The Devil's Armour (Gollancz S.F.)

by John Marco

  ‘Roddy? What’s the word?’

  Aykle wore his hair braided like a savage. He was a big man in bulging leather, but his soft eyes told Varl he shared at least some of his wariness. They should have been in Norvor, and Aykle knew it, too. But mercenaries weren’t given choices.

  Rodrik Varl took his sword from its scabbard and raised it high above his head. He wondered if Colonel Bern was in the bastion, and if the old soldier could see him.

  ‘Attack,’ he cried. Then, louder, ‘Attack!’

  A cry rose up from the ranks of men. The first line of cavalry bolted forward, covering the advance of the infantry and bowmen. Shields raised against the coming rain of arrows, the horsemen charged across the wet green toward the field, their comrades on foot echoing their cries. Varl watched as his men thundered into battle. Eventually he would join them, but not before his bowmen answered the arrows from the wall. Already the archers along the catwalks were raising their weapons skyward. Scores and scores of iron-tipped missiles tilted up. Among the lusty cries and snorts of horses Varl heard the twang of bowstrings. The Liirian arrows leapt for the sky, arcing through the murky sunlight. Varl’s own archers hurried forward, racing against the deadly rain. Like vengeance from heaven the arrows fell upon them, plummeting down. Among the infantry and archers the arrows fell the worst, piercing hearts and windpipes in an indiscriminate massacre. The horsemen galloped forward, undeterred, calling their brethren to follow as they hurried toward the wall. They would secure the field, attack the gate, and make an opening for the ladder-men.

  Again the sky filled with arrows. Again they missed Rodrik Varl and the reserves by yards. Next to Varl, Aykle squirmed anxiously on his speckled stallion, eager to lead his own horsemen into the fray. Varl held up a hand to calm him.

  ‘When I say so,’ he reminded his comrade.

  The first of his archers were in place. In unison they fell to their knees, drew back their weapons, and gave the first reply. Along the catwalks and battlements the Liirians ducked the whistling barrage, granting the Norvans needed breath. When he was sure the barrage from his men would continue, Rodrik Varl ordered the next rank of horsemen and infantry toward the field. Aykle of Astan raised his brutish sword and led his mercenaries into battle.

  There were Liirians among the attackers. Colonel Bern could see them from his place on the catwalk, still wearing their threadbare uniforms as though they were somehow proud of what they were doing.

  Below the wall the field was crowded with cavalrymen and infantry, all trying to secure the area and make ready for the ram. Bern shouted orders to the men along the walks, who concentrated their arrows on those nearest the walls. Inside the tower, the crossbowmen with their powerful ballistae pumped bolts at the Norvans, puncturing the armour of the horsemen and sending them sprawling from their mounts. With practised ease they traded positions, falling back to load their weapons while another took a shot. The air overhead filled with Norvan arrows, falling into the yard and forcing the men to take cover. Nevins gathered his horsemen into groups near the wall to protect them from the barrage.

  So far, though, the Norvans seemed oblivious to the oil slicking the grass beyond the field. Colonel Bern peered out past the throngs of darting men and saw how the reservists flooded the green. Rodrik Varl had held back hundreds of his men. Even the battering ram rested there. Bern thought for a moment, wondering if he should give the order now, while he had a chance to burn the ram.

  But he could not give the order. Later – when the bastion fell – they would need the fire’s cover.

  At Andola’s eastern wall, Kaj and his Crusaders had battled for two hours and had gained only modest ground. Shortly after dawn they had launched their attack on the old fortification, but the city had grown out past the wall since its construction, leaving Kaj and his men with a bloody, street-to-street advance. The Liirians held the wall tightly in the hands of at least two hundred men, but had also positioned fighters in the houses lining the way. Ravel’s hirelings had done an admirable job of holding back Kaj’s more experienced men. Without armour and armed with quick, curved blades, the Crusaders advanced slowly toward the wall, occasionally pushed back by a barrage of Liirian arrows. Though he had over three hundred men at his command, Kaj kept most in reserve behind him. So many men would have choked the narrow avenues, and he preferred his own brigade – his Crusaders – to do the real fighting. As they advanced down a street of battered shops and abandoned homes, crossbowmen appeared at the other end of the road. Kaj ducked behind a broken shutter as the bolts blew past him, turning the avenue into a deadly funnel. Overhead, the rickety structure of the house groaned, threatening to give. He and his men sucked in air as they pressed themselves against the crumbling cobblestone. A few of his men sprinted forward, sheltered themselves behind open doors and returned fire.

  Pinned where he was, Kaj groped for an idea. He could see the eastern wall up ahead, guarding the city. Like the southern bastion, the wall needed to be taken, for there was no way Andola would really fall before that, not while so many troops guarded it. But to take the wall they had to reach it, and that was the real dilemma. Sweat glistened on Kaj’s dark skin, stinging his eyes. He wiped at them furiously. He had already lost a score of good men.

  ‘Get to the roof!’ he called to the group behind him.

  At once his men began scrambling, hoisting each other onto the low roofs of the shops and handing up bows. A crossbow bolt grazed past Kaj’s ear as he peered out to see, nipping it. He hollered, more in surprise than pain, and cursed at his men to hurry. His Crusaders shimmied quickly onto the rooftops and took aim down the avenue. The burst of fire gave Kaj the break he needed. An instant later he was on the move, leaping from shutter to doorway to window, guiding a group of twenty men behind him while more swarmed into the avenue. He was about to advance again when the door beside him burst open.

  A group of soldiers – six or seven men in armour – rushed toward him. Kaj leapt into the street, twisting to avoid the rush of arrows. From the end of the street a company of horsemen advanced. Caught between the Liirians, Kaj called to his men for help, then threw himself at the lesser force, slashing wildly at the armoured figures. His curved blade danced, catching the first surprised man easily and slicing through his gorget. While he buckled Kaj turned again, spiralling against a swinging mace. The spiked ball breezed overhead as the mercenary ducked, bringing up his sword and slamming it into the man’s groin, hard enough to crush the flimsy armour. The soldier screamed and crumbled into Kaj’s rising blade.

  With his own reinforcements coming up fast, Kaj ducked the blade of a nearby Liirian, scrambling to escape the squeeze. One of his men jumped from a rooftop onto the armoured pack, knocking some to the ground and scattering the rest. Kaj ran to his aid, slicing past more of Ravel’s soldiers, who were coming out of the buildings like cockroaches now. The horsemen down the alley were almost upon them. Kaj’s own men streamed down the street to meet them, screaming with bloodlust.

  On the western side of Andola, Count Onikil’s cavalry had made good progress penetrating the city. Like Andola’s northern front, the west of the city was nearest to greater Liiria and so had no need of bastions or walls to protect it. Here the streets were crowded and mazelike, but the fighting had been sparse so far and Onikil’s men had spent most of their time securing the homes and gathering the populace into disarmed groups. Fires had broken out in the market quarter, and small bands of Liirian men had picked up weapons to ambush the Rolgans. Because the west side meandered so much, Onikil had been forced to break up his six hundred men into smaller brigades, which were now patrolling the streets and securing the area for the sweep toward the castle. What might have looked like chaos to an ordinary man was a perfectly metred orchestration to Onikil, who had a brain for complications and who, through his lieutenants, knew everything that was happening.

  Since the death of Duke Rihards, Count Onikil had secured his rule over Rolga. He had quickly gathered his army and
marched them to Andola, and now he could see Baron Ravel’s castle in the centre of the city, soon to be under siege. The sight thrilled the count. He and his men could be the first at the castle gates, the first to start taking it down brick by brick, but he had orders from Rodrik Varl not to proceed too far too soon, and so Count Onikil cultivated his patience, methodically securing Andola’s western districts and waiting for those with more difficult tasks to catch up with him.

  Surrounded by horsemen in their black Rolgan armour, Count Onikil felt strangely indestructible as he trotted through the streets. He loved the smell of fire and the cries of women, and knew that from the windows of bolted homes children looked at him with fear. A tall man, Count Onikil sat arrow-straight in his saddle, feeling like a hero in his embroidered cape of gold and scarlet. A time of Norvan greatness was upon the world. At long last, his country had risen from its own ashes.

  Oddly, it had taken a woman to make it so.

  As arrows flew past his head, Rodrik Varl rode along the edge of the green, shouting orders to his men while the battering ram was brought up from the rear. In three hours of fighting his men had hardly breached the bastion at all. The ladder-men had tried and failed repeatedly to overtake the walls, beaten back consistently by the archers deployed along the catwalks and in the tower. By now Varl had called up his siege machines, a pair of catapults dragged all the way from Carlion. Before they had fallen into Jazana Carr’s hands they had been well used in King Lorn’s army and had taken hours to get into position. They were clumsy but monumental beasts, and the mere sight of them had drained the colour from the Liirian faces on the wall. Mostly, though, the catapults had been ineffectual. Though they had drilled with the weapons for days before the siege, his men were mostly unused to the machines. Each shot they launched landed harmlessly outside the bastion’s walls, more a danger to his own troops than to the Liirians. The catapults took far too long to load, too, and by now Rodrik Varl had given up on them. The ram, he knew, was their only real chance.

  But his men had taken heavy causalities bringing the ram into position, and Rodrik Varl cursed Jazana Carr as he galloped along the battlefield. Though he loved her, he sometimes hated her stupidity. Her greed had cost him dearly at the bastion, and he wondered if Kaj was faring any better at the eastern wall. He held his shield high, guarding his head from the storm of arrows, which had concentrated on him lately, and sneered at his archers to return fire. They would need protection to bring up the ram. Nearby, on the outskirts of the field, the huge battering ram stood ready to roll. Muscular men lined its side, holding desperately to its iron grips as they awaited the order to heave. Behind them, the huge catapults were loaded. Varl could hear the strains of their many twisted splines tautly singing as the arms were pulled into position and the cups loaded with shot. It took ten men to load each weapon, piling jagged boulders into them from war carts brought onto the green. A train of carts snaked into the distance where the reservists and workmen waited. The field itself was bedlam and Rodrik Varl could barely hear his own voice in his head. He was exhausted, and the rank smell of oil and smoke choked his searing lungs. The field lay littered with fallen mercenaries, each pierced cleanly by a pointed shaft.

  ‘Ready on the ram!’ he called. His voice strained against the din. To his men at the catapults he cried, ‘Make ready to fire!’ Quickly he galloped toward a line of archers, protected now by hastily erected siege walls. ‘Covering fire,’ he ordered them, and the lieutenants passed the order down. The archers in the field dipped into their quivers and loaded their bows one more time. Seeing what was happening, the Liirians in the bastion replied with a hailstorm of shafts. A thump-thump of arrows hit the shields. Rodrik Varl raised his hand in defiance, saw the fire burning on the tower, and gave the order.

  A volley of arrows streaked into the blue. The great catapults launched their deadly loads. A hundred men grunted against the enormous ram; the weapon let out a groaning wail. Slowly, slowly, the behemoth began to move. From behind the shields the archers drew back and fired again. The exchange of missiles darkened the sun. One, two, three men fell dead from the ram. Others hurried forward to take their place, leaving the fallen on the trampled field. Their commanders cursed at them, driving them on, while horsemen with long shields did their best to protect them.

  ‘Go, go!’ Varl urged. An arrow struck his shield, breaking through the wood, its iron head peeking through. The shot drove him on, deeper into the field and chaos, closer to the ram that was picking up speed, headlong like a charging bull toward the bastion’s gates. A nearby horseman rolled from his saddle, spraying Varl with gore as a bolt blew his head apart. Varl shook off the surprise, galloping in a wide circle across the field and hissing at his men to hurry.

  Around the ram the world seemed to stop. Even safe in the bastion’s tower, the Liirians there paused a moment while the menacing weapon picked up speed. The fire slackened, the field grew hushed, and the sound of ten oiled wheels filled the air as the battering ram bore down.

  Colonel Bern felt the world shake. The Norvan ram bashed the bastion gate with an earsplitting clap, cracking the timbers and sending men spilling from the wall. The two stout portals buckled, barely held closed by the splintered timbers. From his place in the yard, Bern could see the head of the great weapon through the breached gate and the triumphant, sweaty faces of his enemy.

  The time was drawing quickly near. He had already mounted his horse, prepared to take the field. Nevins, his cavalry commander, rallied his horsemen for the coming melee. Once the ram was deployed again, the gate would breach and the bastion would be lost. It would be a slaughter for the men inside, who had all signed on to fight to the death but who deserved better than to perish for the sake of Baron Ravel.

  It would not be that way, Bern determined.

  At last, he had the excuse he needed. His men had defended the bastion mightily; they could all be proud. He gave a look to Nevins who nodded his beaten helm in understanding.

  To the sergeant of the yard Bern gave his order, who called to his piper to sound the trumpet. The piper put his brass instrument to his lips and blew a mournful note.

  Up on the roof, Captain Aliston heard the trumpet blast and knew the time had come. One by one his archers lowered their bows. Each took up a special arrow next, one unlike any other they had fired all day. They notched the arrows to their bows and hurriedly went to the brazier. The inferno that had so far covered their plan still belched smoke into the sky, passing along a tiny portion of itself to the oil-soaked arrows. As his men prepared their weapons, Aliston saw the ram being repositioned below. His forty archers took up their positions again along the rooftop’s crenellations. This time, blazing arrows tilted skyward, they took careful aim at the green beyond the field.

  Confident the arrows couldn’t reach them on the green, the Norvans had arranged themselves in dense, clumsy clusters, waiting for an order to join the battle. Aliston smiled, happily anticipating the coming blaze.

  ‘Fire,’ said Captain Aliston, and watched in wicked glee while the flaming arrows took flight.

  Rodrik prepared himself for combat as the battering ram broke through the gate. Only peripherally did he see the glowing fireflies sailing high above. He looked skyward, following the burning arrows as they arced toward the field, and wondered dreadfully with what Colonel Bern had gifted him.

  He did not wonder long. A second later the field erupted with hot light. Varl shielded his eyes, shocked by the roar as the fire spread. His horse bucked beneath him and all was suddenly chaos. A chorus of screams rose up from the field as men and horses scrambled for cover. But there was no safety from the flames. Everywhere, cool grass had turned to hellfire. Varl struggled to control his thrashing horse, aghast at what had happened. Across the field his cavalry and archers ran as the flames reached for them. Frenzied horses rose up on their haunches, panicked by the fire and tossing free their riders. Varl reined his own beast, prancing in confused circles. The green had been a tra
p, and all that acrid smell had come from right below their feet. He cursed himself and rode for the green, but the heat was too great and forced him to pull back. His men were shouting and breaking ranks, trying vainly to help their burning comrades. Like a great, dead tree, one of the huge catapults stood stark among the flames, burning. Figures darted through the orange haze, their uniforms aflame. Scorched figures clawed at the earth as they pulled themselves away, only to collapse in agony.

  ‘Retreat!’ called Rodrik Varl. Suddenly, his every thought was of Jazana Carr. He remembered in a panic how she had promised to come up to be with him, and hoped desperately she was not inside the holocaust. He strained to see beyond the green, beyond the hellish blaze, but the light was dazzling and pained his eyes. ‘Fall back!’ he cried, hoping his men could hear. ‘Beyond the green! Back!’

  Rodrik Varl had a mercenary’s sense of things, and knew that Colonel Bern had not set fire to the field without reason.

  For some reason, Bern had waited before springing his trap.

  To a man like Varl who was used to tricks, that meant only one thing. With the barest surprise, he looked toward the shattered gate and watched it explode outward, heralding a flood of Liirian horsemen.

  With a broadsword in one hand and his reins in the other, Colonel Bern gave a wild shout as he jumped the threshold of the broken gate. Outside he found the chaos he expected. Jazana Carr’s mercenaries were in disarray, calling retreat or vainly trying to rescue their burning comrades. Already Major Nevins had led a dozen horsemen out onto the field. Dozens more followed Bern, all eager to avenge their own fallen friends. The hailstorm of arrows had ceased, replaced by the relentless roar and heat of fire. Bern ignored the needles piercing his eyeslits. As his eyes ran red with tears he brought his sword down on a confused Norvan, cracking through the man’s breastplate and rending his chest. He could see the mercenaries running for cover around him, confused now by this new attack. Bern swung his sword in a rage, smashing through the defences of any Norvan he came against and crying loudly for his men to follow. Frantically he scanned the field for Rodrik Varl, but the mercenary was nowhere to be seen. Calls for retreat echoed over the crackling fire. Bern shouted at his men to press on, to push the Norvans deeper into the fiery green.