Siege Perilous

by E. D. Debirmingham

  The priest calmed immediately. “Now,” said Innocent, “do you understand how important it is that we do the right thing? We need that cup more than we need the death of a few hundred heretics. I,” and here he paused for dramatic effect, “I need that cup, my son. Do you understand?”

  He looked directly at the archbishop and suddenly the archbishop cringed with elated awe as he understood. “Your Holiness!” he cried, pushing himself out of the chair and kneeling on his long, knobby, aging legs before the Bishop of Rome. “Forgive me for not recognizing you at once!” With a collective baritone cry of shock, every man in the room knelt likewise.

  Innocent held out his hand so the Bishop could kiss his ring.

  “You are a good shepherd, my son,” he said.

  “Your Holiness!” said Pierre of Amelii again, and began to stagger to his feet. His cleric on instinct also rose and moved closer to him, to give him an arm to lean on. “Your Holiness, why have you not come in all your glory as—”

  “No, no,” said Pope Innocent, clicking his tongue. “My presence here would cause an uproar, so I must stay in the shadows. Everyone in this room must swear an oath to me and to you that they will say nothing of my presence. However, my men and I—by which of course I mean the esteemed Dietrich and the rest of the Livonian order,” he paused a moment, and Dietrich enjoyed the surprise and awe on the faces of the men who had been snubbing him for months. “We require decent housing, out of the morass of the general camp. I am sure one of the houses in the village can be cleared for us, without much fuss being made about the reason.”

  “Of course,” said the Archbishop of Narbonne, trying not to wince.

  His Holiness smiled. “Excellent. Then all that remains is for you to find a way to make sure the commanders know that the safe return of that cup to the Church is the most urgent thing to happen here.”

  CHAPTER 26:

  ON ST. AGNES’ DAY

  The next morning, Raphael declared himself fully restored and ready for duty, despite the crutches. He hauled himself out to the frosty courtyard to examine the siege machine everybody had been talking about since he recovered consciousness.

  When he exited the keep at sun-up, Vera and Ferenc beside him, most of the population of the fortress was taking their morning walk before the French began their daily shower of arrows. This was a ritual that allowed the hall to air out, allowed everyone to get a little exercise, and kept the courtyard empty of civilians for most of the day. It was the closest the fortress ever came to joyful, with some two dozen children running around the frozen ground, ducking behind sheds to hide from each other while throwing snowballs from the diminishing piles against the walls. Off-duty soldiers would roughhouse with the boys and even the girls; it was as if every morning, for an hour, there was a village festival.

  Raphael noticed all of this as he slowly headed across the altered landscape of the yard, mindful of the slick stone and snow, toward the gangly-looking trebuchet. Bacalaira and Peire-Roger were standing beside it, looking up at it. Since Bacalaira had presented himself the day before, quite pompously, to Raphael at board, the knight felt no need for greetings now. “So this is the catapult I’ve heard so much about,” he said.

  “It is not a catapult,” sniffed Bertran de Bacalaira. “It is a trebuchet.”

  “It’s just a piece of furniture if you have no ammunition for it,” Raphael said.

  “I was just learning about that unfortunate detail,” said Peire-Roger, glowering.

  Bacalaira hissed impatiently. “I am engineer, not a supplier. Do you expect your candle-maker to light your candles for you? It never occurred to me that on a hilltop made of limestone you would not have found yourselves some decent projectiles. It would not have occurred to anyone in my position.”

  There was a shout of alarm from the wall-walk: the French trebuchet was launching its first stone.

  This inaugural projectile was small and did not make it as far as the wall. But hearing the sound of it hissing through the air was unnerving; hearing it land safely away from the walls brought no comfort. Immediately the festive air evaporated; the children started bleating, and with the women they hurried back into the rank hall with its fetid air.

  “We must evacuate the village,” Peire-Roger said urgently. “Really evacuate it this time—they have no choice now.”

  “Yes,” said Raphael. “We have at least a quarter of an hour before they send another stone. It will take that long for them to winch their counterweight and get safely out of the way. If you act quickly, you can get everyone to safety before the next attack.”

  “And then nobody is to leave the fortress walls again, except under cover of darkness for emergencies.” Peire-Roger ran toward the keep to summon men.

  Bacalaira continued to stare at his useless machine. Vera and Ferenc, after a glance at Raphael, both followed Peire-Roger.

  Raphael turned to Bacalaira. “Once the French have offered us a few more projectiles, we’ll send you out the fortress gate to collect them.”

  The evacuation of the village took little effort; the Good Ones had almost nothing to bring with them but their bedrolls. When the fortress gate closed behind the last of the Perfecti, Peire-Roger announced loudly to the courtyard, “It is now safe nowhere beyond these walls.”

  Ocyrhoe had been in the pantry-shed helping to stack the bags of flour delivered from the last shipment of food. She did not realize what was happening until she exited the tent and heard Peire-Roger finish his declaration.

  “Nobody is to go out this gate unless it is for military or scouting purposes, with my express permission.” A wave of alarm washed over her. She would never get leave to sneak down on her own. And the cup was still in Rixenda’s hut down in the village.

  For the rest of the day, in addition to the sporadic spate of arrows, bombardment from the trebuchet was not frequent, but it was regular. Twice or thrice an hour there was a new roar of rock tearing the air, a new thud too close to their gate. One did hit the wall, which made an entirely new and dreadful sound; there was a round of surprised yelps from within the donjon.

  Most of the rocks hit the same location near the barbican, so that the men on the walls saw an indentation growing in the mountain’s rocky summit, a pocked circle the width of a man and a hand’s span deep.

  “That is what they are going to do to the walls eventually,” Raphael warned Peire-Roger late in the day. For at least an hour there had been no more bombardments. The two men stood together looking east out the peek-hole in the gate, shivering even in extra layers of wool wraps.

  “If that’s the farthest they can throw their stones, let them make a crater twenty times that size,” said Peire-Roger. “It will not harm us.”

  “They are going to push it up the mountain,” Raphael warned.

  Peire-Roger laughed and shook his head. “However frequently you are proving to be right, this particular idea of yours is simply foolish.”

  “They are working on it even now. That’s why they’ve stopped the bombardments. Look,” said Raphael gravely, and pointed down the mountain.

  The trebuchet of the French, rickety as it looked from here, and treacherously slick as the mountainside must have been, was wobbling with infinitesimal slowness up the slope. With the counterweight attached it to it, it weighed well over a ton, and it was being pushed up an uneven, icy slope on tiny wheels. There was a lot of shouting and cursing, and more tipping than forward movement on the part of the trebuchet itself.

  Peire-Roger gaped a moment as he realized that the French were, in fact, attempting the impossible. He left the peek-hole and ran up the stone staircase to the battlements to get a better look. Then, somewhat forced, he laughed again. “But they will never get it up the slope,” he called down to Raphael. “Not at that rate.”

  “Exactly at that rate,” Raphael countered. “They only need to advance it by a f
ew yards a day, and eventually it will make its way close enough to hit our walls, and then it will sling those boulders directly into the courtyard. Eventually, it will reach the barbican, where there is level ground to rest it safely. It will destroy this fortress if we do not destroy it first.”

  “How best to do that?” asked the Lord of Montségur.

  “It’s made of wood, so burn it down. I’d say forge some fire-arrows,” Raphael said tiredly. “But I understand you destroyed your smithy for the sake of building that useless siege machine.”

  Peire-Roger was loathe to let them leave the fortress for their evening scouting sortie. After many admonitions and warnings from him, and an unasked-for grim blessing from the bishop, Ocyrhoe and Ferenc geared up and slipped out while the sun hovered above the western walls of Montségur, casting deep shadows that camouflaged their exit. A dozen soldiers went out with them—the bombardments had stopped because the French appeared still to be moving the trebuchet. As Ocyrhoe and Ferenc moved toward the northern face, the soldiers rushed toward the barbican to collect the heavy, round projectiles the French had sent their way and bring them back into the fortress. Raphael’s ironic comment was applied: their only ammunition was the very rocks the French had hurled at them.

  Wrapped up against the permanent, chill winds of the mountaintop, Ferenc and Ocyrhoe edged their way eastward along the northern lip of the summit to see how things had changed in the French camp with the successful first day of bombardment.

  A French captain at the trebuchet called out; a heartbeat passed in which nothing seemed to happen. Then with a cacophony of sounds the counterweight tumbled heavily toward earth, and the sling-arm whirled up and whipped a rock toward the fortress. It tore through the air and smashed against the limestone wall near the donjon. Ocyrhoe shuddered.

  “I thought they had stopped for the night,” she said.

  She felt the warm vapor of Ferenc’s breath against her cheek. It made her feel protected. He pointed to a man walking with deliberate slowness up the slope. A long-legged man with shield and weapons, he moved too quietly, and recovered too smoothly from a slip on the icy snow, to be wearing maille beneath his surcoat. He veered into the shadow of the barbican in the fading sunset. The barbican was full of archers but not one arrow flew from the loops toward him: he was using the twilight to create a blindspot.

  The man reached the barbican, held a moment, and then began to walk away just as slowly. Meanwhile, the mass of workers at the trebuchet continued their grunt work, a pack of them laboring together to hoist the massive counterweight back up to its starting height, while one of their mates, clambering up the side of the machine, struggled to cinch the thick, iron pin that would hold the counterweight in place until the next attack.

  The walker returned to the trebuchet before the machine was ready to propel again. He reported to the captain as several other men moved around to listen. By now the light had faded completely and Ocyrhoe could make out no other details. The moon was already high in the sky, waxing close to full; they might be able to make out something once their eyes had adjusted to moonlight.

  “You see what’s happening,” said Ferenc, as if assuming it was clear to her.

  “No,” she admitted.

  “They will try to take the barbican. That man was sent to establish timing. To see if a force of men can travel there between trebuchet shots. They don’t want to shoot at their own men, but they don’t want to stop shooting. Once it’s dark the moon would give away their movements to the archers in the tower, but the night will be clouding over soon and if they move slowly enough, they now believe they will be able to get all the way up to the tower without being noticed by the archers inside. They can get there, take shelter, and prepare to fight, while the trebuchet works as a decoy.”

  Ocyrhoe slowly took a breath as this registered. Her fist tightened and she smacked the fat of it on the freezing rock. “Whoresons! Why don’t they just leave us alone! What have we done to them?”

  “You consider yourself one of the Cathars?” asked Ferenc.

  “Don’t call them that; it’s disrespectful,” said Ocryhoe. “It doesn’t matter what I call myself or even what I believe—this is my home, these people have protected me, and this siege, it’s…it is so…” she grimaced with frustration. “It accomplishes nothing! Those French bastards want victory for its own sake! They gain nothing. Nothing. There are two hundred Good Ones here, but there are hundreds more out in the world. Killing these accomplishes nothing in the bigger picture. This is an absolutely useless outpost. Taking it accomplishes nothing. It’s pure tyranny on their part. There is no reason for any of it.”

  “Shhssh, Ocyrhoe,” Ferenc said, wrapping his arm around her and squeezing her a little. “I agree with you, but your anger also accomplishes nothing. We have to tell Peire-Roger.”

  “And to think he almost didn’t let us come out tonight,” harrumphed Ocyrhoe, wanting to stay angry at someone, anyone.

  They snuck back toward the fortress, where they signaled a man on the wall. Ferrer let them in at once.

  The courtyard was already torchlit. Soldiers were loading the smallest of the collected round rocks into the Montségur trebuchet’s sling, which Raphael and Vera were staring at it with disapproval. The courtyard ground was so uneven that Bacalaira was having a devil of a time keeping the machine balanced as the counterweight was winched up. Peire-Roger, dressed as usual elegantly in black, with thick furs pulled around himself, was standing beside Bacalaira as if his glowering presence could somehow frighten the trebuchet into functioning. Percival, Ocyrhoe was sure, was off somewhere praying or meditating or speaking in tongues. Everywhere shivering pages and squires stood with torches that threw strange lights and shadows across the courtyard.

  “It is much smaller than the French trebuchet,” Raphael was saying to a displeased Peire-Roger. “Using it now is a waste of ammunition. It cannot throw as far—it will accomplish nothing until the French are perilously close.” Peire-Roger gave Bacalaira an accusing look, as if he had deliberately handicapped them.

  Ferenc led Ocyrhoe straight to Raphael. “The French are planning to take the barbican,” he said.

  Peire-Roger ceased glowering at the trebuchet-maker and spun on his heel to face the young hunter.

  “When?” he demanded.

  “I think tonight,” said Ferenc. “The evening bombardments are intended as a distraction.”

  “Tell us what you know,” Raphael said. He gave Vera a look that Ocyrhoe guessed meant she was to find Percival. She hoped Percival was a good enough knight to put aside his mystical musings in the face of an emergency. She’d seen him do nothing at all so far to suggest he was any good at fighting, but there had been little chance for any of them to prove themselves here in this crowded corner in the sky.

  Peire-Roger smacked young Artal on the shoulder and with a few muttered words sent him to collect men. Work on the trebuchet stopped. The counterweight was carefully lowered back to earth. Ocyrhoe was cold and wanted to go inside but Peire-Roger ordered her and Ferenc to stay and report. Ferenc, sensing her dismay, placed his large hands heavily on her shoulders and asked if it would be possible to have hot wine brought to them. Like the moment when his breath had warmed her cheek out on the mountain ridge, this filled her with an unfamiliar sense of contentment despite their situation.

  The wine arrived before all of Peire-Roger’s requested men did, so she was in a better mood by the time Ferenc began his report. “The moon is just past full, and they know we will be watching over the walls and from the arrow loops of the barbican,” he said. “But they expect we will be watching only the trebuchet, nothing closer. There will be clouds coming in by midnight, very thick and very sudden. If I know that, then they must have local mountain men who know that too.”

  “How do you know it?” asked Peire-Roger.

  Ferenc shrugged. “How do you know when it is go
ing to snow instead of rain? I feel it. I am a child of the fields and woods and mountains. Not these mountains, but the cloud-gods of all the mountains know each other.”

  There was a silence after this remarkably pagan declaration. Ocyrhoe pursed her lips to repress a smile.

  “That is poetic, my friend,” Raphael said carefully, into the silence. “I for one would be grateful for a more scientific explanation, as I am sure the knowledge that you draw upon could instruct us all.”

  “I was not being poetic,” said Ferenc, almost impatiently. “The French are using this time until midnight to prepare in the moonlight. After that, it will be too dark for anyone to see anything clearly. Until midnight is the time that you have.”

  The men looked at one another. There were a score here in the courtyard, perhaps thirty. “Gear up,” said Peire-Roger loudly. He was clearly uneasy about having to actually strategize a battle plan after months of nothing but defensive moves, but he rose to the occasion.

  “I suggest—” began Raphael, but Peire-Roger, blustery, spoke over him to the group.

  “We’ll wait until we hear them approach the barbican. The men on the walls and in the barbican itself will not let on that we expect them. We allow them to get close, believing we are not expecting them. Then, on my signal, the archers will shoot, and once the archers have engaged them we will rush out the gate and fight them on the ground.”

  “You will ‘rush’?” echoed Raphael doubtfully. “There is a very narrow ridge connecting our walls and the barbican.”

  “Yes, but the barbican itself is on a big stretch of level ground—”

  “How does that help you?” demanded Raphael, clutching his crutch-handle to contain his impatience. “You have to get there first. The French who escape our archers will be waiting for you. They’ll dispatch you as you are coming out along the ridge.”