‘So cautious,’ de Vrailly spat.
‘It is my will,’ the king said. He didn’t lose his smile.
Gaston had a bad feeling in the pit of his stomach.
Lissen Carak – Michael
Michael sat and wrote by strong afternoon light.
The Siege of Lissen Carak. Day Ten.
Yesterday the enemy destroyed all the villages west of Albinkirk by fire and sword. We were forced to watch. Today, the enemy fills his siege lines with monsters and overhead his foul creatures fill the air with their cries. When more than two of them are over the fortress, it is as if they darken the sky. And it has disheartened many of the people to see how many our enemies really are. They are literally uncountable. All our efforts to kill them now seem like the efforts of a man with a shovel to move a mountain.
The captain was tireless today, moving from point to point around the fortress. Our people began to build an artillery platform in the ruins of the Onager Tower. He and Lord Harmodius helped the workmen lay stones in new cement and then worked the cement so that it dried faster – a great miracle, and one that did much to encourage the people.
Now it is the middle of the afternoon. The enemy had set engines of war to work, but their stones could not even reach the fortress, and we watched them sail uselessly through the air and land well short of our walls – indeed, one killed a creature of the Wild out in the fields. The captain says that the spirit of resistance can be fuelled by things as small as this.
But an hour ago, using his thousands of slaves, the enemy rebuilt his engines closer to us.
Lissen Carak – The Red Knight
‘He’s going to have a go at the Lower Town,’ Jehannes said.
The captain was staring out, watching the distant engines as they were cranked back. The enemy had two trebuchets built about four hundred paces from the Lower Town’s walls, on a timber and earth mound almost forty feet tall. The speed with which they had built the siege mound had been, for the captain, the most horrifying moment of the siege.
Perhaps not quite the most horrifying. I am not your lover.
It was ironic that Harmodius was training him to divide himself, to rule himself, to wall off dangerous elements of spells and counter-spells. He had issued his new apprentice an absolute injunction.
‘Never use this power on your emotions, boy. Our humanity is all we have.’ The old man had told him that this morning, as if it was a matter of great moment.
The captain had used his new talent to wall off his emotions almost the moment Harmodius left. The Mage wasn’t attempting to prosecute a siege while feeling as if his leg had been ripped off by daemons.
Why?
Clearly his control needed work.
He settled back into the crenellations as a rock struck one of the Lower Town gate-towers squarely. The tower shrugged off the hit.
The captain breathed.
‘We have men down there,’ Jehannes said. ‘We can’t hold it.’
‘We have to,’ the captain said. ‘If we lose the Lower Town, he’s cut us off from the Bridge Castle. Then he shifts his batteries south. It’s like chess, Jehannes. He is playing for the ground just there,’ the captain pointed at a set of sheepfolds to the south and to the west. ‘If he can build a siege mound there, and put his engines there, he can destroy the Bridge Castle one tower at a time.’
Jehannes shook his head. He was a veteran of twenty sieges, and he clearly hated it when the captain talked down to him. ‘He can build there any time he likes,’ Jehannes snarled.
The captain sighed. ‘No, Jehannes. He cannot. Because he fears our sorties. Despite his immense power and force, we’ve stung him. If he places engines there without killing the Lower Town, we can sortie out and burn his engines.’
‘He can build more. In a day.’ Jehannes was dismissive.
The captain considered this.
Jehannes bored in. ‘He has limitless muscle power and wood. Probably metal, as well. He can build a hundred engines, in ten different places.’
The captain nodded. ‘Yes he can, but not if his creatures desert him,’ he said. ‘He doesn’t want us to win any more victories.’
‘Why should he care?’ Jehannes said bitterly.
The captain was watching a party of novices going into the hospital, to take their turn at duty.
‘Why, Jehannes!’ the captain said. His eyes flashed, and his bitterness was evident. ‘I thought that you believed that God was on our side.’
She hadn’t so much as glanced at him as she passed.
Jehannes made a fist. ‘Your blasphemy is an offence,’ he said quietly.
The captain whirled at his marshal. ‘Make of it what you will,’ he said.
They were standing, their eyes locked, when a third trebuchet went into action, and they heard the sound of the northern gate tower in the Lower Town collapsing.
‘You need to pull those men out of the Lower Town,’ Jehannes said.
‘No. I will reinforce them. And I’ll lead them myself. Who has the Lower Town today? Atcourt?’
‘Atcourt is still injured. It’s Ser George Brewes.’ Jehannes looked out over the walls. ‘We’re losing too many men,’ he said.
‘We’re stronger than when we started the siege.’ The captain was bottling his anger and storing it out of reach.
‘It’s time you looked around,’ Jehannes said. ‘We have bitten off far more than we can chew. We cannot win this.’
The captain turned back to his senior marshal. ‘Yes, we can.’
Jehannes shook his head. ‘This isn’t a time for boyish enthusiasm-’
The captain nodded. ‘You overstep yourself, Ser Jehannes. Go to your duty.’
Jehannes continued ‘-or chivalric daring-do. There are two realistic options-’
‘And when you are captain, you can act that way,’ the captain went on. ‘But let me be as blunt as you seem to be, messire. You can’t see the simplest tactical consequence. You play favourites among the archers and the knights. You lack the birth to command men who prize such things. Most of all you don’t have power, and I do. So I’m bored with explaining everything to you, messire. Obey. That is all I ask of you. If you cannot, then I will dismiss you.’
Jehannes crossed his arms. ‘In the middle of a desperate siege.’
The captain’s mouth formed a hard line. ‘Yes.’
They stared at each other.
By nightfall, the enemy had six engines throwing rocks into the Lower Town.
The captain collected the relief watch and headed down the slope towards it. There were two routes – the road, which wound in multiple cutbacks down the face of the ridge, and the path, which went straight down the spine of the ridge and had two sets of stairs. Several portions of the path were walled and covered to protect parties going to the Lower Town but, of course, you couldn’t take a horse down the path.
The watch took the path anyway, their feet wrapped in rags to be as noiseless as possible. Given the enemy’s dominance of the plain below them, the captain put out scouts to either side of their route – Daud the Red and Amy’s Hob were moving carefully down the bare rock.
It took them an hour to make their way down the ridge. All the while, great rocks fell from the sky on the Lower Town, destroying houses and cracking the cobbles. Sparks flew as each mass of flint struck the town. The heavy thump-snap of the trebuchets sounded every few heartbeats, so clear in the smoky air that the engines seemed near at hand.
The air was acrid and heavy. Burning barns and roofs on a damp day had saturated the air with smoke.
An archer coughed.
They crept on. No stars showed and the darkness had become a palpable thing, an immortal enemy. The choking smoke was far worse down on the plain, and the rocks were raising dust and stone grit with every strike to add to the difficulties.
Far out on the plain, one of the engines loosed its burden. As it rose in a graceful arc, it could be seen dully – it was burning. Its misty appearance show
ed just how dense the smoke was.
The burning mass seemed to come right at them.
‘Come on,’ the captain said, ignoring it. ‘Follow me.’
The fire crashed to earth out in the fields.
Another engine loosed.
Even the vague light of the burning missiles was enough to help the relief watch move down the path.
The captain launched into a stumbling run. His sabatons rang on the stone steps as he came to the postern gate.
Link, Blade, Snot, and Hetty caught him up.
‘Relief watch!’ he called softly.
There was no answer.
‘Fuck,’ the captain said softly. ‘RELIEF WATCH!’ he called.
‘Dead,’ said Kanny, softly. ‘We should go-’
‘Shut up,’ Blade said. ‘Cap’n, you want me to climb the wall?’
The captain was reaching into the postern with his power.
It was unmanned.
‘Help him up the wall. Kanny, make a bucket. Then onto my shoulders. Stand on my helmet if you have to.’ The captain stood next to Kanny, who grumbled but made a stirrup with his gauntleted hands.
Blade stepped up into Kanny’s hands, and then onto the captain’s shoulders. The captain felt a shift of weight, and then the man jumped.
Above him, the archer grunted, swinging from his arms. But on the third swing, he pulled powerfully and got one leg over the lowest part of the wall. And then he was in.
‘Garn, that was too easy,’ Kanny said.
Snot blew his nose quietly. ‘You are a useless fuck,’ he said. ‘We used to take towns in Galle this way.’
Blade opened the postern. ‘No one here,’ he said.
A rock crashed into the wall, far too close, and all of them had to clamber back to their feet.
‘In,’ the captain said. He rolled in through the low postern gate, and drew his sword. Daud the Red appeared at the wall with Amy’s Hob and No Head. ‘Get in here. Daud – you and Hob take the postern in case we have to come back through.’
The two huntsmen nodded.
Moving across the Lower Town was a new nightmare. Rocks hit the wall – once, an overcast hit a house less than a street away. The streets were already full of rubble, and all of them closed their visors against the rock chips and wood splinters. They fell frequently and cursed too loudly when the did.
The sky was lightening when the relief watch made it to the northern gate tower. It had taken several direct hits, but the massive fortification was fifteen feet thick at the base and had so far survived.
The captain hammered at the lower door with the pommel of his sword.
It took time for a terrified pair of eyes to appear at the grille.
‘Watch!’ the captain hissed. ‘We’ve come to relieve you.’
They heard the bar lifted.
A big stone hit, somewhere to their right, and they all cringed. Stone chips rang off the captain’s helmet.
Blade began to pant.
The captain looked back at him – then reached to catch him as he slumped to the ground, a four-inch wood splinter in his neck. Before the captain could lower him to the ground, he was dead.
‘Get the door open,’ the captain roared.
The door opened outward a handspan and stopped. It was jammed by rubble.
Two more rocks struck nearby, and then a ball of fire struck fifty paces away, illuminating the smoky air.
No Head got enough of the rubble off the doorsill to get it open and they piled into the tower, dragging Blade.
Scrant, just inside the doorway, flinched at the look in the captain’s eye.
The captain pushed the archer out of the way and stalked along the low corridor. Outside, another rock struck, and the tower gave a low vibration – torches moved in their brackets, and plaster came off the walls.
Ser George Brewes was sitting in a chair in the donjon. He had a cup of wine in his hand. He looked blearily at the captain.
‘Are you drunk? Why wasn’t the postern manned?’ The captain turned to No Head. ‘Round up the off-going watch. Ser George will be staying.’
Kanny lingered in the doorway of the donjon, clearly interested in listening, and No Head grabbed him by the shoulder. ‘Move your arse,’ he said.
Kanny could be heard grumbling all the way up the stairs.
Ser George waited until the archers were gone. ‘This can’t be held,’ he said. The effect of his statement was largely ruined by a belch. ‘It’s not tenable,’ he said, as if his careful pronouncement would settle everything.
‘So you thought you’d leave the oncoming watch hanging out to dry?’ the captain said.
‘Fuck you and your righteousness,’ Ser George said. ‘I’ve had a bellyful. It’s time someone told you what a posturing arse you are. I pulled my men into the tower to keep them alive. You got here anyway. I was sure someone would. I haven’t lost a fucking man., and if I’m drunk, that’s no one’s business but mine.’ He snorted. ‘You were outside. It’s hell out there.’
The captain leaned over. ‘If we abandon the Lower Town, he’ll take the Bridge Castle in a day.’
Ser George shook his head. ‘You just don’t get it, do you? You’re playing at being a knight errant – is that because you’re doing a nun?’ he guffawed.
The captain could smell the liquor on the man’s breath. The sweet cloying smell of wine and hate. Just for a moment, he thought of his mother.
‘We’re mercenaries, not heroes. It’s time to find whoever is behind this siege and cut him a deal. Take your girlfriend with us, if that’s what it takes. We’re done here. And there’s no money in the world that would make it worth dying here.’ Ser George hawked and spat. ‘Now get out of my way, Captain. I’ve done my twelve hours in hell and I’m going back up to the fortress.’
The captain stood up straight. ‘No. You’re going to stay right here, with me.’
‘Like hell I am,’ Ser George said.
‘If you try to leave this room. I’ll kill you,’ the captain said.
Ser George made a plunge for the door.
He wasn’t in his full harness and he had a good deal of wine in his belly. In a moment, he was kneeling at the captain’s feet, with his arm in a lock that threatened to dislocate his shoulder.
‘I don’t want to kill you,’ the captain said. ‘But to be honest, Ser George, I’d really like to kill someone, and you are the likeliest candidate right now.’
Ser George grunted.
The captain let go his hold, a little at a time.
Ser George backed away. ‘You’re mad as a hatter.’
The captain shrugged. ‘I am going to hold this fortress to the bitter end,’ he said. ‘I’m going to hold it if I have to do it by myself. When we march away from Lissen Carak – and by my power, Ser George, we will march away – we won’t be a nameless company of broken men on the edge of banditry. We will be the most famous company of soldiers in the North Country, and men will bid to have us.’
Ser George rubbed his shoulder. ‘We’re going to die her, and that’s not what we do, boy. We live. Let the other bastard do the dying.’ He looked at the captain. ‘You have a very persuasive way with an arm lock.’
Two rocks struck close together. Slam – slam, and plaster rained down on their heads.
The Lower Town, Lissen Carak – The Red Knight
An hour later, as the light began to grow outside, the off-going watch started up the path with two heavy beams – the rooftrees from collapsed cots – carried high on their shoulders.
The enemy’s machines launched a flurry of stones but the off-going watch was already out of range. They scurried up the ridge, and men came out of the fortress’s main gate to help.
And then there was silence.
Hours passed.
The captain had been sleeping in his armour, his head down on the table in the donjon. He woke to the silence, and he was up the ladder in a twinkling, his sabatons ringing, his hip armour scraping on the hatch to the f
irst floor of the tower.
No Head was already on the battlements. He pointed to the enemy machines – just three hundred paces further west. Close enough to touch, or so it seemed.
‘Cuddy could reach ’em with an arrow. Or Wilful Murder.’ No Head grinned. ‘I’m tempted to try, myself.’
‘Even if you caught one or two,’ the captain said, ‘there are many, many more of them.’ He was much more exposed here – his Hermetic defences weren’t buttressed by the power of the fortress. He could feel Thorn.
He looked around.
The Lower Town’s curtain wall was breached in four places.
Harmodius he called.
He felt the old man stir.
Well sent. I understand you.
The captain concentrated. There will be an attack on the Lower Town. I need men. Please tell Ser Thomas.
You are stronger.
I am practising sent the captain.
He went back to watching.
Sauce watched the beams come through the gate. Skant came over to her – hollow eyed, rubbing his arms – and handed her a note.
She looked it over and nodded. She had the day watch formed in the courtyard for inspection, and she found Wilful Murder easily. ‘Wilful,’ she said. ‘On me.’
He stepped out of the ranks.
‘Find Bent. And any artificers you can rustle up. Master Random’s man is in the dormitory – I think that the pargeter boy is in the Great Hall. These beams are to form the pivot arm of a trebuchet – mounted where the onager was.’
Wilful Murder digested this. Nodded. Chewed on his moustache.
While he was looking at the tower and Cuddy was inspecting the duty archers, Bad Tom appeared in his armour. He didn’t look like a man who’d been up all night.
‘Captain needs the quarter guard. At the double.’ He nodded.
Ser Jehannes came along the wall and down the curtain steps. ‘Hold hard, Tom.’
Tom’s eyes met Sauce’s. ‘Now,’ he said.
He turned to face Ser Jehannes.
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