“God protect us from our own handiwork,” John muttered to Roland’s retreating back.
Alans searched on foot through the forward units until he found the Tournai men laboring under Ganelon’s supervision. With picks and shovels, the men strengthened the earthen fortifications that would eventually ring the city and plug the gaps in the Frank line. Between them and the city walls stood brush screens that obscured their activities from the archers stationed in the crenellations. Even so, an occasional random shaft whistled through the air, the missive of some bored bowman.
Alans waved to Ganelon, but the count frowned and gestured for his men to continue their work.
“What do you want?” Ganelon snapped. He grabbed a water skin and sloshed a swig around his mouth, spat it out, then took a longer pull. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and eyed Alans more closely. It was then he noticed a strangely humble look on the usually haughty face of the southern noble.
“I seek a man who’s lost much in this debacle,” Alans said.
Ganelon didn’t try to stifle a mocking laugh. “Weren’t you one of the loudest voices for this war?”
Alans shifted uncomfortably. “Do you remember long-ago days when we were young?” He stared past Ganelon to the distant wall. “We chased with Charles to Italy on his glorious mission to free the holy city. None of us imagined that Rome would throw open her gates in just a matter of days! Why, I remember the stink as the Romans thronged the streets to greet us.”
Ganelon chewed the edge of his mustache. “The Saracens have more to lose than the Lombards, I suppose.”
Unnoticed, the youth, Julian, found a task closer to the conversation. He bent his back to drive the shovel blade into the summer-hardened earth.
Alans clenched his fists. “They force us to batter down every wall! We waste men in siege instead of using them to hold lands entitled to us by conquest! Surely Charles knows we’re bleeding our strength in a wild goose chase!”
A sudden cry marked the luck of an enemy archer. Guinemer hopped into the ditch, pushing men aside to check the fallen soldier’s wound.
“Look where he takes counsel,” Ganelon mused, ignoring the moment’s chaos. “From a general who washes the streets in our own blood, and the slut of his loins who warms his bed.”
“Surely God has abandoned us.” Alans genuflected to ward off evil.
“If He was ever with us,” Ganelon hissed.
As night extended her shroud across the contested field before the city, a hush fell over the Frank army with the passing creak and groan of the massive contraption that crawled through their lines toward the gate—a large, bulbous wooden frame covered with stretched hides soaked in muddy creek water. At the forward end, a steel cover glinted in the red twilight, roughly worked into the shape of a frightful hell-beast with a gleaming maw jostling on its hinges. Smoke billowed and formed a dark smudge above the war machine, bolstering the impression that this fiery serpent crawled from the apocalyptic pit. Its wheels turned slowly with every heave from the men inside it, and with each measured step, the horrific creation inched forward.
Beneath the dripping hides, sweat-soaked men strained at push-bars extending from a cart beneath the Byzantine machine. Gritty cloths covered their faces to keep out the rank oily smell overlaid with choking dust and the stench of wet skins. Many glanced nervously with every whistle and pop at the winding copper tubes and kettles above them, fearful of the brew bubbling within the cauldron at the heart of the monstrosity. Further down the Frank lines, Charles rode with his entourage to the foremost trenches to gain a better view of the operation.
Shouts rang out from the city walls. Saragossans hastily repositioned on the imposing gate, a strong barrier bound in iron and topped with towers and murder holes steaming with vapors. From the battlements, arrows rained down on the machine’s thick hide that bristled with the spent shafts. When it finally neared the gate, hot pitch spewed from the wall. Flame erupted, engulfing the shell. But the machine rolled onward.
The Frank army held its collective breath when the wagon butted with a muted thump against the gate.
Within the bowels of the monstrosity, Kennick and Otun grabbed the bellows’ handles and bent their strong backs to the work. The entire contraption rocked with their effort, and the piping groaned with the increased strain.
“Keep going! More pressure!” Leo shouted over noise from the assault above them. He was covered in thick felt garments allowing only his eyes to show. Those eyes darted from the bellows to valves and to indicating glasses.
“Ready! Now!”
At the head of the machine, Roland and Oliver, similarly garbed, threw open the steel snout and lifted their shields overhead. Leo stepped under their protection holding a tube the size of a man’s head connected by a stitched hose of leather and gut to the depths of the contraption. His eyes crinkling in what must have been a mad grin at his shield-bearers, Leo braced his feet widely and turned a brass lever atop the nozzle.
With a ghastly echoing roar, wet flames belched out, engulfing the gate in liquid hellfire that clung to the massive timbers. Sulfurous smoke billowed upward, blinding enemy soldiers who scrambled madly across the ramparts to escape the rising inferno. Leo angled the tube toward the heights and arced his stream of flaming death after them. Along the wall and across the top of the gate, even the slightest splattering turned men into human torches, many of whom desperately flung themselves from the heights to end their anguish, screaming until they hit the ground.
Charles gasped at the horrific vision before him. Just visible in the conflagration, a few defenders recklessly stood their ground, dumping water over the wall, but the flames roared upward without abatement until the gatehouse walls cracked. Heat rose in a rippling billow and obscured the horrible suffering on the battlements.
“I’ve seen this,” Charles whispered, crossing his chest with sharp, quick motions. “It is my nightmare before my waking eyes. Dear God, forgive us for what we do.”
Flames clawed from the gate to the battlements, and men continued to die. Stone blackened and cracked while iron fittings flared white-hot. Wooden catwalks shriveled and collapsed. Timbers and ash rained down on the shell as the pipes and the cauldron began to rattle and hum.
Leo nodded vigorously to Roland, all he could do in his thick garb to indicate his excitement. Moral regrets were apparently lost in the rushing power he wielded. He shifted his feet to strengthen his stance and gave the gate another blast.
Then a rivet burst, and Leo faltered. Within his heavy shroud, his eyes grew suddenly wide with fear.
Another rivet pinged into the flames.
“It’s going to blow!” he shouted over the noise. He shut the valve, dropped the cherry-red nozzle on the ground, and lunged back to Kennick and Otun still pumping madly at the bellows.
Roland urgently waved the other men away. “Get out! Now! Get out!”
The crew spilled from beneath the covering and stumbled back to the Frank line. Half-hearted missiles from the farther walls whistled past them. Roland pushed Leo on ahead then turned to others who stumbled behind. Ignoring the sulfur stinging his eyes, he shouted at them to hurry along.
An explosion rocked the ground.
Brimstone hurled upward then plummeted back down in a fiery rain. A few steps behind the champion, a ball of flaming muck struck Kennick’s shoulders and burst across his back. He stumbled, beating at the flames, angering them more. They spread to his sleeves and with a flare engulfed him in living fire. He shrieked.
Roland launched toward his friend, but Leo tripped him, throwing his body across the knight’s. Roland spat a mouthful of dirt and wrestled out from under the Greek’s scant frame while Kennick screamed and writhed.
Leo snatched at Roland’s garments, tangling him up again. “You can’t save him!”
“Let me go!” Roland hammered him with his fists.
“God damn you, let go!”
Kennick slumped to the ground and twitched in a sickening display of agony.
“You cannot put it out!” Leo clung to Roland, gasping to continue. “He was dead when it touched him!”
Roland sobbed, the fiery air stinging his lungs and the stink of burnt flesh filling his nostrils. Balls of fire continued to strike the ground around them. Kennick’s body lay where it fell, now nothing more than a pile of blackened ash.
The war carried on indifferent to the champion’s grief.
The flames burned through the night, no longer needing the Greek fire to sustain them, and by dawn the city gates collapsed and took down the gatehouse wall.
The wails of the defenders rose above the roaring flames, and the Franks advanced.
Over the next days, bandons of soldiers entered the smoldering ruins, moving house-to-house and street-to-street in maneuvers perfected in alleys of Barcelona to root out remnants of Saragossa’s demoralized forces. Those they found they dragged in chains to either the muddied streams for rites and peace oaths, or to the chopping block. Roland led heavily armored cavalry in pursuit of Marsilion’s straggling lancers across ruined acres of wheat, cutting them down in relentless skirmishes to the very shadows of the Pyrenees.
Ahead of the chaos, Blancandrin directed a full-scale retreat, frantically driving his army around the mountains and across the summer-scorched peninsula toward Saragossa.
At his heels, the Oliphant sounded the victory yet again.
AOI
CHAPTER 22
In God’s Hands
Red-bellied clouds rolled slowly over the forest still shadowed with the dregs of night. From their lofty gossamer shreds, stray beams of promised sunrise bounced into deep recesses of dark boughs. In the shadows of the verdant canopy, edged steel glinted in the pale light.
A bow creaked. An eye sighted along the shaft and made contact with Aude’s defiant gaze a score of yards away. She clutched Jerome with her good arm, her clothes warm from his blood.
Their desperate race to Charles had come to a grim halt.
And yet, not so many days before, Francia’s northern forests had lain deep, verdant, and welcoming. Summer remained much the same as it had for hundreds of years. Farmers toiled against the hot sun and at times against the land itself. Motte-and-bailey forts rose from the forests, their walls of heaped earth and mossy timber battlements nearly indistinguishable from the surrounding verge. The old Roman road, upon which Aude’s party traveled, intersected dusty cattle tracks leading to tiny settlements of mud-and-thatch huts alongside dilapidated Roman buildings, long since vacated by bureaucrats and now pressed into service as churches. Old and new existed side by side in the land of the Franks. Aude’s own family attested to this—the line of Vale Runer stretched back in time not just to Germanic forebears but also to Gallic patricians who had considered themselves more Roman than the mobs of the Eternal City.
As the days stretched down the rutted roads, their flight became a trek—a slog of long hours in the saddle, avoiding unnecessary contact with other travelers. With only short breaks to enjoy a spot of shade and a clear draught from some small creek, they pressed on.
Aude pulled her hair back from her face with a silken band and remained atop her mount as it stretched its neck and drank from the stream. She waved a hand before her eyes to chase away a stray fly, watching the men feed their horses from scant pouches of grain.
Even though weeks had passed, she still felt a pang of guilt for misleading Berta. A necessary deception, for secrecy was paramount. And the daughter of the Vale realized she could trust no one until this mission was finished. Ganelon had spent his entire life in the orbit of the court and had acquired many friends who listened at corners and doorways. On the day they set out from Aachen, the narrow streets had still been dark with homes still shuttered. Yet the small band kept eyes fixed over their shoulders to double- and triple-check that no one followed while they chased toward Spain bearing accusations of treason and murder.
Her steed finally pulled its head up. Water drained from her bit like a fountain.
“This can’t be good for my bones,” Jerome muttered when he thought no one was listening. But listen she did—to him, to her mount, and to the land all around them. A strange sensation crept up the back of her neck, and every time they lingered too long at a stream or waited for beams of light to penetrate the leaves before stirring in the morning, she knew some nameless horror would be upon them. Her face reddened, and she turned her cheeks upward to the sky, hoping none of her companions noticed.
Oliver would likely laugh at her foolishness and remind her of the great care she had taken in keeping all a secret—even from Gisela. And she bore the message to Spain herself rather than trust it to another. The only loose end was Berta, who thought Aude flew to the Vale. She desperately hoped that false trail would send any pursuit days to the east and allow them to race south unhindered to the Spanish plain.
Yet the lurking fear remained, and she continued to watch and listen.
A few days later, Aude again turned her face to the sky, only this time cool drops pelted her skin. Gray enveloped the countryside with a storm that rolled into the region. She closed her eyes for a moment to shut out the swaying of her horse and the clopping hooves of her companions. The droplets ran down her face, around her lips and chin—a welcome respite from the summer sun that had accompanied them all the way through Neustria, in central Francia. She searched the sky and thought of the gray day of her wedding to Roland, and the light that had brought to the gloomy winter. Those precious moments in the champion’s quarters seemed a world away now, and she desperately wanted to recapture them.
“Dear Mary, mother of God,” she prayed in her heart and her mind, “please speed us to him. I beg you, keep him safe that I might see him again.”
The crack of a branch snapped her eyes open, and she jerked upright in the saddle. The wind had picked up sharply, and her horse skittered to the side when the leafy appendage crashed across the road. Aude cooed to her steed while the men struggled to calm their own mounts. Jerome pressed his horse against hers.
“My lady!” he said against the sound of creaking timber and rising wind. “I’d advise shelter! This night will not be fit for man or beast!”
Aude brushed her dampening hair from her face and pulled up the hood of her cloak just as the rain began its assault in earnest. “If we pause, a messenger from the capital could reach the army before us! We must keep going!”
“My lady, if someone sent a message with official sanction, it will surely reach its intended before us anyway,” Jerome replied with some urgency. “Messengers can ride alone and change out horses regularly.” Jerome’s horse pranced fitfully under his hand to the crackle of lightning and the delayed boom of thunder. “We must get off the road!”
Aude gauged clouds that appeared to stack up over their heads. “You’re right, of course. We must take what shelter we can find.” She dug her heels into her horse and led them beneath the trees.
Not far ahead, a loud groan turned into a ripping crack as a limb broke loose, hurling impaling branches around them.
One of the men screamed, and Aude’s steed bolted.
Branches and leaves whipped at her face, while beneath her the horse heaved with panic and galloped headlong back toward the road. She strained at the reins, but with the echoing booms of thunder, the horse was having none of it. The beast jumped a ditch, sliding through unexpected mud on the far side. Her companions shouted and struggled far behind her.
Aude leaned low and pressed herself against the saddle. A branch tore her cheek, flooding her skin with warmth. The horse leaped a fallen tree then slipped on slick muck to crash through sharp brambles. Hooves flew wildly when it lost its footing, and steed and rider tumbled hard into a crumpled, heaving heap as rain poured rampant from the turbulent sky.
&nb
sp; The horse thrashed to its legs. Like a foal walking for the first time, it gathered its feet and stumbled a few steps.
Aude remained on the ground, staring up at the darkness, rain driving downward on her face. She gasped for breath. Sharp pains shot through her body.
“I’m sorry, my love,” she choked. “I’ve failed you.”
Her mind drifted while the storm gods danced across their high-vaulted halls in the heavens. She clung desperately to consciousness that she might remount her steed, find her companions, and continue on her desperate errand.
But pain and darkness overcame her.
Branches broke, and leaves rustled, letting in thin slivers of light.
“Here!” The voice caused her to stir. She choked out a breath.
Brush parted. Jerome, covered with grime and blood, thrust his face into view. He looked back over his shoulder. “She’s here!”
Aude blinked against dappled sunbeams. “Where? Is anyone hurt?” Her throat was dry.
She tried pushing herself up, but grinding pain shot through her arm and shoulder and bound her tongue.
Jerome’s face remained serious as he separated her clothes from debris. “My lady, we lost Gregory. He chased after you and cracked open his head against a tree limb.”
“Oh, dear God, no …” The words faded as she lost focus, struggling against the pain that clutched her lungs with each breath.
Peonius appeared above her and gently lifted her. She clutched at his collar.
“We cannot stop,” she whispered through clenched teeth. “Please, my horse. Get my horse—we’ll continue on.”
But Jerome directed Peonius to set her down on a cleared patch of ground where he began examining her for injury. When his arthritic fingers probed her right shoulder and arm, Aude cried out.
“You’re broken,” he observed. He sat back on his heels and began tearing long strips from his sodden cloak. “We’ll need to get you put back together before even trying to find aid.” His hands, though swollen with age, worked with a tender skill as he probed her flesh to trace the broken bone.
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