Anvil of God

by J. Boyce Gleason

  But much to Gripho’s dismay, Heden didn’t attack. Instead, the old fart waited. Two days went by, and the Thuringian continued to let Carloman dig in unmolested. The dirt wall now stood three feet high and housed a labyrinth of fortification, walkways, storage facilities, platforms for the rock throwers, and arrows for the archers. Heden did nothing to stop the never-ending line of soldiers moving up and down the winding road from the plain below. The man was content to wait.

  Gripho was not.

  “When are we going to attack?” he asked on the third day. “You said yourself we need to attack before they’re ready. If we wait much more, they will be.” But Heden showed no interest in answering his question. Like Carloman and Pippin before him, Heden had dismissed Gripho’s concerns. Gripho even called the old fuck a coward, and Heden ignored him. The Thuringian simply pretended not to hear.

  On the fourth day, Gripho was first to the eastern wall. He could see the pulleys and winches lining the hillside and the mules and horses being driven downhill to bring the machines up. Progress was slow since the wheels of the trebuchets were small and solid. Progress was further hindered by the wide base the trebuchets needed for stability. But they were drawing close. By evening they would be in place.

  Gripho waited for Heden to climb up the steps to the rampart. “You waited too long, Heden. They’ve finally come,” Gripho said.

  “The catapults?” Heden’s eyes seemed to twinkle when he said the word.

  “Yes.”

  “How many?”

  “They’re bringing up three.”

  “How far up the ridge are they?

  “About a third of the way.”

  “Good boy. Send for the captains. We attack in the morning.”

  Gripho wanted to kill him.

  ***

  At dawn the next day, Heden led one hundred men on foot streaming through the city gate. They veered right and headed for the lowest part of the dirt wall. They marched quickstep in formation with shields on their arms. Some of the men carried torches. Others brought buckets of pitch. Shouts erupted from behind the dirt wall, and within seconds, archers and rock throwers appeared.

  “Shields!” Heden shouted from the front of the column.

  Without breaking stride, the soldiers raised their shields above their heads to form a metal and leather roof to deflect the falling arrows. Wooden missiles rose and fell but were too few in number to have much effect. Heden knew there would be more next time.

  A whooshing noise came from the wall, and a rock slammed into the side of the column, cutting one man in half and crushing the legs of several others. As the men went down, those behind them in formation stumbled over them, breaking their line.

  “Close up!” Heden shouted. More arrows fell. More rocks were thrown. More men went down. “Close up! Close up!”

  As they reached the low dirt wall, long wooden pikes shot out from behind it, skewering several in the front row in the groin and in the stomach. Soldiers behind the wall had rammed them forward trying to break the onrushing wall. The ploy had worked. The pikes gored many and hampered most. With their shields over their heads, Heden’s men had left their bodies vulnerable from below.

  “Forward!” Heden shouted. He batted away a pike and pulled men forward between the poles. “Over the wall!” he cried. He led them up over the short dirt wall, and they dropped into the trench behind it, using their shields as battering rams. They arose into hand-to-hand combat. With his shield to his left, Heden elbowed the soldier to his right in the face. A sharp pain sliced into his side. He hacked down on the man with his sword, and his blade caught flesh and bone. Throwing his shoulder behind his shield, he shoved left into the men clustered there, knocking several down. He kicked one in the groin and thrust his sword into the abdomen of the other. With a practiced motion, he slid his arm through the sling of his shield, and it slid onto his back. He drew his knife with his left hand.

  More men came from his left. He waded into them. Slicing through the eyes of the first with a backhanded slash, Heden thrust his sword past the man into the stomach of the next. He continued forward, struggling to maintain his feet on the blood-soaked wooden planks lining the trench. He twisted and slashed, moving from one opponent to the next. Suddenly, he was free. Looking back, he saw his men running through the trench toward him. Bodies from both armies littered the wooden walkway.

  “To me! To me!” Heden shouted, pounding his chest. He gathered the men behind the closed gate, forming them into two lines, and led them straight for the catapults. With a furious intensity, they cut a swath through late-arriving Frankish soldiers who ran into the attack rather than forming a defensive line. The mistake cost them their lives. They were slaughtered to a man.

  Nothing stood between Heden and the siege engines. He raced down the hill to the platforms that held two of the machines in place. The third was still being pulled up the hillside. Heden called for the pitch. Only two men who carried buckets remained. He signaled for them to be poured onto the two stationary machines. Within moments, the torches were applied, and the flames licked up the wooden shafts of the catapults.

  Rallying to defend them, a number of Carloman’s soldiers formed a line at the gate and began an organized advance. Seeing them, Heden threw his weight against the side of the burning catapults. Thirty hands joined his, and with a groan, they toppled the machine from its perch. It began to roll clumsily down the side of the hill. Within twenty paces, its wheels caught a rock and the behemoth flipped over, somersaulting toward the plain below. On its second flip, the machine broke apart and became a wave of fire sweeping down the hill.

  Seeing the battle line approaching, Heden knew he didn’t have enough time for the second catapult. The fire would have to suffice. He blew his horn—two short blasts followed by one long—and they ran down the hill deeper into the enemy’s territory. Carloman’s soldiers closed behind them, cutting off their escape. Ignoring the peril, Heden cut a path straight down the hill to the third catapult. While several men hacked at the thick cords with their blades, Heden formed a rear guard to protect them from the impending charge. He ordered the men into two lines, shield overlapping shield, to create a defensive wall across the road. Each man assumed a well-practiced position with his left shoulder behind his shield and his right foot behind his left. In the second row, each man positioned his shield in the gap between the two men before him, creating a wall behind the wall and fortifying the strength of their position.

  Carloman’s line slammed into them. Although Heden’s men gave way a step or two, they held. Shield against shield, the first rows of each line strained against each other, trying to force a break. Having the higher ground, Carloman’s line had the advantage.

  Heden blew his horn, one long blast. His men, with practiced skill, used their swords in a series of orchestrated thrusts into the faces and feet of their opponents. This was desperate work as it made the attacker vulnerable. Any exposure from behind the shield provided a target for the other line. While many of these blows proved futile because of the size of the shields, the wounds once inflicted were debilitating. Many men were blinded or crippled in the line. Carloman’s line responded with complementary skill, and the two lines locked in an orchestrated dance of furious deadly thrusts.

  Behind them, the last strand of the rope holding the catapult was severed, and the huge machine fell away. Its speed was startling. Within seconds, it was airborne and flipping down the steep slope. Pieces of the equipment flew in every direction. On the second bounce, the catapult exploded into a rolling heap of detritus. After a brief cheer, the men turned and threw themselves into support of their cohorts on the line.

  Heden again blew his horn. Two long blasts.

  Cavalry thundered from the gate of the city. Led by Gripho, they numbered more than forty. They made straight for the gate in Carloman’s dirt wall. Defenders of the makeshift rampart called for archers and set to launching the rock-throwers. They came to this late, however, since their
attention had been diverted by the fate of the falling catapults. Much to their surprise, their own gate opened before Gripho’s charge, letting the cavalry hurtle past their defenses.

  Heden’s line held.

  “Hurry, Gripho,” Heden whispered to himself.

  Gripho swept into the backs of the Frankish line. Even the men who had heard the attack coming had little chance to defend themselves. The cavalry waded into them, hacking downward with their swords, sinking their blades into the heads, necks, and shoulders of the foot soldiers before them. The cavalrymen were drenched in blood.

  With long elegant sweeps of his sword, Gripho severed Frankish heads from their shoulders. They seemed to float off their decapitated bodies as if they had never been joined. Gripho spurred from one to the next, laughing as one ghoulish ball after another hit the ground. Blood spewed upward from their wounds. It was slaughter. He and the cavalry kept at it until all the Frankish line was dead.

  Heden’s horn blew. Three long blasts. His remaining foot soldiers regrouped into formation, flanked by Gripho’s cavalry. They turned back to the gates. The cavalry rode ahead and swept behind the wall, forcing the archers to flee before them. The men on foot advanced through the makeshift gate and made for the city. The cavalry closed behind them. Several stray arrows harassed them back to the wall, but none did any damage. The last of the cavalry rode through the city’s gates, and its heavy wooden doors closed behind them.

  A crowd cheered them as they reentered the city. Gripho raised his sword in salute. When the crowd saw how few returned and how saturated they were with blood, they muted their enthusiasm. Of the hundred men on foot that had left the gate at dawn, fewer than twenty remained. None of the cavalry had been lost.

  Heden marched the men to their barracks and, with his duty complete, collapsed.

  ***

  “You’re too old for this,” Sunni chided him.

  “You knew that when you sent for me.” Heden groaned.

  He was in his bed. Sunni sat next to him, washing his body with a sponge. He had no idea how he had gotten there. He was weak and feverish. He watched Sunni bend to her task. The sponge was cool on his body. Her hands were gentle.

  “I wondered what it would take to get you into my bed,” he said with a wry smile.

  Sunni reached out to comb his hair with her fingers. Failing at this, her hand cupped his face and then came to rest on his chest, palm down. Her eyes were sad. She dunked the sponge in water and resumed washing away the grime from his body.

  “How bad is it?” he asked, somewhat alarmed.

  “Bad enough.” She lightly touched a bloodstained bandage on his right side. “You’ll live, but it will take some time to heal. I’ll have to sew it shut, of course.”

  “One of the doctors can—”

  “No,” she said. “I will do it.”

  She made him roll to his left so she could wash his back. She did this efficiently, examining every cut and hole in his skin. When she had completed his upper body, she pulled back the sheet and began to wash his lower body. She cleaned his genitals, moving them from side to side, and then worked her way down his legs to his feet. When she was through, she moved the sponge and water to a nearby table and returned with a needle and thread.

  “Are you ready?” she said.

  He nodded. Removing the bandage, she probed the wound with her fingers, looking for pieces of cloth or metal.

  “Did the blade stay in you?”

  “No.”

  “Did it break inside you?”

  He shook his head.

  “It looks pretty deep. I’ll do the best I can.”

  Blood was filling the cavity in Heden’s side. It brimmed over and began to run down his abdomen to his hip and then onto the bed. Heden watched Sunni maneuver the edges of the severed skin together until they matched and quickly sank her needle through the bottom layer of the skin and up through the top. Her hands moved with assurance, repeating the gesture until the skin had closed over the wound. Blood continued to seep through the stitches. She applied a new bandage to the site and wrapped it around his body to hold it in place.

  “Did we destroy the third trebuchet?” he asked her.

  “Yes,” she said without diverting her eyes from her task. “Their soldiers tried to put out the fire. But by the time they got there, it had been damaged beyond repair. The two you toppled down the hill, of course, are gone.”

  “There’s three more,” Heden said. “Carloman won’t be caught off guard again.”

  “How did you open their gates?” Sunni asked. “When Gripho took the cavalry out to cover your return, their gates flew open of their own accord. If not for that, you and your men would have been lost.”

  “Ah,” Heden said, reveling in his secret. “Once inside their trenches, we fought our way to the other side of their gate, then chased the trebuchets.” He stroked his long mustache. “Two of our men stayed behind at the gate, pretending to be dead. When Gripho needed the gates opened, they had a miraculous recovery.” He smiled up at her. She looked away.

  When she was done dressing his wound, Sunni went to get fresh linens. Rolling him first one way and then another, she replaced the wet and bloodied sheets on his bed. She took the soiled sheets from the room and left them outside his door.

  “I’m having some soup brought up to you,” she said, her eyes still avoiding him.

  “Sunni—”

  “You shouldn’t eat anything solid until your strength returns.”

  “Sunni,” he said, reaching up to take her hand.

  She looked at him then. Her eyes were brimming with tears. “Heden, what have I done? I have been so selfish. I wasn’t thinking of the cost.”

  He pulled her to him. She laid her head on his chest, and he felt her tears fall to his skin. Stroking her hair, he said, “Shhh, I’m right where I want to be.”

  Picking her head up to look into his face, she said, “This isn’t even your fight.”

  “It’s one of my choosing,” he said. “Besides, there are some things that are worthy of a fight.”

  She moved to kiss him on the forehead, but he caught her face in his hands and drew her to his mouth. Her lips hesitated at first and then gave in to his embrace. Their soft warmth enveloped his mouth, and he remembered the taste of her. Her warmth spread through him, flooding his extremities. Something happened to him then, something both physical and profound. He could only describe it as “relief.” It was as if a tremendous tension lifted from him, a burden removed. His body relaxed, and his blood sang.

  Sunni pulled back from him and looked into his eyes. She was smiling and crying at once. She stroked his face with her hand. “You are a lovely man,” she said. “I don’t deserve such a champion.”

  “I’ll not leave again,” he said.

  “I know,” she said. “You won’t have to.” Sitting up, she recovered her nurse’s voice and said, “You need rest. And I plan to see that you get it. Eat all the soup when it gets here, and I’ll check in on you later.” She stood to go and bent to pull the blanket up around his shoulders. As she tucked it under his arms, her eyes registered a large lump protruding from the lower end of his torso. She laughed and patted the lump affectionately before turning to leave.

  “Maybe you’re stronger than I thought,” she said.

  ***

  Pippin took his time though he knew it bothered Childebrand. Despite his uncle’s growing frustration, he refused to be hurried. They stopped in Loivre to see to the town’s reconstruction. Some of the young girls who had been taken had returned to their mothers’ care. Others had not survived. Bertrada checked on each of the women, leaving a silver denarius behind for every household. Pippin insisted that his men help build shelters for the village survivors. Although Bertrada relayed the news of Bradius’s capture and their administration of justice on those at the inn, most of the villagers only nodded numbly, as if the news held little meaning for them.

  When they regained the northern road
, Pippin continued his leisurely pace. They ate well, rested often, and enjoyed the bright sunshine that favored their journey. Each night, they stayed at a comfortable inn. Each morning, he dallied in bed with Bertrada, intent on savoring the last moments of the spell she had woven around him in Reims.

  “This is irresponsible,” Childebrand said, riding his warhorse alongside Pippin and Bertrada. His face was dark and angry. “You know Carloman is at Laon. You know the war has begun. And we’re wandering around while you dally here with your girlfriend! We’re at war, man. War!”

  Bertrada patted Pippin’s hand and said, “I should probably leave the two of you alone.”

  Childebrand looked from Pippin to her and back to Pippin, and then blushed. “I’m sorry, Bertie—”

  “No need, good sir,” she said and laughed. Raising her hand to shield his embarrassment, she pulled back on her reins to let the two men move ahead. “I shall retire willingly.”

  “I’m sorry, Pippin,” Childebrand grumbled, still flustered. Pippin, too, waved off his apology.

  “Why are you in such a hurry?” Pippin asked his uncle.

  “Have you not been listening?” Childebrand bellowed, regaining his outrage.

  “Yes, yes, I know. Carloman’s laying siege to Sunni and Gripho.” He paused. “But have you asked yourself, what are we going to do?”

  “We can’t do anything while we’re vacationing here in the country.”

  “True,” Pippin said. “But Carloman brought an army. He has six thousand men. We have less than twenty knights. He’s not going to listen to reason. He’s not going to leave. Sunni’s not going to give in. So what do we do?”

  “We take Carloman’s side,” Childebrand said.

  “We do?” Pippin asked. “Why?”

  “Because you can’t take Gripho’s! You heard the reports. The boy burned a church. He’s creating a pagan state. He’s a child! You and Carloman need to take control before the whole kingdom breaks into camps.”