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
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,
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
“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 have 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
