Shef let the breath escape in a long sigh. He knew already it was going to be over, even well over. His shot had been far worse than the enemy's. The thump and cloud of dust had come down well over. How well over? He put down the far-seer with its cloudy lenses, strained his one eye to get a sure view. There were too many things in the way. At a guess he would say forty yards over. Consider. How many men, stretched head to foot, between what he could see of “War-Wolf” and the already settling dust-cloud. Shef counted, nodding his head unconsciously to each imaginary six feet. Maybe not forty yards. More like thirty-five. Under rather than over. Say thirty-four.
Now how far was it from “War-Wolf” to the gate? The guard captain Malachi was standing by him, saying nothing but looking anxious.
“Think carefully. You must have walked that road many times. How far is it from the gate to their machine? Think of it in double paces.”
A long pause. “I would say one hundred and forty.” And twenty, already paced out, from the center-line of his own machine to this side of the gate. A hundred and sixty, times five and a half feet, was the range he meant to shoot. That sum, plus thirty-four, times three, was what he had shot. He had to reduce the fifteen-hundred-pound throw weight in proportion to the reduced distance to get a hit with a boulder of the same weight. Two days ago he would have thrown his hands up, declared the sum impossible. Now…
Shef sprinted down the steps again to where his sand table waited. Osmod met him with a face of woe. “The machine. It's falling apart. The weight's too big for it. Needs side-braces, like what they've got…”
Shef pushed him aside. “Wedge everything back as best you can, use nails if you have to. It has to hold together for one more shot. Tell the men to unload, winch up, put in ten hundred pounds. Then wait.”
He bent to his table, lines already drawn for the first of his sums. One hundred and sixty, times five, add on eighty—that was easy. Write “880” in the sand. Thirty-four, times three, add it on, write “982” in the sand.
Now, divide fifteen into 982 to find out how much distance to each hundred-pound bag. And then, divide that figure into the 880. Shef struggled on, absorbed. His own men watched him curiously. Solomon and Malachi exchanged glances. Either of them, they suspected, could have carried out the operation faster, as could any trader in the market. But then a market-trader would not have known what it was that the king of the barbarians was trying to do. He might be near-illiterate. But he had made the machine. The flares, the kites, the crossbows. Best to trust to what the Arabs would call his iqbal. The odor of success.
Shef straightened. He could not do quantities less than one, had had to double his numbers both sides to get a fair approximation, but he knew the answer.
“Ten hundred-pound bags in? Right, add three more. Open a fourth. Take half out. Exactly half.”
Shef bent over the open bag. There should be fifty pounds in it. According to his figures he should now take out seven more. What difference could that possibly make to a boulder of the size they were throwing? Grimly he scrabbled out what seemed to him to be seven pounds of dirt, the same weight as two days' rations. He twisted the bag closed, stepped up the ladder, hurled it in on top of the pile.
“Ready to throw again? Have you checked the line?”
A shout from the parapet, where Thorvin had gone to watch. “ ‘War-Wolf’ is ready! I can see the long arm raised!”
Shef looked at Osmod. There was no crash of metal here, no trumpets blaring and war-cries rising, but this was where the battle would be decided. All “War-Wolf” had to do was drop its range six feet. Unless they smashed it with this shot, the next act they would take would be to run for the harbor. To face the floating fort, the noon-day calm, and the Greek fire. In an hour they would all be burnt corpses floating in the sea.
Osmod shrugged like a farm-hand asked about the haymaking. “I checked her for line again. I can't say nothing about what happened to the timbers. You heard them start to come apart.”
Shef took a deep breath, looked at the counterweight, the frame, the sling with its carefully-chipped boulder. It felt wrong. The figures said it was right.
“Stand by to shoot. Get back, everybody. All right, Osmod. Shoot!”
As he pulled back the bolt Shef was already in mid-leap for the steps and the parapet. Behind him he heard the scrape, the crash, and this time a chorus of yells of alarm as the hastily-wedged timber frame slowly, inexorably, sprang apart. The boulder was still in the air, still rising, as he reached his vantage-point. As he focused on his target he saw it, too, suddenly move. The great wooden counterweight-chamber dropped instantaneously behind the mantlets, he saw the long arm rise, the inconceivably powerful lash of the sling, like a giant's arm coming round. And then there were two boulders in the sky. One falling, one rising. For an instant he thought they would strike each other. Then all he could see out on the plain was dust. And out of the dust, the enemy's missile still climbing.
Erkenbert's weak eyes had not let him see the flight of his first missile. He had a Lanzenbrüder standing beside him to act as his observer, but the man had said only, “Very close, just over the top, drop it just a cat's hair, herra, and we are through!” Encouraging, but hard to count a cat's hair.
Erkenbert did his best. One thing he knew was that his throw-weight would not change, not now that he had the system in place for hauling the counterweight up again by main force. As the men struggled with it, heaving at unyielding ropes, he reflected on his problem. It was three hundred yards from machine to gate, more or less. He needed to shoot just a trifle less. So use the next boulder up in his graduated pile. But would that then fall short? What was the difference? If a stone of some two hundred pounds were to be thrown three hundred yards by the weight he had, whatever that weight was, how heavy a stone would be needed to travel just two hundred and ninety-five? Erkenbert knew how to find the answer. He needed to multiply three hundred by two hundred, and divide the answer by two hundred and ninety-five.
But to Erkenbert, product of the great and famous school of Latin learning at York, the school that in its time had produced such men as Alcuin the deacon, the minister of Charlemagne, preserver of manuscripts, poet, editor and commentator on the Bible, the problem did not present itself like that. To him, three hundred was CCC, two hundred CC. III times II was VI, C by C—but there common sense would have to step in, not calculation, and give an answer as XM. Erkenbert had plenty of common sense, he could soon, if not immediately, deduce that CCC multiplied by CC must be VIXM. But VIXM—six-ten-thousand—was more like a word or a phrase than a number. What VIXM divided by CCXCV might be—that, hardly the wisest man could tell, and even he not on a battlefield.
Erkenbert considered, ordered forward the next size of boulder up from the one he had just hurled. According to the number painted on its side, it should be perhaps five, perhaps ten pounds heavier than the last one—more or less, like the three hundred yards Erkenbert had estimated for the range. Arithmeticus though he was, absolute precision in numbers was no part of his world-view, except perhaps for calculating rents, the symbolism of Bible numbers, and the date of Easter. And “War-Wolf” had never before faced a reply. The stone that had crashed into the ground forty yards away had angered Erkenbert with its proof of hostile and inventive minds resisting him, and his Emperor, and their Savior's will. Its wild miss had cheered him as well: what better could one expect from illiterates imitating their betters, without so much as a copy of Vegetius to instruct them? Nor would they have had the ingenuity to match his roller and his ropes. Why were the laborers taking so long to haul the weight back into place? He waved forward the Lanzenbrüder to flog the idle levies on.
One of the men heaving at a rope, his feet slipping in the soft dust, dared to snarl a comment in the ear of the man next to him.
“I'm a sailor, I am. We shift our lateeno-yards over the mast all the time, just like this. But what we use is pulleys. Ain't this lot ever heard of pulleys?”
A slash of leather opened a weal across his back and shut his mouth at the same time. As the retainer-bolt finally slid home and the gasping men let go of their ropes, he looped his line unnoticed round the side frame, twisted it into a half-hitch, walked away. What it would do he did not know. He did not know what they were supposed to be doing, drafted here on the orders of his bishop and taken from his boat just as there was a chance of a successful voyage. But if there was anything he could do to obstruct, he would.
Erkenbert viewed the cocked and prepared machine with a grim pleasure, looked round at his Emperor watching from the hillside, within cover or out of range of the weapons still shooting from the wall. Behind him the two thousand stormers ready to pour through the gate, headed by Tasso the Bavarian and the Emperor's own elite guard.
He turned back. Saw with sudden incredulity the boulder already rising from behind the enemy's gate. In an immediate reflex of rage shrieked the order: “Shoot!” Saw his own missile drag along the ground in its sling, whirl round, climb into the sky almost into the very path of the other.
And then the great crash, the rending of timbers and ropes and iron all together.
Shef's exactly calculated rock came down precisely as intended, the various errors of calculation balancing out, as so often happens when each part is done as nearly as humanly possible. Range a little over-estimated, air-resistance never considered at all, the creep of strained timbers incalculable: but the answer correct. In one moment “War-Wolf” sprang apart, struck just at the pivot point and square on, shattering arm and side-frame and rending out the side of the counterweight. The great machine lay in fragments, timbers slowly, creakily falling to the earth, like a stricken hero's limbs sinking in death. Gently, through the dust, earth began to patter out of the counterweight-chamber, falling on to the boulder that had shattered it as if to hide it from view, pretend that nothing had happened. Numbly, Erkenbert stalked forward to inspect the damage. Then caught himself, looked out across the plain to see where his shot had landed. Called on his eyes to report for him.
“Just short,” reported Godschalk the Brüder with stolid unconcern. “Up just half a cat's hair and you've got it.”
From the wall, Shef looked at the boulder lying now four feet short of the gate, looked across at the cloud of dust which marked where his shot had gone home, with surely an instant ago a glimpse of broken pieces whirling end over end out of it, and reflected on the value of calculation. A deep sense of satisfaction rose within him. He had the answer. Not just to this problem alone, but to many problems.
Not, perhaps, to his most pressing one. As the cries of glee and triumph began at last to die down, he turned into the exultant face of Brand, almost a foot above his own.
“We beat off the fire, we beat off the stones,” shouted Brand.
“We have to do more than beat them off,” replied Shef.
Brand sobered. “Right. We have to sicken them of it, I always said so. Now how are we going to do that?”
Shef hesitated. He had a feeling as of one who reaches out for a familiar tool, the hilt of a sword that has hung at his belt for ten years, and finds nothing there. He reached inside himself for a source of inspiration. Advice. The voice of his father-god.
Nothing there. He had the knowledge of al-Khwarizmi now. The wisdom of Rig had gone.
Chapter Twenty-four
The Emperor of the Romans sagged back on to his camp-stool, his face drawn and weary. “Total failure,” he said. He reached out an arm, picked up the Holy Lance which never left him, cradled it to his cheek. After a few moments he put it reverently, but still wearily, back in its place.
“Even the Lance brings me no comfort,” he went on. “The virtue has gone out of me. I have angered God.”
The two bodyguards standing at the entrance to the tent, stifling at the end of the long Catalan summer's day, looked at each other uneasily, then at the fourth man in the room, the deacon Erkenbert, mixing wine and water with his face turned down.
“Angered God, herra?” asked Jopp uncertainly, the bolder and duller of the two. “You eat fish on Fridays. God knows—I mean we know you don't have no women in here, though if you wanted to there's plenty…”
His comrade trod firmly on his foot with a hobnailed boot, and Jopp's voice trailed into silence.
Bruno's face showed not even amusement, his voice continued wearily. “The Greek fire failed. Forty good brothers dead or missing, and Agilulf pulled out of the sea half-roasted.” A spark of animation showed, he straightened for a moment. “It's my belief those Greek bastards flamed him with the rest, because he was in the way. But still,” he sank back again, “we lost. The admiral won't try again, keeps wailing about his lost projector.
“And ‘War-Wolf’ smashed. The gate not down. I do not blame you, Erkenbert, but you have to admit, there was something devilish about the way they hit with the second shot. You would have thought God would send His servants something. If they were His true servants. I fear I am not. Not any more.”
Erkenbert did not look up, continued to pour one flask into another as if absorbed. “Are there any other signs, O imperator, that God has turned his back on you?”
“Too many. Deserters keep coming in. Men who say they were Christians, converted to the worship of Mohammed by force. We make them eat the bacon, then test what they say. They all say the same. The Arab army barely the other side of the hill, led by the Caliph in person, er-Rahman. Tens of thousands, they say. Hundreds of thousands, they say. All those who resist the will of the Caliph are impaled.
“And the worst of all you know, O deacon. No word of the Holy Grail, the ladder of life to go with the lance of the holy death. How many men have we sent to death in the search for it? Sometimes their screams come to me in my sleep. That boy, the one who had seen it, you tortured him till he died. And the child, the fair child who fell in flame from the skies. They should have lived many years yet, but they died. And for nothing. For nothing…”
The Emperor sagged back further, his long arms trailing on the ground, his eyes closed.
His metal gauntlets lay on the table in front of him. Moving carefully, Erkenbert the deacon stepped across, seized one of them, weighed it in his hand, and then swung it with all his scrawny force across the face of the defenseless Emperor. Blood spurted instantly from the broken nose. As the bodyguards reached reflexively for their hilts, Erkenbert found himself whirled off his feet, back stretched over the table, a forearm like oak and wire cutting off the breath in his throat, and a dagger-tip already poised an inch from his eyeball.
Slowly the pressure relaxed, the Emperor straightened up, hauling his counselor with him.
“Stay back, boys. Now, what the Hell did you do that for?”
No glimpse of fear showed in the pale face glaring up at him. “I struck you because you are a traitor to God. God has sent you to carry out His purposes. Whatever those purposes may be! And you, you fall into the sin of despair! You are no better than a suicide, who kills himself because he fears what God may send. Except in one way. You have time yet to make amends. Down on your knees, Emperor that should be, and beg forgiveness from the All-Highest!”
Slowly the Emperor sank down, dagger falling from his hand, and began to mutter the Lord's Prayer through the flow of blood from his nose. Erkenbert let him finish.
“Enough! For now. Confess this to your confessor. Now hold still.” The deacon stepped forward, took careful hold of the broken septum, aligned it carefully, ran a finger along the top to check. The Emperor remained motionless, as he did under his own many private penances.
“Very well. You will look none the worse in a day or two. Here, drink.” The deacon thrust forward an unspilled tankard.
“Now, listen to what I have to say. Yes, the Greek fire failed. Yes, ‘War-Wolf’ is destroyed. No, the Grail has not been found. But think: these deserters, these secret eaters of pork who have come to you. They are apostates and the children of apostates, traitors many times over. Would they hav
e come to you if they had thought the Caliph of the Christ-rejecters were going to win? No. They fled in fear of his defeat. So, put them in the front rank of your army, remind them of the fate that comes to those who are captured having renounced the false prophet. But smite the Caliph as Samson smote the Philistines, strong in the Lord.”
The Emperor rubbed a blood-stained chin. “It sounds as if we are well outnumbered…”
“Smite them in the mountain passes, then. Take revenge for the dead Roland. What is it the minstrels sing in his song, in the Rolandslied?”
Surprisingly, the stolid Jopp replied. “They say, the Franks, Chrestiens unt dreit et paiens unt tort. ‘Christians are right and pagans are wrong.’ I heard it sung back in Leuven market. That's what made me join up.”
“ ‘Christians are right and pagans are wrong.’ That is all you need to know. But I will tell you another tale, to strengthen your faith. When the blessed Gregory, the Pope, sent his emissaries to England to bring my countrymen the holy gospel, they would not listen, just as they have turned heretic today. And Paulinus the Archbishop of that time, his heart failed him and he made ready to flee, to return to Rome in faintness of heart. But in his sleep the Apostle Peter, the first Pope, from whom all Popes take their power, he came to Paulinus in a dream and scourged him savagely with knotted cords, and told him to return to his post. And when the Archbishop woke the marks of the cords were still to be seen on his body where the holy Peter had flogged him. So Paulinus turned again, and conquered. Do you now likewise, Emperor! And as penance for your weakness, though I am not your confessor, I appoint you this: stand in the forefront, fight for the Holy Church.”
The Emperor rose to his feet, stood looking down. “And what of your penance, little man? For you have struck the Lord's anointed.”
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