"My lord, this is some riff-raff," Navarre protested. "They won't assault this castle. How could they possibly expect to take it?"
"What is that ungodly stink?" someone asked.
A noxious smell, like spoiled meat, was drifting on the breeze.
"Pig farmers, ditch diggers," Navarre said. "Which is all they are."
"That, my lords, is the smell of war," the earl said abruptly. "Muster your men, if you please. Prepare for battle!"
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Bells rang throughout the castle for most of that morning. Clarions sounded in every section. But Countess Madalyn waited in silence on the western bluff, as did her army, its disordered ranks eerily still. By eleven o'clock, the walls of Grogen Castle were bristling with swords, spears and arrows knocked on strings; every defender was fully mailed. Even the grooms and pages had been called up and given blades. And yet still nothing happened.
Ranulf, on the south curtain-wall, with Gurt to his right and Ulbert to his left, wondered if this delay owed to some previously unseen notion of Welsh chivalry, but he soon dismissed the idea. More likely the countess was waging a mental attack before the physical one. She was letting it be known that she had no concern about whether the English were prepared to receive her or not; that she was undeterred by their readiness, their armour, their weaponry. The battle would only commence when she decided, for it was she, not Earl Corotocus, who was dictating this day's strategy.
Of course, Earl Corotocus was never one to waste an opportunity. While the countess dallied, he'd prepared his defences to their utmost. Though his personal artillery wagons might not have arrived, the castle had several engines of its own, and these were quickly marshalled. On the Barbican, Carew and his men, under the direction of William d'Abbetot, prepared the trebuchet, swivelling it round on its colossal timber turntable so that it faced the western bluff, then stockpiling rocks and lead weights, some as heavy as four hundred pounds. It took three of them to load just one such missile into the sling, and half the company to pour sweat as they lined a dozen more in the trough. They also set aside a pile of 'devil's sachets' — linen sacks, loosely tied with lace, each one containing ten smaller boulders, a payload that would spread mid-flight and cut a gory swath through massed infantry. At the entrance to the Gatehouse, meanwhile, the gate was locked and chained, the portcullis drawn down. Behind this, a fire-raiser was brought into position. This was a fiendish device: a massive steel tube mounted on two wheeled carts. At one end, a gigantic pair of bellows allowed its crew to expel wind through it at great force. At the other, which flared like a trumpet and, with a deliberate sense of irony, had been carved to resemble the gaping mouth of a Welsh dragon, a cauldron was suspended and filled with lighted coals, sulphur and pitch. When working at full capacity, great billowing clouds of flame could be expelled by it, engulfing anyone who managed to tear down the outer gate and attack the portcullis.
In the southwest tower, there were four levels of ballistae. The lower two comprised polybolas, immense crossbows designed to project large single bolts and fitted with windlasses and magazines so that they could discharge repeatedly and quickly. The upper two levels contained lighter weapons, archery machines constructed with cradles from which sixteen clothyard arrows — fitted either with barbed or swallow-tailed heads — could be shot at the same time. All these frightful devices were built into the actual fabric of the tower, in specially designed rooms containing masses of scaffolding, and angled at a downward slant so to discharge through horizontal ports cut into the outer wall. On the normal parapets on the top of the other towers and turrets, and on the curtain-wall, every archer and crossbowman had ample time to accumulate bushels of arrows. The rest of the men provided themselves with other, less sophisticated missiles — stones, spears, javelins, grenades made from interwoven nails and spikes, and barrels of naptha — a highly flammable mixture of oil and resin, which they could pour on the heads of their assailants.
Father Benan was visibly unnerved by these preparations. He'd seen war before of course, but had previously stayed clear of the actual battlefield.
"I shall return to the chapel and sing a mass for the preservation of our souls," he said, crossing himself at the sight of so many axes, mattocks and cleavers.
"Sing one for the Welsh first," Corotocus advised him. "I'll soon be sending a hundred-score of them to God's hall of judgement.
But if the Welsh were daunted by the sight of the rearmed stronghold, there was no sign. In fact, Ranulf didn't think he'd ever seen as quiet or composed an enemy. Only as the noise of the English activity — the clanking of mail-clad feet on steps and walkways, the clinking of hammers, the rattling of chains, the shouting and the banging and bolting of iron doors — faded, did he realise that no sound at all issued from the vast army outside, except perhaps for a distant low moaning, which more likely was the wind hissing on the wild Welsh moors. There was no beating of drums, no blasting of horns, no guttural roars as the various companies psyched themselves up for combat. Yet neither did he think he'd ever seen so drab a band. He didn't expect glorious heraldry, but few banners or standards flew. The predominant colours were greys and browns; many of the enemy sported nothing more than filthy rags. And, of course, there was that foul fetor, which had got steadily thicker until it now seemed to have settled over the castle in a malodorous shroud.
"How many of them, would you say?" Gurt wondered. "Ten thousand?"
"Even ten thousand wouldn't normally be enough to assail a fortress like this," Ranulf replied. "But…"
"But?"
Ranulf couldn't explain.
"Don't worry, I know," Gurt said. "Sometimes emotion alone will win the day. You can only tyrannise a population so much before it turns on you like a tiger."
"Are you a student of treason as well, Master Louvain?" Walter Margas wondered, walking past them towards the nearest ladder. Despite his age and world-weariness, he was still an efficient eavesdropper. "You two are made for each other. You should get a room in a tavern sometime where you can whimper your sedition together."
"Are you leaving us, Walter?" Ranulf asked. "Surely not? Not when the battle's just about to start?"
Margas's wizened cheeks coloured. "Perhaps you'd rather I defecated up here on the parapet?"
"I'd rather you got back to your post. You can drop your guts with everyone else, when the fighting's over."
"Are you calling my courage into question, sirrah?"
"You were very active on the River Ogryn, as I recall. Riding against unarmed footmen. These odds are less to your fancy, I take it?"
Margas's lips tightened with rage. "When this is over, FitzOsbern, I'll report you both to the earl. You'll find he takes a dim view of those who spread defeatism."
"If you're hiding in the privy, how will you know when it's over?" Gurt asked.
Margas was visibly furious. Spittle leaked into his unkempt beard — but there was nothing else he could do. Aware that others were listening and watching, he trudged back along the wall to his post.
"Useless sack of puke," Gurt said under his breath.
"He likes his cowardly butchers, does Earl Corotocus," Ranulf added.
"If you gentlemen would concentrate on the day," Ulbert interrupted them, "I'd be obliged. There's movement afoot."
To the west, large numbers of the Welsh host were suddenly shambling — shambling was the only word Ranulf could think of — down the bluff towards the southwest bridge. There was nothing military about it. They descended in a mob, stumbling, jostling each other. In appearance they were lambs to the slaughter, for they marched neither behind shields nor beneath a protective barrage of missiles.