The siege of Macindaw ra-6

by John Flanagan

  Strange, he thought. The day was cold, but not so cold that they should need a fire on the ramparts to keep them warm, at least not until nightfall.

  "What's happening?" asked Horace. He was bored and uncomfortable, and he wanted some form of distraction. Will waved him to silence. They were only twenty meters or so from the walls, and it was possible that they might be heard.

  "Keep your voice down," he said. Horace rolled his eyes to heaven again and continued in a hoarse whisper.

  "It's all right for you. You've got the peephole," he said. Will gave him another long-suffering look.

  "It must be awful to be you," he said, "covered in ants, in agony from cramping muscles and not even a peephole to look through."

  "Oh, shut up," said Horace. He couldn't think of a witty reply.

  They were interrupted by the slamming impact of another bolt into the wood over their heads. Will frowned, wondering why the defenders should be wasting time and ammunition shooting at the stranded cart. The answer came to him a few seconds later.

  Horace, who had flinched violently at the unexpected impact, sniffed the air. "I can smell smoke," he said.

  Will craned once more to look through the peephole. He could see the ramparts, with the same group of men watching the cart intensely. Then he saw one of them raise a crossbow and shoot again.

  "Here comes another," he warned his companion.

  The bolt sped through the air toward them, trailing a thin ribbon of smoke behind it. Seconds later, there was another ringing thud as it struck the roof planks. Now the smell of smoke was stronger. Through the peephole, Will could see a lick of flame.

  "They're shooting fire arrows," he said calmly. "Trying to set the cart alight."

  "What?" Horace jerked upright, and his head thudded against one of the support frames on the cart. "We'd better get out of here!"

  "Relax," Will told him. "I had the planks soaked with water before we started."

  Horace sat back doubtfully. He remembered now that for ten minutes before they had left the shelter of the trees, the Skandians had poured water and melting snow over the planks.

  "Besides," Will continued, "have you ever tried to set a piece of hardwood on fire by dropping a burning stick on top of it? The odds are the arrows will scorch the wood a little, but they'll burn out before the fire can really take hold."

  "The odds are?" Horace repeated. "What odds might they be?"

  Will regarded him patiently. "What do you want to do, Horace, jump out and put out the arrows and then wave to the men on the ramparts?"

  Horace looked uncomfortable, realizing he might have been premature in his reaction.

  "Well, no," he said."But I certainly don't want to be caught under a burning cart either."

  " The cart won't burn. Trust me." Will told him. Then, seeing that the last two words had absolutely no effect on Horace, he continued, "And even if it does, we'll have plenty of time to get out of here. But there's no point running for it now. How will we feel if we give our plan away and then sit back in the trees and watch the fire go out?"

  "Well, maybe…," Horace said, a little mollified by Will's logic – and by the fact that the smell of smoke hadn't grown any stronger. He put his hand against the planks, beneath the spot where one of the bolts had struck it. The wood didn't feel any warmer there than in other parts of the roof.

  Another two burning bolts hit the cart in the next few minutes. But, like the first two, they soon burned out, causing nothing but surface scorching. Eventually, seeing that the fire arrows weren't working, the defenders on the ramparts gave up the attempt.

  + + ¦

  The afternoon wore on, and the light began to fade as the watery winter sun sank below the level of the trees. Horace pulled his cloak tighter about him. It was cold sitting here immobile for hours on end.

  "What time is it?" Horace asked.

  "About five minutes later than the last time you asked," Will told him. "You're getting as bad as Gundar, with his constant Are we nearly there?' "

  "I can't help it," Horace grumbled."I don't like just sitting around doing nothing."

  " Try composing a poem," Will said sarcastically, wishing his friend would shut up.

  "What sort of poem?" Horace asked.

  "A limerick," Will told him, through gritted teeth. "That would seem to be about your speed."

  "Yeah. Good idea," Horace said, brightening a little."That'll take my mind off things." He frowned thoughtfully, looking to the heavens for inspiration. His lips moved silently for several minutes, then the frown deepened.

  "I don't have anything to write it down with," he said.

  Will, who had managed to doze off in the silence, jerked awake. "What?" he snapped, crankily. "Write what down?"

  "My limerick. If I don't write it down, I might forget it."

  "Have you thought it up yet?"

  "Well, I've got the first line," Horace said defensively. Limerick writing was proving to be harder than he'd expected."There once was a castle called Macindaw…," he declaimed. "That's the first line," he added.

  "Surely you can remember that?" Will said.

  Horace nodded reluctant agreement. "Well, yes. But when I get two or three or four lines worked out, it'll get harder. Maybe I could tell them to you and you could remember them?" he suggested.

  "Please don't," Will said, biting off the words.

  Horace shrugged. "Well, fine. If you choose not to help."

  "I do."

  Will's replies, Horace noted, were becoming shorter and shorter. "All right then," he said, a little huffily. His lips moved again, stopped, restarted. He closed his eyes to concentrate. This went on for some five minutes, and the more Will tried to ignore him, the more he was drawn to Horace's facial contortions. Finally, the broad-shouldered warrior realized his friend was watching him.

  "What rhymes with Macindaw?" he said.

  31

  As the afternoon lengthened into evening and then into night, Horace became increasingly restless and bored. He shifted position continually and sighed repeatedly. Will steadfastly ignored him. This annoyed Horace, who knew his friend was intentionally taking no notice of him.

  Eventually, after a particularly extended sigh, followed by a prolonged shifting of position and shuffling of shoulders and buttocks, Will could no longer pretend not to notice.

  "It's a pity you didn't bring a trumpet," he said. "That way you could make a bit more noise."

  Horace, pleased that he had finally provoked the beginning of a conversation, answered immediately. "What I don't get," he said, "is why we didn't run the cart out here now, instead of doing it hours ago? We could have waited comfortably in the trees until nightfall, then run out, lost the wheel and had only an hour or so to wait for Malcolm's monsters. It would have been much less boring than crouching here all afternoon and into the night."

  "It's supposed to be boring," Will snapped. "That's the idea."

  "You wanted to be bored?" Horace asked.

  "No." Will spoke very patiently. He adopted the tone an adult might use talking to a very young child. It had been some time since he'd done that with Horace, and the warrior found that he didn't like it any more now than he had previously.

  "I wanted the sentries to be bored. I wanted them so used to the sight of this cart that it became part of the scenery. I wanted them to look at it for hours and hours with absolutely nothing happening so that they eventually believed that nothing is going to happen. If we'd only come out of the trees now, they'd still be suspicious when the time comes, and they'd possibly still have their eyes on us. This way, they've seen the cart clearly, in full daylight, and they think they have nothing to fear from it. They're bored with it, in fact."

  "Well… maybe…," Horace said reluctantly. Actually, what Will said made sense. But still, he was bored. And cold too. They were sitting on a mixture of melted snow and saturated grass. And the earth itself still held the bone-numbing chill of winter. As he had the thought, Horace felt an o
verwhelming need to sneeze. He tried to smother the sound, but only succeeded in making it louder.

  Will looked up angrily, shaking his head in disbelief. "Will you shut up?" he said tautly.

  Horace shrugged in apology. "I'm sorry," he said. "I sneezed. A person can't help it when they sneeze."

  "Perhaps not. But you could try to make it sound a little less like an elephant trumpeting in agony," Will told him.

  Horace wasn't prepared to take that lying down. Crouching down, perhaps. But lying down, never.

  "And of course, you'd know what an elephant sounds like! Have you ever heard an elephant?" he challenged.

  But Will was unabashed by his logic. "No," he said."But I'm sure it couldn't be any louder than that sneeze."

  Horace sniffed disdainfully. Then wished he hadn't. Sniffing only created the urge to sneeze again, and he fought against it valiantly, finally quelling it. He sensed Will was right. The sneeze had been particularly loud.

  On the ramparts, the corporal in command looked at one of the soldiers standing by him.

  "Did you hear that?" he asked.

  From the soldier's reaction and the way he was staring into the darkness, it was obvious that he had. "It sounded like an animal," he said uncertainly. "In pain."

  "A big animal," the corporal agreed uneasily. They peered into the night together. Fortunately, neither of them connected the strange sound with the ruined cart. Will had proven to be right. The sentries barely noticed the dark shape anymore."God knows what goes on in that forest," the corporal said eventually.

  "Whatever it was, it seems to have gone now," said the other man. He hoped he was right.

  Twenty meters away, under the cart, Horace had his cloak doubled over his head and his fist rammed up tight under the soft cartilage between his nostrils to prevent another sneeze. The following day, he would find a bruise and wonder how it got there.

  When the urge eventually subsided, he sagged against the cart, his eyes streaming.

  Will, who had seen the immense effort he had gone to, patted his shoulder. "Good work," he said sympathetically.

  Horace nodded, too exhausted for further comment.

  The moon rose, passed over them, flooding the land around them with pale light, then sank below the tops of the trees in the west. Will felt his heart rate begin to accelerate. The time of waiting was nearly over. He looked at Horace and realized his friend knew it too. He was no longer shifting and twitching. Instead, he was slowly and carefully stretching his cramped arm and leg muscles, easing out the kinks caused by long hours of inactivity. Carefully, the tall warrior unfastened his round buckler from where it was tied to the side of the cart.

  Will watched as he removed the thick white canvas covering the front of his shield to reveal the glossy white-enamel surface, with its gleaming green oakleaf symbol in the center. "Good to see you'll be fighting under your true colors." He smiled.

  Horace smiled briefly in return. He was becoming focused now. Will could see that this was a different person from the fidgeting, complaining Horace who had sheltered under the cart for the past eight hours. This was a very deadly, very serious Horace, a master of his craft, and Will was glad he was here. Once they hit the top of the ramparts, he knew it would be Horace who would bear the brunt of the fighting until the Skandians could make their way up the ladder to join them. He couldn't think of anyone he would rather have by his side.

  He realized that he had preparations of his own to make. He checked that his quiver, with its twenty-four gray-shafted arrows, was firmly in position. His longbow was tied to the underside of the cart, and he untied it now. It was unstrung, of course. There was no point leaving it under tension for the hours they had spent waiting. He checked that the string was in position, without any tangles or loops. The bow had a draw weight of eighty-five pounds, and it would be virtually impossible to string it in the cramped position under the cart. He'd do it as soon as they moved out from under the shelter of the sloped roof. He checked the big saxe knife at his belt and touched his hand to the throwing knife in the hidden sheath at the back of his collar. The sheath's position was a little awkward, and he remembered how he had been unable to reach it quickly during the fight with MacHaddish. He made a mental note to tell Halt and Crowley that the collar sheaths were a bad idea.

  In the distance, from beyond the far side of the castle, they heard the drawn-out moan of a ram's horn – one long note that went on and on, finally fading away.

  "Start counting," Will told Horace. The arrangement with Malcolm was that the huge image of the Night Warrior would be projected twenty seconds after the horn stopped.

  As Horace counted, Will slipped out from under the cart, staying behind it so he was still shielded from the ramparts as he set the string on his longbow. He felt Horace begin to stir under the cart.

  "Come on out," he said, "but stay down."

  Horace crawled into the open, half straightening behind the cover of the cart.

  They both peered into the dark sky above the castle. They wouldn't see the projection from here, but they might see the reflection of the light in the low clouds, Will thought.

  " There it is!" whispered Horace. There was a brief flash of light in the sky. Then they saw the next demonstration as a ball of fire rose into the night, hissing and trailing a banner of sparks behind it before exploding high above the ground in a shower of red embers.

  Then the flash repeated itself, just for a few brief seconds.

  It was important, Malcolm had told them, not to leave a projection in place for more than a second or two. Any longer and the eye could focus clearly on it and realize that it was a crude outline that didn't move. Flashing it on and off like this, with other lights to distract the watchers' eyes, created a sensation of movement and uncertainty.

  "Let them think what they see, rather than really see it," Malcolm had said.

  They could hear voices shouting on the ramparts now as men reacted to the terrifying images shimmering in the fog.

  "Let's go!" Will said. He drew his saxe and slashed the bindings that held the ladder on top of the cart's roof.

  Horace threw it easily over his shoulder, his shield slung over his back, and together they ran for the castle wall. Keren was in the main hall of the keep when he heard the shouting and the bang of the first rocket exploding. He was already armed and wearing chain mail, and he dashed into the courtyard, climbing the stairs to the south ramparts two and three at a time. The shouting was coming from that side, and he realized he had been right. This was where the attack was coming.

  He reached the ramparts and found the sentries gathered in a small knot, staring fearfully into the darkness. Their voices formed an incomprehensible babble as they all talked at once.

  "Silence!" he yelled, and as they obeyed, he singled out the sergeant in charge. "Sergeant, what's going – "

  He got no further. Suddenly, in the dark night sky, some two hundred meters from the castle's south wall, a gigantic shadow figure loomed against the mist. Huge, evil, terrifying.

  And gone, almost as soon as it appeared.

  Keren actually staggered back at the sight of it. But then a demonic red face began to rise from the ground, soaring into the air and exploding into darkness. And even as it did, another massive shape loomed in the mist – the black shadowed outline of a dragon that seemed to quiver and shake and then disappear.

  A strange, hollow voice could be heard, laughing hysterically. The sound chilled Keren. The men around him shouted in fear. Several dropped to their knees, doubled over as if to hide from the horrible sights before them. He kicked savagely at the nearest man.

  "Get up, you yellow-skinned coward!" he cursed. But his voice was hoarse, and his throat was dry. He could feel the skin on his arms prickling and dimpling, and the hairs on the back of his neck rising in fear. Then, fifty meters from where they had first seen it, the giant warrior flickered on and off again. A series of colored lights flashed across the ground at the height of a man'
s head, and the laughter was back, more bone-chilling than before.

  Buttle appeared beside Keren, his face haggard with fear. He pointed wordlessly into the night as the dragon reappeared, then a huge lion, then the warrior again, all interspersed with images of that demonic face soaring into the air and disappearing.

  "It's sorcery!" he cried. "You said there was no sorcerer! Look at this, you fool!"

  "Get hold of yourself!" Keren snarled at him. "It's a trick! It's nothing but a trick!"

  "A trick?" Buttle answered. "I know sorcery when I see it!"

  Keren grabbed the man and shook him. "Get hold of yourself!" he said savagely. "Can't you see? This is what Barton wants! They'll be coming at us any minute, so get the men to the ramparts!" He gestured at the cowering sentries, grouped together in fear and backing as far away from the wall as they could.

  More and more men had run from the east and west walls to view the terrifying scene outside the castle. As Buttle hesitated, half accepting that Keren might be right, they heard a voice shouting:

  "Here they come!"

  32

  Horace had gone up the ladder at a run, while Will kept up a constant stream of arrows, picking off any defender who showed himself over the ramparts. Nearing the top, the warrior paused for a second, then hurled himself upward, rolling into a ball and somersaulting high into the air so that he sailed over the top of the ramparts and the two defenders who crouched there, waiting for him.

  He landed lightly on his feet, turning and drawing his sword in the same motion. The two startled defenders recovered their wits and began to move toward him. He cut the first man down with ease. As the second came at him, Horace deflected his halberd thrust, seized his collar and propelled him over the inner edge of the walkway. The man's startled cry cut off abruptly with a heavy thud as he hit the flagstones of the courtyard.

  More defenders were moving toward him, coming from the north wall. He turned to face them.

  "Will! Up here! Now!" he yelled.