lifting the building stone without damage to toes or fingers and then inserted himself in the line of porters heading into the barbican, where progress slowed to a crawl.
Now he could let his mind roam to the south barbican. Anton was standing just inside the sally port, talking with Arturas, the herald. A few men-at-arms were lurking nearby and nobody seemed to be unduly alarmed.
“… cardinal warned me that I might find myself between the dogs and the wolves.”
Arturas laughed and the eavesdroppers exchanged proud smiles.
Of course they would be impressed to hear that their count was on joking terms with the king’s first minister, which was what Anton had intended. The story would be all over town by nightfall. Arturas was a short, nondescript, clerical sort of man in his late twenties, rarely seen without a diffident smile. Today he was wearing a formal herald’s tabard, which meant that Anton’s sudden summons to the south gate had been a call to a parley. Count Pelrelm must have sent up a flag of truce, as required by the Church’s laws of war. Anton was not as experienced in wrangling as Otto or even Vlad, but he was glib of tongue and fast of wit. He had thrown Havel out of the cathedral on Sunday and the great hall yesterday, and would not be easily fooled. If Havel wanted to talk now, it was probably because his bishop had insisted. The Church always tried to arrange a negotiated settlement before a battle. And one would get you ten that the present delay was because the Cardicians were waiting on Bishop Ugne to complete their team.
“One Speaker is defense,” Justina had said. Havel would certainly have brought a Speaker along to defend him against tweaking, assuming he had found one to replace Vilhelmas. The boy Leonas lacked the wits to undertake that sort of task. So Wulf’s place was at his brother’s side. He must quickly do whatever he could at the north gate and get to the parley before the dirty work began.
Madlenka and her helpers were almost at the battle scene. She would be exposed to stray arrows out there on the wall, but she would insist on doing her duty as she saw it. He could do nothing to stop her, short of transporting her to Portugal, Outremer, or the land of Prester John, and she would never forgive him if he did that.
The machine room was less dangerous, with the defenders there enjoying better protection behind the narrow loopholes than the men exposed on the wall. The trickle of bolts that came whistling in through the loopholes had a low trajectory, so that more of them struck the far wall than the ceiling-a real threat, but also a welcome source of replacement ammunition.
Now Wulf realized with dismay that the stone he carried was destined to go all the way to the roof of the tower, so he could not leave yet. He still had more stairs to climb: spiral staircases, narrow and steep, and the up traffic was waiting its turn. He directed his attention to Vla Kents td, who was still up there, supervising the fitting of ropes to the first trebuchet. He was ignoring the Wends, so Wulf could not Look to see what mischief they were up to, but an effort to burn down or undermine the gate was the most likely guess. Their archers were concentrating their shots on the tower roof, dropping a steady barrage of bolts on it. There were a lot of bodies lying there, some with more than one arrow stuck in them. Men were stripping off the lead sheeting, exposing the timber roof below… Why?
The waiting line lurched forward and Wulf began to walk again, aware that his hands and shoulders were cramping with the strain. No, he would not use his talent to cheat. Almost all of the other men were much older than he was, and most of them were smaller. He was not big as Magnuses went, but he had eaten well all his life, and few commoners enjoyed that luxury.
The staircases from the machine room to the attic, and the attic to the roof, were too narrow for teams to pass safely, so they were sent up in relays. That meant they were expected to go faster. Wulf was streaming sweat and gasping when he emerged into the icy wind, blinking at the sunlight. He had expected that the stone he had brought would contribute to the trebuchet counterweight, but he was directed to add it to a pile beside a merlon. There were other piles beside other merlons, apparently intended to be dropped on the attackers when they came close enough.
As he stepped back, a crossbow quarrel slammed into the lead of the floor right at his feet, making him jump. All in all, the defense had already lost two or three dozen men, more than it could afford, and four injured men sat curled up small beside the stair, waiting for help. Crossbow quarrels stuck up everywhere like hairs on a wart.
“You!” roared a sergeant-at-arms. “Back down!” He waved for Wulf to go to the stairs.
Wulf waved back politely and instead trotted over to the trebuchet, where Vlad and half a dozen men were loading rolled sheets of roofing lead into the counterweight cradle. Another four men were attempting to hold shields over them and also themselves, but Wulf doubted very much that a limewood shield would stop a bolt dropping from a great height. Vlad noticed his arrival and straightened up, angrily pushing two shields aside. “What do you want?”
Wondering if his brothers were starting to doubt his loyalty, Wulf said, “Victory for His Majesty and obliteration of the ungodly. You’ve done a fine job here, Big Man.” He patted the nearest upright. May your timbers stay strong and your ropes endure. May your aim be true and your blows decisive.
A bolt cracked into the wood not a finger length from his hand.
“Crazy young idiot!” Vlad bellowed. “This is no place for boys. Get yourself downstairs and do something useful.”
“I’ll go roast an ox for the victory feast,” Wulf said. He went off to the top of the stair, where the collection of wounded had already increased to six. Men lining up to go down were loading them on their backs. At that moment Wend bugles blew and everyone’s attention went to the battle. The massed attackers dropped their shields and revealed their attack: not battering rams or kegs of gunpowder, but ladders, two of them. Made of two tree trunks apiece, they were not only enormously long and heavy, they were rigged with ropes to raise them. The slow and deliberate approach had been designed to keep those ropes from becoming entangled. In an impressive display of training, the men divided into three groups. A center group steadied the base of the ladders, a group behind pushed them up with pikes and poles, and the group in front, by far the largest, ran forward with the ropes. Meanwhile the archers at the back worked their crossbows in a frenzy.
“Rocks!” Vlad roared. Men rushed to the battlements and began throwing out the building stones. Most of them fell short of their targets, and the supply would obviously run out in minutes. Wulf again silently cursed the late Count Bukovany.
Gradually the far ends of the ladders rose and the attackers’ main problem became the need to keep the bases from slipping. They had as many men attending to that as they had pulling on the ropes, and the defenders poured arrows into them. Higher yet, and now the haulers by the gate were clearly winning as the angle improved. First one ladder, then the other, reached the vertical and began to topple toward the barbican. As soon as that happened, would-be heroes began scrambling aboard.
The rain of rocks had stopped for lack of ammunition. There was still plenty of discarded timber lying around the roof, though. Full of rot or worms those balks might be, but every one of them was heavy enough to kill or maim the men it landed on. Wulf found himself swept up in a gang manhandling one of the largest to the edge and raising it to go over the crenels, which was no mean task. They were just in time. As it vanished towards the ground, the top of the first ladder came rushing down to the battlements. The second followed moments later. The tower trembled at the impact.
The Wends’ planning had been excellent. They had judged the length of the ladders and their distance from the gate perfectly, for they were neither too long nor too short, overtopping the coping stones by a useful three or four feet. Defenders jumped to try and push them aside with hands or pikes, but already Wends were swarming up the rungs, weighing them down. Other attackers were holding the ropes as guylines to keep them vertical.
Wulf clawed his way to the front and managed to scramble up over the massed men-at-arms until his fingers could touch the rough wood of a ladder. -Break! You were damaged in the impact. There is a weakness near the third rung from the bottom. When the men reach the top you will be overloaded.
A sword flashed, swinging at his hand, and he fell back, lost his footing, tipped off the parapet, and sprawled headlong on the deck below, narrowly avoiding impaling himself on a couple of the embedded bolts. He was dazed for a moment, but a rattle of crossbows snapped him awake. The defender archers were lined up, shooting at Wends mounting the ladders. So he had failed. The rungs were full, and the rails were holding their weight. His curse had not prevailed against whatever blessing the Wends’ Speakers had used. Archery stopped as the defenders ran out of ammunition, leaving them only Kinghateve swords and pikes to repel the assault.
Then came a great roar from a thousand throats, part wailing, part cheering. The ladder he had cursed
