In due course he relocated his musketeers. Ignoring his promise to Colonel Hartley-Booth, he appraised them of their rôle for the morrow; they were old soldiers, life-service men and so displayed no emotion at the regrettable turn of events. Sykes was told to go and get some more useful hand-to-hand weapons for his men in preference to the cheap swords of government origin they already carried. Tobias was adequately equipped with an expensive broadsword courtesy of a recently deceased Florentine Crusader.
When a number of pick axes, sharpened spades and the like had been assembled he gave the men a blessing and told them to sleep. He did not feel the need for bed, mainly because he had placed one of his unique self-affecting spells on himself. Until a twenty-four-hour tower had finally decayed it would be impossible for him to enter into sleep. He was utterly determined to savour this experience to the full.
He returned to the command pavilion and acquired a long-barrelled carbine from the commissariat officer who dealt with the weaponry requirements of the command staff. Then like a black-clad death’s head he crept into the trenches outside the town, darkened his face and hands with mud and spent the night carefully sniping at any light which showed on the town walls.
CHAPTER 4
In which our hero delivers an uplifting sermon and enters a town.
‘ … and though our minds and bodies will undoubtedly be fully engaged today and at times we may forget the all-pervading presence of God, let us pray that, in all of what is to come, God will not forget us. In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost, Amen.’
Tobias had neither the time nor inclination to prepare an original address to the Special Retinue and so had cobbled up something he dimly remembered as the words of one of the generals in the Great Civil War.
At any rate it had seemed satisfactory and as they rose to their feet none of the officers showed any signs of recognising it. He doubted in fact whether any of them had listened to him at all; Colonel Hartley-Booth certainly had not, he was still on his knees mouthing a fervent, if silent, prayer.
They were a most motley group of soldiers representing most of the regiments, groupings and races in the crusading Army. Tobias’ musketeers could be said to be the most coherent group amongst them if only for the fact that they all came from the same regiment. Hartley-Booth had obviously scoured the Army for the most robust and ferocious for his group and they brandished a great variety of weapons. The Colonel himself retained his dandy, old-fashioned costume and carried a short-sword in one hand, a furled banner in the other.
Behind them the Army was stirring and moving to position prior to the artillery opening up on the town; it was essential for the half dozen storming parties to be at their posts before then. It was still half dark.
Perhaps realising the need for a degree of urgency, Colonel Hartley-Booth rose from his prayers and strode wordlessly forward; Tobias fell in beside him and the rag-tag force followed on.
They entered the sappers’ trench where Tobias had been employed a few hours before. Some of the veterans grabbed handfuls of soil from the sides to rub into their faces and hands. This was an eminently sensible precaution because the defenders of the town had already noted the unusual amount of noise coming from the besieging camp and some of the more nervy heretics had been firing wildly into the dark.
The Special Retinue trudged on in single file, keeping low; in time they came to the large hollow scooped out a few days previously and where a file of musketeers were already in residence. These they relieved.
Tobias peered over the lip of their refuge. In the distance he could see the very first light of day twinkling on the Thames, but he had lost his appreciation for views. His attention was wholly given to the town now only a couple of hundred yards away. Directly opposite him the wall had been severely battered by the artillery and it was nigh-on down in one place. The heretics had tried to fill the gap with timbers and the like but that would not last for long.
For days now he had hardly felt anything but, freed at last from years of restraint and maddened by war, all his animal impulses suddenly broke loose. Weakness was death. If he could rouse some strength then there was no reason whatsoever for him not to indulge it to the full. He had no scruples and such was freedom, he thought. He could just as happily, in other circumstances, have killed Crusaders. As it was he looked with eager eyes to the town for his pleasure.
By way of contrast his commander, the Colonel, was profoundly sad, although grateful for the opportunity to serve. To him, it was woeful to have to take lives, especially those of heretics with no hope of salvation and he took advantage of the waiting period to ask for mercy for their souls.
A mile or so back in the camp a massive bronze bell had been erected on a high timber frame. There had been a bell and cannon foundry at Wantage until the Crusade had passed through it two weeks ago. Five men heaved on a rope attached to its clapper and then loosed their grip. A booming high note like the transubstantiation peal was emitted and thus the day’s work for nearly a hundred and fifty thousand men and women was started. As the Crusade’s batteries of culverins, demi-culverins and sakers began to speak, soon enough they received a reply from the town and a lively conversation ensued.
Unaware of the sea of soldiers for miles around, Tobias lay on his back and tried to spot the cannonballs flash overhead. The noise was quite astounding and he felt his animal madness begin to heighten. With just the sky to watch and this apocalyptic accompaniment he could not but feel unreal; he was more than ever convinced of the validity of his nihilistic views. The laws and moralisings of man were flimsy facades at the best of times, weak to the point of transparency for those with the strength of will to see. In such a mood, every edifice of propriety was blown flat to the ground and Tobias found the resultant wind of freedom exhilarating.
Such second-to-second living was as exciting as it was animal. It was for what the real, underlying, Tobias had been chosen, groomed and trained. This was his time.
Thought was no longer needed, now, even if he were capable of it and an enormous explosive energy occupied him body and soul. If he could make sense of anything he could at least destroy and perhaps that was the sense of it.
He turned over and tried to peer through the smoke in front of the town. The gunners’ aim seemed to have been good, for the barrier at the breach in the wall had been blown apart and unidentifiable mangled remains lay unevenly in its place. From within someone was screaming in a horribly calm and level tone.
Around him Tobias heard some of the men mumbling at their rosaries. He felt possessed, his fingers twitched, he gripped his broadsword again and again, and felt capable of bounding the distance to the town in a couple of steps.
A hand was laid on his shoulder. Colonel Hartley-Booth had quietly come over. He signalled to his timepiece so as to say ‘soon’ and Tobias gave him his first uninhibited, broad grin for years to serve as reply.
The retinue grasped their various weaponry and tensed, preparing to go.
They could not see it, but the other forward-positioned storming parties did likewise.
In a vast semicircle round the town the Crusaders stood to arms. Myriad brief prayers fled to the Almighty.
Again the great bell sounded and the Crusaders’ artillery ceased. Most of the Levellers’ guns had been silenced by the bombardment but a few carried on, punctuating the ensuing tension.
Unknowingly, Tobias resumed an adolescent mannerism and bared his teeth in a half-grin, half-snarl. He was quite unaware of anything but his fury.
Again the bell tolled and nearly fifty thousand Crusaders moved forward with one accord.
Hartley-Booth unnecessarily whispered ‘Go!’ and his retinue sprang over the edge of their shelter. In a ragged mob they sprinted for their objective, all but the most stupid feeling hideously exposed and vulnerable. The town ditch had been allowed to fall into disrepair and the Crusading Army had arrived too soon for this to be remedied. Now it was a mere rubbish-filled dip in the ground
and most of the men did not even notice crossing it.
The heretics up on the wall were firing downwards. Once Tobias felt the rush of a ball passing by his cheek and several times he heard brief cries behind him, but by and large his party reached the approach to the breach intact.
Then, when they were a mere thirty yards or so distant, he noticed a plank which was lodged drunkenly on the rubble and which blocked the breach. He saw it being pushed forward from the inside. It slid clumsily out of the way to reveal a close-set line of musketeers. The Crusaders were too far distant to use their pistols or grenades so it was to their credit that after an almost imperceptible hesitation they rushed on rather than flinging themselves down.
Tobias felt that every musket was directed straight at his head and a chill feeling washed over him, but independently his legs kept moving and his fury spurred him on.
Horribly, he could see an officer behind the musketeers with his arm raised waiting to give the order. With his sharp eyes Tobias could see the man clearly: he was pudgy or so his head and shoulders seemed to indicate; his face was dirt-smeared and alternatively drawn or screwed up with anxiety. Then his arm dropped leadenly.
Amid the resultant popping noises and smoke, incredulously, Tobias found he could continue to run. He was in the van of the retinue so he did not see a round dozen of men fold and fall behind him.
Then a steep slope inhibited his further progress and one step later he found himself near the top of the rubble mound blocking the breach and towering above its Leveller defenders. Several men detailed for this task were still with him and they delicately lobbed hissing spherical grenades into the enemy ranks. Wisely, Tobias ducked.
Rising after the bombs had gone off, he found the problem considerably simplified. There was a lot more smoke about but it seemed there were precious few people left behind the breach where he jumped down, landed, recovered and saw a smoke-wreathed figure to his left. He shot it in the stomach and it grunted and fell backwards. Roaring madly a large man rushed at him with a half-pike and Tobias dropped him with an incantation and a flicked finger.
All around him members of the retinue were similarly plying pistols and every type of edged weapon; by the time Tobias had finished off his next opponent with his sword only Crusaders were both in the breach and alive.
Tobias looked round inside the town. In a semicircle around the breach was a hastily assembled barricade of cases and timbers. Beyond this stretched a longish street bisecting two rows of mean-looking houses. At the bottom of this street a mob of figures was boiling with frantic activity and purpose. He pointed to the inner barricade. ‘Take and hold.’
The sixty or so survivors ran to comply. Somewhat more leisurely, Tobias strode forward sword in hand, looking around. How remarkably easy it had all been! Colonel Hartley-Booth came up and clapped him on the back.
‘Well done.’
‘Nothing to it as yet.’
‘Time to give the signal.’
‘Thorpe – signal!’
There was no answer until someone yelled, ‘He’s dead!’
‘OK – Mepham go up on the breach and wave your tunic till you’re sure the infantry have seen you.’
Mepham never did so. Tobias heard several simultaneous gasps of horror from the soldiers and looked round in time to see a large cannon muzzle being poked out of a hitherto invisible hole in the side wall of one of the dingy houses. It was not twenty yards distant. Simultaneously, crowds of yelling heretics emerged from the nearest houses.
It was a very clever trap.
When Tobias tried to shout ‘Back!’ his word was drowned and lost in the tremendous roar of the Leveller saker. But once again he was spared, as was the Colonel, and so they were able to see a whole section of the barricade and the men behind it thrown up in the air to disintegrate and fall in oddly shaped pieces. The cannon had been charged with grapeshot ready for their coming.
Fortunately the Levellers pressed their charge home in wild order, they had grown too excited during their wait in the houses to think of anything but closing with their hated opponents. They surmounted what was left of the barricade like a wave and within seconds they and the Crusaders were irretrievably mixed, which happily prevented the saker from speaking again.
Having lost their fighting ranks to engage in individual duels, the Levellers were robbed of their considerable advantage since the Special Retinue were men specially picked for their suspected or known propensity for this kind of scrummage. Moreover the heretics were not élite troops by any means; these were on the walls, dead in the breaches or waiting in reserve deeper in the town. The Retinue’s present enemies were town volunteers, militiamen, idealists and young bloods keen on excitement; all very good in their way but an unsuitable match for their brutalised opponents. At first they pushed the Crusaders back, but by weight of numbers this rate of retreat slowed and finally ceased.
None of which was apparent to Tobias for he was engaged in a sword fight with a man of far superior ability, perhaps a duellist or the like, and his mind was too occupied with increasingly desperate and graceless parries to be able to construct a spell to save himself. This was eventually done by another Crusader who, just at the point when all seemed lost, found himself without an opponent and obligingly hacked down Tobias’ tormentor from behind with an axe.
With the realisation that he was still alive, Tobias also saw that they were victorious. The remainder of their ambushers were slowly retiring over the barricade and down the street. The ground was unseen beneath a carpet of the dead and a few Crusaders who still had the energy wandered around to ensure that this was indeed the condition of the fallen.
Hartley-Booth was still there; like a bizarre vision he was waving a bloody axe.
Tobias saw what he was looking at, ‘Saker,’ he screamed. ‘Saker – get that fucking saker!’
While shouting, he ran forward towards the cannon that had done so much damage before. (He had not thought to question the wisdom of so doing.) He dimly appreciated that others were following him.
As he drew close he could see how the trick had been done; the bricks in the wall of the house had been loosened and then replaced, presumably leaving a spy-hole. Now enough bricks had been displaced to allow a view into the house. Beside the cannon muzzle one man was watching Tobias approach. Less clearly visible, another man was sighting the gun, moving feverishly fast and another was approaching it with a glowing taper.
One of Tobias’ pistols had not been fired – he had not had the opportunity. Now he drew it from his belt. Judging by the sounds behind him, he was a good few yards ahead of his nearest compatriots. The black muzzle of the cannon beckoned him on and illogically enough he felt sure he was going to run into and down it before being spat out rudely. Even at such an inappropriate moment several sexual comparisons occurred to him.
Then with a degree of relief he was never to experience again, he reached the wall of the house and was out of the field of fire. He would have been happy to stay there for ever, his fighting mood having passed when faced with the actuality. However he was not allowed to remain uninvolved. He looked inside and four gunners looked at him; then one moved to apply the taper to the touch-hole. Another raised a half-pike but, moving faster than he knew he could, Tobias clashed his sword with the haft below the blade and thrust the danger aside. With the other hand he raised his pistol and shot the taper-man through the head. As befitted a crisis, his aim was true.
Then some idiot buffeted into his back and he tumbled head first through the hole in the wall and into the room beyond.
Once again, he was lucky. In falling he had stuck his sword out in the faint hope of warding off blows. Instead he felt it hit and sink into something. He landed in a confused heap underneath the muzzle of the gun beside one of its wheels, his face painfully rammed into his armpit. A heavy body landed on him and they wrestled. Something cold and sharp slid across Tobias’ forehead and blood began to trickle into his eyes. Made strong by fear, he fr
eed his arms, found what he thought to be his opponent’s head and in a smothered voice shouted a brief phrase. The aggressor’s body gave a couple of spasms and then was still. Tobias heaved the dead weight off and sat up. Through a thin sheen of blood he surveyed the ghastly scene, the focus of his attention, naturally enough, being the surviving member of the artillery team. In his turn this man found Father Tobias of similarly consuming interest. They stared at each other for a long moment. What the priest saw through a red haze was a shock-headed youth who had the look of a dare-devil, but at this moment a panic-stricken one. The instantaneous destruction of the gun team before his eyes had perhaps been the final straw in a day of mounting horror. He held a sword and could have skewered Tobias with it for the priest was bloodied, confused and jammed into a helpless position. Instead, somewhat jerkily, he turned to his left and walked briskly out of the room.
Something of the full gravity of the moment had also communicated itself to Tobias, although he was less afraid of death than most men since he attributed no value or sense to life. He scrambled up, his hair matted with blood and all over his face, his clothes pale with rubble-dust. Somewhere deep down in his vast coldness was a tiny spark of human panic, something he was unaccustomed to and fearful of. Today he had clearly seen the awful random quality of existence.
No one had the right to exist, all were likely to be penetrated by blade or projectile and die from it. In a few seconds a room full of men, individuals all, with minds aware of their aloneness, could be swept clean and each of those stories terminated. Therefore a man’s all-pervading sense of self did not increase his prospects of survival or prosperity against those of his contemporaries.
The sum effect of which was to knock some of Tobias’ boundless confidence out of him because it meant the universe would continue to function quite happily without his presence.
Somewhat chastened and a touch more cautious than hitherto, he swept his face clear of hair while recovering his sword from the floor. He was grateful for the feeling of security given by the walls that remained solid. But he became conscious of a wider world again and looking behind him he saw through the holed wall that the Crusaders still held the breach. A fat, bald-headed man with an axe, presumably the one who had knocked him into the house, was about ten feet away. He waved at Tobias and shouted some incomprehensible message of congratulations.
A Dangerous Energy Page 26