The derrick grapnel is much what the name suggests. It is used from walls, dangled down, and then drawn up with a winch. If the wall is a harbor wall it can capsize a ship. If the wall is a land wall, it can, with luck, topple a siege tower. This device also, however, tends to be ineffective except under rather optimum, special conditions. For example, very few captains are likely to get their ships within range of a derrick grapnel. Would you?
I watched the rope on the grapnel for a moment and noted that although it was taut it did not exhibit the differential tensions which it would if it were being climbed. I pulled it loose then and, letting it tautness do the work, let it fly back over the walkway and the crenelation. Had I more time or been of Ar's Station, perhaps I might have waited until it was being climbed and then, after a while, cut the rope. This sort of thing, as you might imagine, tends to be somewhat frustrating to the fellows who are climbing the rope, particularly if they are some seventy feet or so up the wall at the time. It take great courage, incidentally, to climb such a rope in daylight under battle conditions. I did not doubt but that one or tow of the fellows on the other side of the wall were probably just as pleased that it had come back as it did. It also takes great courage, incidentally, though it is much easier to do, to climb a siege ladder, particularly when the walls are heavily or stoutly defended. It is better, I think, for the individual attacker, particularly if the walls are high, over twenty feet, say, to try to enter over the bridge of a siege tower or, even better, through a breached wall or gate.
I looked through the crenelation again, standing back from it. It takes time to move such cumbersome objects. Their progress forward was steady, but so slow, it seemed sometimes almost like watching the hands of a clock move.
I passed a lad standing behind one of the embrasures with a crossbow. He was too young to be on the wall. One quarrel reposed in the guide of his bow. Beside him, leaning against the inside of the parapet, were some more quarrels, only two of which were crafted, one feathered, one with light metal fins. The others were little more than filed rods, neither feathered nor finned. With these, too, there were some wooden quarrels, blunt-headed, such as boys sometimes use for bringing down birds. I did not think they would be effective. Perhaps, ideally targeted, launched from within a yard or so, one might cause a fellow to lose a grip on a ladder. More likely they would serve as little more than irritants. I smelled hot oil on the parapet, and a cauldron of it was boiling, which I passed. Buckets on long handles could be dipped into this, the oil fired, and then poured on attackers. The oil tends to hold the fire on the object. I passed two catapults on the walkway. They were quiet now, not even manned.
I proceeded on toward the raised platform over the main gate, where the impaling spear, flashing in the sun like a polished needle, was mounted. I passed another lad, too, also, in my opinion, too young to be on the wall. Better these fellows had been running about the windy corners of the markets, looking for the veils to blow about the faces of free women or pursing slave girls, pulling up their brief skirts, playing "brand guess," or busying themselves playing stones or hoops behind the shops. He was crouching beside a pike of stones, building stones, and tiles. It is hard to throw these with accuracy without standing above the crenelation. This exposes the caster, of course. He seemed lost in his thoughts. I wondered if he had been on the wall before. I supposed he had a mother, who loved him.
When I passed him, he looked up. I saw then that he had been on the wall before, and that, though his age might indeed be that of a boy, that he was a man. He then put down his head again, returning to his reflections, whatever might have been their nature. Near the steps to the raised platform I passed two men with long-handled tridents. These are used to thrust men and ladders back from the wall.
Turning, about fifty yards behind me, I saw the upright of a single-pole ladder jut from the outside over the wall. The two men, gaunt and weary, paid it no attention. Back there, however, a cluster of defenders sped to the place. The ringing of swords came to my ears. More than one fellow leapt over the crenelation but the ladder itself was thrust back. This isolated the Cosians who had attained the wall. Men swarmed about them. Two were cut down and a third climbed back over the wall and leapt away, plunging to its foot, preferring to risk the consequences of such a fall rather than face certain death on the walkway. The bodies of his two comrades, stripped of weapons, half hacked to pieces, were flung after him.
I hurried up the broad stone steps to the surface of the platform over the main gate. This area, at least at the moment, perhaps because of its height, and its position over the gate, the ground below soon to be blocked by the ram, the men working it protected by its sturdy shed, was empty. It would have made an excellent command post for Aemilianus, I thought, but, I gathered, he must be below, in the vicinity of the gate. Perhaps he thought, and rightfully, for all I knew, that there lay the greatest danger. I supposed that by now tons of rock would have been piled behind the gate. Still the ram might attempt its entry there, pounding through the brass facing riveted into the thick beams of the gate, punching, driving it back, snapping the crossbars, forcing back, blow by blow, even the rock and sand behind.
I placed Lady Publia on her back at our feet, near the mount for the spear. I then dismissed her from my mind, for the moment.
I considered the approaching towers, the thousands of men I could see in the field, the ladders being carried, the supporting engines. I then regarded the walls. There were too few men there. The results of the battle were a foregone conclusion. The Cosians had waited long for this day.
I looked up to my left. There, on a pole, defiantly, snapped a torn flag, bearing in yellow the single "Ar' on a red background with, beneath it, a wavy yellow band. This was the flag of Ar's Station, signifying the power of Ar on the Vosk. I did not think it would be there long.
I then lifted the tall impaling spear from its mount, laying it, with a sound, beside the supine, bound figure. She tried to rise but, her ankles thonged together, she fell. She tried to scramble back, but I reached out and took her ankle, and then pulled her where I wanted her, closer, across the stones. "Please, no!" wept Lady Claudia, putting out her hand. I brushed her aside. I then addressed myself to Lady Publia. "Would you car to confess yourself a slave?" I inquired.
She thrashed about, uttering wild, affirmative whimpers, nodding her head in the hood, vigorously.
"You recognize my voice, do you not?" I asked.
Again she nodded. This was the first she would have realized, for certain, I supposed, that she had come to the height of the wall, to the foot of the impaling mount, on my shoulder, and not on that of the executioner. Hope would be springing up wildly within her, for the executioner not knowing who she was, and thinking she was the Lady Claudia, would presumably have simple put her on the spear and went about his business, probably, pulling off his mask, to some post on the wall. I, on the other hand, she knew, knew well who she was. Too, my word must have given her some hope that she might have, at my hands, at least some slim chance for life, albeit that it might have to be purchased at so alarming a cost as consigning herself by her own words to a fate no less than the degradation and categoricality of uncompromising Gorean bondage.
Lady Claudia put out her head and touched me on the shoulder, gratefully. I pulled Lady Publia to her knees.
"Are you a slave?" I asked.
She nodded, vigorously. Lady Claudia clapped her hands with delight, she herself no better. "Do you beg permission," I asked, "to legalize the matter, to speak appropriate words of self-enslavement?"