Ashes of Heaven

by C. Dale Brittain

  Tristan kept track of the stockpiled supplies and tried to keep the villagers and their animals confined to the bailey. He forced himself to concentrate on preparations for battle, even though during the daytime he recalled that he had once compared Isolde the Blonde to the day’s full glory, and at night he seemed to see her bright eyes among the stars. Occasionally in the evening he tried to give Lord Jovelin and his court a brief respite from the cares of the coming siege by playing his harp, and it was as though the only tunes the harp knew were love songs.

  War, not love, should be his focus, he told himself firmly. “More mouths to feed,” he commented as more villagers crossed the river and passed through the gates into the castle. They had all brought food, but he doubted enough to last through a six-month siege.

  Lord Rigolin of Arundel rode to Karke exactly when he had threatened to appear, arriving in mid-morning. He came at the head of an army of hundreds of knights and foot soldiers, visible miles away by the dust they threw into the air. By the time he reached the river that defended the castle’s lowest flank, the bridge was raised and crossbowmen stationed at all the arrow-slits.

  The would-be new lord of Karke had donned an elaborately embroidered surcoat and rode a fine-boned steed that must have come from Ispania. He clearly meant to convey to anyone who saw him that he was a rich and powerful man, one who eminently deserved to hold this castle.

  But the real power lay in the man just behind him, a solid, square man with a grizzled beard, wearing an unadorned mantle over his chain mail. “That’s Duke Rugier,” said Lord Jovelin to Tristan, as they stood looking down from the battlements. But Tristan had already guessed.

  “Open to the lord of Karke!” shouted Rigolin of Arundel.

  The guards at the gate shouted back, jeering. “The lord of Karke is already here!” “You don’t look like him at all!” “Did you steal those clothes from a fine lady?”

  He glared upward, as though considering what punishment might be most appropriate for such disobedient guards. “The former lord of Karke has lost his rights through gross disobedience to his master, the duke. If you open at once, I shall not be forced to attack you or to put any to the sword.”

  “Now!” came Kaedin’s shout from the gatehouse.

  A dozen crossbowmen loosed their quarrels at once. The lord of Arundel had prudently drawn up his forces just out of bowshot, but when the quarrels hit the ground before them, many of the horses shied, and Rigolin’s reared, pawing the air with its hooves and almost tumbling him off.

  But in a moment he found his stirrups again and got his horse under control. “I will remember this!” he shouted, his face purple. There was a general surge backwards in the front lines, complicated by the denseness of the ranks of horsemen behind them.

  Duke Rugier forced his own horse to the front. “Jovelin!” he shouted. “Yield now, before we have to attack you! You refused to swear your fidelity at my court when summoned to do so, and your honors are thus forfeit!”

  Lord Jovelin leaned over the battlements to shout back. “I have sworn fidelity to you on more than one occasion, and am happy to do so again, so do not make me attack you! Accept my obedience, take these men away with you, and we shall not be enemies.”

  “It is too late to offer feigned obedience!” the duke roared back. “The time for that was my Christmas court! Since you will not obey my order to yield, we shall drive you out by force.”

  And so the attack began. The duke had come well prepared. Just downstream from the castle, the main road crossed the river by a shallow ford. The ford was within bowshot of the castle walls, but the army had brought along walls made of hide stretched over wooden frames, walls high enough to shelter a man on horseback. These were mounted on wheels, so they could be pushed into position with minimal loss to the foot soldiers pushing them. The knights then crossed the river in their shelter and spread out in a ring around the castle. Even with the size of the army that the duke had brought, they were spread fairly thin by the time they completely encircled Karke’s hill. Well-placed arrows kept them from drawing too close.

  The attackers had at least ten times as many men, Tristan calculated, as they had knights and soldiers inside. The villagers in the bailey, with their crying children and frightened cattle, would be no help in a fight.

  But Karke, he thought, would be a hard castle to capture. Kaedin the Bold seemed to be everywhere, positioning his men, giving them words of encouragement, looking out at the enemy and commenting mockingly how small were their chances for success.

  At the back of the attacking army, behind the knights, came foot soldiers with scaling ladders and siege engines. Tristan, seeing motion, called to Kaedin, but the young heir to Karke had already spotted them and was preparing his soldiers for defense.

  The foot soldiers with the ladders rushed forward, again sheltered by the hide walls, trying with sheer numbers to overwhelm the castle’s response. As they came close to the castle, beneath the battlements, their hide walls no longer shielded them from Karke’s defenders. Crossbowmen fired again and again, bringing down many of the soldiers, but others hurried forward to pick up the ladders and kept on coming.

  The first wave of ladders swung up against the walls. They came up in a fairly narrow section, on either side of the castle, between the river and where the hill was too high for the ladders to reach. The castle’s defenders rushed to push the ladders back down, usually waiting until there were a dozen men on a ladder, so that when it crashed to the ground the injuries to the climbers would be all the greater.

  Isolde Fair Hands, wearing a hauberk and a helmet over her curly hair, stood with the defenders, pushing back ladders and cheering when they smashed amid shouts and screams on the rocky ground below the castle walls. Beside her, men levered stones up and over the battlements, to land on the attackers and splinter their ladders.

  All through the fighting, the hot summer sun beat down on both attackers and defenders. In mid-afternoon, the attackers drew back. Some foot soldiers, under a white flag, came cautiously forward to gather up the bodies of their fallen comrades. The men of Karke watched them for any sign of a sudden treacherous attack, but mostly the truce was an opportunity for them to eat and drink and take off their helmets, at least for a little while.

  “Look how many men they’ve lost already,” said Kaedin cheerfully. “And we have not lost a single man.”

  “We were much better prepared than they expected,” Tristan agreed. “They unwisely imagined they would pluck the castle from you and your father and a handful of old retainers, as easily as taking a treat from a child.”

  “And most of their scaling ladders are now useless.”

  Tristan shook his head. “They lost most of those they used in the first assault, but I believe I see wagons with many more ladders back beyond the river. They may be reserving them in the hopes that a night attack will succeed where a day attack did not.”

  “They’re going to be short of foot soldiers soon,” commented Kaedin. “And a fall from the ladder will be even more disastrous for a knight in armor.”

  After the duke’s men withdrew with their dead and wounded, Lord Jovelin was hopeful that the lord of Arundel might be less inclined to press his attack, but instead a great trebuchet appeared from behind the lines, ready to fling stones against the castle wall.

  “We have a trebuchet of our own,” said Kaedin, gulping down the last of his beer. “We’ll see where they position theirs and be ready to fire back!”

  The great ducal trebuchet was slowly wheeled forward. It was tall and awkward as it rolled, but the defenders of Karke looked at it with chill apprehension. The duke’s men pulled the long arm slowly back, hooked it, loaded it with a heavy stone, and released the hook. The arm swung up, almost too fast to see.

  “Here it comes!” The defenders scattered, keeping an eye on the stone arcing toward them.

  But the attackers did not yet have the range, and the stone struck short of the castle. The men of Kark
e leaned over the wall to shout insults.

  The trebuchet was being repositioned and reloaded. The second stone hit the wall at the base, where it was thickest, and rolled harmlessly away.

  “Where’s our trebuchet?” called Tristan urgently. “They’re aiming too well for my liking!”

  It was being carried up the stairs to the battlements in pieces. The great arm was too long to make it up the narrow stairs and had to be winched up from the courtyard. Another stone struck, halfway up the wall. The defenders, casting worried glances over their shoulders, started assembling the pieces of the trebuchet. Another stone, better aimed, hit the castle, crushing an arrow slit. The attackers cheered, their voices faint and distant.

  The men of Karke were assembling their trebuchet as fast as they could and positioned it on its wheels. “Don’t worry about their knights!” Kaedin shouted. “Go for the siege engine!”

  Their trebuchet was smaller than the duke’s, but they had the advantage of a higher position, shooting down, which increased the range. Their first shot went nowhere near its target, but the stone, bouncing at deadly speed through the ranks of attackers, sent them scattering. “It’s good wherever it hits,” said Kaedin with a grin.

  The men of Karke re-aimed and shot again. This time the stone hit closer to the enemy trebuchet. “Look out!” Kaedin shouted. An incoming stone just cleared the battlements and bounced among the defenders.

  Faint cheers could be heard from the attackers. “They like this stone so much,” said Tristan grimly, “let’s see if they want it back!” They levered the stone into the sling, cocked the trebuchet, and fired.

  This time they almost had the range. The stone bounced not ten feet from the duke’s trebuchet.

  “Will they try to move it?” asked Kaedin, straining to see what the attackers are doing.

  “They won’t if they believe they are in position to damage us,” said Tristan. Both of them ducked reflexively as another stone sailed toward them, but this one was lower than the last and crunched heavily against the wall below them, barely missing a window.

  Karke’s trebuchet launched another stone. This one hit the ground just in front of the duke’s siege engine, bounced, and slammed into it. “Again!” Kaedin shouted. Karke’s men reloaded and relaunched as fast as they could, jumping out of the way as their trebuchet rolled on its wheels from the force of the launch. The stone hit in almost exactly the same place, bounced, and hit the enemy’s trebuchet at full force.

  The shouting from the attackers died away abruptly. When the dust had cleared, those in the castle could see that the arm on the trebuchet hung awkwardly, cracked, and its supports were in splinters, the base off its wheels. The men of Karke cheered wildly.

  Kaedin grinned, but only for a moment. “What do you think they’ll try next?” he asked. “Ladders again?”

  But the attacking armies seemed to have had enough for the day. They pulled back, set up camp, and lit cooking fires. “We’ll have to keep guards posted all night,” said Tristan, “in case of a surprise attack.” But the defenders were ready themselves to take off their armor, eat and rest. They had clearly won the first day’s battle, but how many more days were there to come?

  V

  “Your men can hold out indefinitely,” Tristan said to Lord Jovelin. They were seated on the battlements, watching the sunset fade, and as usual Kaedin and Isolde were with them. “Kaedin the Bold certainly deserves his name, and the men are eager to follow him.” He could see the young man’s grin through the darkening air. “We will be able to withstand a protracted siege, and, if we become restless with long inactivity, some of the knights can ride out, harass the besiegers, and escape back into the castle. But what happens next?”

  “They will attempt a new attack with scaling ladders,” said Jovelin, “or bring up a new trebuchet, for I expect that this one shall prove irreparably damaged.”

  “Yes,” said Tristan, “but that is not my concern. You do not wish to hold out indefinitely. Sooner or later you or Kaedin will have to be reconciled with the duke and persuade the lord of Arundel—or have the duke persuade him—that he should be content with Arundel. It will be much easier to effect the reconciliation now rather than after many months of siege, before rather than after the loss of many more men.”

  “You are not counseling surrender, I trust!” came the voice of Isolde Fair Hands from the shadows.

  “Not our surrender,” said Tristan. “Theirs. The duke must be made to recognize the madness of making war on one who has always been faithful to him.”

  With the sunset a cool breeze had come up, bringing the sound of distant voices from the attackers’ campfires. “I understand from your foster-brother,” Lord Jovelin commented, “that you have been studying law and rule in Cornwall, in preparation for becoming king one day. It sounds to me as though you have been learning your lessons well.”

  Tristan shook his head. “This isn’t a matter of law. This is a matter of winning.”

  At first light the postern gate was opened and a narrow bridge lowered across the river. Tristan rode out under a white flag.

  He came alone, though it had taken half the night to persuade Kaedin not to accompany him. Even Isolde Fair Hands had offered to come, arguing that the duke would not attack a woman.

  “I am not part of your quarrel, and therefore I can speak to the duke without arousing his anger,” he told them. Besides, although he did not mention it, he hoped that this duke might recall that he had attained his title only after his cousin, the former duke, had been killed by Tristan, and thus he might owe him some sort of gratitude.

  Nor did Tristan tell Kaedin and Jovelin what else he was planning.

  In the early morning light, the camp of the attackers was quiet and sober. Mounds of earth showed where the dead had been buried. The ruined trebuchet still stood where it had been, a pile of unused stones beside it.

  Duke Rugier and Lord Rigolin of Arundel came out of their tents to meet him. Tristan reined in but remained on horseback, the white flag snapping above him in the morning breeze.

  “Tristan of Parmenie, I believe,” said the duke, standing with his thumbs hooked into his belt. “Someone who enjoys killing his liege lord, and then renouncing any allegiance.”

  Not quite what Tristan had hoped from him. He silently dipped his head in acknowledgment.

  “Fortunately Curvenal of Parmenie has better sense,” the duke continued.

  Curvenal, Tristan recalled, had given this new duke the oaths that he himself had renounced when declaring that he held Parmenie only from God. Tristan reminded himself that Parmenie was now his foster-brother’s, to do with whatever he wanted. All he had wanted was Cornwall—and Isolde.

  And now that he had lost them both, he had little reason to live longer.

  “So,” the duke added, “I gather you have come to tell me that you have been teaching the renunciation of oaths to Jovelin?”

  Tristan spoke then for the first time. “Not at all, Sire.” He hated to call the duke “sire,” for he had never served him and never would, but he needed him calm, not angry. “In fact, the very opposite. I have been urging Lord Jovelin to find a way to induce you to accept his oath of allegiance.”

  “He had his chance,” the duke grumbled.

  “I know he has offered explanations and apologies for why he was not at your Christmas court,” said Tristan. Sitting on horseback gave him an advantage, he felt, for he was looking down at the others. “It was the only court he has ever missed or, with the help of God, that he ever will. This war is not the way to settle your quarrel. You have already lost many men and will surely lose more, even if the castle is eventually forced to yield. Show your power and magnanimity by accepting Lord Jovelin back into your liege service.”

  “Too late for that,” put in Lord Rigolin of Arundel, who had been listening silently to the exchange. He was wearing his finery again, as if to suggest that he was about to take part in a banquet in his own hall, but it was rather
wrinkled and spotted. “The castle of Karke is mine, by gift of the duke.”

  “Then,” said Tristan loudly, “I have another suggestion.” This was what he had wanted to keep from Kaedin—at least until it was all arranged. “It is an offense against God for Christians to kill other Christians, and it is as unwise for a lord to throw away the lives of his men in attack as it is for a lord to risk starvation in staying shut up behind high walls.”

  He paused, waiting for the duke’s reaction. “I am not going to forgive Jovelin and those cubs of his out of hand, if that’s what you’re proposing,” he said.

  “You willfully misunderstand me, Sire!” Tristan replied, trying to chuckle. “I am proposing instead a judicial duel, to decide the right of this matter: the lord of Arundel against the champion of Karke.”

  Lord Rigolin seemed about to speak, but Duke Rugier spoke first. “And what, exactly, would this duel prove?”

  Tristan hoped that the duke’s tone was not entirely dismissive. “This, sire. The question shall be whether Lord Jovelin of Karke is a loyal vassal who should not be deprived of his honors. If his champion wins, it shall indicate that God recognizes his loyalty to you and knows that it should be rewarded.”

  “And if he loses?”

  “Then God will have demonstrated that you were entirely right to give the castle of Karke to another. In either case, we will have settled this quarrel without further loss of men or equipment—other of course than the death of the champion who loses. Lord Jovelin really is extremely sorry to have caused you pain. What do you say? Do you agree?”

  “It is I who shall agree or disagree!” burst in the lord of Arundel, who had been growing slowly more livid during the last few minutes.

  But Duke Rugier waved a hand at him. “No, this is my quarrel. I dismissed Jovelin from my service, and it is my decision whether to accept him back.” He narrowed his eyes at his cousin’s husband. “You are not seeking to escape this duel, are you?”