Like monks.
Or nuns.
‘I will think on it,’ she said. She smiled.
He watched her go, and then sat beneath the apple tree.
Chapter Thirteen
Thorn
Lissen Carak – Michael
The Siege of Lissen Carak. Day Eleven
The captain took the watch to support our garrison in the Lower Town – a small fortified bastion at the base of the ridge. The Enemy has constructed siege engines – catapults and trebuchets – to attack. Because of the rage of our engines atop the fortress, and because we can launch sorties from the fortress through the streets of the Lower Town, the captain says that the Enemy must take the Lower Town first.
He made two attempts, but both resulted in heavy losses of creatures of the Wild. We lost not a single man or woman yesterday. The Abbess called on the Power of God and defeated the Enemy’s poison air. Many men felt lighter at heart after she prayed.
But the Enemy’s engines now throw heavy stones all the time. The air is full of smoke, and many of the farm folk have become angry and downcast.
During the night boglins assaulted Bridge Castle, but their surprise failed and they were driven off.
Michael put his quill down and shook his head at the ink stain on his forefinger.
Kaitlin had not come out to meet him last night, even though he was on his way to the Lower Town. The farmers were angry – he could feel it. Old Seth Lanthorn, an oily bastard in the early days of the siege, was now surly and silent. Farmers muttered when he walked by.
They resented their boys being taken to be archers. And perhaps resented-
I will marry her, he said to himself. But he couldn’t keep his eyes open . . .
Lissen Carak – The Red Knight
The curtain wall around the Lower Town was gradually pounded to rubble.
Before the sun rose, the stars were obscured, and clouds rolled in. The rain that started wasn’t hard, but it was soaking, and cold.
‘Attack coming,’ Toby said, rubbing his cheek. The boy’s breath was sweet with apple cider.
The captain rose blearily, feeling as if he’d been kicked repeatedly. It was an effort of will to run through his Hermetical exercises and it was torture to arm. Toby had to put his harness on him – Michael was down in the Lower Town. Every man and woman had to do their duty, now.
When he went out on the wall, the fields were moving again, lines of irks marching to form up opposite the northern flank of the town. Now they had shields – great pavises of heavy bark stripped from downed trees in the deep woods.
They formed in six deep columns, glistening in the light rain.
Bad Tom had twenty men-at-arms and as many squires and valets waiting for them, and twenty archers on the tower. The breaches in the town wall glittered damply with men in harness.
The enemy’s engines were silent.
Wilful Murder stepped up on the wall with his captain. ‘It’s done,’ he said. He pointed to the squat remnants of the former southern tower. Now it was an engine platform, two storeys tall, crowned with a trebuchet whose launching arm was as tall as the spire on the chapel.
The captain gave him a tired smile.
‘Let’s see if we can give Master Thorn another surprise,’ he said. ‘Let’s go.’
The first stone was loaded with some trepidation. The arm of the trebuchet would throw a man in armour five hundred paces. A war horse three hundred paces.
Wilful fussed like a mother sending her child to church the first time.
No Head, who was supposed to be off duty but whose love of engines outweighed his good sense, pushed the loader out of the way and muscled the stone into the great hemp-rope web.
‘Care to do the honours?’ Wilful asked the captain.
‘Everyone off the tower,’ the captain said.
Every one of the farmers was in the courtyard. They’d worked like draught animals to get the machine built and in place – to level the stump of the tower. Their grumbling was loud and aggressive, and the captain ignored them.
But he needed them to wind the arm into place. The trebuchet depended on farm women for its motive power.
When they were all clear, the captain pulled the lever.
The trebuchet’s arm moved slowly, at first, then rotating faster and faster until the great sling at the end was lifted clear of the deck – the arm and its massive weight passed the centre of rotation and the weight crashed down onto a massive pile of old hordles – thump – and the sling opened – crack, and a stone the weight of a man flew free – rising for what seemed an incredibly long time.
And of course, the heavy stone started three hundred feet above the fields below.
It rose and rose, passing over the irks, who had just started to move forward, clearly unsure of the efficacy of their new shields, and then it began to fall. It came down at a steep angle, it passed over the irks, over the deep trench the boglins had dug, over the enemy’s’ artillery platform, the mound on which his engines sat, and vanished into the trees of the woods at the western edge of the cleared ground.
It did no damage to anyone, or anything.
But the farmers cheered, and the archers cheered and the captain grinned to see it.
Wilful Murder ran back up the ladder and pounded his captain on the back.
The captain smiled. ‘Nice work.’ He turned to No Head. ‘Get the engines.’
No Head grinned.
The first assault was retreating by the time the great engine was wound again. Bad Tom’s men-at-arms had mangled it, and the great bark shields hadn’t done as much to stop the archer’s shafts as the irks might have wished.
The captain gathered a sortie under Ser Jehannes in the courtyard. ‘Tom’s going to be hard pressed,’ he said to Jehannes. ‘A dozen men ahorse will make short work of their next assault.’
Jehannes nodded. ‘Yes, ser,’ he said coldly. ‘I know my business.’
The captain noted that Francis Atcourt was in harness and mounted. He pressed the man’s gauntleted hand. ‘Good to see you about,’ he said.
‘Good to be here,’ Atcourt said. ‘Although, it seems to me another day abed-’ He laughed. ‘I’d be strong enough to swim a mountain or climb a river.’
The trebuchet released.
The captain wasn’t the only man who ran to the walls to watch the fall of the shot.
No Head’s first round landed out of sight beyond the enemy’s engines.
The captain watched the next assault. It was halfhearted. The irks stayed away from the worst of the archery by bunching up in the front of the central breach, and very few of them went forward all the way to the men-at-arms.
Then one of the enemy’s engines released.
The rock fell like a lightning bolt, into the breach, crushing men-at-arms and goblins alike.
‘Damn,’ the captain said. ‘I should have expected that.’
A creature gave a long, bone-chilling cry – like a trumpet, but louder and more hideous – and irks crept from houses and cellars in the Lower Town. They had crept in during the night, or made it past the archers in the first assaults, and now they struck the rear of Bad Tom’s line.
A great armoured troll sprinted from behind the engine platform and pointed its antlered head at the breaches in the curtain wall.
The irks got out of its way.
Another rock plunged from the heavens to strike in the central breach. The stone seemed to explode as it hit, spraying attackers and defenders alike with lethal stone chips.
The men on the walls watched the men in the breach like spectators at a joust.
Ser Philip le Beause died when a stone chip caved in the side of his helmet.
Robert Beele fell, stunned, and an irk got its dagger in his eye slit.
Ser John Poultney died trying to get his back to the wall, swinging his sword in wide arcs. He stumbled when a stone hit his backplate, and was on his knees; in a heartbeat, a wave of the little monsters were on him.
He crushed one with his gauntleted left fist, swung his sword one handed through another pair, and then two were hauling his head back.
‘Release the sortie,’ the captain ordered.
No Head loosed the trebuchet. The stone flew high, and vanished into the forest of upright machine arms atop the enemy’s artillery mound.
Wood chips flew, visible even from the fortress.
A half-loaded trebuchet in the enemy’s battery was loosed by a panicked boglin and his loader was caught in the casting net and flung a hundred paces to fall wetly to earth.
Jehannes galloped down the road from the fortress followed by a dozen knights.
They flew down the switchbacks, and the troll raced for the breach, and a swarm of irks pushed the defenders of the breach into a knot.
‘Damn,’ the captain said.
He’d never cast power at this distance, but he had to try.
The Lower Town, Lissen Carak – Bad Tom
Bad Tom was a pebble in a crumbling sand castle.
He threw back his helmeted head and bellowed.
The irks quailed.
He killed them.
His sword was everywhere, and he was faster than they, taller, longer, stronger.
They went where he wasn’t, but the other men-at-arms knew what Tom was like, and they stuck to him like glue. Francis Atcourt stood at his shoulder, advancing when Tom advanced, retiring when the big man spun away. He had a short spear, and he used it sparingly. He let Tom kill the irks. He only killed those who could threaten Tom.
They began to retreat off the breach. They couldn’t hold it – too many of the men-at-arms were down.
Atcourt saw movement above him on the ridge. ‘Sortie,’ he called.
Tom was frozen.
‘Troll coming,’ he said. ‘Francis, clear what’s behind us and open a lane to the tower.’
Atcourt didn’t need to be urged. He tapped the captain’s squire and three other men on the helmet as he passes them. ‘On me!’ he called.
An irk appeared in his range of vision – paused, surprised, perhaps to find men in the town, and not on the wall, and died with Atcourt’s short spear in its forehead.
‘Michael!’ he called. ‘Get to the tower. Tell Cuddy and Long Paw to cover us.’
The squire had excellent armour, lighter and better than any of the professionals. Besides, he was the youngest.
The great troll ran through the irks. At the base of the rubble-strewn slope up into the breach, it paused, glaring around like some eyeless worm seeking daylight or warmth – or human blood. Then it picked its way to the top of the breach, clearly unwilling to move quickly in the bad footing. When it reached the top it paused again, caught sight of the men-at-arms and threw back its head and roared its challenge, its grotesque mouth, back-hooked fangs and black gullet on display as it sounded its challenge.
The sound rang through the woods, and echoed off the ridge and the walls of the fortress high above. The Abbess heard it at her prayers, and Amicia heard it in the hospital. Thorn heard it and clenched a mighty fist. The captain didn’t hear it at all. He was preparing to work.
Bad Tom stood his ground, threw back his head, and roared back.
The sound crashed back and forth – from the fortress walls to the woods, and back.
They charged each other.
A stride from contact, Tom side-stepped – the monster hesitated, and Tom’s sword swept through. The troll’s antlers caught him and slammed him to the ground.
The troll’s momentum carried it a dozen steps, and it turned.
Tom got a leg under him. He put the point into the ground and used his great sword as a lever to get to his feet.
The troll completed its turn, and put its armoured head down.
Tom laughed.
Cuddy leaned out over the tower wall. The troll turned, and he let it turn, reasoning that its arse couldn’t be as well armoured as its front. He raised a chisel point above the wall, leaned into his draw, and loosed.
The arrow struck with a sound like a butcher’s blade into a leg of mutton.
The troll stumbled. The arrow had struck from behind, between its shoulder blades, and sunk in all the way to the fletchings. The troll gave a moan and raised its head.
Tom stepped forward.
The monster flinched, and then punched for Tom’s throat with both stone-shod hands.
Tom cut.
Struck, and was struck to earth in turn.
Ser George Brewes leaped over Tom’s body to face the troll in his place. ‘Go!’ he roared at the rest of the men-at-arms. ‘Run!’
But Francis Atcourt came and joined him, and Robert Lyliard too.
The troll eyed them, pawed at the earth once, twice, and then slumped slowly to it and lay still.
‘Son of a bitch,’ Lyliard said. He stepped forward and slammed his hammer into the thing’s head.
‘Get Tom!’ Atcourt called. The irks had the breach, and the troll’s death didn’t seem to make any difference to them.
They all got a hand on him. He weighed as much as a war horse, or so they swore later.
And then they ran for the tower, the irks hard on their heels.
The archers shot right into them, Cuddy and Long Paw assuming that their armour would hold.
Mostly, it did.
The irks fell back – flooding the Lower Town, but letting the men have a path to the tower – and the postern opened. Long Paw loosed a shaft right down the line of men-at-arms and then drew his hanger and his buckler, flinging his bow through the door behind him. He stepped out, and the men-at-arms carried Tom past him.
There was a brief flood of irks. They were all armoured in scale mail and carrying round shields – warriors.
Long Paw’s sword and buckler swept up, bound as if they were one weapon – his buckler slammed into the face of one irk’s shield, and then, in the same tempo, his sword beheaded another. In the same flow, he swept his sword back into guard, fell back a step, and parried not one but two spear thrusts with a single sweep of his blade. He stepped in, passed his buckler under the spear-wielding irk’s arms, wrapped them, slammed his pommel into the irk’s unarmoured face, and used his advantage to throw the lighter creature into his mates.
Stepped back again, and the postern crashed shut.
Lissen Carak – The Red Knight
Ser Jehannes had halted the sortie two-thirds of the way down the ridge, when it became clear that the breach had fallen. Now the sortie turned and rode silently back up the road.
The captain was waiting in the gate.
‘Right,’ he said to Jehannes. ‘Good call.’
Jehannes dismounted, gave his reins to a farmer – the valets were all in harness – and started to turn away. ‘The Lower Town is lost,’ he said.
‘No,’ the captain said. ‘Not yet.’
Over their heads, the trebuchet lashed out again.
‘You are risking everything on the hope that we will be relieved. By the king.’ Jehannes was obviously restraining himself. The words were very carefully enunciated.
The captain put a hand on his shoulder. ‘Yes,’ he said.
‘Christ be with us,’ Jehannes said.
West of Albinkirk, South Bank of the Cohocton – Gaston
Gaston had done his exercises of arms, and had prayed. And now he had little to do. He’d had enough of his cousin, and enough of the army in every way.
He mounted his riding horse, left his valet at his tent door, and went for a ride.
The camp was enormous – a sprawling thing as big as a market fair or a small town, with more than two thousand tents, hundreds of wagons drawn up like a wall, and a ditch all the way around it, dug to the height of a man and with the upcast flung back to form a low rampart.
No man was allowed outside the ditch on pain of punishment. Gaston understood – better than his cousin – that he needed to set an example, so he rode slowly around the perimeter, nodding to the Alban knights he knew, and their lords.
>
He saw a pair of younger men with hawks on their wrists, and he was envious.
He thought of home. Of sun-drenched valleys. Of riding out with his sister’s friends, for a day of wit and wine and frolic, chasing birds, climbing trees, watching a well-formed body on a horse, or by a stream . . .
He shook his head, but the image of Constance d’Eveaux looking back over her naked shoulder before leaping into the lake haunted him.
There had been nothing between them. Until that moment, he hadn’t even noticed her except as a pretty face among his sister’s friends.
Why am I here? Gaston asked himself.
‘See something what you like?’ said a familiar voice.
Gaston reined in, his reverie exploded.
It was the old archer. Gaston was surprised to find that he was happy to see the low-born man.
‘You were going home,’ Gaston said.
The old man laughed. ‘Heh,’ he said. ‘Lord Edward asked me to stay. I’m a fool – I stayed. I sent my useless brother-in-law home.’ He shrugged. ‘Of the two of us, my daughter probably needs him the more.’
‘The Lord of Bain?’ Gaston asked.
‘The very same. I was his archer on the crusade, oh, ten years back.’ He shrugged. ‘Those were some hairy times.’
Gaston nodded. ‘I knew you were an man-at-arms.’
The old archer grinned. ‘Aye. Well. I meant what I said. It’s all foolishness. Why are we at war with the Wild? When I lie out at night hunting I love to have a chat with the faeries. I’ve traded with the irks more than once. They like a nice piece of cloth, and mirrors – hehe, they’d trade their mothers for a bit o’mirror.’ He nodded. ‘Admit I can’t stand boglins, but they probably feel the same about me.’
Gaston couldn’t imagine such a life. He covered his confusion by dismounting. He was surprised to find the archer holding his horse’s head.
‘Habit,’ the old man said.
Gaston held out his hand. ‘I’m Gaston d’Eu.’
‘I know,’ the old man said. ‘I’m called Killjoy. Make of it what you will. Harold Redmede, it says in the christening book.’
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