Siege Perilous

by E. D. Debirmingham

  By mid-morning, French arrows from the tower were flying right over the battlements into the courtyard. The women and children were ordered to stay indoors, but Ocyrhoe could not possibly have stayed cooped up in the donjon all that day. There was an air of sorrowful domesticity to all the ladies and children in there, made worse by those grieving the death of the slain soldiers. There had never been so many deaths together on the pog. Some part of her felt vaguely guilty for not grieving more.

  Without asking leave from Rixenda, Ocyrhoe slipped nervously out the door and into the courtyard, straining her neck to look over the top of the eastern wall. The arrows were terrifying—the sound of them more than anything. Some went right over the entire courtyard and landed on the slopes outside the western gate. That gate was opened, briefly, for the first time since the siege began soldiers rushed out to collect the arrows and bring them back in for Montségur’s own arsenal.

  “It must be tonight,” she heard Raphael say fiercely. She glanced over to see Raphael and Peire-Roger standing close together near her, behind the armory. “Already we’ve lost the advantage. Last night there were seven men, who thought we weren’t aware of them. Now there’s a whole army.”

  “They won’t be camping up here,” said Peire-Roger. “They will keep a contingent in the watchtower of course, but it would be death to spend the night exposed on the pog. No matter how many men they have up here now, when the sunlight falls, they will go back down to the encampment.”

  “Leaving an unknown number of soldiers in the tower,” said Raphael. “So you’ll need to let me take as many of your knights as I see fit.”

  Peire-Roger gave him a strange look. “I thought you would wait for the return of Percival.”

  “I’d want that if we had the time. We don’t. Vera and I will go, but I need some of your men. It’s what they’re here for,” he added, with forced patience, as Peire-Roger hesitated. “And I’ll take Ferenc. Let him sleep today so he’s prepared for it. I’ve never fought beside him but he more than proved himself last night.”

  Ocyrhoe made a small noise of protest before she even realized it; both men turned sharply toward her. “Hasn’t Ferenc done enough already?” she said. “He’s not a soldier.”

  “He’s my squire,” Raphael said, but she thought she heard a note of hesitation. “And I would not send him on a suicide mission. Neither him nor Vera. Nor anybody else,” he said in a meaningful tone.

  “I do not begrudge you soldiers,” said Peire-Roger quickly. “But I wonder at the wisdom…”

  “I have fought—on both sides of the wall—during sieges at Córdoba and Damietta,” interrupted Raphael, “and do not mistake my tone as insulting to your status here, but I know exactly what we need to do.”

  The commander of Montségur stared at Raphael for a moment, then nodded brusquely. “My men are yours.”

  At dusk, Ocyrhoe was sent out to scout the area around the tower and estimate how many French were there on watch. Ferenc insisted on going with her. She did not need anyone to go with her, but because it was Ferenc she didn’t argue. Outside the gate, they squatted low and crawled to the southern extreme of the wind-blown mountaintop. They moved slowly, in almost perfect silence, down the incline toward the eastern cliff.

  From the sound as Ferenc and Ocyrhoe approached, the garrison guards were enjoying themselves a bit too much for men on duty. Cocksure there would be no immediate counterstrike, they were drinking freely and had lit the tower brightly with tallow-fueled torches. Ocyrhoe was struck by the stink of the tallow, something she hadn’t smelled in years.

  Their night vision was ruined by the torches, but the torches themselves shed light enough to reveal much. Farther to the east, just at the cliff’s edge, was a work-station of some sort. Ocyrhoe guessed the French were setting up a pulley system, from which they could haul up supplies. There was no buildable timber on the pog, but lumber could be hauled up and there was plenty of scrub for fueling fires. The crusaders had done more than secure the watchtower: They had won themselves a staging station for more attacks.

  Ferenc nudged her and nodded toward the tower. There were four armed men atop it, well-lit by a bonfire on a makeshift brazier in the center of the roof. Each had a bow in one hand and a cup of wine in the other, and none of them seemed aware what easy marks they were, silhouetted in the firelight. There was off-key singing from within, some debauched madrigal comparing a Cathar to a cat’s backside.

  “The windows are too narrow to see much, but I’m listening to voices,” Ferenc whispered. “I count maybe six, plus the men on the roof.”

  “Let’s say a dozen total to be cautious,” Ocyrhoe whispered back.

  They worked their way carefully back uphill over the frozen terrain, to the fortress gate, noting in the moonlight the best passage for a group of armed soldiers. Inside, they reported to Raphael and Peire-Roger. Raphael considered their news briefly, then asked Peire-Roger for his best three archers and someone exceptional at hand-to-hand. Rixenda’s nephew, Vidal, who was in the courtyard, heard this and volunteered his grappling skills. When the assigned party was armed and girded, they all circled by torchlight in the courtyard. Raphael explained the fight plan.

  Ocyrhoe would come with the party but stay at a distance, so that she could get word to Peire-Roger to send more men as soon as it was safe.

  The nine of them moved out of the gate and carefully edged along the south side of the mountaintop, retracing Ferenc and Ocyrhoe’s route under the rising moon. They moved slowly and paused at irregular intervals to avoid the sound of their arms and weapons giving them away, although the wind was blowing from the north, carrying what few sounds they made off the mountainside.

  When they drew even with the tower, Raphael placed a hand on Ferenc’s arm, signaling him to remain there: he would take aim at the south-facing archer on the tower. He also gestured to Ocyrhoe that she was close enough now and should wait with Ferenc until she knew the outcome of the sortie.

  The remaining seven moved on, cautiously, to the extreme eastern edge of the pog. Raphael tapped one of the Montségur archers, who stayed there to take aim at the eastern-facing roof guard. Inside, the shadows of tipsy men moved across the windows. Their singing was extremely out of tune.

  The rest of the sortie party moved widdershins around the tower, to the north face of the mountain. This was most treacherous, as the tower was sited only a few yards from the northeast cliff face. The footing was slick and icy, and there was little vegetation to either hide behind or grab on to for stability. Raphael noticed, gratefully, that the wind had suddenly died. That seemed extraordinary, given their altitude and exposure.

  They positioned a third archer on the north side; Raphael remained with him. Vera and Vidal moved carefully closer to either side of the watchtower door, and the final archer continued his way around the tower until he stood to the west of it on the nearly level ground that the French intended to use as a staging area. He had not approached in a way that drew attention, but this man alone stood where the French would expect an attack. Raphael, crouched with the northern archer, watched the final bowman get into position. Then he stood to his full height briefly, waved both arms, and crouched again; the eastern archer, seeing him, waved in response, so that Ferenc could see him from the southern side. As Raphael had instructed them, all four bowmen nocked their arrows, found their targets, and began a silent, slow count to three.

  Four arrows zinged into the cold night within a few heartbeats of each other, and all four guards atop the tower, as in a grotesque dance, staggered, bellowing, as the arrows pierced the thin leather armor of the local, conscripted soldiers. The north-facing guard fell gurgling off the roof and landed hard on the frozen limestone below, almost right beside the door, where Vera looked at him dispassionately and Vidal glowered. Two of the other roof guards stumbled backward into the fire brazier, shrieked, and scrambled trying to get out of it; th
e fourth man stumbled blindly seeking the safety of the stairwell.

  The response from within was immediate and expected. One soldier raced from the upper floor up to the roof, where Ferenc dispatched him at once. One fool stuck his head out the upper western window, where Raphael’s western archer struck him. The door opened abruptly, and two armed men appeared in it, staring wildly around. Vidal grabbed the first one and yanked him out onto the frozen ground, throwing himself on top of him and pulling out his knife to slice the man’s throat. Vera’s axe split the second soldier’s skull while he was still in the doorway; she shoved his dying body out the door, onto the fallen guard from the roof, and then shifted her axe to her left hand, drew her sword with her right, and rushed into the tower. Raphael drew his sword and followed close on her heels, slapping Vidal’s shoulder as he passed him. Vidal’s man wasn’t moving, but Vidal kept stabbing him. Perhaps it was guilt that made him so ferocious, Raphael thought, or fear—until recently, Vidal himself might have been one of the crusading soldiers garrisoned here tonight.

  Inside, the ground floor was abandoned, stinking of wine, and well lit; Raphael heard scuffling above as he entered, and strange shadows played across the walls as the upstairs torches were chucked out the windows. Now upstairs would be lit only by the light coming up from the stairwell—lighting whomever was ascending, keeping the French defenders safe in darkness. Raphael had anticipated all of this.

  He and Vera glanced at each other and nodded briefly. Raphael grabbed a torch from the brazier closest to the door with his left hand. They were about to head up the stairs as a unit, backs together, torch foremost, but as they began a blood-streaked Vidal came rushing through the door, pushed past them, and instantly ran up the stairs, turning in a circle as he did so to try to see all the way around while moving. He had the energy of a berserker.

  Raphael grunted with frustration, and signaled. Back to back he and Vera moved up the stairs into the darkness. Vidal shrieked from above, and Raphael’s heart sank for a moment, but then he realized Vidal was shouting “Three!”

  One for each of them. They could handle that. Vidal had already engaged one guard, in the darkness behind the stairwell; the other two were hovering over the opening in the floor, waiting for them. Vera swung her axe in a wide, controlled arc above their heads as they mounted the stairs, and both waiting men leapt back.

  Once off the stairs, Raphael felt Vera move away from him toward one of the guards. He turned to thrust the torch in that direction, but a large, roundish object came at him too fast to see clearly. It hit the torch at an angle that torqued his wrist and also doused the flame with a loud, complaining hiss. It was a heavy, woolen cape that had been soaked in water; he flung it down the stairwell, keeping hold of the torch as a smoking club. In the darkness he heard Vera’s axe clash loudly against something metal. The cry of pain that followed was a man’s.

  A second cry, more strangled, came from Vidal’s corner, and Vidal’s voice jubilantly called out as Raphael heard a body slump to the floor. Another sword clanged hard against Raphael’s own in the shadows and then disengaged. He sensed his opponent lunging toward him, which likely meant a dagger. If he leaped back out of reach, he’d stumble down the stairwell; instead he raised his leg to kick his opponent off balance before the man could follow through on his thrust.

  But the lunge had been a feint; Raphael’s boot found nobody to kick, and his own momentum sent him stumbling further into the room. Briefly disoriented about the location of his opponent, he dropped the smoking torch and pulled out his knife. He turned quickly, both sword and knife held out before him.

  Vera grunted in the darkness to his left. Vidal’s victim was still rasping painfully, and Vidal was chortling with a sadistic satisfaction.

  Raphael stopped moving and focused on sounds. The other man had also stopped. Blindly, Raphael thrust out with his sword, moving his left-hand blade protectively under his right armpit. Nothing. He spun ninety degrees and tried again. Nothing. The only sounds were Vera pummeling her man, and Vidal enjoying his victim’s death throes. It was as if the third man had vanished out a window.

  Then he heard a soft sound right against the wall, about the level of his head: the Frenchman was climbing up the stairwell to the roof. Let him, Raphael thought; one of the archers will get him.

  There was a loud crack, and Vera’s man, with an offended grunt, fell to his knees.

  “That’s it!” Vidal crowed. “We got them all! And not a casualty among us!”

  A booted foot came flying out of the darkness and kicked Raphael viciously right in the groin. He lost his grip on both weapons, doubling over in pain. As he landed on his knees, he heard the metallic rasp of a sword being freed from its sheath. A heavy weight fell on him, and everything went blank.

  CHAPTER 24:

  OCYHROE DEFLECTS

  The giraffe was tame enough to eat from Frederick’s hand, unless the lion was also in the building; then it was too skittish to trust anyone, even its handler. Everyone counseled him against bringing the lion along in the menagerie, but he would not consider parting with it. It looked magnificent and exotic; it symbolized a special majesty but in truth, it was old and tired and spent most of its time asleep. Had there been other lions about it would not even appear to be magnificent and exotic.

  “It’s like me in that way,” he explained to the giraffe, offering it a leafy branch to nibble on. “I only seem magnificent and exotic because there are no other handsome geniuses to compare me to. Léna, I said that just so you could mock me,” he continued as if to the giraffe. As quietly as Léna walked, he could smell the perfume he personally dabbed onto her robes each morning.

  A moment of silence, and then from the darkness of the partitioned room, her voice: “Your Majesty, my sisters have brought me some news I believe you will want to hear.”

  “Has the Pope conveniently died?”

  “It is not about the Pope.”

  “Have the Mongols stopped pecking at my eastern frontier?”

  “It is not about the Mongols.”

  “Has that awful German minnesinger been flayed for subjecting us to that awful German poem?”

  “Montségur,” she said, with tension in her voice. “It is about Montségur. The Tor, their watchtower, has been taken, and a siege machine is being built just outside the barbican. I am almost certain our sundry friends are all still up there.”

  “I know Raphael,” said Frederick. “If there is imminent danger, he won’t leave innocent people unprotected.”

  “There are other knights there. About a hundred men-at-arms.”

  Frederick laughed briefly, harshly. “Against an army of ten thousand? They’re doomed. Can you get a message back up there through the Binders? Tell Raphael I order him to come back immediately. And bring Ferenc. Nobody else is as good with the horses and hawks as Ferenc is. And I will not lose the best knight and one of the only real friends I’ve ever had to a doomed attempt to protect a heretical cult. What an utterly absurd demise that would be for him. I’ll not have it.”

  He turned away from the giraffe, following Léna’s voice to the chamber nearest the door. She looked even more solemn than usual. He suspected she was worried about Ocyrhoe, even if she would not say so.

  “I’ll write to Count Raimondo of Toulouse,” said Frederick, “and tell him I am sending reinforcements. I can send three thousand. To protect the Credents, get them out safely, even if we can’t protect the Good Ones themselves.”

  “And will you send reinforcements?” Léna asked. “Or are you claiming you will just so Raphael will hear about it, and believe that because you are replacing him a thousand times over, it’s morally acceptable for him to quit the place?”

  “Well that’s obviously the only reason to send anyone,” said Frederick. “Why should I care about heretics stupid enough to trap themselves in a stone box in the sky? They’re not even m
y subjects.”

  “So you are not sending men?”

  Frederick shrugged. “I’ll send them as soon as I can collect them. That might take awhile. Given that Count Raimondo is pledged to attack the place I’d be sending men to defend, he might not want me to follow through with my offer. It would put him in a terribly awkward position, if he used my men to do the precise opposite of what I sent them there for. But I’m sure he’ll appreciate my good intention. Shall I wake a monk to write the letter, or would you take it down for me? I do like a woman who knows her way around a quill.”

  Once he was awake enough to pay attention, nobody could explain to Raphael’s satisfaction what had happened. There had been two French soldiers hiding in the darkened room, Vera said. One of them had been the bugler, crouching behind the upturned table, and in the commotion he had snuck up to the roof, where he threw himself onto his back, trumpet to his lips, and blew an alarm that could be heard a mile in every direction. It did not matter that Vidal chased him up there and hacked his heart out moments later; the alarm had been sounded, and the French would start pushing up the hillside in greater numbers than the sortie party could possibly hold off.

  The second man had been holding himself from a brazier imbedded in the rock wall near the ceiling; his comrade’s deliberate retreat had led Raphael close enough for him to get a good kick in; after the kick, he jumped directly at Raphael, and as soon as he landed, he’d pounded him with his fists, knocking him instantly unconscious, and then kept pummeling until Vera took his head off with her axe.

  He had cracked ribs, internal injuries, and his bruised face was too swollen for him to see from either eye. The worst damage, Vera reported, was a badly broken leg.

  “The worst damage,” Raphael corrected her, “was the bugler sounding the alarm. They’ve taken back the tower, haven’t they.” He spoke without inflection; it was a statement, not a question.