“Get more men,” she said. “And bring half a dozen pikes.” The man saluted and ran to do her bidding, and she turned her attention to the stairway again. The dragging, scraping noise had started again, much closer this time. Then she saw what was causing it.
A rectangular wooden barrier, like a moveable wall, appeared in the stairway below the gap, being shoved forward by men behind it. It was made of boards nailed to a timber framework and it filled the space between the walls of the staircase. The men pushing and lifting it moved it at an angle so that it could advance up the stairs. It stood about a meter and a half high and there was an open space twenty centimeters high at the base. The men behind it were mostly hidden from sight, although from time to time a head would appear above the top of the barrier for a second or two.
Cassandra addressed the three remaining archers. “The minute you see someone, shoot him,” she said.
They all nodded. A head appeared above the barrier as its owner looked up to see what was happening above them. Instantly, an archer drew, aimed and released. But the head had disappeared again, and the arrow whizzed through empty space, then ricocheted off the stone wall below with a screech of metal on stone. She heard a curse from the man who had come so close to death.
She frowned. The wall would protect Dimon’s men from the arrows and spears of her troops. But it wouldn’t bridge the gap in the stairs. It was too short for that. She looked more closely, straining her eyes, and made out a pair of hinges in the barrier. Then she could see that there was a gate in the center, perhaps a meter wide. Obviously, once the barrier was in position, those behind it could open the gate—and what?
The barrier stopped a meter from the edge of the gap. On the right-hand side, one of the men pushing and shoving had grown careless. The top of his helmeted head was visible above the roughly constructed shield. The helmet made a poor target for her archers’ arrows. They would skid off harmlessly.
But her sling was a different matter. She loaded a shot into the pouch and began whirling the sling around her head. Stepping out in the open, she released. There was a resounding CLANG! as the lead shot hit the helmet and the man went down, staggering back and falling down the stairs with a mighty clatter. She heard a voice shouting urgently.
“Stay down, for pity’s sake! She’s got a sling!”
Nobody else showed themselves above the barrier. Then they heard more scraping and slithering, and a timber bridge about a meter wide began to slide forward from under the barrier, reaching out across the gap in the stairway.
“Push it back!” she ordered and her men moved forward, pikes in hand, to obey. But they were too late. The makeshift bridge reached the upper side of the gap and fell into place. She could see that there was a transverse beam nailed to the lower end. It was set against the edge of the stairs and held the bridge in position, no matter how hard they tried to push it back.
Merlon touched her arm. “Smoke, my lady!” he said. “I smell smoke!”
She sniffed the air. He was right. There was an oily smell of smoke drifting up from the lower stairs. She frowned. The steps were stone. They wouldn’t burn. So what was . . . ?
In answer, an object appeared, hurled over the top of the barrier, trailing a thin line of smoke and sailing across the gap to shatter on the steps above where she stood. Then another, and another.
They were round clay pots, she realized, and each one held a mixture of oil and pitch—and a lighted wick. As they shattered against the stone, the flame from their wicks ignited the flammable mixture inside and a cloud of noxious, dark smoke began to fill the stairway. Her men began coughing and she felt her own eyes tearing up.
“They’ll try to cross in the smoke!” she warned. “Be ready!”
She turned to Merlon, standing by her with one of the ineffectual pikes. Ineffectual against the replacement bridge, perhaps, but not against the men who might try to cross it.
“Get the door open!” she ordered. “We have to let the smoke out!”
Dimly, through her streaming, itching eyes, she saw the central gate in the barrier begin to open outward, the gap between the edges growing larger. She loaded another shot and began whirling the sling. Through a veil of tears, she saw a figure step into the gap and out onto the bridge. His upper body was covered by a shield, and he held a spear in his right hand.
40
Cassandra changed her aim point as the attacker advanced across the bridge. She whirled the sling one more time as he moved tentatively above the yawning gap, then released.
The shot slammed into his left knee with a sickening crack, smashing bone and tendons. The knee gave way beneath him and he slumped to one side, releasing his grip on the spear as he hung over the edge of the seven-story drop, scrabbling frantically at the rough wood to recover.
And failing.
With a horrible scream, he fell into the gap beside the makeshift bridge, plummeting down into the darkness, screaming all the way until they could hear a distant, ugly thump.
The scream was cut off.
The door in the barrier slammed shut once more. The next man in line had seen his comrade’s fate and wasn’t prepared to risk the crossing. Cassandra heard a raised voice shouting orders. Dimon, she realized.
“More smoke pots! Get more of the pots up here! If they can’t see us, they can’t shoot us!”
The smoke was clearing in the upper part of the stairway now, although the defenders’ eyes still smarted and ran with tears. The open door had created a draft to let the dense, choking clouds out.
There was a brief lull, and she heard feet running on the stairs below her. Presumably men were fetching more of the smoke pots.
Merlon pointed to the replacement bridge. “Could we maybe burn it, my lady?”
She considered the idea but shook her head. It was solid timber. “It would take too long to get it burning,” she said. “And I doubt they’d leave us in peace while we did it.” Some of Dimon’s men had bows, she knew. They might not be as skilled as her archers, but at close quarters like this, they could hardly miss.
There was a flash of flint on steel in the dimness on the other side of the barrier.
“They’re lighting the fuses,” she said. “Everyone get ready.” She removed her scarf and wrapped it round her nose and mouth. Turning to the youngest of the troopers standing ready, she pointed up the stairs.
“Fetch scarves and kerchiefs for everyone. And a bucket of water to soak them.” Wet scarves around their noses and mouths might help against the choking smoke, she thought.
He nodded and turned, running lightly up the stairs.
She heard Dimon issuing orders once more. “Don’t throw them so far! Try to lob them close to the end of the bridge.”
That would concentrate the smoke where they stood waiting, she realized, and create better cover for the men crossing the bridge. She loaded her sling again and let it dangle down beside her, swinging back and forth like a snake’s head as it prepared to strike.
The first of the clay pots sailed over the gap, hitting the stairway four steps above the bridge. Before it could ignite the oil and pitch inside, however, Merlon reached out with his pike and scooped it down the stairs, sending it tumbling into the gap. But his action came at a cost. Even as she began to congratulate him, he gave a gasp of pain and dropped the pike, clutching at his upper arm where a crossbow bolt had struck him. He sank awkwardly to the stairs. She reached out, grabbing his jerkin, and with the strength of desperation heaved him back into cover as another bolt ricocheted off the step behind him. He screamed in pain as she dragged him in, but managed to gasp his thanks, realizing she had saved his life.
“Think nothing of it,” she said. “We need you.”
Another smoke pot flew over the gap. This one went too high and smashed on the stairs above them. The resultant cloud of smoke billowed up, but someone had had the intelligence t
o open the doorway on the floor above them, and most of the smoke was sucked upward by the draft.
The young soldier had returned now with scarves and kerchiefs and a large bucket full of water. He began to distribute the wet cloths to the defenders, who wrapped them round their noses and mouths. He was just in time, as another two smoke pots crashed onto the steps. These were better aimed, and they hit the stonework level with Cassandra’s position. She hastily dipped her scarf into the bucket and retied it. The wet cloth filtered the smoke to a certain extent, but her eyes were still smarting and weeping, and she found it hard to see. One of the pots had deposited its load of oil and pitch only a few meters from her. The young trooper seized the bucket, still half full, and dumped the water onto the burning pitch, smothering the flames.
“Good thinking!” she croaked. Then she gestured upward to the doorway. “Get more water. Get a bucket chain going!”
He nodded, his own eyes red and weeping, and darted away to do her bidding.
The flames close by her had only been temporarily doused—more by the sheer impact of the water cutting off the air to them than by the extinguishing properties of the water itself. They flickered to life once more, feeding off the pitch, and began to generate more smoke.
Through streaming, reddened eyes, she saw the gate in the barrier opening again, and another enemy soldier advanced through it. At least, she thought, the bridge was so narrow it would permit only one man at a time to cross. But if any of them gained a foothold on this side of the gap, she and her men would be in trouble.
She whirled her sling and launched a shot at the man. But he was crouched low behind his shield and didn’t offer her a convenient target. The shot hit his shield with a vicious thud. He was stopped by the impact for a second. Then he continued to advance.
Two more smoke pots soared across the gap, shattering and adding their billowing fumes to the hellish scene in the stairwell.
Three arrows slammed into the man’s shield, and he stopped uncertainly. The narrow bridge didn’t provide the most stable footing, and crossing it in the current conditions, while being targeted by archers and with visibility uncertain, required enormous concentration.
“Step aside, my lady,” said a hoarse voice behind her. She turned and saw one of her men—a tall, broad-shouldered corporal, standing ready with a heavy spear. His eyes were fixed on the enemy soldier, now two-thirds of the way across the bridge, advancing slowly. Cassandra moved to one side to give him room. He took the spear back over his right shoulder, eyes still fixed on his target, and, stepping forward, made his cast.
The spear flashed through the dark smoke and bit deeply into the man’s lower leg. He let out a scream of pain and stopped, dropping to a crouch. He released his hold on his battleax and clutched at the wound in his leg. The heavy spear shaft dangled over the drop, unbalancing him and trying to drag him after it. He tried to pull the spear loose but couldn’t manage it. He was stuck, unable to stand again, swaying fearfully over the gap while arrows hissed round his ears and slammed into the timber bridge beneath him.
Holding his shield in front of him, he began to back clumsily away on the bridge, propelling himself with his free hand and his uninjured leg. His shield was now festooned with arrow shafts as the archers maintained a constant barrage on him. Crossbow bolts whirred across the gap in return, and Cassandra heard a shout of pain from the stairs above her as at least one found its mark.
A lucky shot, she thought. Visibility was as poor for the attackers as the defenders. The air over the bridge was relatively clear, kept so by the draft coming up the gap in the stairwell. But everywhere else, the fumes and smoke made it almost impossible to find a target.
The wounded man made it back to the safety of the lower edge of the gap and slumped back against the barrier’s closed gate. He still kept his shield in front of him, protecting himself from the steady rain of arrows that continued to thud into the wood-and-hide shield. Blood poured from the spear wound in his leg. An arrow hit him on his right arm, and he flinched and cried out. But his voice was weak, and Cassandra realized that loss of blood was weakening him.
Abruptly, the gate slammed open and several pairs of hands grabbed at him, dragging him back into safety, accompanied by another hail of arrows flashing through the open gate.
Cassandra studied the temporary bridge for several minutes, then flicked her gaze to the pike that Merlon had dropped. For the time being, both sides had stopped shooting, with no targets visible for either her archers or Dimon’s crossbow men.
Earlier, Cassandra and her men had tried to push the bridge back across the gap. But the transverse beam nailed in place a meter from its end locked against the lip of the stairs and kept it from moving.
But there was no similar beam at the upper end of the bridge, she realized. So there was nothing to stop them from pulling the timber structure up the stairs.
She turned to look behind her, coughing as an eddy of smoke whirled around her. The heavyset, tall soldier who had thrown the spear was still close by. He’d do admirably for what she had in mind, she thought. She beckoned him forward and, as he knelt beside her, gestured to the fallen pike on the steps.
The pike was a combination of different weapons. Mounted on a stout ash shaft two and a half meters long, it had an ax head on one side, a spear point at the top and a vicious spike opposite the ax head.
“See the pike?” she said. The man nodded, and she pointed to the bridge. “When I give the word, drive the spike into the timbers and drag the bridge up toward us. Understand?”
The man nodded, smiling, as he caught on to her idea. If he could haul the bridge up far enough, the bottom end of its two main beams would slip off the edge of the steps and the entire structure would plunge into the gap. He started to move forward, but she gripped his arm to stop him.
“Wait till we get some cover for you,” she said. Then, calling to the archers a few steps higher than she was, she gave her orders.
“Archers! Rapid shooting! Keep their heads down!”
Arrows started to fly across the gap once more in a steady stream. There were no visible targets, but the iron warheads screeched off the curved stone walls of the stairwell, striking sparks in the gloom as they did. Several arrows slammed into the wood of the barrier, but most skimmed over the top, ricocheting off the walls beyond, sometimes shattering the shafts and sending the razor-sharp broadheads spinning wildly through the air. They heard at least one hoarse yell of pain, which indicated that a broadhead had found a target. But the sudden arrow storm had the desired result. The attackers on the lower part of the stairway dropped to their bellies, hands over their heads, while the arrows hissed and spun and screeched among them.
She released her grip on the soldier’s muscular arm.
“Now!” she told him, and he lunged forward, gathering in the pike as he went. Then, from a kneeling position, he raised it over his head in a two-handed grip and brought it down with all his strength, driving the long spike into the timber planking of the bridge.
Once it was set, he gathered his feet under him and began to heave the bridge forward, slowly, a few centimeters at a time. As the attackers realized what was happening, she saw hands scrabbling desperately under the barrier, trying to seize hold of the bridge and stop it. She darted out into the open, grabbing hold of the soldier’s belt and adding her strength to his. Behind her, she felt someone else doing the same to her. She glanced over her shoulder and saw the young lad who had fetched the water.
“Heave!” she shouted. “Keep it moving!”
Under their combined strength, the long structure slid upward until its lower end slid off the step below them. Then it pitched up vertically and disappeared into the gap, taking the pike with it. The three of them released their grip and staggered backward on the stairs. For a moment, they listened to the clatter of the bridge falling into the darkness below, bouncing off walls, t
he noise gradually dying away.
The archers on the stairs gave a ragged cheer as Cassandra and her two companions dragged themselves back into cover.
Breathless, she sprawled on the stone steps with them, grinning triumphantly.
She shook her head angrily. So much for Dimon’s word. She had let him lull her into a feeling of false security, assuming he would hold off until the twenty-four-hour period—and the implied truce that went with it—were over. He had caught her napping, and his attempt had come close to succeeding. She realized that she couldn’t let her guard down again.
41
It was half an hour before sunup.
As was his custom, Horace leaned on the palisade above the gate, staring moodily down at the enemy camp below. The campfires that had burned through the night had died down now to glowing ashes. They twinkled in the predawn darkness, marking the lines of tents where the enemy slept. He knew there would be sentries awake, stationed around the perimeter of the camp, keeping an eye out for a possible attack.
As he was doing.
He felt a movement beside him and, glancing around, saw that Gilan had joined him in his study of the enemy.
“Morning,” said Horace.
Gilan grunted a reply, then said, “Thought I’d find you here.”
Horace smiled quietly. “Am I so predictable?”
“Well, you’re here most mornings. If that makes you predictable, then you are.”
“Just keeping an eye on things down there,” Horace said.
Gilan said nothing for a minute or so. He studied the lines of campfires, the silent, darkened tents.
“I don’t think they’ll try anything,” he said at length. “We gave them a bloody nose last time they did.”
“We gave them one at the river as well—at least, you and your archers did,” Horace said.
The Red Fox Clan Page 28
