Part 102 (1/2)
The roof and beams cramped her. Ash stuck the shaft of her poleaxe forward past Euen as he recovered his balance. She hooked the curved back edge of the blade behind the second man's knee. Bracing both feet, she yanked.
The razor edge of the axe hooked the man's knee forward, his mouth opening in a scream as the cut hamstrung him. He went over, on to his back, crumpling against the front wall of the brattice. Euen Huw stabbed with his sword, up between the legs, under his hauberk, into his groin.
The first man struggled upright, on to one knee, his other leg jutting at a twisted angle. Too close. Ash dropped the axe, grabbed her dagger out of its scabbard with her right hand, and threw herself down on to his back.
She wrapped her forearm around his helmet, twisted his head around, and slammed the blade down into his eye-socket, straight into the brain.
Despite helmet, despite blood and the scream and the disfigurement of his face, she had a moment to recognise the man. Bartolomey St John - Joscelyn's second - I know him!
Knew him.
Anselm bellowed something. Two or three dozen men in Lion livery piled over the battlements into the brattice, iron cook-pots manoeuvred gingerly between them on bill-shafts. The first two tipped their cauldrons, and a white mist of steam hissed up: boiling water spilling through the gaps and planks alike. More men: Henri Brant and Wat Rodway heaving a cauldron between them, laughing under the clamour, tipping hot sand down through the nearest opening- A yard under Ash's feet, men screamed, shrieked; there was the recognisable crack of a siege ladder shattering under panicking men's weights. Screams diminis.h.i.+ng, bodies falling into the bright air.
”s.h.i.+t, boss, that was close!” Euen bellowed, mouth at her ear, one hand reached out absently to pull her to her feet.
Ash grabbed the axe with her free hand, hauling it out from under Bartolomey St John's dead body. Her hands were, she realised, shaking; with the same uncontrollable tremor that one has when badly injured. But nothing's touched me: the blood isn't mine!
She lifted her head, couldn't see Anselm, could hear him and her sergeants yelling orders back on the battlements - he's done it, we're holding!
”Euen, send a runner! The Byward Tower, now. What the f.u.c.k are the Burgundians doing up there? We need covering fire! They've got no business letting these guys get anywhere near the foot of this wall!”
One of Euen's squires pelted off down the brattice, regained the battlements, and vanished in the direction of the nearest tower. Can we cover it still, from the Byward Tower to the White Tower?
Ash ducked back, and stepped off the h.o.a.rdings on to the walls. Only the backs of men visible, now; a hundred or so here: blue-and-yellow Lion livery for the most part; a couple of Burgundian red Xs. Further along, where the brattices had been on fire, and chopped away because of that, she saw swords, axes; men hooking bills over the tops of ladders - no time for anything subtle: slam them into position along the battlements and tip down everything available on the scaling ladders below.
Robert Anselm jogged up in a clatter of armour and hard breathing. ”I've sent my lance to the tower to kick some sense into the Burgundian missile troops!”
”Good! We got 'em turned round here, Roberto!”
Something bright and burning dropped out of the sky, with the whistle of flames fanned by the wind.
The stench of it warned her.
”Greek Fire!”
Oh, sweet Jesu, they will fire on their own men if it means getting us too, they just don't care!
She threw herself back across the battlements to the inside of the wall, hauling Anselm with her, yelling orders: ”Back! Off the walls! Away from the walls! ”
Fire hit and splashed.
Inside a second, the nearer brattices burst into flame. She saw the flaming greasy liquid splash and spread. One high voice shrieked. No use to call for water- ”Cut the h.o.a.rdings free!” she ordered, swinging her axe up and over, chopping down at the supporting beams, and she stood back as the men of three more lances took over.
The shrieking figure rolled on the stone battlements, Greek Fire clinging, a stench of burning coming from blackened skin. Ash recognised red hose and brown padded jack, and the frizzled hair under the melting steel of her sailer. Ludmilla Rostovnaya, half her torso and one arm coated in gelatinous, burning fire.
Anselm yelled, ”Thomas Tydder!”
The boy and the rest of his fire detail rushed up along the wall, doused leather buckets of sand over the screaming woman, sc.r.a.ping the stuff away. Ash glimpsed their hands going red in the process.
”Stand aside!” Floria del Guiz sprinted past her with a stretcher team.
The brattice creaked, tilted; gave way with a rush. Flaming wood collapsed out into the empty air.
Ash moved forward to the wall. Below, she saw siege ladders tipping back, screaming men falling from them. Bodies in twenties and thirties plummeted to the broken ground at the foot of the city wall. Visigoth slaves - without armour, without weapons - ran about on the escarpment, darting forward, lifting and carrying men with broken limbs.
As she watched, one pale-haired slave fell with a bolt in him. A few yards away, a soldier wearing the Crescent Moon knelt down beside another trooper who writhed with a broken back, gave him the coup de grace with his dagger, and ran on, leaving the slave jerking and twitching and alive.
Ash looked up to the Byward Tower. Archers and crossbow troops surged past to the shuttered embrasures and arrow-loops; some of the Welsh longbowmen recklessly shooting over the merlons.
Another bolt of Greek Fire impacted, further down the wall.
Under her breath, Ash muttered, ”Come on. Take that machine out!”
She grabbed the edges of the battlements, staring out from the walls. Under the pale sun, four carved limbs of turning stone flashed white in the November day. Four carved marble cups, on stone beams, like the cups of a mangonel, revolved around a stone spindle. There wasn't a soldier or a slave within yards of it to wind it. Ash watched it moving, golem-like, of itself.
Stone chips exploded off it, under a hail of crossbow bolts.
A shrill voice from the Byward Tower yelled, ”Gotcha!”
As Ash watched, the bra.s.s-bound wheels of its carriage began to turn, and it swivelled away from the walls and back towards the Visigoth camp to reload. Blue flickers of fire still burned in the cups at the end of each of its four arms.
”We're holding!” Ash yelled at Anselm.
”Only just!” Ordering the sergeants back to the wall, Robert Anselm broke off to add: ”They got the ram going against the main gate! This is just a diversion!”
”Yeah, I could've guessed that!” Ash wiped her mouth, took her hand away b.l.o.o.d.y. ”Are they holding the gate?”
”Up till now!”
Breathless, Ash could only nod.
”Motherf.u.c.kers!” Robert Anselm narrowed his eyes against the light. ”'Ere they come again. Auxiliaries and mercenaries again. Wait till they f.u.c.king mean it.”
Aware now that her chest was heaving to gain air, Ash s.n.a.t.c.hed a second to look out at the distant enemy camp. Three or four hundred men, ma.s.sing in preparation for the a.s.sault's success. ”No eagles!”
Robert Anselm tilted his sallet down, against the sun that showed the dirt and stubble on his face. ”Not yet!”
Another stone machine edged forward out of the makes.h.i.+ft vast city that is the Visigoth camp. Ash watched. The cups were loaded: fragile clay pots with fuses already lit, s.h.i.+mmering with heat.
”Look at that! They're not supporting that engine. Robert, send to de la Marche, tell him to sally out and take out those b.l.o.o.d.y engines! Tell him if he won't, we'll be happy to!”
As Anselm signalled a runner, Ash narrowed her eyes in the sunlight. Below, the ground before the walls was strewn with the dead, already; in what must be the first fifteen minutes of fighting. The moat was full of bodies, moving feebly, or still and broken, bleeding on to the f.a.ggots and mud and shattered rock.
Two or three riderless horses wandered aimlessly. Carts with pavises mounted on them, slave-hauled, began to recover enemy wounded.
And this wasn't even an attack. A feint. Just so they can get the ram or the saps up to the north-west gate.
It isn't what we can see. It's what we can't see.