The battering ram, close against the wall but well to one side of the three-beaked tower, was just about to make another stroke as Brindur and the rest reached it. Like Vigri’s soldiers who were already crouched on either side of the massive device, they held their shields above their heads to ward off arrows from the tower or wall, waiting for their chance to attack.
The ram’s sloping roof, which protected the men beneath it from defenders’ arrows, was the length of a tithing barn, though much narrower, and so large that it had to be assembled in sections like the bear-headed ram itself. Snow had been piled high atop the ram’s roof as a protection against flaming arrows, but Isgrimnur saw no sign of Norns now and little evidence of defense or defenders at all.
The ram’s overseers chanted loudly and beat their drums, competing with the war-cries of Brindur and his party. The sweating, grunting ram-handlers drew the great log back as far as its heavy chains would allow; then, at the chief overseer’s command, let it go. The Big Bear’s grinning iron muzzle swung forward and smashed into the already weakened wall with a loud crunch. The wall still did not collapse, but it shifted and bowed inward where the ram had struck, causing a shower of stone chips when cracks between the unmortared stones widened.
“One more time!” shouted Brindur hoarsely. “One more time and they’re ours!”
Isgrimnur rode closer, but still held his distance, keeping his eyes on more than that one spot: Brindur and even the usually cautious Vigri seemed blind to anything but the stretch of wall before them. Isgrimnur looked up to the three protruding beaks of the tower as a few arrows came hissing down from the battlements. Although some of these shots found their way between the soldiers’ upturned shields, the rest of the ramparts were still all but empty of defenders. Surely the Norns realized that their damaged wall could not hold much longer. Had they turned from their defensive positions and fled toward Stormspike? Or was something else going on?
The ram was pulled back again, the groans of its handlers and the pounding drums mixed with the battle-chants of the waiting Rimmersmen, but the bloodthirsty excitement of his countrymen no longer touched Isgrimnur. Something truly did seem wrong. His men had driven hundreds of Norns to this spot, and although a few of them had been killed on the walls by Vigri’s Tungoldyr archers, Isgrimnur knew those had only been a fraction of the enemies that should be fighting to keep mortals from crossing into their lands. By the Holy Ransomer, the duke thought, if Sludig is right, what are they planning?
The chains creaked as the ram reached its farthest backward point. A moment later the drum fell silent, then the overseer cried, “Now!” The ram swung forward and the bear took another crunching bite.
A goodly chunk fell from the middle of the wall where the iron head of the ram had struck; a moment later another piece fell from above it. Then, with a rumble like thunder directly overhead, the great stones began to tip and slide. The troops around the ram, arrested in mid-cheer, scrambled back—some of the stones were bigger than a man.
Once it began, the cascade of black stone could not be stopped. The whole center of the wall before the ram tottered and then fell in on itself with a grinding crash. Huge stones began to cascade on either side, throwing flurries of snow and mud into the air, scattering men in all directions. A moment later the collapse was over: all but the bottom few cubits in the wall’s center had toppled, leaving a gaping wound in the great structure like an upturned horseshoe. The Rimmersmen quickly reformed their ranks and began to surge through this opening, climbing over the remaining stones like ants swarming a fallen loaf of bread, screeching and bellowing in their gleeful frenzy to get at the enemy who had evaded them so long.
A moment later the attackers discovered that another wall stood behind the first. It was only barely taller than a man, obviously hasty work by the defenders behind the great wall’s weakest spot, but as the first Rimmersmen made their way over the rubble, they found themselves climbing into a hornet’s nest of arrows: most of the rest of the castle’s defenders were hidden there, waiting patiently for the chance to fight back that had now arrived.
“No fear! They are only a few!” shouted Vigri, his short legs straight in the stirrups as he waved to his troops. “On, now, Northmen! Show them what iron tastes like!”
But even as the jarl’s Enggidalers and Brindur’s Skoggeymen forged into the gap, Isgrimnur heard another cry. It was only another voice in the chaos of many, but this one caught his attention because it came from a different direction.
To his left and behind him, a good distance back from the breach, stood the catapults that had been pelting the walls with large stones to divert any remaining defenders from the ram. These siege engines were mostly guarded by the mercenaries from the south, men of unknown quality that Isgrimnur had not trusted in his front lines, and now he saw one of these southerners waving his arms and shouting, trying to get the attention of the Rimmersmen fighting near the ram. Isgrimnur could not make out what the man was saying through the noise of the assault, but he followed his wild hand gestures and looked up to the high peaks that framed the wall on either side of the pass. His heart lurched. About halfway up the slope on Isgrimnur’s left hand a huge boulder had somehow worked its way loose from the soil and was beginning to move ponderously downward. The massive chunk of stone seemed to be alternately skidding and rolling right toward the Rimmersmen as they fought to get over the collapsed wall through the flurry of Norn arrows.
Isgrimnur shouted a warning, but of course no one could hear him. High above, the irregular boulder slowed for a moment, its flattest side down, and the duke felt a moment of hope that it had stopped; an instant later the great chunk of stone slid over the small level spot that had slowed it and began to roll, big as a three story house in the wealthy merchant’s quarter of Elvritshalla, careening toward the base of the hill.
Isgrimnur spurred his horse forward, shouting a warning as he headed toward the hole in the wall the ram had made.
“Forward!” he bellowed with all the strength he had in his great lungs, trying to drive the rest of the waiting troops through the gap. “Forward or be crushed! ’Ware! ’Ware!”
The huge stone smashed the corner of the wall as it scraped past, sending monstrous black shards flying like pebbles but slowing the stone not at all.
The collapsed section of wall lay before him, then his horse was leaping and sliding on the piled stones as men threw themselves out of his way.
“No, forward!” he cried. “Forward if you want to live!”
And then a powerful wind nearly blew the duke out of his saddle as the great boulder struck just behind him, grinding men and stones and the mighty bear-headed ram itself into an unrecognizable clutter, with a noise like the end of the world.
Porto, from his position beside the catapult known as the Donkey, had been watching the Rimmersmen waiting to attack with a mixture of admiration and disbelief. As the wall wavered he thought they looked like a pack of dogs, their beards bristling, teeth bared, howling and even singing as they waited, and all he could think was, Are they really going to charge through that hole into the teeth of whatever defenders are left? Because surely the Norns were aware of the widening cracks spreading between the great stones. Even a blind man could hear the shifting of tons of rock as the wall slowly began to give way.
Although the catapult had been loaded and wound again, it had not been fired: two of its crewmen lay on the snowy ground with Norn arrows in them and their hammers lying beside them, one man already dead and the other shrieking for God to help him. Several of the long iron stakes that held down the front of the war engine had worked their way loose on its last shot, but Hjortur the catapult master did not seem to have noticed in the confusion of battle. Porto knew that if the front was not anchored the release would not just miss the target, but might throw its stone into the Rimmersmen’s own ranks, so he hurried around the wooden frame. As he lifted the heavy maul the dead man had dropped, he heard a sharp, excited cry from the soldiers at the wall as the great Bear was released again and crashed into the heavy stones.