of everyone nearby. Culai and the three men-at-arms standing with him were thrown down into the bailey, cart- wheeling through the scaffolding, hitting every joist, so that they were torn and broken long before they struck the ground.
It was a dizzying moment.
Ulbert wafted his way through the dust to the parapet and peered across the Tefeidiad. On its far shore, three colossal siege-engines had been assembled, each one placed about thirty yards from the next. Diminutive figures milled around them.
'God-Christ,' he said under his breath. 'God-Christ in Heaven! The earl's mangonels!'
Ranulf and Gurt joined him, wiping the dust and blood from their eyes. There was no mistaking the great mechanical hammers by which their overlord had shattered so many of his enemies' gates and ramparts. The central one of the three, War Wolf, had already ejected its first missile. The other two, God's Maul and Giant's Fist, were in the process.
Their mighty arms swung up simultaneously, driven by immense torsional pressure; the instant they struck their padded crossbeams, massive objects, which looked like cemented sections of stonework, were flung forth. All of the defenders saw them coming, but the projectiles barrelled through the air with such velocity that it was difficult to react in time.
Ulbert was the first. ' EVERYBODY DOWN!'
On the roof of the Constable's Tower, Corotocus and his men moved en masse to the south-facing parapet, drawn by that thunderous first collision. They were just in time to see the next two payloads tear through upper portions of the curtain-wall, fountains of rubble and timber erupting from each impact, a dozen shattered corpses spinning fifty feet down into the bailey. One missile had been driven with such force that it continued across the bailey until it struck the wall encircling the Inner Fort. Huge fissures branched away from its point of contact.
The earl's expression paled, but as much with anger as fear. Blood trickled from the corner of his mouth as his teeth sank through his bottom lip.
'Good… good Lord,' du Guesculin said. 'They've raided the artillery train. Taken possession of our catapults.'
'And how are they operating them, this peasant rabble?' the earl retorted. 'Have they engineers? Can they read Latin, Greek… none of my diagrams and manuals are written in Cymraeg, as far as I'm aware.'
Had he been on the river's south shore, Earl Corotocus would have had his answer. Already, the three great machines were being primed again. The hard labour — the cranking on the windlass, the retraction of the throwing-arm — was provided by mindless automatons, some in shrouds, others naked, many in rags coated with gore and grave-dirt. They moved jerkily, yet with precision, speed, and unnatural strength. But when there was skilled work to be done — the measuring of distance, the weighing of missiles in the bucket — it fell to three figures in particular.
They too were ravaged husks; heads lolling on twisted necks, gouged holes where eyes had been, organs rent from their eviscerated bodies. Yet Corotocus would have recognised them: Hugo d'Avranches, Reynald Guiscard and, notable in his black Benedictine habit — which now was blacker still being streaked with every type of filth and ordure — the walking corpse of Brother Ignatius.
CHAPTER TWELVE
For the rest of that first day, the Welsh army stood in silence on the western bluff while the three mangonels did their terrible work. Projectile after projectile was launched across the Tefeidiad. One by one, they struck the upper portion of the curtain-wall or its battlements. The only breaks in this pattern came when delays were caused by the contraptions having to be partly disassembled so that they could be moved on their axes to take aim at different sections.
Wholesale damage was caused. Tons of rubble cascaded into the bailey and onto the berm, burying the dead and maimed of both sides. By late afternoon, the English had lost close to forty men, their shattered bodies flung like so much butcher's meat down through the scaffolding. There was no danger of a major breach being caused — the wall itself was nearly twenty feet thick, its outer face shod with granite, its core packed tight with brick rubble, but the position on top of it was becoming untenable.
A message was soon sent to the roof of the Constable's Tower, requesting permission for the south wall's defenders to withdraw to the Inner Fort. It was rebuffed. As the earl's decision was relayed back, another three thunderbolts struck. One passed clean through a gap already blasted in the battlements, ripping the legs off an archer who was attempting to cross the damaged zone via loose planking. Men scattered in front of the other two, but impacts like claps of doom threw out blizzards of splinters and shards, in which twelve more men were slain and twice that many wounded. One lay on the smashed parapet with his belly burst, his exposed guts hanging down the wall like a mass of ropy tentacles.
'Go and talk to the earl,' Ulbert shouted to Ranulf as they crouched together. 'I'd go myself, but with Culai dead I'm the only one left here with any seniority. Reason with him, plead with him. At this rate, every man on the south wall will be dead by nightfall.'
Ranulf had taken his helmet off earlier because it was so dented by repeated impacts. He tried to put it back on, but it would no longer fit. Cursing, he tossed it away, sheathed his sword, slung his shield onto his back and clambered down the scaffolding.
'Ranulf?' his father called after him.
Ranulf looked up.
Under his raised visor, Ulbert's face was smeared with dirt and blood. He wore a graver expression than his son had ever seen. 'Politeness costs nothing. Insolence may cost us a lot.'
Ranulf nodded and continued down.
In the bailey, it was difficult to work out just how many men lay dead amid the piles of broken masonry. Several of them had been dashed to pieces, their constituent parts mingled in a macabre puzzle of butchered bone and bloody tissue. Father Benan was present. He wore his purple stole and stood with hands joined in the midst of this gruesome tableau. When he heard Ranulf's footsteps, his eyes snapped open. They were wide, rabbit-like; his cheeks were wan with shock, his brow dirty and moist.
'I'd move out of this place,' Ranulf said. 'There's more where this came from.'
'When… when we first arrived,' Benan stuttered, 'I offered to hear all the men's confessions. But the earl said it wasn't necessary. That we wouldn't be attacked.'
'The earl is not always right. It's a pity it's taken us so long to realise that.'
'Dear God!' Benan's eyes were suddenly brimming. 'To serve Earl Corotocus and die unshriven? That's not a fate I'd wish on anyone.'
Ranulf didn't like to dwell on such things. He couldn't remember the last time he himself had taken confession. 'I'm for the Constable's Tower, Father. You should come with me. You're in danger here.'
There was a colossal boom as another missile struck the wall behind them. An entire tier of scaffolding fell spectacularly. With a shriek, a man-at-arms fell with it. Benan flinched, but shook his head.
'I must offer a requiem.'
'For these scraps of meat?'
'Their souls may yet be saved.'
'Father, there are other souls in this castle who could use your prayers. And they still live.'
'Go to them. I will join you anon.'
Ranulf turned and jogged away up the bailey, though in his full mail it was hot, hard work. He again had to make his way through the Barbican and the Gatehouse, from the tops of which, respectively, Carew's Welsh malcontents and Garbofasse's mercenaries were watching the massed force on the western bluff with a mixture of fear and awe. These two groups in particular faced a dire consequence if taken alive, and the prospect of either that or death suddenly seemed significantly closer than it had done a couple of hours ago.
Ranulf hurried back along the Causeway. By the time he'd climbed to the top of the Constable's Tower, he was streaming sweat and blowing hard. Fresh blood trickled from a slash on his brow. Earl Corotocus was at the south battlements, with various of his lieutenants around him. The rest of his household stood further back, their
