Anvil of God

by J. Boyce Gleason

  “Or you can continue to play mayor and put yourself between Carloman and the city. They have six thousand soldiers. They will come at you in wave after wave using their numbers to overwhelm your defense. And when they succeed—” Heden’s eyes focused on a distant point, seeing the assault with his inner eye. “The men who claw their way through a breach won’t just take the city. They will rape it. And don’t think they will stop with the women.” Heden looked at Gripho. “Boys are just as prized.”

  Gripho wrested his arm away from Heden and moved to walk away.

  “Most nobles in this situation abdicate,” Heden said. “They give up rather than unleash such a torrent of violence.”

  “I won’t give up.” Gripho spat, turning his back to Heden.

  “Stay out of my way, Gripho,” Heden said. “Your stupidity has already led to Petr’s capture. I think that’s enough.”

  Gripho stalked away only after making the most obscene gesture he could remember. He stormed up the first street he passed and turned at the first corner. He stopped to hear Heden giving orders back at the wall.

  “The mayor has agreed to let me handle the defense of the city,” Heden said in a voice that projected to all those working on the wall. A collective chuckle answered him. “I want the gap reinforced with stone and timber. Inside the gap, I want a narrow gauntlet built using pikes and timber. That will be our first fallback position. We will make an interior wall to surround the gauntlet tonight and put a catwalk with defensive positions for the archers. That will be our second line. By tomorrow, I want this area inside the wall to be a killing field.” Heden looked up at the rampart walls. “They will mount parallel attacks there,” he pointed, “and there. I want pikes, arrows, and soldiers in position by daybreak.”

  Gripho stood with his back against the wall, raging at his own impotence. He hated that the Thuringian was right about him. But he didn’t know what to do. He wasn’t going to let Heden humiliate him in front of the men. A pox on him, but he will pay, Gripho thought. He will pay.

  ***

  Carloman stood on the catwalk just above the northern gate of his siege-wall. Drogo stood beside him holding his banner. It fluttered lazily in the southern breeze that swept up the hillside. The sun’s early morning light glanced off their armor with a glint that could be seen for miles.

  Gripho had been foolish to lead that boy into the night. What value could he have been to such a mission? But as a captive, he had great worth. Carloman had yet to determine what price Heden would pay for his son. But it would cost the Thuringian dearly. So far, Carloman had refused all attempts to parlay for the boy. If not for Heden, Carloman would have already taken the city, and Gripho would be in chains. Heden would pay. The only question was how.

  Carloman surveyed the gap in the wall and watched his trebuchets systematically widen it. The gap in the wall formed a crude V, with stones on either side creating a river of rock outside the city. Climbing that river up to the breach would be the challenge. It was a steep climb, the height of three men. It would be grim work. Many would die trying it.

  Inside the city, hundreds of people had gathered on the ramparts. They stood two and three deep, peering out over the wall. They are waiting for me, Carloman thought. He, in turn, was waiting for the bulk of his six thousand men to ascend the steep, winding road up to the city.

  Given the narrowness of the road, the men marched in units of five across and ten deep. Every man in every row stepped in time to a military drum, their knees rising and falling as they ascended the mount. On every fourth step, their fists slapped their chest plates in unison. On every twelfth, they shouted “Huh-yah!” The sound of it echoed off the hillside and rolled over the flat landscape behind them.

  Their progress had been steady since daybreak. Over a thousand men were in position behind the siege gate awaiting his orders. A second thousand were well on their way, and already there was little room left on the hill behind the siege wall. Carloman would have to attack soon, if for no other reason than that they were running out of space.

  “Father?”

  “No, Drogo,” Carloman said. “You cannot lead the attack on the breach.” He smiled. Drogo’s company was the only comfort he had found since his visit with Boniface.

  “It is the battle’s greatest honor.”

  “Only because so few survive it.”

  “You did.”

  “I was much older than you.”

  “Will we be part of the attack?”

  “At the right time, son.”

  “When will that be?”

  “The battle will tell us.”

  Three of Carloman’s Knights in Christ rode up to the gate. They dismounted and fell to one knee before Carloman. As a father would a child, Carloman made the sign of the cross with his thumb on the forehead of each. They rose to their feet.

  “Drogo, these are the knights who will lead the assault on the breach. May I present to you Rhinehart, Jolin, and Friedrich of Austrasia.” The men bowed deeply, and Drogo returned the gesture.

  “I bid you strength and valor to overcome our enemies,” Drogo said.

  “For the glory of God!” Rhinehart raised his sword in salute.

  “Huh-yah,” echoed his companions.

  Carloman reached into his pocket and handed Drogo three small, red, triangular pennants. Each had Carloman’s cross and fleur-de-lis. He nodded for Drogo to give them to the knights.

  “Take these tokens with you into battle,” Carloman said. “May they bring awe from your enemies and honor from our men. They are symbols of the highest bravery; you will be honored to the end of your days.” The knights fastened the pennants to their chain mail just above the left breast. Carloman made the sign of the cross. “In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.”

  “Amen,” the three said. They rose, bowed to Carloman and Drogo, and took their places at the gate. Behind them, more than a thousand knights were arrayed. Some carried ladders. Many carried pikes. Most carried swords and shields. They jostled restlessly, crowded behind the gate.

  Carloman faced them, his armor shining in the sunlight. He raised his sword high above his head. A shout rose from those nearest the gate and was picked up by the men behind them. Soon, score upon score lent their voices until the whole army had joined in the visceral roar. They banged their shields and slammed their breastplates. A rhythmic beat began to emerge from the cacophony. This sound overtook the shouting. Others joined in until the entire army seethed with the rhythm.

  At a signal from Carloman, Father Daniel, dressed in white, strode out onto the catwalk beside Carloman and Drogo. Silence took the ranks. The priest lifted his right hand, and the ranks closest to the wall dropped to one knee. Behind them, each successive unit knelt, creating a wave of obeisance before the Church’s representative.

  “In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost,” the priest intoned.

  “Amen,” echoed the ranks.

  The priest paused, waiting for attention. When he spoke, his voice resonated with a deep and clear timbre that projected far over the ranks of men.

  “Holy knights … God’s soldiers … Army of the Church! Today, you are the hand of God on earth. You carry His sword, His pike, and His lance. You bring righteous retribution to those who have desecrated His holy church.

  “Because you have faith, and because your purpose is just, when you pass through these gates, you will be absolved of all sin. Should you fall today bringing justice to the pagan, you will sit at the Lord’s right hand. You will have a place at His table.

  “But many of you will not fall. Many of you will survive the fury the pagans will unleash. Many of you will cross the breach and overcome the wall to bring God’s justice.

  “I beg you, do not hesitate. Do not hold back your hand. Do not spare the pagan from your wrath. Let none who stand before you rise again to offend His name. Let none who harbor them live to sin again. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.” He mad
e the sign of the cross with large sweeps of his right hand.

  “Amen,” chorused the troops.

  Carloman raised his sword high in the air.

  “Austrasia!” he shouted.

  “Austrasia!” they returned.

  As the gate opened, horns blared, and Rhinehart, Jolin, and Friedrich of Austrasia ran onto the battlefield, leading a thousand soldiers toward the breach.

  ***

  Dressed in a blue robe, Sunni stood next to Heden high on the wall so both armies could see her. She would not cower in her room while brave men fought and died for her son. In truth, she dreaded this moment. She had hoped to avoid its unnecessary bloodshed, but Carloman had forced her hand. She would not turn away from Gripho’s destiny.

  Despite the early hour, the sun beat down on her like a blunt instrument, assaulting her before the day’s battle even started. Making matters worse, the dust from Carloman’s assembling army billowed through the morning air, making it difficult to see and breathe.

  She stiffened as a thousand voices roared from the other side of the shield wall. A horn blared, the gate swung open, and a torrent of men swarmed onto the battlefield, racing toward them in an incoherent rage. Sunni blanched at the sheer menace of it. Instinctively, her hand found Heden’s arm.

  They streamed toward the wall, stumbling into and over the trenches and barricades Heden had placed in their path. The city’s archers had little trouble finding their target. Sheets of arrows flew from the wall, striking with a staccato sound that thrummed along the phalanx of soldiers. Scores fell under the barrage.

  The attackers advanced until the next flight of arrows was launched. At a barked command, the soldiers slowed and crouched under their shields until the arrows hit and then resumed their mad dash when the sound had passed. They advanced and retrenched, advanced and retrenched, in a ragged dance with the arrows across the battlefield. To Sunni, they seemed to rise and fall like a morning tide.

  As Carloman’s army drew close, three concerted assaults began to take shape. The main body struck for the breach while two flanking attacks moved to scale the wall with ladders to the east and west of it. The city’s defenders rained rock and stone down upon them. The rock-throwers wreaked havoc, slicing through the ranks of men in ghastly swaths of destruction.

  Heden’s men were particularly successful in keeping the ladders from the city walls, but less so in stopping the attack at the breach. At the forefront, one man led the army into the gap of the wall. He shifted his shield onto his back to free his hands and scaled the boulders before it like a goat. A rock knocked him off balance, and he fell. Then he was up again, pulling himself forward. A dozen men behind him scrambled up to keep pace, shouting, “Austrasia! Austrasia!”

  Burning pitch fell on them, and their screams filled the air. The charge, however, had brought its own momentum. Soldiers scrambled over their fallen comrades and advanced through the wall into the city.

  Sunni turned her attention inside the rampart. Heden had set up a shield wall inside the breach, trapping their attackers at the wall. With no time to form a wall of their own, Carloman’s men were being cut down like wheat before a scythe.

  With a guttural roar, a handful of men charged. One knocked aside a pike, swept his sword upward, and in a continuous motion leapt high above the shield in front of him. His sword slashed down, splitting the defender’s head from the back of his skull.

  Falling forward, he rolled over the dead defender and stood up behind the shield wall. Without hesitation, he began to hamstring the line’s shield holders.

  “To me! To me!” He pushed forward, his sword killing in fluid circular blows as he moved from foe to foe. The line was breaking. A handful of men appeared at his side, and he led them deeper inside the wall. The way now open, Carloman’s men poured deeper into the city.

  A dozen paces in, they saw the trap. Heden had erected a gauntlet inside the breach, with newly erected ramparts above it. His archers had Carloman’s men at close range.

  They raised their shields to fend off the arrows, but it was too much. They fell in droves, slaughtered before the battle was an hour old.

  ***

  Heden pushed thoughts of Petr roughly aside. He couldn’t afford to be distracted.

  “More arrows! More arrows!” he shouted above the din. As the attack pressed up into the breach, the city’s archers could not sustain their barrage at those newly entering the battlefield. The focus of the battle moved closer and closer to the city, and more of Carloman’s men crossed the battlefield untouched.

  It bode ill that Carloman refused to parlay over the boy. What could be gained by keeping his son captive? He was a child! Heden thought of Petr, bound and alone, crying into the darkness. He wanted to howl in frustration.

  “Shields left! Shields left!”

  The shield walls had held against the initial rush, but the bulk of Carloman’s attack was still to come. As the sun climbed higher in the sky, the sheer weight of Carloman’s army bore down on the city’s defenders. Ladders scaled the city walls, and pockets of invaders grew on the ramparts. The main body pushed its way through the breach, forcing Heden’s men to retreat to his first fallback position.

  Carloman’s men streamed into the gauntlet of pikes and wood trusses that Heden had built and met a new wave of death. They surged at the wall, their voices rallying in wave after wave of battle cries and screams. Hundreds came, and hundreds died under the barrage of arrows, rocks, and burning pitch that Heden and his men poured down into the gauntlet. The slaughter was merciless, the onslaught relentless. Death followed death that followed death.

  Heden’s hands itched for action. Now, at last, it had come. He ordered a surge to beat back the Franks on the ramparts and left to join the reserves. He found Gripho with them at the gate, holding his horse at the ready. Heden signaled for the gate to open and led over one hundred cavalryman into the field. They waded into the Franks, their blades descending in rhythmic butchery. Their sortie cut through the main body of Carloman’s attack, leaving those in the breach cut off from support and fighting on two fronts.

  Gripho led a separate mission to strip the wall of ladders. Heden waited until the walls were denuded before ordering the cavalry back to the gate. The maneuver cost him twenty men but bought precious time for the wall’s defenders to regroup. Once inside, Heden sprinted back to the ramparts to survey his defenses. Carloman was sending more men than Heden had expected. The fighting was more intense, and the losses were higher. His men were being strained to their limits. Heden repositioned some of his reserves along the rampart to fill in the gaps on the wall and ordered new supplies of arrows and rock to be carried up to the catwalk.

  By Heden’s count, Carloman must have already lost almost a thousand men, a heavy toll for any army. But Carloman had plenty more in reserve. Heden heard a shout from the rampart and looked out over the wall. Fresh troops had entered the field. Carloman was starting over. He hadn’t even bothered to change his battle plan.

  Heden shuddered at Carloman’s detachment. No cost seemed too dear for the man. He tried not to think of Petr, but new fears and fury bloomed inside him.

  “Here they come!” he shouted. Ladders rushed to the east and west walls as the main phalanx drove again toward the breach. Heden grabbed a pike and headed toward the Frankish ladders. His rage had found another outlet.

  ***

  From across the field, Carloman surveyed the approach to the breach. The river of rock had become a river of corpses. The dead lay in waves across the field, grotesquely disfigured by the burning pitch or descending rocks. Some were still alive, pierced with arrows and screaming in pain for help or the chance to end their torment. The ground was thick with blood. Carloman shook his head and dabbed the trickling mucus from his nose. He had lost nearly a third of his army.

  He received reports of a gauntlet set inside the walls of the breach. If Heden had one fallback position, he was likely to have a second. The Thuringian was clever. He had be
en prepared. The cavalry sortie had bought the city time and cost Carloman hundreds of men. But the tactic would only work once. Carloman had sent for his own cavalry units to be brought up the hill. If Heden tried it again, Carloman would isolate the Thuringian on the battlefield and take him hostage.

  The sun was setting over the western horizon. In the morning, Carloman would direct greater numbers of men to the ladders. He had to overwhelm those manning the city’s ramparts. At the very least, he had to distract them. Otherwise, getting through the breach would be too costly. Too many men were dying.

  “In the morning, Father?”

  “No, Drogo. I told you I would let you know.” For the first time since he had left Paris, Carloman wondered whether he had enough men to take the city.

  ***

  Heden heard the horns. Carloman’s army withdrew from the field. His men cheered, but he had trouble sharing it. Petr was still a captive. Looking down into the breach from the forward rampart, he was appalled by the slaughter they had committed that day.

  His wound had reopened. Exhausted, Heden leaned against the wall for support, waiting for the reports to be brought to him. The scaffolding of the gauntlet had been burned. Casualties were high, supplies low. They would not survive another day like this, he thought. Carloman had too many men.

  Heden called for his head engineer. It was dark by the time the small, wiry man made his way up to the rampart. Torches lit his way. Heden could see that the man, too, had been wounded; the engineer’s bandaged left arm hung useless by his side.

  The engineer nodded in greeting, exhaustion plain on his face.

  “We held,” Heden said.

  “Today.”

  “Can you fix the gauntlet?”

  The engineer shook his head. “I’m surprised this rampart still holds. Their catapults did a lot of damage.”

  “What if we collapsed what’s left of the rampart into the breach?” Heden asked.

  The man looked from the rampart down into the breach and back to the wall. He descended one flight of stairs to the level below and returned several minutes later. A smile took the corner of his mouth. “Might be able to do that,” he said.