King and Emperor thatc-3

by Harry Harrison

  And then the fire was everywhere, exploding outwards with a thump that caught Shef fifty yards away like a blow in the chest. His dazzled eye for long moments could see nothing, then make sense of nothing it saw. Then he realized that the flaming mass was a ship rolling over, the torches in the water were men ablaze, the noise in his ears was tormented screaming.

  He swung himself inboard. From the shore Steffi, hands now raw with pain, saw the Fafnisbane lit up in full view of the hostile offshore fort with its catapults, threw his torch aside, watched his last flare sing into the sea and go out. Darkness fell again on the harbor and the harbor wall, where dismayed combatants fell back groping, their only light the burning galley. His voice thick and fearful, Shef called to Ordlaf to turn the Fafnisbane and take her back.

  And from his vantage point on the hillside a long half mile away, the Emperor Bruno grasped that his attack had failed, he knew not how. He turned to Erkenbert.

  “Agilulf is gone, and the Greeks have let us down. It is up to you now.”

  “To me and to ‘War-Wolf’,” the Emperor's arithmeticus replied.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Shef looked down from the high seaward wall into the blue water below. The wreck of the Greek galley was there, he could see its outline maybe ten, maybe twenty feet below the surface, and no further out from the outer face of the jetty. He was sure that he himself could swim down, see what the fire and explosion had left, maybe attach ropes and drag what metal there was left into daylight. The floating fort was still there, still occasionally hurled a vindictive stone at any sign of movement, but he did not think they would hit a single man at that range.

  No time, though. Not for mere curiosity. In any case he did not think that the wreckage would tell him very much more than he had worked out already. Most of the enemy storming party had got away in their boats before he could organize effective pursuit, but some had failed to find a place and remained in his hands: local levies for the most part, quite willing to talk out of fear or anger at being abandoned. They had confirmed much of what he had heard himself. Yes, the galley had had a fire amidships, a kind of brazier, fueled, one man had said very positively, by a kind of long match of burning flax. He himself had heard the bellows and others had seen it. So they had to burn, or maybe heat something before they could project it. Whatever it was, it was in the gleaming dome-shape which had exploded, and from its color that was almost certainly copper. Why copper, not iron or lead?

  That was one clue. Another was the whistling noise. Shef had heard it himself, and so had many others. One of the Jewish levies closest to the Greek ship had also heard a voice counting, or so he had told Solomon. Counting in Greek numbers, for all the world, Shef reflected, like Cwicca's catapulteers in the old days counting the turns on a torsion catapult, counting carefully for fear of an overwind and a backlash. And finally there was the evidence from Brand's men. Two of his survivors had said with absolute certainty that at the very last moment they had seen a man point something at them, like a hose. The fire had come from that, come in a steady stream before the stone struck and everything blew up.

  Brazier, match, bellows, dome, hose, whistle, and someone counting something. Shef felt sure that this would yet fall into place. Even the injured could tell him something. Or tell Hund something. Perhaps a dozen of the German Lanzenbrüder had survived the crossbows, Brand's axes and the final flame turned on them by their own allies, though most of them were horribly wounded. The flame had reached into the ranks of Brand's men as well, if only for an instant. Five of them had felt a lash of it, were lying now in the makeshift hospital with terrible burns. Hund could maybe tell him something about what had caused the burns.

  If he was prepared to talk to him at all. Since the start of Shef's dealings with Svandis, the little man had been quiet and sullen. When Shef had gone to visit the burned men, and had seen the one who had been blinded, flame across both eyes, he had tapped the hilt of his dagger and looked at Hund with a question. It was normal enough for the Vikings to kill their hopelessly wounded, and both Brand and Shef had done it before. But Hund had flown at him like a terrier, hurled him bodily out of the ward. A while later Thorvin had emerged and said apologetically, in the words of one of the sacred songs of the Way.

  “He told me to remember life is sacred. As it is said:

  “A halt man can back a horse,

  The one-hand herd sheep.

  The deaf one duels and wins.

  Better be blind than burnt.

  Now what good's a corpse?“

  “Better blind than burnt,” Shef had replied. “But blind and burnt?” But it was no good arguing with the little leech. He might have something to tell another day. More than would be gained from the surviving monk-bastards, as Brand called them. None had surrendered willingly, all been taken burnt, crippled, or unconscious. They refused to say anything at all for any fear or inducement. Brand would cut their throats as soon as the priests of the Way ceased to protect them.

  With a last reluctant stare at the wreckage lying deep in the water—was that a gleam of copper he could see deep down?—Shef turned away. The mystery would wait. So would Hund. So would Svandis, who had said nothing to him since her bitter words on the quayside, was now sitting with one of the desperately hurt Greek sailors who had survived both fire and water. There were more urgent things to do. The enemy had tried a probing raid at the south gate already this morning, as if to show they were not dismayed. Time to anticipate them for a change.

  On the deck of the Fafnisbane they were already making ready to stream a kite in the strong morning breeze. Tolman was already being fitted into his harness. Shef patted him encouragingly on the head which was all that could be seen sticking out of the sling—why did he seem to shrink away? Still sore from his fall, probably. Then he looked again at the rig. The top surface was seven feet wide and four feet long, each side four feet long again and three feet deep. Now, how much cloth was that? Think of it as so many squares a foot each way. Turning to the sand tray which two men now carried round behind him ready for instant use, Shef began to move the counters and write the signs, muttering to himself. All round, eighty square feet of cloth. And Tolman, he knew, weighed sixty-eight pounds. He himself weighed one hundred and eighty-five. If, then, you needed a foot of surface to lift a pound of weight…

  “The wind makes a difference,” Hagbarth cut in on his mutterings. “The stronger the wind, the better the lift.”

  “We can figure that in too,” Shef replied. “See what have we now…”

  “Fresh breeze, enough to drive us at four knots under full sail.”

  “Call that four then. And how many knots would we be going when you had to reduce sail?”

  “Maybe ten.”

  “Well that's ten. So if we multiply eighty by four we have a lift of… three hundred and twenty, but if we had a ten-knot breeze we would have a lift of… eight hundred.”

  “Enough to lift a walrus,” countered Hagbarth skeptically. “Which it wouldn't.”

  “All right, we're allowing too much for the wind, but if you call a four-knot breeze one, and a ten-knot breeze two, or even one-and-a-half…”

  Shef spoke eagerly, fascinated by the new experience of exact calculation. Ever since Solomon had shown him the basis of algorism, the methods of al-Khwarizmi, he had been seeking problems to turn it on. The answers might be wrong. To begin with. But he was sure this was the tool he had been searching for half his life.

  A voice broke in, disapproving. Cwicca's. “He's up now. If you'd like to watch, that is. He is risking his neck.” Cwicca growing sarcastic and Hund aggressive, Shef noted with a part of his attention. Time to think of that another day.

  Tolman was high in the sky, not flying free but streaming on the end of his line, already two hundred, three hundred feet up, blown out across the harbor, higher than the topmost turret of the walled city. Like a watchtower in the sky. From the besiegers on the hillside someone shot an arrow, which looped
hopelessly short. Shef licked his lips as he stared up at him. Now he had the basis of calculation, he was determined to make a kite with enough surface to lift him too. If it were a one-to-one relationship, he would need a kite maybe twelve foot by six by four. But how much did the kite itself weigh? There was an answer to everything.

  Cwicca turned back from his place by the ropes. “He's pulled three times. He's seen something. And he's pointing north.”

  North. And the probing attack from the south. “Winch him in,” Shef ordered. He had no doubt that this was the Emperor's famous machine approaching. The “War-Wolf.”

  The road which snaked along the coast towards the north wall of Septimania made its final turn some two hundred double paces short of the massive wooden gate, normally open for the passage of trade, now closed and barred, the towers either side of it bristling with breast-bows and crossbows, traction catapults and torsion dart-throwers. None of that could save the defenders once their gate was battered down. And reinforced oak though it was, criss-crossed with iron, one blow from “War-Wolf” would destroy it. This Erkenbert knew.

  But the blow had to be in the right place. “War-Wolf” lobbed its missiles, like all traction weapons. A shot which fell five paces short was of no value, just another obstacle to the final attack. One five paces over was as useless. The boulder had to come whirling from the sky and crash exactly into the center of the gate, ideally just a fraction short of central, so that it would burst oak and iron backwards. It had always done its work in the past, sometimes after repeated trials. Erkenbert was well aware that the little hornets'-nest strongholds of the Moslem bandit-lords, even the citadel of the heretics' Puigpunyent, had offered no serious resistance, had merely stood still for undisturbed target practice. One could not count on the apostate Englishman and his diabolic crew to be so passive. And so Erkenbert had given serious thought to the two great deficiencies of “War-Wolf.”

  First, its appallingly slow reload time. The great counterweight-chamber, the size of a peasant's dwelling, was filled with stones. Its crash to earth was what provided the mighty power for the missile slung from the long arm. How was the weight to be lifted twenty feet into the air? Till now, Erkenbert had used the slow way, the safe way. Raise the counterweight chamber by pulling down the long arm. Bolt down the long arm. Send fifty laborers to mount ladders and fill the chamber while it hung above their heads. Once it was full, load the missile, pull the retainer-bolt. After it had shot, empty the chamber once more, raise it up against the lessened resistance, send the laborers back again to pour in their stones.

  Too slow, Erkenbert knew. He had decided to solve the problem. Stout iron rings sunk into the rims of the counterweight-chamber. Ropes lashed firmly to them, leading over a new and massive wooden roller at the very top of the whole contrivance. Now the laborers could simply haul the weight up again, slowly and with horrible effort for those who had to dead-lift half a ton and more twenty feet in the air. But it saved all the emptying and filling.

  The second problem was the old one, so vital for this machine, of estimating the range. But this was partly solved by the now invariant quality of the throwing weight. All that needed to be changed was the weight thrown. Erkenbert had selected a pile of boulders of graded weight. The idle peasants complained bitterly about dragging them along too, in carts pulled by mule and human power, but Erkenbert gave no heed to that. He was confident that once he had shot his sighting shot—and who knew, it might be dead on target too—one calculation and he could select a stone to finish the job. Two shots and the gate would be down. Three at the very worst. All that remained was to maneuver the great machine into position, ignoring the inevitable harassing shots from the enemies' lighter weapons.

  At noon Erkenbert, having surveyed the ground, gave the order to advance. It was obeyed gingerly by the sweating exhausted men of his catapult-gang, with disciplined readiness by the Lanzenbrüder, as contemptuous as Erkenbert himself of the local noonday halts. With the Emperor himself at hand, there was no question of anyone disobeying.

  Shef had had hours of warning from Tolman. Behind the barred gate, totally invisible to the besiegers, he had set up the answer of the Waymen to “War-Wolf”: a counterweight-machine based on what the Arab had told him and on what his own imagination and experience with traction weapons had suggested. Now, from the wall, he watched “War-Wolf” creeping round the corner of the road with interest and alarm. It had been transported in pieces, assembled just short of its place of operation. It crept forward on twelve massive cartwheels. As it reached the flat place Erkenbert had selected, it stopped. Men began to set blocks under its frame, lever the wheels off. Why were they doing that, and how would they move the blocks once they were in place?

  “Ready to shoot!” called a voice from the walls. Cwicca, crouched behind the sights of his favorite dart-thrower. He had a hundred men, two hundred, in front of him, clear targets. Shef waved impatiently for silence. Watching was more important than killing a few laborers. So the enemy must think too. More men were coming forward, staggering under the weight of giant mantlets, heavy wooden screens that would keep out a crossbow-bolt, even blunt the force of a torsion dart. The screens hid what he needed to see. But he had seen something. Something ominous.

  “Shoot when you're ready,” called Shef.

  “Nothing to shoot at now,” complained an anonymous voice. They began nonetheless to shoot at the mantlets, trying to aim for junction points. Something might get through. Some poor fool might be unnerved.

  “What did you see?” asked Thorvin, the most interested of the Way-priests in mechanical contrivances.

  “Theirs has two bracing timbers running out from the sides. Ours doesn't.”

  “What difference does that make?”

  “We don't know. We've never shot ours.”

  The two men looked anxiously now at their machine, set up twenty paces behind the gate. It was nothing but a massively scaled-up version of their familiar old pull-thrower, the weapon that had won the Threefold Battle, as men now called it, the battle on two fronts against Mercians and against Ivar, Svandis's father. It had not won a battle since. Would its giant descendant work as simply as its ancestor?

  “Start loading,” said Shef. He too had seen the problem that Erkenbert had learnt from experience, could think with his more mechanical mind of two methods at least of solving it: had no time to make the necessary gears and ratchets, the great iron axle that would be needed for the better method. He too was thrown back on the simple way. Raise the bucket high and empty, then fill it while it was in the air. But his gang were not using stones. Each man had a stout sack full of sand, carefully and individually weighed. A hundred pounds a time. Thorvin counted the men off as they mounted the ladder, the burliest of Brand's Vikings, sweat pouring from them into their hemp shirts. Fifteen loads dumped in and the long arm bending visibly as it strained against its greased retainer bolt.

  “Load the sling,” Shef ordered. Another hard job. The sling itself lay along the ground like a gigantic empty scrotum. The boulder that went into it, Shef knew, weighed almost exactly a hundred and fifty pounds. A gang had dug it from the seashore, weighed it against sandbags over a steelyard, been told immediately to start chipping it round—and weigh the chips! Then they had been sent back to raise three more, carve them to a weight as near identical as care could make them. But now the first load had to be lifted into place. No great weight, for strong men, but round boulders are hard to lift from the ground. For a moment there was straining and cat-calls from the watchers, then as the two lifters turned angrily on their messmates, Brand and Styrr walked forward. They dug their fingers into the sand below the boulder, embraced it like two wrestlers, heaved it up and along into its double bullhide bag.

  Now, when the weight dropped, the arm would rise. When the arm rose, the sling would whirl. When the sling whirled—the rock would come off and crash down on its own launcher and crew, unless the hook, the hook that was the free counterpart of the
fixed ring on the sling's rope, unless that hook lifted off at precisely the right point. Shef stepped forward to check the angle of the nail it rested on. It was right.

  As he stepped back, drawing a deep breath and looking at his old comrade Osmod, who had demanded the honor of first launch, he heard a great “Oh!” rise from the men on the walls, a gasp or groan of surprise that cut through the snapping of crossbows and twanging of ropes. Shef looked up, saw the moon coming down on him. Just as he had a decade before at the siege of York, he cringed, head sinking into shoulders like a turtle. Gigantic, weightless, the boulder sailed silently down from a point that seemed higher than ever Tolman had flown. Erkenbert and the Empire had shot first.

  The boulder was almost a perfect hit first time. It cleared the top of the city gate by no more than six feet, shot past faster than eye could follow, crashed into the dry sandy ground almost equidistant between the foot of the gate and the place where Shef stood by the side of his own trebuchet. The earth shook beneath his feet, sand rose in a cloud. As it settled, in an awestruck silence, men stared at the rock that had appeared there, looking as if it had lain there since the dawn of time.

  “It's bigger than ours,” came a gloomy voice. Some friendly memory helped Shef to recognize it.

  “Anything's bigger than yours, Odda,” he replied. “What are you waiting for, Osmod? Pull the bolt.”

  As he saw Osmod turn, with a certain fear, to the bolt, Shef himself turned his back, ran up the stone steps to the parapet of the left-hand tower. Behind him he heard a squeak of protesting metal being drawn. Then a long scraping noise which ended in a great crash. He looked round just in time to see the sling release and the boulder that two mighty men had strained to lift fly into the sky like a pebble.

  As it soared out on its long arc Shef followed it, ignoring the groans of protesting timber, the shouts and yells from the crew. The top of its arc, there, must be the midway point. He was sure it was on line for “War-Wolf.” But the range?