"I suppose once you were a haughty free woman," he said to Lady Publia. "You do not seem so haughty now. Doubtless once, too, you thought yourself very clever, when you betrayed your city and accepted Cosian gold. Now, however, I suspect that you are less sure of your cleverness."
I motioned that Lady Claudia should return to her place.
"What is wrong with her?" asked the fellow. "She pities the prisoner," I said.
"Spare her!" cried Lady Claudia, suddenly.
Her outburst was greeted by a frenzied squirming, and a renewal of tiny, pathetic noises from the prisoner.
"Do not take her to the spear!" begged Lady Claudia. "What can it matter? The city, I am certain, will soon fall. What difference will it make?"
I wished Lady Claudia would have kept her lovely face shut.
"Why do you think we have waited until now?" he asked. "Let that be the irony, if you wish, that today, of all days, when the citadel surely must shortly fall, when she is so close to rescue by her Cosian friends, but so far, that she, today, of all days, in full view of the foe, in justice and defiance, is placed upon the spear!"
Lady Publia shuddered.
Lady Claudia shrank back, horrified. She looked at me, wildly.
"Would you like a hand with her?" I asked. This would bring me close enough to deal with him.
"I can manage," he said. "Where are the others?"
"What others?" I asked.
"Usually there is a squad of three, with the warder," he said.
"Doubtless they are about somewhere," I said.
"The other two are doubtless on the wall," he said.
"Perhaps," I said. That surely seemed a likely supposition on his part, given his information.
"It was wise of them," he said, "to move the other prisoner out, if they could bring only one man here this morning."
"That would seem to make sense," I said.
"He would probably, in any case," he said, "have been too weak to do anything." "Perhaps," I said.
"Doubtless, a child could have handled him by now," he said.
"Perhaps," I said.
"We are all weak," he said, irritably.
"Are you certain that you would not care for my assistance?" I asked. "No," he said. "This filthy, treacherous little vulo's weight is nothing."
He turned about then and bent to pick up the quivering Lady Publia, to hoist her to his shoulder. Suddenly he stopped. He had then, apparently for the first time, detected the bodies, muchly concealed with straw, which we had hidden at the side of the cell. I moved quickly toward him but then it seemed, suddenly, as thought the world had burst apart, and I spun about, covering my head with my hands, and it seemed in that instant that the cell was filled with bursting stones and bricks, and there was a great sound, and Lady Claudia screamed, and one could hardly see or breath for an instant, the dust in the air, the white, bright dust, and we were coughing, and my eyes stung, and there was debris all about, and it seemed half the cell wall was gone, and I squinted against the light, so bright, the dust glittering in it, flooding the room. The fellow had lost his footing. The floor, where he was was crooked, buckled. Some of the great stones tilted upward. He seemed half in shock. He turned, in the dust, pointing back to the wall, startled, that he would apprise me of his discovery, not even seemingly suspicious, and met the stone in my hand, part of the wall I had seized up, and sank to his knees. Lady Claudia crouched down, shuddering, her hands over her head. Lady Publia lay prone among the buckled tiles, perhaps in shock. Both were covered with dust.
I scrambled up an embankment of debris to the great opening in the wall. There, spread before me, in the bright morning sun, under the clear blue sky, bright with glittering spear blades and shields, with nodding plumes, with the standards of companies and regiments, dotted with engines, here and there a tharlarion stalking about, tarnsmen in the sky, in serried ranks, some stretching back to buildings still standing, even crowding streets in the distance, most on an artificial plain extending for three hundred yards about, created from the flattened ruins of burned, razed buildings, the debris sunk in cellars, and basements, and leveled, or hauled away, was the marshaled might of Cos in the north!
I motioned eagerly for Lady Claudia to climb the rubble, that we two, together, might stand in that opening and regard the grandeur of war. "Do you see how it is, that men can love it?" I asked.
"It frightens me!" she gasped.
"Look at them," I said, "the soldiers, their glory, their strength!" "It terrifies me!" she wept, the wind moving the veil against her lips. "How splendid it is!" I cried.
"I belong naked in chains!" she suddenly cried.
"Yes," I said, seizing her arm, "you do!"
Had I not held her arm, I fear she might have swooned on the rubble.
We then heard, from all about, before us, the notes of trumpets.
"The men are moving!" she said.
"It is the attack," I said.
"They are silent!" she said. Hitherto the trumpets had been followed by great cheering.
"They have had their fill of shouting, and such," I said. "They come now to finish the matter."
Light-armed troops hurried forward, slingers and archers, and javelin men, to keep defenders back, as they could, from the crenels. Under their cover the ladder brigades followed and the grapnel men; behind these came scalers, crouching, protected under the shield roofs of infantry men.
"The wall will be attacked at several points," I said, "to spread the defenders."
She suddenly gasped.
"What is wrong?" I asked.
"I thought I saw a building move," she said, "back by the other buildings." "Where?" I asked.
"It does not matter," she said, "it was only an illusion, a ripple in the air, a matter of the waves of heat rising from the stone, the debris.
"Where?" I asked.
She pointed. Then she gasped, again.
"It is no illusion," I said. "It is moving. There is another, too, and another." "Buildings cannot move!" she said.
"I count eleven," I said. "They can be moved in various ways. Some are moved from within, by such means as men thrusting forward against bars, or tharlarion, pulling against harnesses attached to bars behind them, such apparatuses internal to the structure. Some, on the other hand, look there, there is one, are drawn by ropes, drawn by men or tharlarion. That one is drawn by men. See them?"
"Yes," she said.
There must have been at least fifty ropes, and fifty men to a rope. They seemed small yet, even in their numbers, at this distance.
"Even so, how can such things be moved?" she said.
"They are not really buildings as you think," I said, "made of stone, and such. They are high, mobile structures, on wheels. They are heavy, it is true, but they are light, considering their size. They are wooden structures, frameworks, covered on three sides with light wood, sometimes even hides. The hides will be soaked with water as they approach more closely, to make it difficult to fire the structure. They overtop the walls. Drawbridges can then be opened within them and men can pour out, preferably down, this giving them momentum for the charge, over the walls, others following them up the ladders within. There are many types of such structures. Some are even used on ships. We call them generally castles or towers. As they are used here, one would commonly think of them, and speak of them, as siege towers."
"They are terrible things," she said.
"Even one of them," I said, "from the platforms and landings within, and by means of the ladders, bringing men from the ground, may feed a thousand men into a city in ten Ehn.
"They are like giants," she said.
"There does, indeed, seem to be stately menace in them," I said.