They resented their boys being taken to be archers. And perhaps resented-
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 –
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
