in an orange glow. Gospel Mark, up and functioning again despite a deep dent in his helmet from the rock he caught earlier, loosed with a grunt, and a second later, so did Stone and then Ewan, and there were shouts.
Ewan grinned like a loon and lofted an arrow impossibly high.
He shrugged. ‘They’re behind the wall,’ he said. ‘I can drop arrows there.’
‘No one can do that,’ Gospel Mark said.
They began to loose arrows while arguing what kind of shaft would be best for plunging fire.
I got another rung into the ladder. A shower of stones hit us, and Ewan cried out and dropped, cursing, blood flowing through his fingers – someone had thrown a bucket of gravel over the wall. A small stone had cut off his earlobe and it was bleeding like fury, but Ewan was damaged only in his vanity. His face was mottled in the moonlight, the blood like a black spiderweb across his face.
I got another rung into the ladder. I laid the thing along the base of the wall, and Fiore and I began to hammer at the sides, trying to get it to stay together.
Right at the base of the wall was the most dangerous place, because that’s where they dropped the biggest stones. One hit my ladder and bounced away. The ladder had been with us since Pont-Saint-Esprit. It was English oak, and, though it was far from home, it was still strong.
‘Ready!’ I roared in English, a language I assumed my adversaries would not know.
Men ran towards me in the dark. By God, I lie. Men staggered and climbed and tottered towards me. The ground, if it can be called that, was so uneven that when Gospel Mark drew his bow, one foot was three feet above the other and he looked like he was kneeling sideways.
But they came. They got on the ladder, and pushed – there was some yelling. Stones fell on us, and Fiore was hit. There was cursing in six languages, but the ladder went up, and as soon as it scraped on the stone, all the archers left it, ran, hobbled or jumped to their bows, and began to send shafts profligately at the head of the ladder. This was our style; the archers weren’t aiming, they were simply showering the area around the head of the ladder with arrows, and woe betide any enemy that tried to push the ladder down.
There was one brave man, though. The ladder shuddered and tottered, as someone very strong pushed it away from the wall, but the steepness of the slope and the eight men holding the base steady saved it.
There was nothing for it. Someone had to go up. Don’t think less of me. We all hesitated.
Everyone looked at me.
That’s how it is. They look at you, and you have to go. I don’t know whether that’s courage or cowardice, but when your friends look at you, even in the moonlight, you know what they mean.
Show me the way. That’s what they are saying. Lead me up.
‘Follow me!’ I bellowed, and started up the ladder.
It was terrifying. I had lots of time to b
e terrified: long enough to not be able to see the head of the ladder; to wonder if it was too short; to think about how fucking obvious I was to the enemy; and how many rocks it would take to brush me off like a fly from a farmhouse wall in summertime. My legs felt like they were made of lead and my head hurt. Probably my fingers and toes hurt too.
I wasn’t hit a single time. The reason was the archers. Their rhythmic, almost obscene, grunts at the base of the ladder rose out of the darkness at my feet like a hymn of comfort, and their shafts passed within inches of my back. No man ventured a shot at me save one crossbowman bold enough to peek out further along the wall when I was almost at the top. I never saw him, but I heard his scream, and then …
And then, by God, I was up. My pain was forgotten, and I was in between two merlons. I tripped, just as I had way back in France, and fell forward onto a man with a spear. His spear missed me in the dark and then we were tangled on the catwalk. I mangled him with my knees, my elbows, my fists and the pommel of my sword and then I was up. There were two dead men by the ladder, another breathing blood, and the man I’d just pulped. I had time to look left and right.
A crossbowman shot me from so close I saw his fingers move on the stock of his bow in the moonlight.
His shaft slammed into my right cuisse, just a finger’s width to the outside of the ridge by my groin. An inch the other side and I was a dead man, but all the bolt did was knock me down and leave me a bad bruise.
I got my legs under me, and went for him.
He threw the crossbow and ran.
The fire behind the wall was big by then and no doubt served as a signal to the garrison that this was the location of the assault, because by its light I could see a dozen men coming up, the firelight washing their armour and their maille and brigandines. Franks, like me. Catalans.
The ground inside the walls was as steep as the ground outside. It might have taken the spirit from me, if I had had a glimmering of what was in store, but I did not, so I whirled and ran along the wall towards the gate. The slingers there were virtually naked – none of them wanted to face me – and they dropped off the wall. There were a dozen of them, and none of them stayed. One twisted his ankle in the drop, and he screamed and begged men to come and help him, wedged between two slabs of volcanic rock, lit by the pyre.
I ran on, careful of the drop on my left, and reached the head of the steps to the interior of the vast fortress at the same moment that one of the Catalan sergeants was climbing up them. He had a heavy pole-hammer.
I had a sword.
He should have thrust, but he whirled the head back, and I cut down on his gauntleted hands, and he was done. I probably broke all his fingers, and then my point scraped his nose and my left hand pushed him back down the steps.
Sic transit gloria mundi.
‘Leave some for me,’ Fiore said.
And we were in.
‘In’ wasn’t worth all that much. We were inside the damned wall, but we were three quarters of a mile from the gate to the town, and the ground inside the fortress was … more mountain: slabs of rock, gravel, tufts of grass, and never a yard of flat.
I sank to one knee. I thought I was exhausted, which shows how little, still, at that age I knew about my body.
‘Hold,’ I panted. I doubt I roared it. Fiore was going down the steps.
He looked back.
‘Make them climb to us,’ I said.
The Catalans had no interest in climbing, though, and formed a little line about twenty yards away. That might have been a good idea, except that Ewan came up the ladder and started dropping shafts among them. L’Angars followed him, and then, very quickly, the rest of my men-at-arms.
The Catalans ran. We panted and scraped along behind them.
‘Does the wall run all the way to the gate?’ I asked.
Gregorios didn’t know, in any language.
‘Stands to reason,’ Gospel Mark said. ‘Garrison here ought to be all goats.’
‘Bring the ladder,’ I wheezed at Rob Stone.
We headed off along the walls. The catwalk behind the merlons was not straight, but it was smooth, better by far than crossing that infernal stony ground.
At some point, we realised all the Catalans had run off. It might have mattered later but, for the immediate objective, it didn’t matter a damn, and we moved from tower to tower. None were occupied, and we turned a corner and saw the gatehouse and the steep road running like a ribbon down to a moonlit sea, like in some tale of romance.
The sight of the gatehouse put heart into us, even though it was like a separate fortress, strong and tall, built into the side of the hill, a thousand feet above the sea.
But then, at last, we had a little luck. The door, four layers of oak board clenched with iron bolts, was open, and the catwalk was bathed in the glow of oil lamps from within the tower.
Of course it was.
There were crossbowmen up in the tower above us, shooting down into a milling pack of mounted men-at-arms on the road below us.
Why, you ask?
Because signals are for fools, and when the garrison lit their beacon behind the wall just before Rob Stone started throwing shafts back, Nerio assumed that was us on the wall and he galloped along the coast road and up to the gate …
Far too early. His best warhorse was motionless on the ground and his squire, Achille, was lying in Father Angelo’s arms with a bolt through his left pauldron. It was fucking chaos out there, and my friends and my company were trapped like fish in the proverbial barrel by expert crossbowmen.
No one was looking at us. And the door was open.
I remember it as one of the longest runs of my life. I thought that I was tired, but God, or fear for Nerio, gave me wings, and I ran like Hector, heedless of the condition of the wall or the catwalk. But Fiore, for all his snaps at Nerio, was faster – he ran like Achilles, and I had to be second. He threw himself through that door heedless of what might wait on the other side.
We were in a room full of women. Perhaps ten of them – big, strong women with cooking implements and knives, and they knew we were the enemy as soon as we went in.
They screamed and came for us.
We didn’t kill them. I’m proud of it. Our blood was up, our friends were at risk, and in a storming action there are no rules. But Fiore wasn’t going to kill a woman, and I wasn’t either. I took an iron poker on my vambrace and put the first woman down with a sweep of my armoured forearm across her throat. I kneed the next, caught her leg and threw her, pommelled another, and they broke, screaming, and ran or fell down the central steps.
‘Up!’ I called to l’Angars. Fiore stopped at the head of the stairs to breathe and because we needed someone to hold the steps behind us. L’Angars and I went up, with Ewan at my shoulder. Lascaris came up with l’Angars.
A bolt missed me.
Ewan got the crossbowman, and I was going up, my legs still, somehow, functioning, the spirit of war driving me, and I climbed. Another crossbowman flinched and didn’t loose his bolt, and Ewan dropped him, too, and then I was out on the roof of the tower. My left arm was not functioning well, there was something wrong inside my helmet, and my legs felt like they were made of wood.
Despite all that, I could hear young Francesco roaring like a lion down in the dark, demanding that the men-at-arms stand fast.
‘Saint George!’ I called.
I was on the roof, and there were a dozen crossbowmen, most of them in their nightshirts.
L’Angars came up behind me, and I flipped my visor open, regardless of the crossbowmen.
‘Saint George!’ I roared.
Down on the road, I heard young Francesco call ‘Saint George!’
Ewan’s shaft dropped a man, and I turned to clear the wall.
They had cressets lit so that they could see to span their bows, and by that fitful ligh
t I saw a young man on his knees. I didn’t speak a word of Catalan; he bared his neck.
Behind him, his mate used him for cover while he aimed at me.
I killed them both. I’d like to have spared the young man, but he was in my way, and I had time to cut up, and then back with a kick into the man with the crossbow. That’s how I see it. It still sticks with me, but storming actions and escalades are terrible; everything dies.
Let’s make this brief.
We killed them all. Mayhap we might have given quarter to the last two, but we did not. Aye. War is glorious, is it not?
The Gascons had the gate open before we cleared the top of the tower. Our men-at-arms burst in like water bursting a dam in spring and, as Nerio was dismounted, young Francesco led the charge up the road without an order or a word from anyone.
There were no wounded. The women were well up the slope, barely visible in the darkness. Nerio came in through the gate, and behind him were Sir Giorgios, his stradiotes, at least those who weren’t with John, and a big mule, grunting in the darkness.
Nerio threw his arms around Fiore, and then me.
‘Christ, I thought you were all dead,’ he said.
‘Christ, I thought the same, for a bit,’ Fiore said.
Nerio paused. ‘You made a joke,’ he said.
Fiore made a face in the moonlight. ‘I make jokes all the time,’ he said. ‘You’re just too slow to understand them.’
‘Citadel,’ I said. It took all the willpower I could muster to get my leg over Gabriel’s back. The saddle was comfortable. The high back supported me, and I swear I could have gone to sleep. I probably grunted. My shoulder was aching, waves of ache that meant it was probably broken.
‘Citadel,’ Nerio said. ‘You stay. I can do this.’
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