“We'll reel you out quickly, pull you in as soon as you wave,” he repeated. “Be as quick as you can.”
The scared face nodded, the launchers held him aloft to take the wind, waited an instant, threw him up and out all together. For a moment he seemed to drop, and Shef noted that the wind eddied round the walls. Then he was reeling away backwards, on the stout mooring line and the cluster of thinner control lines—control lines the boy hardly needed now, so expert had he grown at working the vanes. Shef admired his skill as he swept upwards and outwards. His own best flight had lasted bare minutes. One day, when the world was at peace, he would do better.
“They're still up to their tricks,” said the Emperor Bruno to his new-appointed Pope, Peter-that-was-once-Erkenbert. The two stood in the cover of a sacristy outside the walls, wrecked years before by the Moors. The Holy Lance was still by Bruno's left hand, in its holder beside the shield-grip. Behind him the four knights of the Grail stood round their relic and its banner. All had been held back from the fighting, not from personal fear but from the Emperor's fear that the precious relics might fall into enemy hands. He could not hold back much longer, the Emperor thought. Rage at the enemy's defiance was beginning to overcome him. They were defying not only him but their Savior, His Church and His relics on earth. The heathen had penetrated to Rome itself, were in catapult distance, almost, of the Leonine Wall and Saint Peter's Basilica, heart of the Faith. It must be finished today.
“If they try it again, I will have a trick too,” replied Erkenbert. “But they are reeling him in. Lucky for him.”
“What did you see?” asked Shef.
The boy spoke from his harness, not bothering to climb out. “Inside the walls, there are men on foot, in armor, on that side there,” he pointed. “About two or three hundred. There were none in sight the other way.”
No more than that, Shef thought. There will be more out of sight, of course. But they have lost heavily.
“No horsemen anywhere?”
“No. I saw the Emperor. Behind me, near that ruined building with a bit of white dome left. I think it was him. There was a man in black standing next to him, and a banner by his side.”
“What emblem was on the banner?”
“It was yours, lord.” Tolman jerked his chin at the ladder-pendant dangling now outside Shef's torn tunic.
If only we could shoot from the skies, Shef told himself. Or rain down fire from Steffi's mixtures. Then the Emperor would be dead and the war over. All wars would be over.
The trouble with machine wars, something within him replied, is that both sides end up with machines. The same machines. That is the true meaning of the Song of the Giantesses, which Farman once sang for me.
“Go up again,” he said. “See if there is a door in these walls anywhere near the Emperor, a door we might reach. We could try a sally out.”
The small scared face nodded, the launchers moved back to their places. Two hundred yards away Erkenbert exclaimed with satisfaction as he saw the kite appear again on the parapet. From the shade of the ruined sacristy men came out, hammered a stout five-foot post into the ground, set on it a device like an upturned iron stirrup, and on that a crossbow. A giant crossbow, six feet from tip to tip.
“It is yew-wood,” said Erkenbert. “Vegetius does not explain the secret of the steel the heathen make their bows from. But nor does he explain this. I had it made when we saw the kites fly from the Jewish city. But this shall be its first trial, in defense of Saint Peter and Saint Peter's city.”
Tolman had seen arrows curve up at him before, shot hopefully by the besiegers of Septimania. He knew that the range of an arrow shot straight up is far less than one shot along the ground. He had no fear of breast-bows, even of the heavy crossbow quarrels of his own side. When the first yard-long shaft zipped past his side and tore through a side-vane he did not understand what it was. Then, almost directly underneath him, he saw the bow bent again and his danger with it.
“He's signaling to be hauled in,” Shef said, watching through the far-seer. The man at the mooring-line began to haul in, coiling the rope round his elbow for want of the winch.
“Something's wrong.” The second arrow had driven through the body of the kite, all the archers could see to aim at. It had caught Tolman through the knee. His first start and twist of agony had almost turned the kite away from the wind. Then he had recovered himself, was trying to spill the wind enough to help the hauler, but keep it under the top of the box-shaped kite to keep him aloft. As they hauled him in, the elevation fell, the range for the heavy yew bow shortened. It was slower to reload than a goat's foot crossbow, as the two men operating it heaved the cord back by main strength and fitted it over the releasing ratchet. They still had time enough for the third shot.
Tolman was barely ten feet from the wall and safety when the men reaching out to seize him heard the whistle of the arrow, saw the small face contort and the small body jerk to the blow. They still could not see what had hit him. As they hauled him over the battlement, hands reached to pull him from his sling. He could not move, seemed wedged. Then Shef, reaching inside to cut the obstruction free, saw the great arrow driven through sling and body and out the other side. With four ripping slashes he cut away the material and the cords, pulled the boy and the harness and the arrow together all free. It was impossible to lay him down, the arrow would have been driven further through. He stood clutching the boy as blood ran down over his tunic.
“Where is Hund?” he called.
The little leech was already there. He took the boy from Shef's arms, laid him down carefully on his side, cut quickly at the sling and the clothes inside.
He sat back on his heels, patted the boy's face reassuringly. Shef had seen him do that before. It was a death sentence.
“No need to talk,” he murmured soothingly. But the boy's face showed worry now, more than pain. He was trying to say something, face turned towards Shef. The king bent forward, trying to pick out the dying words. Something to do with the Emperor…
“What? What was that?” he said.
The boy's head turned sideways and Hund let it fall, rolling down the eyelids with professional hand. He looked up at his lord and one-time friend with the disgust and hatred that had come upon him again and again on this voyage. Shef paid no attention.
“He saw something. He tried to tell me something. Something vital. Have we another kite? Someone else to go aloft?”
“They dragged your kite along, the big one,” said one voice.
“You could look for yourself,” said another.
“Unless you want to thend another bairn,” said a third. It was Cwicca, still lisping through his broken front teeth. Shef remembered suddenly that he had struck him in the night, threatened to send him back to slavery. But he could not remember why. All the faces turned towards him betrayed anger, even contempt. He had never seen that before, not from his own men, whom he had freed from their masters. No, he had seen such a look once. In the face of Godive. It was what had sent him on this expedition.
“Rig my kite then and put me in it,” he said, his voice sounding in his own ears as if it came from far away.
Moments later, it seemed, he was in his harness, held up by a dozen men, lines attached. His face was a bare foot from Cwicca's just below.
“I'm sorry,” he said.
They launched him into the rising wind.
As had happened with Tolman, he dropped instantly below the wall. For seconds he could see nothing but the great squared stones flashing past in front of him, while he thought of the man who had jumped from the tower of the Wisdom House, jumped and gone straight down. Then there was the feeling of lift again, and he felt the wind take him. They were reeling him out as fast as they could, he was beginning to climb, already he could see over the wall. He could see Brand shouting and lashing out at the men who had launched him, could see crossbows lining the wall and starting to shoot down, to kill or distract the men who had shot Tolman. Time to lo
ok round and see what it was that Tolman had died for. There, yes, the troops of the enemy forming up for the attack. Not where Tolman had said the first time, but massing behind a villa from which two flights of steps led up to the city-wall where his remaining command was strung out. He leant forward as far as he could without tipping the whole flimsy contrivance into a downward swoop, shouted at the top of his voice, far stronger than Tolman's pipe.
“There! There!” He struggled a hand free and pointed. Brand at least had caught his meaning, was off in the right direction. Steffi was on the wall too, doing something with his gear and an armful of earthenware pots.
“Burn the bastards alive,” said Steffi gleefully as he poured his deadly mixture into the pots he had taken from the nearest guardhouse kitchen.
“Let 'em get halfway up before you shoot,” bellowed Brand, arranging his defenses. “Don't shoot to kill, shoot 'em in the belly. Frightens the rest of 'em.”
Hund stood up from his crouch beside the dead boy, thought of his patients lost in the night, thought of the burned and scalded men he had treated all through, thought of the death and chaos and the worship of Loki. He twitched the heavy sax-knife from Cwicca's belt, stepped over and hacked through the mooring-line. The kite on the end of it jerked, began to rise and drift away. One of the men on the handling-lines tried to jerk it in, over-compensated, instantly let go before he pulled the kite into a dive. Hund slashed out at the other lines, men ducked, tried to avoid him. In moments only one line held, at one corner, it was tugging the kite over with no pressure from other lines to resist it. The man let go.
Trailing rope, the kite stood on its tail, banked clumsily, turned away from them, drifted off across the open country, losing height all the way as its unskilled operator tried to bring it under control.
With a blare of trumpets the Emperor's stormers surged forward towards the stairways, the stairways held now by axe and sword alone.
Chapter Thirty-three
As the lines jerked and parted to the struggle below, Shef felt the kite lurch unpredictably this way and that, felt the instinctive bowel-loosening fear of falling, of empty space beneath him. Then the last line went, and the air was under his canvas again, holding him up like the warm sea under a swimmer. At the same time Shef realized that he was being blown backwards and upwards, the walls of Rome receding, already too far for him to see more than white dots of faces following him from the wall.
To fly free, he remembered, you had to turn away from the wind, not into it. Tolman could do it—Tolman had been able to do it. His nerve quailed at the idea of trying it. Better just to sag backwards, let the wind take him, perhaps bring him down far from the war and the everlasting pain.
It wouldn't happen like that. The wind would change, dash him on stone or drop him into some ravine, to die with a broken back of thirst. He had to turn now. Tolman had said it was like a ship turning fast under oars. Raise one side-vane, lower the other, roll your body as the kite rolled and go round in a bank, just far enough to straighten up. Before his fear had a chance to stop him, Shef worked the controls, trying to do both smoothly and at once. The kite rolled immediately, his body automatically trying to tip the other way, to correct the sickening heave. Override it. Do what Tolman said. Shef tried to point with his back and belly-muscles in the way he wanted to go. He was diving now, still tipped over to one side. Correct it, work the side-vanes, swing the tail with his ankles. For a few moments he was swooping down like a hawk over the villa-dotted slope, his shadow running ahead of him away from the city and the rising sun. Flight! He was the flying man, the Völund escaped from his enemies, the smith who hung in the air while those who had tormented him lamented below. In a moment of ecstasy Shef shouted out the lines from the Völund Lay that Thorvin had often sung, the despairing lines of the evil king Nithhad unable to reach his crippled but escaping enemy:
“No man knows how to knock you from your horse,
Nor has wit so sharp as to shoot you down,
There where you hang high in the sky.
Sporting like a salmon in spawning-season.“
The ground was coming up fast, much too fast, his dive had given him speed, he knew no way to brake it. Tip the nose of the kite up like a skier in soft snow? He worked both vanes, felt the nose lift, cut off his view of the ground. Was he rising again? Or sliding along in the air, belly exposed to the rocks?
The kite's tail kicked upwards as it hit the ground, Shef saw the rocky wall of a terraced field hurtling towards him, tried to…
The crash smashed the breath out of his body, he felt himself sliding over something in a tangle of cloth and broken frames, tried to jerk his hands free to protect his head. Something slammed him in the face. Then all movement stopped.
For several moments he lay perfectly still, not unconscious but dazed. He was down anyway. And alive. How badly hurt was he? Slowly Shef ran a tongue over his mouth, counting his teeth. Got his left hand free to feel if his nose was broken. All well so far. Both hands free now, and he groped for the razor-sharp belt-knife. Cut the cords, cut through the leather harness, at least he knew now which way was up, he was lying on his face behind a wall over which he must have somersaulted. Now try to crawl free.
Shef looked down at his left ankle, knew it was broken. The foot stuck out at an impossible angle. No pain there, no feeling at all, but he knew not to damage it further before the pain-warnings came back. He rolled onto his right side, edged free of the jumble of canvas, careful not to knock the damaged foot on any projection, rolled onto his back.
Now. He had seen Hund do this. Set a bone quickly and firmly before the patient had a chance to scream or set his muscles. It was easier if you did not have to bend forward. Legs straight out in front of him, Shef bent forward, feeling an immediate pain in his ribs that told of further fractures, seized the foot sticking out at right angles to one side, and pulled foot and leg firmly straight.
Still no pain, but he felt a terrible grinding deep inside the joint. If Hund were here he would cut me open, set the bones straight with his fingers, cleanse the wound with Udd's spirit that the Arabs call al-kuhl. Maybe I would walk again. Now I have to crawl from this hillside. At least I am alive.
Shef pushed himself up with his arms. He would reach the wall and hobble along beside it till he could tear down a branch from an olive tree. Make a crutch. Try to get back to the road, find a mount or a cart. And head back to the ships in the harbor, where Farman waited with the rearguard. His fight was over.
As Shef got his hands on the wall, faces appeared on the other side of it. Helmets. Mail. Two men vaulted the wall, came in on either side of him, swords drawn. There was no chance of resistance, he could not even let go of the wall to stand unaided. Perhaps they were Italians, friends of the deposed Pope, he could bribe them with his gold armlets…
“Wi habben den Heidenkuning gefangen,” said one of the men, “den Einooger.”
Close enough to Shef's own native English for him to follow. We've caught the heathen king, the one-eye. Low Germans. Lance-brothers.
They would take him to their Emperor.
If their Emperor were still alive. Shef had been right to think that one side's weakness is rarely known to the other side. As the day dawned and the Emperor counted his losses, he had realized that while his enemies were in a position that would soon be untenable, he himself had barely enough force left to make his advantage tell. He had begun the battle with three thousand men as the core of his army. Now he had less than two—not all the result of casualties, but also of secret desertion in the night.
Yet he had been clear enough what to do. While the giant catapults of Erkenbert harassed his foe, he had spread out his lower-grade troops in a rough semi-circle outside the wall, Greek marines and French archers, the cowboys of the Camargue. If the Waymen came out they would be decimated again by ambush and charge in the broken ground.
His high-grade troops he had sent inside the wall. Some to form strong barricaded blocks eithe
r side of the enemy, on the high walkways. He did not want them escaping to left or right. The rest massed out of sight and in cover, where there was best opportunity for what he meant to be a final escalade, up the broad steps to where the Wayman remnants clung to their parapets. There to finish them for good, and their apostate king with them. The Lanzenbrüder and Lanzenritter were all there, except for the small guard set on the Holy Grail and on His Holiness outside the walls. Such of the Frankish knights as were left alive and still prepared to fight grouped behind them. Perhaps six hundred men all told. The last reserve of the army of Christendom, Bruno thought. But he was prepared to use up his last reserve in what would be the last struggle. He walked through the ranks, dressed in his own fighting gear. The Holy Lance was still inside the cover of his shield, strapped next to the central grip. The Lance-brothers and Lance-knights reached out to touch its projecting head as he passed between them, and he granted them the favor smilingly. At the sound of a bell his entire force fell to its knees, each man took into his mouth a piece of grass, or straw, or even dirt, and swallowed it as a last communion before death while the priests pronounced a general absolution of their sins, gave them the penance of fighting bravely, promised the delights of Paradise to those who fell in battle against the heathen.
Then the army rose and split into its two columns, each one to assault a flight of stone steps, eight feet wide, thirty feet high. Bruno's remaining archers formed line and began to shoot up at the walkways with their weak breast-bows. Their duty was only to hinder the crossbowmen, prevent them from shooting down the armored men making the foot-assault. For a few moments arrows and quarrels went to and fro, then the answering shot died down: most of the cross-bowmen had used up their missiles in the night, could not fit the enemy's arrows into their specialized weapons. Bruno's trumpets blew for the charge.
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