When the Saints (9 page)

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 Kent still hd, 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 Kingght. 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 began to slide sideways. One leg had failed, as he had commanded. The top caught in a crenel, so the whole structure twisted and slammed into the other. Both ladders went then, with their human cargoes shrieking in terror and despair. Some who were low enough would fall to the road and crush other men, but most would be hurled over the edge, down to the banks of the Ruzena far below.

Madlenka and her helpers were on the wall near the barbican, loading a wounded man on a stretcher for transport back to the keep. There they had been within range of arrows, but there would not be many arrows coming now. At the south barbican, Anton was just stepping out the sally port, following Bishop Ugne.

Everybody on the roof was up on the parapet, peering through merlons and even over crenels, cheering and jeering as they watched the Wends crash to destruction. No one was watching Wulf. The battle at the north gate was won for today. It was time to go and attend to the other foe. Busy morning.

Wulf unbuckled his belt, dropped it, sword and all, and went to attend the parley.

CHAPTER
6

He did not break the first commandment, because he emerged from limbo directly behind Anton just as the sally port thumped shut at his back. The door itself would have hidden his mysterious materialization from the men inside, and the slight overhang of the arch from any watchers on the walls.

The new outpost Vlad had ordered, a hundred yards down the road at the first bend, comprised a timber breastwork and some blindings to conceal his archers while they reloaded. Those would also prevent the enemy from knowing how many men opposed them, which at present was no more than a dozen. The outpost, in short, was a sham, but the Jorgarian flag flew above it, beside the pennant of the new count of Cardice. If Havel Vranov tried to force his way past, he would be making war on his king. He must not be allowed to see behind the blindings, so the parley would have to take place on the far side of it, in no-man’s-land. Bearing a white flag, Arturas led the way down the slushy trail, with count and bishop following, and the gate-crashing Speaker in the rear.

Wulf poked Anton in the back, under his corselet.

Anton warped around and gave him a what-are-you-doing-here glare.

Wulf returned a knowing, you-need-me smirk. After eighteen years’ practice in dealing with each other in war and peace, the brothers needed few words to communicate. Anton pulled a face and returned to attendance on the bishop.

Ugne was not an especially short man, but he appeared so next to Anton. His conspicuous belly and flat-footed waddle made his legs seem short, though, and perhaps they were. He had a very prominent curved nose. Madlenka said that he looked like a parrot, but today he was enveloped in a robe of snowy ermine with a red miter. Wulf decided he was more o Nht="0 thaf a cockatoo.

“Bishop Starsi is a most holy man,” he proclaimed. “His health has been causing concern of late and it is a measure of his dedicated service to the Prince of Peace that he has made the arduous journey over these hills to participate in this holy discourse.”

“I am not yet familiar with the limits of my own fief, my lord bishop,” Anton said. “I do not even know how far away Pelrelm is.”

“Oh, a day’s ride or less to the border. But Pelrelm is much larger than Cardice, and mountainous. The bishop’s see is in Woda, three days’ hard riding away from here in summer, and more in these conditions.”

They should let the holy man make an early start on his homeward journey, Wulf thought. But this was Friday, and on Sunday Anton had arrived in his new domain and thrown the conspiring Havel Vranov out on his ear. There should not have been time since then for him to ride home to Woda and rout the bishop out of bed to come and negotiate a parley. Havel himself certainly dabbled in Satanism, but was his bishop one of the Wise?

The garrison on the redoubt saluted as the dignitaries arrived. They had already opened a gap in the breastwork, so Arturas led the way through and the others followed. Wulf grinned at a couple of faces he recognized from the banquet and took note of them as people whose eyes he might want to borrow in the near future—especially Master Sergeant Jachym, who was currently in command of this suicide squad.

Less traveled, the snow beyond the outpost was less slushy. A few more yards of it brought Wulf to his first view of what lay around the bend. The road descended more steeply down the side of a V notch in the cliff, which it crossed on a trestle bridge. If Anton had shown some foresight, he could have stripped the deck off of it days ago and given himself a better first line of defense.

Havel’s armed escort of at least two hundred mounted men-at-arms and archers was already on the Castle Gallant side of the bridge, drawn up in rows. The Hound and four companions were closer, still on horseback. Apart from the count himself, there was a portly herald in a tabard, a crozier-carrying bishop in miter and vestments, a man in armor, and a boy on a pony. They now began to dismount, with the herald and the man-at-arms assisting the bishop, and the boy taking charge of the horses.

The groups met halfway. The heralds proclaimed a parley. The two bishops exchanged the kiss of peace and blessed the proceedings. The wind was damned cold.
Madlenka was up on the roof of the north barbican, bandaging a wounded boy. Idiot woman! A few Wend arrows were still falling.

Starsi was elderly, with the spare, parchment face of an invalid. He was taller than the tubby Ugne, but sorely bent; the bony hand clutching his crozier trembled constantly. He ought to be home in bed, not out here on a mountain trail in winter.

Ugne presented Count Magnus. Anton kissed Starsi’s ring.

Unnecessarily, Starsi introduced Havel Vranov to Ugne. Wulf had not previously set eyes—his own eyes—on the notorious Hound, but he had stolen Looks at him through others’. He was a heavyset man of middle years, wearing a salt-and-pepper beard that made him seem older than he probably was. His nose was generous and aquiline, although not on the same Alpine scale as Ugne’s, and he had a slight limp.

That should have been that for introductions, for attendants did not matter. The man-at-arms was a squire, taller than anyone else there, other than Anton, of course. Although his helmet obscured most of his face, it revealed enough of his chin to show that he was still quite young, not yet fully matured into his height. His nimbus reflected beautifully in his highly polished helmet and cuirass.